Guardian Cryptic 29,149 by Fed

85 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,149 by Fed”

1. This seemed easier than the previous Fed offerings with no tricky parsings but lots of ticks. I thought WEATHERBOARD was a clever homophone/pun and I also liked COUPE, BALD EAGLE, SHOPPING MALL, FINAL SCORE, FULL STEAM AHEAD, DIEHARDS and the amusing ABOLISHING. A very accomplished puzzle.

   Ta Fed & loonapick.

2. Learnt a new meaning for WEATHERBOARD today. I thought it was just a building material.

   No further remarks, as I’ve not quite finished yet.

3. I enjoyed this. Nothing too obscure but lots to think about. I loved the Rishi/Lishi trick in 13 down. 14ac is a good homophone which might actually get past the HID (homophone investigation dept.)
   Thanks Fed and loonapick.

4. I agree, this was also easier than yesterday’s for me. But I also struggled with parsing many of them, so thank you loonapick and of course Fed

5. Fairly gentle today, though I failed to parse LAUREL, so thanks for that. With Fed it often seems that you just have to follow the instructions and they will lead you to the answer. Doctor Watson’s holiday in Burma was amusing, as was the Rishi / LISHI device in ABOLISHING. But I think my favourite was the very neat OMEN.

   Good to see “my” = COR in 22a!

   Many thanks Fed and loonapick.

6. Found this a bit of a mix, but, like Loonapick, I finished it with some unparsed.

   Liked BALD EAGLE, BOTSWANA, TRACTABLE, ABOLISHING (I await our non-UK solvers’ thoughts on that one!)

   Less keen on FALLOUT (all = greatest possible?), DRAUGHT thought the definition was a bit of a leap), SOYA (just didn’t like the “by all” – didn’t read very well for me)

   Thanks Fed and Loonapick

7. Fed in full storytelling mode today with lots to enjoy

   Thanks to him and Loonapick

8. I loved the timeshare; new to me and very witty.

9. Quite a lot of very long clues but my favourites were the short ones, especially for OMEN and ROCKET. Some nice misdirections. LOI DIEHARDS even though hidden in plain sight. Thanks loonapick and thanks Fed.

10. I did enjoy this, although my quibble was SOYA, which although it flavours tofu, and tofu definitely needs flavouring, it needs drying out before cooking thenheat and oil to make it crispy.

    Thank you to Fed and loonapick.

11. Thanks, Fed and loonapick!
    A great puzzle and an excellent blog!

    ABOLISHING
    You have BONGs before the News at Ten: News at Ten’s introduction.
    (a) Part of BONGs=A BONG.
    Am I overthinking?

    Crispy@6
    FALLOUT
    found this example:
    said in all/the greatest possible sincerity

12. Fairly quick to solve, a bit longer to parse, eyebrow remains raised at ‘greatest possible’ = ALL but I’m open to correction.

    ABOLISHING (A BONG, brilliant), BOTSWANA, and BALD EAGLE were my picks.

    Thanks Fed & loonapick

13. Crispy@6
    Forgot to say that I loved ABOLISHING. Didn’t give much parsing trouble.

14. KVa @11 ah yes ok, that works for me for ALL. And that was my parse of ABOLISHING too!

15. Thanks Fed and loonapick
    Mostly straightforward but enjoyable, though I didn’t parseLAUREL or OVERSLEEPS (not surprised about them!)
    I would make a distinction between Table and Chart – the latter would have graphicl elements.
    ROCKET is a salad leaf, but hardly a lettuce, loonapick!
    Favourite BALD EAGLE.

    [Fitzroy’s ship would have been more accurate than Darwin’s, though less well known. Also most people think that Darwin travelled as ship’s naturalist, but this isn’t the case. There was a ship’s naturalist whose name I have forgotten. Darwin went as “captain’s companion”. It was customary for a captain to have an upper-class companion he could dine with.
    Fitzroy later invented shipping forecasts – a sea area is named after him. He also violently opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.]

16. BOTSWANA – easy, but beautifully formed.
    JerryG @3 – only if you pronounce “whether” ans “weather” the same.
    Good fun from Fed and thanks to loonapick for the parsing of LAUREL.

17. I found the long clues hard to parse, with WEATHERBOARD, ABOLISHING and OVERSLEEPS being my last few in. I particularly liked ROCKET which could also be parsed as a cryptic def.

    Thanks to loonapick and Fed

18. [Wow, thank you muffin@15. Poor FitzRoy. He ensured his genes wouldn’t carry much further. I love how these cryptics lead to science and TILTs. In the article attached to this link I also learned a lot more about Antipodean history. So many names here are familiar.. as place names.

    https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/tragic-life-charles-darwins-captain

    That led me to to a further TILT:
    ”Onomastics as a subbranch of linguistics is the study of the origin, history and use of proper names. Toponymy is one of the most important branches of onomastics and is understood as the study of place names”.]

    BTW I enjoyed Fed too.

19. Let’s just leave ROCKET as “leaves” and forget salad and lettuce. I’ve always thought that the only thing that goes with Rocket is weedkiller.

20. Whether you say weather or whether JerryG@3, and further to Auriga@16 depends on where you live.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_%E2%9F%A8wh%E2%9F%A9

    So now we have a new homophone debate. Fed does like to stir the pot.

21. I’ve a busy day today, so, unfortunately no time to comment on all the ingenious constructions and great story-telling clues but I’ll just pick out my top favourite, 17dn BOTSWANA.

    Many thanks to Fed and loonapick, especially for parsing LAUREL.

22. … and I have to add 13dn ABOLISHING.

23. ABOLISHING was my LOI, because I had to guess and check the 2 elements of UKGK. Brilliant. Doubly, triply brilliant with the sideways shift. A lesser setter, and one who’s less contemporary in his cluing, could have crafted A BONG in some very Stone Age way. 🙂

24. That meaning of WEATHERBOARD was new to me, and I failed with the laborious parsing of LAUREL and FINAL SCORE (thank you, loonapick). But lots to enjoy here, particularly the timeshare arrangement in TRACTABLE and the neat little OMEN.

25. The clock on Twitter, in times before Musk and X, because I can’t comment now, announced the hour by bongs – so two am or pm is Bong! Bong! – the onomatapoeic representation of the chimes of Big Ben.

26. Didn’t finish — there were a few doozies. Had forgotten about the Fal river, and the News at Ten and LSE references were beyond me. Still scratching my head over swallow/draught and stage/present.

27. GDU @26
    You can take a swallow/draught of beer, for example.
    Think of “present” as a verb – you can present/stage a play.

28. Very enjoyable. Parsing was a luxury with some of the clues – until I set aside some time to go back to them and draw out the clever bits that I missed. I loved ABOLISHING, with Rishi and bong in the build-up, and TABLE TENNIS BAT, my first one in.

    Thanks to Fed and loonapick.

29. I thought ‘hot country’ was quite a vague definition. In fact according to this page, Botswana is actually in the colder 50% of countries:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_yearly_temperature

30. Yes, Alan R @ 29. I visited Botswana one June and nights especially were quite chilly!

31. Entertaining puzzle, though I do find Fed’s constructions often laborious and the clues too wordy for my taste. OVERSLEEPS is a prime example of this. I managed to parse everything except LAUREL.

    I enjoyed BALD EAGLE, SHOPPING MALL and BOTSWANA.

    Thanks to S&B

32. …. and ‘timeshare arrangement’ is clever.

33. Thanks to Fed and loonapick. I found this an entertaining puzzle and ticked 10a COUPÉ, 10a BALD EAGLE, 8d DIEHARDS and 19d ROCKET along the way (I see others liked those ones too). Appreciated having a few of the more tricky parses like 22a FINAL SCORE, the “timeshare” bit in 25a TRACTABLE and the “A BONG” part of 13d ABOLISHING (as predicted, Crispy@6) explained. Thanks also to all contributors for an interesting read of the comments prior to mine.

34. Fed brings clever, left-fieldish, constructions into all his crosswords.
    Thanks to him and loonapick.

35. Far too wordy for my liking. Some great clues, but dubious about draught/swallow, as are other commentators. They are different parts of speech for me.

36. Re Botswana as a hot country. Given that Fed, and the majority of solvers, are British, Botswana is definitely a hot country. Then again, so is just about everywhere according to Alan R’s link. Mind you, that only goes up to 1990

37. KateE@35. I love Fed’s wordy story-telling, and am impressed when I go back over the clues as to how succinct he really is.

38. Thanks for the blog, a lot to like here , WEATHERBOARD a very neat double “verbally”. TRACTABLE a clever clue for sharing the T . ABOLISHING a great construction.
    I did think a few clues had far too many words.
    Playing cards with the students I often win the greatest possible number of tricks , i.e. ALL of them.

39. [ AlanC returns to the top of the charts again after success on Friday , it is now 28-19 ]

40. I loved this puzzle; some clever wordplay with lovely pictures painted. Thanks, Fed. The full parsing of LAUREL and FINAL SCORE escaped me so many thanks to loonapick too. Botswana made me think of Bogdan, who often used to contribute comments.

41. JerryG@3, Auriga@16 & paddymelon@20 – Stewie from Family Guy would pronounce WHETHER as HWETHER – He must be !rish.

42. Lots of fun! As already mentioned fairly easy to solve but trickier to parse.

    Loved the timeshare arrangement and Sunak changing sides.

    Favourites ABOLISHING, FINAL SCORE, TRACTABLE and DIGITAL.

    Thanks Fed and loonapick

43. Tried to get ALI in 1a as the greatest often refers the boxer and struggled with 2d as thought essentially was ilm otherwise completed fairly quickly but struggled with the parsing so thanks to blogger. I still find Mr G too wordy though.

44. Whether the weather is cold, or
    Whether the weather is hot
    We’ll weather the weather
    Whatever the weather
    Whether we like it or not

45. I enjoy Fed’s puzzles. I think the wordy clues present a slightly different challenge. I often find that I get a bit of the wordplay e.g. LISHI, then see the answer and then smile at the rest of the wordplay. I missed the parsing of LAUREL, though, probably because I was thinking of “y” or “x” rather than “z”. Thanks both.

46. I agree about the wordiness os some clues-sent me to sleep before the finish line

47. Shanne@10: SOYA (curds) are needed to make TOFU, not TOFU CRISPY.
    I struggled a bit with this, but worth it. Nho River Fal, but heard of Falmouth, so obviously…..
    Thanks both

48. Really enjoyable with great surfaces, misdirection and humour. I really liked the timeshare device, the bong and the double-bluff simplicity of OMEN! Thanks Fed

49. Thank you for the parsings of FINAL SCORE and LAUREL, both of which largely eluded me. Otherwise, this was a satisfactorily entertaining and brain-stretching sortie.

50. Thanks Fes & Loonapick. Super stuff (as usual with Fed!) I particularly enjoyed COUPE, DRESS SENSE, SHOPPING MALL, ABOLISHING and ROCKET amongst others. (However … and judging by comments so far, perhaps it’s just me – I did find the grammar in BOTSWANA a little jarring, the imperative “doctor” not quite matching the following instruction “to visit”? So one very pedantic minor quibble, sorry!) I do very much enjoy Fed’s storytelling amd Lego constructions, many thanks again!

51. Got on with this much better than previous Fed puzzles I’d come across before. Very smooth surfaces throughout. Just held up at the very last with 2d. With the three crossers in place wondered if the answer might be Lauded, but no parsing to back things up. So strictly a DNF as LAUREL escaped me…

52. Thanks Fed for a very pleasant crossword. While I like succinct, economical clues I also enjoy the imagery that Fed provides. I had many favourites including SHOPPING MALL, TRACTABLE (like the “timeshare” trick), IRKED, DIGITAL, OMEN, BOTSWANA, and ROCKET. I couldn’t parse LAUREL or FINAL SCORE; thanks loonapick for explaining.

53. Overall I found this more accessible than most Feds I’ve attempted, until a handful of pencil-chewers at the end. Failed on FEUDAL as I’m no good on Cornish rivers, although I suspect a sneaky web search may have got me there.

    I don’t mind the odd wordy clue. Fed is good with evocative surfaces, which adds a nice layer of interest in a clue. Loved the timeshare and the BONG mention.

    Cheers both.

54. I also had some difficulty parsing quite a few of these, although once they’re explained they mostly make sense.

    I wouldn’t have thought that STAG and PARTY were equivalent. There’s such a thing as a stag party, but do people use “a stag” to refer to such a party? They don’t where I’m from, but maybe they do elsewhere.

55. I always forget arugula/ROCKET in my running list of vegetables with different names on different sides of the Atlantic (see also eggplant/aubergine, zucchini/courgette, rutabaga/swede/neeps, and cilantro/coriander). [That last one gets an asterisk: we do use the word coriander, but only to refer to the plant’s seeds used (whole or ground) as a spice.]

    Those who wondered about the American take on the ABOLISHING clue: I thought it was clever. If you don’t know who the Prime Minister is, you shouldn’t be doing British crosswords. And I’d forgotten, but did remember after solving, that some news program(me) over there starts with clock chimes.

56. [Me @55: today I learned that rocket and arugula are (to make a long story short) both bastardizations of the standard Italian name for the stuff, rucola.]

57. Ted @54 – yep, the single word STAG is often used to mean a stag party (e.g. “Are you planning on being at Kev’s stag next weekend?”) in various parts of the UK so it’s not a particularly regional thing. And it’s even in Chambers under STAG, with a note of US origin – so perhaps it was imported from over there.

58. I agree with my fellow American mrpenney @55: if you don’t know who Rishi Sunak is, you have no business complaining if you run aground when solving a British puzzle.

    I usually do OK on your politicians, because I pay at least a bit of attention to international news. Older colloquialisms are fine, because I’ve read my share of English novels, but more recent colloquialisms are hit or miss. My geographical knowledge is spotty, so I am constantly running into rivers I’ve never heard of when solving these puzzles. And of course my knowledge of your sports is dismal (although to be honest my knowledge of US sports isn’t great either).

    Conversely, I’m always impressed by how much knowledge of my country seems to be expected in British puzzles — the two-letter abbreviations for all 50 states seem to be fair game, as is familiarity with our Native tribes, among lots of other examples. It’s embarrassing how much you know about us and how little we know about you in return.

59. Loved this. If I was a ticker I’d have ticked an awful lot of them. Botswana and Abolishing, and the neat Omen stick in my mind.

    I’m another who love the wordy ones when they work so well.

60. Never heard of WEATJHERBOARD — I find that it’s what we call clapboard in the US (pronounced “clabbered”). I now know much more about its production than I ever did.

    26ac I think IRKED means “annoyed,”,not “distressed.”

    I had no hope of parsing LAUREL. Thanks, loonapick.

    Crispy@6 I have actually heard of Rishi Sunak, but the News at Ten bongs were beyond me. Some of my compatriiots may be baffled by
    ROCKET, which we call arugula.

    gdu@28 I did remember the Fal, having moored on its shore in Falmouth after we’d sailed across from Boston, but didn’t register the “turns up.” Tried FADUEL and gave up.

    It was on that visit to the UK it first occurred to me that places ending in “-mouth” were actually at the mouth of the river in question. We have a Falmouth and a Dartmouth in New Englanc, but they aren’t at the mouth of anything, just probably named after the first settlers’ home town. We also have a Plymouth of Pilgrim fame, but I don’t think the UK one is at the mouth of the River Ply, is it?

    Got most of it last night. Thanks, Fed and loonapick.

61. Close Valentine , it is the river Plym.

62. Valentine @60: Plymouth is on the river Plym. Liked the revelation that the American “mouths” aren’t on mouths. It had never occurred to me before.

63. In Wales the word Aber can mean mouth but it comes at the start of place names.

64. We do have at least one too – Cockermouth in Cumbria is nowhere near the sea (though it is on the confluence of the Cocker and the Derwent).

65. Weymouth in Staffordshire is about as far from the sea as you can get and I do not think it is near any rivers . It is probably a corruption of some old name. Quite near to the wonderfully named Loggerheads.

66. I did not parse 22ac apart from IN and COR, 2d,13d apart from rishi -> lishi

    Thanks, both.

67. Another very enjoyable crossword from one of my favourite setters. Loved ABOLISHING, TRACTABLE, OVERSLEEPS. Thanks Fed and Loonapick.

68. [Roz @39: mid-table mediocrity as ever. Middle of the Road – Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep]

69. [ AlanC@68 , once my students are back I will not even make the top 40. Fortunately the more obscure weekend charts will save me . ]

70. I remember watching a western called “Five Bloody Graves”. It used the same music as News at Ten. I kept expecting a Bong!!!

71. Thanks, loonapick, for parsing LAUREL.

    I was unfamiliar with the bong but I wasn’t thrown. I quickly associated it with the doot doot doot that proceeded (maybe still proceeds?) the top-of-the-hour radio news during my time in the Netherlands.

72. A region is considerably larger than a locality.

73. By the time I get round to finishing the Guardian crossword usually, there’s nothing left to comment on. All I can offer is that Lossiemouth is at the mouth of the R Lossie and, in Scotland, “inver” is used for “at the mouth of” e.g Inverness.

74. … but Aberdeen is allegedly “the mouth of the Don” even though it is also at the mouth if the Dee.

75. jellyroll @74
    The Don enters the sea at Old Aberdeen.

76. After a quick scan through the comments I am feeling uncommonly pleased with myself for parsing LAUREL, having lost count of those who said they were unable to. I had to persevere with it as I couldn’t think of a four-letter synonym for ‘triumph’ beginning with C (doh!), and these were my last two. My first thought on taking the Z out of A(Z)URE was “that’s not fair”, but perhaps it’s just difficult.

    I liked ‘timeshare arrangement’ too, but I initially put a huge question mark beside 3d as it was so verbose I just didn’t know where to start. Eventually spotting the two words with IC in them was the nearest I got to a penny drop moment.

    Thanks to Fed and loonapick.

77. Sheffield Hatter @76: you say 3D is verbose but it is positively taciturn compared with 12A — twelve words in the clue for four letters in the solution. My brother-in-law insists on an upper limit of 2-to-1 words to letters, so our household nicknames all such ratio violations as “Martin clues”

78. Thanks loonapick and thanks all.

    Shanne @10 – I think others have pointed out that the ‘crispy’ is part of the wordplay not the definition.

    With the greatest possible/all respect, I’m surprised to see people quibbling over draught/swallow. I didn’t think it obscure. A draught of beer, say, is the amount of beer that you drink in one swallow. As, of course, is a swallow.

    Cheers!

79. jellyroll@74 / muffin@75 – the main part of Aberdeen is a few hundred metres inland; the small picturesque village at the mouth of the Dee is called Footdee (pronounced “Fittie”). I know of at least one other place in Scotland where “foot” is used to mean “mouth of…” – the little village of Lendalfoot in Ayrshire.

80. ‘With the greatest possible/all respect’ -nice touch Fed.

81. To add to the conversion about homophony, or the lack thereof, this conversation has drawn my mind to the way that Bob Ross spoke in his ‘The Joy of Painting’ TV series where he would say ‘white’ as ‘hwaat’. It’s certainly a recessive trait these days though and I don’t exhibit it personally. It’s very difficult indeed to find someone who doesn’t merge ‘whether’ and ‘weather’ anywhere in England in fact, I’m no sure such people still exist here apart from a few transplanted Scots/Irish/American rednecks.

82. I realise this is late but thanks loonapick for making sense of LAUREL (I did toy with LAUDED as ronald@51 but spotted the l in films, and then thought that X for X-rated/blue was being kicked out of something) and FINA…, and thanks muffin@26 for the stage/present equivalence as that had been a lucky guess for me. And thanks Fed for another creative triumph.

83. Absolutely could not parse FINAL SCORE, LAUREL or ABOLISHING (I did get the LISHI part!), until I saw the explanation here. Anyway, no complaints – a great puzzle. Thanks Fed and loonapick.

84. BOTSWANA such a great clue; I’ve added it to my “whetting the beginner’s appetite” list!

    Nicely done, Fed, most pleasant

    Thanks to loonapick

85. This crossword appeared in the internationally distributed Guardian Weekly, and I think parsing some of the clues (eg BONG) would have been virtually impossible for my fellow Aussies. Luckily for me I’m also a Pom, so got it. Bongs are of course common in Australia but usually serve to slow down time rather than mark it exactly.

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