Guardian Cryptic 28,365 by Puck

81 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,365 by Puck”

1. I liked a lot of these, but the clumsy rest seemed to perfectly exemplify the TRADE-OFF in managing a lot of theme words. You know the ones I mean.

2. NW most difficult for me – especially 9ac and 3d. I needed to search possibilities via google and finally found Richard Rogers.

   Favourites: SCHOONER, TIVOLI, CATATOMBS, SUBTLE.
   New: Celtic F.C., organelle, dibble.
   Could not parse 26d – ah that is very clever! I should have seen that.

   Thanks, Puck and manehi.

   I did not notice the theme, and do not know the TOP CAT comic anyway, so it was way over my head.

3. Thanks Puck, that was most satisfying. I have fond memories of watching TOP CAT as a child so that added to the fun. I had many favourites — SPOOK, PIT STOPS, ALSO, TOP CAT, of course, TOP HAT, and ASTAIRE. Despite a few tortured surfaces (e.g. 7, 26) this was top notch in my opinion. I missed OFFICER, being totally in the dark on that one. Thanks manehi for the early blog.

4. Well I saw the themes (TOP CAT and TOP HAT) quite quickly, but failed to notice any of the associated words!

   I found this a steady solve, the last four or five completed after a break of four hours. LOI WRAITH.

   Thanks Puck and manehi

5. Great Puckish fun, but I needed the ever-helpful manehi to explain “officer” as a more formal term for what in my Liverpool days I used to call a “bizzie.” Many thanks to both!

6. I don’t understand why a setter would go to all the trouble of constructing a crossword with this theme and then not bother to squeeze in Benny. Which would have been easy to do in the bottom left corner.

7. [I haven’t even started today’s but wanted to recommend – to those who may not have dipped into yesterday’s blog towards the end – taking the time to do so. Muck’s comment at 66 sheds new light onto Nutmeg’s creation which may be worth revisiting as a result.]

8. Thanks to Puck and to Manehi for the impressively early post.

   Top Cat was actually shown by the BBC as Boss Cat, to avoid confusion (or maybe copyright issues) with a popular cat food brand.

9. I found that very doable in terms of matching words to definitions, but could not parse several (especially TRADE OFFS, OFFICER) so thank you to Manehi for explaining everything so well. I recognised TOP HAT and TOP CAT and still didn’t register the theme(s). Thanks to Puck for an rnjoyable start to the day.

10. *enjoyable*

11. This was certainly ECLECTIC with the mixture of two themes but I enjoyed it a lot with the fond memories of TOP CAT as mentioned by TS @3. I was also disappointed, Andy @6, when I was sure 25ac was going to be Benny and I was also hoping for some references to the wonderful Sergeant Bilko.

    Three football teams, DERBY, CELTIC and TIVOLI (Gardens) and another cartoon character, Penelope PITSTOP(S) from my childhood made this a lot of fun. I liked CATACOMBS and TEHERAN but I thought APHIDS and SCHOONER were a bit clunky. I parsed TRADE OFFS as per your latter version, manehi. Another lovely clue with the image of the smooth-talking, scarf wearing, ladies man making me grin.

    Ta Puck and manehi for the excellent blog.

12. I enjoyed this one, and thanks to PostMark for alerting me to Muck’s identification of the theme words in yesterday’s Nutmeg! Nice.

13. 3dn – ROGER doesn’t mean ‘agreed’ when used in aviation, it means ‘I have received and understood your message’. To indicate compliance with an instruction you say WILCO = will comply, which is about the closest you can get to ‘agree’.

14. An enjoyable solve slowed down by putting Rimini in for 6dn. (In my defender, it’s more of a resort than the actual solution!)
    (Top Cat was a childhood fav for me too. My memory is that it was called Boss Cat because the BBC applied it’s non-advertising rules rigorously in those days!)

15. Andy @6 That’s exactly what I was thinking. I love TOP CAT (and Bilko), but the theme seems a bit half-hearted without Benny, who could have easily been accommodated.

    Beobachterin @9 Yes, I don’t know that I would have got OFFICER from the on/off thing, without it needing to go with DIBBLE.

    Still not keen on the extra ‘E’ in the middle of Tehran, but I enjoy getting from Bahrain to BRAIN.

    Thanks Puck and manehi

16. Fun. Saw there was a theme but didn’t help with spotting the related words as unfamiliar with both the film and the cartoon. Which is my excuse for having to google to find ROGERS along with agreeing with Jane@13, that it Roger doesn’t mean agreed but understood. Liked BRAIN and OFFICER. Nho a DIBBLE.
    Thanks to Puck and to manehi.

17. Good fun, particularly TRADE-OFFS (but couldn’t clearly parse), ECLECTIC, PHOBOS and all the cat references – but missed the film references. ROGERS was LOI, although I agree with Jane@13 that ‘roger’ doesn’t really mean ‘agreed’. Many thanks to Puck and manehi.

18. Thanks Puck and manehi
    For once the theme helped, as I’ve always called the tool a “dibber”.
    TIVOLI was a resort for Romans. If you get the chance, visit the Villa d’Este – the gardens are even better than you’ve heard!

19. [AlanC @11 Do CATACOMBS, WRAITH and SPOOK point us to any other cartoons? I haven’t a Scooby, but with PHOBOS being the personification of the fear, maybe Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘Fear My WRAITH’ is another mini theme?]

20. Tricky but enjoyable – managed to spot the Top Cat theme within seconds but I’m with Andy @6 – where’s Benny the Ball!?

    Memories of singing “Top Cat, The most effectual, Top Cat, Who’s intellectual, Close friends get to call him “T.C.,” Providing it’s with dignity” at the top of my voice whilst not realising that the words on the screen said “Boss Cat.” They make them slower in Southend… And not realising that I was watching The Phil Silvers Show in feline form! I wonder how much else was lost on me…

    [Jane @13: “Roger Wilco” is/was low-latency voice-over-IP software used by gamers many, many years ago (a sort of Discord for the time…).]

    Thanks to Puck for a tricky one, manehi for the blog.

21. Penfold @15: You won’t be surprised that I’m with you on TEHERAN but it brings back happy memories!

    Jane @13: that’s helpful. I haven’t heard WILCO in a long time but your distinction makes sense to me.

    I am amazed to discover that Top Cat only ran for one series of 30 episodes back in 1961/62. Rather like Fawlty Towers in that respect. It’s one of those timeless cartoons that can be repeated for every new generation. I do agree Benny should’ve been there. Clever to have worked in the themes though Dr WhatsOn makes a fair point that it did lead to a few forced surfaces.

    Thanks Puck and manehi

22. Thanks both. I don’t think anybody has mentioned that Top Cat was modelled on Sergeant Bioko.
    [Richard Rogers – don’t like his buildings, but he writes a damn fine tune!]

23. A struggle for me in the NW and needed reveals so a DNF.

    Thanks Postmark @7 for pointing out the late theme spot from yesterday’s Nutmeg . Also thanks to Puck and manehi for today’s puzzle and blog.

    Is Puck the new Everyman? TEHERAN with that spelling, and ECLECTIC clued almost identically were in the Everyman from 27th Dec 2020

    minty

24. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what grated me with this until I read Dr. WhatsOn @1

25. When I started this I quickly saw ASTAIRE and had GINGER or RODGERS in my mind but by the time I got to the top lest I’d forgotten and revealed the latter
    The Roman thing somehow reminded me of the film Trumbo with Helen Mirren playing Hedda Hopper-need IU mention how good she was

26. Penfold @19: you’re just being wacky and I did resist including WRAITH Rovers in my footie teams 🙂

27. Well, tha was a lot of fun.

    I haven’t much to add – I had ticks for DISCREDIT, ECLECTIC, TOP CAT, SUBTLE, AVATAR and SCHOONER (I liked the ‘defaced’ – we’re used to seeing ‘detailed’ but I don’t remember seeing this before).

    It took me a while to parse DIBBLE, because. like muffin, I thought the gardener’s tool was a dibber – I’m sure that’s what my grandpa called it but he had his own name for lots of things.

    I’m with muffin too, in recommending the Villa d’Este (visited on the same holiday as the Arno /Uffizi one I mentioned yesterday). Happy twenty-year-old memories.

    Many thanks to Puck for a most enjoyable puzzle and manehi for a super blog.

28. I’m not normally bothered by bad surfaces but I’ll make an exception for TRADE OFFS: an example of another pet hate – the DAFT (Distributed Anagram Fodder Throughout) clue
    Wasn’t “Are trends ECLECTIC” a Gary Numan song?
    [Penfold I concur with your TV selection and would add Mr Ed for it’s theme tune alone]

29. PostMark @7 Thanks for this. Like many others, I missed that.

30. The gardener’s tool is definitely a dibber: indeed, that’s what I put in until the combination of theme and crossers proved otherwise. Never heard it called a dibble, but in this crossword, it had to be.

31. @gladys 30 and others

    Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act iv, scene iv:

    Polixenes.
    Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
    And do not call them bastards.
    Perdita.
    I’ll not put
    The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;
    No more than were I painted I would wish
    This youth should say ’twere well and only therefore
    Desire to breed by me.

32. Pleasant enough crossword, for once the theme helped me.

    Notwithstanding the use of ROGER in aviation, it is more generally used to mean agreed, viz, Collins: ‘an expression of agreement’; Oxford: ‘informal Used to express assent or understanding’.

    I particularly liked ECLECTIC and SUBTLE.

    Thanks Puck and manehi (especially for the ‘edible’ that I missed).

33. For DIBBLE, Chambers gives: A pointed tool used for making holes for seeds or plants (also dibb?er).

34. … or even dibber.

35. Thanks to Puck for a great crossword. Thanks to manehi for parsing TRADEOFFS for me and for explaining the TOPCAT theme. I am so cross with myself. I loved that cartoon and I knew all the characters and I should have got it from OFFICER DIBBLE alone. So thanks to all the rest of my fellow bloggers for resurrecting some sweet memories.

36. A lovely double themed crossword. Add me to the list of people who didn’t know a dinner could be a dibble

    Thanks to Puck and manehi

37. Mine’s a dibber. Thanks, manehi, for explaining the “half of it” in SCHOONER (obvious in hindsight). I’d twigged the answer but kept trying to fit either of the HO and OO model railway gauges into a charade of S=small, CH=child and either ER=half LNER or NER= defaced LNER and no matter how I cut it I always ended up with one letter too many. I think a trip to Chattanooga might be in order (post lockdown).

38. I did not mean that dibble wasn’t valid ( even I looked it up!) just that it wasn’t the name I knew for the thing and I didn’t remember hearing the other one, although I must have done so at least once since I did the Winter’s Tale for A level, many years ago.

39. The penny finally dropped with last one in ROGERS, with ASTAIRE having waltzed into 21d earlier in the solve. Wasn’t quite clear exactly how SUBTLE worked from the wording of its clue at first. Found this a bit fiddly in places, and hadn’t realised that the word TIVOLI (as in Copenhagen, for instance) originated from the Roman resort.

40. Ronald@39: no, I couldn’t work out SUBTLE either, or SCHOONER or TRADE-OFFS (coincidentally, two of the three were clues featuring Top Cat characters). I could see it must begin s+ch and end in er, but not how the middle worked. Thanks manehi.

41. I would never have got DIBBLE without the theme. Double clueing like in TOP HAT often confuses me. I enjoyed this, though.

42. Really enjoyed this, which is surprising as I’m not great fan of the themed puzzle… let alone 2.

    On a number of occasions, found myself starting at the right guess for some time before the penny dropped.

    Favourites the same as manehi’s.

    Many thanks, Puck.

43. Dr. WhatsOn @1 was on the money for this one, I think.
    And I found many of the surfaces to be execrable. Sorry, Pan, but this one really rubbed me up the wrong way.

44. Ooops. For “Pan” read “Puck”.

45. @gladys 38
    I wasn’t getting at you, Gladys; I just thought a bit of Shakespeare might illuminate the comments thread. as well as vindicate Puck. I hate gardening, but I got ‘DIBBLE’ instantly just because of that passage in WT.

46. I think the parsing of 12A is HOBO inside P (front of “polite”) and S (abbreviation for “society”). If “front of” had been intended to apply to the first letters of more than one word it would have needed to be “fronts of”, wouldn’t it?

47. … a “knavish sprite”, indeed!

48. [Postmark@7 Oh no! Not another Guardian crossword glorifying our Imperial past. (tongue in cheek emoji, just in case)]

49. RichardCV22 @46: that’s how I parsed it too. I thought that’s what manehi had said but, looking again, I don’t think it reads aright.

50. [Petert @48: that’s a real face acre 😀 ]

51. The bottom half wasn’t too hard but found the top especially the NW very tough and couldn’t parse several.

    Sure I have seen a similar use of CELTIC recently.

    Favourites were APHIDS, DERBY, TIVOLI, SUBTLE

    Thanks to Puck and manehi

52. Theme soon twigged which meant I joined the throng looking for Benny (and Ginger too, for the ROGERS connection). And Puck often inserts himself into the wordplay, rather like Boatman does, but not today.

    Tremendously enjoyable. I’d much rather do a dozen Pucks than a single one of some of our more abstruse setters. Didn’t know ORGANELLE; I started off with the unlikely ‘argonelle’ but then realised AVATAR made sense, prompting the switch. That was my only real hold up, though if busy = policeman hadn’t cropped up elsewhere a few weeks ago it might have been a different story.

53. This came in pretty quickly, and I didn’t even notice the themes. If I had, it might have slowed me down.
    Like Maidenbartok, I remember the series when I was a child as always called “Boss Cat”, though the protagonist was always Top Cat.

54. Loved this whimsical offering from Puck. Who needs Benny when Derby fits the theme? I looked for Berlin but found plenty of Cheek in Phobos.

55. Fred Astaire played a dog owner in the film ‘The Amazing Dobermans’, so maybe there is a link to Benny the Ball after all.

56. [I’ve just tried to discover why a match between local rivals is called a “derby”. The answer seems to be … nobody knows for sure. One possibility is a traditional match that has taken place in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, since the 12th century between teams from opposite sides of the river; other suggestions include the Earl of Derby and his horse race. Any other suggestions?]

57. 26d – Anyone remember TV gardening expert Percy Thrower appearing with Morecambe and Wise?
    THROWER: Excuse me boys, I must pop into the greenhouse for a dibber.
    MORECAMBE: Well have one for me while you’re in there.

58. Not having grown up with a TV, any theme passed me by, but this was soluble regardless. A nice easy way in with the 3,3 pair. I agree that a few surfaces were unnecessarily clumsy, but most were fine, and I rate the puzzle overall as a good one.

59. [Ronald @39: If you ever find yourself in Rome by all means visit TIVOLI. It’s very close in distance but worlds apart in many ways. Its residents are welcoming, the city is clean, the accomodations affordable, the restaurants excellent, and both Hadrian’s Villa and Tivoli Gardens are fantastic attractions.]

60. In 28, I wasn’t very keen on “fellow” for CO. I would have preferred “company”.

61. muffin @56. Your suggestion of the local match in Derbyshire seems the most plausible. It’s also intriguing to know how close the rival teams should be to merit the phrase ‘local derby’. I recall on Match of the Day recently, the commentator suggesting a game between Crystal Palace and Brighton was a ‘derby’ match. Considering that my routeplanner puts a distance of 48 miles between their respective stadia, that strikes me as rather pushing it!

62. dantheman @61 Not every derby is local. Norwich City play Ipswich Town in the East Anglian or ‘Old Farm’ (a play on the Celtic v Rangers ‘Old Firm’) Derby. They are also 48 miles apart. A derby can indicate the bitterest rivals as well as geographical proximity.

63. Enjoyable puzzle, despite some rather tortuous clues and clunky surfaces (uncharacteristic of the púca).

    I’m another for whom DIBBLE was unknown, not being word-for-word familiar with The Winter’s Tale. According to the OED, DIBBLE is Late Middle English, whereas ‘dibber’ doesn’t pop up until the 18th century. But it seems to have superseded the older term: Google them both and you get mainly dictionary references for the former, but online purchase options for the latter.

    Incidentally, as a plain-speaking guy I always call a spade a horticultural implement.

64. Monkey @60
    I think the “co” is “with”, as in “co-worker” = “fellow-worker”

65. [I found some discussion on whether Liverpool v. ManU can regarded as a “derby”. Perhaps this uncertainty has led to the coinage “local derby”?]

66. I would think the “outside of beetroot” would be BT, not B.

    I never saw Top Cat, just knew vaguely that it was some sort of cartoon, so the references got me nowhere.

    Enjoyed the puzzle, even with no clue about Top Cat. I knew a dibble was some sort of gardening tool (googled it to see what it looked like), never heard of a dibber.

    Thanks Puck for the playfulness and manehi for the excellent blog.

67. There were several I couldn’t parse in full so I hadn’t realised my ARCTIC and STOOL(!) were wrong. I still don’t understand 7a. I’m another who originally had DIBBER and I also tried ICE CAP at 14,15.
    However I enjoyed a lot of it so thanks to Puck and manehi

68. Thanks very much for that suggestion, Tony Santuccu@59. I may very well do just that, whenthishopefullyisallover. I am one eighth Italian, after all!

69. Valentine @60: As the blog explains “dible” goes outside the root letter of “beet” i.e “b”.

    I enjoyed this one a lot. Lots of clues I really liked, but Top Cat was probably my favourite if only for the happy memories of watching the cartoon as a child.

70. Not another cartoon but,
    Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb

71. Katherine @70 Ah yes, Trumpton Fire Brigade, who do double duty as the town band.

72. Fiona Anne @51: “The bottom half wasn’t too hard but found the top … very tough.” I had the opposite experience! Strictly a DNF for me, as I had either TAILS or BALLS for 29a, and in the absence of Benny the Ball I plumped for the latter. (That character is a major link between Top Cat and Bilko, as its voice was provided by Maurice Gosfield, who played Doberman alongside Phil Silvers in the human version, and the cartoon character’s rotundity was based on Doberman’s appearance.)

    I was miles off the theme to start with (despite recognising Fancy-Fancy in the opening clue), as I had ICE AGE for the cartoon series, which made linked clues impossible until I realised my mistake when TIVOLI went in – giving ___CIIA at the end of 13a!

73. An earlier start for me as the newspaper delivery man was defeated by the snow and so I could not do a warm up on The Scotsman cryptic (which is always easier on a Wednesday). So, found this hard and, as usual, was oblivious of the theme although I remembered that Officer Dibble was in Top Cat. I did not know that an officer was a busy.

74. muffin @56&65 and others. It seems clear to me that a derby match in football is a much later usage than the name of the horse race, which was by a long way the most important race in the calendar, and its use to describe a match between neighbouring teams is usually clarified as a “local derby”. The clue’s use of ‘close rivals’ is therefore perhaps a little misleading. The Shrovetide ball game in Ashbourne is only one of many such games that have taken place in various parts of the country for centuries, and the fact that Ashbourne is in Derbyshire looks like just coincidence to me. Brighton v Crystal Palace is usually referred to as the “A23 derby” and only dates to the 1970s, when football fans were becoming more mobile; any use of the term “local derby” with regard to this one is a slip of the tongue.

75. Had no idea that “busy” = “police officer”; so there was no way I could parse that one, and I did not enjoy parsing 7 ac. with all those Fs and both “foolishly” and “produce” pointing together to an anagram. But otherwise an enjoyable solve – SPOOK and SUBTLE were my favorites!

76. Aa mixed bag for me. The surface of the first clue, 7a TRADE-OFFS, was so awful that I almost stopped right there – and there were some others almost as bad. But, knowing that Puck can be, well, puckish, I persevered, and found much to enjoy – 22a PITSTOPS and 29a TAILS among them.

    I’m not familiar with the cartoon TOP CAT, so I missed out on the fun of that theme, but I managed the solving in any event.

    Robi@32 notes the more general use of ROGER as more than just understanding, which reminds me of the double-entendre expression of agreement, “I’ll roger that.” And, like Shirl@22, I think Rogers is less an architect than a defacer of urban landscapes.

77. I loved Top Cat too. I’m pretty sure it was called that in the UK when it first aired, then changed to Boss Cat later. But I could be wrong – I remembered the character as Brains, not BRAIN. Or possibly I’m confusing him with the mastermind in Thunderbirds. Anyway, lots of fun here and I enjoyed the chewy parsings. I agree it’s odd that Benny is not there. I even looked for him as a Nina, but no luck. Perhaps Puck didn’t fancy defining the word, although “Jack” comes to mind.
    Enjoyable stuff. Thanks, Puck and manehi.

78. [phitonelly @77: Brains was Thunderbirds. Brain was Top Cat/Boss Cat and all Pinky and the Brain (c.1995). Talking of brain, Joe 90 was “activated” using BIG RAT, the Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record And Transfer and worked for the World Intelligence Network – where on earth is that when you need it…]

79. [MaidenBartok @78, it’s feels like a long time since we’ve had a WIN. Thanks for the Joe90 nuggets 🙂 ]

80. In 29a “What most 15s have” – I assumed “most” to be alluding to the fact that Manx cats are famously tailless.

81. Muffin@56
    Another suggestion is that it was first used in connection with Everton v Liverpool whose grounds are separated by the Earl of Derby’s Stanley Park estate. At a guess they may even have been part of it at the time.

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