Guardian 28,970 – Pangakupu

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A nice puzzle with some elegant clueing. Thanks to Pangakupu.

I noticed that the left and right columns contained the letters KORIPO MARAMA, which I see means bad weather in the Māori language. For those that don’t know, Pangakupu – another Māori word, meaning (roughly) “crossword” – is an alias of Phi, who lives in New Zealand.

 
Across
1 KING LEAR One driven mad by Regan and ilk? (4,4)
Anagram of REGAN ILK, and it’s an &lit, also called “clue as definition” by some. Regan is one of Lear’s three daughters in the Shakespeare play
6 WISDOM Weak ideology limiting party intelligence (6)
W[eak] + DO (party) in ISM (ideology)
9 ON HAND Prepared location for some nails? (2,4)
Double definition
10 CREAM TEA Male brought in to make a meal (5,3)
M in CREATE + A
11 RECTANGLE Figure in uncovered sunken ship will be adjacent to seaweed (9)
[w]REC[k] + TANGLE (a kind of seaweed); “will be” makes the cryptic reading a bit awkward and I think could be omitted without spoiling the surface reading
13 ATTAR Rosy stuff? Half of that’s black stuff (5)
Half of thAT + TAR
15 RELIEF Position that’ll block official aid (6)
LIE (position, as in golf) in REF
17 KOBOLD Possible result of punch striking secretly helpful creature? (6)
KO (knockout) + BOLD (striking) – it’s a mythical sprite from Germanic folklore
18 RAPPEL Mostly criticised student: letting oneself down? (6)
RAPPE[d] + L (learner, student)
19 KITSCH Children pursuing small mam­mals? Insufferably twee (6)
KITS + CH
21 IMPEL Force that is keeping military police liberal (5)
MP in I.E.+ L[iberal]
22 MELISMATA Thrash metal’s aim, creating tunes (9)
(METAL’S AIM)*
25 PENDULUM Ultimate source of utility in prize clock component (8)
END (ultimate) + U[tility] in PLUM (prize)
26 OSMIUM I’m interrupting musician that’s rejected dense material (6)
IM in reverse of MUSO
28 OSPREY Hidden observer coming round about in pursuit of ordinary bird (6)
O[rdinary] + RE (about) in SPY
29 TASMANIA Tense chap residing in large land mass — or small land mass (8)
T[ense] + MAN in ASIA
Down
2 INN Drinking hole popular with additional number (3)
IN + N
3 GIANT Vast expansion of G & T — one tucks in (5)
A in GIN +T
4 ENDANGERED Close and hot on the way out? (10)
END (close) + ANGERED (hot)
5 RECALL Substantial latitude given about source of computer memory (6)
C[omputer] in REAL (substantial) + L[atitude]
6 WREN Source of reconstruction in London, say (4)
R[econstruction] in WEN (London is nicknamed the Great Wen); and another &lit, referring to Christopher Wren’s rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666
7 SUMPTUOUS Rich politician turned out in America, swinging both ways (9)
MP + OUT* in SU + US
8 OPEN‑AND‑SHUT Straightforward writer in thousand, possibly (4-3-4)
PEN in THOUSAND*
12 EAR TRUMPETS What you’d associate with Beethoven, true master possibly around piano (3,8)
P in (EAR TRUMPETS)* – see some examples here
14 SOLICITOUS Historic coins, encompassing old legal tender? (10)
O + LICIT (legal) in SOUS (old coins)
16 LIP READER One may get something from television that they couldn’t get from radio (3,6)
Cryptic definition
20 HELMET Satisfied after cure’s put paid to a nutcase (6)
HEAL less A + MET (satisfied)
23 MAMBA Harm dodged by one sailor that’s turned up a snake (5)
MAIM less I + reverse of AB (sailor)
24 FLAY Old horse-drawn vehicle carrying a whip (4)
A in FLY
27 UNI Not quite a group study centre (3)
A truncated UNIT (group of e.g. soldiers)

64 comments on “Guardian 28,970 – Pangakupu”

  1. Quite challenging, with a good number of smiles. I’d never heard of a kobold, nor fly as a vehicle. The latter is definition 26 in Collins, and it’s apparently specifically British. Didn’t know tangle was seaweed, nor that London was the Great Wen (although it was easy to solve not knowing this). We had a robust debate for W=weak just yesterday elsewhere, so no need to do so again.

  2. I agree that “will be” is a bit clumsy in RECTANGLE. I also wondered whether “letting oneself down” should be Rapelling rather than RAPPEL.
    Favourite was LIP READER.

  6. A helmet in slang doesn’t mean nutcase. It means dickhead. Quite literally as it is a reference to a purple helmet. Very different.

  7. Thanks, Pangakupu & Andrew. I really struggled with this, but looking back over it, I can’t think why – as you say, Andrew, it’s all very elegantly clued – that elegance only slightly marred by using source as a first letter indicator three times (was starting to wonder if it was a theme). No quibbles over any of the parsing, all fair and makes sense. Just not got my brain in gear this morning. Particularly liked the &lit for WREN.

  8. Andy @6 – save that one for the Viz crossword, perhaps. I like “nutcase”, as in a case for your nut, as a whimsical definition of helmet.

  9. Andy @6 – a helmet is a “case” for a head or “nut”.

    Thanks to Epeolater and KVa for spotting my faulty underlining in 20d – I’ll correct it.

  10. Kobold. Melismata. I often feel that compilers get to the point where rather than change the crossword to use less obscure words, they dig out obscurities. I can already feel the knock backs (knocks back?) From other bloggers, but that’s how I feel. At least after yesterday I got W for weak.

  11. Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew
    What an entertaining puzzle. Too many favourites to mention them all, but I must reference KING LEAR, WREN, SOLICITOUS, and HELMET (whick took me a long time to parse!)
    KOBOLD gives us the element name “cobalt” – mini-theme with OSMIUM?

  12. On the tough side for me, but a couple of nice penny-drop moments. Of course I didn’t know MELISMATA or KOBOLD, but I did work out RAPPEL as a jorum (I have a problem with heights, so have never experienced the thing itself). Liked the two &lits KING LEAR and WREN.

  13. I failed on MELISMATA – a word I’ve never come across before, and while it was clearly an angram of metal’s aim, the unchecked letters could be arranged in multiple plausible patterns. Also, it seems it refers to sequences of notes rather than what I’d call complete tunes – but close enough I suppose.
    Apart from that, pretty enjoyable. Liked WREN for its conciseness. I learned today that the term “the great wen” for London was invented by Cobbett in the 1820s, and not from about the 17th century as I’d thought.
    Thanks Andrew and Pangakupu.

  14. I thought this was trying too hard – three ‘new-to-me’ words in one crossword (ATTAR, KOBOLD, MELISMATA). Apart from that I enjoyed it!

  15. New: MELISMATA, KIT = kitten; RAPPEL; KOBOLD.

    Liked HELMET, UNI.

    I did not parse 6d (got as far as R in WEN) and 15ac.

    Thanks, both.

    Bad weather? It is zero degrees here but sunny with a clear blue sky. Lovely!

  16. I enjoyed this despite finding it quite hard. I couldn’t get 17a from the crossers so had to reveal, but was relieved to find it was a word I’d never heard of. I also DNK melismata for tunes, or London as the Great Wen, but managed to get them both from the clueing. I did know the horse drawn fly, however. I wonder if these new words will stay with me!
    Thanks Andrew and Pangakupu where surely the weather is not too bad at present? I lived there until age 12 and have only been back twice. Whether I will visit again before I die is a big question.

  17. I like WREN, KING LEAR and SOLICITOUS. I had a vague memory of KOBOLD from Faust, but I I always imagined them as mischievous, rather than helpful.

  19. A tough challenge. I managed to work out several ‘unknowns to me’ from the wordplay but failed on ‘kobold’ despite thinking of the ‘ko’ element.
    So, disappointed to be beaten at the end but I enjoyed the rest of the puzzle.

  20. Enjoyable but curiously uneven puzzle, with some transparent clues for common words and some more convoluted ones for some of the rarities.

    RAPPEL was the only word I hadn’t come across (TimC @2 it is a ‘letting down’) – strangely, because nobody else has quoted it as a DNK! 🙂 Like muffin I knew KOBOLD as the source of the name for cobalt, and I knew MELISMATA as the coloratura figures where a single syllable is stretched over a series of notes (hardly a ‘tune’ though, as beaulieu @13 remarks).

    Like others I particularly liked KING LEAR and WREN.

    Thanks to S&B

  21. Enjoyable; I knew MELISMA so guessed the plural, didn’t like nutcase and I have never thought of kobolds as helpful?

  22. Much less verbose cluing this time and all the better for it. I liked GIANT and SUMPTUOUS. Is the question mark the anagrind for KING LEAR?

    Didn’t know KOBOLD but I definitely want one 🙂

    Cheers S&B

  23. Thanks Andrew for confirming some parsing (eg L = Latitude – but then what is Longitude?), the Nina (Lyssian@18 yes currently seems to be a moderate La Nina period though there is some expectation of El Nino conditions later in 2023) and for the full definition of KOBOLD – like Petert I thought of them as rather less pleasant (at least as encountered in fantasy gamebooks etc of my youth) but Wikipedia backs up their more helpful nature in classical folklore.
    I found this somehow easier than other Pangakupu efforts but having said that got lucky with 22A first attempt. Lots of good clues with 7d and 20d standing out as well as the &Lits – thanks Pangakupu.

  24. I find it hard to believe that this was Phi-whom i solve most Phidays
    Almost like he was given special instructions for the Graun
    Same thing with Monk and Harpo
    Monk is Monk in both Indy and FT
    Nimrod is IO is Elgar and once in a blue moon Enigmatist in the Graun

    But he is always JH and we hardly ever se an Enigmatist in the GH.

    Picaroon changes names but not quality and style.

    “And it makes me wonder”

  25. I vaguely knew the climbing sense of RAPPEL, but I’m much more familiar with the word on French road signs, where it means “reminder”.

  26. Great to see Tassie get a guernsey. I agree with beaulieu @13 that cluing an obscurity like MELISIMATA as an anagram is tough, with no wordplay to help with the letter order. As a onetime caver, RAPPEL was very familiar, though I always think of it as American (we used ‘abseil’). I liked (and knew) KOBOLD. SUMPTUOUS and KING LEAR were clever (though we had the answer for the latter before realising it was also an anagram). Thanks, Pangakupu and Andrew.

  30. An enjoyable solve, despite some relative obscurities. I see with the NINA though that there were few alternatives to MELISMATA (Heliomata) and ATTAR (at war). However, there were some others for KOBOLD (no good, do good, toroid etc); thanks to muffin @11, I now know that cobalt is derived from KOBOLD, so perhaps it is not as obscure as I thought.

    I liked the small mammals in KITSCH, the good surface for SUMPTUOUS, and the legal tender in SOLICITOUS. As Andrew has pointed out, the ‘will be’ in 11 was rather unnecessary and misleading.

    Thanks Pang and Andrew.

  32. BaldyB@28 There’s the word ‘around’ in the clue to signify the * going across the “p”.

    I have been a cat lover for years and have never heard anyone use KIT for KITTENS, although Google reveals it’s fine for use in small foxes, so that’s alright.

    Being an ex-I.T.er, I loved the misdirection in in 5 dn with it being “C” that was active and “memory” the definition.

    On a current Brit/New Zealand theme, I’m currently watching Norrie vs. Lestienne in the Aus Tennis and the “hawkeye” system has just failed and given points to the wrong player ! This on the day after the floodlights failed and a porn-broadcast practical joke featured live on BBC1’s football match last evening ! Must be a follow-on from Friday 13th last week. Also loads of rain in the Aus Summer.

    Thank you Pangakupu and Andrew.

  33. Beaten all ends up but some nice entertainment with SUMPTUOUS getting the silver tassie. Of those I got I needed Andrew’s help with parsing OSPREY, GIANT (I was thinking ‘G an’ T’ with ‘I’ inserted: sooo bad), WREN (live and learn).

    Thanks both.

    [Andrew: what BaldyB@28 says (Flea@32: I think you’ve got the wrong end of some stick) and also the ‘I’m’ in OSMIUM has to be included in the reversal.] [Fwiw.]

  34. Well that was a struggle. Solving required far too much obscure general knowledge for my liking e.g KOBOLD, MELISMATA, ATTAR and MUSO in the wordplay for OSMIUM (another obscurity for me). Couldn’t have completed this without the help of Mr Google.
    Grump over. Thanks Andrew and P.

  35. I am unhappy with KOBOLD for 17A. I know of the Germanic spirit, but believe they are mischievous, sometimes malicious, rather than helpful, so that threw me off. (Corrections welcome).

    Other than that, a satisfactorily challenging solve.

  37. Several times I wondered whether I should persevere with this, as I managed to solve nho clues like MELISMATA, ATTAR and RAPPEL, and also had some that I simply couldn’t parse after I had fairly confidently inserted them in place. Finally defeated by the interlocking KOBOLD, OSMIUM and SOLICITOUS.
    But I did enjoy the challenge as far as I could manage it. Thought WREN a very sneaky little 4 letter clue, though I had that one in and wondered why exactly. Thanks Andrew therefore for clearing up the question marks today. Liked PENDULUM most of all…

  38. MUSO is new to me. I got GIANT but couldn’t parse it, so thanks, Andrew.

    Said Sir Christopher WREN,
    “I’m going out to dine with some men.
    If anyone calls,
    Tell them I’m designing St. Paul’s.”

    As I was going to St Ives
    I met a man with seven wives.
    Every wife had seven sacks,
    Every sack had seven cats,
    Every cat had seven kits,.
    Kits, cats, sacks and wives —
    How many were going to St. Ives?

    Good puzzle. My own favorite was SOLICITOUS, for the legal tender as remarked above. Thanks to Pangakapu and Andrew.

  39. Just wondering: is “MUSO” a common term for a musician Down Under? Is it part of the antipodean trend to truncate a word and add “-o” as in “I’m going down the servo for the arvo smoko”? :-}

  40. I’m surprised how many posters haven’t heard of “attar of roses”.

    [Valentine @38
    I’ve always thought that the St. Ives riddle doesn’t work. Suppose you were, as is probable, walking faster than the company and simply caught them up?]

  41. Wasted a lot of time on the two ridiculous obscurities, and wished I’d just cheated sooner. I’ll remember for any future Pangakapus.

  42. Muffin @ 40 and Valentine @ 38. I always thought the answer was zero, unless the first person is a wife themselves, so then the answer is 1. I am going to St Ives, they must be coming from St Ives.

  44. Thanks Andrew for your helpful blog and illustrations.
    Managed to solve most from wordplay, except LIP READER which took me forever to see, and MELISMATA.
    Perhaps we can add ”thrash metal” to the heavy metal mini theme which muffin has alluded to @11. Interesting to learn the connection between kobold and cobalt. Crosswords are such a mine of information.
    I love the stories about the kobolds, helpful provided you don’t cross them, a moral tale for households. Maybe that’s why German people are known for fastidiously clean houses. (I must have crossed them too many times.)

    SUMPTUOUS was a bit rich. Made me laugh.

  45. At top left I thought “too easy” but then Kobold, Melismata! I got so stuck. Also couldn’t get LIP READER and gave up. I had IN HAND not ON HAND

  47. DeepThought@39. I was surprised at your question about ”muso”. While acknowledging the tendency for Australians to abbreviate using ”o” at the end, I thought ”muso” for musician was universal. In fact, I thought Pakapangu could have clued that with a little more disguise in OSMIUM.

    So looked it up and found Collins online gives:

    slang
    1. British derogatory
    a musician, esp a pop musician, regarded as being overconcerned with technique rather than musical content or expression
    2. Australian
    any musician, esp a professional one

    I now wonder if ”musician that’s rejected” has an extra significance (apart from the reversal indication), in the British sense.

  48. Overall a fine crossword, but in the NW I started off fairly easily then ground to a halt in the mid- E. Took ages to figure out the two Ks and the tunes. Almost like doing two different puzzles.

    Liked CREAM TEA, PENDULUM, OSMIUM and SOLICITOUS.

    Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew

  50. Thanks for the blog , some very good clues here, SOLICITOUS was very deceptive. I liked the REC bit from RECTANGLE.
    KOBOLD was a clever construction but I suspect the miners would not find the sprites helpful, or their cousin nickel.

  51. Sitting in the sun in Madeira I very much enjoyed this puzzle, especially the simple craft of sumptuous, wisdom, solicitous and pendulum.

  52. Enjoyed that. Felt like I was not on the right wavelength on the first pass, but the second run through filled in almost all the gaps, except for ATTAR and MELISMATA which needed some extra cogitation. I was obsessed with PENTANGLE for the figure in 11 before reaching the wreck synonym.
    I think IN HAND works better than the given solution, which is more like available than prepared.
    Extremely minor parsing discrepancy: I saw SUMPTUOUS as MP + reversal of OUT in SU/US.

    Ta, P&A.

  53. Alphalpha @33; I also parsed GIANT as G ‘an T with I inserted. It seems to me that the ‘expansion’ leads to this parsing, although maybe G could be expanded to GIN.

  54. I am surprised at those who have never heard of ATTARs (which can be purchased in many of those shops that sell candles and incense and stuff like that) and RAPPELling (which is fun as hell, by the way). MELISMATA I dredged up from some obscure corner of my brain, but I did not know the KOBOLD.

    And yeah, “muso” for musician sounded Australian to me; it’s certainly another “not in American English” thing, so not universal at all.

  56. Too many obscurities in the answers and wordplay in the RHS for me to complete, LHS was fine though, I enjoyed looking up the obscurities in the dictionary though.
    Looking forward to reading the blog.
    Thanks both.

  57. 1a was great to get one of the daughters into the anagram fodder.
    I took KIT to be a young beaver.
    I must have missed the debate on W=WEAK. Not sure why C=COMPUTER, but I’m sure there is a good reason.

  59. HYD@57 the clue has SOURCE of computer.
    The lesson on the WEAK interaction was yesterday in the Boatman blog. The test is on Friday.

  60. Poor old Robert Hooke. Wren gets all the credit for the post 1666 rebuild, but Hooke did a lot of the work with him.

  61. Tough puzzle. Took two visits and an embarrassing amount of bung/check activity in the last stretch. A few obscure words, which gave off a slight whiff of ‘gridfill trauma’. I don’t generally mind obscure words if they are clued sympathetically (eg OSMIUM was quite gettable) but an anagram for an obscure word is harsh (MELISMATA).

    ‘Hot’ = ANGERED was a tad stretchy. And I could open an a can of semantic worms by suggesting there’s quite a difference between WISDOM and ‘intelligence’, but I won’t!

    All that said, I did enjoy it – obscure words educate me 🙂 and there were some marvellous clues such as KING LEAR and CREAM TEA.

    Thanks both, for the workout and the subsequent enlightenment.

  62. [Osmium, as well as being dense, has a strong smell that gives it its name – actually from the volatile tetroxide, which forms so readily that powdered osmium catches fire on exposure to air.]

  64. Intriguing to read that “muso” might have a pejorative insinuation in the UK. It doesn’t here. I am one — I’m well aware of melisma and melismatic, although melismata is new to me.

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