Guardian Cryptic 28,529 by Paul

76 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,529 by Paul”

1. Managed to get 22 a third of the way in and eventually twigged the variations. Was hoping to find a Q after getting the SE corner early. I thought this was Paul near the top of his game and so many to like such as STONED, VIETNAMESE, REAPPEARANCES, EMOTICON and even NUMBER TWO. I thought STANZA was clever, having been misled by the ZA – international abbreviation for SA. Relished this challenge today and never really in a 22 for a change.

   Ta Paul & manehi

2. Quite a difficult challenge – I think that it would have made a good Prize puzzle. I only got 22ac after I had solved MUMMIFY, STEW, PRESERVE & RELISH.

   Liked: STONED.

   Did not parse: UNSTUDIED with def = natural (looked like an anagam but I couldn’t work it out); 1d RACCOON.

   Thanks, both.

3. Did not know “pickle” is a term for a naughty child. V clever crossword and hugely enjoyed it. Many thanks Paul and also Manehi for the good solving work.

4. Strangely the clue for 5d in my paper version is “22 skunk perhaps doesn’t open”. I had a question mark against this – although the wordplay is clear, I wasn’t sure how TINKER = PICKLE. The revised version is better I think.

5. Thanks TerriBlislow, on checking Chambers I see it has “a troublesome child” for PICKLE. Presumably there was a last minute decision that this was a bit obscure.

6. I’m a great fan of Paul, but I found most of this one seriously annoying, before a few delights at the end.
   Eleven clues reference 22a, which itself isn’t straightforward. Of those eleven, far too many – 9a, 11a, 15a, 14d – are weak clues in themselves and ended up being bung-and-hopes guided by the crossers.
   I thought 16d wasn’t entirely satisfying, because it used MUMMY to clue MUMMIFY. And EXPOSIT is the sort of word you end up with when you can’t quite complete the grid and have to cross with four clues (FREELOADS, PICKLE, BIT PLAYERS and STANZA) that you’re rather pleased with.
   But having ploughed through most of the puzzle, I was rewarded with some really neat wordplay – VIETNAMESE, FREELOADS (of which more anon), EMOTICON, STANZA (a crafty little misdirection, because Tanzania isn’t a South African country…), REAPPEARANCES.
   And as I pondered 17a (and of course, only Paul would use Bums as an anagram indicator), I had the crossers from EXPOSIT and NUMBER TWO (which had gone in straight away with the thought “Yes, this is Paul…”). And as well as the brilliant FREELOADS, another possibility for …E.O… is the extremely Pauline ARSEHOLES. I spent a pleasant minute or two trying to see if I could make the wordplay work. Not all the joy of crosswords is confined to finding the actual answers.
   Thanks (eventually) to Paul and to manehi for the explanations, particularly of 9a.

7. Wow. A very clever crossword.
   A fair number I guessed, based on 22a. Some I parsed later, with others I was losing the will to live partway through the parsing and, having come here for enlightenment, I realise I would never have untangled them.
   I’m not entirely sure mummification used pickling, but it works as a synonym for what they were doing – and in any case, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the combined areas of FS regulars’ expertise included egyptology…
   Thanks to Paul and Manehi

8. Relatively gentle from Paul I thought, nwst my congenital thematic denseness re, in this case pickles literal and metaphorical. They did eventually help a bit, e.g. with dilemma and mummify. Had a few mers: pickle as mischievous child=scamp; pickle itself as dip rather than condiment, and lemon as active, i.e. as ‘loser’ rather than ‘dud’. Exposit, meanwhile was a nho. Ntl, still gentle overall. Thanks Paul and manehi.

9. @3 TerriBlislow I actually prefer the paper clue for 5d. I’ve often heard “You’re a bit of a tinker” and “You little pickle” addressed to a mischievous child.
   Very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Paul and Manehi, especially for parsing CAJUN which for some reason eluded me.

10. Found the repetitious strained synonyms for PICKLE became tedious after a while. No great criticism of the setter, just not my cup of tea.

    This, together with Paul’s recent trend of not always bothering to make a coherent surface, made this not much fun for me. (Notice rogue secreting second heart, say. Err??)

    Thanks for the explanation of SCAM.

11. .. and not sure we say yatter In Oz, although yadda yadda meaning blah blah has crossed the ocean (not sure which one).
    5d reminded me of the Tracey Ullman skit where she (as … character name??) has to learn what a lid of pot is.

12. Hmm. Didn’t enjoy this much, I’m afraid. The concept is fine, but some of the synonymy is dubious: a pickle is not really a dip, and jam is not a pickle. Too many rough or meaningless surfaces (though I really liked the clue for STONED).

    More a setter’s than a solver’s puzzle IMHO.

    Thanks nevertheless to S&B

13. I enjoyed that.
    Half way through I thought it was quite difficult and then it suddenly capitulated. Couldn’t parse 17.
    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

14. Wasn’t enjoying, so gave up early. Not my cup of rea.

15. Gervase @12 I agree about PICKLE != DIP
    Yes you could dip something in pickle but you could also dip it in engine oil
    Pretty good fun apart from that although Paul is starting to feel a bit like an annoying child who keeps showing you the same trick

16. Thanks Paul & manehi. I was initially a bit dispirited at seeing how many clues referenced 22, especially given the opacity of that clue, but then I got STEW and PRESERVE and 22 yielded. YATTER is a new one on me – I wanted to put in NATTER but the wordplay made it obvious that YATTER was the right answer. I read 6dn as a single (very Paul-like) cryptic definition, but I expect the double definition was the intended parsing.

    NeilH @6 – “Bums” is the definition, not the anagram indicator.

17. Thanks manehi, I didn’t get the SCAMP/Pickle equivalence and thus glad I solved online as that 5D is less of a stretch for me than Lord Jim’s paper version (I recall “pickle” addressed to me and others as a child with no suggestion of mischief, unlike scamp or tinker). I found this slow going too but enjoyed working through some edu-guessed definitions to check parsing, plenty of eureka moments thus generated.
    Not knowing the technical definition of pickle (an Indian friend once told me the difference between chutney and pickle being sugar in the former but that’s all I recall) seemed to help with what others may find slightly inaccurate synonyms.
    Anyway my favourite was EMOTICON (William@10 I thought of a card sharp palming something to help in his SCAM) with many runners up, and a couple of new words too so thanks Paul.

18. Thanks for the blog, see Lord Jim@4, clue in paper is wrong. It gives (s)tinker but I can find no justification for tinker = pickle.
    First pass I put in POCKET for 22AC , stupid Roslyn , I was double bluffed by Paul , thinking the synonyms had to be harder.
    Tanzania I just took the first 5 letters, no need for a gap but it does work.
    EMOTICON was explained to me on the FT blog last week , only knew emoji until then.
    Old style theme but so much better than yesterday’s boredom.

19. Abandoned after 2½ hours with eight clues (inc 22a) still not solved. Unpleasant!

20. A slow and largely unenjoyable solve. I agree entirely with Gervase@12 and largely with Bodycheetah@15. Thanks both.

21. Widdersbel @16 -You are right, of course. Senior moment on my part.
    Which being said, Paul is someone who would cheerfully use “bums” as an anagram indicator; and I suspect that if he hadn’t been concentrating on how many tenuous links to pickles he could cram in, we might well have had simply “Bums of leaders” with the word doing double duty.

22. Roz@18 re TINKER there is shurely no reference to 22 in the clue.

    Otherwise I thought I’d cracked it immediately as HOLLOW fitted perfectly for 22. I knew it was too good to be true as I got STEW,DILEMMA, CAJUN and the strange EXPOSIT which seems to be hiding in my Chambers but it seems OK.Then it was downhill all the way.

    The general consensus seems to be a NAY for this puzzle but I canna lie. I enjoyed it
    So there!

23. Paul at his wiliest, and though I tackled this with some relish, took a while to complete the SW quarter, struggling with the parsing of EMOTICON as LOI along with several others there. Looked at UNSTUDIED for a while before I wrote it in…

24. Nice idea, although it led to rather a lot of dds, unfortunately.

    After solving DISAVOW, and having ???W for cook, it seemed that that was STEW, leading to untangling of the PICKLE. Some somewhat dodgy synonyms as others have raised – dip and mummify. Gervase @12; jam = pickle, as it says in the blog is a synonym for mess or pickle.

    I did like UNSTUDIED, STONED and NUMBER TWO.

    Thanks Paul and manehi.

25. copmus @ 22 , clue in the paper is – 22 skunk perhaps doesn’t open.
    Clearly a late change online because it does not really work.
    I am very much a yay for this puzzle.

26. Fiendish but fun. I enjoyed this although 22 itself eluded me for sometime. Like NeilH at 6 I toyed with Arseholes (?) for 17ac as that seemed like a Paul solution. I guess ‘Number Two’ was his compulsory bit of toilet humour. Thanks to Paul and manehi today.

27. Satisfying in the end to get this out, though it was a bit of a slog along the way. The gateway clue wasn’t at all obvious in itself and was just as hard to “reverse engineer”, so it was quite a while before I built up some momentum. Still, very clever to have both senses of PICKLE and I liked plenty of non-thematic clues as well, especially UNSTUDIED and EMOTICON.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi

28. I solved 22a very early and spent a few minutes – fruitlessly, as it turned out – waiting for The Gherkin to put in an appearance. I really enjoyed Paul’s dual Olympian themed puzzle last time out but this one not at all, partly due to the 2-word dd’s which I’ve never liked much unless they’re really good (Rufus was good at these, Philistine is too) but mostly for the body functions/toilet obsession clues at 5 and 6 down. I know some posters like this sort of thing which they describe as “typically Pauline” or some other such sobriquet but I emphatically don’t.

29. Another annoying (to me) rather than entertaining offering from Paul. As others have said, the synonyms are just too loose.

30. My heart sang when I saw Paul was the setter, then sank when I saw it was a riff on last week’s effort where one answer informs a significant proportion of the rest. Slogged through about half of it and was on the verge of giving up when MUMMIFY revealed the keyword, having fruitlessly hazarded POCKET and HOLLOW as others did. In the end, it was, as usual, tough but fair and everything parsed, which always helps, although I’ve never heard a child, naughty or otherwise, called a pickle. Ticks, however, for EMOTICON, REAPPEARANCES and LOI FREELOADS. On balance not as grim as I initially thought it would be. Thanks Paul and manehi.

31. Found this slow going, needed five of the “22” clues to get PICKLE (chapeau to anyone who solved 22 before any of its very stretchy synonyms). And when you’ve had enough of double defs, you can start on the convoluted containers. Glad to have got there: can’t say I enjoyed it much.

    I certainly know both PICKLE and TINKER as semi-affectionate names for a naughty child. On the other hand, a LEMON is a dud object like a faulty car, not a person. Perhaps the slang is different where Paul comes from. Never met YATTER before either.

    Liked BIT PLAYERS, and STANZA for the misdirection which had me looking at maps of Botswana and Eswatini, but by the time I got to the end I was losing the will to live, so revealed REAPPEARANCES. If I could put an EMOTICON (also revealed ) on this, it wouldn’t be a heart.

32. Not Paul’s best work IMO.

    Pickle dropped on a first read through, as we always used to get lime pickle as a dip with poppadoms any time we went out for a curry. So having already seen lots of short clues mentioning 22, my mind naturally turned to synonyms of pickle, and that was about it.

    Wellbeck@7 I remember once reading that during mummification certain organs were removed and stored in canopic jars after being pickled or preserved with natron salt.

33. Plus 1 on the ARSEHOLES front. Fortunately I was no longer in a dilemma after solving that very thing.
    Also plus 1 on PICKLE not being a dip. Not in this house anyway.
    Tough going but got there in the end.

34. So the dead tree puzzle differed from online-thats interesting cant exactly buy the paper where I am,

35. Brilliant. Took me 4 passes but enjoyed every minute. Exposit is cheeky and I didn’t know pickle = scamp, but these are acceptable

36. copmus @ 34, yes a totally different clue in the paper, same idea of (s)tinker.

37. manehi, thanks for parsing UNSTUDIED, EMOTICON,

    MEGA was one of my least favorites, because I’m not convinced it’s a word. I’m also not convinced that a pickle is a dip.

    I agree with Gladys@31. To me a LEMON isn’t a person but a thing, particularly a car, that’s no good.

    Well, I enjoyed it. Thanks to Paul and manehi.

38. Gladys @31, Valentine @37; this is what Chambers says about LEMON: 4.Something or someone disappointing, worthless, unattractive or defective (informal).

39. Some clever stuff as usual, but on the whole too stretchy to be as fun as Paul’s last. Joining Neil@6 & Steve@33 for the potentially brilliant but ultimately “the Guardian can’t possibly allow that” alternative to FREELOADS – my crossers at the time were -R-E-O—, quite compelling. “Bum”med out!

40. Well, I enjoyed that greatly, unlike several above. Normally not very good at DDs, as my ancient brain seems to have given up on synonyms. Why waste valuable space by storing more than one word per idea, it seems to have decided. However, plenty of alternatives to 22 sprang quickly to mind. Perhaps because I’ve been in one too often.

41. With only Yatter solved on the first pass, and 11 clues referencing 22, I nearly threw in the towel at that point. But then saw Stoned and Tinker, and a very enjoyable Number Two gave me the motivation to continue. Many thanks to Paul for what turned out to be a very rewarding puzzle, and manehi for explaining some of my failed parsings

42. Thanks Manehi and Paul. This was tough for me and required a lot of use of the check; the double definitions were overly stretchy for me at times.

    I’ve complained about key answers with crossers that depend on them and this wasn’t too bad with 2/3 of 22ac’s crossers independent of it. I went straight to that corner, got STANZA and CAJUN quickly, eventually worked out EXPOSIT from BIT PLAYERS, and with P_C___ in hand filled in “POCKET,” figuring that if you DIP IN to a fund you are POCKETing it, and that an air pocket is a kind of hole. We don’t have lime pickle etc. as dips or sauces in the States, “pickle” refers exclusively to a whole brined cucumber. Check set me straight here.

    I hadn’t heard pickle/scamp either.

    I accidentally did this last night because I forgot that the posted time adapts to the time zone, so “19:00 EDT Thursday” is Friday’s puzzle!

43. Took a while to get going. As I do not do on line and buy the paper failed to get 5d some good Paulisms

44. After three poor days, a shock return to form with only 8d and 21 a defeating me.
    8d was gettable, 21a wasn’t.
    Unusual for me to get anywhere near the finishing line on a Paul puzzle. Like two weeks ago, I got the key clue very early by dint of 15a and a bit of lateral thinking and it certainly helped.
    I need to review the parsings as there were a few bung-ins.
    Thanks both.

45. matt w @ 42 I also had POCKET before even looking at the down clues.
    To take stealthily for dip, as a pickpocket does.
    Hole = pocket on a pool table.

46. HYD @ 44 did you write _E_P_E_R_N_E_ going across on paper ?
    It does help.

47. Roz @46 grrr, you are quire right. Not convinced that I would have got it, but a much better chance. I’m like Guy Pierce in ‘Memento’. Short term memory of a goldfish.

48. EA = All, not come across that one before. Just 1d that stumped me on the parsing front.

49. No it doesn’t EA = Each!

50. I told you that tip the other day. The simple things work the best.

51. NeilH @6 isn’t BUMS the definition and 22a the anagram indicator in 17a??

52. Many thanks to Paul and Manehi.
    HoofitYouDonkey @51, yes that’s how I read it too.

53. Hoofit @51, Matematico @52; Yes, Bums is indeed the definition. I acknowledged my error @21 and I do so again.

54. Thanks Paul and manehi
    As I was reading the across clues, I though “I’m not going to enjoy this”, and I was right. I nearly gave up when my first entry was the awful clue for YATTERS (how lazy is ‘omburgs?). The only reason I kept going was to find out what the clues referencing 22 had in common – it took until PRESERVE (3rd from last of these) for the penny to drop.

55. Unlike the majority, I found this a gem of a puzzle, and – Vlad aside – an oasis amid a recent drought of dreary puzzles.
    I’m not usually a fan of themes, and am ashamed to say I bunged in almost half the answers without cracking 22, but from then on it was a succession of solving laughs.
    Especially enjoyable were MUMMIFY, CAJUN & EMOTICON, among others.
    PS: as an amusing aside – before solving 22A, I had -R-E-O- – – for 17A (decided the definition was ‘bums’) and was quite taken aback at the most obvious solution – thus was very relieved when FREELOADS eventually prevailed. Did anybody else here wander down this path? I see somebody did on the Guardian blog.
    Thanks Paul, for a first-rate puzzle – just broke the hour by a few minutes.

56. [rodshaw @55
    Many years ago, in an Everyman, I think, I had an anagram answer of UP TO HIS ???? IN IT. The letters I had left were A R S E. I thought “surely not?”

    It was EARS!]

57. I always enjoy Paul’s puzzles – probably my favourite setter following the passing of Araucaria. It took some time to get into it: PRESERVE and STEW didn’t seem to help with 22 across at first. Took a couple of slight wrong turns with MAMMARY and ARSEHOLES, but eventually got back on the right track. Unusually for me, I managed to parse everything, despite never having heard of FREELOADS and EXPOSIT. Thanks, Paul, for all the enjoyment over the years, and to manehi for the blog.

58. baerchen@28

    You are not alone.

59. Several people have commented that ‘dip’ does not equal PICKLE, despite Blah @32 recalling “we always used to get lime pickle as a dip with poppadoms any time we went out for a curry.” Sorry, Blah, you must have imagined it!

    NeilH @53: I acknowledged my error @21 and I do so again. Yes, but did you write it out 100 times?

    I’m astonished at how many regular solvers didn’t enjoy this. Yes, my heart sank (just a little) at seeing how many clues depended on 22a, but then I thought, “Hey, it’s Paul: give it a chance to develop.” And it did, and I enjoyed it.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

60. At 8am I accessed the puzzle, saw it was Paul and that I needed 22A to have any chance, decided I really couldn’t be arsed, and did the Times and the Independent instead

    Came back to it 8.5 hours later, having become very bored, and spotted STEW, thus chanced PICKLE, and bludgeoned my way through it without any dramas. One or two iffy clues mentioned by others earlier, but nothing to add really. Not my cup of tea.

61. SH@59

    It is of course entirely possible I was hallucinating as the majority of my visits to the clay oven did occur after copious quantities of friday post-work pre-prandials.

    I am quite sure however that there were dips served; a neon red one that nobody was ever brave enough to try, a yoghurt based one with green bits that we hoped were herbs, a mustard yellow concoction, and of course the scotch mist-like lime pickle non dip.

    Clearly in vino veritas must be a base canard. 🙂

62. Pickle as a dip is a bit of a stretch IMO. The American sense of pickle (yes those awful dill excrescences) is definitely not a dip, the Indian/South Asian pickles which presumably Paul is referring to are not so much a dip as a side dish/condiment. Overall, I am getting a bit tired of these self referential ones with terrible surfaces. I hope it is a temporary phase for Paul as I used to enjoy his fare.

63. @59 @61 I have seen people dip pappadums in all sorts of stuff. In the US, they give out tamarind and mint chutneys and that neon red oniony dippy stuff to dip it in. In India, we simply eat it no dip or with rice (in the south). There is no raita/wrong way with these 🙂

64. Anagrammarian@63

    Only one possible response to that – namely very HUMoroUS!

65. Funny enough, I found this a relatively straightforward solve while many puzzles the gang here finds easy I get stuck on. (having had the similar gimmick a couple weeks back definitely helped me along. ) As a result I add myself to the minority who quite enjoyed this puzzle, and only failed to parse SCAM, not knowing that meaning of pickle. YATTER was new to me but gettable from the wordplay. I did make the same early error as Roz @18 and Matt w @42, but recovered after cracking RELISH and DILEMMA. I liked STONED and STANZA a lot.

    Thank you much Paul and manehi!

66. At least two clues appear here as different from those in my paper. Is this becoming a habit. One of these led me to entering a word crude even for a Paul! I thought this was otherwise a fair test for which many thanks.
    Last Sunday’s delightful Azed “Playfair” had half the explanation for the code left out which, I hope, didn’t divert people from enjoying it.
    I had no trouble in identifying TINKER with PICKLE. A charming lady Bridge partner always refers to nonagenarian me as “you little tinker” when I make one two many attempts to be smart.

67. too! Oops!

68. Keith@66, which two clues? My paper has the alternative 5 down (as given by Lord Jim @4) but otherwise matches the clues listed by Manehi.

69. Thanks both,
    A bit of a struggle to day, not helped by having ‘tittify’ for 16d and ‘arsefold’ for 17a.

70. Annoyingly held up by impulsively entering TITTIFY at 16d. It is a Paul, after all.

    A slow start, followed by a cascade as the 22a penny dropped.

    Thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks Paul and Manehi.

71. Stuck for a while wondering if MUMMIFY was wrong. _M_T_C__ not giving me much to play with. The word having been replaced by the more formally defined EMOJI. Gave it my wife with a lot undone. She immediately spotted LEMON and then the rest followed between us.

    No problem with PICKLE=TINKER and SCAMP.

    Now to go down and get today’s paper.

72. Gervase @12: Like most on here I agree about the quantity of dubious synonyms. However I will defend jam as a pickle.

    You can be ‘in a jam’ = ‘in a pickle’

73. Agree with @6. Couldn’t parse 9a – a really annoying and contrived reference to 22d. Nutmeg seems to me to the only setter now who combines wit and subtlety without showing off.

74. Apols Tyngewick @69. Didn’t see you’d beaten me to it with TITTIFY, even though it was the previous entry. Congrats on the double with ARSEFOLD 🙂

75. Enjoyed theme. New were YATTER and PICKLE as naughty child and LEMON as loser. NUMBER TWO was favourite.
    Thanks Paul and manehi

76. [Got muddled thinking this was the prize puzzle. Then emotional when LEMON – which in Yorkshire could refer to a dud person – brought ace late 1960s Sheff Univ chess player Dick Lemon to mind only to find he had just died in Oregon. A lovely man.] Otherwise a really nice seasonal puzzle.

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