Guardian Cryptic 28,598 by Pasquale

69 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,598 by Pasquale”

1. Enjoyable puzzle. I solved the SE corner last.

   Favourites: HARLOTRY, RUFFLING, ARCHES, HABITUES.

   New words for me: SORB, STINKPOT, ANOA, SCRUMP. All were well clued.

   I could not parse 4d.

   Thanks, both.

2. Thanks, Pasquale and manehi!
   SCRUMP: I considered ‘off’ as ‘the right side’ just like the blogger did.
   BALL GAME and ACQUIRED are my picks.

3. Not convinced about 23. Off isn’t a term for the right side. It depends on whether the batter is left or right-handed.

4. Re @3. Meant to say off isn’t a cricketing term for right.

5. Did anyone else call to mind the famous Margot Asquith put down when considering HARLOTRY? (For any who are unfamiliar with the tale, when the actress Jean Harlow met the aristocratic wife of the former PM, she assumed first name terms rather sooner than dictated by the British etiquette of the day but mispronounced her host’s moniker as Margott. The acidic put down in response: “No, dear. The ‘t’ is silent, as in Harlow.”)

   I didn’t find this particularly accessible and it was a bit of a struggle to get over the line. But I did enjoy the aforementioned, along with UNDERCLASS, LOTH, ACQUIRED, GHOSTBUSTER and MORDRED receiving ticks. The lovely anagram and surface for DEPARTURES was COTD. My only real ‘meh’ moment was the rather loose definition for FORESTATION: ‘countryside activity’ seems a pretty broad brush description.

   Thanks Pasquale and manehi

6. Quite tough for a Tuesday but fairly clued as usual for the Don. Reasonable amount of GK required too. I thought the surface for DEPARTURES was inspired. Also ticks for LOTH, HARLOTRY, ARCHES and ANOA.

   Thanks both.

7. Thank you Manehi, and Pasquale. This was an enjoyable challenge. Very wordy is Pasquale but it all goes together.
   I thought the ‘off’ bits were just the 5 letters deleted after SCRUMP, which I’d never heard of. So that’s why cider is called Scrumpy? I learn so much from 15sq.
   Also didn’t know GAM. So is that where a ‘gammy leg’ comes from? Tautological?
   LARGOS didn’t know the music defintion. Took a stab and thought it was the ‘passage’ as in archipelego.

8. I’ve got to hand it to Pasquale. When he chucks in the really obscure words (SORB, ANOA, and to a lesser extent BALUSTER and LARGOS) the wordplay is impeccable enough to get you to the right answer. Only one quibble… just one LOL moment, so thanks to PostMark @5.

9. This seemed to take me far too long and felt a bit “treacly” at times. My experience of several “unfamiliars” was quite similar to michelle@1. I also was thinking of “passages” like Key LARGO(s) when it came to solving 9a, and similarly thought of SCRUMPy for cider when I solved 23a, paddymelon@7. The Jean Harlow story (which I think I have heard before but bears repeating and still raised a smile) was a fun contribution: much appreciated, PostMark@5. Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

10. Scrump sounds Boys Own-ish but, along with Sorb and anoa, rang no bells. Only a smatter of entries on first pass, then slow to fill, even with a bit of guess and check. Harlow’s nickname too was a dnk, tho the crossers nailed it. And couldn’t remember whether Mordred was historic, legendary or a Rowling creation, but hey ho, all good, ta to the Don and manehi.

11. I didn’t like this very much and agree with a commenter on the Grauniad site that it was a bit ‘Boys’ Ownish’ – it’s many a year since I came across ‘stinkpot’ for example.
    I had ‘ghosthunter’ at 11a on the basis that Hunter is a man’s forename usually met in America, but concede that ‘ghostbuster’ better fits the clue.

12. As a boy I was familiar with the activity of scrumping, but never used SCRUMP as a verb. I wouldn’t ever have thought of Jean Harlow, with or without a T.
    Thanks M and P.

13. Sorry grantinfreo@10, it was, of course your comment with which I agreed.

14. No prob GC @13 (I’m forever forgetting where I just saw or heard something).

15. I found this one tough too. I’m still not convinced by the ”off’ bits’ in the parsing of SCRUMP but can’t think of anything better. Couldn’t parse BALL GAME, being stuck on BALL for ‘dance’, and fell into the trap of ‘Serb’ for the unknown SORB. Cracked it lucky with ANOA.

    Favourites were HONOLULU and the reminder of the Jean HARLOW anecdote as mentioned by others.

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi

16. Found this tough and not much fun. Needed a fair bit of help from manehi – a definite learning experience. Annoyingly I knew I had seen a two-letter abbreviation for ambassador (HE) but couldn’t remember it until the crosses gave me BEHOLD.

    Liked HERCULES, MORDRED (made me smile) LOTH

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi

17. Toughest for some time, but a nice feeling to get to the finishing line. GHOSTBUSTER made me smile, and I agree that the ‘Exodus’ surface is great.

    I couldn’t parse the ‘tious’ removal in SCRUMP, so thanks manehi. On reflection I agree with Chris @3/4 that ‘off’ as a cricketing term depends on whether the batsman is left or right-handed. However Lexico (noun, sense 2) gives off = right side in the case of cars (in Britain) and horses.

    Apologies in advance to those who find phonetics yawn-inducing, but MORDRED isn’t really a homophone of ‘more dread’. The E in Mordred is an /ɪ/ sound, unlike the /ɛ/ in ‘dread’. (See (and hear) Lexico.)

    paddymelon @7: the much-maligned but often very helpful Wiktionary has this note on ‘gammy’:

    Origin obscure and uncertain. Possibly from the English dialectal (North Midlands) adjective game (“lame”), Welsh cam (“crooked”), or from Irish cam (“bent”), by way of Shelta. Compare also Old Occitan gambi (“lame, limping”), related to Old Occitan gamba (“leg”) (see also French jambe (“leg”), English gam (“leg”)).

    So yes, possibly the same root, but a different route 😉

    Thanks P & m

18. Thanks essexboy @17 – your definition of off makes more sense.

19. Was I alone in trying to fit UNDERMENSCH into 12 after the short-lived conservative MP Louise M?

20. Thanks Pasquale & manehi.
    Tough but fair and although new to me, ANOA & SORB went in easily enough.
    Presumably the word ‘scrumptious’ is derived from SCRUMP?

21. I needed a bit of help with this. LOTH was very good, sending me down all sorts of blind alleys before the penny dropped. I had BALL (dance) GAME (leg crushed) but couldn’t see where the curtailed came from. eb@17 Normally the second syllable of MORDRED would have the schwa, but if we imagine Mordred’s mother calling him back from evil-doing for his tea, she might give the “e” its full value.

22. Well that was obscure, especially for a Tuesday.

23. Had Slav instead of SORB for a while, as I somehow convinced myself that Lav might refer to the “throne”, as in regalia. Which meant I was trying to shoehorn in Balustra instead of BALUSTER. Didn’t know ANOA, do strictly a DNF. Guessed LARGOS then looked it up for confirmation. Found this difficult to unlock at times, trying out all kinds of possible variations before I finally arrived at STINKPOT…

24. …so strictly…@23

25. Tough but gettable. Not convinced by 25A GETS AT (both parts of the DD feel weak even with the “?”) but otherwise really good.

    Thank you Pasquale and Manehi

26. This was certainly a slog with the SE holding out longest. The obscure words already mentioned were gettable and just like PM @5, I thought of this Harlow story. Funny how certain things, like Torquay yesterday, seem to be embedded in most people’s locker worldwide. Couldn’t parse BALL GAME, as I also focused on ball/dance, so thanks to manehi for that. DEPARTURES (superb), LOTH, HONOLULU and WEAKNESS were favourites but like GC@11, I had GHOSTHUNTER, justified for the same reason. Agree with the Boys Own-ish feel but I remember going Scrumping in private orchards (or the orkys as we called them) as a young scallywag.

    Ta Pasquale & manehi

27. Just to add, I quite like that there are four REDs (2 linked pairs) centrally placed in the grid, not quite a raft and most likely devoid of significance!

28. Had to look up SORB and Lusatia to confirm they existed and were related: didn’t get the other unknown ANOA (I bet either or both will show up again within the month).
    I think GAM=leg comes from French jambe, whereas a gammy leg is from Gaelic cam=crooked. Either way I didn’t remember it. I also didn’t find it necessary to involve cricket terminology in parsing SCRUMP – “off” just means away, which is enough.

    This was hard work with Pasquale’s usual sprinkling of rare words and things like FORESTATION, which I’ve never met without a de- prefix (and the definition was pretty vague too). On the other hand I loved MORDRED, GHOSTBUSTER, HARLOTRY and the labouring individual.

29. Good stuff.
    I knew neither orb as a piece of regalia nor SORB, so dnf.
    I think ‘a bit’ is fine for ‘pretty’ but I don’t think the example in the blog is one where they are interchangeable. If it’s a bit cold, it’s on the mild side of cold, if it’s pretty cold, it’s a bit colder. A bit meaning pretty, or very, is another boys-ownish expression, rather outdated, eg Was Jean Harlow sexy? Just a bit
    She’s long dead, but as someone who was married off young by her father and died to much regret at 26 I think she could do with a break from the harlotry associations. Margot Asquith, unsupportive of women’s liberation, and who thought Neville Chamberlain the greatest Englishman that ever lived for signing the Munich agreement, was clearly a right four letter word.
    Thanks Pasquale, Manehi

30. gladys @28 – I agree, gam = leg is from Italian gamba, hence related to French jambe. However if we delve further into the mists of time, gamba is derived, through Latin, from Greek καμπή – which is thought to come from the Proto-Indo-European root *khem-, meaning to bend or curve. This is the same ultimate root of Celtic cam = crooked.

31. Very tough, with several new words for me. Only managed to fill in the grid after a lot of cheating. Needed the blog to understand 4 BALL GAME, as I took ‘dance’ to refer to ‘ball’ and was completely at sea with the rest of the clue, never having come across ‘gam’ = ‘leg’ before. (In fact as I type this the spellchecker is telling me ‘gam’ is wrong!), Still a little confused by 23 SCRUMP, because as noted above, ‘off’ in cricket is a relative term depending on whether the batsman is right or left handed.

    Most entertainment was provided by the comment by PostMark@ 5! Thanks to Pasquale and to Manehi for the blog.

32. James @29 my sympathies lie entirely with Jean Harlow. I suspect Lot’s wife gets an unnecessary bad press too. Who wouldn’t look back?

    That said, I enjoyed the puzzle, after a rather slow start. Doesn’t hurt to learn a few new words – ANOA, SORB. BEHOLD was my clue of the day.

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

33. I had less difficulty with this than some other posters; the vocabulary was almost all familiar (ANOA was the only word for which I was not a knower).

    As others have commented, Pasquale’s puzzles always use curiously dated expressions, so it helps to be somewhat advanced in years. And they always have some religious allusions – so 4ac was no write-in, as I was expecting ‘see’ to be a diocese…

    I read the ‘off’ in 23ac as simply an instruction to take off 5 letters, but the ‘offside’ (as opposed to ‘nearside’) explanation works.

    As James @29 says, it is unfortunate that Jean Harlow is now best remembered for Margot Asquith’s put-down (possibly apocryphal?) – but given the solution to the clue it must have been in Pasquale’s mind as well.

    Thanks to S&B

34. Couldn’t finish this, as some of the solutions are unfamiliar. I also put GHOSTHUNTER instead of GHOSTBUSTER – wondering if Hunter S Thompson was the American guy, or was just a comment on some Americans’ love for shooting stuff!

    Should have known it wouldn’t be something that loose with Pasquale…

35. It took a while to get into this, but all fairly clued, I thought.

    ‘Pretty’ much the same as Michelle @1 the SE was the last to fall, and I thought the dance in 4D was BALL, and then got fairly crushed. I was another to like the clue for DEPARTURES, also HONOLULU and SCRUMP.

    Thanks to PM @5; I hadn’t heard that before.

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi.

36. essexboy @30 – interesting stuff. Thanks. (from another long-time Essex boy, as it happens!)

37. [Ed @36 – I realised a few months ago that there are quite a lot of us – and some Essex girls too. We all got a bit hot under the collar when one setter clued EPPING as ‘London suburb’!]

38. A good challenge as usual from Pasquale, with the unfamiliar words (SORB, ANOA) being fairly clued and gettable.

    essexboy @17: I’ve no objection to MORDRED being pronounced Mordrid, but personally I’ve always pronounced it the same as “more dread” (with the stress on the “more”).

    (PM @5 and others: I suspect that the Margot Asquith quote is, like many good stories, apocryphal. Firstly, are we to believe that Jean Harlow would only ever have seen MA’s name written down and never heard it said? And would even Margot Asquith have made such a vicious remark just because someone was being a little overfamiliar?)

    Many thanks Pasquale and manehi.

39. [essexboy @passim: Thanks for your phonological and etymological contributions. I don’t think Wiktionary is generally ‘much maligned’. It was only polyglot Anna (Whom God Preserve) who was very dismissive about it. I’ve always found it very useful – and the entries are always well referenced]

40. The Margot Asquith story is probably apocryphal, but this little clip from the movie Dinner At Eight shows a similar but fictional putdown, with Jean Harlow playing the dumb blonde to perfection.

41. A bit of a work-out but all fair, even the obscurities. However, it wasn’t the most exciting or entertaining solve, just a matter of plodding on.

    I agree with James @29 re poor old much maligned Jean Harlow ( a large poster of whom adorned our student house way back).

    And Gervase @33 is right to say that it helps to be of a certain vintage for this kind of puzzle.

    By the way when I saw 2d “Exodus was one of these…” I put in Pentateuch without even thinking about parsing as I was sure I had seen that before. It didn’t help my cause and DEPARTURES was one of my last ones in.

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi

42. PostMark @5 – yes, the wonderful (and I hope not apocryphal) Margot/Harlow story sprang immediately to mind. Sadly these days it i rarely possible to recount it without a rather deadening raft of explanation.

43. Never heard of Lulu, and thought I remembered that the Blonde Bomber was Marilyn Monroe. I’ve also never heard of an anoa, and ended up revealing it, when I smote my brow and said “an oar!” It could have been a jorum if I’d worked that out.

    Some non-UK solvers might need a bit of explanation of scrumping. I don’t remember where I ran across it. It means (I think) stealing apples from somebody else’s orchard.

    I think “off” for “right” is a reference to riding, where “near” is left — the side you mount from.

    essexboy, I always enjoy your phonetical and philologic discursions. Keep ’em up.

    I don’t think “Hunter” is a common name for men in the US. The only one I’ve ever heard of is President Biden’s son.

    Thanks, Pasquale and manehi, for pleasure over breakfast.

44. My least favourite setter. I don’t care that SORB or ANOA are easily gettable – they require the hated Google. And if they were common words the clueing would make them Mondayish anyway. To me it smacks of a setter getting into a corner and being forced to bung in an obscurity to escape.

45. This one really hit all my 24acs. Not familiar with SORB, ANOA, BALUSTER or GAM as ‘leg’; never seen that spelling of LOTH before; STINKPOT and HABITUES definitely not a big enough part of my vocabulary to come easily to mind; haven’t come across MORDRED since perhaps school; had to look up ‘pollarded’ too.

    More experienced solvers will probably more easily pick up ‘Ur’ as an ancient city, but I missed that too. Is ‘surging’ a common anagram indicator? To me it suggested a reversal in a down clue.

    Good to learn, but a little bit too much learning for this to be fun today, sadly! Speaking only for myself of course. Thanks regardless to Pasquale and manehi.

46. Well that was tough, a bit uninspiring although fairly clued. It took me a while to get on the setter’s wavelength. Some humour might not have been amiss.

    My newly acquired secondhand Chambers Crossword Dictionary (from a trip to Hay-on-Wye, no less) helped me with some of the obscure words. So thanks to the person of this parish who recommended it recently.

47. [In my boyhood I lived quite close to scrumpy country, but never went scrumping. However, I did go “nobbing”.]

48. I thank Gervase @33 for a new term, as I was “not a knower” of ANOA too! I have to disagree with oofyprosser @44: I too have never heard of ANOA but didn’t Google it because it had to be right. (I let others do the Googling and then come here to read their results!) And I “knowed” SORB already. But today’s setter “getting into a corner and being forced to bung in an obscurity”? In my experience Pasquale doesn’t need to be *forced* to use an obscurity! Anyway, I can think of SPRY, SERB, ANNA and INCA for those lights, and I’m sure that Pasquale could have too.

49. Thanks for the blog and PM and EB for the entertainment , I thought GETS AT was very weak but the rest was fine , as Lord Jim mentioned , the obscure words were clue fairly. I did like STINKPOT and HONOLULU was very neat .
    I know very little about cricket but I do know a lot about parity. OFF=RIGHT cannot be true for both bowler and batter irrespective of their handedness.

50. Valentine @43 You live in New England and you have never heard of Hunter Renfroe of the Boston Red Sox? Shame on you! And then there is Hunter S Thompson …

51. [Thank you essexboy for your posts on the etymology of gam/gamba/jambe/cam, which, aided by a bout of insomnia, led me on a wiki trip of consonant shifts from Proto-Indo-European, some of which I knew about, and others I didn’t, eg Gaelic. And thanks to Pasquale for kicking this off 🙂 ]

52. Thanks Pasquale and manehi. Judging by comments so far, it feels like I’m in a minority of people who actually enjoyed this one – obscurities and all. Never heard of Lusatia but once Wikipedia confirmed it was aka Sorbia, the solution came readily enough. Having to look up the odd fact on Wikipedia isn’t too much of a chore.

    As well as poor maligned Jean Harlow, spare a thought for Mrs Lot, who was never even given the dignity of being named (not in the Bible, at least). And it seems a bit harsh to call her ‘bad’ when Lot himself was not exactly a saint – not to mention his daughters…

    Ark Lark @41 – PENTATEUCH was my first thought for 2d too – it even fitted with the crossing letters I had in at the time – but it clearly didn’t fit with the wordplay so I hesitated to write it in.

53. Another Pentateuch here. Not in form today and didn’t enjoy this much (my bad I’m sure). I came here to understand (a revealed) FORESTATION and had to get as far as gladys@28 before the penny dropped; that’s how bad I am today.

    [Ark Lark – you misunderstood my contribution yesterday. I (hope I) have explained myself at the end of that blog.]

54. roughtrade@19: It seems that you were indeed alone in your surmise – but a lovely bit of thinking.

55. Just got back in and had time to look through some earlier posts.

    On MORDRED/ ‘more dread’, I’m tickled by Petert @20’s idea of Mordred’s mum calling him in for tea, and emphatically giving full value to the ‘e’. I’m not totally persuaded: if, like the late Geoffrey Howe, you had a dog called Budget (a companion for Loofa?), I think you might shout ‘BUDGE-IT!’ rather than ‘BUD-JET!’ However I now appreciate (from Lord Jim @38) that not everyone says ‘Mord-rid’ like I do. There must be fifty ways to mangle Mordred. 😉

    Gervase @39: Thanks for your comments on Wiktionary – your experience chimes very much with mine. I thought I remembered one or two other people being critical, but maybe I had conflated Anna’s comment with other posts pointing out the deficiencies of Wikipedia, along the lines of “anyone can edit it” (true, of course, but as I think you suggested previously, the likelihood of someone tampering with etymologies is much less than, say, with accounts of JFK’s assassination or the current policies of the Chinese Communist Party!)

56. And thanks to Valentine @43 and pdm @51 for your friendly encouragement. You (or others) might come to regret it, because I now feel emboldened to tackle wynsum’s question @20 – is ‘scrumptious’ derived from SCRUMP?

    Surprisingly the answer, according to the aforementioned Wiktionary, is no. Scrumptious is “probably an alteration of sumptuous. First noted in 1836, and originally meant “picky, fastidious”.

    Scrump, on the other hand, is from a root meaning shrivel/shrink, and meant ‘small apple’ (or small anything, in fact). ‘Shrimp’ is from the same root – so, etymologically speaking, going scrumping is the same as going shrimping. Pint of shrimpy, anyone?

57. eb@passim to complete the circle, are Gambas (prawns) also derived from the the fact that they are curved?

58. I got stuck a few times with some new words and some parsings. Not convinced about the cricketing explanation but I suppose it’s the setters job to search for new ways of tricking us. Well done Pasquale and thanks also to manehi!

59. [Petert @57 – they’re temptingly close, aren’t they? Both in the appearance of the word and the curved/bent meaning. Alas I can’t find a confirmation. Gamba (= Spanish prawn) appears to come from Ancient Greek κάμμαρος, which is from Pre-Greek…

    “The Pre-Greek substrate (or Pre-Greek substratum) consists of the unknown pre-Indo-European language(s) spoken in prehistoric Greece before the coming of the Proto-Greek language in the Greek peninsula during the Bronze Age. It is possible that Greek acquired some thousand words and proper names from such a language or group of languages, because some of its vocabulary cannot be satisfactorily explained as deriving from Proto-Greek and a Proto-Indo-European reconstruction is almost impossible for such terms”

    Possible cognates French homard and German Hummer (both meaning lobster).]

60. [And there was I thinking they were gambas because they had so many legs…]

61. eb@59 Thanks so much for not scrimping on the etymological/phonetic efforts.

62. [@3 Chris: …and even if the batsman (oops, nowadays batter) is right handed, the off side is on the *left* from the bowler’s (and from the television watcher’s) point of view]

63. AndrewTyndall @62. Isn’t that what Roz said @49?

64. Isn’t all-out to do with strikes at work?

65. Like some, unlike others…I got there in the end…regrettably as a chore. I find the Friday toughie harder, but fairer so I persevere with my limited abilities and many hours later I have an enjoyable fill after a fair bit of sifting around outside, but not the DanWord stuff, may as well reveal.
    EB @almost regular/irregular posts along the way. With ‘old’ stuff is one not expected to pronounce as intended? We can all path/garage/advertisement to our local contentment, but what was the original intention and should that not always prevail? Mordr”I”d for me. There again, my first name is Arthur so I have some skin in this game. Not quite a Campbell/McDonald affair though, never met a Mordred.
    Thanks Pasquale and manehi.
    P.S. Can someone explain why some bloggers using nicknames are not worthy of capitalisation? They are certainly worthy in my estimation.
    Too lazy to research atm, might be obvious once I did.

66. [sheffield hatter @63: true that. my apologies]

67. Scatflap@50 You’re right, I’ve heard of Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter whatsisname of the Sox, though, is as unknown to me as all the other baseball players playing today, since I never follow sports. The only times in my life I have ever actually turned on a game was in 2004, when I watched the determining games of the Pennant and the World Series to watch the Sox finally shake the Curse of the Bambino. (For the uninformed, the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees early in the twentieth century and he became their great power hitter. They never won a World Series again — until 2004.) Unfortunately, I was
    hoping it would be a political omen, but Dubya (Bush the son) won the Presidency again.

    essexboy@56 You’ve added to my collection of “Latinoids,” latin-looking words that somebody, probably American, made up. Semi-serious (I think) words like “curvaceous” or playful like “discombobulate” or “absquatulate.” I haven’t ever written this list down, so its components come and go, but now “scrumptious” can come and go with the rest.
    scrumptious

68. Very late, because I couldn’t finish and was hoping 25ac would come to me this morning. It didn’t, and I forgive myself, because even when I saw it, it didn’t work for me. I also fell into the GHOSTHUNTER trap – GHOSTBUSTER is much better. And I didn’t parse BALLGAME, for the same reason as others, but with less excuse, as on reflection I have heard of GAM meaning leg. I think in Dickens.

    New to me – SORB & ANOA. Both well-clued, so I got them OK, and I like that Ye-e-e-es moment when you google and find you are right.

69. Moth@68 (In case you see this) That makes SORB and ANOA Jorums for you and probably a lot of us — a word you put together from the wordplay but have never seen before, that turns out to be a real word.

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