Guardian 28,981 / Paul

90 comments on “Guardian 28,981 / Paul”

1. ISTANBUL
   CONSTANT in O PLE

2. O CONSTANT PLE
   city

3. Of course – many thanks!

4. Well, I did try, but finally defeated by ARTE POVERA, and therefore the final piece in the puzzle, the chessmen SPASSKY. Too many unparsed clues to call this one of Paul’s more enjoyable tests…

5. O constant plecity – is Constant in o ple City – so Constantinople City = Istanmbul

   I didn’t know ARTE POVERA either, so was my last in.

   Thank you to Eileen and Paul

6. 17D refers to Istanbul’s old name
   CONSTANT in OPLE

7. Chessman, only one of him…

8. I am rarely on Paul’s wavelength and today was no exception.

   Liked PRESS CLUB, ARTE POVERA.

   New for me 7d chine = backbone; ELEMI tree; Boris SPASSKY.

   I did not parse
   1/2ac the KAPIP bit but managed the rest of it
   14ac
   17d – thanks KVa @1. I had a feeling that we needed to separate PLE/CITY but I couldn’t manage to parse it.

   6d I agree it is hidden in chloriNE ONly

   Thanks, both.

9. Pretty tricky, needing several revisits. Some of the constructions were truly Byzantine, notably TOPKARI PALACE, ISTANBUL, INTOLERANCE, PANACEA and ARTE POVERA. Good thing we have 15^2 to unravel such things. Yet, others were really nice: LUKEWARM, PRESS CLUB, DOWN THE TOILET, the Ne/Cl pair. So, a bit of a curate’s egg for us. Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

10. There is a very nice message from one of Gaufrid’s daughters posted today with some photos of Gaufrid and info re the funeral on 6th February
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/01/30/gaufrid-dad/

11. Thanks Paul and Eileen
    I’m probably not alone in getting ISTANBUL from 1,2 rather than its clue – clever, though.

12. *TOPKAPI

13. I don’t fully understand the “up and down” reference in the clue for 23, 19.

14. Also defeated by ARTE POVERA and LUKEWARM. ISTANBUL too clever by half and only got it by guessing TOPKAPI PALACE, which was a great clue (must visit some day). Eileen, I think the a in ARTE POVERA should not be underlined as part of the definition. Although defeated, this was a marvellous challenge.

    Ta Paul & Eileen for a super blog

15. ANTILLES
    a minor typo Eileen
    SELL: deal (gets- a link word)

16. simonc@13
    re 23/19 I was thinking it might mean that the angels are above in heaven and below on earth (as the bike gang)

17. Angels above (in the skies) and Hells below (the earth), maybe?

18. 17 D Istanbul. Constant in o ple?

19. I mean ‘hell is below the earth’!!!

20. The LSD clue reminds me of an Ali G sketch where he is talking to a drug expert who tells him re a certain medication
    “You’ll have a sense of wooziness and not relate to where you are at present,,,,” and Ali cuts him short saying “And what about the negative effects”
    Nice blog Eileen-I just smelt Constantine!

21. Defeated but educated by ARTE POVERA and TOPKAPI PALACE. Parsing of a few escaped me til I got here — INTOLERANCE went in fine but didn’t spot the ‘signal of support’ and think it’s a tad stretchy; likewise HELLS ANGELS fit perfectly but I’ve only just deciphered the cryptic clue.

    I don’t have many pet peeves crossword-wise, and think of myself as quite a flexible thinker, but I really don’t like clues that use made-up words like ‘plecity’. Rebus/Dingbats-style clues are perfectly fine, but it’s a crossword, please use real words in them!

    Thanks both 🙂

22. I am another who missed ISTANBUL (not) Constantinople but I found this a very pleasant mix of clues. Thanks, both.

23. This was hard especially for a Tuesday, but at least not too many references linking different clues. No way could I have got Istanbul or Arte Povera so had to reveal thos, making me very eager for today’s blog. Many thanks to Eileen and the early bloggers for parsing, although on the whole I feel quite pleased that I managed to get so many! Thanks to Paul for the workout, maybe I will climb onto your erudite wave length one day!

24. Another to fail on ARTE POVERA and also had no idea of the parsing of ISTANBUL; I agree with Rob T @21 about ‘plecity’. Once I’d worked them out, I liked the ‘Boris playing intellectual game’ def, TOPKAPI PALACE and LUKEWARM.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

25. RobT @ 21, plecity is a surname for various famous people including one of the heads of a European Commission directorate, so not really a made up word. Obviously I googled it before I gave up and pressed reveal!

26. Good to see a different Boris, especially as it was Spassky’s birthday yesterday

27. Thanks for the corrections AlanC @14 and KVa @15 (and I had it as an anagram, too!). Sorted now.

28. SinCam @25, yes, that came up in my research 🙂 but would only have met my (admittedly nitpicky) criteria if it had been ‘O, constant Plecity’ which also has the benefit of actually making sense as a surface!

29. Paul is one of my favourites and this didn’t disappoint. Lots of favourites but Eileen has listed most of them.

    Special praise for ISTANBUL – I gather some people don’t like this style of clue but I thought it was a corker. I guess I like the mental gymnastics involved even if it’s not for the purist.

    The art movement was my LOI and I feel duly educated.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

30. O constant plecity – grrrr classic Paul.

    I think my favourite was TYPIST, for the brief moment I spent wondering how the %@&£& is a typist a key worker before the light dawned.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

31. I’d seen ELEMI before but had forgotten it. ARTE POVERA was new, and I needed a list of famous Borises to find SPASSKY (not helped by a fixation on heavens above = MY as it so often is).

    Paul has done a few of those x-in-y dingbat clues lately, so Constantinople became ISTANBUL quite easily -though I couldn’t parse TOPKAPI PALACE. The hidden answer requiring another clue to be solved (NEON) is a newish Paul device too: good fun.

    Liked CASHPOINTS, SECULARISM and TYPIST (probably an extinct occupation nowadays).

32. I’m very familiar with the arte povera movement – but I still didn’t get it.

33. Pleased that Paul managed to resist a homophone for 1d. I enjoyed the puzzle, though ARTE POVERA and ELEMI were new to me. Paul has used a similar device to the one for ISTANBUL fairly recently. I think it would be better if ‘plecity’ wasn’t a nonsense word, but I appreciate that would severely limit the use of the device. Liked 11 and 25. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

34. I must be improving as I managed to complete most of a Paul puzzle! This website certainly helps a lot.

    Anyone else confused by 14a? At the risk of sounding pedantic, intolerance isn’t an allergic reaction. It’s solvable thanks to the crossers but the definition is inaccurate.

35. Entertaining puzzle. Favourites as for Eileen. I failed to parse ISTANBUL but the solution was confirmed by the Cannongate Palace at 1ac, 2.

    As a great Italophile I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know ARTE POVERA, though I got it from the wordplay. Renaissance and Baroque art is more my thing. Cucina povera, on the other hand….

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

36. Didn’t expect Paul on a Tuesday but it was a nice surprise !
    Being a lover of a link, I got wild about two adjacent clues – 14 and 18 ac and found the phrase “the UNSPEAKABLE in pursuit of the uneatable” foxily creeping into my mind.

    Also harked back to those school playground days and the challenge : “CONSTANTINOPLE’s a very hard word and if you cant spell it you’re the biggest dunce in the world ; can you spell it ?”
    Istanbul’s a fascinating city and my particular favourite touring day was The Topkapi Palace followed by The Blue Mosque.

    Absolutely loved AMBROSIAL.

    Thank you Paul and Eileen.

37. I have to rate this frustrating for me, despite learning a new synonym for spine. Never heard of ARTE POVERA and even with all the crossers could not get it. Got the SKY part of SPASSKY but still could not find the famous Boris despite being a chess buff in my youth. Not heard of TOPKAPI PALACE either. ISTANBUL went in from the crossers plus bafflement, and even with the explanations here took me a bit to understand.

    And ELEMI might be an old favorite for the seasoned veterans, but for this relative newcomer it was a complete blocker. I’m sure I’m in a tiny minority on this, but I do find that relatively unknown trees, plants, and fish are rarely satisfying clues.

38. I really liked ISTANBUL, maybe because it was quite a circuitous route to get there. Googling plecity only confused me, then eventually I got all the crossers, saw it would fit, couldn’t think of anything else which would, but it didn’t make any sense. But that
    led me to TOPKAPI PALACE, and a minute or so later the penny dropped. Great stuff!

39. Had to look up tourist sites in Istanbul and Italian art movements to get TOPKAPI PALACE and ARTE POVERA. Not a big fan of clues where both the solution and word play are obscure and rely on esoteric general knowledge (or resorting to Mr Google in my case).
    Liked SPASSKY and HELLS ANGELS.
    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

40. I do love a Paul but frustratingly I was outfoxed today. After working hard to get the NHO TOPKAPI PALACE I chucked it away by overthinking 3down – AT ALL TIMES was such an obvious answer that I assumed it couldn’t be right (and couldn’t see organ = TIMES) so went with the highly dubious AT ALL PIPES. Not quite sure what lesson to learn from that, perhaps that if in doubt I should go with definition over wordplay…

    Fun puzzle although I feel like it was missing a real clanger of a homophone. Not sure I would have come close to ISTANBUL without the PALACE link, but I guess it’s fair if you get it! Thanks Paul and Eileen.

41. All straight forward except for ELIMI which I filled in but can find no tree related definition on line.

42. Hell’s Angels, great brand name, from Dis to Divine, I mean what could be more, er, down and up 😉

43. ps wonder who thought of it …

44. Did anyone else suspect STARSKY was going to make a reappearance 28a? I must be getting too fixated on tracking Everyman’s follow-on clues.

    I’ve never been to the TOPKAPI PALACE, but fortunately I remembered the film with Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov etc.

    Have to agree with Rob T @21 about the nonsense words. Once in a blue moon may be OK, but it’s getting to be an annoying habit with Paul. And (pace ginf – sorry!) I thought the clue for HELL’S ANGELS was a bit weak, with the cryptic element not really standing up. The angels that are usually depicted as “ascending and descending” are the ones on Jacob’s Ladder.

    Sorry to be a grump. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

45. Let down by my inadequate GK, although I gather many DNK ARTE POVERA. I should have known TOPKAPI PALACE as I saw the TOPKAPI film many years ago.

    ISTANBUL was a typical Paul clue; I didn’t cotton on but obviously some others did – at least I saw the city as the definition.

    I found this hard going with my favourite being CASHPOINTS for the smooth surface.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

46. Alastair @41; see here.

47. Thanks for that, Robi.
    I was about to post this:
    ‘Alastair @41 – perhaps because you’re spelling it incorrectly: ELEMI, although, as I said in the blog, I’ve only ever seen it in crosswords as a resin and on looking it up in my Collins, Chambers and SOED just now, that’s the only definition I can find, albeit ‘obtained from various tropical trees’.’

48. [I’ve been to the Topkapi Palace. I remember an exhibit of hairs from Ali’s beard.]

49. IN TRANCE is not a correct description of the effects of LSD: your senses are enhanced, and you may be a bit slow to move around due to taking in the experience, and I know this from pers – I mean, so they tell me.

50. I was pleased with myself for solving TOPKAPI PALACE and ARTE POVERA despite having almost no memory of the former and never heard of the latter, but I trippped up on CASHPOINTS, of all things, having all the crossers and a MELANGE of letters from the anagrist to fit in, and being unable to see the wood for the trees! Doh.

    It was odd to see an almost Vulcanian clue for HELLS ANGELS – maybe that’s why Paul appears on a Tuesday this week?

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

51. Re DOWN THE TOILET: it says something about a setter’s reputation that whenever I see ‘go’ in a Paul clue, I assume it’s lavatorial – and I’m usually right!

52. I’ve no problem with made-up words like in 17d – all part of general word-play in my humble you-know-what. However I do have a problem with tan being indicated as a constant. It is not, it is a trigonometrical function that can take any value. The complete opposite to anyone’s definition of a constant.
    I absolutely love Paul’s devious mind at times, (he penned my all-time favourite defining a proctologist as a behind poker), but the surface to 27a is just nonsense!
    Thanks to him & Eileen

53. monkeypuzzler @52
    TAN as a constant was Eileen’s first thought, but several posters have pointed out a better parsing of ISTANBUL that doesn’t involve TAN/

54. Ah, eb, so Christ is the means of ascent and descent, the ladder, from up there to down here (not all the way down, to Hell)? I’m sure there are Theology PhDs thereupon. Still, Hell’s Angels is a brilliant name.

55. Thanks Eileen, I got 1a/2d from 17d and only ever parsed the last bit, also couldn’t see over = on account of in 13d having already grumbled that Petra is Nabatean not Hashemite and needed to cheat to look up the particular movement. same gripe as Bluenun@34 and same trap as Gladys@31 re my last and favourite SPASSKY. also liked 9a and 22a, which took far too long to spot IN as part of the fodder (after trying Cart- and Packhorses). Thanks Paul, and I liked the dingbat this time because Plecity seems a plausible word that I could imagine cropping up in Azed or some old poem.

56. Me @52. Getting a bit confused (again). Paul never suggested tan was a constant – that only happened in the mush that passes for my brain.

57. No. monkeypuzzler, it was my fault, as muffin said @53.

58. Always a tough challenge from Paul. I got there in the end but got nowhere near parsing Istanbul! Thanks to P and Eileen for the blog.

59. I was short of time today; I like to think I would have got there but I needed the check button a few times. Some very good clues as others have said, and I was pleased to have solved Istanbul from the wordplay.
    Did anybody else consider “Godunov” for 28? It doesn’t quite work, but I found “Go” = “intellectual game” and “duno” = “I haven’t a clue”.
    I also thought I needed an anagram of reaction+lsd for 14, which although wrong did help me get there given that all the letters of reaction were in the answer.

60. Just putting in a good word for 17d. Where would we be without nonsense words? What about the Jabberwocky?
    Maybe someone will do a whole crossword on that theme one day. Now that would be funny!

61. Eileen@47

    I understand the non Latin name of the tree which produces the elemi resin is Manila elemi and as it only (?) grows in the Philippines, shortening this to elemi would not seem too far for a clue.

    Thanks for 14 though. Having felt very chuffed at getting Istanbul and its tourist attraction along with the art movement, the simple ole stumped me! Cleverer than you mention as there is an anagram of reaction in intolerance and I wouldn’t object to allergic as an anagrind. Certainly led me away from the light anyway!

62. Sorry, just seen others spotted that also…

63. monkeypuzzler@52 : I agree that the surface of 27 ac could be improved although Paul is my favourite setter and I defend him to the last.

    Depending on his quotas for clue types, for the day, he could have had all sorts of 27 ac alternatives with readable surfaces.

    From the simple. Mean gel mixture
    to
    Meryl regularly meets illiberal American actress. What a mixture!
    to
    Mixed bag for golfer, rightless after Yuppie Flu.
    .
    . there are loads of possibilities.

    Boris Spassky was 86 yesterday. ( just adding to Solon’s comment ).

    I’m late today with jotting comments down – my BRO keeps ringing up. ( absolutely true ).

64. I almost got there – which is a major achievement for me when faced by one of Paul’s puzzles – but Paul won again, defeating me with the NHO ARTE POVERA. There were a few which I didn’t parse, including SPASSKY and INTOLERANCE, so thanks to our blogger for helping with those. As to 17D, yes, very clever, but I don’t like it at all. (I don’t like ISTANBUL at all either: I think it’s probably one of those places that you either love or hate, and I certainly fall into the second camp.)

65. Lately I’ve been skipping Paul but I thought I’d give this a try. I got much of it but ran out of patience and revealed the last several clues that I hadn’t solved (or guessed). Not really my cup of tea. I prefer his alter-ego Mudd. Thanks to both.

66. Istanbul was first one in. I’m not keen on word splits, but splitting fictitious words does I guess make life pretty easy for the setter. What’s next? Fictitious words as anagram fodder? Oh, been done …

    Arte povera was last one in. Another clue that uses gk in both wordplay and answer.

67. Thanks Paul and Eileen.
    Just got round to doing this. Didn’t get parsing of ISTANBUL and kicked myself for overlooking the bloomin’ obvious. Perhaps because I once called the city on the Bosphorus by its Roman name when speaking to a Turk and got the iciest response.

68. Thanks both,
    I enjoyed 17d. It helps to have a non-word as part of a Dingbat clue because it indicates what kind of clue it is.
    OED has ‘elemi tree’ as an attributive use.

69. The annoying thing, for me, about “plecity” in 17d was that I googled it (as you do..) and straightaway saw the answer in one of the results – still couldn’t parse it, though 🙂

70. Enjoyed the trip to Turkey as well as the rest. Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

71. still don’t get ISTANBUL

72. Far too hard for me.
    Thanks both.

73. Fiona Anne @ 71 : The word CONSTANT is clued, positioned between the “O” and the “ple” (plecity minus city) and this equates, then to CONSTANT in O PLE.

    Modern name is ISTANBUL and the remnant fragment of the clue “city” is the definition.

    The phraseology of the clue, IMHO, is legal as “Plecity” is a valid surname.

    Search Taylor Plecity in the U S phone book
    https://www.usphonebook.com/taylor-plecity

    and you will get middle initial D and some relatives. A lesser known actor. 1 hit only – that’s not a multiplecity of occurrences !

74. Many thanks, Flea – you just beat me to it Thank goodness I refreshed. 😉

75. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    Delighted to trot through this and smugly came by here to realise I had missed LUKEWARM. Why I didn’t torpedo it on sight I can’t say – it foxed me and I parked it: never came back. But what fun!

    Fiona Anne@71: O consant plecity = ‘Constant’ in ‘O ple’ with ‘city’ as the definition. So ‘Constantinople’ is ISTANBUL.

    I only got it because TOPKAPI emerged like a dead fetid crocodile from the primordial swamp of my thought processes as a word I had possibly heard before but was surely some type of hat(?) and obviously the ‘Topkapi police’ would monitor headwear in… and suddenly ISTANBUL! Oh to have the ‘mush’ that monkeypuzzler@ complains of – “Luggsury!”

76. Refresh – always refresh!

77. Blue Nun @34: I took 14a to be a pharmacological reference. A patient’s failure to tolerate a medicine may be caused by an allergic reaction to it, hence INTOLERANCE

78. Some very poor, sloppy, & obscurantist clues.

    I am used to much better from Paul.

    It could have been sweet if better clued!

79. OK finally got it – thanks Flea and Alphalpha.

80. I’m with Jacob (37). Answers which are obscure flora and fauna are not much fun. And I too googled plecity thinking it must be a word I don’t know to see the answer to the clue on the results! (I’d never have got to Istanbul though).

81. Would a capitalized Plecity have been less provocative? It is a surname, albeit not a common one.

    Translation:

    Would a capitalised Plecity have been less provocative? It is a surname, albeit not a common one.

82. Might be a bit late for an earworm, but worth it. Surprised it hasn’t come up already. One from my youth.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcze7EGorOk Istanbul not Constantinople

    Apparently written on the 500th anniversary of the fall of Byzantine Constantinople to the Ottomans.

83. [pdm @82 – see Petert @22. Not that I minded a second reference. In fact, I listened anyway, ‘cos I just wanted to hear that song again.]

    Lewis @81 (thanks for providing a translation; I was struggling with the original 😉 )

    I think the problem with going down the ‘surname’ route in order to excuse nonsense words is that almost any combination of letters can be the name of someone or something, somewhere.

    To illustrate – Paul recently included not one but three nonsense words in a Prize puzzle (which is why I said it was becoming an annoying habit in my earlier comment): satede, breban and gerad. Thanks to the wonders of Google, I now discover that Satede is the name of a sports facility in Réunion, Breban is a Romanian novelist, and Gerad could be a Somali sultan, an Iranian professional wrestling team, or the pseudonym of a character from Final Fantasy VI !

84. Oh, thank you eb@83 for pointing me to Petert’s link, and to yours with the Muppets. Priceless.

85. I was far too busy on Tuesday to have time to get very far with this but I’m glad I came back to it this evening because I thought it was wonderful. Such a breadth of fun and clever clueing technique, and varied, interesting words to fill the grid. I sit in that happy place where I have enough general knowledge to be able to deduce all the “obscure” answers but don’t have enough specialist knowledge to be troubled by the inaccuracies mentioned by others.

    Thanks for the blog, Eileen – I know at least you’ll see this comment even if no one else does.

86. Glad you didn’t miss it, Widdersbel! (I didn’t see your comment until this morning.)

87. 3D: How the hell do you get from organ to newspaper?

88. Via any recognised dictionary.

89. J @87
    The “standard” accepted dictionary for most crosswords is Chambers, which is available in book shops. And there’s the Chambers app available from: https://chambers.co.uk/apps/

90. Please note that there is (deliberately) no apostrophe in Hells Angels.
    According to their website at https://hells-angels.com/faqcontact/ :
    “Yes, we know that there is an apostrophe missing but it is you who miss it. We dont.”

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