Guardian 29,078 / Pasquale

80 comments on “Guardian 29,078 / Pasquale”

1. I thought this was a reasonably straightforward offering, even with the new words, HEELBALL, KINGLET, CATECHUMEN, KEELSON and JONATHAN, which were all clued clearly. I’m assuming that ‘royal’ refers to the ruby-crowned KINGLET but I may be mistaken. The long anagrams were clever and I also liked ABSOLUTELY, GINGHAM, NORMA, TAIWANESE and HECTARES. Anyone else bung in MARTINI first thinking of Mini as the vehicle? A very elegant puzzle indeed.

   Ta Pasquale & Eileen.

2. No sleek ( number and smart ) reversed.

3. KEELSON is number NO and SLEEK reversed.

4. Many thanks, Flea!

5. And Alan – and any more that may follow. I’ll amend the blog now.

6. All good fun, although I overthought 9ac and invented a type of show called an OPERALIVE (REP+O< then ALIVE for 'working'). Quite a neat parse I thought, and it would been just one more nicely clued NHO. Ah well.

   Especially liked 'person with a seat' for MP, and the educational paper.

   Thanks Eileen & Pasquale.

7. Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen!
   Liked OPERATIVE, KEELSON, TAIWANESE, DISTRAIN and TENETS.

   TAIWANESE
   Is it not an &lit Eileen?

8. Puzzled about GINGHAM defined as “stuff”. With reference to cloth the old definitions have “stuff” as a woollen material, so not gingham at all. Am I missing the point?

9. KVa – I thought so but I’m always a little tentative. 😉

10. Ian @8 – I’m used to ‘stuff’ applying to various kinds of material. Chambers has ‘cloth, esp woollen’.

11. Picaroon clued the Loch Ness Monster on May 11 and here she is again – this time Pasquale. There were some marvellous long anagrams in this one and I liked GINGHAM, JONATHAN, GALACTIC and TENETS.

    Couldn’t resist posting this YouTube in my commentary

    https://youtu.be/zaEjIlZsuTg

    Drink in those beautiful vowels !

    Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

12. Thanks for the reminder, Flea. I remember the advert well but (as so often) had forgotten what it was advertising, or I might have included the link myself!

13. I found this fun, witty and entertaining. I liked the challenge to assumptions eg bits I assumed were cryptic or anagram fodder were to be taken literally: “unlucky OT man”. “Man once incarcerated in Reading “. And vice versa: “mate in spring say”.

14. JONATHAN and GINGHAM (despite Eileen@10’s explanation) completely threw me, having never heard of either in those contexts. Particularly liked PRAYING MANTISES (misdirection upon misdirection!), GALACTIC and HECTARES.

    Thanks Eileen & Pasquale

15. Pasquale is a favourite and this one meets the case, though HEELBALL, JONATHAN and DISTRAIN were new to me.

    Eileen@9: TAIWANESE is certainly &lit. The Don even has a chapter on them in his book.

16. I put Pasquale in my “don’t attempt” list just recently, after I found one too challenging, but gave it a go today anyway. Got halfway through and got bogged. Decided I wasn’t enjoying it and went for a nice walk on the beach. Even after looking at the solution I had five in my “never heard of” list and four in my “Huh?” list.

    Perhaps I’m suffering from ennui.

17. poc@15
    Eileen is never far from her blog. Must be typing her response now. 🙂

18. Slow to start, after what seemed like ages I had only solved 7 clues.

    Was not sure how to parse 21d NET in TES = Times Educational Supplement? Thanks, google.

    New for me: DISTRAIN; KINGLET; HEELBALL; KEELSON.

    Thanks, both.

19. Great puzzle and great blog – thanks both.
    Minor correction, Eileen: in 26a, the underlined definition should be “she” rather than “what you’d expect”.

20. Thanks, Quirister!

21. Very enjoyable for a Wednesday. Impressive long anagrams. New to me were HEELBALL, SKERRY, KEELSON (although I figured KEEL had to be in there somewhere), and SAN for hospital.

    And I was happy to remember NESS for head from another recent puzzle.

22. After a nice guide in with those two excellent long anagrams, I did think that as many as six nho before solutions were – to this ignoramus, anyway – rather too many to call this puzzle truly enjoyable. As others have already mentioned, KINGLET, HEELBALL, CATECHUMEN, KEELSON, JONATHAN and SKERRY. Though I recently read about the man about to spend 60 consecutive days perched on one of those last names rocky outcrops in the sea, Rockall. All the NORMA’s in the world might be looking at themselves differently after the clueing of 26ac…

23. …a Chris Cameron, raising money for charity after his personally isolated and introspective Covid experience…

24. Good puzzle. It wouldn’t be a Pasquale without a sprinkling of rarities. HEELBALL and JONATHAN (as an apple variety) were the unknowns for me today, though both excellently clued. And like AlanC @1 I’m familiar with the KINGLET as a small bird rather than a minuscule monarch.

    Like others I particularly liked the anagram clues, and NORMA raised a smile (quite a rare occurrence for a Pasquale 🙂 ).

    Thanks to the Don and Eileen

25. A classic Pasquale with the unfamiliar words deducible from the wordplay and crossers. The long anagram for LOOK WHO’S TALKING was very clever. I did know DISTRAIN, partly from Bolingbroke’s words in Richard II (a lovely play – the only one of Shakespeare’s I think to be entirely in verse):

    My father’s goods are all distrain’d and sold

    Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

26. As noted, the expected number of unfamiliar words from Pasquale with CATECHUMEN and DISTRAIN forgotten and HEELBALL and KINGLET new. I couldn’t parse KEELSON either but the rest went in steadily enough.

    I liked JONATHAN, even if it is ages since I’ve eaten one.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

27. Very smooth puzzle from Pasquale as always and, as Eileen says, the trickier words were all gettable. It’s always a pleasure to discover one knows one or more of the obscurities: KEELSON, DISTRAIN and GINGHAM as ‘stuff’ were known but JONATHAN as an apple was way beyond my ken. (Surprising to discover it is also a term used to refer to the people of the USA. Definitely nho) I wonder if any ruler has ever described himself proudly as a KINGLET? (Or, frankly, whether he has ever been so described by another?). The splendid anagram for PRAYING MANTISES was odds-on to be my favourite until I encountered the sublime TAIWANESE towards the end of the solve. Absolutely COTD.

    Thanks Pasquale and, as ever, Eileeen

28. Battered by many unknowns but all well-clued.

    I liked the anagrams for PRAYING MANTIS and ABSOLUTELY, the person in the seat having a CAMPARI, and the topical reference in HECTARES. I failed to spot Jonah in JONATHAN and I didn’t see the reason for the ‘a’ in the clue for SKERRY (?).

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

29. Robi @28 – I took the ‘a’ in 29dn SKERRY as indicating that ‘sky’ was one shade of blue.

30. JONATHANs are well known here on the Apple Isle. Slow start, but steady solve. Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen.

31. I actually knew CATCHUMEN, so that one and PRAYING MANTISES went in on first read through along with quite a few others – funny how clues that some find difficult others find easy.

    I also wondered about GINGHAM and didn’t enter it until late as I really don’t think of it as stuff, which I think of as much heavier cloth. It’s a not really a fabric as such, but more a way to produce woven fabric, normally in a colour and white that makes a checked pattern and can be produced in various fibres, such as cotton, voile, linen, now usually polycotton unless you really look for a natural fibre.

    Thank you to Pasquale and Eileen.

32. Eileen@29
    I have a doubt (maybe elementary). Does ‘sky’ mean ‘blue’ (without saying ‘sky blue’, ‘sky’ alone…)?
    And one more question. ‘The blue’ means ‘the sea’ or ‘the sky’. Right? Can we say ‘a blue’ to refer to
    one of them or is it not proper English?

33. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    Jonathan as an apple rang a bell: it was clued as such by Maskarade in 28847, last August’s bank holiday special.

34. KVa@32. Perhaps you didn’t see Eileen@29, where I think she covered your point.

35. I have seen this grid before with two long anagrams down the sides but cannot recall if it was a Pasquale. Anyway, it made me look out for the anagrams which helped a lot with some of unfamiliar words, especially KEELSON. OSCAR was a favourite when the penny dropped, as was TAIWANESE. Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

36. KVa – I looked up ‘sky’ in order to reply to Robi.
    Chambers has, under ‘sky’, ‘sky blue’; Collins does not have it standing alone: ‘sky blue’ is a separate entry. I wouldn’t expect to see ‘sky’ alone, meaning blue, except in a list / collection of blues, as in a paint chart for instance.
    Re your second suggestion, I’m rather dubious!

37. After the usual slow start I gradually picked up speed, though got stuck on three or four at the end. A tocuh of concrete brain rather than anything tricky in the clues, I think. NORMA had to wait until I’d got SKERRY, for example, but neither of them is particularly difficult, just a case of discarding previously disproven ideas and looking afresh.

    Like others, NHO HEELBALL (solved the two halves independently before checking Chambers), my attempts at cleaning and polishing shoes being far less thorough and most of my footwear these days having no leather component anyway. CATECHUMEN was deducible from the previously known catechism (not saying I know the catechism, just the word) and the friendly wordplay. I used to find Pasquale incredibly difficult and unrewarding, but this one was much more enjoyable than, say, two or three years ago.

    Thanks to pasquale and Eileen.

38. Eileen has very kindly classified the clue for OSCAR as a double definition, but I think if this had been Vulcan on Monday we’d have had a few commenters saying that it was barely cryptic. OK, I’ll say it then: it was barely cryptic, in my opinion. 🙂

39. Quite hard, got there in the end, with help from Bradford and the check button. I could not parse my guesses and NHO 13,3 and 14a though worked them out from the clueing and crossers. Fav 19a. Thanks P and E

40. Thanks, Eileen@36.

41. An unusual (not unique) experience today. I decided to adopt a muffin approach and tackle the long side-clues first. No joy with the hypocrite but 8d cracked immediately and with a little check of 10a for supporting evidence (that would be OSCAR) I confidently revealed CRICKET MATCHES!

    As I pressed the reveal button niggling (but fleeting: nano-seconds) doubts (about enumeration) (and cricket being more of a Summer activity) flashed by and were justified by the disappointing PRAYING MANTISES. Ah well – not the first time I’ve kicked off with a wrong ‘un. But I enjoyed the rest of it even though I was more inclined to reveal than ponder KEELSON and JONATHAN (tiltx2).

    Eileen, I would not have appreciated the cleverness of the surface for JONATHAN without your insight.

    Thanks both.

42. Alphalpha@41. I was tuned in to JONAH having listened last night – first time in decades probably – to John Tavener’s The Whale. I bought a recording that was released on Apple Records in about 1970; probably only bought it because that was the Beatles’ record label.

43. I knew Skerry from Archie Fisher’s haunting song “The Final Trawl,” about a fisherman who can no longer make a living from his trade:
    “I’d rather beach her on Skerry rock (Haul away, my laddie-o)
    Than to see her torched in the breaker’s dock (Haul away, my laddie-o).”

    I’ve heard of the feathered kinglet but not the human one, though the meaning is clear. I’d forgotten the fabric meaning of “stuff”. And HEELBALL was a new one on me.

    I think TAIWANESE has to be an &lit, because “Asians” supplies both the definition and the letter A for the anagram. I’m not sure making it an &lit fixes that, but I can’t see anything else that does.

    I’d heard of CATECHUMEN and KEELSON, but TES was beyond me.

    Wonderful anagrams! Thanks for those, Pasquale, and Eileen for the elucidation and the accompaniment as you follow us along.

44. Alphalpha @41 – I love your CRICKET MATCHES!
    I’m looking forward to telling my son that he featured (as an apple) in today’s puzzle – but I’m not expecting it to spark an immediate enthusiasm for cryptic crosswords: I’ve given up on that.
    sheffield hatter @42 – thanks for the link, a new one on me. My choir have sung the better-known ‘The Lamb’ and ‘Song for Athene’ several times.
    Valentine @43 – we also sang of the Scottish Skerries in ‘The Road to the Isles’ in our concert a couple of weeks ago.
    Thanks for the support re the TAIWANESE &lit. I must learn to be more confident – but it’s also sometimes nice to leave titbits for others to highlight.
    The reference to the TES brought back memories of the weekly Friday scuffle for the staffroom copy, only to find that someone (or two) had already neatly cut out relevant job adverts. 🙂

45. Eileen @29/36; thanks, you are probably right, although I have seen things like: a sky-coloured T-shirt’.

46. [Eileen@44. Glad to have introduced you to something new! The full work takes up two sides of an LP, but it seems only the introductory movement is on Youtube. Later sections include bits of the story of Jonah in Latin. Here’s a contemporary review from the Guardian.]

47. More thanks, sheffield hatter @46 – several TILTs for me today!

48. I once flew as a passenger to an island called Outskerry in Shetland. Terrifying landing!

49. A real treat of a puzzle but all very approachable. The long down anagrams were well spotted esp the insects.

    Apart from them my fave was ABSOLUTELY- I don’t recall seeing that before.

    DISTRAIN/ DISTRAINT are in common usage in legal circles. If you don’t pay your debts (eg your tax bill) the friendly collector will threaten you with distraint.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

50. My 2 cents worth on whether TAIWANESE is an &lit.

    For the wordplay, you need the whole thing, so we’re half-way there.
    For the definition,
    Asians works
    Asians primarily in East works better because it’s more specific
    Asians primarily in East, we fancy is less good as a surface because “we fancy” adds nothing, but it doesn’t hurt.
    So I would conclude Yes, but it’s not one of the best, but since they’re extremely hard to make, Bravo!

51. Managed this OK, was familiar with DISTRAIN and for some reason had heard of CATCHUMEN but HEEL BALL went in purely because it couldn’t be anything else, never heard of it. And I delayed myself by carelessly entering OPERATING instead of OPERATIVE. Elaine Paige doesn’t do surgery, as far as I know…

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

52. [sheffield hatter@42: Thanks for the link. Not my kind of thing – I love a good tune (which eliminates an awful lot of music). The piece reminded me of a solo piano recital (Liszt (perhaps appropriately)) when a sudden sforzando caused me to leap from my slumbers with a cry of alarm (ff) to much shushing.]

53. Just came here to mention that the younger of our two cats is named CAMPARI, a name bestowed by the shelter from which we adopted him. Whenever the liqueur puts in an appearance, kitty gets a shout-out, so here it is.

    “Stuff” as cloth was new to me, as was KEELSON. The rest of the obscurities were not obscure to me.

54. KVa, Eileen & Robi passim: It’s rather a stretch to use ‘sky’ to mean ‘blue’, though the odd example may be found. However, the reverse is a common metaphor: ‘out of the blue’, ‘the wide blue yonder’. I was perfectly happy with the clue.

55. …. though re-reading the clue, Pasquale has put ‘a blue’ rather than just ‘blue’, which demolishes my argument 🙁

    Is ‘sky’ a ‘blue’? (Is Ely a cathedral? 🙂 )

56. Gervase@54/55. Always a pleasure to see a regular commenter in melt down! I think a reasonable response to the quiz question “name a type of blue” would be “sky” and it would be a harsh quiz master who could demand the answer “sky blue” and nothing else.

57. Gervase @55
    ” …. though re-reading the clue, Pasquale has put ‘a blue’ rather than just ‘blue’…”
    … which, I think, is where we came in, with Robi @28. 😉

58. Sorry, s h – I should have refreshed!

59. [Not a problem, Eileen. 🙂 It’s amazing how often the letter A can be so significant, as it’s so easy to overlook. It can be one of the most potent tools in a setter’s armoury. ]

60. I’m sorry to be late to the feast again. but my approach to ‘blue’ was not via a paint chart but via the phrases.
    ‘out of the blue’ and ‘a bolt from the blue’, which I have always understood to mean ‘as if dropped from the SKY’. Have I been wrong for all these decades?

61. Spooner’s catflap – always welcome, at whatever time – no, of course, you’re quite right – but I don’t think that explains Pasquale’s inclusion of ‘a’ in the clue?

62. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale.

    One day, the estimable Don will run out of obscure religious terms to puzzle us with. Today is not that day.

63. I enjoyed this. I do think Pasquale has toned down the difficulty in recent years, but this was still very nicely written. Both the long anagrams were clever. Big ticks also for ABSOLUTELY and HECTARES, for the surfaces.
    I rationalised “a blue” in 20 as one particular shade too. I think it’s similar to the way navy has developed over the years. When I was a kid, it was always Navy Blue, but now Navy alone is often used, particularly in clothing catalogues.
    Thanks, Pazzer and Eileen.

    Dr. WhatsOn @50,
    I’d argue that “we fancy” adds to the surface by suggesting that we (in the UK) see Taiwan as being in the Far East only because of the arbitrary way in which world maps are usually displayed. So I’m with those who say it’s a true &lit.

64. DaveJ @62, you have prompted me to quote two examples from my classic book – amazingly, consecutive clues (18ac – wonderful &lit – and 21a deliciously self-referential ) – in Pasquale’s
    https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/lookup?crossword_type=cryptic&id=25968
    This was before we began to include the clues in the blogs but you can see Andrew’s blog here:
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2013/06/07/guardian-25968-pasquale/

65. DrW @50 You need the “we” for the anagram fodder. “Fancy” is the anagram signal.

66. He’s talking about the surface reading, though, to which “we fancy” neither adds nor subtracts. “Asians primarily in East, we fancy” is a fine but verbose definition of TAIWANESE. Most Taiwanese are to be found in East Asia, but by no means all, so reading “we fancy” as a stilted way of saying “I guess” makes it just about work.

    [The kid who lived across the street when I was growing up was Taiwanese-American. His parents were Taiwanese. (The kid’s dad was ethnic Han Chinese, his parents having come to Taiwan when the Kuomintang fled the mainland. The mom was descended from the people who had inhabited Taiwan for centuries.) So clearly not all Taiwanese are in East Asia–some wind up in places like Indiana.]

67. Thanks Pasquale, I always enjoy your crosswords because of the pleasure derived from learning new words (DISTRAIN, HEELBALL, SKERRY, and KEELSON) just from the wordplay alone. (Tees/Neo does this quite well also.) I played some of the guess-then-check game but mostly I got most of this unaided with favourites being TAIWANESE, REINDEER, JONATHAN, and PRAYING MANTISES. Thanks Eileen as always.

68. Nowadays, the catechism is mostly taught to already-baptised Catholic children who are preparing for confirmation instead.

    [Yes Lord Jim @25, Richard II is a lovely play. You might almost say that he ends it as a mere KINGLET

    …Sometimes am I king;
    Than treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
    And so I am. Then crushing penury
    Persuades me I was better when a king.
    Then am I kinged again, and by and by
    Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,
    And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
    Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
    With nothing shall be pleased tell he be eased
    With being nothing]

69. Eileen @64, yes some lovely Don-isms there!

70. A toughie for me, with lots of unknown or unfamiliar terms, and only got to the finish line with some help. I liked JONATHAN a lot once Eileen parsed it for me, and NORMA was a favorite.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen!

71. This was good fun but OSCAR worried me. The Oscar is an Award, not a REward.
    Thanks to both for the fun and elucidation.

72. Mystogre @71 – yes, I wondered why Pasquale chose reward over award and expected comment:: perhaps he thought that would be too obvious but the comments speak for themselves, I think.

73. For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
    And tell sad stories of the death of kinglets?

74. I’m glad that Pasquale clued kinglet;
    It’s sparked off a whole lot of Eng Lit.

    (Princelets are sometimes called princelings
    But I know of no kings who are kinglings.)

75. Thank you, Gervase @73, nicely (!) tying in with Lord Jim @25 and Andrew Tyndall @68.
    And hurrah! essex boy @ 74.

    So many great comments and illuminations today – many thanks to all. I ‘m off to bed now.

76. Thank you Mystogre@71. Totally agree and was about to write the same thing.

    And how is stuff – a wooden material equating to gingham – a cotton material

    Didn’t like either in fact I’d say they are just plain wrong.

77. Once again I’m late to the ball, but I had to add my thanks to Pasquale for such a stylish crossword. It was a bit chewier than my Goldilocks zone, and all the more satisfying when I finished, all beautifully parsed. I agree with everyone else’s favourites and thought the unlucky OT man and the spring mating were worth the entry fee without the other excellent clues. I’m always thrilled to see a Don puzzle. He never fails to deliver, IMHO.

    Eileen, thank you once again for such an informative blog and for all the additional value you add during the discussion. I so enjoy reading the variety of comments from the others. Thanks all round. 🙂

78. Thank you Pasquale for the reminder of a song I had almost forgotten: ‘The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry’. And thank you to Eileen for explaining ‘distrain’ and why ‘net’=‘clear’.

79. Sydney’s largest private hospital is the “Sydney Adventist” and is widely known as “The San”, but I was sure that this would not be known to Guardian readers. I had forgotten that San is short for Sanatorium.

80. GINGHAM brought this jingle to mind “the gingham tin with the good things in…”
    I Googled it, and it returned precisely one result – “…get a Heinz hot snack meal”
    Just what I was looking for!

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