Guardian 28,493 / Pasquale

90 comments on “Guardian 28,493 / Pasquale”

1. UMAMI also appeared in Everyman very recently, Eileen. And in a Paul in March. Setters clearly have a taste for it. AUGUSTAN, UNTRAMPLED, NICARAGUAN and CITRON all got ticks with the glorious POSTILION coming tops today for me. As Timmytimtim observed late yesterday, crosswordland seems awash with Marks recently which is probably a BAD THING.

   Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

2. Some days (not that often) the anagrams and charades leap out at me, and this was unexpectedly one of those. Typically well crafted puzzle from the Don; like Eileen, the exotic bird was the only unfamiliarity.

   I expect to find some unusual words in a Pasquale puzzle. This misled me with AMOUNT – almost my LOI – as I was searching for an arcane term for a biblical sermon (and the D’oh when I saw the solution blinded me to the ‘number’/amount disparity, the latter being more usually applied to quantities of uncountables).

3. PS I’m more familiar with the spelling ‘postillion’ and had to check that my memory wasn’t faulty.

4. That was a lot of fun this morning – mostly went in OK and GUAN was known to me having taken an animal/zoo obsessed young BartokJr round many aviaries in my time.

   FOI was POSTILION; I must re-read the Bogarde autobiographies now – there is a sense that Bogarde was trying to come out publicly but times did not permit so these are the closet he managed to get.

   Super puzzle; clear cluing. Just the right balance of possible and impossible!

   Thanks Pasquale and Eileen!

5. “Interesting and enjoyable” sums it up nicely. I actually ticked AMOUNT which I thought was clever, but I do see your point Eileen about whether “number” is equivalent.

   Was there a hint of Star Wars in 1d? Mark (Hamill) and a fresh / new hope? No? Probably just me.

   Interesting that in RADON, the definition is “I’m hot”. There was a lengthy discussion a few months ago on a Vulcan puzzle (28,375) about whether something inanimate (AXLE in that case) could address us in the first person for the purposes of a clue. I thought it was fine, being in the tradition of riddles dating from Anglo Saxon times onwards (and popular with the Victorians in the form of “My first is in… but not in…”). But baerchen, whose views I respect, disagreed and thought that made it a bad clue. Well if it’s good enough for Pasquale I feel a bit vindicated!

   (MB @4: “these are the closet he managed to get” – nice one 🙂 )

   Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

6. Gervase @3 – me too.

   MaidenBartok @4 – ‘closet’: Freudian slip?

7. Lord Jim @5 – we crossed.

   Number and amount are not equivalent! If you google ‘the difference between number and amount‘ you’ll find pages of explanation.

8. [Eileen @6: Fat fingers! But maybe not…]

9. Excellent puzzle from one of my favourite compilers, but alas I had “Rodin” instead of RADON (“I’m hot” was lost on me, but anything remotely sciency usually is !).

   The “number v amount” argument could develop into another “look v spot” like yesterday – Eileen is absolutely correct in her assertion, but it shouldn’t stop anybody from solving the clue.

10. A bit of exotica, guan and zo, and a bit of art education re Augustan, but otherwise plain sailing. The amount/number thing reminds me of less/fewer, Eileen; it does grate, but when pro journos do it every day on radio and telly, I think that horse has bolted. Nice Friday stroll anyway, thanks both.

11. Chambers has “A total quantity or amount” as one of the many definitions for number

12. grantinfreo @10 – I almost added, ‘It’s exactly the same difference between less and fewer’. When I think of the years I spent explaining it … 🙁

13. Only just noticed I had one wrong I couldnt resist RODIN (IN=HOT)
    I feel better now. Thanks Don and Eileen

14. Thanks Pasquale & Eileen. That was fun, especially FAG END.
    re number: the amount of times this grates leaves me benumbed.

15. Solving this was an interesting job. I got SCHERZO from def, crossers and The central HER , having forgotten both SC and ZO, and the GUAN was a new one: exotic in habitat rather than appearance. I also thought POSTILION had two Ls, and I now realise that I’ve always known the word (from the lightning incident) but have never been sure exactly what a POSTILION does.

    I live just down the road from Pope’s Villa (our telephone exchange used to be POPesgrove in the days when they had names) so I know about the Augustans.

    Favourite the rowdy republican ready to BOO the KING.

16. I found this amazingly easy for a Pasquale, even though there were a few unfamiliar words. Hadn’t heard of a buff biscuit, but now I realise why . . . Many thanks to P & E.

17. “Amount is now fast invading the territory of number, sometimes, but by no means always, when the following noun is viewed as an aggregate or collection. The substitution is older than one might think: the OED notes it first in a quotation of 1801.
    […] The loss of the distinction may be irritating to many, but it is beginning to look like an unstoppable process, akin to the widespread use of less instead of fewer.”

    [Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 4th ed., 2015]

18. Eileen@12: precisely !

19. PS: it might be worth spelling out that Don Pasquale is an opera by Donizetti, so you don’t need to know the setter’s name to solve 3a RADON.

20. Hugely enjoyable, as ever from the Don. Like Gervase@3, I would have instinctively spelt 9 as POSTILLION. I hadn’t come across GUAN or ZO before but impeccable clueing meant both elements were gettable. Couldn’t for the life of me see how BUFF was a biscuit (even though it had to be the answer) so thanks, Eileen, for that nudge into realisation and for the rest of the blog. Thanks too, of course, to Pasquale for the entertainment.

21. Very nice indeed, I really liked POLITICAL ANIMAL. DIDO for ear worm of the day https://youtu.be/PSu5nAQ7uZw

    Ta Eileen & Pasquale

22. That was tough – got most in the end but needed lots of help – and also with parsing some of the ones I got.

    Never heard of a ZO or a GUAN

    Liked NICARAGUAN, ADJECTIVE, MIGRANT

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

23. I’m guessing the Scrabble players amongst us knew ZO 🙂

24. Miche @19 – thanks for spelling it out. 😉

    It might also be worth a mention, for newer commenters, that Pasquale is Don Manley and, as Michael Curl (Orlando) tells us in his Best for Puzzles link, ‘His various pseudonyms – Duck, Pasquale, Quixote, Bradman, Giovanni, Izetti – are all punningly connected with the name Don or Donald’.

25. Eileen@24 He’s resisted the pseudonym TRUMP thank goodness!

26. 21D. Parsing should be LEG (on, …).
    Though I was a student of English literature for BA, Pope and Swift being Augustans is new to me.

27. Thank you Eileen and Pasquale. Needed the blog / Google for SC, Zo, Guan, MiG, Postilion, buff (as colour) and Asphodel. Completed it but didn’t fully understand it until now…

    … except that I can’t work out why “radon” is “hot”

    To add my twopenneth: I have no real issue with amount/number as I can think of circumstances where I would use them interchangeably. “What’s the number we need to sell?” vs “what’s the amount we need to sell?” I can see there is a fewer/less sense in the difference, but I don’t think it’s absolute.

28. Barbara Williams @25 – yes, indeed!

    VDS Prasad @26 – thanks. Fixed now.

29. Apart from lightning strikes, POSTILION is familiar to me only from the opera ‘Le postillon de Lonjumeau’ (double l and only one i) by Alphonse Adam (he of ‘Giselle’ and ‘O Holy Night’) [He also wrote an opera entitled ‘Le brasseur de Preston’, together with Donizetti’s ‘Emilia di Liverpool’ the only ones nominally set in my home region]

30. As bodycheetah @11 points out, Chambers has number = amount. The Chambers Thesaurus has number = amount both ways round, so I think it must be popular usage.

    I thought RAD(iator) ON means ‘I’m hot’, so where was the definition, doh!

    I liked BOOKING, FENCE and FAG END.

    Thanks to the artist DON, and the conductor, Eileen.

31. MattWillD @27

    I think it’s because it is radioactive

32. Robi @30 – I know very well it’s popular usage but I don’t have to like it. Pasquale is one of the last setters I’d have expected to use it.

33. After spotting what I thought was a link between POSTILION and ENAMOURED (struck by lightning = coup de foudre = enamoured), I searched for others, but in vain. I would associate a CITRON with an acid taste rather than a bitter one, but Wikipedia tells me it has both. Great crossword. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

34. [Was that link (‘not available in your country’) to an aria in the Purcell, AlanC@21? As a 14yo I was sawing away in the 2nd fiddles while the big kids sang in the school production thereof]

35. i’ve just got started on these puzzels and found this one quite a bit harder than others this week. Slowly expanding my knowledge but needed help to sove 11, being unfamiliar with the definition and both ends. Thanks Eileen & Pasquale.

36. Is SCHERZO necessarily a fast movement? I refrained from entering it for some time because I always thought it meant in a playful manner, not necessarily fast, but happy to be corrected.

37. MattWillD @27 – “I’m hot” for RADON gave me pause, too, but among the many definitions for “hot” in Chambers are “dangerous” and “highly radioactive (informal).”

38. Hard to get started. Solved only one of my first pass through all of the clues. Finished the lower half first, NE corner last.

    DId not parse SELF-ESTEEM (wow, devilish type for ELF seems quite extreme but I mainly relate to Tolkien elves), SCHERZO apart from HER, BUFF.

    New: GUAN bird.

    Favourites: BOOKING, POSTILION, APOSTROPHE, AUGUSTAN, REUTERS, UMAMI, FIRS (loi).

    Thanks Eileen & Pasquale.

39. Concerning POSTILION, I wondered why I, like Gervase @3, had initially been drawn towards the double-l spelling. I checked on some period novels in which a prodigious number (not amount!) of coach journeys are made, first Smollett’s Humphry Clinker (1771) and Dickens’ Pickwick Papers (1836-37). In the former it is single-l (and occasional uses also in Fielding and Austen confirm this), but Dickens uses double-l. A decade later, Thackeray is still favouring single-l in Vanity Fair. A Dickensian quirk, perhaps?

40. [Those with a little French (sorry mrpenney!) might enjoy a sketch called Ô postillons maudits! on YouTube. Postillonner is an onomatopoeic word meaning to spit/splutter while speaking, and les postillons, as well as being postillions of olden days, are the drops of fluid thereby ejected.]

    ginf @34 – wrong DIDO – at least it wasn’t Harding!

    Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

41. michelle @38: I shared your raised eyebrow at elf. Either Tolkienesque or, at the other end of the scale, pixie-ish have always been my images of elves. Devilish isn’t the word I’d associate with them.

42. Thanks for the blog . Some very neat clues here , all been mentioned I think. Agree about number and AMOUNT but minor quibble. BUFF is very original using biscuit.

    I’m hot is not appropriate for RADON. Many radioactive solids will self heat due to the energy of their emissions. Radon is a gas and emission energy will be lost to the surroundings and it will simply be in thermal equilibrium with the air.

43. Super big to a cracking puzzle.

    However, I’m still not sure about RADON being defined as hot.

    There seems to be a double jump here where step 1 is “radioactive is dangerous”; step 2 “something hot is also dangerous”; ergo “radon is hot”.

    I’ll get my coat…

44. Apologies Roz, crossing.

45. S’sC @39: the double-l spelling may be a conflation with the French ‘postillon’ where it coveys the glide sound, as in the Italian ‘postiglione’, which seems to have been the original coinage.

46. Fiery Jack @36: in my experience scherzos are not slow movements but lively and fast.
    Very enjoyable puzzle with lots of favs. Failed to parse FENCE, did not take it quite literally enough.
    Thanks to the Don and Eileen

47. I checked half a dozen dictionaries to see what they thought of hot, and whether they agreed with my thought, which was hot can indeed mean radioactive. 4 gave radioactive as a possible meaning, 2 gave dangerously radioactive. No requirement to have a hot temperature, apparently, although that often happens too, as Roz said. So the clue is fine.

48. [ William@44 it is usually me being slightly too late. I am still typing with one finger. Just about mastered the shift key ]

49. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale. Mostly straightforward and fun today. I’m another for whom GUAN and ZO were new, but both very gettable. BOOKING made me laugh, nice clue. POSTILION also raised a smile – not because of the clue but because of the phrase it immediately brings to mind.

    Quibbles: like others, I don’t agree that SCHERZO=”fast” but I suppose it’s close enough. And I’m still far from convinced by the definition of RADON.

    I didn’t quite parse 1dn – pencilled in the correct solution but struggled to work out why POSTR=”bad temper”… Doh!

    For 20dn, I was stuck for a while trying to remember the name of the mount where the sermon was held… ARARAT seemed to fit but I couldn’t make that work with the clue, and anyway, that was where Noah landed, not where Jesus delivered the Beatitudes. Got there eventually, and not too fussed about the number/amount thing.

50. Thanks both,
    Like less vs fewer, amount vs number is an invention of c19 grammarians and I doubt a distinction has ever been recognised by the broad mass of speakers. When I ask ‘what is the amount?’ of a bill, the answer that comes back is a number.

51. I took hot to mean radioactive rather than raised in temperature, though I don’t think radon is highly so. It needs to be checked for and dealt with in houses on granite rock, but I don’t believe it’s highly dangerous.

    I agree that the devilish elf is a bit of a stretch.

52. [Fiery Jack @36: yes I agree a SCHERZO, from Italian for joke, should be playful, in triple or compound time. Composers have interpreted it in an amount, sorry – any number of ways, not necessarily fast. Perhaps we get the word ‘sketch’, as something that is improvised, from the same root?]

53. [ Dr. WhatsOn @47 personally I only use Chambers or occasionally Collins, both give the highly/dangerously version and Radon is certainly not highly radioactive so hot is not good enough for me, but I do see that you have a good case. ]
    [ gladys@51 , very good point, the danger is in the concentration and the fact that we can breathe it in. The alpha emissions then take place in our lungs, not a good idea. It is a bit like smoke detectors , the Americium source is perfectly safe unless we swallow it . ]

54. Thank you all for the explanation that “hot” can mean “radioactive” – I have never come across that before.

55. Roz@53 3 of my 4 were US-based, via OneLook, so there may be something intriguing there, but the fourth was OED, so probably not. (The 2 were the same as yours.)

56. I’m still unsure of the objection to number = amount. The ODE gives the following:
    2.A quantity or amount: the company is seeking to increase the number of women on its staff | the exhibition attracted vast numbers of visitors.

57. Hi Robi @56

    As I suggested @7, googling ‘The difference between number and amount’ produces a considerable number of pages, with a considerable amount of information, in a variety of styles. I’ve looked at quite a few of them and I think this one’s quite good.

58. Dr. WhatsOn@55 I will stick with Chambers , you can take your pick. I still think the hot is linked to highly radioactive via temperature. High level waste from nuclear reactors is in a liquid state due to self heating. It has to be stored separately in steel water-cooled tanks.

59. Amounts (how much) can be measured but only numbers (how many) can be counted:
    The amount of apples I bought was 2 kilos.
    The number of apples I bought was 8.

60. On the radon theme, several isotopes have shortish half-lives and the most stable (A=222 at <4 days) is hot enough you wouldn't want to have much around, especially if the heat is generated when the alpha particles hit your skin or lungs! Back at the Schuster lab in the 60s and 70s, radioactive "hot" wasn't really about thermodynamic "hot."

61. Of all the pedantries out there, the amount vs. number distinction is not a hill I care to die on. It feels like usage has long since eroded it to the point where the incorrect version only sounds bad to me in certain glaring contexts.

    I of course know the phrase FAG END, but with the U.S. meaning of “fag” in mind, it never fails to make me snicker. (Full disclosure for those who missed it: I’m gay.)

    Overall, I found this to be on the easier end for the Don, which is to say I found it moderate. Did not parse SCHERZO.

62. [ Ken @ 60 , nearly four days is very long compared to many isotopes produced from fission, radon would be classed as a low activity source. Being a gas the energy density from alpha emission is also extremely low so any heating is negligible. Alphas hitting the skin are virtually safe, do not penetrate the dead outer layer, no living cell damage and negligible heating unless energy density is very high.
    The lungs with radon is the major issue. Nothing to do with heating , the alphas can cause cell damage by ionising molecules and even break both strands of DNA in the cell nucleus. Radon being a gas is the problem. ]

63. I’m torn between trying to accept “less” being used instead of “fewer”, or actually doing the opposite – using “fewer” instead of “less” to point out quite how awkward it sounds.

    I don’t have a problem with number equating to amount though – either as a noun or a verb.

    “Add up all the days takings. Let me know the final amount”.

    “Add up all the days takings. Let me know the final number”.

    If you said either of those two sentences to anyone they would know exactly what you mean. There is no ambiguity whatsoever.

64. Despite needing a few look-up’s I found this on the less challenging end of Don’s spectrum. I too bunged in Rodin for RADON but could never parse it except for in=hot. I liked the wordplay in MOCCASIN and the surface for the ubiquitous UMAMI. Thanks to both.

65. [e.g. @40, oh, thanks. This contempory one is a nho for me..hey ho]

66. [eb not e.g. … grr]

67. Some nice clues (MOCCASIN, LEGACY) but I can’t say I enjoyed this greatly. No way that I would ever have been able to parse SCHERZO (thanks Eileen…) even if I did fill it in. I also thought girl=ENA is kind of weak; not a fan of generic common nouns for proper nouns…

68. MarkN @63 – your examples don’t really involve the point at issue: the difference we’re talking about is between amount of (e.g. cash) and number of (e.g. pound coins).

69. Gladys @59 has it bang on with her apples.

70. [mrpenney @61: a gay American friend of mine, working in London some years ago, told me he nearly choked the first time he heard the alternative to FAG END which is, of course, fag butt. And he now uses it back in the States at every opportunity! ]

71. essexboy @40. Where I live (Chaville, 92370 France) there’s a lane called Allée des Postillons. I’ve always wondered why someone would call a road Spit Alley, even though I grew up in Truro, Cornwall, where there’s a Squeezeguts Alley. But I suppose it refers to where the postmen lived… How disappointing!

72. Eileen @68: It’s not the number of pound coins in my example. The number arrived at could be £315.92p. I see that as a number, or let’s try a figure (the first definition of “figure” on Collins Online = a particular amount expressed as a number).

73. [ Spooner’s catflap@39 a bit late I know, have been busy with radon. If you return – would it necessarily be the spelling of Dickens ? Did publishers at that time, even for magazines , have their own ” house style ” for spelling and other things ? I have no actual knowledge here, I am just speculating. ]

74. A fun end to the week with excellent cluing and surfaces – for some reason the E side fell in quickly . UMAMI was first in, seems to be to many setter’s tastes.

    Then worked over to the W and last one in RADON ( had Rodin for a while )

    My favourite was MOJO, but really so many raised a smile.

    Thanks to Pasquale and to Eileen for the blog

75. gladys @59:

    I had 3 kilos of apples. A friend gave me 2 more kilos of apples. What amount of apples do I now have? You may NOT use or even refer to numbers in your answer. Good luck.

76. Guan was new to me too, as was zo (alternate spellings zho, dzo, dzho, I find in wikipedia). Would be nice to have an exotic bestiary as a theme!

    Gervase@3 and Eileen — I didn’t put in POSTILION last night because I was sure it was spelled wrong and had to be something else. Being in bed, I couldn’t check it. We;ll, actually I put it in in faint ballpoint, so I could write over it if necessary, but all its crossed letters worked out with the down words, so this morning I braved the fates and inked it in.

    gladys@15 POSTILION is a variant spelling, with two LL’s the more common one. I thought they had something to do with coaches, but now looked them up to see what they actually did, which it turns out was more than just be ornamental. I had thought they were more like footmen.

    I’m staying out of this lesser/moster hooha.

    Thanks as ever to Pasquale and Eileen,

77. [Roz @73: it is a good question. PP was published in book form by Chapman & Hall; Little Dorrit in 1857 was published in book form by Bradbury & Evans, and in the latter, ‘postilion’ is spelt thus. But then, in 1859, Chapman & Hall, in printing A Tale of Two Cities, spelt it with one l. It would require more research into CD’s manuscripts and into printing house practice than I am in a position to conduct and than Gaufrid would be minded to tolerate to sort this out, I’m afraid.]

78. As a determined user of less rather than fewer, I am interested by Gladys @58’s example. Is saying an amount of apples OK? If so, that’s a countable noun with a quantifier that apparently cannot refer to numbers.
    Then, if it is OK to have an amount of apples, I wonder if amount for number is OK in a crossword despite the objection that they are not synonymous. Solutions to clues don’t have to be synonymous. They may be subsets, or examples of a type. Dog and Labrador are not synonymous but dog in clue for Labrador in solution is fine. So here we have amount, which means a quantity. In the case of apples, the quantity would be given by a number, so number is an example of how we express quantity.

79. [ Thank you anyway, it was just a thought . Often when reading a novel there is a note from the editor explaining changes, usually linked to the house style of a previous publisher. Would Dickens have been his own editor and even publisher for hie initial work in magazines ? ]

80. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen
    Too late to make a novel comment on the puzzle (except to say that FENCE was favourite), but one of my favourite coffee mugs has the legend “Grammar Grumble No.1: Less milk and fewer sugar lumps”.

81. blaise @71: thanks for Spewguts, sorry Squeezeguts Alley 😉 Sadly I think your more prosaic explanation for Allée des Postillons is the more likely one.

    Of course there’s also the cor des postillons, otherwise known as the post horn. Very familiar as a logo for postal services all over Europe, eg Deutsche Post or the Swiss PostBus buses.

    James @78: so all we’re missing is a dbe indicator?

82. Thank you for all the kind comments., I am used to putting up with any amount of grumblers. of course, especially those who cannot distinguish between original meanings and acquired meanings ( which they might find recorded in dictionaries, with examples in quotations in the OED).

83. Hi muffin @80

    I’d love that mug – a perfect illustration!

    I shall never stop flogging this dead horse, a particular ‘bête noire’ 😉 of mine, as you’ll have gathered – which, as grant @10 has said, has probably bolted, but I’m quite prepared to call it a day for now.

84. Pasquale @82 – I’m sorry: we crossed.

    Thanks, as ever, for dropping in.

85. One last example: “I’ve got about a zillion photos on my phone.”. A zillion’s an imprecise lot. And “a lot” is an amount, not a number. But zillion is listed as a number in the dictionary.

86. essexboy @81, no those are for when the example is in the clue, as in ‘Labrador, for example’ as a clue for dog. ‘Dog, for example’ as a clue for Labrador makes no sense.

87. Too many obscurities for me to finish, as per normal with a Pasquale puzzle. Not a reflection on the setter, more a reflection on my vocabulary.
    Looking forward to tomorrow.
    Thanks both.

88. I take the point about the developing use of amount = number but I still cringe when I read about an amount of people.

89. I’m another who doubted radon was hot. And “mark” appears again for 3rd or 4th time this week.
    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

90. Ironically, the clue to RADON left me cold. Otherwise, enjoyable.

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