Guardian 28,928 / Paul

71 comments on “Guardian 28,928 / Paul”

1. It took quite a few scattered crossers before the long ones clicked into place, but once they did that opened up the rest of the grid nicely. A few held out at the end, and NEONATE required a my classic combination of wordplay, crossers and bung-and-check before it yielded.

   I must say I thought the clue for SO-SO was so so-so that it could have been an &lit in-joke… Even changing the clue slightly to something like “Really very unexceptional” would have made it a tad more interesting.

   Favourite was TEAR A STRIP OFF.

   Cheers both!

2. I’m afraid my heart sinks, too, when it’s a Paul with lots of multi-light solutions; it just isn’t my favourite device but, as Eileen says, they were not as impenetrable as they can be and all eventually fell into place though I had to check PINEAL which is nho.

   Favourites today include: RIOT GEAR, DEAD LIFT, PINEAL BODY, NEONATE, THYME, RANSOME and the childish lol moment provided by CADGE. Of the long ‘uns, ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE brought a nice smile. Having FEE in DOCTORS FEE was surprisingly offputting when trying to parse the clue – even though it was not particularly tricky in itself.

   Thanks Paul and Eileen

3. Like Eileen my heart sinks a bit when I see all the linked clues in Paul’s puzzles, which always makes for a bit of a tussle. But I enjoyed this a lot, particularly RIOT GEAR, PROPAGATE and METAVERSE. Many thanks to P & E.

4. Nice to see Paul continuing to irk the homophone purists 🙂

   Plain sailing once the long ones went in but great fun nonetheless

   Cheers P&E

5. With the exception, perhaps, of SO-SO (which was), I thought this was Paul on top form. A couple of characteristically cheeky ones – ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE, CADGE; a really clever long anagram in THE TAIL IS WAGGING THE DOG; a neatly concealed initial letters job with STEREO; some well-constructed charades such as LIVE IT UP and TEAR A STRIP OFF. Oh, and a first rate Spoonerism (one of my favourite devices when done well – sorry, Eileen) in RIOT GEAR.
   Paul is often let down by his surfaces, but I thought today’s were very good.
   Really enjoyable, and one of those where at about 9.15 am you find yourself thinking “The day’s got to go downhill from here…”
   Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

6. I am never sure whether to be pleased or not when I see a Paul puzzle with lots of long linked clues. Sometimes it is very helpful – and that was the case today. I got the “call of nature” one very quickly followed soon after by the “tail of the dog” one and I was off.

   Like others I particularly liked: THYME, PROPAGATE, METAVERSE, PINEAL BODY

   Thanks Paul and Eileen

7. NeilH, I do enjoy Spoonerisms when they’re done properly (as by Nutmeg and Knut yesterday) and, as I said, I liked Paul’s, today – and, unusually, a lot of his surfaces!

8. I knew pineal gland from my reading of Descartes but have never heard of it referred to as pineal body. Amused to see behind outhouse as the clue for BO when more obvious ones might have been used, especially by Paul. Sorry, I didn’t enjoy this puzzle with its enormous anagrams scattered all over the grid.

9. Thank you Eileen
   bodycheetah@4. I might have missed it but is anyone irked so far?

   I spent way too long looking for a reverse clue for ‘howl back’ in ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE.

10. I agree with Eileen, drofle and PostMark – my heart sinks, too, when it’s a Paul with lots of multi-light solutions!

    SW corner was hard for me.

    Liked DEAD LIFT, LIVE IT UP, TEAR A STRIP OFF.

    I could not parse 24ac.

    Thanks, both.

11. Like revbob I didn’t enjoy this, obvs couldn’t finish it, but still admire the immense skill of compiler and blogger. Thanks to both.

12. PM@9 give it time 🙂

13. A Parfait Paul Puzzle for a Wednesday.
    Thanks, both.

14. Agree, cheetah @4, Paul’s various sorts of irkiness are cool. Last two in, neonate and metaverse were great. Metaverse is the sort of neologism that’s sounds so ‘in’ that it’s hard to tell whether you’ve actually met it or not. And should’ve been quicker to twig that ‘go’ was the driver in ‘answer the call’. [Bit distracted watching our boys getting to 2 for 300 v the Windies]. And yes, squelchy hormone-secreting 27,9s, and other glands, are indeed part of thinking (so much more than computation). All good fun, ta PnE.

15. I made very heavy weather of this. I find that if you get the long composite clues fairly early, the rest clicks into place, but today I didn’t. It’s also galling when you have spotted an anagram, seen the slightly cryptic definition but are still in doubt about the solution – PILEAN BODY, LIPEAN BODY???, but I should have seen PINEAL in retrospect.

16. Ah, funny you should say that bodycheetah@12. I was misdirected by what I thought was a homophone in SKI BOOT, ‘it was said to shock’. Not a homophone at all!

    Ok, I’ll bite. I’m usually one of those homophone pedants, but don’t have any problem with RIOT GEAR, although I could imagine that some might be affected by the written words, and the stressed and the unstressed syllables.

    Or is it THYME? , but that’s one of those tricky looks like but doesn’t sound like.
    Or MOCHA? I don’t speak Italian so can’t comment. I see it’s different in British and American English.
    See what you started? 🙂

17. I found this so hard that I ended up pressing reveal for two clues that once revealed were actually quite straightforward. I think I am so scared of all those split solutions that I give up too easily. But there was a lot to like as others have mentioned. Thanks Paul and Eileen for the excellent blog.
    [I revealed 4 and 24 15 – duh!]

18. First time posting.
    Fairly new to cryptic crosswords and always enjoy reading the comments on here. I’m just buzzing to have finished “a Paul” before midday!
    Took a while to get, but thought ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE was a cracker!
    Many thanks, Paul And Eileen.

19. Welcome, MickF70 – and congratulations! Hope to hear more from you.

20. There was not much for me to enjoy here. The only composite clue I managed to solve was PINEAL BODY (the only one I haven’t heard of!). Of the other clues, I really should have got NEEDLEWORK, NEONATE and POMPEII, but somehow they wouldn’t yield today. Many others needed crossing letters that were not there! This was an altogether different experience from solving yesterday’s puzzle.

21. OK, I give up. Can someone explain for this thicko why DEE=Runner?
    ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE was a good long answer with a short clue but favourite was METAVERSE for the nice charade.

22. tim@21
    river dee

23. I always enjoy Paul’s puzzles and I like the ones with long, multi part answers because they offer something different from other setters. That variety across the week is part of the joy of Guardian cryptics. This took me a while because I needed a few crossers to help with the long solutions but that made it quite satisfying. Many thanks to Paul and Eileen , and welcome to MickF70.

24. TimC@21: ‘runner’ is a common setters’ trick to mean a river: therefore the River Dee.

25. These long split answers are not my cup of tea, but I got there in the end.

    I liked PINEAL BODY for the ‘bit of a thinker’ and METAVERSE for the unliked NY museum.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen (META used to be Facebook).

26. ‘Flower’ also often indicates a river.

27. pm@16 according to Ricky Martin in Livin’ La Vida Loca it’s pronounced MOW-KAH

28. I felt that Paul had just gone over the top with the multi-light phrasal solutions and the ridiculously long anagrams today. It effectively reduces the crossword, since there are fewer clues overall to be solved — it’s not really a 15×15 any more. And his surfaces today are really pretty awful. Sorry.

29. The one thing I can be certain of if I feel certain that everyone will complain about a Spoonerism homophone is that I will certainly be wrong. I’m usually most tolerant of the genre, but today I just can’t accept “guy ot rear” as being close enough to “gut at rear” for 12a. Each to their own, but as I said I expected more protests.

    Also can anyone enlighten me how some = remarkable in 3d?

    Usual thanks to Paul & Eileen

30. Oh OK MrBev @22, pserve_p2 @24….. thanks…. Why is it never the Darling, Parramatta, Dumaresq or Murrumbidgee? 🙂
    When I “metaversed” ‘dee runner’, all I got was instagram, facebook (remember that), horse names, linked in and marathons.

31. Monkeypuzzler @29… 3d is some clue is it not?

32. Phew! personally this took a long while to penetrate. Wasn’t sure whether to have a go first at the long wordy clues scattered across the grid, or the shorter ones. Eventually got going with a typical Paulism with Go indicating ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE. Thereafter all good, though for quite some time I was trying to force (Sebastian) Coe as the wrong kind of runner into the construction of loi DOCTOR’S FEE. Thought THYME smelled the sweetest of today’s clues…

33. monkeypuzzler@29 The “o” in riot and the “a” in at are both pronounced as schwa /eh/ for many of us.

34. Sometimes Paul’s multi-light marathons go in quickly and help – but not today, though TEAR A STRIP OFF and ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE made me smile when they did. Did anyone actually work out THE TAIL IS WAGGING THE DOG from its anagram? I preferred the shorter one for NEEDLEWORK. One thing to be said for multi-light solutions is that they do often help with the common problem of that blank corner where you can’t get any of the interlocking clues to find a foothold.

    Anyway, lots of fun with the rest including guy-at-rear and Met-averse (which I did know, unlike the DEAD LIFT – I’m not a gym bunny). Had to look up the PINEAL BODY too.

35. (In my head) I called this a knife-edge puzzle. Like Eileen and many of the commentators here, I was also a bit apprehensive when I saw the lie of the land, and I was right for this reason: the long answers were not gettable without a number of crossers, and getting much headway in the rest of the puzzle was not that easy without help from the long ones. Hence a slow down to a temporary halt, waiting for inspiration to come from somewhere, not knowing if it will. When it did, thankfully, everything fell into place.

    I really liked DOCTORS FEE, after I stopped trying to make the runner COE!

36. MOCHA, rhyming with British RP MOCKER, is apparently named after the Yemeni city Mocha. One lives and learns.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_mocha

37. MrBev @22 and others: I did not understand Dee for runner either, although I got to the answer by other means. I will try to remember that for the future.

38. Thanks Tim C @31. My brain must be running in safe mode today for some reason, as for some while I thought you were merely expressing a judgement on the quality of the clue rather than actually giving an example as I had requested!

39. News to me that anybody pronounces MOCHA with a short O. I was indignant solving the clue, but thanks to paddymelon looked up the pronunciation and sure enough, “mocka” is British. You live and learn.

    I resisted RANSOME for a while as unparsable until I thought of “some” as “remarkable” as in “some pig!” (Charlotte’s web.)

    Does anybody else remember that Araucaria in the 80’s used to use lots of scattered lights. I enjoyed them. (In those days nothing was on line, so the only Guardian crossword I had access to was the one in the print weekly, which was almost always an Araucaria.)

    Eileen, I appreciate it that you put the answers in bold in the blog. Some bloggers don’t, and it leaves me feeling a bit disoriented.

    [I have to leave and don’t have time to read all the comments, but before I go I want to tell a story about POMP>. Many years ago, maybe in the 70s, our local public radio station WFCR had a news reader on who managed to make even easy things sound difficult to say — sometimes too difficult for him, as when he said “polaritu” for “popularity,” or “Assectary of Defense.” He may have been drunk and trying not to sound it. But when he said, “:In England today, Queen Elizabeth celebrated her birthday with all the promp and pagnetary London could muster,” the station just shut him off and silence ensued.]

    Thanks for the puzzle, Paul, and for the accompaniment, Eileen.

40. Okay, I’ll be the “irked” one. MOCHA=MOCKER is particularly rough on Americans, since not only do we pronounce our Rs, we say MOCHA with a long O. So the two words aren’t even vaguely close over here. I’m not really complaining–it’s what I get for doing puzzles written by and for people with a different dialect.

    Otherwise, I agree with Eileen’s general sentiment: in general I get annoyed by Paul’s multiple multiple-light answers, but for some reason it was easier to get it all in today, probably because for once those long ones were actually straightforward.

41. Dr. Watson @35
    You describe my kind of solving experience with a puzzle such as this (having multiple long answers) very well. If inspiration comes when needed, things ‘fall into place’ in a very satisfying way … but if it doesn’t, they don’t!

42. Tim C @30. I know you’re joking. But it’s fun the way that British (and European, really) names for rivers have been eroded over the centuries, just like the lands they flow through, so that so many of them are not only short, but have origins lost in the mists of time. It’s believed that they all once had longer names. Anyway, the river is almost always the Dee, the Ure, the Cam, or the Exe. Occasionally they’ll go abroad for the Po or the Don.

    But just to prove you can do it:

    Dish for Nebraska banker, right? (7)

43. Me @42: also the Ouse.

44. Thank you, Eileen, for this excellent review,
    and thanks to Paul for an enjoyable workout.

45. mrpenney @42
    You might be interested to know that the Don and the Dee both flow into the North Eea at Aberdeen. Also, there is more than one Don and more than one Dee among the UK’s rivers.

46. Me @45
    Sorry: Sea, not Eea.

47. Well, my heart leaps in delight when I see it’s a Paul puzzle, and this was him on top form.

    FOI for me was METAVERSE so I was smiling/ half-laughing straightaway. PINEAL BODY, RIOT GEAR and TEAR A STRIP OFF also raised plenty of smiles.

    In fact it was all great and I thought SO-SO was better than others clearly did.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

48. I’m another who dislikes all these split entry solutions; I solve via the Guardian app on a smartphone (as I spend a lot of time in Italy and it’s a method that works everywhere), which requires a lot of scrolling up and down to work out the order of the entries and where they fit in the grid.

    Nevertheless, I did appreciate THE CALL OF NATURE and TEAR A STRIP OFF for their amusing concision. As for the other one, the surface is ragged. Tramp had some far superior long anagrams in his recent prize puzzle (and Araucaria’s were often exceedingly long and &lit to boot).

    Otherwise, I liked METAVERSE, DOCTORS FEE and PINEAL BODY.

    [Incidentally ‘moka’ is the name usually given in Italian to their ubiquitous stove-top coffee-making apparatus (it’s a trade name but used more widely) and is pronounced with a short open O as in the British English ‘mocha’. The American pronunciation drops and lengthens the vowel, as is does with ‘latte’ and ‘pasta’]

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

49. I love Paul’s crosswords, even when I can’t complete them, because he always makes me laugh and keeps me guessing with amazing anagrams. It was hard work for me today but still hugely enjoyable. Thanks!

50. Well my heart lifts when I see a Paul with multiple connected solutions. He was on top form here. No other compiler so consistently delivers that aha moment. For me anyway. We’re so very lucky to have him.

51. 13A METAVERSE has a surface that’s grammatically weird. Couldn’t Paul have written “Where virtual reality is experienced,” without harming any of the clue’s components?

    I’ll take “runner” for river, I’ll take “flower,” but you can have “banker,” thanks very much.

    Ronald@32 I went for Coe too, till I couldn’t account for the other E in FEE.

    AlanB@45 The Don also flows not only in Russia but in Canada.

52. Valentine @51: I bet the Don’s louder in Canada? 🙂

53. I always feel Paul’s puzzles resonate with those of the peerless Aruacaria-challenging but nothing to obscure. Always grateful for the blog.

54. Hurrah! It took a while but today we finished our first “Paul” without resorting to any assistance.

    Thank you Paul and Eileen

55. Congratulations, Drew! 😉

56. mrpenney @42: (Rio de la) Platter?
    Had to google it of course, but easier than finding PNC Park, which IIRC was the solution to matt w’s excellent baseball clue last year.

    [Gervase @48, interesting about US v Italian pronunciation of latte, pasta, mocha. In all three cases I think it’s because Am Eng “short” vowels are different from Br Eng (and Italian) ones.

    (In the following I’m using long/short in the popularly understood sense, not the phonetically accurate one.)

    Am Eng ‘short a’ sounds more like Br Eng ‘short e’, so if they used it for latte and pasta, it would sound closer to lette/pesta.
    Am Eng ‘short o’ sounds like Br Eng ‘short a’, so if they used it for mocha, it would sound like maka.

    By switching to the ‘long vowel’ they actually manage to preserve a sound which is more recognisably an approximation of the original Italian – or in the case of mocha (I assume) the original Arabic.

    Cf the argument between John Inverdale (UK sports commentator) and the American Jim Courier about how to say Djokovich – is the first syllable jock or joke? They carried on arguing at cross-purposes because neither could see that their disagreement was less about how to pronounce Serbian, and more about the difference between British and American vowel sounds.]

    Thanks to P & E; I agree it was a parfait Spooner; ta bc @27 for Ricky!

57. Much the hardest Paul I have seen for ages.
    Thanks both.

58. Thanks Eileen, I enjoyed this one too though it was a long haul as none of the split entries came to me very quickly. Regardless of whether it is autological, I was grateful for 16a’s simplicity as it and 25/15 were my only initial successes. 13a was coined in the book “Snowcrash” which I read not long ago, so you would think it too would have been easy but no, as I was convinced MOMA must have gone in there somewhere. It all came together eventually and was great fun, thanks Paul, and thanks for discussions of vowel sounds above too everyone.

59. I struggled a bit but I can’t blame the multi-word scattered answers though I don’t like ‘em. Nice to get PINEAL after looking for Daniel the philosopher…..?
    METAVERSE has been well bandied about this year and was my favourite.
    I was a bit annoyed at not seeing STEREO initials and also at the clue. Does anyone refer to a “stereo” these days and “player”?
    End of moan
    Thanks Eileen and Paul

60. Good challenge and enjoyed, but I can’t accept ‘some’ for ‘remarkable’ without the indefinite article (even though it is in Chambers).
    Thanks both.

61. [me @56 – apologies for misspelling Djokovic!]

62. Well it took 3 stabs & a helluva lot of patience but got there in the end without any reveals though used the check facility a couple of times & made a correction as a result. Very tough indeed but satisfying to complete albeit with a couple unparsed. Never heard of PINEAL BODY & very slow to clock the anagram indicator. Standouts for me – ANSWER THE CALL OF NATURE, TEARS OFF A STRIP, RIOT GEAR & DEAD LIFT.
    Thanks both.

63. Spooner will be gurning in his trave

64. [essexboy @61: As Nole is a Serb, his name is properly spelt in the Cyrillic alphabet (with some letters not used in Russian) so you can be half forgiven for mistransliterating it – although it does have a canonical Croatian form in Roman script, of course 🙂 . And all Italian vowels are very short in pronunciation. If Americans (and most Brits, come to that) shortened the vowel in ‘latte’, but kept the same quality, it would be a closer approximation to the Italian ]

65. Moma and Coe put me off for a while too.
    I’ve been enjoying Stanley Tucci’s culinary tour of the Italian regions on the television but was distracted by baysil and, indeed, coolinary.
    Thanks to Paul, who usually causes several smiles, and to Eileen.

66. mrpenny @42… the other river/runner/flower/banker I’ve come across in crosswords is the Fal in Cornwall.

67. Fun. Got all except 1d which I should have solved. Takes me ages so there are always lots of comments to read by the time I get here. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    I always enjoy long multi-entry clues as the shape & flow of the phrase is a clue in itself, even before any crossers, so I find they’re a little bit easier. But I’d never heard of the term “scattered lights”. Is it just you lot here that use it?!

    Similarly “Anagrind” Perhaps Qaos or another setter keen on thematics might do a crossword-terms crossword?

68. [Gervase @64: “If Americans… shortened the vowel in ‘latte’, but kept the same quality, it would be a closer approximation to the Italian.”

    The thing is, most Americans – and I’m generalising here, inevitably – don’t have a short /a/ in their repertoire of vowels, just as they don’t have a short /ɔ/ for mocha/moka.

    They only have a choice between ‘long A’ /ɑ:/ and ‘short A’ /æ/
    and ‘long O’ /oʊ/ and ‘short O’, mostly realised as /ɑ/

    You can’t ask people to use a vowel sound that’s not in the repertoire of their native language/dialect/accent (well, you can, but it’s generally pretty futile). Exactly the same problem applies to RP speakers in other contexts.

    For moka, I would say the ‘long American O’ is a better approximation to the Italian than the ‘short American O’ (because it doesn’t sound like an A); for latte, it depends on the exact quality of the /æ/ and how close it is to a /ɛ/. (My Italian is pretty basic, but I do know how they say latte and pasta 😉 ) ].

69. JaneE @67

    You make a very good point about the ‘shape and flow’ of the answers to multi-word phrases. I very often guess (correctly) all or part of the required phrase from the enumeration before I get it from the anagram (or other wordplay). I was surprised, if not shocked, that this way of solving those clues in this puzzle didn’t work for any of them!

    As for ‘scattered lights’, assuming it’s the word ‘lights’ that you are asking about, this word for ‘answers’ or ‘entries’ is peculiar to crosswordland and originated decades ago. Ximenes used it, and so did the Guardian’s Araucaria. I always believed ‘lights’ referred to the light as opposed to the dark cells in the grid – that is, where you write the answers and not the dark squares that separate them.

70. eb@56 You must know different Americans than I do. I and the ones I know pronounce the A in latte and pasta like the A in “palm,” which I think is called a broad A in common parlance. For the coffee, we pronounce “mocha” to rhyme with a non-rhotic “poker,” not with a non-rhotic “locker.” Can you give an example of a word in RP with a short A that isn’t the one in “cat?”

    Pino@65 I say neither “bayzil” nor “coolinary.”

    JaneE@67 I think I made up “scattered lights,” groping for a way to describe the thing.

71. I knew that someone would say this was “a fairly straightforward puzzle”, because I had a real concrete-brain struggle on Wednesday, with only three on first pass, and only four more when I came back to it later. Did better on Thursday, but on Friday morning I was still missing 13a. ‘New York art museum’ brought up only Guggenheim from my memory banks, and even if I’d got ‘where virtual reality experienced’ I’d have struggled to parse it. Maybe ‘not liking New York opera’ or ‘police in smoke’ might have rung a bell, but I’m not complaining, just displaying my inadequacies.

    This was a day for being on the compiler’s wavelength, but I couldn’t get a synonym, never mind an anagram, on Wednesday.

    Thanks to Paul for the torture, and Eileen for the explication as always.

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