Guardian 28,535 – Paul

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As has been my experience with many of Paul’s recent puzzles, this one started out feeling quite hard, but yielded satisfyingly in the end. I was helped by guessing the two long acrosses quickly from definition and enumeration, but they were a bit trickier to parse. Thanks to Paul.

 
Across
1 COGNAC Warmer vessel spinning on wheel (6)
COG (wheel) + reverse of CAN (vessel)
5 LAPTOP Fit in dock for computer (6)
APT (appropriate, fit) in LOP (to dock)
8 TIGHTEN Squeeze gallons into the tin, furiously (7)
G in (THE TIN)*
9 TOSTADA Stoat out gathering commercial food that’s fried (7)
AD (commercial) in STOAT*
11 LINCOLN MEMORIAL Half dying to tuck into green food? That’s a landmark for Americans! (7,8)
Half of MORIbund (dying) in LINCOLN (green) MEAL
12 AMOK A donkey, virtually wild (4)
A MOK[e]
13 BRIDGEABLE Not beyond reach, fresh bagel snatched by union member (10)
BAGEL* in BRIDE (a “union member”)
17 ATTACHMENT One’s joined with soldiers in amendment of that act (10)
MEN (soldiers) in (THAT ACT)*
18 TINY Little bit in your houses (4)
Hidden in (housed by) biT IN Your
20 SLIP OF THE TONGUE Sauce regularly guzzled by that woman with meat, unfortunate mistake (4,2,3,6)
LIP (cheek, sauce) OFT (regularly) in SHE + TONGUE (meat)
23 EYEBALL Watch character cry out loud? (7)
Homophone of “I bawl”, with I being the letter or character
24 SEA GULL Familiar bird, swallow almost caught by coastal mammal (3,4)
GUL[p] in SEAL. Chambers only gives this as a single word
25 STODGE Something filling skip that obviously doesn’t get eaten, initially (6)
Initial letters of Skip That Obviously Doesn’t Get Eaten
26 TO DATE Up until now, fox feasted (2,4)
TOD (traditional name for a fox) + ATE
Down
2 ORGAN LOFT Sort of long art gallery in church, perhaps (5,4)
(OF LONG ART)*
3 NATION Race car leaving front of plant (6)
[CAR]NATION (plant)
4 CONUNDRUM Puzzle deception with German drink (9)
CON (deception) + UND (German “and” or “with”) + RUM
5 LATTE Drink contents of dish? (5)
The “contents” of pLATTEr
6 PUSHOVER Breeze that may result in domino effect? (8)
Double definition – breeze and pushover can both mean something easy; and you might PUSH OVER the first in a line of dominoes
7 OMANI Arab in country without borders (5)
A similar construction to 5: rOMANIa
8 TALLAHASSEE God and fool welcomed by supporter in US city (11)
ALLAH (god) + ASS (fool) in TEE (supporter of the ball in golf). Tallahassee is the state capital of Florida
10 ALL VERY WELL No one requiring doctor’s appointment? OK with some reservations (3,4,4)
Double definition – if ALL are VERY WELL then they don’t need to see the doctor
14 DINNER SET China, say, private place under leader of dictatorship (6,3)
D[ictatorship] + INNER (private) SET (to place)
15 BRING SUIT Sue found bus tiring, sadly (5,4)
(BUS TIRING)*
19 RONALD MCDONALD Clown feeding odd bits of muck to Republican presidents? (6,8)
Alternate letters of MuCk in RONALD (Reagan) + DONALD (Trump)
21 INERT Ship yet to launch, boat ultimately motionless (5)
[L]INER + [BOA]T
22 TILDE Spanish line on mat for waltzer, did you say? (5)
Mat + TILDE gives us a homophone of Matilda, who is a “waltzer” in the famous Australian song

74 comments on “Guardian 28,535 – Paul”

  2. thanks Andrew for the blog which put me out of misery when it came to parsing LINCOLN MEMORIAL. Likewise TILDE.

  3. This has been added to the puzzle: “Special instructions: 27/8/2021: 24 across letter count has been corrected”. But the letter count has been removed altogether!

  4. Found it easier to solve/guess some of the answers than to parse them. I did not parse: SLIP OF THE TONGUE, STODGE, LINCOLN MEMORIAL, TALLAHASSEE (apart from the ASS bit), AMOK.

    I liked SEA GULL (but usually see it as one word, not two), OMANI, PLATTER (loi).

    New: TOD = fox (google led me to a 1981 Disney movie).

    Thanks, both.

  5. Had one of those days today when I whistled through the whole thing with barely batting an eyelid. But yet really struggled to crack into Crucible yesterday. Funny old game, innit.

    I enjoyed TILDE and RONALD MCDONALD, and had a wry smile at DINNER SET, having spent a few minutes wondering whether it had anything to do with ‘China = friend’. But definitely on the easier side for a Paul, I thought.

  6. I got the feeling Paul must have been ‘tiring, sadly’ towards the end. ‘Sue’ = BRING SUIT? How is that cryptic? You might as well clue ‘fell’ as ‘cause to fall’. ‘Yet to launch’ = ‘take the first letter off’? How? And if I say ‘That’s all very well’, I don’t mean ‘that’s OK, with some reservations’, I mean ‘that’s not OK’.

    Humph.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew.

  7. I usually struggle with Paul, but this one was largely a breeze. I guessed 22dn (LOI) but despite being Australian, the penny didn’t drop for me about Mat+Tilde=Waltzer.

  8. Good fun, and a Paul without a single rudery (unless you count the comments about US politics in the clues to 8d and 16, 19). I did wonder whether, it being Paul, 6d would turn out to be ASSHOLES.
    Not enormously keen on think of something at random and take off its first and last letters, and certainly not smitten enough to want the device repeated in 5d and 7d.
    The surface in 15d is smooth, which Paul’s aren’t always – but is BRING SUIT really an expression (I ask as a retired lawyer)?
    TILDE and SLIP OF THE TONGUE were particularly good, I thought.

  9. MEET BRENDAN – TONIGHT!
    Thanks everyone for your comments. I have a very special guest on my latest Zoom call tonight. Brian Greer, aka Brendan, is joining us. To ‘meet’ him subscribe here:
    https://www.johnhalpern.co.uk/

    See you tonight, 7.30pm

    John aka Paul

  10. Too indirect for my tastes – LATTE, and OMANI, as well as the two-step for ‘with German’ – which is MIT – to UND.

    Thanks Andrew and Paul.

  11. Quite an odd solving experience. Saw Paul’s name, and braced myself. But then saw 11A and 8D as the puzzle churned out of the printer and bunged-in the answers – rapidly followed by RONALD MACDONALD – and all three easily parsed (wonderful clues).
    Minutes later the grid was completed apart from 1A and 2D, which I stared at for a comparative eternity until the final ‘duh’ moment.
    PS: By coincidence I’m in the middle of a 2005 Paul puzzle (#23,438) and so far it seems like it’s going to be the usual much longer grind.

  13. Relatively easy for a Friday and for a Paul, I thought. Also the lack of lavatorial wit (unless I’m missing something) was strange. In places it didn’t feel like a Paul at all.

    I did like TILDE both the definition and the groan inducing homophone, and Ronald Mcdonald. Both of which were definitely Pauline.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew.

  14. Easy to solve, hard to parse. Being unfamiliar with moribund had no show of unpicking 11. Enjoyed the clown threesome in 19. Thanks Andrew & Paul. I’ll set my alarm clock.

  15. Thanks Paul and Andrew
    Parsing 20 gave me the most trouble, but I eventually worked it out. Otherwise surprisingly straightforward. Favourite TO DATE – does no-one else here remember Beatrix Potter’s The tale of Mr. Tod?

  16. I was progressing smoothly but was defeated by COGNAC, NATION and TILDE. All completely fair. I associate TILDE with Mathematics writing rather than Spanish but it’s obvious with hindsight it really is a Spanish line. The MaT connection was clever and made a very ingenious clue.

    Thanks Paul. Thanks Andrew for parsing the SLIP OF… solution and the rest of the blog.

  17. Paul on a Friday. Didn’t think I’d get anywhere but, like Michelle @4, I found it to be one of those strange puzzles where I got a lot from the definitions (inspired guesses) and crossers but couldn’t always parse them.

    Enjoyed it – some lovely ones including: RONALD MCDONALD, TALLAHASSEE, ALL VERY WELL (which I guessed and then could parse) LINCOLN MEMORIAL, SLIP OF THE TONGUE (which I couldn’t)

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

  18. I enjoyed that – as I always do with Paul’s puzzles – but wasn’t quite on his lambda today. Favourite was Ronald McDonald.

    Looking forward to tonight’s zoom.

    Thank you Paul and Andrew.

  20. Thanks for the blog, a bit on the easy side but some nice clues. I think BRING SUIT is just one of those cases of last word to fit into the grid.
    INERT does not really mean motionless but probably close enough for a crossword.

  21. I knew BRING SUIT – not sure from where but it’s here
    Took a while for the TILDE penny to drop as I’m used to using it as the bitwise not operator when coding

  22. Stared for minutes ’til the teatray struck up the unofficial anthem to get tilde, d’oh. Thought the same as eb@6 re ‘all very well’, but didn’t notice the ‘und for mit’ swap in conundrum. Tod for male fox was a dnk. Otherwise a cruisy Friday potter. Thanks P and A.

  23. It’s probably just me on an off day, but I didn’t enjoy this. Maybe it’s because I prefer to get the solution and the parsing at the same time. Maybe it’s just little things like UND = with, BRING SUIT. I liked TALLAHASSEE and RONALD, though.

  24. One of Paul’s gentler (and cleaner) ones. TOSTADA was new to me and I failed to solve, let alone parse, TILDE. Liked PUSHOVER, and LINCOLN MEMORIAL for its surface.

    Any birder will tell you (ad nauseam) that seagulls do not exist: gulls come in various species, and “sea” is not one of them. But Paul comes from Brighton, I believe, so he should know all about seagulls.

  25. gladys @24
    I think the “familiar” excuses the seagull.
    As Peter Owen @3 says, the Guardian can’t even get the correction right!

  26. For the first time I have solved all the Guardian crossword puzzles from Sunday to Friday. Tomorrow’s will probably be a step too far.

    Today’s was easier than expected, with some nice moments. 20a came to mind quickly with just the G crosser, but took a minute to parse. 11a was obviously correct, but I failed to parse it. I see that clues such as ?LATTE? and ?OMANI? are not universally popular – I was happier with them than with MORI???? and GUL?, but I tend to struggle to see that type of two step process (think of a synonym and then modify it, in the hope that it might fit the rest of the clue).

  28. Had wondered whether Joseph Grimaldi was going to feature as the Clown in 19,16 down, but once the cluing sorted out DONALD MCDONALD, as others have said, this became a bit of a breeze or almost a PUSHOVER. But no less enjoyable for that…

  29. I only know INERT from gases which have about as much reaction as a wombat in the snow
    But I did like tilde-one of Halpern’s trademarks
    Very lite for a Fri-might need the other JH for the Prize tomorrow.
    Back to the cricket

  30. As others have said, more straightforward than usual for Paul, with some nice words and imaginative constructions – ALL VERY WELL, but many of the surfaces are terrible.

    A bit disappointed. Sorry, JH.

  31. Sorry, didn’t enjoy this. Agree that BRING SUIT is hardly cryptic.
    And despite being an Aussie and knowing about TILDEs, or whatever the Spanish plural is, it’s unfair. Difficult def, reasonable wordplay or vice versa.
    Wish I could do the zoom thing with Paul and Brendan, one of of my faves. I’ll give Paul/JH credit for that.

  32. Yes, a deal easier than the usual Paul on a Friday. I have the same doubts about BRING SUIT as those expressed above. Otherwise a lot of enjoyable stuff in there.

  33. It’s unfortunate that “Sue” appears in the clue for BRING SUIT.

    I would thnk that in 13a it’s the gap that’ BRIDGEABLE but whatever’s on the other side that’s “not beyond reach.”

    Thanks for parsing LINCOLN MEMORIAL (cicn’t think of “moribund”), STODGE and (car)NATION, Andrew. Actually, I think the first is a little unfair — if indirect anagrams are not okay, why are indirect charades?

    21d reminds me of a line from James Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks: “I am no longer ert, for I have lost my ertia.”

    Thanks, Paul for the challenge and Andrew for the parsing where I needed it.

  34. Monkey@26: The game of “think of a synonym and modify it” isn’t one of my favourites either – I got LATTE but not OMANI which I had as an unparsed IRAQI on the strength of the last two crossers for quite some time.

    Muffin@25: whether or not “seagull” is ornithologically correct isn’t really relevant here: the word exists and will undoubtedly be in Chambers, so it’s fine. I belong to one or two natural history groups on Facebook, and the pack of resident pedants waiting to pounce on the unwary victim who dares to speak of seagulls is a constant hazard.

  35. Not as hard as usual but still pleasing to do. Yes the Albion are known as the Seagulls but like JH living down south we all know that these squawking birds are actually herring gulls. Famed locally for dropping large amounts of poo on one’s car! It will also be great to see Brian Greer on the zoom tonight.

  36. [Confession time: until I finally read it a couple of years ago, I’d always thought Jonathan Livingstone SEAGULL was a book called SEAGULL by the otherwise unknown author Jonathan Livingstone]

  37. essexboy@6 & grantinfreo@22
    Just thought I’d show up in praise of ALL VERY WELL, which I really enjoyed. One may very well think something or other is totally not OK, but if one feels obliged to start the condemnation by saying: “That’s all very well, BUT…..”, one is reluctantly conceding that ones interlocutor must have made some kind of point in its favour.
    (It’s all well and good you thinking otherwise, I just happen to be right, so there! With brass knobs on!!)

  38. Thanks Paul and Andrew (I failed to spot Matilda), that was fun.
    I liked RONALD MCDONALD, which conjures up quite a circus.
    I loved the apt anagram in 2d. Lengthy voluntaries that showcase the organist’s lofty art come to mind.
    Valentine @33 – I agree, ‘BRIDGEABLE’ is all about the gap. Maybe something can be ‘not beyond reach’ by closing the gap?

  39. Hark to the whimper of the seagull
    He weeps because he’s not an e-gull.
    Suppose you were, you silly seagull —
    How would you explain it to your she-gull?

    Ogden Nash

  40. Gert @37: That’s all very well… 😉

    I think you’re quite right about ‘reluctantly conceding… some kind of point in its favour’. But that’s not the same as saying ‘OK with some reservations’.

    ‘OK with some reservations’ is basically a ‘yes’. It means ‘I’m going to accept this, providing it can be tweaked a little’.

    ‘That’s all very well’ is a precursor to a ‘no’. It means ‘I’m not going to accept this, despite what some may think are its good points’. There’s always a BUT coming, often accompanied by brass knobs.

  41. paddymelon @31 – you didn’t mention the third factor in a fair clue – helpful crossers – which certainly applied in the case of TILDE. And how many more Spanish lines and waltzers are there to consider? Seems fair to me. The bigger issue is that the clue only works if someone can claim that they pronounce Mathilda as Mat-thilda.

  42. Thanks Andrew.
    At 20a, surely often and regularly aren’t the same? Something can happen regularly every 100 years, and that isn’t often. Similarly, something that occurs often is not necessarily regular?
    Still, I always enjoy Paul’s puzzles. Thank you, Paul.

  43. [essexboy @40
    You’ve reminded of a description of a diplomat: if he says “yes” he means “maybe”; if he says “maybe” he means “no”; if he says “no” he’s no diplomat!]

  45. eb@40
    Yes, that’s all very well and good, and I take your point, but don’t you think there might be another way of looking at it? 😉

  46. Paul definitely at his most benign today ~ loved RONALD MCDONALD . Ear worm of the day is Bobby Gentry’s TALLAHASSEE BRIDGE(ABLE).

    Ta Paul & Andrew for parsing LINCOLN MEMORIAL.

  49. Crosser@42

    You are absolutely correct in your analysis, and I think along the same lines, everytime I see oft/often and regularly clued for each other. However they are listed by several sources as synonyms or similar.

  50. Eb @48: indeed it is Tallahatchie but one of those classic misheard lyrics which gave me a bit of poetic licence I trust. A search on google will still bring up the Ode 😉

  51. Yes, I find it annoying the way that English is misused, and even more so that the misusage gets incorporated into dictionaries. For instance, Halley’s comet reappears regularly, but hardly often!

  52. One of the rare occasions when a Paul puzzle has been a fill-in. I couldn’t parse 11 ac. until seeing the explanation here. And I don’t get the need for “Familiar” in 24 ac. – seems a bit misleading to me…
    Thanks Andrew and Paul

  53. Thanks Paul and Andrew. At the end of what has been a relatively straightforward week of puzzles, I did wonder if we might get a stinker today, and seeing Paul’s name in the header, I braced myself… but it turned out to be mostly plain sailing, and mostly enjoyable.

    Have to admit to a DNF though – just couldn’t make the mental leap from “warmer” to COGNAC. And ORGAN LOFT only became obvious once I’d hit reveal on 1ac, so that was LOI.

    Also failed to parse SLIP OF THE TONGUE – got hung up on “sauce regularly” being the S…UE and couldn’t get any further than that. Got the solution from the crossers and definition though.

    Gladys @34 – I hope you don’t come here to get to get away from the pedants…

  54. JiP@52

    There is no species of gull actually called a seagull. The most common gull so misnamed is actually a herring gull. Familiar in this case means familiar name – a common usage which is technically incorrect but almost everybody knows what it means and probably use it.

    Seagull can defined as a bird that lives near the sea, broadly a gull.

    I think Paul was anticipating the usual pedantry and protecting his clue from criticism.

  55. Jay @52
    As gladys pointed out earlier, technically there’s no such thing as a “seagull”, but most are “famililiarly” named as such.

  56. Blah @54
    Most of the “seagulls” we see are Black-headed gulls – generally not actually black-headed in summer – but we do live about as far from the sea as is possible in England!

  57. Thanks Andrew and Paul. I must be cobwebby today because this was a real slog for me, and I eventually gave up on 1ac – cognac as a warmer didn’t occur to me.
    I couldn’t parse LINCOLN, AMOK, or TILDE – but quite liked the last once I got Andrew’s explainer. I did think that one was fair, fwiw. I’m also not bothered by regularly for often, as I hear it used as such colloquially quite ‘regularly.’ SLIP OF… did take me a lot of staring to parse; I got hung up on assuming “sauce regularly guzzled” must be the outer S UE as an envelope for something.

    PUSHOVER and RONALD MCDONALD were favorites.

  58. I can’t believe Paul gets a free pass with warmer as a def. I got it so no sour grapes, but really it’s never going to be one of your first one hundred guesses from that?

  60. Dictionaries record usage.

    Language evolves. If people use a word or phrase ‘wrongly’ that takes on the meaning.

    One may not like it, but the genie is out of the bottle and can’t be put back.

    And you can’t “re-educate” people once that’s happened, after all, look what they vote for.

  62. Simon S
    I’ve said this before. I’ve no objection to words taking on new meanings. What really offends me is words with different meanings coming to be used interchangeably, viz. regularly/often, or irritating/aggravating.

  63. Thanks, Paul, for a very enjoyable afternoon. I hope you made yourself an extra cup of tea after coming up with the splendid surface for PUSHOVER.

  64. muffin @ 62

    I agree with your basic premise. But that’s the evolution of language, whether one likes it or not.

    cf reject/refute, impinge (on)/affect/impact, consist of/comprise of, ‘humanitarian’ with negative implications. The list is endless. And there’s nowt we can do about it.

  66. I had the opposite of Andrew’s experience, this one started out feeling quite easy, but ground to a halt in the end.

    maarvarq @7. …the penny didn’t drop for me about Mat+Tilde=Waltzer. Well, that’s because it doesn’t! “Matilda” is *not* MAT+TILDE, it’s either MA+TILDE or MAT+ILDE. I’m normally the last person to complain about a homophone, but this is quite clearly wrong.

    Andrew McRae @58 I can’t believe Paul gets a free pass with warmer as a def. Well, having not seen NATION (on the basis that taking ‘car’ off was too obvious, so we must be looking for a synonym such as ‘rolls’ or ‘mini’), I also did not get COGNAC, even though I had separately thought of COG as a cognate (ahem!) for ‘wheel’ and CAN for ‘vessel’ but dismissed them as being a) too obvious and b) nothing to do with a ‘warmer’. So no free pass from me, but I’m pretty sure Paul doesn’t care!

    It’s good to give rein to my inner curmudgeon from time to time. 🙂

  67. I had a minor quibble that tostadas aren’t really fried. Loved Ronald Mcdonald though and generally a very nice puzzle.

  68. I only got TILDE and COGNAC from word-searches on the crossers. Did not parse TILDE – not even after seeing “Waltzing Matilda” dictionary entry under “waltz”. Of all the words that matched ?O???C only COGNAC could have possibly been a warmer, but like others don’t like it.

    Luckily Paul’s call last night did not provide any spoilers. No questions about the crossword at all (though I joined late).

  70. This was made easier by the long answers being guessable as Andrew said. Nice one Paul.
    (I was timmytimtim but names seemingly not checked for uniqueness now)

  72. khayyam @61. Although the word TOSTADA comes (obviously) from the Spanish word for toast, Chambers has it as “tortilla fried until crisp”, so I’m afraid you’ll struggle to challenge that clue!

    Camilla Highwater @71. I think ‘race’=NATION is a bit of a crossword staple (though my brain didn’t make the connection so readily on Friday). Looking in Chambers I don’t find a direct equivalence, but for race there is “descendants of a common ancestor, esp those who inherit a common set of characteristics”, and for nation “a body of people marked off by common descent, language, culture…whether or not bound by the territorial limits of a state”, which is hard to pick a fight with.

    timmytimtim @70. I don’t think there was ever an algorithm looking for unique names and matching them with email addresses, but Gaufrid has been known to tackle people calling themselves John or Mark or James, and perhaps he has let your “tim” moniker go, just this once. I thought timmytimtim was pretty good and would hope to see you again before too long.

  73. I only know tilde from Vietnamese, I had assumed it would occur in other languages but I did not know which. As it was introduced here by French Monks, I knew it must exist in European languages somewhere, but I have never thought to look

  74. Thanks nicbach @73 – fascinating subject. It appears that the modern (Latin-based) Vietnamese script goes back originally to the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Francisco de Pina, who naturally enough used Portuguese orthography. The French then enforced its use during the colonial period – although not without some reluctance, since the differences between Portuguese and French pronunciation created problems, both for Vietnamese learning French, and for French administrators trying to pronounce Vietnamese place names.

    Although we in the UK think of the tilde as ‘typically Spanish’ (hence the clue), the Spanish only use it over the letter ‘n’. The Portuguese use it over vowels (as I believe is also the case in Vietnamese?)

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