Guardian 28,854 / Matilda

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I always enjoy Matilda’s puzzles, so it was good to see her kicking off the week.

There are a number of neat anagrams and some witty definitions and deft misdirection, with great surfaces all round.

My favourites, from a fine set of clues, were 1ac DANISH, 9ac SEVERE, 14 BREATHLESS, 18ac ENCOURAGED, 22ac UPSTREAm, 2dn NOVEMBER, 3dn STRENGTH, 5dn DEPRESSION and 17dn EDUCATOR.

Many thanks, Matilda, for the fun.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1 Tucking into stegt flæsk, say, a north Scandinavian (6)
DANISH
A N (a north) in DISH (stegt flæsk, say: a Danish dish – see here)

4 Worshipper vows another time (8)
IDOLATER
I DO (vows) LATER (another time) – but please see comments 19 and 21

9 Tough being cute? (6)
SEVERE
SEVER (cut) + E – crafty!

10 Works and lectures about exercise (8)
OPERATES
ORATES (lectures) round PE (exercise)

11 Make one think of theorem in dispute (6)
REMIND
Hidden in theoREM IN Dispute

12 Was judge free to frolic in grass? (8)
REFEREED
An anagram (to frolic) of FREE in REED (grass)

14 Struggling to inspire praise when nursing a broken heart (10)
BREATHLESS
BLESS (praise) round an anagram (broken) of HEART

18 Helped firm to get involved in under-age representation (10)
ENCOURAGED
CO (firm) in an anagram (re-presentation) of UNDER-AGE

22 Asparagus tip in tempura, battered against the flow (8)
UPSTREAM
[asparagu]S in an anagram (battered) of TEMPURA

23 Cultural and moral frame for new beginning (6)
ETHNIC
ETHIC (moral) round N[ew]

24 Source of tuna in salad (8)
FOUNTAIN
An anagram (salad) of OF TUNA IN

25 Crisp packet’s final design showing text (6)
SCRIPT
An anagram (design) of CRISP + [packe]T

26 Something for Caesar from an address in Gaul (8)
DRESSING
Hidden in adDRESS IN Gaul – a reference to Caesar salad

27 A: winner; B: in a draw; ___ ? Not so far! (6)
CLOSER
Next in the sequence could be C: LOSER

Down

1 Convey an image of extremely delicate writer (8)
DESCRIBE
D[elicat]E + SCRIBE (writer)

2 Unfinished novel: Gong Ringer’s Last Thirty Days (8)
NOVEMBER
NOVE[l] + MBE (gong) + [ringe]R

3 Might Ernst & Young watch out at last for corruption? (8)
STRENGTH
An anagram (for corruption) of ERNST + last letters of [youn]G [watc[H] [ou]T

5 Feeling down at heart indeed? Iron and iron right away (10)
DEPRESSION
DE (inDEed at heart, which took a minute or two to work out – nice misdirection) + PRESS) (iron) + I[r]ON) minus r (right)

6 Half of cellar wine turned up in store (6)
LARDER
[cel]LAR + a reversal (turned up) of RED (wine)

7 One’s not into fancy elitist names (6)
TITLES
An anagram (fancy) of EL[i]TIST minus i (one)

8 Live what’s left out of uniform (6)
RESIDE
RESID[u]E (what’s left, minus u (uniform)

13 Farm on plain somehow filled with rubbish (10)
PLANTATION
TAT (rubbish) in an anagram (somehow) of ON PLAIN

15 All-important fault-finding (8)
CRITICAL
Double definition

16 Long time since deregulation for companies (8)
AGENCIES
AGE (long time) + an anagram (deregulation) of SINCE

17 Teacher said you got into art deco movement (8)
EDUCATOR
U (you said) in an anagram (movement) of ART DECO

19 Turned up fish starter, ate and had a smoke (6)
PUFFED
A reversal (turned) of UP + F[ish] + FED (ate)

20 Clever being like that, you get somewhere at last (6)
ASTUTE
AS (being like) + last letters of [tha]T [yo]U [ge]T [somewher]E

21 Killer groove in public transport (6)
BRUTUS
RUT (groove) in BUS (public transport)

69 comments on “Guardian 28,854 / Matilda”

  1. Enjoyable start to the week with a nice mixture of devices. Favourites DANISH, AGENCIES, ETHNIC, UPSTREAM and DRESSING.

    Ta Matilda & Eileen

  2. My only parse failure was SEVERE. I was thinking along the lines of Acute also being severe, but Eileen’s SEVER-E is much much better and very clever.
    Favourite was BREATHLESS for the definition.

  3. What Eileen said. Lots of good clues and plenty of misdirection. Had to look up stegt flaesk but then realised it didnt matter. Thought there might be a Caesar theme at one stage but it didn’t develop. Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

  5. Very nice. I went down a few false trails, took ages to see STRENGTH, solved PUFFED but stupidly typed in PUFFIN, but got there in the end. A reminder of what Cassius so nearly said to 21 down “The fault, dear Brutus is not in our setters, but in ourselves, that we are blundering.”

  6. Lovely stuff with SEVERE my LOI and firm favourite. Also BREATHLESS for the reminder of the movies, and as an ex-Enron & Lehman Brothers employee I got a wry smile from the ERNST & YOUNG surface

    Cheers all

  7. Thanks Matilda and Eileen
    Very nice. I found the bottom a lot harder than the top. Favourites BREATHLESS, FOUNTAIN, DEPRESSION (no Fes involved!), and AGENCIES.

  8. I also had trouble parsing SEVERE – and I know this is me being slow on the uptake again, but I’m afraid I still don’t understand the explanation. (I’m aware sever is synonymous with cut…)
    Other than that, my faves were DESCRIBE & DANISH. With BRUTUS so near the Caesar salad, I did think, for a bit, that there might be a theme – but it came to naught…
    Thanks to Matilda, and thank you Eileen for the blog

  9. Well, the clue for SEVERE was certainly crafty. Cute, even. I couldn’t parse it, nor CLOSER, till I came here. Otherwise I was all finished in less than half an hour. My favourite was IDOLATER. In 22a, I wasn’t sure whether the asparagus tip was A or S. In 18a, are “encouraged” and “helped” the same thing?

  11. Nice start to the week.

    Favourites were FOUNTAIN and AGENCIES. Was slightly thrown by asparagus tip = S rather than A but soon came to my senses.

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen

  16. I was pleased with myself for getting the cute=SEVERE parsing as I usually miss those word split devices. Perhaps it’s finally sinking in. Was a bit phased by stegt flaesk in the first clue, but didn’t bother googling and the answer became obvious with crossers, so I just assumed it was a dish of some sort. Thanks for the link, Eileen. I’ll ask my great-niece, currently studying on an exchange in Denmark, to try it out. Enjoyable crossword and my favourites have already been mentioned, so thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

  17. Great start to the week, although I had a somewhat slow start.

    Like Tim C@2, I thought there must have been some play on a-cute. I liked BREATHLESS for the ‘struggling to inspire praise’, ENCOURAGED for the surface (Roz may not notice), DRESSING being nicely hidden, and STRENGTH for the wordplay. All-in-all very entertaining.

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen (cute, eh)

  18. Solved NE corner last.

    Liked IDOLATER, BREATHLESS, DEPRESSING, CLOSER.

    Did not parse 9ac – oh, that is clever!

    Thanks, both.

  19. This was indeed nice with lots of clever clues. I really liked REFEREED and DRESSING, great surfaces. I did wonder about IDOLATER – is I DO vows or just a vow?

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

  20. I’m definitely going to have a go at cooking stegt flaesk! Great fun and some very clever clues. Strength took me far too long to see.
    Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

  21. lord Jim @19 – I pondered about how to explain this one – whether to add ‘s’ to vow?Thinking further about it, I’m going to do that. I think we have to think of the clue as a whole, really, with ‘vows’ as a verb .( Lots of ‘thinks’!) I’m not happy with it, though.

  22. The way I saw I DO is that at a wedding both the bride and groom are required to say ‘I do’ – so I DO represents the vows that are said in the ceremony.

  23. This was very satisfying, particularly liked SEVERE when the penny dropped, and also thought that DRESSING was rather cute in itself, cleverly hidden with misdirection too. My last one in…

  24. A pleasant Monday solve. I also struggled with SEVERE, although the technique of splitting a word in the clue (cut+e) seems to be occurring quite often.

    My attempt at a clue for later today: “She’ll come after Boris abandoned sizeable thrust (9,5)”
    Too easy, I know.

  25. Very nice start to the week – satisfying, indeed. SEVERE a favourite, along with DRESSING and CLOSER which made me laugh.

    Like Sourdough @22, I rationalised vows as being the multiple articulation of I DO.

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen

  27. I found this one very satisfying with every single clue coming up to the gold standard of ‘when you get it, you are in no doubt that it is right’. Didn’t take me all that long, but like the best desserts, charming, not over-rich, and with a delicious after-taste.

  28. Oh, and I didn’t know of stegt flaesk, but with a crosser or two it was obvious it must be a dish. Googled it afterwards.

  32. The grid being in four quadrants meant that it was important to get a start in all four. Muffin @7 mentions being slow to start in the bottom half, whereas after completing the bottom I couldn’t get going in the top. My problem was getting onto Matilda’s wavelength and then being able to delve below the very smooth and misleading surfaces.

    Like many others I enjoyed SEVER+E, and I also liked IDOLATER; although I recognise that I DO is not exactly substitutable for ‘vows’ (as Lord Jim almost says @19), it is very strongly hinted at, so is good enough for me.

    Thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

  33. Nice puzzle.

    Interesting coincidence here: for those who don’t speak DANISH, stegt means roast, and is cognate with the English “stick” as in “stick a pig” (and cook it on a spit), as discussed in last week’s Boatman.

  34. Dr. WhatsOn @33. I guessed that ‘flaesk’ might be cognate with flesh, so (as a vegan) decided not to look it up!

  35. Thank you Matilda. Loved it.
    Thank you Eileen for explaining SEVERE. Very cunning – and fools me every time!

  36. Thanks, Dr WhatsOn @33 – I think I must ask my son and Danish daughter-in-law to make
    stegt flæsk when I visit them in Copenhagen next month.

  37. sh @32: I too rather liked the clue for IDOLATER. My comment was not so much an objection as me wondering how I would answer if someone asked me exactly how it worked. Like Eileen @21 I’m still not entirely sure that I could.

  38. When you say “I do” in the marriage service, you are agreeing to a whole list of things, so I think that justifies “vows”.

  44. RoddyMac @41 – I’ve been resisting opening that can of worms all day. ‘I do’ as a wedding vow causes discussion here every time it comes up – but I’ve just remembered that Andrew’s on holiday!
    It’s not just at royal weddings that the response is ‘I will’: it’s the regular form in the Church of England. (I sing in a church choir, so I hear it a lot.) The question these days, though, is usually ‘Will you … ‘rather than ‘Wilt thou’.

    Now that that’s out of the way, I’m happy to go along with Sourdough @22 and PostMark @25.

  45. 19 I can’t think where ‘fed’ and ‘ate’ could be interchangeable. There’s quite a lot of difference between ‘I fed the hamster’ and ‘I ate the hamster’, especially for the hamster. ‘Fed on’, of course, is a different matter.

    23 Even allowing a for substantial overlap in meaning between morality-type words and ethics-type words, I can’t think of where ‘moral’ and ‘ethic’ could be interchangeable – ‘ethic’ and ‘morality’ perhaps, or ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’. The nearest I can get is: ‘The moral/ethic of the story is….’, but these uses differ as well – the first is the finding of a specific value, and the second refers to the general values situation.

    Apart from all that, I really enjoyed this – lots of ingenuity, and it was good to see a foreign language different from the usual ones.

  46. Thanks Matilda for a well written crossword full of seamless and clever surfaces. My top choices included REFEREED, BREATHLESS, FOUNTAIN, STRENGTH, TITLES, and ASTUTE. I saw “I do” the same way as Sourdough @22; I couldn’t parse SEVERE so thanks Eileen for explaining it.

  47. Robert @ 45 – ‘feed’ can be both transitive: (‘I fed the hamster’) and intransitive (Chambers: ‘to take food; to nourish oneself by eating’) – as in ‘We ate well’ / ‘We fed well’.

    Collins has, for ‘ethic’, ‘another word for ethical C15’ and Chambers ‘(now rare) adj ethical.

  48. Liked that a lot. A little tougher than the quiptic today for me, as it should be (finished both without any external assistance, not even a cheeky glance at the thesaurus, which is good for me).

    Lots of misdirection in the clues but every one landed with an ‘of course!‘ which is a sign of good clueing, I think. And I’m another one who got-but-didn’t-get SEVERE. Very clever. Liked UPSTREAM, SCRIPT, PLANTATION, BRUTUS.

    Thanks both!

  49. Roddy Mac @41

    I always read out this blog to Mr SR after we’ve done the crossword.
    Today, I got to your post and told him that a link had been put about “I do” Vs “I will” in royal weddings.
    He said he felt that couldn’t be quite right: “Surely the other one must have said, “I, Harry…”

    It seems there was no vow about not being a smart-Alec in our wedding service…

  52. “Wilt thou take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?”, asked the priest.
    “I wilt”, replied the groom, to general merriment amongst the congregation.

  53. Found this a little chewy at the start, but all yielded nicely once I’d got a few crossers.

    The “I do later” as vows didn’t trouble me at all, and I wasn’t thinking about weddings. I’m not good with the jargon, but in the phrase “After Mark runs out of time cleaning his flat he vows to do it later.”

  55. SEVERE was my clue of the day – and I understood the wordplay. Thanks Matilda, and Eileen, even though I didn’t need your excellent blog today.

  56. Some nice clues, of which DRESSING was initially my favourite (for the clever definition and solution hiding in plain sight, plus the misleading way the two were linked).

    Once Eileen explained the parsing of SEVERE however – which I had failed to see – that became my favourite!
    Happy Monday. Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

  57. Thanks Eileen and Matilda. Lovely Monday crossword for once, elegantly clued as others have said. Proud of myself for correctly parsing SEVERE ! That was what I usually refer to as a “Playtex” clue, i.e. lift and separate. One Guardian setter is rather fond of this particular device,but I can’t immediately remember who.

  58. JohnB @57 – it’s Philistine. Interesting to see Delilah Matilda doing it too. 😉
    Lovely puzzle and blog, as everyone says.

  59. A very enjoyable solve, with thanks to Eileen to help me parse “November” ( got the nove but not the MBE!). Thank you Matilda for lovely misdirections and clueing

  60. That Philistine and Matilda use the same sort of separate-and-lift clue may be because they discuss clueing techniques, as they are married.

  61. Very enjoyable. First time I have successfully solved online for a while as I am away from my printer. I don’t know how online solvers resist the check/reveal button if they do it this way all the time, but I managed to be strong with this one. Thanks to Eileen and Matilda.

  62. I’m with you Julie, can’t stand solving online, which is why I’ve now given up on the Independent. Can’t print it anymore (unless I’m missing something).

  63. Yes great – having tended to consider Matilda to be at the easier end of the spectrum this was a re-alignment and then some. Very entertaining. Thanks to Matilda and to Eileen for parsing NOVEMBER and (ridiculously) RESIDE.

    Jina@61: I always do them online (except for Saturdays’ prize) and if I reveal to find I am wrong it irks me so I take care not to. Just habit.

  65. GreginSyd @62: If you have access to a desktop computer you can print the Indy crossword. That’s what I do unless I’m out of town and I’m forced to do it online.

  66. Very enjoyable puzzle. Another tick for SEVERE from me. Thanks Eileen for explaining that beauty of a clue and for the blog. Thanks Matilida for the fun.

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