Guardian Cryptic 28,381 by Pan

68 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,381 by Pan”

1. A gentle solve for a foggy Monday. I ticked pretty much the same as you manehi. I wondered if COIL could work without including chef?

   Ta Pan & manehi

2. There’s a lit of CONSTERNATION about these days. I didn’t know that OTTOMAN could also be a fabric.

   I’m transported back to the 70s with Camel’s MIRAGE and John Rickman presenting the racing on ITV and dogging his TRILBY.

   Thanks to Pan & manehi

3. I thought this was very good for a Monday: not a write-in. I couldn’t parse TROOP SHIPS for ages until I saw the OOPS. Also liked TRIMESTER and PIPETTE. Many thanks to Pan and manehi.

4. I didn’t know ‘domestic’ could mean ‘pet’! Otherwise a nice puzzle for a Monday. Thanks to Pan and Manahi.

5. Thanks Pan and manehi
   Quite hard, especially the NW. I liked CONSTERNATION. A very complicated clue for a simple word in PATH!
   I had written TURBINE in at 16d, thinking “it’s in there somewhere, I’ll parse it later”.
   The fight in 1d is just SCRAP, manehi, or you’ll have too many Es.

6. A pleasant solve, with one or two tough nuts. Like Penfold @2 I didn’t know OTTOMAN was a fabric as well as a piece of furniture or an empire, but the wordplay was very clear. Like SinCam @4 I was a little surprised by the ‘domestic’ ‘pet’; and it took me a little while even after reading the blog to get season = incur.
   But a nicely Mondayish puzzle.
   Thanks to Pan and manehi.

7. NIB for “toff” was new to me – I wondered if the club could be a NOBLICK

8. Nice puzzle for a Monday but as with others found it slightly trickier than the usual Monday fare. Took me ages to see SHREWD which meant that the whole of the NW was my LOI. FOI 4a followed quite quickly by the rest of the NE.

   Thanks to Pan and manehi!

9. Enjoyable and quite easy. I failed to parse PATH and very nearly went for PATE instead – also unparsed, and a different type of ‘course’.

   I didn’t know NIB ‘toff’ and was tempted by NOB but fortunately I knew NIBLICK exists and had never come across NOBLICK so I made the right choice. On reflection I suppose NIB may have some connection with ‘his nibs’ as somebody who’s important or thinks they are.

10. Tricked by EMPRESS entering EXPRESS unparsed, and the excellent ENDOWMENT was also unparsed due to the presence of WOMEN*.

    Can’t find nib for toff anywhere, except for “his Nibs” plural.

    Don’t see why domestic = pet?

    Loved the old rimester and also ticked METHADONE.

    Many thanks, manehi, trickier to parse than to solve this morning.

11. Favourites: CONSTERNATION, PATH.

    New for me: OTTOMAN = silk fabric; NIB = toff, although I have heard of ‘nibs’ or ‘his nibs’.
    I failed 7d – I entered EXPRESS = fast train, and left it unparsed. I see now that I read it the wrong way round!

    Thanks, Pan and manehi.

12. I’ll add PATH, ENDOWMENT, ANORAK, ATHENAEUM and EMPRESS to manehi’s favourites.

    I took pet and domestic as both applicable to animals.

    Thanks to Pan for a pleasant start to the week and manehi for the blog.

13. Same problems as others: OTTOMAN as a fabric, domestic=pet. I knew you could refer to a stuck up person as “his NIBs”, but not nib= toff.

    Enjoyed working out ATHENAEUM and CONSTERNATION.

14. Struggled to parse some of these too, with last one in SHREWD. Liked the misdirection with APPARENT…

15. William @10 My Chambers gives NIB as (slang) a person of the upper classes: a person of importance or appearance of importance.

16. Yep, liked (home o) path [can water remember?], and wondered about the Turkish fabric, the domestic pet, the nib/toff (his nibs?) . Liked anorak, hope the madar is off. Nice Monday, ta both.

17. Re 18d I haven’t seen this meaning of ottoman before unless I missed a triple-definition clue at some point (quite likely)

18. Penfold @15: So it does, by Jove. “Origin obscure” I see. No doubt. Many thanks.

19. [Penfold: Not wishing to encourage your searches for musical references, I must admit that whenever I come across the word ‘mirage’ I do picture the Camel album that lurks in my album collection.]

20. A bit tougher in places, for sure. I am another that read the E[X/M]PRESS the other way around – tricky to see which is replacing what. Liked ATHENAEUM and STRONGROOM. Ta, Pan and manehi.

21. Penfold @2

    Doing what to his hat??

    I hope you meant doffing!!

    Re 25a – do OIL and FAT mean the same?

22. Thanks for the parsing of INCUR manehi, that stumped me.

    Loved EMPRESS and PATH.

    Thanks Pan

23. I’m another joining those @10,11,20 with a careless EXPRESS and I also took ages over SHREWD so it got a tick along with 10,11 and 17a and 8d for the monster nation. For me this was a mix of straight forward and more challenging clues so a good start to the week – thanks Pan and manehi for the blog.

24. [kenmac @21 Doffing indeed 🙂
    I could swear that’s what I typed.]

25. Started rapidly but then slowed for the last few; held up by the 16s.

    I liked ENDOWMENT, CONSTERNATION and PIPETTE; it’s a while since I used one of those. I thought of toff = nob, but I had seen NIBLICK in previous crossies, so had to check the nib toff.

    Thanks Pan and manehi.

26. I assumed that domestic = pet as in row or squabble. E.g “They were having a domestic” or “They were having a pet”.

27. Gerardus @26
    I parsed pet/domestic in the same way as you. The animal connection did not occur to me.

28. I enjoyed this straightforward puzzle. Along with other commenters, I found the NIB=toff slightly iffy (though “his nibs” works just fine). And inure=season I thought was stretching a bit far, too. Is W=women just another instance of the Guardian’s “any word may be abbreviated to its initial letter” policy? Or is it am “Ah! — but it’s in Chambers” special?

    CONSTERNATION and TROOP SHIPS were nicely clued.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

29. This was OK as you would expect for a Monday. Held up slightly by the SCRAPER / CRIB combo as I couldn’t get beyond fight = spar and double defs aren’t really my thing.

    A bit bemused by ‘military vessels once’ for TROOP SHIPS. Even if there aren’t any now, they’re not exactly an impossibility, unlike a bireme say.

30. pserve_p2 @ 28

    It’s not uncommon to see W & M on doors to toilets.

31. Woke up way too early so enjoyed doing the puzzle online before I went out to walk the dog (PET).
    Did not manage to parse PATH, CONSTERNATION

    Liked ATHENAEUM, TRIMESTER (didn’t know that rimester was a word) EXEUNT (just like the word), EMPRESS, TROOPSHIPS, APPARENT, SHREWD

    Also didn’t know that OTTOMAN was a fabric.

    Thanks to Pan and manehi

32. Could someone please explain why INURE = SEASON.

    Thanks

33. As a SEASONED solver of crosswords I am INURED to slightly dodgy synonyms. Having found TRILBY, I was expecting more Svengali like manipulation.

34. Fiona Anne @32: think of troops SEASONED in battle

35. INURE is in Chambers? as a synonym for SEASON

36. [Darn – my cute little red book emoji didn’t work]

37. On should not have to use a dictionary on a Monday. There are definitions of OTTOMAN which are generally known, but “silken fabric” is not one of them.

38. bodycheetah @36; if you look at FAQ, you’ll find instructions for adding an emoji.

39. On the whole, quite an enjoyable puzzle. I too was momentarily caught off-guard by pet=domestic, but I think it works fine.

    This is not a complaint because it actually made things easier, but using the same device in EMPRESS and CONSTERNATION was a bit of a shame, imo. When the unassuming little word “for” is used (rarely) to take an active role it usually takes a minute for the penny to drop, and hence causes a smile of realization. Only one such smile for that pair today.

40. Gerardus @26 – I don’t think domestic=PET in the sense of an argument in the home; the two meanings seem to me to be miles apart. I initially objected to domestic (animal)=PET (animal), as Eileen @10 has it, because it seems like the old argument about London (bus)=RED (bus). But on checking my thesaurus I find pet: domesticated, with the fine example, “Doesn’t your landlord object to you keeping a pet alligator in the bath?” I’m not sure that you would substitute “domestic” for PET in that sentence, though. Also Chambers has PET as a synonym for domesticated, but this is separated from the first part of the entry for domestic; they are both adjectives but with slightly different senses. Probably just about ok, but as Trevor Bench-Capon says @37, why are we having to check dictionaries on a Monday?

    I enjoyed Pan’s replacement clues (C for M in 8d, M for X in 7d) and the subtraction of E from INUR(E), but asking us to subtract base=HOME and O=last letter in Oslo from homeoPATH is quite a stretch. This was the only clue that I didn’t parse, so thanks to manehi for that, and thanks to Pan for the entertainment.

41. OTTOMAN (made, or partly made, of silk) is used for Queen’s Counsel gowns – QCs are said to have “taken silk”.
    Thank you Pan for an enjoyable and manehi for a helpful blog.

42. Grrr – puzzle …

43. Sponge misled me — I was trying to work in “pong” for “gone off,” and didn’t know what to do with the leftover E.

    I missed EMPRESS, being stuck with an unparsed EXPRESS.

    I forgot the British spelling of ATHENAEUM, because we have the other sort right here in Connecticu, the Hartford Atheneum, I think the country’s first art museum.

    Kenmac@21 Some fats are liquid and then they’re oils.

    I thought a toff was a nob. He’s a nib too? I was with Shirl@7 — noblick?

    manehi, you have a typo in 18d, “split” for “spilt.”

    I tripped over the popular obstacles — pet, ottoman/fabric, nob/nib et al. Was totally clueless what to do with PATH.

    Thanks to Pan and manehi.

44. Gaufrid — why do my identifiers disappear when I post a comment or refresh? I’ve had to re-enter them several times this morning.

45. Even when I click the “remember me” box?

46. Valentine @44/45
    The usual reason is that your browser is unable to find/read the relevant cookie. This can be resolved by clearing your browser’s cache/history (including cookies) and starting again.

47. Other side of the Atlantic here, and had never heard of ANORAK asfanatic (I was able to parse the clue to get the answer, and thankfully wikipedia was there to explain the answer), nor NIBLICK. EMPRESS tricked me a little bit too, before I realized why there was no ‘X’ in the answer.

    Never heard of MEWS for horses; I thought the word was just the falconry equivalent of ‘stable’. Similarly for OTTOMAN as a fabric rather than a footstool. (Though given how many fabrics names are demonyms, I shouldn’t be surprised: cashmere, denim, angora…)

    I got the answer for 8D, but via a really convoluted parsing involving MASTER=’leader’ and CON replacing MA. I, uh, can see the loose ends of that thought process now.

48. Fiona Anne @32: If you buy a new wok (and some other types of cooking pan), you should “season” it by heating it up with just oil in it, allowing it to cool, cleaning it off, then repeating, to best prepare it for use.

    Got held up entering the wrong answer for the muse/mews homophone. I’m usually not irked by these, but here I felt the clue was less-awkward if “muse” was the answer, so entered it fairly confidently.

49. [Trevor B-C@37 and sheffield hatter @40 as Craig David so nearly wrote
    Used a dictionary on Monday
    Checked an answer on Tuesday
    Had to google on Wednesday
    and Thursday and Friday and Saturday
    Chilled on Sunday.]

50. Not the easiest Monday — I needed to reveal a few at the end — but generally I enjoyed this with favourites including SHREWD, TROOP SHIPS, CONSTERNATION, and METHADONE for its great surface. Thanks to both.
    [Simon S @30: W & M are indeed commonplace on public toilets but that might be changing — I recently saw “Sitting” and “Standing” in their place — the “standing” obviously male, the “sitting” for both sexes.]

51. What a shame CONSTERNATION appeared in an identical position only five crosswords earlier.

52. I made heavy weather of this although I don’t really know why. Couldn’t parse ENDOWMENT and PIPETTE and wrote in EXPRESS for 7d. So, not my day. Thanks to both

53. KeithM @51. Congratulations for remembering that! I had completely forgotten, although I solved that crossword last Tuesday. I’ve just been back and had a quick look, and Matilda had clued it very differently from how Pan has done here, so I really don’t think this coincidence detracts from the enjoyment of today’s puzzle.

54. Couto @54: Could you elaborate?

55. CRIB was queried much earlier, and the response is surely that the classroom meaning of the verb is CHEAT, with the noun being the aid to cheating?

56. Harhop @56
    A crib it that sense is a short note to jog your memory. Of course, this may be an aid to cheating!

57. Trickier than I was expecting. I failed to get MEWS, so a DNF. One question: why are TROOP SHIPS a thing of the past?
    I had BULB for 9 at first. Seemed like a sure bet at the time. I’d already altered it once from PLOT. CRIB was my last entry as a result. Also not quite convinced by NIB for toff, but I’ll take Chambers word for it.
    Thanks, Pan and manehi

58. KeithM @51, it reminded me of the DEJA VU answer that appeared in the same place on consecutive days many years ago. It may have been Paul and Araucaria but not quite sure.

59. Trailman @29 and phitonelly @58: yes, I wondered about the “once” in 10a. The Wikipedia article on TROOP SHIPS says, “By the end of the twentieth century, nearly all long-distance personnel transfer was done by airlift in military transport aircraft”, so I suppose that’s what Pan had in mind. But have they gone for good? Surely there could continue to be circumstances where it’s more convenient to transport troops by sea?

    Roz @59, as Yogi Berra said, it’s deja vu all over again!

60. Enjoyed this with most of the same favorites as manehi. For 9ac I thought “to study” was part of the first definition–the CRIB can be used to study as a short reference with the main points. It’s only cheating if you sneak it into the exam!

61. Lord Jim @60, I wonder if anyone could track it down, about 2005 is my best guess, was in the bottom right corner, I am sure it was entirely deliberate.

62. A lovely Monday puzzle. ‘Niblick’ brought back nice university memories as that was the name of a pub in St Andrews.

63. Enjoyed the crossword but fell into the PATE trap, taking alternative letters of practitioner and taking away O and, for some reason we couldn’t fathom, T!
    Loved the clue for consternation

64. drofle@55 re Couto@54. I think statements like that are best left without explanation as I cannot imagine any reason to get that upset about a crossword. If someone doesn’t like a crossword, fine, but why would we care about it.

65. I took it as C + “urin” (for “most” of during), with season as indication of an anagram.

66. Thanks, Eileen. No I was just thanking you, I was able to infer the principle from the blog and comments, and also looked it up.

67. pserve_p2 @28 — Men’s and women’s lavatories often have M and W on the doors, in my experience, so that abbreviation didn’t raise an eyebrow for me. I did run into the same parsing problem as William @10: I decided that “about women” indicated the anagram OMENW but then couldn’t see what “warning” was doing there.

    I didn’t think to be bothered by DOMESTIC = PET, although I can see why one might be. I can manage to justify it in an adjectival sense, along the lines suggested by sheffield+hatter @40: A pet ferret could also be described as a domestic ferret. I admit it’s a bit loose, though.

68. For 16ac, I had the course provided by alternative practitioner as Peto (as in the institute) but couldn’t work out why “leaving base” = PET. I also wondered what “warning” was doing in 17ac

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