Guardian 29,299 – Philistine

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An enjoyable puzzle where I was fooled on a couple of occasions by clues that turned out to be much simpler than I was expecting. Thanks to Philistine.

 
Across
1 OSPREYS Birds on seaside spot to start with, eating what they eat (7)
PREY (what ospreys eat) in first letters of On Seaside Spot
5 SLICING Dealing with cake that’s seasonal without filling and topping (7)
S[easona]L + ICING (topping of a cake)
10 DIVA Singer keen to make a comeback (4)
Reverse of AVID
11 UTOPIANISM To split up and desert over the onset of marriage is an idealised vision (10)
TO in UP + reverse of SINAI (desert) + M[arriage]
12 STAMEN Testament featuring male member in bloomers (6)
Hdden in teSTAMENt
13 EMULATED Followed the example of having dealt poorly with bird (8)
EMU + DEALT*
14 GUERRILLA Regular light infantry starts out with one who doesn’t belong (9)
Anagram of REGULAR L[ight] I[nfantry]
16 KNOTS Entanglements from speed (5)
Double definition
17 ACUTE Sharp causing laceration in casualty (5)
CUT (laceration) in A [and] E
19 HUMAN RACE Much arena activity for us (5,4)
(MUCH ARENA)*
23 BADINAGE A badge for fooling around? (8)
A BADGE is literally BAD in AGE
24 CANAPE Appetiser is able to simulate (6)
CAN (is able to) + APE (copy, simulate)
26 CLOVE HITCH One of 16 churches: the first welcomes love, the second follows it (5,5)
LOVE in CH + IT + CH. The clove hitch is a kind of KNOT
28 USELESS Futile to cut back (7)
To cut back could be to USE LESS
29 PLAYPEN Drama writer’s safe space (7)
PLAY (drama) + PEN (writer)
Down
2 SHIHTZU Dog caught in awful menagerie (7)
Homophone of “shit zoo”. This dog is more usually written as two words, but Chambers allows this version
3 REALM Realism is lost in this field (5)
REALISM less IS
4 YOU AND I We read out a couple of letters (3,3,1)
Homophone of “U AND I” (two letters)
6 LAID UP Face being sick in bed? (4,2)
A face is a DIAL, which in a down is LAID UP
7 CONTAINER SHIP Vessel or two (9,4)
CONTAINER and SHIP are both vessels, as is a CONTAINER SHIP. Rather a weak one, unless I’m missing something
8 NASCENT Whiff of sodium is emerging (7)
NA (chemical symbol for sodium) SCENT
9 NOBEL LAUREATE Like Euler, a notable original! (5,8)
(EULER A NOTABLE)* with a kind of &lit defintion, though Euler (1707–1783) lived long before Nobel Prizes were established (first awarded 1901) But see the comments for an actual Nobel-Prize-winning Euler.
15 RETRIEVAL Bringing back earlier TV production (9)
(EARLIER TV)*
18 CHABLIS Wine and tea and endless joy (7)
CHA (tea) + BLIS[s]
20 ALCOHOL Booze trashed what’s within school walls (7)
Anagram of [s]CHOO[l] [w]ALL[s]
21 CAPSIZE Covers eyes, we hear, to turn over (7)
CAPS (cover) + homophone “eyes”
22 LASHES Don’t start arguments and beatings (6)
[c]LASHES
25 NASTY Finally clean a dirty place that’s vile (5)
[clea]N A STY

79 comments on “Guardian 29,299 – Philistine”

  1. Ulf von Euler (born Feb. 7, 1905, Stockholm, Sweden—died March 9, 1983, Stockholm) Swedish physiologist who, with British biophysicist Sir Bernard Katz and American biochemist Julius Axelrod, received the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

    Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog!
    Thanks both!

  3. On 9d you are – like me at first – thinking of the wrong Euler. Ulf von Euler won the 1970 prize for medicine.

  4. Not Leonard then KVa @1 who would surely have got it if he’d still been around. The author of the totally brilliant e^iPI+1=0.

  5. Yes, I too had the wrong Euler first up. Googling “Euler Nobel Prize” made things clear.

    Why is a clove hitch one of sixteen?

    After Picaroon’s UK special yesterday, this one was good fun, with no speed humps.

  6. Lots of very clever stuff from Philistine today. And I was beaten by the brilliant BADINAGE right at the end – which I do not mind at all, so neat is that construction. (Mind you, it makes up for the inclusion of the chestnutty DIVA but I’d have to be curmudgeonly to the extreme to complain about that!)

    Faves include SLICING where the seasonal/SL was cunningly underplayed, STAMEN which is defined in a way I have never seen before and which made me laugh, CLOVE HITCH which is just a brilliant assembly to clue a tricky word, PLAYPEN – deceptively simple but making great use of a 21st century trope, LAID UP which is very tricksy, CHABLIS for the image conjured up and ALCOHOL – perhaps not the smoothest surface but very clever to spot the potential for inclusion of the fodder in the innocuous combo, ‘school walls’.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew

  9. I don’t see 7 as weak, just very neat and economical. Tastes vary, of course. But you’d never see this in the really weak cryptics.
    Thanks for clarifying a(bad)ge. I knew it was self-referential but it didn’t quite click.

  11. I agree with your first sentence, Andrew – I went down all the rabbit holes, I think! (Enjoyed doing so, though.)

    I had ticks for the nifty anagrams at 19ac HUMAN RACE,15dn RETRIEVAL and NOBEL LAUREATE, the constructions of 1ac OSPREYS, 5ac SLICING, 14ac GUERRILLA, 23ac BADINAGE, 26ac CLOVE HITCH and 6dn LAID UP.

    Many thanks to Philistine for the fun and Andrew for the blog.

  12. Ulf Euler came from a family of Nobel Laureates, if you read the description on the Nobel Awards site, but I thought of the 18th Century mathematician too.

    Entertaining puzzle with challenging cluing – but it all made sense in the end – and I really enjoyed the tussle.

    Thank you to Philistine and Andrew.

  13. O tempora, O mores. Nobody bats an eyelid at the admittedly quite funny 2d…
    Lots to enjoy, favourites being the very neat BADINAGE and CLOVE HITCH, and the brilliant &lit NOBEL LAUREATE (though I was too lazy to look up the Nobel laureate (von) Euler rather than the brilliant mathematician.
    Thanks to Philistine, to Andrew, and to KVa @1

  14. I also went down all the rabbit holes and finally guessed GUERRILLA from the crossers so came here for the parsing. Anagrind ‘out’ was easily missed! Thanks Andrew and especially Philistine for the mid-week fun!

  15. Thanks to KVa et al for teaching me about the other Euler. His namesake is so well known (to me, anyway) that it didn’t even occur to me to check if there were any more.

  16. Funny how ‘gullible’ the (or at least my) mind is; I mean how could I not think Wait up, but he of the most elegant equation was ages before … Hey ho. Meanwhile, lots to love, like the blooming male member, the two churches and the shitty zoo. Great fun, ta Phil’n’Andrew.

  17. Shanne@12
    It seems the Euler everyone of us thought first and the NOBEL LAUREATE under discussion here were distantly related.
    Regarding the &lit classification of this clue, I have a question…
    Like Euler, a notable original! —The clue works as a definition. One condition fulfilled.
    ‘Euler a notable’ original———-The wordplay doesn’t utilise the ‘like’. The second condition is not fulfilled.
    Or am I missing something?

  18. Thank you for parsing 23a. I could have looked at that all day and not understood why. I routinely struggle to spot the clues which work this way.

  19. For 2d I was helped by remembering the old joke ‘I went to a zoo but all they had was one dog. It was a shihtzu’.

  21. Enjoyable puzzle with pleasant surfaces, humour, and witty constructions.

    Favourites: UROPIANISM, ACUTE, LAID UP, PLAYPEN, BADINAGE (loi).

    New for me: CLOVE HITCH (I wonder if I used this knot when I did macrame years ago. Anyway, I liked the way it was clued); I was thinking of the other Euler and then discovered Novel laureate Euler, Ulf von (for 9d).

    I could not parse 5ac even though I was thinking of ICING, and 20d.

    Thanks, both.

  22. Not at my best today, apparently. Couldn’t figure out BADINAGE, and discovered that I have never known how to spell SHIHTZU. Both superb clues.

    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

  23. Thanks Philistine and Andrew, that was fun. I’m quite partial to neat clues like 10a & 28a, and I like that GUERRILLAs are actually irregulars.

  24. I filled in most of the bottom last night reasonably quickly, but the top was virtually blank. This morning was a tough challenge but well worth the effort. There were so many clever constructions with top favourite, BADINAGE plus OSPREYS, GUERRILLA, STAMEN, UTOPIANISM, the funny SHIHTZU, CONTAINER SHIP and NASCENT. I didn’t think of any Eulers, unlike others, as science is sadly my weakness.

    Ta Philistine & Andrew.

  25. That was a really fun puzzle with some great humour. I loved SHIHTZU, BADINAGE, STAMEN and NOBEL LAUREATE.

    Thanks S&B I really enjoyed todays.

  26. Lots to like in an enjoyable crossword.

    I appreciated the wordplays of BADINAGE, LAID UP and CLOVE HITCH, and the definition of STAMEN. All the dictionaries that I have looked at give SHIH TZU as either 4,3 or 4-3. The alternative spelling in Chambers is SHITZU, not SHIH TZU.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew.

  27. All good stuff. BADINAGE was fiendish! Mike @19, yes I immediately thought of that joke too. I was initially a bit puzzled by 19a because it somehow seemed to read as if it was an &lit (and I suppose a RACE can take place in an arena). But it turned out that the definition was just “us”.

    Many thanks both. (Andrew: this blog has not appeared on the Guardian page.)

  28. As a mathematician, EULER would not have been eligible for a Nobel even if they had existed in his time. Rumour has it that Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician, which may explain it. Those mathematicians who have won have been economists, and to be pedantic the Economics one is an Award rather than a Prize.

    I’m afraid I still don’t understand the parsing of BADINAGE.

  30. Was thinking ‘oh, Monday has moved to Wednesday to keep us all motivated during the week’ and then I hit the NW corner and changed my mind. After a break and a second run I thought that this was excellent fun. OSPREYS was my favourite, mainly because once the penny dropped on that one the rest of the NW fell into place, although I still couldn’t parse STAMEN (the answer was obvious to my limited lexicon from the crossers) until coming here. Thanks Philistine and Andrew

  31. I found this puzzle so much more accessible than yesterday’s Picaroon (for similar reasons to Geoff@5; not Picaroon’s fault, just me).
    Many thanks to Philistine. Top puzzle. So many ticks. Most of those favourites have already been canvassed. A shout-out as well though for 16a KNOTS and 28a USELESS.
    I still needed help to understand a couple so thanks to Andrew as well.

  32. Bonnie@20
    NOBEL L…
    I was trying to analyse whether the clue was an &lit one.
    It looks like a Clue-as-definition (as you have indicated the ‘like Euler’ part is required for the def).
    However, the wordplay doesn’t make use of the word ‘like’. Or so I think.
    Hence my question.

  33. Entertaining crossword with a wide range of clues, from write-ins to much trickier constructions.

    Plaudits for the wordplay in SLICING, REALM, LAID UP GUERRILLA and ALCOHOL. STAMEN was fun.

    The only Euler I knew was Leonhard, so this also puzzled me, as I was too lazy to look up his namesake.

    Thanks to the Levanter and Andrew

  34. A Philistine crossword is a joy forever! I thought this a thing of great beauty, in particular the CLOVE HITCH, though could never quite master this knot when in the Scouts. Last two were the dog at 2 down once I had worked out the correct way to spell it, and BADINAGE.

  35. Thanks for the blog, brilliant puzzle, so much variety and imagination in the clues , UTOPIANISM is great wordplay, CLOVE HITCH very neat with a nod to handfasting, BADINAGE very devious. Nearly every clue could get mentioned.
    I did raise an eyebrow for EULER , Leonhard far too early and the wrong subject , I knew that no Euler had won a real Nobel but I suspected an Euler could have won one of the minor awards.

  37. I am going to be very nit-picky here, but treat this as an honest question, please, rather than a criticism.

    Isn’t Ulf von Euler’s last name von Euler? If so, kind of messes with the &lit. discussion.

  38. SHIHTZU – I’ve just realised ‘caught’ is the homophone indicator. Doh!
    Thank you for explaining BADINAGE – brilliant!
    A very enjoyable puzzle with so many clues to admire, including OSPREYS, UTOPIANISM, GUERRILLA, NOBEL LAUREATE and the beautifully misleading surface of CLOVE HITCH.
    Many thanks Philistine and Andrew

  40. poc@28: The widely-repeated story that there is no Nobel prize for mathematics because Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician is rather ruined by the fact that Nobel never married.

  41. Thanks both,
    11a gave me pause. Can ‘utopianism’ be a single ‘idealised vision’. Collins thinks you need more than one. Chambers doesn’t define it and the OED website is so user-unfriendly after its recent ‘upgrade’ that ICNBA to log in. To me the one is a doctrine and the other the product of a doctrine and so not quite the same thing. (What do we call this? A category error?) OTOH, it’s easy to construct phrases where the two are nearly interchangeable.

    To have used ‘idealised visions’ in the clue would have made it harder. To offer an IV as an example of U would need a DBE indicator.
    Just splitting hairs.

  43. 11a – how do you know to reverse SINAI?

    14a – what is the anagram indicator in this clue?

    17a – I had KNIFE.

    23a – might be a silly question but where does AGE come from?

    26a – I don’t understand the definition – what is “one in 16”? I was trying to find words with XVI.

    9d – what is the anagram indicator?

    15d – I had RETRIEVED. I didn’t know it was an anagram.

  45. Steffen:

    > 11a – how do you know to reverse SINAI?
    It’s “desert over”, i.e. “turned over” or reversed

    > 14a – what is the anagram indicator in this clue?
    “out”

    > 23a – might be a silly question but where does AGE come from?
    A BADGE is BAD enclosed by the letters of AGE – A (BAD)GE

    26a – I don’t understand the definition – what is “one in 16”? I was trying to find words with XVI.
    16 is a reference to the answer to 16 across : KNOTS

    9d – what is the anagram indicator?
    “original”

  46. Simon S @42

    Ashamed to say that it rang no bells at all for me – and I find I blogged it! Rather worrying – but pleased to see I managed to parse it. 😉

  47. Quickly wrote in SLICING based on topping as the definition and dealing with cake as the icing (even though that would have the two parts back to front).
    Need to look out for LAID UP BADINAGE trickery in the future.
    Thanks PANDA

  48. I tend not to get the self referential things easily so was pleased to get LAID UP, but BADINAGE defeated me, so thanks for the parsing there. Do you call those “reversals”?

    I associate the Shitzu joke with Barry Cryer.

    I thought this was going to be one which used all the letters of the alphabet (what’s the name for those?) so spent a long time looking for a Q word that would use the U of what turned out to be GUERILLA!

  49. The zoo that only contains one dog and is therefore a SHIHTZU is an oft-repeated gag – and one of my neighbours has owned a series of cute rescued shihtzus, so I had no problem there. Euler was another matter: I vaguely remembered that he was a mathematician, didn’t know there was another one, and ended up revealing that.

    Liked OSPREYS, HUMAN RACE, BAD-IN-AGE, LAID UP – in fact, most of them. I suppose the GUERRILLA “doesn’t belong” to the regular light infantry – I had problems with the def there.

  50. I thought this was glorious. SHIHTZU is one of the great dad jokes, CLOVE HITCH is beautifully constructed, and I thought CONTAINER SHIP a classic in the Rufus mould. As ever with reverse clues, I got the answers without fully spotting the parsing but both are very clever. GUERRILLA held me up a while, but only because I was spelling it wrong. Philistine seems to set less frequently of late, it’s always a treat when they appear.

  53. One of the best of recent times – an enjoyable wrestle with some confidence of victory and associated self-satisfaction when it was all over. Yay me! (but equally yay setter and blogger!).

    I do enjoy those setters who take liberties with the ‘definition’ component of clues but it seems betimes that the elastic is over-stretched, as in GUERRILLA today – but (as I had recent occasion to remark when served a ‘lamb casserole with an oatmeal crust’) mutton crumble.

    Joffee@48: I think we call them ‘reverse definitions’ (someone will correct).

    Paul the Plumber@51: …to say.

  54. Joffee @ 48 it is a reverse containment , the answer itself tells you the wordplay plus a bit of Gossard to push A and BADGE together .

    [ AlanC – classic Porridge was on BBC2 Saturday night. Guest appearance by the home of the mighty KPR ( in disguise) . ]

  55. Sorry Alphalpha@53 I did not see your post or mean to correct you. I would say the definition is normal here and the wordplay is reversed , in this case containment .

  56. Thanks Philistine, that was excellent. I missed the groan worthy SHIHTZU but eventually solved the rest albeit without parsing GUERRILLA (out was devious) and BADINAGE. It took me awhile to get REALM because it was child’s play — tricked again! In any event Philistine ranks among my favourite setters with clues like OSPREY, DIVA, USELESS, LAID UP, NASCENT, and ALCOHOL. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

  58. Nobel winner ( a proper one ) .
    Unit , Konstant and Element named after you.
    Nobody has the full set , Roentgen has 2 plus a unit sort off, 2 and 3/4 maybe.

  59. SHIH TZU is my favourite clue as I own one but I sadly failed to see it. Had 9 clues left unsolved before cheating/revealing today.

  60. Roz @58

    Fermi used to have 4 and a group of particles (1938, 1Fermi = 10-15m, Fermi Constant GF the weak coupling constant, Fermium and Fermion) – but the unit of length was superceded and we just use femtometre. Curie had three and double N.

    I had never heard of NUKEs and spent a pleasant 5 mins thinking of possibilities – thanks for mentioning.

  61. Nothing but praise from me for the setter and the blogger. I found I was grinning as I was typing in the solutions.
    Does one of our record keepers know if there has been a puzzle with KNOTS as the theme? There are so many wonderful names and terms involved on the practical side (thanks go to my years in Brownies and Guides) even before delving into the theory.

  64. I had some difficulty with this one and failed to get GUERRILLA, OSPREYS and BADINAGE but thanks to the blog I’ve learned some more setter tricks. So thanks Andrew and Philistine.

  65. [AlanC@62 thanks for the link , I will look when I have some IT support , I am sure you know the Porridge story , in the episode Blanco’s treasure is buried in Leeds but they actually use the home of KPR and some clever camera work. ]

  66. Matthew@60 and Paul@ 63 , thanks for the interest.
    Fermi – N and E totally . Unit not really , the Fermi was really a prefix , the unit was metres and it is now femto as you say . Constant not quite, too specific and based on other constants . certainly not a fundamental constant. Bit like the Bohr Magneton.
    Curie – only one proper N and definite E , Unit , sort of but based on a gram of radium and really Becquerels, although lab sources are still rated in micro-Curies, a bit like the Roentgen unit.

  69. Andrew@68

    It wasn’t me going mad then! I have the link to category Guardian bookmarked, and kept refreshing the page periodically yesterday and didn’t see this blog. I’ll have to remember to search the site more widely next time.

  73. Charles@22, I have always known that I have never known how to spell SHIHTZU.

    This was up to Philistine’s high standard. He manages to work humour into both wordplay and surfaces, a remarkable accomplishment. Thanks P&A for the delightful diversion.

    Paul the plumber @ 51, too bad. There’s more enjoyment to be had from cryptic crosswords than just from degree of difficulty. And for some of us lesser mortals, we didn’t find it too easy, so thanks for drawing our attention to our inferiority.

  75. I am still having trouble with BADINAGE. I understand that it’s BAD with AGE around it but not why ‘bad in age’ means ‘fooling around’.

  78. Took me a while, laid up was my last in – and failed with badinage and guerrilla! I enjoyed the mental tussle though and all the “aha” moments. Really liked Clove Hitch! Lovely puzzle and thanks for the blog!

  79. I’ve been catching up, having had a busy couple of weeks ….. One of the interesting side effects of solving a few puzzles in one sitting is the global view; I have to say that creations such as this coruscate in any grouping ….

    Had to pop by to give my huge thanks to Dr Philistine (and to Andrew for his excellent blog)

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