Guardian Cryptic 28,110 by Philistine

65 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,110 by Philistine”

1. And a good week draws to a close (or, at least, I think it does: I’m losing track of days in these surreal times) with another fine test.

   I filled the grid and the check tells me they’re all correct but some are unparsed so this blog has helped me a lot today.  PYRRHIC VICTORY rather jumped out at me and was a helpful start though I couldn’t explain it.  SHARK and NAKED also both went in unparsed. Slightly surprised at the first definition of SHARK.  NYSTAGMUS is new to me but the clue led me there OK.

   TESLA raised a smile (talking of not parsing – I still can’t work out whether Elon Musk is genius or buffoon), ORIENTATE, SHOW TACT, SHOEHORN and CHICANO all got ticks but COTD, for its delightful definition, goes to GOOD INTENTIONS.

   Thanks Philistine and manehi for helping me make sense of the bits I missed

2. Thanks Philistine and manehi

   I found this the easiest and quickest Philistine ever. I solved NAKED as it was printing off (I don’t like the clue; it’s not &lit, as “Turned up” isn’t part of the definition, so that means the wordplay and definition are all mixed up). PYRRHIC VICTORY was a write-in (and favourite clue), and it all went smoothly from there (though I didn’t see the first definition of SHARK).

3. “Intimidating at first and enjoyable throughout” – Can’t improve on that.

   CHICANO was a new one for me (and I was interested to find that it isn’t a derogatory term); I hadn’t heard of Sins of Old Age but the wordplay was so clear this was no problem.

   Warm thanks to Philistine and to manehi.

4. I parsed 25a as S + HEAR -> S + HARK.

5. [Re NYSTAGMUS: a sufferer that most people will have seen is the flautist James Galway.]

6. I like your parsing of S HARK, Hovis.

7. Thanks for the blog manehi which I needed for the parsing of MIXED METAPHORS which is now my cotd. We seem to be getting more of this type of clue – do we have a name for them? Before I understood this one I had the simple NEWSPRINT and misleading ALLEGRO as my favourites. I also didn’t get the (M)YRRH part of 1a. It was satisfying to get the unknown NYSTAGMUS from the clue. Thanks also to Philistine for a great puzzle to end a great week of them.

8. I love Philistine’s crosswords and this was no exception: just my Goldilocks level.  I know it was, for me, a good solve since i was able to parse them all I think, although I am grateful to manehi for some confirmations.  Favourites were many, but I will just pick out three.  NAKED, MIXED METAPHORS which I thought was brilliant, and NYSTAGMUS, which I think James Galway the flautist suffers from.  Very many thanks Philistine for getting my day off to a fine start.

9. On the whole very good, but I don’t think 25a works, unless it’s with Hovis@4’s parsing. SHEAR as a noun doesn’t mean ‘predator’, at least not in Chambers.

10. Thanks all – I do like the S+HARK = S+HEAR parsing. This also came up in 2016, in another Philistine blog of mine…

    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2016/05/13/guardian-cryptic-26883-by-philistine/

    For what it’s worth, my Chambers has ‘fleece (also figurative)’ as a definition of “shear”
    Edit – see Wiktionary links [shear] [shark]

    @poc, “predator” needs to be a definition of SHARK, not shear

11. Sorry muffin we crossed re James Galway another sufferer is Pointless’s Richard Osman I believe.

12. Thank you manehi for no doubt the correct, intended parsing of MIXED METAPHORS. I had it as &lit in a different way: the linguistic part referring to the tongue, and the faux pas to the feet, making the clue in itself a MM. Probably Philistine had that in mind too… But the deconstructed anagram has it, of course – I have no real justification for posh. However, I’m with Hovis (to whom thanks) on SHARK – since there’s a double process involved in your explanation, which surely wouldn’t be admitted, though it’s clever. And I think the economical SHOEHORN is brilliant. I didn’t know CHICANO till today. So thanks all round.

13. Another very enjoyable puzzle. I parsed 25a in the same way as Hovis.

    I think that the clue for ‘naked’ at 23a is interesting. I am happy with the clue, but it does appear to require something to do double duty. Arguably, the definition could be ‘dropping even knickers’, but then the first letters of the definition would also be part of the wordplay. As manehi has parsed it, the first letters of ‘au naturel’ are, similarly, part of the wordplay. Personally, I do not object to parts of a clue doing double duty when the clue leads clearly to the solution, but some purists may disagree.

14. Thanks for the blog, manehi.

    A great end to the week. My favourites were all four long ones and I liked ORIENTATE, too.

    Re 25ac SHEAR: this type of clue is now firmly established as a Philistine trademark – and it still caught me out to begin with!

    Many thanks to Philistine for the fun.

15. Interesting struggle.  All in correctly, it turns out, but failed to parse PYRRHIC VICTORY (love the reference to myrrh), SHARK, TESLA & ROSSINI.

    Some tricky stuff but enough do-able clues to gain a toe-hold.

    Many thanks, both.

16. Another Philistine (non-Pyrrhic) victory. Quite, and typically, wonderful.8d must be one of the finest clues ever. I just wish I hadn’t wasted some time trying to squeeze “malaprops” into the second half.

17. ‘Musky product’? Really?

    Some good humour in this but quite a lot of enter-then-parse.

18. Finding myself, earlier, in the unusual situation of being first poster this morning brought to mind a situation not long ago when I turned to the fifteen squared archives for help with a randomly selected Guardian cryptic from 2013.  The blog answered my query but I glanced through the comments out of curiosity – to find that the latest had been added five or so years after publication.  I’ve sometimes wondered whether it’s worth adding a comment to a blog that’s a few days old; it’s rather nice to find that these conversations continue beyond the grave, as it were.

19. Delightful puzzle with clever surfaces. I agree with your nomination of 10a SUSHI as a favourite, manehi: it made me smile. But above all I loved PYRRHIC VICTORY at 1a. Add to those 6d TESLA, 8d MIXED METAPHORS and 15d NEWSPRINT – I clearly had fun! I don’t mean to be repetitive but just reinforcing my enjoyment of those particular clues, which have already been nominated in other comments.

    Many thanks to Philistine for the whole experience and for my “Unfamiliar Thing I Worked Out Today” with  9a NYSTAGMUS (and for the examples of sufferers given by muffin and SPanza). Appreciation as well to manehi for the explanatory blog which helped to tie up some loose ends.

20. A quick and enjoyable solve. Thanks Hovis for the parsing of SHARK. I smiled at Musky, I do like a pun,and favs were 8dn, 10ac, and 27ac for the definition. Thanks to Philistine for the fun and Manehi for the blog.

21. Yes, a lovely puzzle with lots to enjoy – in my case particularly GOOD INTENTIONS, MIXED METAPHORS and SHOETREE. Hadn’t heard of Rossini’s Sins of Old Age, so presumed he must have done dodgy things in his later years. Many thanks to Philistine and manehi.

22. I had a lot of fun with this one; I especially like clues such as for SHARK and GOOD INTENTIONS that don’t 100% spell out what you have to do, but are not so vague or indirect as to be annoying.

    23d NAKED almost has an intriguing surface, but it doesn’t seem to quite work, as explained by muffin@2, so it falls into that limbo area that some dislike while others tolerate.

    I would have thought a question mark was in order for 6d, although in saying that I might be contradicting my earlier comment!

23. I loved the succinct wit of SHARK, INFIRM, NEWSPRINT and CHICANO, and the cleverness of 1a and 8d were impressive too (though, like Oleg, my first thought was to try and make “malaprops” fit the second half of the latter) but for me, cotd is a dead heat between GOOD INTENTIONS and TESLA.
    Thanks to Philistine and Manehi

24. An excellent crossword. I liked the five long ones the best, and of those PANTOMIME HORSE and GOOD INTENTIONS (for its allusive definition) stood out especially.
    CHICANO and NYSTAGMUS were new to me, but they were both readily gettable.
    Thanks to Philistine and manehi.

25. The usual wit and humour here, and a helpful grid (if you got the long ones!) – thanks to Manehi for the blog and Hovis for parsing “shark” which had eluded me. I found the long and convoluted ones somewhat easier to put together than some we’ve had recently, though 3 of the 4 went in by definition and enumeration – only “pantomime horse” went in “properly” with a couple of crossers letting me put “him” and “me” in before seeing the rest.

    I’m not sold on “mixed metaphors” though – I solved and parsed it but I don’t see what in the clue tells me it is of the reverse type. We’ve seen a lot of these but usually something indicates that there is something fishy going on (like “could be”). I know there’s a question mark, but it’s after the definition, which implies the definition is by example, not the wordplay is curious. Likewise “naked” which is not &lit. Everyman does this a lot and we know to expect it from him and I see it as a different kind of clue (definition within wordplay?) which he is good at and which allows him to write some really fun surfaces. I prefer to see it that way than as a failed &lit!

    Anyhow, many thanks Philistine for a gentle work-out and a lovely end to the week.

26. Mark@1; Komornik@12.
    Where did you manage to squeeze ‘shoehorn’ in ?

27. Thanks Philistine, and Manehi for resolving the difficulty I had with parsing some clues.

    Coincidentally, Rossini is Radio 3’s Composer of the Week, so ‘sins of old age’ was a write-in.

28. Chambers dictionaries position themselves as the crossworders and Scrabblers reference manual, so they usually include a hefty number of pretty dubious headwords + definitions in order to maintain that market niche. Oxford and Collins have a commitment to more serious and scholarly attention to how words are used within the English-speaking world. So I’m suspicious of shear=SHARK.

    Otherwise a very enjoyable puzzle with some crafty clueing: esp. the down clues at 6, 8 and 23.

    Thanks, Manehi, for your blog and explaining the parsing of NAKED.

29. Enjoyable solve with everything progressing steadily.

    I loved the wise man’s present and the Musky product. I guess the clue for NAKED could be thought of as an extended definition with ‘turned up’ in the surface just a hint at having arrived somewhere, being unclothed.

    Thanks Philistine and manehi.

30. Stambridge @26: you’re right.  Oops.  Shoetree of course.  Can’t even blame predictive text.  Funny that two of the three of us that liked it made the same error.

    BTW.  Thanks to Hovis @4 for parsing Shark.  Which is, of course, excellent.

31. I had a feeling MIXED METAPHORS would be popular but I can’t help feeling either I am, or the clue is, missing something? I don’t have a problem with the definition and I understand that mixing metaphors gives you “a posh term”. I just can’t see anything in the wordplay that suggests that’s what you need to do. I do quite like these paradoxical koan-like clues but await enlightenment on this one. Cracking puzzle overall with some lovely surfaces. Cheers all

32. Shark Shears are also used by Japanese topiarists and barbers?

33. Terrific. Loved the Musky product and infernal paving.
    Many thanks to Manehi and Philistine.

34. The definition of 1ac meant that PYRRHIC VICTORY was quickly written in, so good early progress. The same applied to DERRING DO. Thought 8d was a wonderful, concealing clue. Didn’t know The Road To Hell line, so GOOD INTENTIONS was last one in as only that could have fitted. Enjoyable throughout, as always with Philistine…

35. body cheetah @ 31 I know what you mean but to me the question mark at the end is enough to change 8d from a dingbat to a proper cryptic clue (and if 25 is a concatenation clue then that too would need one too for my money).

    Gentle for Philistine but none the less enjoyable for it although I agree with muffin about &lit clues, even great setters seem to struggle matching definition and wordplay with identical wording (‘turned up’ in 23 and ‘here’ in 16 stand out as problems).

    Thanks Philistine and manehi.

36. Some excellent stuff here. I had not heard of nystagmus, and kept thinking of  strabismus (a different eye condition), although it clearly would not fit or work with surrounding answers. Strabismus was one of Anthony Burgess’ favourite words, and appears several times in his classic and excellent novel: Earthly Powers. With thanks to all.

37. The was really good fun. Outrageous definition for TESLA, and I quite enjoyed the imagery in 10a – I can just see Jesus with the five thousand calling out ‘does anyone have any wasabi?’

38. Andrew Jordan @36

    Dr. Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht was a recurring Beachcomber character.

39. I missed the parsing of NAKED and SHARK but was pleased to pick up the ‘Top wise man’s present’ at 1a and the excellent ‘infernal paving’ of 27a at the end, admittedly after a bit of hair-pulling.

    Very enjoyable, even though I found this to be more than a gentle work-out.

    Thanks to Philistine and manehi

40. Thank you Philistine for a brilliant puzzle and manehi for a very helpful blog.

    I wanted to enter DARING DO at 26a but it would not fit, so tried DAREING DO which looked wrong, so, feeling low about my poor  English, used the dictionary – apparently DARING DO is correct, DERRING DO is a misinterpretation made by Spenser and by Scott.  I wonder if Philistine had this in his mind when he wrote the clue?

41. Very enjoyable thank you Philistine – I particularly liked 27a and 6d

    Thanks also to manehi

42. My favourite of the week so far; chewy enough to be challenging but accessible enough not to be frustrating.
    Thanks manehi and Philistine.

43. Enjoyed this a lot. Same favourites as many others: MIXED METAPHORS, SHOETREE. GOOD INTENTIONS. Thanks manehi for the parsing of Pyrrhic, Tesla, Naked. I will now return to yesterday’s crossword where, so far, I have managed 3 solutions only.

44. Another lovely puzzle – we have been treated well this week!

    Thanks to Philistine and manehi

45. Zipped through this until I got to the last two, then had to reveal MIXED METAPHORS in order to get POLYP. I love reverse clues when I’m able to get them and thought this one was quite good even though I didn’t. Otherwise a lot of fun. The two hidden words in the NE brought up an image of Jesus serving sushi to Elon Musk, now replaced by Boffo’s better imagery @37, and I nominate “infernal pavement” for definition of the year so far. Thanks to Philistine and manehi.

46. 25a is a great device if you’ve already solved it and are an experienced solver. To everyone else it just looks like an annoying in-joke designed to keep out strangers. On the whole I think it’s a good puzzle but if you want the target audience for cryptics to continue to dwindle, keep publishing clues like 25a

47. Thanks, fiendish Philistine and helpful manehi.  Last night I got just under half the answers.  This morning, all the rest slowly worked their way in, as time after time I thought, “Oh, that bit could mean ..”  It was very satisfying, much more so than getting all of it the night before.  In fact, when I do get it all the night before I feel disappointed at having nothing to work on over breakfast.

    COD for me was MIXED METAPHORS, loved the posh term.

48. Thanks to Philistine and manehi.

    An interesting if somewhat enervating experience today in that I had to conduct a Balkan campaign to get at the soft underbelly of the perimeter clues, but they all fell in their turn with a satisfying clunk.  And just as I was finishing off with NYSTAGMUS my PC’s battery died without warning (it does that) – but what matter: off to 15*15 (on the phone) to see who might say what.

    Only to find that I had not in fact finished and there were holes in the SW relating to SHARK, NAKED, ORIENTATE and CHICANO – all delightfully chewy clues that I hadn’t had a proper run at. Too late to avert the eyes and as a result I’m feeling a little cheated and peeved.

    Ah well.  It could be worse.  I think SHARK would have been my pick of the day – I think it’s a perfectly fair construction.

     

49. Surely Shoetree (8) should be shoe tree (4,4)?

50. Thanks, Philistine, for the introduction to a Rossini work unknown to us – just listening to it now.

51. Do we have a car theme?  There’s the Vauxhall VICTOR, Triumph STAG, Austin ALLEGRO, and of course TESLA.  Also SPRINT, if we can extend the Triumph idea to bikes.  The RAC also puts in an appearance, and ‘AA’ and ‘CAR’ both appear as ninas.

    Incidentally – at the risk of boring everyone after yesterday and a few days back – in the clue for 23d, ‘au naturel’ gives us another nice example to add to the list of ‘things we think the French say, but they don’t, or if they do, they don’t mean what we think they mean’.

    Very enjoyable, thanks Philistine and manehi.

52. Bingybing: de acuerdo.

53. Mark@18 – The i newspaper uses Indy puzzles recycled from c5yrs ago so the comments you  saw are probably from i solvers (the i do the i blog links back to the original blog here on 15^2)

54. Bingybing @ 46 and Dicho @ 52 I could not agree less!!  This type of clue is just one of a myriad used by setters to confound and confuse us along the way of our search for a completed puzzle.  There are plenty of synonym type crosswords out there along with ones which rely solely on general knowledge.  These here are called cryptic crosswords because they use a variety of clues to get to the answer.  If they were all the same – all anagrams for instance – the result would be very boring.  I am a very average solver so I do not always get to the answer.  That is part of the fun.

    And who says that the audience is dwindling?  Do you know that?  The number of comments on this Blog seems to suggest that all is well!!

55. The road to hell reminded me of a language tuition show in which the pilgrim asks the devil for directions and and is told “Heh heh heh, tutti vii vanno al’inferno!”. Sounded a bit like the Sesame Street Count and had such a wicked ring that it entered the family lexicon.

56. Seems to me we can parse SHARK in the way we’re most comfortable with. For me, it works as a simple DD albeit using somewhat archaic definitions. The S-HEAR/HARK approach seems to render the S somewhat redundant in the wordplay? Chacun to their gout etc

57. I rather liked this although I struggled to begin with and then solved the whole thing – well,didn’t parse the PYRRHIC bit in
    1ac. CHICANO was FOI and reminded me of the RnB associated with the zoot suit riots in LA in the 1940’s.Pachuko Hop by Chuck Higgins springs to mind- and then there were the rockers like Ritchie Valens and Chan Romero.Anyway I liked PANTOMIME HORSE,SHARK and NAKED.
    Thanks Philistine.

58. essexboy @51

    The much drooled over Triumph Dolomite Sprint?

59. Spanza – estoy de acuerdo!

60. muffin @58, thank you!  How could I forget?

61. Afternoon all.  A bit of a late start this week.  I didn’t around to looking at last Saturday’s Prize until Tuesday so I’ve been playing catch up.  Caught up now, and I think we’ve been spoiled this week with some excellent puzzles, from the extended Prize, through a harder-than-usual Monday slot from Brendan, yesterday’s fabulous offering from Picaroon and another very enjoyable workout today.  Thanks to Philistine, and everybody else who’s kept us entertained and challenged this week.  I wrote in PYRRHIC VICTORY almost immediately, which offered a great start, and I could see where P____IC VICTORY came from, but couldn’t resolve the YRRH until I came here.  Thank you to manehi for that explanation, and others.  It’s been too long since I watched Life of Brian (“…thanks a lot for the gold and frankincense, but don’t worry too much about the myrrh next time…”), and even longer since I was at a nativity play.

    CotD was GOOD INTENTIONS, just because it made me smile over a couple of old memories.  First, for fans of spiky Welsh punk pop (isn’t everybody), there was the old mclusky song.  And then there’s Eric, Terry Pratchett’s take on the Faust legend.  The title character and Rincewind are climbing the steps out of the underworld, when they noticed that each was built out of stone letters, spelling out “I Thought You’d Like It”, “For The Sake of the Children”, “We Are Equal Opportunity Employers”.  This was a road to Hell, and demons were traditionalists.  Anyway, time for the weekend, so To Hell With Good Intentions

62. 1ac a write-in for me, remember it from a history text book when I was in form 1 in 1979. COD S-HARK, very clever.

63. Like others I did not know of Rossini’s Sins of Old Age, but I do know he died of what is now called an STI (formerly known as VD), so there’s an allusion for us!

64. I don’t consider CHICANO to be slang but it is loosely applied to anyone of Mexican descent living north of the border.  Some time ago I was taught – can’t remember if it was Spanish class or something like sociology – that “chicanos” were specifically descendants of the Mexicans who lived in what became US territory after the US-Mexican War in 1848, i.e. those who became US residents by conquest rather than immigration. I don’t know if that was true or if it’s still used that way in the social sciences but it sounded good.

65. Scutter @61 — why the link to a master class on hostage negotiation?

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