The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28547.
A satisfying crossword which fell squarely in my Goldilocks zone. When 1A falls almost at first look, it often means that the whole puzzle is very easy, but here I progresses better on the right half, leaving some big holes on the left to be wrestled with and, eventually, solved.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | NOTATE |
Teaching assistant in school going back to mark (6)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of TA (‘Teaching Assistant’) in NOTE, a reversal (‘going back’) of ETON (‘school’). | ||
| 4 | ARTICLE |
Tear page off a tiny bit to see item in paper (7)
|
| A subtraction: [p]ARTICLE (‘a tiny bit’) minus the P (‘take page off’).. | ||
| 9 | BREAK WIND |
Trump to take five women home before date (5,4)
|
| A charade of BREAK (‘take five’) plus W (‘women’) plus IN (‘home’) plus D (‘date’). | ||
| 10 | ANNIE |
Nurses stripped for show (5)
|
| A subtraction: [n]ANNIE[s] (‘nurses’) minus its outer letters (‘stripped’); the ‘show’ is a musical based on the comic strip “Little orphan Annie”. Not my normal fare, but I actually saw the show on Broadway. | ||
| 11 | LEPTA |
Smashing plate for bread in old Greece (5)
|
| An anagram (‘smashing’) of ‘plate’, with ‘bread’ being money. | ||
| 12 | MENOPAUSE |
Change for writer with no break (9)
|
| A charade of ME (‘writer’) plus ‘no’ plus PAUSE (‘break’). | ||
| 13 | DISCARD |
Dealt with small vehicle parts for scrap (7)
|
| An envelope (parts’) of S (‘small’) plus CAR (‘vehicle’) in DID (‘dealt with’). | ||
| 15 | EMBARK |
Space in front of bay to take ship (6)
|
| No, interpreted correctly there is no double duty. A charade of EM (‘space’ longer than the more common – in crosswords – en) plus (‘in front of’) BARK (‘bay’ – “baying hounds”). | ||
| 17 | REASON |
Debate about a boy (6)
|
| A charade of RE (‘about’) plus ‘a’ plus SON (‘boy’). | ||
| 19 | SLANDER |
One brought back to earth after Sun’s character assassination (7)
|
| A charade of S (‘sun’) plus LANDER (‘one brought back to earth’). | ||
| 22 | HOPSCOTCH |
Teacher’s perhaps after hard work and playground activity (9)
|
| A charade of H (‘hard’) plus OP (‘work’) plus SCOTCH (a brand of the drink, ‘Teacher’s perhaps’). | ||
| 24 | STOIC |
So nurses against patient (5)
|
| An envelope (‘nurses’) of TO (‘against’; not a common meaning, but it is there – “lean-to” comes to mind) in SIC (‘so’). | ||
| 26 | AROMA |
Middle of day, run out to get mum bouquet (5)
|
| A charade of A (‘middle of dAy’) plus RO (‘run out’, separately or together in cricket summaries) plus MA (‘mum’). | ||
| 27 | CANDIDATE |
One running around with single escort (9)
|
| A charade of C (circa, ‘around’) plus AND (‘with’) plus I (‘one’) plus DATE (‘escort’). | ||
| 28 | SADNESS |
Blues band replacing member with Suggs at the front (7)
|
| MADNESS (‘band’) with M (‘member’) replaced by S (‘Suggs at the front’). The British ‘band’ Madness did indeed replace lead singer Dikron Tulane with Suggs in 1977. | ||
| 29 | ASSETS |
Advantages of good grades put before classes (6)
|
| A charade of As (good grades’) plus SETS (‘classes’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | NIBBLED |
Bit out of end of pen ran (7)
|
| A charade of NIB (‘end of pen’) plus BLED (‘ran’ “the first time I wore it in the rain, the colours ran”). | ||
| 2 | TEE UP |
Prepare to drive Peugeot: go out for a spin (3,2)
|
| An anagram (‘for a spin’) of ‘Peu[g]e[o]t’ minus the letters GO (‘go out’). | ||
| 3 | TAKEAWAYS |
Food in bags to carry out (9)
|
| A definition, cryptic only in that the clue looks as if it might have wordplay.
Yes, well, I missed that one, didn’t I? Spooner’s catflap got in first @12, followed up from the hobo’s mouth @24. Thanks to both for the correction; the wordplay is: An envelope (‘to carry’) of AWAY (‘out’) in TAKES (‘bags’), with (of course) an extended definition. |
||
| 4 | ANDANTE |
Bankers from Santander moving slowly (7)
|
| An anagram (‘moving’) of ‘[s]antande[r]’minus its outer letters (‘bankers from’); As a musical direction, it means literally at a walking pace, leisurely but steady. | ||
| 5 | TRAMP |
Walker‘s my name (5)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 6 | CONCURRED |
Picking up nose on wine after you and taster ultimately agreed (9)
|
| A charade of CONC, sounding like (‘picking up’) CONK (‘nose’) plus U R (‘yoU and tasteR ultimately’ – no textspeak) plus RED (‘wine’). | ||
| 7 | EYELET |
Opening line on film: watch at the start (6)
|
| A charade of EYE (‘watch’) plus L (‘line’) plus ET (crossword compilers’ favourite ‘film’). ‘At the start’ indicates the order of the particles. | ||
| 8 | FILMED |
Shot fired over man’s head with the other hand (6)
|
| An envelope (‘over’) of M (‘Man’s head’) in FILED, which is ‘fired’ with the R replaced by L (‘with the other hand’). | ||
| 14 | SHEEPFOLD |
Pen to run out describing husband? Turn over (9)
|
| A charade of SHEEP, an envelope (‘describing’) of H (‘husband’) in SEEP (‘run out’) plus FOLD (‘turn over’). | ||
| 16 | BEARSKINS |
Stands in front of royals: guards, at the start, going for their headgear (9)
|
| A charade of BEARS (‘stands’) plus (‘in front of’) KIN[g]S (‘royals’) minus the G (‘Guards, at the start, going’). | ||
| 18 | NOTICES |
Signs section for work (7)
|
| An anagram (‘for work’) of ‘section’. | ||
| 19 | SPHINX |
Enigmatic person is cross after panic outside hospital (6)
|
| An envelope (‘outside’) of H (‘hospital’) in SPIN (‘panic’ – “knocked for a spin”) plus X (‘cross’). | ||
| 20 | RICKETS |
Disease obtained from insects? Not primarily (7)
|
| A subtraction: [c]RICKETS (‘insects’) minus the first letter (‘not primarily’). Disease in the looser sense of an abnormal condition, not something caused by a pathogen. | ||
| 21 | CHEATS |
Does hot food, following starter of chicken (6)
|
| A charade of C (‘starter of Chicken’) plus H (‘hot’) plus EATS (‘food’). | ||
| 23 | CEASE |
Stop runs from part of wicket (5)
|
| A subtraction: C[r]EASE (‘part of wicket’) minus R (‘runs from’). | ||
| 25 | OVATE |
Like one that gets laid? Love endless sex squeezing butt (5)
|
| An envelope (‘squeezing’) of VAT (‘butt’) in O (‘love’) plus E (‘endless [s]E[x]). Egg-shaped. |
Had C H ITAL for 27dn after 22ac as my FOI. 🙂 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chital)
Very enjoyable puzzle.
My favourites: BEARKSKINS, CEASE, SPHINX, EYELET, NIBBLED, FILMED, CANDIDATE.
New: CONK = nose (6d); LEPTA. Needed online help for GK (Suggs).
Thanks, both.
@1 *21dn.
Don’t remember the comic, but “poor little Orphan Annie” was a thing said eg to a child feeling deprived. Here, though, I always assumed the musical was as in Get Your Gun…so much for what I know. And likewise, s/Madness went right over my head. But, yes, good puzzle, chewy but with enough gimmes like article and reason to ease the way. Thanks both.
…looking back over, rickets and cease were two more gimmes, but ovate was a biff…forgot about vat being (the malmsey) butt…
Well I found this quite tough, partly of my own making, but got there eventually. ANNIE required crossers because “show” has a zillion of both synonyms and instances. Having “chaperone” for the longest time instead of CANDIDATE (not a synonym, an alternate parse that almost works) was not helpful.
While I agree REASON and “debate” are very close, I don’t think I’d ever use them synonymously myself; if I wanted to emphasize the use of logic I’d use the former, the argument the latter.
Anyway, nothing too obscure to spoil the fun. Thanks.
@1 I should mention, definition: Does, as in doe a deer…
With a son who played Daddy Warbucks in the school version of Annie, the show cam easily to mind – which is more than can be said for many of these – though I can’t claim to have any quibbles. All solved and parsed but a lot of thinking needed to bring this to a close without CHEATing. NOTICES, CANDIDATE and MADNESS, all interlinked, held out until the end with the latter earning a big tick for surface, construction and factual accuracy.
rohanm @1: always interesting (I nearly said fun but that’s the wrong descriptor) to come up with a parsable and plausible solution that turns out to be way off beam. I wondered about does = deer so can see your thinking. And – unless you knew both words already – can imagine your pleasure at discovering ITAL is food and CHITAL are deer!
BEARSKINS possibly my favourite today though I also admired FILMED, SPHINX, CONCURRED, EMBARK and EYELET earning my other ticks.
Thanks Tramp and PeterO
When the first two went in immediately, I thought I was in for an easy time, but from about half way, it turned into a struggle – though when the penny dropped on some that I had struggled with (SLANDER being a prime example), I could not for the life of me see why I had had problems. I assume others are not puzzled by the equation of ‘trump’ with ‘break wind’ (is this a post 2016 usage???). Thanks Tramp and PeterO – I needed your help to parse quite a few (e.g. EMBARK – I thought there was double duty in the ship there).
PostMark@8: Thanks. Although familiar with the deer, it certainly was a pleasure to find the food connection after having looked up ITAL. Finding a different solution, obscurity notwithstanding, is fun / interesting.
I thought this was Tramp on absolutely top form and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.
I had the opposite experience to PeterO, with the top right hand corner holding out the longest, apart from the lovely 5dn, which made me laugh out loud. (Neil) Walker is, of course, Tramp’s real name, which is why he chose that pseudonym.
I can’t list all my favourite clues – I had twelve ticks, for various reasons – so I’m happy, to avoid repetition, to go along with michelle and PostMark. I enjoyed 11ac LEPTA for the memory of the plate-smashing we saw at a Greek wedding we happened upon one holiday and 28ac SADNESS, for the reminder of my then teenage son’s obsession with Madness and 22ac HOPSCOTCH, because it reminded me of this episode of ‘Yes Minister’.
Many thanks to Tramp for a great start to the day and to peterO for the blog.
3D TAKEAWAYS does have wordplay, Peter, although at first I did not see it behind the cryptic definition: it is TAKES (‘bags’ as verb) carrying AWAY (‘out’, as in ‘I am out for the day’).
Thanks PeterO for your help with CANDIDATE and ANNIE and STOIC and thanks Tramp for a crossword that started easy and ended challenging. To my shame, one of the last was TRAMP!
Bizarrely I parsed 10a as fANNIEs after the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, famous in the 2nd World War. Why didn’t I think of nANNIEs?
Good crossword, with a range of clues from sub-Monday difficulty (e.g. NOTATE, TRAMP) to hard enough to be interesting, without getting close to giving up and revealing the answer. Like for Eileen@11, the NW quadrant took longest. My GK on popular music and musicals isn’t great, but I had no difficulty with ANNIE or MADNESS (my favourite).
TT@9, this meaning of Trump was common childish slang in the UK well before The Donald became a thing.
Thanks Tramp and PeterO.
I assume that TRUMP in the bodily function sense is a shortening of TRUMPET – is that right?
This is one where I needed to take a break and come back later: but apart from revealing MENOPAUSE I got there eventually.
It’s nice that you can get TRAMP without knowing about the setter’s real name (I didn’t) – but if you do, it’s a bit of icing on the cake, like the factual basis for the Suggs clue. I was also trying to shoehorn CHAPERONE into 27a, and failed to find any wordplay for TAKEAWAYS. Didn’t know LEPTA, and I’m not sure why the clue for EMBARK might be suspected of double-duty: it looks perfectly straightforward to me.
I liked the clues for SHEEPFOLD, HOPSCOTCH, NIBBLED, BEARSKINS, TEE UP.
Looked to be easy, but a very satisfying amount of headscratchers in the end.
Anyone else waste time looking up rivers in northern Spain?
Eileen, that episode contains some ‘cryptic’ references to the drinks being served in the communications room. One being an urgent call from Mr Walker. It was of course Johnny rather than Neil.
Thanks Tramp and PeterO.
Tough, but in my Goldilocks zone too. Thanks to PeterO for pointing out lack of double duty in EMBARK, which deals with my only query. Favourites were HOPSCOTCH and SPHINX, but there were loads of great clues. Many thanks to Tramp and PeterO.
Blah @18 – yes, that’s why I gave the link. I’ve just managed to find the video.
Urgent calls also from Mr Haig and Mr Smirnoff and, as it happens, ANNIE Hacker also appears.
… but managed to mess up the link
Thanks to Spooner´s catflap for the 3d explanation. It was bothering me when I saw Tramp´s plaintive cry!
Gosh, it’s been a good week for Guardian puzzles.
This one unfolded quite slowly but provided a lot of pleasure.
Definitely Goldilocks zone. Getting 1a and 4a straight off was a good start but the rest gave plenty to get my teeth into. I had to come back between other chores a number of times before the last hold outs finally fell into place. Liked CANDIDATE and FILMED. Glad to see from spooners CF@12 that 3D has hidden depths. My LOI was SHEEPFOlD. I’d been trying to shoehorn in some brand of pen but penny dropped finally. Thanks tramp for the puzzle and PeterO for the explanations.
Many thanks for the blog and the comments.
The clue for TAKEAWAYS does have wordplay: Bags (takes) to carry (contain) out (away). The use of “in” as a link word is contentious but I decided to go with it.
Neil
Sorry Eileen I misread your comment and thought just HOPSCOTCH had reminded you. Should have known better.
I also am v grateful to Spooner’sCF@12d – I knew I had to be missing something as the rest was so superb. Rohanm@1 (et al) I am so glad PostMark@8 responded and acknowledged your inspired alternative parsing for 21d. I knew there was some kind of antelope that could fit the bill but I (fortunately) did not know the hot food you served up. I spent too long on that before seeing the correct parsing. I know what it feels like to find an alternative (although I am often guilty of overworking) and I know what it feels like when that offering gets loftily dismissed or ignored. You must have been a bit disappointed when the crossers showed your word would not work – but it was a cracking bit of work from you. It was a cracking crossword too – and great blog PeterO, as ever. This forum provides a really valuable service and extends the pleasure of the detective work and wit.
Wot I said crossed with yours – Tramp@25. Many thanks for a fabulous Friday crossie.
Ditto
Hi Blah @26 – I’ve only just come back to this.
Mutual misunderstandings – I was slow to pick up your reference to 5dn. My apologies – I should have known better, too. 🙁
Neil @25: Thanks for dropping in. Lovely crossword although one eyebrow raised at slowly for ANDANTE.
Failed to spot the wordplay at TAKEAWAYS and now think it’s rather good.
Favorite was the slightly Paulesque BREAK WIND. A beauty.
Thanks for the blog PererO.
Incidentally, to = against as in put your ear to the wall.
I pondered on BREAK WIND when I first saw it, but didn’t grok the wordplay until later.
Surprised that hardly anyone has picked up on SADNESS today – possibly my favourite clue of the week.
I thought this was absolutely tremendous today, so many amusing misdirections, nearly all ultimately raising a smile of realisation. Particularly liked the little grouping in the SW corner of HOPSCOTCH, CHEATS and SADNESS. Though nothing to feel glum about this morning. Take a bow, Tramp, I say, first class…
After many an asti of late, red’s turn for wine today.
A jolly good puzzle, I thought. (As did many others here.) LEPTA was a DNK but with P and A as my crossers it was the only plausible configuration. Along with William@31, I wondered about the loose equation of ‘slowly’ with ANDANTE. I couldn’t parse the endless sex and malmsey, so thanks PeterO for that clarification. Oh and I so desperately wanted ‘C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ E’ at 27a to be ‘chaperone’=’escort’. But it was not to be.
SADNESS and HOPSCOTCH were both excellent. Trump meaning to break wind used to be a Northern thing. My surname includes the verb and raised no eyebrows till I moved North of Watford.
I like BEARSKINS too. Would a purist say guards is doing double duty? I hope not.
Petert @38 – if they did, they would be wrong.
TerriBlislow@27: Thank you for your kind words. I use the online version and the reveal button preempted any disappointment from having to contend with crossers. More than willing to yield to Occam’s Razor: simplest solution being the best. There is always so much offered on this site, just thought I’d add my two bits.
Another great puzzle that I struggled with a bit; my brain seems to be frazzled these days.
For some unaccountable reason, I got ARTICLE from part (=tear) with the page missing, and -icle being a tiny part, doh!
I particularly liked DISCARD and CANDIDATE.
Thanks to Tramp for the crossword and for popping in, and to PeterO for a good blog.
Splendid puzzle from Tramp, all the better (to my taste) for being athematic. He often produces crosswords which are dense with related words in clues and solutions, which are very clever and entertaining, but often necessitate convoluted charades and surfaces. No such problem here, with some ingenious constructions and misleadingly plausible surface readings (though “son’s” would read better than “Sun’s” in 19ac IMHO).
TAKEAWAYS, HOPSCOTCH and AROMA were the standouts for me.
Many thanks Neil and Peter
Found this challenging but very satisfying, thank you Trump and PeterO.
And special thanks to Eileen for the excerpt from Yes Minister, I had forgotten how funny and clever it was!
SinCam – the whole episode is there on the video. I’ve enjoyed watching it again and was really chuffed to have found it. (It still seems quite topical. 😉 )
I failed to spot the obvious NANNIES when parsing 10a and instead assumed it was FANNIES…..the nickname of the FANY (a female military paramedic unit of the World Wars). Don’t know what recess of the brain that emerged from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aid_Nursing_Yeomanry
Like Gladys@17, this took 2 sittings for me. Like a number of posters I had chaperone for 27ac until it become obvious it wasn’t. Lots of well deserved praise for Tramp and PeterO today. Also agree that the blog adds to the daily pleasure. Nice to have an online forum where discussion and disagreement takes place with courtesy.
Thanks Tramp and PeterO. An excellent puzzle to round off the week. Too many great clues to pick out a favourite, but BREAK WIND did make me laugh. SHEEPFOLD bamboozled me but the parsing became obvious after I hit reveal. 5d took an embarrassingly long time to drop.
rohanm @1 – I had a similar thought process to you on 21d, thought I was being very clever, and got as far as looking up a 6-letter deer to fit CH—-, but decided “there’s no such food as ITAL!” so didn’t bother entering it. And then the penny dropped so I ended up putting in the right answer anyway. The funny thing is, I was only last week working on a feature about a hotel in Saint Lucia with a restaurant named for its Rastafarian ethos… can’t believe I forgot that already.
Eileen @11 – I knew exactly which episode of YM you meant without clicking on the link, because it was on Radio 4Extra fairly recently (they work very well in audio-only form – you just have to imagine Bernard’s facial expressions). It’s brilliant. Think I’ll treat myself to watching the video later.
Thanks, widdersbel – the link to the video is @21, not 11.
Great finish to the week. Like you Boffo @33, I thought SADNESS was excellent, as is the band live.
Ta Tramp & PeterO
[ All is well Eileen 🙂
At risk of getting what you wish for, any setters reading the blog who fancy setting a yes minister themed offering…
I can only imagine the scope for hilarity – ‘CGSM’ and ’round objects’ spring to mind!
William@31 Surely in this instance BREAK WIND was trampy!
Boffo@33 I haven’t seen/heard grok used for many years. It reminded me that until the early 2000s “Stranger in a strange land” was banned from schools in some US states.
Finally on the subject of Trump, I did like Angela Barnes on Mock the week saying that president Trump’s state visit sounded like a euphemism for an unexpected attack of flatulence.
Last off topic comment I promise ]
Really great fun crossword! Not on the difficult side but with plenty of interest and humour.
So many great clues but faves were SADNESS, BREAK WIND, STOIC and BEARSKINS (my LOI).
Many thanks Tramp and thanks to PeterO for the blog
Loved all of this – great fun from start to finish, with too many crackers to mention.
I enjoyed the pair of ‘nurses’, ‘pen’ twice, ‘nose of wine’ with ‘bouquet’ and the perhaps subliminal instruction to DISCARD or TAKEAWAY for the pair of cricket-related (?) clues in CEASE & RICKETS with a ‘run out’ and ‘spin’ also in play. Admittedly, I’m in the habit of seizing on the faintest whiff of a theme where none exists but it keeps me happy!
Thanks Tramps & PeterO (for blog & help parsing embark).
Eileen @49 – fat fingers – I meant 21…
To justify this post with an on-topic(ish) comment:
The Prince Buster song from which the band took their name (and which they covered) rhymes MADNESS with GLADNESS rather than SADNESS, which got me thinking that there must be scope for a crossword clue in this rhyming opposite pair. Though it would be hard to improve on Tramp’s excellent offering today – which is even better with the biographical accuracy (for which extra detail, many thanks PeterO)
I can only echo Eileen@11-pretty much my thoughts
Thanks Tramp and Peter
Blah @51: re BREAK WIND I feel trampine is better.
…messed up the italics!
TassieTime@9 The use of “trump” as a verb goes back to the late 14th Century, I find when googling. It first meant “make a loud noise,” and then got its more specific meaning as above. “Trumpet” for the instrument came later. Here’s the link I found:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/ave-atque-trumpe/505259/
TerriBlislow@27 “Some kind of antelope.” Rohanm’s jorum (word you piece together from wordplay and that turns out to be real), chital, which I’d never heard of before this morning, is not an antelope but a deer. I learned from googling after an involved antelope discussion many puzzles ago that deer are cervids and antelope are bovids — same family as cows. Parallel evolution, I’d suppose, since they certainly look less like cows than like deer, but they’re in different families.
Thanks for Yes Minister, Eileen, I’ll enjoy the episode. I’ve seen a few of them many years ago and enjoyed them hugely.
[Thanks Eileen@21 for the YM link – plus ça change!
Blah@51: TV hacker here exposed mysteries in play? (3,8)]
[Wynsum@59 love it! But I’ll counter with “My sinister empire” insincerely, as Cummings used to say? (3,5,8)]
Thanks Tramp and PeterO. Great Stuff. And Blah@60, simply wonderful – well done.
[I love them both – just brilliant! (I think wynsum can (just about) get away with the decapitalisation. 😉 ]
Tramp – @25 – obviously knows more about these things than I do but I don’t understand what could be ‘contentious’ about “in” as a link word when it appears quite regularly in crosswords in two different constructions: “definition [is found] in wordplay” or “wordplay [is being used] in definition”.
However, I’m less certain that the same principle applies to “for”, which features in this puzzle in four consecutive clues. Three of them are fine but I don’t think strict Ximeneans would accept the “definition for wordplay” construction in 12a.
Otherwise, 25d notwithstanding – though that’s more a matter of personal taste than cryptic accuracy, this was an enjoyable solve. My favourite clue is 3d for the way its apparent simplicity at first reading conceals a more subtle point. I did actually spot this one unassisted but I have to wonder how many other clues of a similar type I’ve failed fully to appreciate down the years.
Thanks to both setter and blogger.
Brilliant puzzle – BEARSKIN and CANDIDATE were my favorites.
I just couldn’t parse STOIC though – didn’t know that sic translated to so in Latin!
Thanks Tramp and PeterO.
[Petert@38 Your first name also contains the same verbal meaning – in French, that is.
Strangely, I am (or was) from Watford and our term for the phenomenon was the rather tame “blow off” A maths master once demanded of me why I was l was laughing in class and I was in an agony of indecision as to what to say. If I were to say “Buggins” (not his real name) “blew off, Sir” it would make me sound irredeemably childish and primary schoolish and would be an affront to my sophisticated self-image. On the other hand, to say, “He farted” seemed to be akin in those days to telling the teacher to fuck off. So I just burbled about saying nothing at all while he became increasingly apoplectic at my blatant insolence and the whole trivial episode threatened to go nuclear.
Such were the good old days that Internet commentators seem so keen to return to!]
I too was thinking of FANNIES rather than NANNIES, although doubted that FANNIES was the plural of FANY. Thanks, PeterO, for parsing OVATE, which completely escaped me, and thanks, Tramp, for a most enjoyable crossword.