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The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29311.
The Don with his usual few unusual words, clearly clued, and apart from that on the easy side.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | CENTRALLY |
At the heart of things, friend is after money, right? (9)
|
| A charae of CENT (‘money’) plus R (‘right’) plus ALLY (‘friend’). | ||
| 10 | ON ICE |
Held back love, meeting heartless female relative (2,3)
|
| A charade of O (‘love’) plus NI[e]CE (‘female relative’) minus the middle letter (‘heartless’). | ||
| 11 | SPOKANE |
Talked about an American city (7)
|
| An envelope (‘about’) of ‘an’ in SPOKE (‘talked’). | ||
| 12 | TAPSTER |
Barman maybe offering sample outside front of pub (7)
|
| No, not a composer for once. An envelope (‘outside’) of P (‘front of Pub’) in TASTER (‘sample’). | ||
| 13 | TWIG |
Little growth? Time to get hairpiece (4)
|
| A charade of T (‘time’) plus WIG (‘hairpiece’). | ||
| 14 | DISRESPECT |
Show contempt for horrible spiders etc. (10)
|
| An anagram (‘horrible’) of ‘spiders etc’. | ||
| 16 | TAGALOG |
Asian folk label a diary (7)
|
| TAG A LOG (‘label a diary’), for the Phillipine people. | ||
| 17 | POTABLE |
River board offering description of water? (7)
|
| A charade of PO (Italian ‘river’) plus TABLE (‘board’). | ||
| 19 | AFFABILITY |
A fine female with competence and friendly disposition (10)
|
| A charade of ‘a’ plus F (‘fine’) plus F (‘female’) plus ABILITY (‘competence’). | ||
| 22 | OLGA |
Girl endlessly radiant after somersault (4)
|
| A reversal (‘after somersault’) of AGLO[w] (‘radiant’) minus the last letter (‘endlessly’). | ||
| 24 | EAGLETS |
Little birds with minimal energy given tags (7)
|
| A charade of E (‘minimal Energy’) plus AGLETS (‘tags’ – the bits at the ends of shoelaces). | ||
| 25 | REAR END |
Engineers attending a rip behind (4,3)
|
| A charade of RE (Royal ‘Engineers’) plus (‘attending’) ‘a’ plus REND (‘rip’). | ||
| 26 | RHYME |
Frost’s heard what Frost wrote (5)
|
| Sounds like (‘heard’) RIME (‘frost’), with the second ‘Frost’ being the poet Robert. | ||
| 27 | ESOTERICA |
Secret things drunkard hides in English heather (9)
|
| An envelope (‘hides in’) of SOT (‘drunkard’) in E (‘English’) plus ERICA (‘heather’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ICOSITETRAHEDRA |
Solid figures that could be tidier with a corset – ah! (15)
|
| An anagram (‘could be’) of ‘tidier’ plus ‘a corset ah’. They have 24 faces; it helps if you are familiar with 20-faced and 4-faced figures. | ||
| 2 | ENDOWING |
Providing with gift, due after death (8)
|
| A charade of END (‘death’) plus OWING (‘due’). | ||
| 3, 23 | BREADMAKER |
Kitchen item in funny dream grabbed by its user? (10)
|
| An envelope (‘grabbed by’) of READM, an anagram (‘funny’) of ‘dream’ in BAKER (‘its user’). | ||
| 4 | FLEETING |
Transient affair involving headless runners? (8)
|
| An envelope (‘involving’) of [f]EET (‘runners’) minus the first letter (‘headless’).in FLING (‘affair’). | ||
| 5 | OYSTER |
Food eaten by boys, terrible (6)
|
| A hidden answer (‘eaten by’) in ‘bOYS TERrible’. | ||
| 6 | COMPOSITE |
Expression of surprise about politician coming to place to see concrete? (9)
|
| A charade of COMPO, an envelope (‘about’) of MP (‘politician’) in COO (‘expression of surprise’) plus (‘coming to’) SITE (‘place’), with ‘to see’ as connective tissue. ‘Concrete’ perhaps works best as the building material. | ||
| 7 | BIG TOE |
Visitor to market, one on foot (3,3)
|
| “This little piggie went to market”. | ||
| 8 | LEARN THE HARD WAY |
Endless alarm – why adherent suffers, making progress with difficulty (5,3,4,3)
|
| An anagram (‘suffers’) of ‘alar[m]’ minus the last letter (‘endless’) plus ‘why adherent’. | ||
| 15 | CLOBBERED |
Beaten journalist weighed down by personal baggage (9)
|
| A charade of CLOBBER (‘personal baggage’) plus (‘weighed down by’ in a down light) ED (‘journalist’). | ||
| 17 | PETERLOO |
Name of massacre, with safe gents maybe hiding below (8)
|
| A charade of PETER (‘safe’) plus LOO (‘gents maybe’), with ‘hiding below’ just affirming the order of the particles.See here for the Manchester massacre of 1819. | ||
| 18 | BULLETIN |
Report of missile going over home (8)
|
| A charade of BULLET (‘missile’) plus (‘going over’ in a down light) IN (‘home’). | ||
| 20 | FOGEYS |
Oldies in state of uncertainty? Yes, possibly (6)
|
| A charade of FOG (‘state of uncertainty’) plus EYS, an anagram (‘possibly’) of ‘yes’. | ||
| 21 | LISTED |
Over to one side, on a roll (6)
|
| Double definition, with ‘roll’ as in roll call. | ||
| 23 |
See 3
|
|
8
Built 1d from the bottom, hedra, tetra, then guessed the top, but had absy no idea how many faces, or what icosi meant. And had forgotten about aglets Otherwise, pretty gentle from the Don, thanks, and thanks to PeterO for the early blog.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO!
A gentle puzzle for sure. Quite enjoyable nonetheless.
As usual, a great blog from PeterO!
Liked EAGLETS, BREADMAKER and BIG TOE.
COMPOSITE (my take)
concrete? —> An example of a COMPOSITE
Re 4d I had ‘(m)eet’ for runners being horse races but your parsing, PeterO, must be right.
I would spell 20d as ‘fogies’.
Thanks setter and blogger.
Well, now I know what an icositetrahedron is. I must try to toss it into the conversation at my next dinner party. You never learn anything new from sudokus.
This was an enjoyable pursuit, with only a few head scratchers. I’d not heard of Spokane and I wasted a good deal of time trying to think of a composer for 12a, a common cryptic trick. Never heard of Peterloo, which is why I hesitatingly entered Waterloo. Conseuqently all that I could fit for 17a was “wetable”, and I spent some time looking for an English River We. Then I remembered that in Crossword Land for some reason peter is a safe, so it all fell into place in the end.
Thank you Pasquale & PeterO.
You can see a picture of ICOSITETRAHEDRA (and 118 others) here.
I built up TAGALOG from the TAG A LOG but couldn’t believe it was a word.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
1d was a problem, left till last, did exactly what grantinfreo@1 had done, built from the bottom and guessed the first 5. (I had two letters already, from crossers so 3 letters actually). Never heard of this shape till today, so learnt something.
Thank you to Pasquale and PeterO
thanks Peter and Don! I got my nursery rhymes mixed up — I thought it was the little toe that went to market but of course he got tickled all the way home
GDU@4
PETERLOO
Under ‘peter noun slang’ Collins has these entries:
1. a safe, till, or cash box
2. a prison cell
3. the witness box in a courtroom
4. mainly US a slang word for penis
Even outside the crosswordland, must be safe to use ‘peter’ for a safe!
KVa, you’re quoting Collins, not Chambers! Are you feeling OK? 😉
GDU
LOL
As you insist…
This is what the mother of all fictional works says:
peter (slang)
1. A safe
2. A prison cell
3. The penis
4. A till (Aust)
5. The witness box (Aust)
PETERLOO – I read that “peter” = “peter pan”, rhyming slang for “can”, meaning a cell or safe or something difficult to open or get out of. Is that others’ understanding? Who still uses rhyming slang and are these just UK words? I’ll remember that one now.
EAGLET – I’d forgotten about aglet (or aiglet), having only seen it in crosswords and not personally having bought any. So thank you for that.
Lovely puzzle. It seemed straightforward until it wasn’t. Like others, I needed to build 1d bit by bit, from the bottom and top and the letters in the anagram. I’m not sure I can pronounce it, but I may never need to. However, as Dave@5 notes, there are 118 other shapes, all available for setters.
BIG TOE, ON ICE and RHYME all made me smile. I also liked BREAD MAKER, a neat clue, ESOTERICA and LEARN THE HARD WAY (reflecting my experience of 1d).
Thanks for the puzzle Pasquale and the blog, Peter O.
Must have been gentle because I finished, 8d being exactly my experience of the G so far. I thought SPOKANE was a gimme and ON ICE was good. Just how I like Maker’s Mark. Thanks.
Sorry about crossing with you Kva@10. I’m too slow with comments.
However nho the Australian terms. Maybe I just don’t get out enough.
Seemed a bit more straightforward today than the previous puzzles this week, perhaps because the long answers down the sides gave a quick toehold. Favourites were OLGA (even if memories of the wonderful Korbut are tarnished somewhat by her revelations of the abuse she suffered), BREAD MAKER, TWIG (when I twigged), and TAPSTER for the smooth surfaces. Had to check SPOKANE was the name of a city somewhere in the US. LOI was RHYME, which I couldn’t parse. Thanks PeterO for the explanation,and for the blog. Thank you Pasquale for such fun.
So, how many people know the word at 1? 0.1%? What is the point of putting it in a crossword?
I too spent a while trying to think of a composer for 12, until I realised it really was a barman. I have met 1d before, but had to spell it out from the fodder. Forgot to go back and work out the parsing of 24, so thanks to PeterO; who knows if I’d have worked out where the AGLETS came from, though I have met it before in crosswords. Needed the crossers to work out OLGA. Wasn’t entirely sure that Robert Frost wrote rhymed poems (‘Good fences make good neighbours’), but it was obvious enough. Not too much ESOTERICA for Pasquale. Thanks to him and to PeterO.
For once, even the relative obscurities either rang a distant bell, or were gettable, so this was pretty much Goldilocks territory for me – many thanks to Pasquale for a fun challenge, and to PeterO for the excellent blog.
Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.
Thank goodness 1d ICOSITETRAHEDRA was an anagram, though I still needed almost all the crossers to get it and then had to check that the word I came up worked with the definition. I had CYGNETS (unparsed) for 24a for quite a while, and even when it was clearly wrong because of 1d, I couldn’t parse EAGLETS. I see others had the same mental blank abouf AGLETS.
I also liked OLGA/”aglow” at 22a, paul@14.
Chris @15. As is fairly usual with Pasquale, there are a couple of uncommon words. The idea is, as in this case, to build up the answer from the clue.
Re TAGALOG. Many years ago, we received a CV from a job candidate who put “speaking Tagalog” as one of his skills. He didn’t get an interview.
Chris@15 Most mathematicians will be familiar with icosahedron and tetrahedron, so combining the two was not too difficult to give ICOSITETRAHEDRA. I suspect a few more than 0.1%, whilst not having heard the word, would be able to derive it (maybe 3% – a guestimate based on the number of maths students at University each year).
Apart from 1d, nothing really too obscure. I’ve had Beef TAGALOG in a local restaurant, very nice.
I think FOGEYS can be read as a CAD, semi &lit, or extended definition, whatever we want to call it today.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.
Thank you Pasquale & PeterO, that was fun.
I loved RHYME, TWIG and FOGEYS.
TAGALOG went straight in despite nho.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
A DNF – I gave up on OLGA; too many names that fitted. It might have helped if a hadn’t been trying to take both ends off a word for “radiant”.
I too liked the “barman” not being a composer. Other favourites were FOGEYS and LISTED.
I wonder how overseas solvers will cope with PETERLOO, and how widespread knowledge of the “piggy” rhyme is, especially with younger solvers?
Crumbs… never completed one of The Don’s offerings at such a lick.
Had to cheat with an anagram engine for icoso-whatsit. I wonder if I’ll recall it in the future
Many thanks, both.
muffin@23
You are about PETERLOO and BIG TOE. Difficult for overseas solvers in general.
I knew PETERLOO from earlier puzzles. BIG TOE I guessed as ‘one on foot’ and then
googled with a couple of different combinations of words. Quickly, Wiki came to
my help with the said rhyme.
No complaints at all. Learning new words and phrases is good for my health.
Quite approachable for Pasquale and, as others have said, the tricky words were not impenetrable – though I did reveal the solid, not having the patience to try to tease the anagram fodder into the gaps between the crossers and knowing no more than it would end with HEDRA. I was beaten by OLGA – several girl’s names would fit – but, in hindsight, the gymnast surface is very fitting and she did have a big smile if I remember correctly. BREAD MAKER is delightful and joins BIG TOE and BULLETIN on my podium.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
Obviously quite a few people here don’t have any Filipino friends like me with TAGALOG (not only the people but also the language of the Philippines).
I presumed that the somersault in OLGA was referring to the groundbreaking gymnast, Korbut. On the easy side but lots to like, with the more obscure words meticulously clued. ESOTERICA made me laugh and coincidentally, can be found in the letters in 1d, which I also built from the bottom upwards,
Ta Pasquale & PeterO.
Crispy@19, I wonder if your employer was aware that Tagalog is more widely spoken than say Italian, or Korean. I’m surprised at the number of solvers for whom it was NHO. I was held up for a moment as it is much better known as a language than for the original native speakers.
Ah PM @ 26, we crossed on OLGA and yes she did have a radiant smile, especially when she got her first 10.
Enjoyable puzzle.
New for me: ICOSITETRAHEDRA.
I could not parse 24ac.
Thanks, both.
And apologies paul @14: I missed your reference to Korbut.
Re peter, interesting the diff between Collins and Chambers (see KVa @8 and @10) because, here downunder, “till” is what it’s always meant for me, as in ” ..turns out he was tickling the peter” …
I found this very approachable for a Pasquale.
I did use the check button to trial a couple of options to get OLGA, but had a big grin when I parsed her. I’m not a mathematician, but carbon molecules are often based on tetrahedra, plus I use them to build with spaghetti and marshmallows (youth work challenge) and tetrahedra and icosahedra are used as dice in strategy games, so I suspect the percentage who could build ICOSITETRAHEDRA is higher than Dave Ellison’s estimate @20.
Thank you to PeterO and Pasquale.
I knew the icosAhedron, and the tetrahedron, started spelling 1d by analogy and ended up with an incorrect set of ICOSATETRAHEDRI. Oh well, it sounded like a possible plural.
Learnt Peter ->Safe from the old Lovejoy books read as a child. Crossed Keys are sign of St Peter (and Papal insignia) and also appear on /are associated with Safes. I hope that derivation is true as I have carried it through too many crosswords over a period of over 40 years
Thanks Setter and Blogger
For whatever reason I was totally on Pasquale’s wavelength this morning, so a very smooth solve – though perhaps a couple of nhos in TAGALOG and SPOKANE interconnecting with the nho solid figures at 1d was slightly unfair. Never mind, some lovely clueing, and was rather sucking my thumb at the very end to remember the nursery rhyme and then insert BIG TOE as loi…
People asking about rhyming slang: when I started work in London factories, and in the shops, pubs and markets. I heard rhyming slang used all the time, often as an affectation in the pubs, where new stuff was made up all the time. If I came in with a new hairstyle, I’d be greeted with “nice Barnet”, more often than not.
Part of my job was preparing the cash wages, which were kept in the safe. If someone didn’t agree with a deduction, they’d tell me to get in the Peter and sort it out.
I’ve heard and used most of the rhyming slang that turns up in crossword land, and a lot more. We used to go for a ruby after a few jars down the rub-a-dub.
Ticks for BREADMAKER, FOGEYS and LISTED
1d was a CQBA even with all the crossers and fodder
Cheers P&P
…EAGLETS made me mindful of Edmond Rostand’s play L’Aiglon, the title referring to Napoleon’s son. We performed a very poor version of it at school, though I can’t remember now whether we did it in French or English…
Great puzzle, and I do mean that, apart from 1 down’s anagram of what must to most of us be an unknown word. Familiar only with two-faced figures, and those in general from the realm of politics, I had to put the crossers into a word-searcher to get that answer.
Thanks Don and PeterO.
I’m not very clever at identifying the words from which bits have to be taken away – couldn’t find OLGA/aglow despite the useful hint about the somersault, and runners=fEET also escaped me.
I enjoyed the BIG TOE, TWIG, RHYME and ESOTERICA.
Nobody seems to be quite sure why a safe is a peter: it’s certainly very old thieves’ slang. I learned it from a book about the Victorian underworld, and it was old then.
Goodness ShanneW@38. Not only did I have to bend my brain to solve Pasquale, and learn something new along the way, but now I’ve had to learn about an Irish singer, Ruby Murray, to know what you did after a few jars down the rub-a-dub. I may yet thank you when it comes up in a crossword one day.
I enjoyed this – lots of lovely clues and a good mixture. Like others not heard of the solid figures – and the anagram finder I used couldn’t find it…. Got it using the crosses and a word finder.
Favourites included: OLGA, BREADMAKER, ESOTERICA, POTABLE, PETERLOO
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
Finishing a Pasquale puzzle exemplifies for me the apocryphal exchange between a judge and a barrister who was explaining the details of a complex technical process. Judge: “I have listened to you for half an hour Mr Snooks and I am none the wiser”. Barrister: “No, my lord. But you are better informed”. I too feel better informed, for which thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.
Unlike yesterday, I found myself largely on Pasquale’s wavelength today and quickly made inroads which opened up the grid. Never heard of 1d, 16ac or aglets but all were gettable. I didn’t notice the sneaky references to Olga Korbut until I came here. Thanks PeterO and P.
(Re Cockney rhyming slang, I have a group of friends that always chip into a Walter when we meet for drinks. And one of my favourites is to describe something as ‘Rodney but Lionel’ – harsh but fair!)
I found this more straightforward than usual for a Pasquale puzzle, fortunately with nothing unknown to me. I don’t think I have ever encountered the name of a 24-faced solid before, but the word was virtually a write-in from the icosa- and tetra- elements, which were familiar, as others have remarked. And I knew TAGALOG, but as a language rather than an ethnic group.
BREADMAKER is neat, TAPSTER nicely wrong-footing,and I also liked LISTING and SPOKANE (pronounced spokán, oddly).
Thanks to the Don and PeterO
For the record, SPOKANE is pronounced Spoke-Ann, so I actually thought that clue was a homophone for a moment until I noticed that that would require “talked” to do double duty, and anyway that would require you to know how to say it!
I knew of PETERLOO because I learned of the massacre while I was in Manchester once, years ago. It is true that that one also requires you to know that a peter is a safe, but that’s one of those tidbits I picked up from years of doing these puzzles. So maybe I’m not the best overseas solver to use as a test case here.
AGLET is one of those words that turns up in those lists of “did you know there’s a word for that?” that float around on social media and thus show up on my Facebook feed with some regularity. So yes, I did know. I also knew that the dot over an i or j is called a tittle.
The five Platonic solids (can be constructed entirely out of regular polygons of the same size and shape) are the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. So 1D was just a mashup of the two more familiar words for me.
Relatively gentle offering, despite having to solve 1d from the bottom up.
I liked the surface for FOGEYS
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
I was lucky enough to remember AGLETS from an article somewhere (possibly pre-web) entitled “20 (?) things that you didn’t know had names”. The other 19 have disappeared into the void but somehow that one stuck.
There was a lot to like there today. FOI was OYSTER, LOI was (unsurprisingly) ICOSITETRAHEDRA, which I had to build up from the cross letters. Particular favourites were ESOTERICA, POTABLE, EAGLETS and FOGEYS. But there were so many to choose from.
I’d never heard of the use of PETER to mean safe, so that’s another new one for me.
Thanks to the Don and PeterO.
[From TAGALOG, English gets the word “boondocks,” which derives from the Tagalog word for mountain, bundok. It was brought into the language by the US army during our ill-advised subjugation of the Philippines, a chapter of our history that often gets forgotten. But the boondocks got ironed out on the way over here–now the word just means the middle-of-nowhere countryside. Anyway, that’s your Tagalog trivium for the day.]
Like others, I enjoyed this, particularly cobbling together 1dn, as PeterO suggests , from knowing icosahedra and tetrahedra.
Other ticks were for 26ac RHYME (I’ve met similar before but I like it), 27ac ESOTERICA (ditto), and 8dn LEARN THE HARD WAY, which initially caused a raised eyebrow for the perceived grammatical mismatch in ‘making’, until the doh moment when I realised that ‘progress’ was a verb – very clever.
Top of the bill was PETERLOO: I have vivid memories of learning about this hugely important event (which inspired the foundation of the Manchester Guardian two years later) and reading Howard Spring’s ‘Fame is the Spur’, on the recommendation of our History teacher. The very comprehensive Wikipedia entry to which PeterO gave the link details the scope of its influence. If you haven’t time to read all of that, here’s an interesting piece on Mike Leigh’s excellent 2018 film, ‘Peterloo’:
https://news.yahoo.com/news/movie-peterloo-based-real-massacre-150055287.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Many thanks to Pasquale for the puzzle, PeterO for the blog and others for the anecdotes.
Not too hard today, thank goodness. Guessed 1D had to be …hedra so the anagram worked well. Dispute that EAGLETS are “little birds” so I needed the crossers to see that, unparsed. OLGA was tough.
Thanks both.
[KLRunner @29. We tended to be happy with English. Given the standard used in documents by too many in the company, we should have vetted them more than we did!]
Thanks to Pasquale. Much to admire, as always.
And thanks to PeterO. I needed your help to parse EAGLETS and FOGEYS.
As many others have suggested, the surface of the clue for OLGA was very clever. I seem to remember commentator Alan Weeks echoing the thoughts of this 10-year-old when he described her winning performance as “delightful”.
Thanks for the blog, I liked RHYME for the hidden fake capital at the front, LISTED was neat, without the PETERLOO massacre there would not be this crossword today. Did not know SPOKANE but the clue was very fair.
ICOSITETRAHEDRA not Platonic because of their faces , many types possible, they are members of the Catalan solids and can be used to make fair 24 sided dice.
My knowledge is sketchy but I think OLGA Korbut was the first to do a backward somersault on the beam.
Eileen @53: and of course there was Arachne’s magnificent puzzle a few years ago to mark the 200th anniversary of PETERLOO.
Many thanks for that, Jim @59.
I didn’t think to look that one up – but I see now I made a very similar comment then!
[It’s perhaps not that surprising that SPOKANE is unfamiliar to many non-Americans – it’s apparently only the 97th largest city in the US, though the second in Washington state. Although I have travelled to WA several times – Seattle is one of my favourite cities in the US – I have never ventured across the Cascades from the liberal coastal region to the far more conservative east of the state, which is more-or-less flyover territory]
Great experience, no really unfair clues – I’ve been in country long enough to know Peterloo but not the slang term underlying it. Then again, being a Yank did help me get Spokane, and thinking of nearby Seattle first didn’t hurt.
Just one quibble. If you’re familiar with the works of the poet in question, then perhaps 26A should be “Frost’s heard what Frost AVOIDED writing” … !
[Despite a cursory Google, I’ve not found when rime in a poetic context became rhyme, or why. Can anyone help? (Coleridge’s poem is, of course The rime of the ancient mariner.)]
I was thinking, there seems to be quite a collection of quite eminent? scientists or possibly mathematicians on Fifteensquared. However, whenever there is an explanation of exactly how things work or are described in their terms I am often none the wiser after reading it. I suppose I am more on the Arts side of life’s experience, interest, knowledge, understanding and perhaps expertise. These thoughts occurred to me the other day when I think the subject of Valency was being discussed on here.
A mucky rainy day spent indoors for me, so just gently wondering what the balance might be on here between those more comfortable on the Arts side rather than the Science side?
I always enjoy my daily wrestle with the Cryptic and it is never complete until I have read through the comments here. As well as the explanations of the parsings that I have failed to master, I like the light hearted banter among the regular contributors and learning how words mean different things in different countries.
In this respect ‘Peter’ caused a few smiles today when I saw the possible Australian meanings of the word (KVa @ 8 and 10) but had to wonder if the australian example given by grantinfreo @33 might have also referred to another of the meanings. But perhaps best not to go there.
AlanC@32 not in any way a problem. I missed a reference myself just a couple of days ago. This is about the only online forum that I contribute to on a regular basis, largely because it is such a nice bunch of people.
ronald @64: I’ve often thought that and I’m most definitely in your team. I wonder how many are comfortable with both? Ta paul @66, indeed you’re right about this forum.
Ronald @64 – a polyhedron is simply a solid with a certain number of faces. The simplest is a tetrahedron with four triangular faces , think of a pyramid with a triangle at the base instead of a square and three sides coming up to a point. The next is just a cube with six square faces , a simple die ( I say douse but no one else does ) . It then gets more complicated with more faces but the principle is the same.
[ AlanC@67 , I am in both, Particle Physics is a science and and an art ]
AlanC@67
I am fine with any word from any subject (don’t tell me I should not Google!).
Paul@66
What a forum! Worth getting addicted to!
13a, 14a, 19a and 5d were my solved clues today. Very difficult in my opinion.
General question: if a clue mentions “endlessly”, how do you know if it’s the word before or after to chop? How do you know if it’s the 1st letter, last letter, or both?
Hands up anybody that ever says “Coo”.
Thought so.
Ronald@64 and AlanC@67: Fortuately, I’m comfortable with both. Trained as a scientist and engineer; life interests and pursuits on the arts side.
Thanks to Pasquale for a fine puzzle, and to PeterO.
1d. Don’t understand why anyone objects. Eminently gettable from the clue and general knowledge about the names of solids – not even specialist Maths knowledge really. Knowing tetrahedron and icosahedron, once you get the solution, it isn’t hard to make a reasonable stab at how many faces an icositetrahedron has, and then you check.
jeceris @72: I have been known to, spoken ironically, of course. And in any case, crosswords are festooned with words that have never passed my lips, but are nevertheless familiar.
Muffin @63 checking with Wiktionary, it seems rime is an archaeic form of rhyme with a etymology distinct from the frosty sort. I think Coleridge’s use is an affectation as in “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”.
Only one thing worse than cheating with an anagram solver. That would be trying to cheat, and finding that the anagram solver is also stumped.
For possible (ahem) future enlightenment, William@24: Which solver did you use ?
Roger GS @62: Many of Frost’s better-known poems do rhyme, including this gem, the longest poem I have by memory:
Whose woods these are, I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.
These woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And then we have this much shorter one that I think is also great:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
There’s also the super-popular The Road Not Taken (you know, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”) where every line does rhyme with at least one other, but I’ve never liked that one as much. So your last example, which I’ll have to link to since I don’t have it memorized, is the hauntingly bleak Acquainted With the Night, which is, amazingly, a terza rima sonnet.
Ronald @64 & AlanC @67: Like nametab I was a scientist by profession (PhD in biological organic chemistry, if you must know), but my outside interests are wide and varied, so references to the humanities hold no terrors for me.
As for ICOSITETRAHEDRON, this requires no specialist scientific knowledge. A familiarity with Ancient Greek is all that is needed 🙂
Titles: that first poem is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and the second is Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Alastair@76, yes you’re probably correct on the poetic license. The OED’s etymology says “The original spelling rime, however, persisted in use as a rarer variant, and in about 1870 its use was considerably revived, especially by writers on the history of the English language or its literature. To some extent this revival was due to the belief that the word was of native origin”
The revival came too late for Coleridge, but it’s interesting “rime” was in use albeit rarely. Apparently “rhime” was quite common too.
SueM48 @11
Rhyming slang turns up in some odd places, but it does not seem to pan out here. As far as I can tell, Peter Pan has no history before J M Barrie’s 1904 play, and, as suggested by gladys @42, peter as safe is Victorian – the OED gives no example before mid-century, and at that the oldest ones with the presumably related sense of portmanteau or travelling trunk.
Steffen @71 – you don’t know which side is endless, I try various options to see which makes sense in context. The offer of a Zoom call is still there.
Thanks PeterO and Pasquale. I mostly enjoyed this but struggled in the SW. Not helped by putting in RIMES for 26a. Anyone else go there? Seems to me it fits as well as the actual answer.
MikeC@84
RHYME
I didn’t go there but your solution seems plausible.
I usually find Pasquale’s puzzles very difficult, although we know from his Quiptics that he’s capable of writing excellent puzzles at a range of difficulties. This one seemed much easier than usual to me.
As an American with a nephew currently at university in Spokane, I certainly had an advantage when it came to 11ac; I’m not surprised that it’s not a familiar name to everyone! And although I hadn’t heard of the icositetrahedron, I do have a background in mathematics, and a long-ago study of Greek, that made it not hard to see what the component parts must be.
Me @82
Correction: J M Barrie introduced Peter Pan in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird.
83. Thank you
Is there a way to email other contributors/you on this site?
EIKOSI – The epsilon gets lost in translation.
Here’s an artwork – the faces are all kite-shaped
Ronald@64 , Paul@66, and others:
As a relative newbie to 225, part of the fun for me is imagining the “persona” behind each contributor to the blog.
Maybe for the General Discussion section, but it would be interesting (to me at least) to have an idea of the breakdown of eg academic interest, nationality, age, cryptic cw experience etc. of 225ers. There should be a way to collect such info, from those willing to provide it, by a trusted administrator – such that it is generally anonymous.
( Again, forgive the newbie if such a suggestion is heresy in the blogging world.)
And here’s Roz@57’s die – What would that be used for? Choosing an hour of the day at random?
Steffen@88 Have you tried this week’s Quiptic? – also by Pasquale – it’s even gentler than most of this one.
As a British expat in America and a one-time mathematician I had just the right set of GK for this puzzle. NHO PETER for ‘safe’ but will try to remember it as no doubt it will come up again.
I also had an advantage on 12A because I was too dim to see the misleading alternative parsing of ‘barman’.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
[ Frankie@91 , whisper it very quietly , Dungeons and Dragons, not me personally, some of my students. I do try very hard not to tease them. ]
muffin @63: RHYME was certainly originally spelled ‘rime’, and comes from French. The spelling change seems like a Renaissance conceit, making a connection with Latin ((from Greek) ‘rhythmus’, although it is uncertain whether that is really the etymology.
It looks like the spelling change made from the original (from French) ‘dout’ and ‘dette’ to doubt and debt. The b was never pronounced – the change was a scholarly affectation to connect the words with the ultimate Latin source.
[Roz@94 – Of course! – DnD – 🙂 ]
There won’t be many people commenting on the Quiptic now. It could be used as a one-to-one (or many-to-one) tutorial for Steffen.
…and I see oakvillereader was recommending it – https://www.fifteensquared.net/2024/02/19/guardian-quiptic-1265-pasquale/#comment-617857 @29
On the easy side? Straightforward?? Arghhhhh.
Well, okay, I completed it – so maybe.
But, goodness, I found it a hard struggle. Several unknown words – though I did get them eventually.
Now, hard doesn’t mean not enjoyable – it was. And the warm glow of finishing is even brighter when it was a struggle!
[Thanks to the posters on rime/rhyme]
96. Thank you. I managed to solve about 60% of that crossword.
Steffen, I’m on my way home now. I’ll set up a zoom and put the link and time elsewhere. I’ll use your user name as password for this one, and set up a waiting room.
Gladys @35 – so glad I wasn’t the only one!
Salamat to PeterO and Pasquale for great blogging and setting respectively
[Roz @69: I don’t imagine anything gets past you].
@muffin – take both ends of Radiant and somersault and you get Aida. I think that’s a better answer if only it fitted in!
Sagittarius @45 : Whether or not the riposte “ none the wiser, m’lud, but better informed” is apocryphal or not, I think it is usually attributed to the ebullient lawyer and Conservative politician F.E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead), who was around in the first part of the last century. An objectionable man, but a notable wit.
SPOKANE has crossed my radar only because it was the home of a rival radio station with which Frasier’s station in Seattle was briefly, unsuccessfully, and amusingly merged.
Mrs Google tells me that some garnet crystals are icositetrahedral,and that it’s my (January) birthstone,and (Oxford comma?) that most of the world’s production comes from the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York.That’s why garnet is the state gemstone – NY also has a state bird,mammal,reptile,insect,fish (freshwater and salt),flower,fruit,tree,beverage,food,fossil,shell,and sport.Some other states have their “insignia” crustaceans,mushrooms,toys,and,ahem,firearms…. (Greg Abbott recently declared the Colt Walker Pistol as Texas’s) Should we not have these in our counties?
Terry@105: You don’t, you know; you get Naida.
There are 76 (and counting) “peter”s in this blog (because of Peterloo and PeterO). I’ve been through them all, only to find that WearyB@65 has already made the comment I was looking to make, about grantinfreo@33’s comment in relation to KVa@8’s definition 4, or KVa@10’s definition 3. Nice one! 😀
[AlanC@104 , most themes go straight past me whereas you can conjure one out of thin air. Occasionally I may notice about half of a theme. Precisely once I was the first to discover an actual theme on here. ]
Well written puzzle. I enjoyed the clues with extended definitions particularly- FOGEYS, OLGA, ENDOWING. Also TWIG and POTABLE for the fine surfaces.
I think “maybe” in 12 is a little unfair. It’s not there to indicate a dbe or for any other reason than to deliberately suggest a composer rather than a bartender, as far as I can see. But that’s a very minor niggle in a fine puzzle.
Thanks, P & P.
Good puzzle, not easy per se but probably the easiest Pasquale I can remember (other than his peerless recent efforts in the quiptic slot). OLGA held me up, but it’s a lovely clue. BREADMAKER is excellent.
[Ronald @64 – politics and history is my academic background. Neither is much of an art nor any kind of science. Both quite handy for crosswords and for civil servants, however.]
Crispy @ 19
I doubt if you will read this, but if you do …
I find your remark about TAGALOG disgusting. Typical of a certain narrow-minded set that despise foreign languages. I suppose you think everyone should speak English.
I have often toyed with the idea of learning Tagalog, we’ve got Tagalog-speaking neighbours living on our staircase.
I am so pleased that I only got round to finishing the puzzle, and hence reading the blog, at 9 pm because you have quite ruined what is left of my day.
I knew ICOSI = 20 in Greek, from the rather more familiar icosahedron (a solid build up of 20 equilateral triangles): so by manipulating the fodder I figured that an extra TETRA had to be inserted. I thought this must be a made-up word but it’s in wiki… Ho hum. It might be interesting to learn whether this was a filler word or not. Don???
All the rest was fine, and not too difficult, except for EAGLETS – I felt sure that AGLETS was a word somewhere, but I had to look it up. So that’s the name for the bits of your shoelaces that inevitably fall off, making the lace impossible to re-thread ??? 🙁
At first I queried the grammar in LEARN THE HARD WAY, being a finite verb it doesn’t quite match “making progress…” which is a gerund or participle. Then I twigged: ‘making’ isn’t part of the def., and ‘progress’ should be seen as a verb. I see that both Peter and Eileen have forestalled me on this observation. OK.
Thanks Don and Peter.
Anna@113 – yes I endorse your comment. “Crispy” – whoever he/she may be – their comment was quite unnecessary and quite likely to offend someone.
At least in the companies I worked for, we never dissed a job applicant because of the language(s) they may have spoken.
Spokane (city in eastern Washington) for the record is pronounced to rhyme with “can,” not with “cane.” Accent on the second syllable.
Roger GS@62 Frost did not avoid rhyme, as mrpenney has shown
Tomsdad@16
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, probably Frost’s best-known poem. I was going to put it in, but MrPenney beat me. It’s written in terza rima, an Italian form very difficult in English — I don’t know another English poem that uses it, but mrpenney has provided another Frost one. Lines 1, 2 and 4 of the next verse will rhyme with line 3 with a new rhyme in that verse’s third line.
MrPenney@52 Our ill-advised activities in the Philippines got plenty of attention from Mark Twain, who fulminated about them.
Steffen@71 You try ’em all and see if any of them work.
Belated thanks to Pasquale, PeterO and mrpenney. (See? No Oxford comma!)
Thanks both and I was entertained and challenged in equal measure.
mrpenney@48: I did not know what a tittle was – now I’m wondering what a ‘jot’ is.
I feel that Crispy@19 is getting rough treatment @113 and @115. There is nothing to indicate approval of the treatment of the TAGALOG speaker; if anything the incident is held up to ridicule the perpetrators (cf@55).
Wellcidered@90: As one with a (hardly glowing) scientific background I am constantly amazed by those who, well versed in ‘artistic’ matters, unashamedly baulk at the simplest of ‘scientific’ hurdles, even unto basic subtraction. It seems to be culturally acceptable to throw up the hands in surrender at the appearance of any numbers, never mind formulae. How have we come to this?
Anna @113, Laccaria@115. Did I say the candidate did not get an interview because they spoke Tagalog? I did not. It was simply one of those things I remembered. I certainly believe that anyone applying for a job in the UK should speak English. Thanks to Alphalpha@117 for your kind words.
In future I’m simply going to come here for parsings.
Alphalpha@117 and Crispy@118 … agreed, you would have to be perpetually on hot coals to take the reminiscence as offensive. ‘Tagalog’ is not an everyday word for most of us, so remembering seeing it being used in any given context is interesting.
[Alphalpha @117: I think “jot” is “iota”, which in Greek is not dotted, so needs a tittle added to it]
Wow what a lot of comments today. Whenever I see the word massacre I think of PETERLOO, so that went in straight away. The geometric shape went in from the crossers but I had to put the letters down on paper first. Olga was my last one in. Sometimes the 4 letter clues are the hardest to figure out. Like Terry@105, I wanted it to be Aida but, apart from the opera, I’ve never heard of anyone with that name. Thanks to Pasquale and Peter.
jeceris@72
At least Coleridge would have been familiar with “Coo”. From distant memory –
My aged aunt, Miss Worthington,
Whose mother was a Lamb
Met Wordsworth once, and Coleridge too,
One morning in her pram.
Birdlike the bards looked down at her
Like fledgling in a nest.
Wordsworth said “Thou harmless babe”
And Coleridge was impressed
Smiling the child looked up at them
And softly murmured “Coo”.
William was then aged sixty-four
And Samuel sixty-two.
g larsen@106
I think you’re right about F.E.Smith.
Another couple:
Smith “Your lordship is right is right and I am wrong as your lordship usually is” and
Smith (in mitigation) ” My client apologises for offence. At the time he was drunk as a judge”
Judge “I think the expression, Mr Smith, is
drunk as lord'”
Smith ” As your lordship pleases”.
Crispy @118: totally undeserved and shame on your critics. I really hope to see your pithy comments in future.
1d ICOSI…. Was a NIAMY (not in a million years) for me. Now, having been told by several commenters that I am a hopeless scientific and mathematical nincompoop, I shall hang my head in shame…for a minute or two.
Thanks Pasquale for the enjoyable (but for that one clue) puzzle, and PeterO for the much needed and very clear blog.
Crispy @118 I do hope that you continue to contribute to this forum. It is ironic that some of us were agreeing only a few comments earlier on the amiability of this group, and then Anna @113 weighs in with highly intemperate language on a misreading of your comment. I would like to believe she genuinely misunderstood what you wrote – a cursory glance at the comment might (erroneously) causatively link the last two sentences. But you did not state that the candidate failed to secure an interview on account of knowing Tagalog, and an apology would be nice.
In fairness to Anna, the way Crispy phrased the comment does imply causality, and that is also the way that I interpreted it. But I didn’t go so far as to assume that Crispy agreed with it – it was simply a humorous aside – and its author has confirmed this.
Pax
Lots of comments here, so I may have missed it from someone else. Am I the only one to have gone for ILSA – gASLIt – at 22a?It’s a justifiable alternative, I think.
For those who are unfamiliar with the history of this website, Anna scaled down her contributions (often about her love of languages) after being accused of accusing others of virtue signalling. So she is hardly likely to have made the comment @113 unless she was properly upset by the one @19. Based on my own impression when first reading the post @19, the fault of any misreading woud be with the author.
[For what it’s worth, I urge everyone to remember that it’s easy to be misunderstood in short comments on a web site. If you think someone has said something offensive, think about whether you’ve missed a more charitable interpretation. If someone has interpreted something you wrote incorrectly, think about whether you could have been clearer. Either way, don’t be too quick to judge and especially not to hold grudges.
In this particular instance, I tend to agree with Van Winkle that the original author should look closely at what they wrote to see how a misreading could have occurred. My initial impression of the original comment was similar to that of those who were bothered by it, but I understand that that’s not what was intended.
I’ve said before that I think this site in general is remarkable for civility in the comments. It’s one of the things I appreciate most about it.]
Well said Ted@129
Agree with Ted@129 – beautifully put, if I may so. Being married to a native Tagalog speaker, I did wince at Crispy@19, wondering whether causality was intended to be implied. But giving the benefit of the doubt about intentions is surely right in this forum.