Guardian 28,951 / Picaroon

72 comments on “Guardian 28,951 / Picaroon”

1. I’m sure GIN is short for Gin Rummy Eileen.

2. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
   I found this very difficult, working slowly from the bottom upwards. My favourite was DRAMAS.
   I suppose GIN might be a short way of saying “gin rummy”?

3. That was my guess, Tim C and muffin – thanks, both.

4. Oh, I hadn’t heard of the grape either (surprisingly, as I know quite a bit about wine!)
   I thought capitalising May in 3d was borderline unfair. I can’t remember whether it’s more acceptable to capitalise a word that hasn’t a cap, or use lower case for a word that should be capitalised.

5. I had NIM (see here) instead of Animal at 16d. I sort of remembered it from one of Martin Gardener’s recreational mathematics books.

   Never heard of HANEPOOT grapes before. Only have Merlot, Shiraz and Cab Sav in my garden.

6. Tim C @5
   Yes, NIM is more consistent with the other games, in that it only makes up part of the upward word.

7. Tim C – thanks for that. I’m sure you’re right. I had no hope of ‘sort of remembering’ it, as I’d never heard of it. I could only think of ‘big game’ – but I wasn’t really convinced!

8. Hanepoot, pie-dog and japan go into my “Obscure Words I’ll Try To Remember For Future Crosswords But Will Never Need In Real Life” list. There were many smiles, as usual for this setter. I found plenty of rising games, but there were plenty of down clues that didn’t seem to have any. But a nice idea. “Bedaub” is a strange word. Doesn’t it mean the same as “daub”?

9. Re Nim, I’ve just found the book on my shelves which prompted my memory. It’s called “Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions” by Martin Gardner (he used to write a column for Scientific American as the wiki page mentions). The chapter is called “Nim and Tac Tix”

10. Delightful but hard. I gave myself a DNF as I had to google a few combinations before I found HANEPOOT – as Eileen notes a mean anagram as any arrangement of vowels was equally implausible! The theme helped me to get LAMINA and PIE-DOG which was nice.

    Muffin @4 the principle as I understand it is that a proper noun can’t be decapitalised, but a non-proper noun can be capitalised for misdirection/surface. I guess it’s sort of arbitrary but I see it consistently applied. I thought MIDNIGHT was a great clue – “day before November 12” had me going down a couple of blind alleys.

    Thanks E&P!

11. Re 3 down: the alphabet involved has nothing to do with phonetics. It’s the international call sign alphabet, a spoken alphabet uniquely identifying spellings. But thanks anyway

12. 17D NAP is also a game.

13. I usually write ‘NATO alphabet’ but there are widespread citations for ‘NATO phonetic alphabet’:
    https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_136216.htm?selectedLocale=en
    https://www.worldometers.info/languages/nato-phonetic-alphabet/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
    I won’t give any more links or my post may be subject to moderation!

14. Togs @12 – yes, but we’d already had NAP in 4dn.

15. Togs@12. NAP’s already taken in 4D.

16. SNAP Eileen. 🙂

17. paddymelon – ha ha!

18. Never did sort out my cases from my moods, but recognised that indicative was one of them, so … As for the grape variety, a total bung and pray, maybe watching us playing the Saffers while solving helped guess the Afrikaans-ish hane + poot. Got the message of 8d early on, but the cricket called so didn’t bother about the upside down games … clever though. Thanks both.

19. grantinfreo – verbs have moods, nouns have cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, etc.) 😉

20. Not being an oenophile I had never come across the solution to 10a, and the guesses I made from the anagrist didn’t work. My lack of knowledge, not a criticism of the clue from this top class compiler.
    I hope for a better performance from myself on the puzzle in the FT from his alter ego Buccaneer.
    Thanks to setter and to Eileen, with best wishes for a healthy and happy year in 2023.

21. Entertaining puzzle. I got the key phrase very early just from the enumeration – it helped as an additional confirmation of the down solutions, but didn’t help the solving itself 🙂

    Many good clues – I particularly enjoyed PATAGONIAN and MOOD (Eileen lists only the English/Latin ones – some languages have a lot more. Optative, presumptive, inferential…!).

    I’m reasonably au fait with
    varietals, but HANEPOOT was a new one for me. Picaroon seems to have painted himself into a corner here – slight pity that he used an anagram for such a unfamiliar word, as there are several possible alternative arrangements of the letters.

    I remembered NIM from the same Martin Gardner book as TimC @9. ‘Nim’ is an archaic English word meaning ‘take’ (cf German ‘nehmen’).

    Many thanks to the Pirate and Eileen

22. Absolutely loved PATAGONIAN, all the more since my genealogy researches had revealed forebears who had emigrated to Argentina and Chile !
    Once discovered, during a rather impromptu tour of the town, AGATHA Christie, secretly holed herself up in Harrogate in 1926 after a marital difficulty. The nation was up in arms as the police escalated their investigation efforts. Christie had created a mystery in her own personal life. Could say her behaviour was another GAME !
    Thanks P & E

23. I took a while to get going but once I’d solved 8d, I got on much better.

    Lots to love throughout. Thanks very much to Picaroon (whose alter ego is in friendlier form over in the FT) and to Eileen

24. Lucky Eileen getting this one to blog
    What a combination of wit and -precision!
    Thanks all.

25. I don’t expect to get clues relating to opera and a whole lot of other things, but is FIGARO fair?
    How are we supposed to know ”servant getting married”?

    Of course I had the def at the wrong end, thinking it was some old rope (guy), given Picaroon’s nautical origins, although it might have been more appropriate in a Boatman clue. Hence my attempt was FIMANM which made no sense at all.

    And having a fair bit of trouble with the intersecting O’TOOLE (good clue), I was up the creek in a barbed-wire canoe.

26. [I can vouch for the accuracy of the surface of the clue for TRAY. I once turned up a bit late for a dinner in La Coupole, which is one of the more upmarket Paris restaurants. Everybody else had already been served their starters so I hastily plumped for “sardines millésimées” on the grounds that I wasn’t sure what they were and might be interesting. Only a few minutes later the waiter arrived, bearing a tray high above his head, possibly so noone could see the contents, then plumped it down on the table, revealing a bed of salad on which reposed the sardines, still in their tin, whose label explained how they were matured for years in the finest olive oil, and regularly rotated like bottles of champagne.]

27. paddymelon @ 24 – As an opera fan FIGARO was obvious to me, but isn’t The Marriage Of Figaro one of the most famous operas, even for non-fans?

28. Paddymelon@24: FIGARO was FOI for me. I don’t regard myself as hugely knowledgeable about opera but this is a favourite and one of the greatest ever composed. The thing about GK is that it isn’t particularly G. I’m often flummoxed by botanical clues, cricket or (in this case) obscure grapes.

29. copmus @24 – I agree on all counts!

    paddymelon@25 – I suppose it’s another instance of things being obscure if you don’t know them. I just happen to know about ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ since I was a child.

    [Here’s a rather arcane story that some may appreciate. When I was at Bristol University, the drama department (the only one in the country then) put on an avant-garde translation, with music, both by students, of Beaumarchais’ play. On the opening night, one of the telegrams, addressed to the composer, read ‘Voi que sapete so much better than me, Wolfgang Amadeus’.]

30. To be honest Shirl@26, while I knew the title, I never knew or thought about who Figaro might be. But you inspired me to listen to some of the music , which has been a pleasant interlude. Voi che sapete. 🙂

    The wordplay is very fair though, once I got the whole thing reversed, and then looked up the def, which I have to do with many clues. So no grumbles, happy now.

31. and poc and Eileen, we crossed! Been away listening to Mozart.

32. Very late to the plate today but what a sparkler to light up my morning. Yes, some obscure words but the downs would have left some challenging spaces to fill so Picaroon has my sympathy. In a way, the surprise is that more obscurities were not forced.

    Favourites today include PITMAN, ENGAGINGLY, PATAGONIAN, PLIERS, STRADDLE and MIDNIGHT. Capitalisation is a super tool for the setter to use for misdirection and, for me, May = MIGHT was splendidly done. Parsing that one defeated me until the very end – did anyone else find themselves desperately trying to equate the solution with 12a – ENGAGINGLY?

    I wrongly identified the game in O’TOOLE as LOOT which is a card game, I believe (as well as the word given to items accumulated during computer games as a coincidental link to games).

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

33. New for me: HANEPOOT; PIE-DOG.

    Liked AGATHA, MIDNIGHT, GARBLE when I finally worked it out – I never saw this device before; DRAMAS; JAPANS; TRAY; LAMINA (loi).

    I did not parse 6ac FIGARO apart from rev of IF.

    Theme was hard for me to see, but got it eventually after I finished the puzzle although tbh I did not bother to look for all the games.

    Thanks, both.

    I laughed when I read Geoff @8: Hanepoot, pie-dog and japan go into my “Obscure Words I’ll Try To Remember For Future Crosswords But Will Never Need In Real Life” list.
    I have a (mental, not written down) list like that too!

34. Phew! Felt I really had to have my wits about me to complete this puzzle. One of the few times that solving the key THE GAME IS UP clue actually helped in solving a few I wasn’t very sure about. The upside down Snap in JAPANS and Brag in GARBLE and Ludo in NODULE, for instance. Thought MIDNIGHT a very obtuse clue indeed. Haven’t seen TIRAMISU for a while, having appeared quite frequently in the past. Last one in was PITMAN. Thanks for the challenge Picaroon…

35. I almost convinced myself that 10ac was OENOPATH. But I couldn’t quite believe that being a grape for something was slang for being a big fan of it.

36. Took a couple of sittings, but still a lot of fun.

    Early on, noting that 8d said “… PLANS have been thwarted”, and the only down solutions in place then being samPAN and jaPANs – well, wouldn’t you have been totally misdirected too?

    Till I reparsed the clue I was wondering if Peter O’Toole was really English. Apparently, he had a Scottish mother, Irish father, but he himself was born in Leeds. But irrelevant for this puzzle.

    Thanks P&E

37. I had don (a card game) as the game for 20d, but ludo is better.

38. 26ac reminded me that when I was in school in Cardiff in the ‘50s our welsh teacher told us that the only welsh language newspaper in the world was published in Patagonia. No idea if it’s still true.

39. [AidaN @37
    There were certainly a lot of Welsh settlers in Patagonia. They were the start of the Argentinian rugby culture.]

40. Gave up after the invredibly obscure 2dn. I was thinking of the Admirable Crichton. But how many butlers are there in films, besides Rhett? I’m sure others found the deep obscurity “fun”…..

41. Nobody has congratulated Picaroon in being able to incorporate LOO non-lavatorially 🙂

42. DeepThought @39
    The Admirable Crichton was my first thought too – Kenneth More, wasn’t it?
    The clue is a good example of how to get round my caps/lower case query @4 – make the word in question the first in a sentence.

43. TonyG @34, I also spent some time trying to justify OENOPATH. I even found a website where the word features, though the author did say that she had made it up. Seems like a word that really should exist, somehow!

44. Many thanks Picaroon and Eileen.
    I seem to recall that NIM had a burst of popularity at about the time of (and probably because of) the publication of Martin Gardener’s book (1959) – and which might have something to do with its surreal appearance in Alain Resnais’ L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961).

45. What’s the reversed game in “pie-dog’ please?(I can’t see how the games were ‘highlighted in the blog”).I see that there is a thing called a God game,so presumably that’s it,but gaming is a mystery to me – I got bored with Pacman,and never went back.But some of you Gradgrinders out there might like to know that Odei is the Basque spirit of thunder,and DEI is the “concept” of Diversity,Equity and Inclusion,but I’m sure no self-respecting Grauniad reader would regard that as a “game”…

46. Just GO, Crabbers.

    [I remember being very impressed by that film when I was a teenager, PeterO; of course, I had no idea what it was all about (does anyone?)]

47. Doh!
    OK,I’m Going now

    (Thanks)

48. Great puzzle! Thanks P & E. Like others (muffin, Gervase), I thought I knew my grape types but HANEPOOT was certainly new to me.

49. Thanks Picaroon. While it was fun searching for the various games I thought tbe clues themselves lacked the pizzazz I normally expect from this setter. I finally revealed the last handful just to move onto something else. Favourite was PATAGONIAN. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

50. Thanks, Picaroon & Eileen. As another who works through puzzles in order, across then down, I had the same experience of being 3/4 through my first pass before realising there was a theme. And with the answers I already had in place, nothing seemed at all obvious. When the penny finally dropped, I didn’t stop laughing for several minutes. Brilliant.

    Paddymelon @24 – I think it’s fair. It only requires very superficial knowledge of the play/opera (pub quiz level rather than Mastermind special subject level). I have the advantage of having studied the Beaumarchais play at university. On the other hand, I’ve never seen Gone With The Wind, but again that clue doesn’t require in-depth knowledge, and “Butler in film” simply screamed Clark Gable at me.

    For those who enjoyed this one, Picaroon’s alter ego in the FT today is also superb – though very different to this one (and somewhat harder IMO).

51. For once I got the theme early on, thanks to the explicit 8d. It didn’t help me solve anything, but I did have fun looking for the games afterwards. I found about half of them!

52. What a clever theme.
    The only FIGARO I am familiar with is the Mexican bandit in the Topper comic.
    Opera passed me by unfortunately.
    Thanks both.

53. MikeC@47, gif@17,TimC
    The reason you may not have come across it is that Hanepoot is grown in SA as a table or eating grape and used to produce drinking grape juice. It is Muscat elsewhere, Moscato in Australia. It produces a very sweet wine which is used to sweeten other grapes in cool years. The name allegedly originates from Honey Pot, which is what the planters called it, this turned into Ha Ne Poot in Afrikaans. It does not travel well. It is one of the oldest unmodified wines. (Janis Robertson 1986).

54. Thanks, CliveinFrance
    HIYD – Figaro makes a fleeting appearance in Bohemian Rhapsody.

55. HIYD/muffin – not forgetting Brotherhood of Man, and Noel Edmonds’ classic figure-O homophone? (How come he never set crosswords? 😉 )

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen for all the fun and games.

56. Gervase@20, Eileen
    Hanepoot, I can not discover either another word that is an anagram of NOT A HOPE or a word that would fit the crossers. Perhaps Hanepoot was the first word and the others fitted around. Next time you are in a supermarket buying white grapes from SA look at the variety name.
    Thanks for a super crossword and blog.

57. If only it were a down clue
    Wine from the South – it’s amusing to uncork upside down (8)

58. Essexboy
    Took a bit of time as was trying tolink to Noel Edmonds but very very good

59. I once played Nim – not the game but the part in Henry V.

60. Thanks Clive.
    Pino – there was also Nim Chimpsky.

61. [Tim C@5 grapes The grapes that grow on the arbor in my back yard are two unidentifiable types (so they said at the Ag Extension office when I tried to find out). They’re probably from the home vineyard of whatever Italian family lived in my house in 1890 or 1910 or whenever they arrived. My neighborhood was still quite Italian when I moved here i 1990, but is much less so now. The grown kids or grandkids are moving to the suburbs just to the south, along with several of the Italian restaurants or shops that used to be part of my local community.]

    shirl@26 I’d guess that non-opera fans who have heard of The Marriage of Figaro wouldn’t necessarily know that Figaro was a servant.

    HANEPOOT was indeed a total unknown, but I think I’ve run across both pie-dog and japan as a verb in books, more commonly as “japanned.” I have certainly never used them in real life or met anybody else who did.

    TonyG@34 I was tempted by OENOPATH too, but couldn’t think of anything it might mean.

    [AidaN@37 and muffin@38 I’ve heard of Welsh-speaking soldiers from both sides of the Falkland War encountering each other in their common language.]

    DeepThought@39 I tried to think of a film butler, and the only one who came up was the one John Gielgud played in Arthur in 1981. (Thanks, Google, for helping my dim memory.) Didn’t think to capitalize the B!

    Thanks to Picaroon for the clever challenge and Eileen for the cheerful elucidation.

62. Thanks for that, Eileen @18 … shouldn’t be too hard to remember 🙂

63. Sorry, ginf – once a teacher … 😉

64. Thanks to all for the various information about Nim and HANEPOOT grapes. Valentine, the Italians in Sydney are big winemakers and their favoured grape here judging what’s on offer around February in the wholesale markets would be Shiraz (Syrah).
    I was another who tried Oenopath which sounds like it should be a word, but I guess the idea is possibly covered by Oenophile.
    It also took me ages for the penny to drop with GARBLED. I’d got into the mental rut of thinking Rab Butler and spent a while trying to parse Rabble.

65. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/770/loot

66. Fun and games this week in Crosswordland, though I was defeated by the grape at 10a and had to look up Bradford’s “blue book” of Lists to get HANEPOOT. Thanks to Picaroon for lots of deviousness – I enjoyed spotting all the games and using my highlighter pen to make the grid colourful once I was finished and spotted what 8d THE GAME IS UP was all about! Very grateful to Eileen as well for today’s terrific blog.
    [Also echoing others’ thanks to bodycheetah for the help with the Maskarade Prize puzzle, and the same appreciation to whoever provided the link to the other Christmas-themed puzzle I have been working on this week.]

67. [The latter appreciation goes to paddymelon for the link to the Observer Christmas crossword by James Brydon aka Picaroon. Both the Maskarade assistance and the Observer link are in the 15² blog for the Picaroon Prize which appeared on the festive weekend.]

68. New grape for me too and PIE-DOG.
    Having got theme clue I was looking for games in every other down answer…. but the are everywhere?
    My favourite was MIDNIGHT
    Anyone still there…Eileen?
    Thanks both

69. It’s now late, Eileen @62, but no not at all, happy to be taught!

70. CiF @52, love it that what I thought sounded Africaans was in fact a homophonic Englishism!

71. Tim@67 here every other means ALL other down clues, but I agree that every other CAN mean alternate down clues.

72. Thanks Ros

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