Guardian 28,558 / Paul

79 comments on “Guardian 28,558 / Paul”

1. I know it’s a nitpick, but I was held up for a long time by the enumeration on 19, 29, which should be (3,5,4). Thanks Paul and thanks Eileen for the help with parsing a lot of these!

2. The penny finally dropped for last one in, ETHELRED, after I’d spent much time trying to justify the clueing of TIED DOWN. And there had to be a Paulism in here somewhere, dutifully supplied by the witty EPEE. Hard slog in a bit of a fog at times, but got there in the end…

3. 25 is E + PEE (‘go’).

4. …E then Pee, for “Go”

5. 25dn EPEE is e=E and go=PEE. Which I rather liked. Typical Paul?

   Like Eileen, I was horrified at first but it eventually came out.

   Thanks Paul and Eileen.

6. Ego is split into E (the letter) + GO in the sense of peeing. Aargh!

7. Thanks Paul and Eileen
   I’m glad you mentioned Gwen John, who is now almost as famous as Augustus – if Paul was just thinking of the latter, it was rather sexist, as also was “filly” for LASS in13d.
   I’ve seen this sort of clue for ANAGRAM before, but this was a particularly pleasing one as the surface made sense. I do like an unexpected hidden, and PIANO TUNER was a great example.

8. I just parsed the long one as cut in TOILET(refinement) anagrammed to ELIOT so thanks for T(HEW)ASTE but not very respectful to the great Tom-great name for writing about cats
   I have never come across the word APPLE in Genesis-I wouldnt imagine them growing around the Euphrates or wherever
   But like LATTE and CHER we seem to be stuck with it,
   My first themer was Le Carre so the first thing I thought of was pseudonyms but the only other one was that used by Mary Anne Evans

   My favourite Genesis clue must be a good couple of years old-I think it was Eden Hazard relating to THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
   Thanks Eileen and Paul

9. Couldn’t parse HURRAY or LE CARRE, but lots of tricky fun. Spotted the Pauline EPEE. I particularly enjoyed APPLICANT and OUTDO. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

10. Thanks for all your comments. Just popping in to say if you were hoping to join a Zoom with John Halpern today – I did say there woiuld be one, so my apologies are due. Do come to the next one if you haven’t been before – they’re great fun, and we have a lovely, and growing, community going. Simply subscribe to johnhalpern.co.uk for details.

    Have a great day.

    John aka Paul

11. Oh, please, Paul and/or editor – the title of the poem by (toilets)* is THE WASTE LAND (3,5,4)

12. Agree with the comments about PIANO TUNER and thanks to those for parsing EPEE. With the reference to Mersey in 8,28, I thought JOHN may have been referring to Lennon, as it would have been his 81st birthday today. I’m not sure if he would want to be known as a pop star though. I was a big fan of the Rabbit series so I quite liked UPDIKE.

    Ta Paul and Eileen for the excellent blog.

13. Re 19, 29d. I thought maybe that the phrase “more than one 6” does not only refer to the answer to that clue but uses “john” in a slangy generic sense (as in “john doe”) ie The Wasteland is a work by “more than person” as it is a musical piece by Elton John as well as TS Eliot…?. It’s taken me so long to type this that probably half a dozen others have made the same point by now… It probably did not take me quite so long to complete the puzzle – which I found fun and thought provoking. Thanks Eileen for going over and above by standing in.

14. Well I got everything bar ANAGRAM. So I was a bit perplexed by your explanation for that clue Eileen, until I reached the explanation for THE WaSTELaND. I had parsed the word play and since the enumeration was 3,9 I decided it was actually referring to the song by ELton John and a book by another John and the Eliot idea was misdirection. Oh well.

15. Should add I thought 1,3d would have been more appropriately worded if the rough stuff was rolled up rather than rolled over.

16. 13d!

17. I didn’t enjoy this much. Several clues like 10, 13d and 16 seem to have no surface to speak of. 15 is obvious if you recognise the reference and unsatisfying if you don’t. APPLE I CAN’T and the indirect anagram T S Eliot clue were (to me) annoyingly unguessable rather than entertaining, and the gateway clue at the heart of it all is a pair of dull general knowledge clues. I’ve enjoyed many a Paul puzzle in the past though so musn’t grumble too much. At least some commenters had a better time with it than me.

18. Mixed bag for me today.

    The enumeration of The Waste Land is a shame, rather spoils a very inventive clue.

    Loved HURRAY, ARCHIMEDES and ANAGRAM but the whole experience of solving Paul’s crosswords is marred for me by the lack of a coherent surface in many of the clues.

    Hey-ho, there’s always tomorrow.

19. Thanks, everyone for the parsing of 25dn – I was held up by a couple of phone calls. I’m glad I didn’t (as I nearly did) comment that it was a squeaky-clean Paul puzzle today! I’ll amend the blog now.

    I’m mortified at missing the wrong enumeration for 19,29 in my haste, Thanks to Tom @1 for pointing it out.

20. @Copmus

    You must be thinking of Picaroon’s clue from Puzzle 26,177 – February 7th 2014 (doesn’t time fly?!)

    New ref took latitude, playing advantage for Eden Hazard (4,2,9)

21. No need for you to feel mortified, Eileen – it was the setter and editor that got the enumeration of 19, 29 wrong.

22. But I should have spotted it, Mitz. 🙁

23. 19/29 was very nearly my last in, and having worked out the ANAGRAM of more than one JOHN (given that this is Paul, what other synonym of JOHN could it possibly be?) I bunged in THE WASTELAND from its crossers without sorting out the other parsing, so thanks for that, Eileen, and for CAESAR which escaped me completely.

    I liked the cast of Cats, and the PIANO TUNER, but found this pretty difficult, with a lot of GK required for all the Johns, and ETHELRED and ARCHIMEDES, both of whom I enjoyed. And while IT is indeed a BOOK TITLE, it’s one out of a field of millions of possibilities and not a particularly famous one either (I’m not moaning because I didn’t get it: I did). APPL(E)ICANT doesn’t work for me either.

24. It was a nice idea, although I didn’t like the fact that the gateway clue was just a boy’s name plus GK.

    Thanks to Eileen for sorting out CAESAR and THE WASTE LAND. Although THE WASTELAND is an Elton John song, the clue is pointing towards the TS Eliot poem, I assume. I did get the E PEE though.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

25. I have to go out now until late afternoon. I’ll deal with any more queries / quibbles then.

26. OED is in Chambers, but COD isn’t, which made me doubt that answer for a while. And CAESAR is dodgy.

27. My father always said I had to take the rough with the smooth, so, in that spirit, this was great. Thanks to Paul for the entertainment and to Eileen and the various parsers of EPEE for explaining the bits I didn’t get.

28. Hmmm. Some clever constructions and a nice touch of Pauline humour with EPEE, but many of the surfaces leave much to be desired. I didn’t parse CAESAR and THE WASTE LAND was my LOI from the crossers – I didn’t bother to parse it.

    ARCHIMEDES was a write-in and it was disappointing that the clue for ETHELRED, which was well constructed, referred to the wrong meaning of ‘unready’. [It was John who supposedly lost his crown jewels in the Wash. He shouldn’t have taken them to the laundrette].

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

29. Thanks Eileen for confirming that there are maxi coats as well as skirts, I am insufficiently cultured to have been bothered by the mis-enumeration of The Waste Land but appreciate the full story which makes it otherwise a great clue I think. EARLY BATH (lovely surface) and ARCHIMEDES eased me into this with a smile, other highlights noted above, and I enjoyed working out plenty of tricky parsing, thanks Paul.

30. Was helped by the theme for a few solutions.

    I find that I am increasingly not fond of puzzles with so many interconnected clues, where to solve one we must look at another clue, such as ‘Cut in refinement, get work by 14 of more than one 6? (3,9)’. And many of the surfaces are not pleasant to read. For that reason, enjoyability level was low.

    I liked: 22d.

    New: EARLY BATH, BOOTLE TOWN (8/24).

    I did not parse: 19d; 19/29; 20ac; 15d.

    Thanks, both.

31. Gervase@28 – I do recall the Ethelred discussion but surely one so poorly counselled would be ill-prepared as a result – that would be my excuse anyway. (PS very good re John and thanks for your Nice note the other day.)
    Michelle@30 I wasn’t so much helped by the theme as reliant on it for UPDIKE and LE CARRE, and STEINBECK may otherwise have taken all day, although the satisfaction of completion seems to have erased any grumbling en route!

32. I had the opposite experience to a number of others, in that I thought PIANO TUNER, far from being well hidden was blatantly obvious, but I had forgotten that TOILETS was an anagram of TS Eliot. Is ‘14 of more than one 6‘ the most indirect anagram of all time?

    A DNF for me, as I spell HOORAY with double-O rather than double-R, so had entered HURRAH with a shrug. (I see that Chambers has all three spellings.)

    Nice to see Gwen John and her brother getting a mention so soon after their recent appearance. A bit of a deja vu moment, as JOHN is at 6d in both crosswords, which use identical grids.

    Thanks to Paul, and megathanks to Eileen for doing the overtime.

33. Clearly the pop star in 6d is actually Jilted John

34. Clever cats!
    At first, I thought Elton’s song could help explain the enumeration at 19, 29 but the clue clearly points to TS Eliot.
    And I was hoping to find Biggles, but more than happy to see Shed and Gr..ham 🙂
    Thanks to Paul & Eileen

35. Thanks Eileen and Paul. I can’t lie, I found this incredibly tough and due to lack of time I threw in the towel with a bit over half the grid filled in. As others have noted, there is more than one candidate for a pop star called John, which made me wonder if I was missing some clever wordplay there and in fact John was not the correct answer after all, but then the other 6s started falling in to place.

    Like Gazzh, I was entirely untroubled by the incorrect enumeration of The Waste Land. As sh @32 says, “the most indirect anagram of all time” – but since TOILETS/TS ELIOT is so well-known in crosswordland, and John is commonly used as a synonym for toilet, the clue is practically a giveaway once you’ve got 14 and 6, so the enumeration shouldn’t really be an issue (would any other of his works fit that space?).

36. I’m feeling ever so pleased that I actually managed to complete a Paul puzzle – a fairly rare event.
    A small point, Eileen, EARLY BATH is not exclusive to football. Indeed, if memory serves me right, it was popularised (if not invented) by the inimitable Eddie Waring who commentated on Rugby League in days of yore.

37. @MItz-thanks-tempus fugit -innit.

38. Thanks to Paul and Eileen

    15dn went in straight away – and then I ground to a halt before slowly making headway via 6dn. I did wonder if Paul would clue himself.
    I agree with others: I would much rather own a Gwen John painting than one by her brother.
    Copmus @ 8 – indeed, Genesis only refers to fruit. A contestant on “Brain of Britain” was recently caught out by that one.
    I knew that Ethelred the Unready was ill advised rather than ill-prepared, but having looked it up (Wiki, so it may be a bit dodgy) apparently Ethelred means well advised, so it is the ill advised well advised…

39. Failed badly on this. Could not get on Paul’s wavelength at all. Normally I thoroughly enjoy his work but this one was not for me. If I have a quibble it’s that a Reg D is often referred to as Elton but never by his (stage) surname, John.

40. Well done to everyone who managed to get through this. I can’t say I’m one of Paul’s biggest fans, especially because of his (clever to some, irritating to me) habit of linking clues. I had no idea about 6A today and, as a result, no chance with the rest of the puzzle. I don’t complain about the fairness of the tactic, but this is a bit like the opening batter in a cricket match getting a first-ball duck. Fair play to the bowler, but the batter’s attention tends quickly towards tea rather than the rest of the innings. And it is to tea that I now turn with several of Paul’s doubtless clever clues unread.

41. Marienkaefer @38: yes, it’s an awful Anglo-Saxon pun.

42. [SISAL makes me remember the sweaty summer my parents and I, age 10 or so, spent up in our attic nailing sisal insulation to the rafters. I think to help the house stay cool, though in retrospect I can’t see how. The trade name of the stuff was Sisalation.]

    Michelle@30 I have fond memories of interconnected clues. In the 80’s, when I lived in San Francisco, I used to buy the Guardian weekly at my local second-hand book shop, Charing Cross Road. (Named after the book 84 Charing Cross Road, which I heartily recommend.) The puzzles always were by Araucaria of blessed memory, and they often had intricate webs of connected clues, which I greatly enjoyed. When I re-encountered Araucaria on line in the 90’s he seemed to be using far fewer clue-webs, and I missed them.

    Thanks to Paul for an enjoyable puzzle and to Eileen for stepping in so excellently.

43. Deezza @36: your memory is spot on. Eddie Waring was indeed the inventor of the EARLY BATH’. Rugby league is not my game and Waring was not my favourite broadcasting voice – in fact, I often wondered how he ever got into the BBC: I suppose it was his encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport rather than his totally unDimblebylike delivery – but I liked the expression and still use it today when the occasion arises in the other rugby code.

44. I agree that this was a mixed bag of some old favourites (crossword cliches?) and some fun and taxing clueing. Took me a while to get 6d, and where there’s a theme I always go for the theme word first, so poor tactics on my part today.

    Favourites were ETHELRED and PIANO TUNER, the latter not for its difficulty but for the smooth surface into which it’s thrown.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

45. Any chance someone could parse 14 across for me? Cast of Cats = Anagram? Obvious? How so? I remain mystified.

46. Old Bloke @45
    Cast and cats are anagrams of each other, say means they are examples of the solution

47. I was another who couldn’t get the parsing of 23d. Thank you Eileen for reassuring me that it’s not just me.
    A brilliant Paulism in 25d, and I am entirely with muffin @7 in liking PIANO TUNER – it takes a very skilful compiler to conceal a “hidden” that well.
    I liked ETHELRED as well, and frankly the fact that he was unraed, i.e. ill-advised, rather than unready, is a matter for historians rather than people engaging in wordplay. Cf the discussion about pressure=force a day or two ago. (Beside which, as Gazzh @31 points out, if he was ill-advised he would be ill-prepared, i.e. unready, anyway).
    19, 29 in which you have firstly to solve 14a to get ANAGRAM and then realise that your fodder is not JOHNS but TOILETS, pushes the libertarian (in the sense of positively thumbing the nose to Ximenes) envelope a long way. But as Eileen observes, “everybody knows” that “T S Eliot is an anagram of Toilets”. Indeed, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Araucaria or Paul himself perpetrated a long clue split across several lights with the enumeration 1, 1, 5, 2, 2, 7, 2, 7.

48. BigNorm@43: The other memorable Waring-ism, as I recall, was the lofted kick, sometimes called a Garryowen, which Waring christened an OOP AND OONDER.
    I have a distinct suspicion that the reason why Auntie BBC tolerated Eddie Waring commentating on Rugby League was that it reinforced the message that League was played by people who probably kept coal in the bath, while the proper Game for Hooligans was played by nice young men who had probably been to decent schools (and so were eligible to play for clubs like Old Fartonians) and probably lived south of Watford.
    Not that I am in the least bitter about having been made to play it for six or seven years, you understand…

49. Thursday’s puzzle is an afternoon treat in our house, especially so today as we parsed the theme clues early on. IMHO the forbidden fruit in Genesis was much more likely to be a fig, however, the Apple as we know is often used in western european artworks as a symbol of desire and sensuality.
    Several pesky clues and links, with PIANO TUNER as my COTD, my longest hidden clue to date.
    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

50. NeilH@48
    Hulking Stan Rovers

51. Well I liked the puzzle a lot, but at the time of solving THE WASTELAND last night I said to myself that not everyone is going to like it.

    Regarding “apple”, as I understand it when the Bible was first translated into English the word meant fruit in general. So the story may be preposterous, but is technically correct in that aspect.

52. If you are ever on Margate Station you will find in the toilets a tiled mural about the anagram referred to; at the bottom (where else?) it has “My name is only an anagram of toilets” – TS Eliot.

53. Thanks for standing in for me, Eileen. I solved this early today (rather slowly until I twigged the theme from GRISHAM) then had a spectacular day bagging the two Munros of Beinn Alligin in perfect conditions (which are pretty rare up here).

54. [When I commented @11 this morning, I had one shoe on and one shoe off ready to go out to distant parts on pressing business and had been fretting about the mis-numeration of Eliot’s poem since about 4.00 a.m. when I had addressed myself insomniacally to the puzzle. Sorry in retrospect to Tom @1 for not having recognised, in my haste, that his comment made the same point.]

55. Hello Muffin! @ 46 Ah, I get it now. Thank you. Always like your comments. Pip pip.

56. I was out for longer than I expected today, so just catching up.

    Thanks for all the comments, and to muffin for answering Old Bloke’s query. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, Old Bloke. Was that your first comment? If so, welcome – my apologies if not – hope to hear more from you.

    Good to hear from you, Andrew @53 – well done, you! Glad you’re having such a great time.

57. Thanks Old Bloke!

58. Thanks, Paul, and also Eileen for explaining things I didn’t get. I didn’t know the spelling of HURRAY, only HURRAH and HOORAY. I put in an unparsed KAISER at 4 down – I would never have got the correct answer in a month of Sundays. Unlike most people here, I’d never come across the TOILETS/T S ELIOT anagram, despite having been forced to read THE WASTE LAND many years ago for A-level English and finding it totally underwhelming.

59. Elenem @ 52

    So sorry I missed commenting on your post – that’s lovely! Surprised I haven’t heard of it before.

60. Wow – so hard! GRISHAM was my first one in but that helped me not at all. I gave up with only about a quarter of the puzzle filled in.

61. Had a ridiculously early start and late finish today so having had 20 minutes with coffee about 15 hours ago had barely finished reading the clues and had filled in a few. I returned this evening only to find my subconscious had been even more industrious than me, (and far more successful 🙁 ) and this flowed beautifully for a very pleasant evening solve with a glass of wine.

    I did think as I solved this will have split the audience as it seems to have done but I enjoyed it immensely, more so I think because of the time lag. It really has all been said above, the ultimate in indirect anagrams, the apple controversy, the lack of definition on themed clues, the incorrect enumeration.

    Many thanks Paul for the mental workout and Eileen for the customary exemplar blog.

62. Not getting 6d rendered any progress for this Limited solver pretty much a non starter.
    Good to go through the hints.

63. This was tough but I found it rewarding and fun. I ran out of time and didn’t get STEERAGE or ANAGRAM (oh the shame!!), so failed to parse THE WASTE LAND. Wordplay got me home though.
    Couple of other points:
    10a: I think OUT/OFF are synonymous when used to describe measurements and deviations from specifications. E.g., the spec was out/off by 0.35%.
    3d: “unerringly” is in there only for the surface, which is a bit of a faux pas in a hidden word clue. But I still liked how well it was hidden. Paul seems to have received some stick for his surfaces here, but they’re generally OK to my mind.

    Thanks, Eileen and Paul.
    Curious to know if the editor or the setter was at fault for the 19,29 enumeration botch.

64. Hi phitonelly @63

    I’m with you on your take on 10ac (thanks for that – the only answer to my quibble) but not re UNERringly, which is part of the wordplay. Am I misunderstanding you?

    Can’t agree with you about the surfaces, though. 😉

65. Oops, you’re right about the PIANO TUNER, Eileen. My brain must be fried! Apologies, Paul.

66. Phitonelly @63. I agree about OUT/oFF that is what I thought. But unerringly is a genuine part giving the UNER of TUNER.
    I am relieved to find someone else who failed on ANAGRAM I am still traumatised and it’s the next day here!!

67. Sorry we crossed on UNER.

68. I forgot to reveal how I managed to parse CAESAR, which I believe some of you may enjoy.

    Recently my 13 year old niece proudly told me a joke, which I can only describe as a Dad or Christmas cracker joke.

    What do you call a hen staring at a lettuce?

    Chicken sees a salad!

69. @68 – ha ha, very good.

    My parsing of 3D is somewhat how prosaic, and different from Eileen’s.

    Goes out with = “sees her”
    state “sees her” = Caesar = a dictator.

    In other words, I saw “a” as part of the definition, and you need to be a heterosexual male, or a gay woman, for the clue to work.

70. Thanks, Blah – I can go to bed happy now. 😉

71. I’m another “sees her”

72. A bit of a curate’s for me. Fluked 6 as Barry John was a Welsh artist, but don’t particularly like these “all clues lead from here” styles. Too hung up on Aethelred/Aethalstan to remember the other spelling and can’t recall the loss of his crown in the sea. Anagram an ‘in joke’, not at that level yet. Managed most but the NE killed it for me. OUTDO, BOOK (got the title), STEERAGE and STEINBECK.
    I have to say that Monday’s was comfortably the best cryptic crossword I’ve ever finished and I really enjoyed it. Tuesday’s was excellent too. Wednesday was mostly good…. today is where I’m getting despondent.
    Must say that I have really enjoyed Everyman recently, within one or two clues of a finish.
    Thank you as always Eileen, the other bloggers too. Paul for today, Brendan, Matilda and Nutmeg previously.

73. Late as usual, but I’m surprised that no one has jibbed at the description of Bootle as ‘a port on the Mersey’. That’s a bit like describing Bermondsey as a port on the Thames. The port is Liverpool.

    And much envy of Andrew @53 – Beinn Alligin is a spectacular mountain, with terrific sea views. When I bagged it many years ago (in less than perfect conditions) it only counted as one Munro. Grade inflation gets everywhere!

74. g larsen @73 – I did wonder briefly about the Bootle thing. The docks in Bootle are certainly part of the “Port of Liverpool”, but Bootle itself is part of the metropolitan borough of Sefton, NOT Liverpool. I don’t know whether Bootle was historically regarded as a port in its own right. Maybe the clue would have been more accurate to call it “town on the Mersey”. It’s certainly questionable enough that I spent ages lost down a WIDNES/RUNCORN blind alley before the penny dropped.

    As an aside, my wife’s great aunt was Mayor of Bootle, and she would be turning in her grave at it being called part of Liverpool!

75. Didn’t get 4d – I guessed at Kaiser – but even with the explanation I cant feel I should have

76. Don’t suppose anyone will read this but I was too busy to look at it till today. As usual iI admitted much and was infuriated by a lot (e.g. 1 across which just doesn’t say what means).
    I think it’s time Paul got over his toilet training. Whoever first pointed out the Thomas Stearns non-anagram must turn in his/her grave. Would that a few might read “The Wasteland”

77. Didn’t parse CAESAR and don’t see tide=sea water. Otherwise good.
    Thanks both

78. Looked through the comments and at last found the justified dissent on BOOTLE. Certainly not regarded as a port these days – it bearly touches the Mersey

79. It would never occur to me that “Caesar” and “sees a” were homophones. If you don’t live in the urban bottom of the country this kind of clue gets tedious.

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