Guardian Cryptic 28,888 by Paul

64 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,888 by Paul”

1. Some good stuff here, but why, oh why does Paul persist with those clunky surfaces such as: Awful short white skirts provided, one under coat of raver. That sentence should be taken outside and shot.

   Failed to parse CONSULATES, not believing slow could equate to late. One could be late having run like mad, no?

   Loved the FATAL ATTRACTION and LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME clues.

   Thanks both.

2. Some of Paul’s clues are just great and I so enjoy it when the penny drops, as here with the film title 23d,11a paired with the simile at 15,17d, as mentioned already by William@1. But yes I agree with your example of that AWFUL wording at 16d, William. Maybe “late” in CONSULATES at 13d is used in that sort of sense of “late to the party” as in slow to get there? I also liked 22a CAFFE LATTE, manehi, as well as 18a LASAGNE (as I made a vegetarian version this week), 26,10a THICK AS THIEVES and 20d HECKLE. I do appreciate the fun you provide, Paul, and explanations such as the one for 2d ARISTO which I couldn’t quite see, manehi.

3. It’s been a fairly successful week for me, though I found this a bit of a struggle in places. I also liked FATAL ATTRACTION, and can only agree with Willliam @1 on Paul’s frequent use of bizarre and over long sentences. With thanks to both.

4. I didn’t think 16d was too horrific, quite liked the way it assembled from its bits. And yes some nice stuff from Paul. On one’s knees and Thick as thieves were pretty neat. Otoh, while moths are indeed fatally attracted to flame, the controversial film bit was a bit oblique. Lots to like, thanks Pnm.

5. The penny dropped on FATAL ATTRACTION when I had the F and T on the crossers for FATAL. The clues I found clunky were 16D where I didn’t fully parse all those little bits of HORRIFIC and also ARISTO, which I did parse, but with RAINY was one of my last two in. I struggle with the clues where I have to think of a word randomly clued, then subtract – in this case (b)RAINY where brainy and academic are not equivalents. I saw (c)ARTO(n) when I solved it.

   Thank you to manehi and Paul.

6. I think Paul was in an Essex frame of mind at 16d. The white skirts go with the stilettos and handbags.

   Continuing the party theme, I was going to suggest JinA’s solution @2 to William’s query @1, but I was too late/slow off the mark.

   Shanne @5 – a brainy/academic child?

   Thanks P & m. Glad no one’s mentioned the homoiophone.

7. Essexboy @6 – I youthwork. The other week two of our more challenging regulars came in after they’d been chosen for a Cambridge Uni extension day. Academic they aren’t, I hear them talking about school, but being chosen suggests they are brainy.

8. And secondly, when did you last see white stilettos in Essex? Orange tans, mini skirts and animal skin fabrics, yes, but not white stilettos for decades.

9. [Shanne – I need to get out more. Or perhaps Paul does?]

10. When I see it’s a Paul I know I’m going to enjoy it and this was no exception. I was lucky that Fatal Attraction arrived quickly as my brain worked through synonyms of calamitous and that quickly led to 15/17dn. For the second time running I could see no Paulian smut. I sincerely hope he’s not been put off by a handful of adverse comments.
    Thanks Paul and manehi.

11. Maybe not ‘smut’ JerryG@10, but the wordplay for HORRIFIC and STRING VEST are Paulian IMHO.
    And I always thought I wasn’t visually imaginative!

    I liked THICK AS THIEVES, WHAT FOR, FATAL ATTRACTION, HECKLE, FLAKED OUT, ON ONE’S KNEES, CONSULATES,

12. Liked WHAT FOR.

    I did not parse 16d.

    Thanks, both.

13. Like gratinfreo@4 I really liked 16d – gave it a tick. Lots of circuitous clues to enjoy as always with Paul, even though it was quite hard work for me. Many thanks to P & m.

14. This made me feel less than (B)RAINY this morning but got there eventually. Some super linked clues already mentioned ad I thought HORRIFIC was fine as explained by essexboy @6. My favourites were ON ONE’S KNEES and HECKLE for the misdirection.

    Ta Paul & manehi

15. HORRIFIC – One of these days I’ll remember that red and white mean wines of some sort. Thanks for putting me straight with the parsing manehi.
    I liked the KNEE caps in 18a and THICK AS THIEVES.

    Not on the same wavelength today but eventually got there. Thanks Paul & manehi.

16. JerryG@10 I sincerely hope he has.

17. Great clues but as others have said some terrible surfaces and I always sigh at the answers placed all over the grid. But I managed to parse all except HORRIFIC, and for good reason it seems.
    Thanks P and m

18. Got most of this very quickly for some reason, but I don’t much like the long 15, 17. It seems very laboured compared to the other clues, and the first clause has only a tenuous connection with the solution, if it can be said to have any at all.

19. Surprisingly I found this to be Paul on Easy Mode (this is a relative descriptor!) so I must have been tuned into the right wavelength. Got over half on first pass (which had me rechecking the setter name) then most of the rest fell in the second pass. The long multi-worders helped hugely. Only a handful in the NW corner really held me up – for almost as long as the rest of the puzzle combined. Swings and roundabouts.

    Lots of clues to like but special mention to the outrageous ‘Dickens’ = HECK in HECKLE that I only parsed after correctly getting it from ‘taunt’ but once I saw it, it made me chuckle.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

20. A raft floats but I don’t think that makes it a boat.

21. Rob T’s comment above (“special mention to the outrageous ‘Dickens’ = HECK in HECKLE that I only parsed after correctly getting it from ‘taunt’ but once I saw it, it made me chuckle.”) neatly captures that feature of Paul’s clueing style that left me feeling so flat when solving this puzzle. No chuckle for me: it doesn’t seem like a proper cryptic clue if it’s necessary to BIFF the solution and then ex post facto try to unpick the wordplay. I thought the idea was that the clue functions as a clue — a cryptic guide, a trail of wordplay — which leads the solver towards the solution. But loads of people seem to enjoy doing it the other way round, so I guess it’s each to one’s own!

22. Foggy Friday for me. Took me a while to get going only to discover I was going up garden paths more often than not. Hard to pick a favourite from the 18 ticks I had but it has to be CHEETAH for the partial name-check

    ON ONES KNEES reminded me of the classic “Two girls, one on each knee”

    Cheers P&M

23. pserve_p2 @21 – I appreciate clues that work either way! It’s very satisfying to arrive at the solution through the clue in and of itself, but I also don’t mind at all if I get it from definition / bits of wordplay / crossers with the penny dropping after the event. I’m easily pleased in this regard! 🙂

    And to be fair on almost every puzzle I do, there are clues that I get right but don’t really understand until I get here to see what I’ve missed…

24. I liked the idea of an EMOIST being an academic engaged in the study of millennial cultural phenomena, which would have given MOIST for RAINY, but had to discard it.

25. Mercifully few split entry solutions today (and the two linked ones were nicely done) and the puzzle passed almost without incident. I must admit that many answers went in from the definition, followed by a check to the parsing. I agree that some of the clues are verbose and rather lumpy, but that’s all part of the Pauline style.

    A train can be running slow if it is running late.

    [A comment on LASAGNE: this is an Italian plural, and is the form that always appears on packets of the pasta sheets. It is also the usual term for the composed dish in the UK, which is called ‘lasagna’ in the US. Italian dictionaries mostly give ‘lasagne’ for the dish, sometimes with ‘lasagna’ as a secondary alternative. It seems that the singular form may be used more in Southern Italy; as this is the area from which most emigrants to the US originated, this might explain the American usage. A complication is that the word ‘lasagna’ originally comes from the name of the pot in which it is cooked (like ‘casserole’ and ‘terrine’) 🙂 ]

    Thanks to S&B

26. I struggled a bit, especially with the long ‘uns, although I thought the anagram for LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME was ingenious.

    I liked COLLABORATE for the wordplay, ARISTO for the misleading lady, and I DID enjoy HORRIFIC, where the surface makes sense to me – a female raver with a short white skirt (that was provided) under her coat; what’s wrong with that? I also like ON ONE’S KNEES because of the kneecaps.

    Thanks Paul and manehi.

27. Pretty straightforward for a Paul I thought, but even then I needed Manehi to parse ROAST and HORRIFIC. Favourite was LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME. Thanks Paul and Manehi

28. Like others, I never got HORRIFIC fully parsed, getting it from the IFI at the end, and misidentifying LAB rather than BALL as the party meant trouble parsing COLLABORATE.

    I very often get the answer from crossers or def or one bit of the wordplay, and then work out why it must be so afterwards. I accept that this is because I’m not expert enough to do every clue the “right” way round, and I stand in awe of those who can, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy myself any less. Favourites today the WAR SAW and ON ONES KNEES (Is there a rule that it’s always ONES and not YOUR in such phrases?)

    PS: Is anyone else having trouble getting the site to remember them?

29. I thought 6d was SPIN until eliminated by 5a.

30. Many thanks to Paul for a fun crozzie and to manehi for the helpful blog. In 5ac I couldn’t for the life of me work out why ‘and’ should mean ‘for good measure’.
    Did anyone else initially enter IN ONE’S HANDS for 18ac? When you beg, you go ‘cap in hand’ …

31. Nice to see a decent Latte clue.
    Good fun
    Thanks Paul and manehi

32. gladys @28: The site has just unfriended me too, without my blocking any cookies – and it was fine when I posted this morning 🙁

33. gladys @28: PS Cryptic clues consist of wordplay plus a definition (coincident in an &lit) and it is no shame to use both to arrive at a solution – that’s what most of us do 🙂

34. Very little on the first pass, but 18a got me started.
    Lots to like, though some of the surfaces were somewhat chunky as mentioned by others.
    Unable to parse the underwear, so thanks for the heads-up.
    Thanks both.

35. Gladys @28 – that’s me too, no shame in it.

36. My thanks to pserve at 21 for expressing so well why I dislike Paul’s puzzles. Like him, I expect a clue to lead to a solution not A puzzle to unpick having guessed the answer.

37. gladys @28
    I think the rule is that it’s ONES, except when it’s YOUR.

38. jydygs@30 Me too with IN ONES HANDS, but eventually when ON ONES KNEES came to me it was so much better.

39. I couldn’t parse ARISTO (didn’t think of “carton”) so thanks, manehi.

    Stilettos and handbags, essexboy@6? And I know that a homoiophone would be some Greek variant of a homophone, but how does it actually work?

    Gladys@28 I got stuck too on “LAB” for “party,” and couldn’t figure out where Paul got the extra L. Had to come here to have it pointed out to me that a party is a BALL. And judygs@30, my cap was in my hand(s) too.

    gladys, every now and then my name doesn’t appear in the box below, and that lasts for a day or two. Blame the e-gremlins.

    I like the picture of an army going to battle armed with battle saws.

    Thanks, Paul and manehi.

40. Valentine @39: when essexboy coined the wonderful ‘homoiophone’ I presume he was thinking of the early Christian debate about the nature of God the Father with respect to God the Son. ‘Homousians’ maintained that they were ‘of the same substance’, ‘homiousians’ that they were ‘of similar substance’ (the former won out, hence the phrase in the Nicean Creed: ‘being of one substance with the Father’). Hence homoiophones are words which sound similar, rather than exactly the same.

41. Whoops – for ‘homiousian’ read ‘homoiousian’. Tricky words 🙂

42. [Valentine/Gervase – you may have missed my very late post on yesterday’s blog. I thought I was being original, but it turns out I missed the boat by 134 years.]

43. [And Valentine @39, re stilettos and handbags, I was referencing the out-dated and very unfair stereotypes concerning Essex girls. Shanne quite rightly upbraided me.]

44. [essexboy @42: No shame in that – we celebrate Copernicus for realising that the Earth orbits the Sun, despite Aristarchus having suggested the same the thick end of two millennia earlier. Great minds…]

45. essexboy @43 I work and have worked with Essex girls for the last couple of decades and those stereotypes do not make life easier for teenagers, who don’t deserve the assumptions made, so I’m afraid I do challenge them.

46. Thanks, all. Have kept at it through the week and enjoyed the extra challenges. Loved the Pauline STRING VEST but hated HORRIFIC. Was chuffed to get HECK for Dickens before reaching HECKLE. Struggled to parse ROAST and RUTLAND but happy when I did.
    RATIONALE my favourite.

    Many thanks Paul and manehi.

47. pserve_p2 @ 21: A crossword clue is built from wordplay and definition. Being able to find the answer from either is absolutely fair. When we talk about clues we’re not saying that the wordplay is the clue to the definition – part of the clue-solving process is working out which is which.

48. Oops, should’ve read manehi properly; anag of (look at a film + a theme)* makes a nonsense of my ‘oblique’ comment @4.

49. [MarkN @47: I’m right with you there. One of my favourite clue types is where the break between the wordplay and the definition (the caesura?) is disguised. Vlad is particularly good at that.]

50. Also with you MarkN @47. Sometimes the answer immediately pops into your head as a possibility from the definition and you set it down to see if it makes sense from the wordplay. That doesn’t make it ‘not properly cryptic’.

51. Gervase @44, can’t believe I hadn’t heard of Aristarchus’s heliocentrism, many thanks. Funny about dogmatism; an opposite example is proper knowledge of the heart-blood system taking until the Renaissance era (despite all the blood pumping out on ancient battlefields).

52. [Mark N and Gervase, Arachne is good at that. Some of her surfaces have such aesthetic harmony that your brain just doesn’t want to break them]

53. Gervase @49: Yes. Actually I still remember the clue, where I suddenly had a PDM and realised the kind of tricky misdirection that was going on. By coincidence it was one of Paul’s. From memory:

    Spooner’s description of Arnhem landing (9)

    Back then I found it so hard to separate clues in the correct place, but when I got this one something just shifted in my head, and I levelled up a little.

54. MarkN@53 agreed, it can be difficult to override your natural parsing circuits, but coherent phrases in clues are what setters rely on for misdirection. In this puzzle, for example, we have “cold milky drink”, “dish in sink”, “shark hunter” and others. Another red flag is redundancy, such as “cook in oven”.

55. Some would question whether redundancy is a fair kind of misdirection.

    Personally, I don’t mind whether I get there through wordplay or definition first, as long as I have that satisfying penny drop moment, and can tie up all the loose ends.

    Definitely wasn’t on Paul’s wavelength today, so several cases of getting the solution from the definition and/or crossing letters then spending ages scratching my head over the wordplay, so not as satisfying as it could have been.

    Still, lots to enjoy – CAFFE LATTE was a particular favourite.

    Thanks Paul and Manehi.

56. I don’t mind a bit of “yes but why” and I certainly get plenty of that with Paul. Ultimately I think it’s just a reflection of my limitations as a solver. Often it’s a hybrid like with HORRIFIC where I was pretty sure there’d be an RR and an IF and then the answer popped into into my head so it was just the HOC(K) that needed reverse parsing

    Anyway it’s Mikes David and Negroni time

    Cheers

57. DrW – I think I misunderstood your point about redundancy but just twigged – “oven” isn’t needed for the definition, hence must be part of the wordplay. Good point, well made.

    I was thinking of redundancy meaning words that are part of neither definition nor solution, which is unfair because it sends the solver on a wild goose chase.

58. Mikes Davis being a jazz tribute band 🙂

59. Bodycheetah – exactly how I solved HORRIFIC

60. There was too much “educated guessing” on my part to say that I truly enjoyed this crossword but I did like the simplicity of DISCOVER and the groan-worthy CHEETAH. Thanks to both.

61. Same here re HORRIFIC. Thought of that from def then fell into place when I saw it written down. A couple of Phi’s Indie clues like that today – and mention Phi partially because I am surprised by the lack of comment on his puzzle today.

62. eb@42 and Gervase@40 — I actually knew (sort of) about the various posited natures of Jesus, but couldn’t see the connection to phonics. Essex girls, on the other hand, were completely beyond my ken.

63. DrW@54 – sorry; your final sentence makes no sense to me, especially if referring to the clue containing it in this puzzle. Am I being slow? (I know I’m late!)
    manehi – great blog as ever, but in your final parse “in” should be included in word play (‘drawing in’ meaning attraction here rather than just ‘drawing’)

    As for the puzzle, I was surprisingly a tiny bit disappointed. But then the bar’s high – since it reflects my regard for this master of the art of setting. I never really look for great surfaces in Paul creation but I expected a touch more coruscation in its crypticism. I think Paul being (intentionally?) more classical/conservative than liberal here.

    Many thanks, both and all

64. Gervase@44 Stigler’s law asserts that no discovery is ever named for the discoverer.?
    

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