Guardian 28,771 / Picaroon

98 comments on “Guardian 28,771 / Picaroon”

1. Eileen it’s RUNS with the U (you heard) upped. Delightful from start to finish. My favourite was DAY LEWIS for its Irish simplicity and the surfaces of BREAK THE ICE, CHAMBER POT and SUPPLEMENT made me smile. SE held out longest with YTTRIUM and ATRIUM last in. Thought there might be a London thing with HACKNEY(ED) and SOHO going in early. Clever stuff.

   Ta Picaroon & Eileen

2. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
   6d is RUNS with the U moved up.
   Great fun, and quite quick, though I didn’t parse PROHIBIT. Favourites SUPPLEMENT and DAY LEWIS.
   LOI RED WINES, as I was obsessed with the ports being the LHS of shipd, where the red light are displayed.

3. What a cracker Mr Picaroon!! Stared at this for about 15 mins before getting a single clue but then, with a great deal of patience, it came together. Couldn’t parse 6dn so thanks AlanC. Too many good ones to mention. Thanks to Eileen for the blog.

4. Many thanks, Alan and muffin – I knew it wouldn’t take long. 😉

5. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen. Lots of great clues, my favourites being BREAK THE ICE, ATRIUM and APOTHEOSIS. LOI was ORAL – a guess, so thanks to Eileen for the parsing. Also didn’t pass RUNS, so thanks to AlanC and muffin. And thanks to Picaroon for the enjoyment.

6. parse not pass. oh dear.

7. The clue for RATTLER could have simpler as “rattle” is also used for someone who talks too much (by Jane Austen, at least!).

8. Eileen, I think Shadowlands was about C S Lewis, not C Day-Lewis.

9. That was fun – I grinned at the surface of PUDGY and loved too many clues to mention (most of which have been discussed already). SOHO initially threw me as although it’s part of the London Borough of Westminster, the area of Westminster (around the Houses of Parliament) is some distance away. To walk between the two you’d have to traverse Victoria and Piccadilly or travel several stops on the Tube.

   Eileen – for 17D isn’t it PRO + H + I + BIT – you’ve got A for one.

10. Lord Jim @8 – oh dear: egg all over my face. 🙂 I’m a great admirer of both of them!

11. Superb from start to finish! A real tour de force.

    So many favourites esp SUPPLEMENT, RECKON and PICNICKER.

    Thanks muchly Picaroon and Eileen

12. Damn. Not CHESSLER, then …

13. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen. Very enjoyable crossword.
    My favourite was PICNICKER, for the hundred nicker. And for some reason I kept thinking chimney pot, instead of CHAMBER POT, until the penny dropped. That would be a strange place to go.

14. Thanks, Shanne @9 – fixed now.

15. The supple men get the GoD prize, but yeah, generally very smooth throughout. Bit surprised that Theban simply became ban the, and being classics-deficient I’m afraid the Sophocles connection went over my head. Ditto Del+phi, knew about the oracle but that’s about it. As for Whistler (and thinking about the Greeks) wasn’t there something about him having a thing for his mum? Much enjoyed, ta Pickers and Eileen.

16. Bit of a brain fog this morning and I found this hard work. Not unenjoyable hard work; just difficult to solve. Entirely my own solving ability as it’s all typically well done. I did eventually seek a bit of help to get PICNICKER – I was thrown by the plural/singular – but that did suddenly open up the areas of the top half that had been eluding me. Same surprise as Shanne with SOHO though, yes, resolved by the Westminster Borough: good to see that one of those two locations has managed to clean itself up and improve its reputation …

    As others have said, too many good ones to separate the wheat from the wheat.

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

17. p rattler

18. Great to see YTTRIUM in a crossie. I like APOTHEOSIS too. Slow to start but it came together well in the end. Thanks, Picaroon and Eileen.

19. Eileen @10: no egg at all – it’s their fault for having such similar names 🙂

    A very pleasant puzzle, lots of great clues with clever surfaces. I particularly liked the “Theban plays”, the “supple men”, and the clue-as-definition for PUDGY (I’m playing safe by not saying &lit).

    Many thanks both.

20. I decided to play safe, too, Lord Jim – and at 4dn.

21. With this weather it’s no wonder that PICNICKER was the last one in. My favourite C. Day-Lewis poem is so often apt these days. A great puzzle and blog, thanks.

22. Excellent for the most part, though being from County Antrim myself I thought it’s description as a “district” a bit off.

23. Such a great romp – I loved it all. My favourite was 18a HARUM-SCARUM (what a delightful adjective! – does anyone else recall the Elvis film?). But ticks as well for 1a SCRUBBY, 10a HACKNEYED, 3d BAN THE BOMB, 16d WHISTLER, 19d DELPHI* and a couple of others mentioned already on this blog. Only listing them to show my enthusiasm for this puzzle, as I know one’s personal favourites aren’t important to anyone else, but if I had a “little gems” list like Eileen has said she keeps, several of these would be added.
    Many thanks to Picaroon for a terrific puzzle and to Eileen for such an interesting and positive blog, including the way she teased out a couple of solutions to clues I hadn’t fully parsed.
    [*And I agree with Eileen, I will never forget my own awe-inspiring visit to Delphi over forty years ago, although I discovered that I just happened to be there on the day that the museum was closed, so I didn’t ever get to see the Charioteer which I had travelled halfway around the world to see.]

24. Highly enjoyable puzzle.

    My favourites (though comparisons are odious with so many good ones) were DELI, BREAK THE ICE, DAY-LEWIS and PICNICKERS for their constructions and/or cryptic defs.

    As a chemist, I was pleased to see YTTRIUM. ‘Rare’ is commonly used to describe the element, though it is not strictly a ‘rare earth’ (ie lanthanide) and in fact is more abundant than tin and lead. It is one of the four elements named after the Swedish village of Ytterby (the others being ytterbium, terbium and erbium).

    Thanks to the Pirate and Eileen

25. PS aren’t the Day-Lewises are a talented pere-fils …
    PPS while generally unfussed about brand names, sugary drink ones do touch my grrr spot, along with other addiction ads like tobacco, booze and gambling. Ban ’em all (the ads that is).

26. [Crossed with several posts as I took too many words to say what I wanted to say – my usual problem. But I had to smile at your Oedipus/Whistler reference @15, grantinfreo – very clever connection there. BTW, how good is Western Australia, given our recent federal election result?]

27. Had to come here for a few bits of parsing, particularly HARUM-SCARUM, as I was thoroughly thrown off by the presence of the letters of MURMUR ‘about’ in there. Seems so obvious now you’ve explained it…

    Thanks Eileen and Picaroon!

28. [and gif@25, as far as I am concerened, the only ads worse than the pre-election propaganda are the gambling ads on TV; the part that grates most with me being the “Gamble responsibly” bit at the end, when they actually want the mug punters to do just the oppposite.]

29. Didn’t know that meaning of APOTHEOSIS, or the Parnassus/DELPHI connection, but that didn’t spoil an excellent Picaroon. Favourites DELI, BREAK THE ICE, SUPPLEMENT, PICNICKER (in which I am always tempted to put a middle K), CHAMBER POT, PUDGY. I can’t believe how long I spent trying to find an artist called CHESSLER.

30. Many thanks..
    Failed in THE SW corner due to ignorance of the element in 28a and the poet stuff in 19d.
    Enjoyable but with many unparsed (18a, 21a, 26a, 28a, 5d, 6d, 19d, 24d). One day I will parse everything!
    Thanks both.

31. [Hi JinA, yep the new parliament sure is a real sunbeam in a troubled world. And yep too re gambling ads, especially how they make them look all so so matey and fun. My sister in London says the UK ones are just as bad]

32. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought CHESSLER for 16d.

    When I started off reading 1a, I thought MORALLY (MO = ‘second’ + ALLY = ‘mate’ around R = ‘Republican’) but how was that ‘like Bush’ so, thankfully, left it until I had some crossers.

33. Hovis @32 I was initially a CHESSSLER and MORALLY man too

34. A total delight, thank you Picaroon & Eileen.
    Hard to pick a favourite but perhaps the two central across clues, BREAK THE ICE and HARUM SCARUM, the latter confusingly containing a murmur.
    I also enjoyed finding paired solutions or part-solutions: YAHOO & HARUM-SCARUM, CHAMBER & ATRIUM, SOHO & HACKNEY, (APOTHEOSIS & DELPHI?)

35. grantinfreo @31 – A talented ex-footballer and gambler-holic, Paul Merson, recently did a program on BBC1 about the life of an gambler-holic. He reckons to have spent over £8 million on the habit.
    It was a disturbing insight into the way that the gambling companies work.

36. HIYD @35: yes a very sobering watch. Keith Gillespie also lost £7.2 million. Footballers with way too much dosh and time perhaps.

37. Started with Scrubby instead of SHRUBBY until I realised the error of my ways when I couldn’t make Cubby = mate or friend.
    I realise from the blog that my Podgy is really PUDGY so thanks Eileen. I just though that peas in a POD are sweet and there are sweet things called Mars Pods. Not sure how common they are in the UK. PUD makes a lot more sense.
    I liked BREAK THE ICE just because I like those sort of reverse cryptics. Favourite has to be URNS which took me a while before the penny dropped and I love shifting letter wordplays.
    JinA @26 re Fed Election. Yes. Good to have the adults in charge again.

38. Thank you Eileen, what a treat indeed though the only locations familiar to me were the earthier London ones! First in was 14A which got a double tick straight off and they kept on coming though I had to go to the online dictionary to confirm the meaning of Apotheosis, having not been sure that Thesis could be the proposition as well as the whole argument/dissertation, and google to check where Delphi was. muffin@7 agreed, it took me longer to think of the missing P than to solve in the first place. Can’t choose between 14A and DELI as the highlight, thanks Picaroon.

39. Ridiculously good.

40. I agree with copmus!

    Like Mark @16 “I was thrown by the plural/singular” NICKER, so 5d was my last one in, and unparsed. Most of the rest I found myself on Picaroon’s wavelength, which is a pleasant place to be. And like Gervase @24 I welcomed YTTRIUM as an old friend. [I once set a quiz with a round on the origins of the names of elements, which the quizzers found much too difficult to enjoy, to the extent that the round was referred to as the Swedish Quarries for many years afterwards.]

    Brendan used the SUPPLE MEN trick in 28,626 last December, but he went with ‘loose-limbed fellows’ rather than yoga.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

41. Thx to Picaroon for a tricky, challenging and enjoyable workout. Lots of favourites particularly BREAKTHEICE, PICNICKER, SUPPLEMENT and PUDGY.
    Thx also to Eileen for the blog.

42. Nice puzzle – I particularly like RED WINES at 8D – but a DNF for me as I had a puzzling SCRUBBY at 1A, not being sure that I’d ever heard ‘cubby’ as ‘mate’, and a made-up Chessler, who may have been an American drawer but was never as famous as WHISTLER, at 16D. Points fairly and squarely to Picaroon, therefore. Thanks to our blogger for all her work and for letting me know of my clangers.

43. Another masterful puzzle from Picaroon, definitely one of my favourite setters.

    I liked HACKNEYED because of the ‘stock’ definition, DELI for the ‘return fare’, SUPPLEMENT for those yoga chaps, and CHAMBER POT for ‘where one goes at night.’ I failed to see the C NICKER, so thanks to Eileen for that.

    Lord Jim @19/Eileen @20; I would certainly call YAHOO an &lit, and PUDGY a semi-&lit, or, as we seem to now say a clue-as-definition.

    Thanks Picaroon for the entertainment and Eileen for a comprehensive blog.

44. [Big Norm @42: I particularly like RED WINES wherever they are to be found 😀 ]

    HIYD and Hovis ages ago @32&33 (and Gladys @29): put me down as another initially MORALLY and CHESSLER

45. Mistakenly put BLADDER at 5ac, and then with CHAMBER POT thought, here we go again!!

46. A treat of a crossword whether you were Lucky Eileen or not

    Thanks to her and Picaroon

47. Robi @43: it’s sometimes a bit hard to judge if a clue is a full or semi-&lit, hence Eileen’s and my hesitancy. (The term clue-as-definition, or CAD, as coined by our blogger Pierre, gets round this by covering both.) On mulling it over, I think actually that 23d does qualify as a full &lit. In the wordplay, the word PUDGY is indeed what you get from PUD and GY. And of course the definition is also the whole clue.

    [Thinking further about 7d, how about someone doing a LEWIS-themed puzzle sometime? It could have references to C Day and Daniel Day, to C S and Narnia, to Lewis Carroll and the Alice books, to Lewis Hamilton, to Lewis the TV series about Morse’s sidekick, amongst others. It sounds rather up Brendan’s street.]

48. Lord Jim @47; ‘sweet food and extremes of gluttony’ gives the wordplay without anything else, whereas ‘what you get from’ doesn’t contribute to the wordplay. That’s why I wouldn’t call it an &lit. Anyway, it’s just a matter of opinion and not that important overall. 🙂

49. [Re: the NICKER conversation, I wonder why it is that you would never say nickers to mean pounds in the plural. It’s always just nicker, as in “That’ll cost you fifty nicker, mate.” And I don’t think you’d say nicker if it was just one pound. You’d say “That’ll be a quid.”]

50. Crossbar @49. I also find ‘quid’ strange in that regard. You might say “that costs a couple of quid” but never “a couple of quids”, yet we talk of “being quids in”. Ah, the wonders of English. In a similar way, I talk of myself as being 6 foot tall, not 6 feet tall, although the latter doesn’t seem wrong.

51. [Hovis
    You’ve reminded me of a joke punchline (you can supply the rest yourself!) – here’s that sick squid I owe you.]

52. Tricky and tough. I failed to solve 12ac DELI and I could not parse: 14ac apart from the def; 2d apart from [w]RECK; 5d apart from def.

    Plenty to like. My favourites were PLUNDER, URNS, CHAMBER POT, HARUM-SCARUM, ENCOUNTER, SUPPLEMENT, HACKNEYED, DELPHI (loi).

    New: PEP = ginger (26ac); YTTRIUM; poet Cecil Day-Lewis (for 7d).

    Thanks, both.

53. [Crossbar and Hovis @49 & 50: I recently attempted to define a single cabbage as a ‘green’ to discover that, unlike ‘nicker’ and ‘quid’, ‘greens’ are, unfortunately, always in the plural. Which, again, seems rather odd. I feel I ought to be able to purchase a bagful of greens from the greengrocer or just a single green. But not so. Mind you, I’ll soon be having to order my cabbages in fathoms … ]

54. Tim C @ 37.
    Obviously on same wavelength today.

    I thought of sweet peas and went for PODGY and also tried SHRUBBY for 1a

55. I didn’t think to comment on the singular nicker in the blog because, like Crossbar @49, I’ve never seen it in the plural. I’ve just looked and neither Collins nor Chambers gives a plural form.
    I don’t think I’ve seen ‘a/one nicker’ (although both dictionaries give it as ‘a pound sterling (Origin unknown)’ but ‘half a nicker’ sounds familiar.

56. * meant to say initially tried SCRUBBY.

57. Thanks Picaroon for a very enjoyable puzzle and Eileen for the parsing and explanations which, though completing, I needed for PICNICKER, HARUM-SCARUM and DELPHI.

    Johnnykingsman, I have the regular pleasure of meeting up with the great man’s family. I’ll pass on your pseudonym tribute next time I see them.

58. [Lord Jim @ 47 – that’s a great idea – could also include an athlete, a boxer, a singer or two and some Hebridean magic …]

59. Lovely stuff and as a techie and yogi I felt right at home. I hesitated slightly over ORAL as the word also appears in the wordplay “fOR A Learner” – misdirection / double-bluff maybe?

60. Luckily, Mr SR and I didn’t think of “SCRUBBY” for 1a as I could have (somewhat tortuously, admittedly) parsed “cubby” for “mate” as it’s what Robert calls his brother, Raymond, in “Everybody Loves Raymond” hence I would have assumed it was US slang for “mate”.
    Began to wonder if I’d misheard it so Googled and it seems he does say “cubby”, possibly derived from “cub” as in baby animal as Raymond’s the younger brother, but no one seemed to know for sure.
    Anyway, we didn’t think of it so I didn’t parse it thus.
    Phew!
    Excellent crossword – many thanks, Picaroon and thanks to Eileen for the blog (for once not needed today, but still a pleasure to read).

61. [Postmark@53 I expect we’ll have a themed crossword soon to help with our revision of Imperial etc measurements. Scruple, grain, chain, bushel………. The world’s gone mad]

62. Strictly speaking, my take is that 4d YAHOO is an &lit (since whole clue is wordplay as well as – very nearly at least – a definition), but I’d probably describe PUDGY as &littish since “What you get from” is not part of wordplay. Coincidentally, PUDGY was my equivalent of Eileen’s URNS in that it stumped me. Convinced the solution was “podgy” I persuaded myself that “sweet” referred to a vanilla pod or some such (like TimC) but something felt wrong so came here for enlightenment. What a silly Billy!
    Uplifting, and enjoyable, puzzle from Picaroon as ever. And thanks to Eileen for her never ending stalwartness, aplomb and acuity….

63. NICKER for pounds is new to me, and perhaps as a result that was my last one in. I’m glad it got explained in the comments. It’s funny how slangy terms for money are almost all lost in the mist of time, etymology-wise.

    I’m also grateful for the education about the elder DAY-LEWIS.

64. Crossbar@61 and PostMark. Can I propose “measure reintroduced by man without them”(8) as a clue for one of them?

65. Petert @64 😀

66. Thanks Picaroon for yet another super crossword with DELI, BREAK THE ICE, SUPPLEMENT, YTTRIUM, RED WINES, WHISTLER, PROHIBIT, and DELPHI among my favourites. I needed a look-up for APOTHEOSIS and I couldn’t parse HARUM-SCARUM, URNS, and PICKNICKER so thanks Eileen (and the blog) for the help.

67. Robi @48 and William @62: with respect (and as I was trying to say @47) I think “What you get from” can be regarded as part of the wordplay, because the word PUDGY is what you get from PUD plus GY. Ok, it’s not necessary for the wordplay, but Occam’s Razor doesn’t always apply in crossword clues.

    [wynsum @58: it’ll have to be a bank holiday special at this rate!]

68. Most enjoyable. My last three answers (SUPPLEMENT, DELPHI & PEPSI) held out until afternoon tea time, then gave in gracefully. And I even managed to parse all of them with PICNICKER holding out longest.

69. [Crossbar @61: it’s already been done. Nutmeg last February. Here’s the blog.] ]

70. That didn’t come out as expected – they are two separate links but look like one:

    Puzzle

    Blog

71. [Thanks Postmark@69 I have no recollection of it. I shall have a go.]

72. petert @ 21 — there seems to be a problem with the link. For others, the poem is Where Are the War Poets? and add Day-Lewis for the search.

73. Calgal@72 Thanks

74. [Re: quids, nickers, etc. If we truly are going back to imperial times, I recall nothing ever cost two bobs, always two bob.
    Apropos of other units I knew a tall girl who always said she was five foot twelve and a half so as not to scare off men by being over six foot. Unfortunately as her name was Sally she was inevitably referred to as Long Tall Sally.]

75. For those who remember old money, we used to say ‘three bob’, not bobs. Or ‘he’s not short of a few bob’.
    Incidentally, I’m surprised the Brexiteers haven’t demanded a return to old money….

76. Fascinating discussion! – so it seems to suggest, perhaps, that it’s the slang / informal versions ((bob, nicker, quid) as opposed to LSD – pounds, shillings and pence – that don’t have a plural form?

77. [Eileen @76 – that would seem to hold true for money, but the ‘foot’ plural goes back to the genitive plural form in Anglo-Saxon (declension here).]

78. I would definitely say “I’m six feet tall” (except that I’m not!)

79. [muffin – I remember having a similar discussion with sheffield hatter quite recently. I think a lot of people use ‘feet’ when it’s an exact number of feet, but ‘foot’ otherwise. Bad bad Leroy Brown was definitely six foot four. (Incidentally, I would say six foot square, but 36 square feet.)]

80. [Good point, eb – I agree with “six foot four”}

81. I thought this was going to be a complete blank until I reached 23d. This gave me YTTRIUM and the rest fell into place but not without a struggle.

82. I would say I weigh eight stone (if I did). But it’s pounds and ounces….

83. Eileen@55. Can a woman with one leg give you change for a Pound?

84. Imperial measures – I blame Thatcher. She ditched an orderly transition to real units, saying “let the market decide”. And it decided on a mish-mash. What other country sells petrol in liters (litres) and measures distances by car in miles? Madness.

85. Like William F P @ 62 I had PODGY, thinking of vanilla pod. I don’t think I’ve heard of PUDGY. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

86. Tassie Tim @ 84: what particularly annoys me is being told a car does so many miles to the gallon. Surely these days it would be more helpful to have “miles to the litre”.

87. Here, it is liters per 100 km – i.e. the lower, the better. MPG it is higher is better.

88. Erike44@86….most people I know (yes old ones) are converting their litres into gallons before calculating. I have a suspicion we are sold litres because a) fewer dials were needed on the pumps when they had dials and b) price is lower per litre.
    Anyway THEBAN = BAN THE ! And ORAL also evident in clue.
    Enjoyed it though easier.

    Thanks both

89. TassieTim@83
    When i was in the USA I often said, “why does a country that resists the metric system buy its coca-cola in 2-liter (litre) bottles?”.

90. Tassie Tim @85 and kevin @89: The U.S. is a hodge-podge, crazy-quilt of a nation. It always has been and always will be. That’s its strength and that’s its weakness. The scientific community and many of its hospitals are strictly metric; in everyday life, not so much. It helps to know both systems.

91. I believe it has changed now, but when I was in Ireland last, the road signs gave distances in kilometres, but speed limits in mph.

92. [tim the late toffee @88 – quite right about the petrol pumps

    TT @84, re ‘real units’ – apart from universal constants like the speed of light, aren’t all our systems of measurement arbitrary in some way? In future eons, a unit originally based on the circumference of our home planet may be seen as just as parochial as one based on the length of a human foot 😉 ]

93. [ MrEssexboy@92 your point is very sound and the speed of light emphasises it. It is a universal constant but the value is arbitrary depending on the units used – 186000 miles per second is one example, or c=1 in the Planck system that I use.
    Even the SI system is a bit of a mish-mash , 7 BASE units , some historical , some have been modernised , two are ridiculous , look up the definition of the Ampere for example and do not get me started on the Candela. ]

94. [Roz, didn’t one of NASA’s adventures fail because of a mix up between imperial and metric in different parts of the project?
    There are also cases of planes falling out of the sky due to similar stuff-ups, whether in fuel loads, or the measurement of tools or nuts and bolts etc.

    EB I like your ‘parochial’ circumference of the earth. ]

95. [PDM@94 the Mars Climate Explorer burnt up as it tried to enter orbit. Problem with the final engine burn, Nasa using metric and Lockheed using imperial.
    The metre is now defined in terms of the speed of light, no longer using the circumference of the Earth. ]

96. [Roz@95. That’s interesting. Thank you.
    Didn’t know the metre in terms of the speed of light. I’m clearly behind the times. 🙂 ]

97. Thank you, Eileen, for, as Julie in Australia rightly says, such an “interesting and positive blog”.

98. [Roz @95, and the foot is now (since 1959 I think) defined as exactly 0.3048 metres.]

Comments are closed.