Guardian Cryptic 29,342 by Tramp

77 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,342 by Tramp”

1. Enjoyable puzzle.

   Favourites: TESTINESS, AFTERMATH, MARCHING ORDERS.

   I am still unclear on how to parse HASH= number in 19d. Is it because hashish is a drug that numbs?

   New for me: GRAM = chickpea (for 5d); and MANKINI and ugh, I wish I had not googled it and seen pics 🙁

   Thanks, both.

2. Six in my “Huh?” list, and some elicited groans. Number/admired dress? On/paid for? Ducks/sweethearts?

   I learnt that a gram is a legume.

   A slow solve for me, mostly enjoyable. Thanks, Oriel.

3. Thanks Tramp for some fun definitions and 2D for explaining MARCHING ORDERS (I hadn’t thought of NOTICE in terms of DISMISSAL).

4. Am I allowed to call 15 unfair for having no indication that the order of H and ONES is reversed in the clue? After all it could have been worded In case of doubt, is husband of yours inside cheating?

5. Justigator @ 4, I read it as “is your” with husband inside, all of which is in case of doubt.

6. GDU @ 5: Ah yes. I’ll shut up.

7. HASHTAG
   michelle@1
   HASH could mean that but I took as # which is used to indicate a number (as in #19).
   Thanks Tramp and Oriel!
   NYLON (a minuscule point)
   paid for by=ON

8. Parsed the ON in 6d NYLON as “paid for by” rather than just “paid for” (as in ‘this round’s on me’) – [Edit: as KVa has just said]

9. Yes, both, paid for by makes more sense.

10. Thank you and welcome Oriel. An extra treat with a name check for you!
    I parsed the HASH in HASHTAG as Michelle did@1. Not that I know from personal experience, not that I remember, anyway. 🙂

    Thanks KVa@7 and FrankieG@8. I couldn’t get ON in NYLON to work. paid for by is a novel way to clue ON, and makes perfect sense. I like it. Just as much as I enjoyed the novel HASH for number.

11. Another one who queried On = “Paid for” in NYLON GDU @2 unless On = “Paid for by” (“It’s on me” = “It’s paid for by me”) which makes ‘by’ not a juxtaposition indicator, but part of the definition of ‘on’. In Aussie vernacular, it’s my shout. 🙂
    MARCHING ORDERS was the weakest clue for me, but otherwise plenty to like.

12. Too slow as usual @11

13. 14d INTER ALIA – the heArt should’nt be in the anagram:
    (I LEARN IT)* (*off) + “by” [he]A[rt] (essentially)

14. re 19d
    KVa@7 – ah, thanks, I get it now re #1, #2 etc
    paddymelon@10 – haha, great minds think alike! I remember that it made me feel very sleepy 😉

    TimC@11 – yes, ON = paid for by as in the clue

15. HASHTAG
    number (Collins online)
    slang
    a cannabis cigarette
    roll another number
    So NUMBER in both senses work?
    (attn: Michelle and pdm)

16. I needed some help with parsing! But a very enjoyable puzzle that suddenly came together at the end. However, I would like to point out that the word for a native of Afghanistan is Afghan; an afghani is not a person, but the unit of currency.

17. KVa – thanks for that info on HASHTAG – yes, I think both senses work 🙂

    Also, thanks to Sarah for pointing out that “a native of Afghanistan is Afghan; an afghani is not a person, but the unit of currency.”

18. This went fairly quickly. Liked it. Thought EARPLUG & CROSS POLLINATE were well constructed anagrams. Thank you for the parsing of LEGUMES…missed “Deal” as an anagram indicator…Thank you to Tramp and Oriel

19. AFGHANI
    Sarah@16 Thanks.
    I didn’t notice it though I know the difference between the two words under discussion.

20. Thanks Tramp & Oriel.
    Liked 1d & 10d, ORIEL & EARPLUG inter alia
    Thought there might be a smack of a theme with ‘punched’, …PLUG, PUGILIST, TYSON & SITTING DUCKS.

21. I’ll take your word for it KVa @15. But, eh, what does it matter? Don’t bogart that joint, my friend ….. 🙂

    Interesting that we also have OUTNUMBER, another meaning for hash, at a stretch, in both senses?

22. Another dnf for me but thanks Oriel for parsing. The joke’s ON me as I forgot that it means paid for (by) and in my world HASH is cannabis or weed and Hashtag is the number sign.

23. Thanks Tramp and Oriel

    16 “admired dress” = NUMBER I took to refer to eg “She’s wearing a really smart number tonight”.

24. pdm@21
    HASHTAG
    I won’t smoke even when on fire!
    Keep a bucket full of weed near me. I won’t touch it. Have to kick it sooner or later!

    Simon S@23
    Collins has this entry for number”
    informal
    an admired article, esp an item of clothing for a woman
    that little number is by Dior
    (your example says the same thing)

25. Does AFGHANI work if you think of it as an adjective rather than a noun? The Afghani troops = the native troops??? I enjoyed this. AFTERMATH and CROSS-POLLINATE make the podium today.

26. I struggled with some of the parsings and definitions but got there in the end without aids. Thanks to setter snd blogger.

27. A real treat – and what a felicitous blog-swap for Oriel! 🙂

    Lots of Tramp’s trademark deft definitions and synonyms, producing several smiles and sighs of satisfaction, as noted by others.

    I enjoyed all the long answers, along with 9ac PUGILIST, 25ac FLAGRANT, the topical 3dn SANITISE, 14dn INTERA ALIA and 18dn AFGHANI.

    Many thanks to Tramp and lucky Oriel.

28. Great fun as ever from Tramp at his most straightforward this morning, I thought
    Those who cherish well constructed meaningful surfaces will have little to irk them
    A bit of a masterclass really….
    Great generous blog from Oriel (welcome, Oriel!) – though I agree with FrankieG@13 that the second A of INTER ALIA is not part of the anagrist

29. Petert @25; no, not really – they’re still Afghan troops.

30. The chickpea is a multinomial little chap; an ex from upstate NY called them garbanzo beans, and now gram. As for the #, it was an Afghan in Kabul told me there was no i on the end … no wait, mixing my stories 😉 . Fun puzzle, ta both.

31. gif@30 🙂

32. First-class puzzle from Tramp, as ever.

    I like TESTINESS now that it has been explained to me; also, the wordplays of MANKINI, DISHONEST and OUTNUMBER, the surface for EARPLUG, and the definition of LEGUMES (which I DNK). The following usage note is from Wiktionary:
    The usual term for a person from Afghanistan is Afghan; Afghani is uncommon and deprecated by some style guides.

    Thanks Tramp and Oriel.

33. Beautiful puzzle for those of us who value good surfaces, especially with humour – Tramp always delivers here.

    I agree with the parsing: ‘paid for by’ = ON – ingenious, and one of my favourite clues. Others include all the long entries, DISHONEST and the octothorp (#!).

    Chickpeas are not the only LEGUMES known as ‘grams’. Green gram is an alternative name for the mung bean and black gram for the urad.

    Thanks to Tramp and 2dn

34. AFGHANI
    Petert@25
    AFGHANI works as an adjective in Hindi/Urdu. That doesn’t help. Does it?

    michelle@1
    LEGUMES
    gram
    Oriel explains in the blog the question mark after the ‘grams’.
    Chickpeas are green grams, I think. There are black grams, red grams, horse grams etc.,
    (various types of legumes/pulses.).
    Gervase has just said that!

35. grantinfreo@30: garbanzo is the Spanish word for chickpea, also known as chana in Indian cooking.

36. First came across “#” meaning number in my misspent early ’60s childhood reading American comics.
    In the UK it was always”No.” ‘Etymology – Borrowing of the Latin scribal abbreviation No. from (in) numerō (“in number, to the number of”).
    Cognate with French no.’ (that last ‘o’ should be superscripted, but GeneratePress can’t handle it)
    [Didn’t know this till I learnt Latin (after math(s) inter alia) in my misspent late’60s youth in secondary school.]
    Then found out “#” was pronounced “hash” in my misspent late ’70s adulthood learning BASIC: “10 OPEN file$ FOR INPUT AS 1 : 20 INPUT #1, a$…”
    Then there’s “little black number” and “blaze up a number” – This puzzle’s a “numbers game”
    Thanks T&Balliol

37. I found this quite a slog and gave up on AFGHANI, a word I have not heard used before, so a DNF. M for MARCHING is an example I suspect of the setter having no good idea how to finish off writing the clue, so depending on M standing for the word in some dictionary or other. I poster the other day (I think may have been defending this practice) gave an incomplete list of the words which could come from A, and it ran to eight or so, with who knows how many others to follow. Obvious once you have the clues and have guessed the answer, but always for me anyway, elicits a shrug. PUGILIST, DILUTES and LAIRS were my favourites today, and many others were satisfying solves, but for some reason, my fault I’m sure, I did not enjoy this as much as other crosswords this week. I parsed OUTNUMBER the same way as Oriel, without conviction. Which is not to say that it wasn’t very good! Thanks Tramp and Oriel.

38. FrankieG @36.

    Try this: Nᵒ

    This was entered as N\&\#x1D52\;

39. FrankieG@36
    #NumeroUnoDigger

    paul@37
    MARCHING ORDERS
    You mean M for member. Right?

40. Nice and chewy for a Thursday. NHO gram for a kind of legume. In addition to garbanzo beans, chickpeas are also known as chana; you’ll see it a lot in Indian recipes.

    Thank you Oriel for the parsing of 7D which eluded me and Tramp for the puzzle.

41. Little black number, paid for by, I never clicked with # for number, but the crossers did ít. Very enjoyable. I was thinking of rubbish for balls, not my actual dangly bits, well done Tramp. I finished but had trouble back parsing some of them.
    Thanks both.

42. Had a go at this at about 3 in the morning, a restless sleeper last night. And enjoyed it, though as others have said, couldn’t quite untangle some of the parsing. Though that didn’t matter too much. Fav clue was FLAGRANT. Might have mentioned this before, but my grandfather went to Oriel College, Oxford, in the Edwardian era, and he apparently named his youngest daughter Auriol in its honour or whatever. Good to see you Oriel, with your welcome mat appropriately in place at 2d…

43. Good puzzle and thanks to Oriel for the blog. Maybe Oriel is not the same sort of cricket tragic that I am, but the crease does not mark a point where either a player or the ball is in or out of play. In the sense of this clue, we’re talking about the popping crease (there are two others which need not detain us), which is the line at which the batter usually takes his or her stance to face a ball and beyond which he or she must ground bat or part of the body in order to complete a run. A batter is said to be ‘at the crease’ or ‘in’ until he or she is bowled or caught out (or dismissed in any one of eight other ways).

44. I have often thought, and sometimes commented, that “wanting” and “needing” seem lazy devices to indicate a simple connection, so I was pleased, and a little surprised to be honest, to see “wanting” used for its meaning in AFTERMATH.

    Puzzle was a lot of fun. Liked BASIC and the construction of TESTINESS, although the surface is a little clunky.

45. Welcome to Oriel and many thanks to you for the blog. Thanks very much to Tramp for a terrific puzzle. Too many ticks to list.

46. Yes Dr Wh@44, I like after meaning wanting. The Irish use it in a different way again; I was after …no, too many shirazes to think of an example.

47. grant @46
    I think the (Northern, anyway) Irish say, ‘I’m after…. doing something’, meaning, ‘I’ve just done it’. Alan C will put me right if I’m misremembering.

48. Thanks for the super blog, Oriel and thanks to others for the kind comments.

    I wrote this last July but I don’t remember setting most of the clues. I’m quite happy with it and I’m rarely happy with anything I do. On reflection, “number” for “hash” is a bit loose.

    Neil

49. I most often lack the time to tackle the daily puzzles these days, but having just completed one of my weekend puzzles I seized this opportunity and thoroughly enjoyed, first, the puzzle by Tramp, then the blog by 2d ORIEL (what a coincidence) and finally the many interesting comments on various points that I noticed and perhaps puzzled over while solving. I couldn’t help but notice and appreciate the ‘good range of clue types’ (as Oriel noted). I very much liked the long ones, of which CROSS-POLLINATE was the only one that came to me quickly.

    Thanks to Tramp and Oriel.

50. Dr. WhatsOn@44
    AFTERMATH
    Agree with you about the use of ‘wanting’ for AFTER. If I’ve seen it before, I don’t recall that.

    Tramp@48
    HASHTAG
    Thanks for dropping by.
    There were no complaints about number=HASH. Why do you think it’s loose? Should it have been clued as ‘number sign’ rather than ‘number’? Or something else?

51. Thanks Oriel, especially for a more appropriate parsing of wordplay for 27A, which I had thought of as a second cryptic definition, along the lines of ‘instructions to get your limbs moving’. I didn’t know that a “NUMBER” in the dress sense meant it was a particularly impressive piece so thanks for the dictionary link KVa. I think of an Afghan as a dog, rug or jacket so was happy to distinguish the people as AFGHANI but clearly I’m in the wrong again. My only gripe, a repeat i think, is that property is an example of an asset but not here indicated as such, but a very minor one, easily conquered by eg 7D and 13A, so thanks Tramp.

52. Thanks for the blog, 2d. I enjoyed that outing today. FLAGRANT was a particular favourite, but as Oriel noted, there was a good range of clues.

    The OED says that Afghani can refer to the currency unit, something that is native or endemic to Afghanistan – such as the language, culture or cuisine, or the people themselves. The historical usage gives examples from The Times, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph:

    Hunger and disease on a large scale are threatening the Afghanis.
    – Times 20 October, 1980
    The kidneys went to..a Libyan doctor, an Afghani and a young Greek woman
    – Independent 5 December, 1989
    A news item on television about the struggles of Afghanis to ward off incoming Russian tanks.
    – Daily Telegraph 11 January, 2008

    Thank you for an enjoyable puzzle, Tramp.

53. Got halfway through, wasn’t enjoying it, gave up. Found the setter’s style annoying. The English schoolboy humour is off-putting.

54. I enjoyed this one, actually, but I was upset about the notification this morning of the end of the Guardian puzzle app. End of an era, as the website and main app are not half as good as the Guardian puzzle app to solve crosswords.

55. G@51 if you define property as a building or land etc. then you have a point but somewhat inevitably Chambers offers various other definitions of property/asset of which several could be seen as synonymous

    As an IT nerd I’ve always called the numeric result of hashing a piece of text a hash (number) but Chambers isn’t aware of this usage yet 🙂

    Great crossword with all the usual Tramp trademarks; left field definitions, distributed anagram fodder etc. I loved it but can see it might not be to everyone’s taste

    Cheers O&T

56. 17 across (AFTER = wanting) couldn’t help but remind me of:
    The older we get, the more we think about the hereafter. We‘re forever saying: what am I here after?
    Thanks to Tramp and Oriel for a good puzzle and blog.

57. Bodycheetah@55 thanks yes I suppose adding owned financial instruments etc makes it more of an equivalence rather than subset. I will try to remember to suppress that moan next time!
    And with Spring very much in the air here I will add that 1A felt very apt.

58. GRAM as chickpea was new to us. And we recall learning recently (on this site) that chickpeas are not commonly called garbanzos in the UK. Nice to have so many words (and there are even more) for this useful little legume.

59. Eileen @47: Indeed another strange Irish expression. Treat was also the word I thought of after a long crack at this one. I liked your namesake ORIEL and the clever CROSS-POLINATE amongst others.

    Ta Neil & Oriel.

60. Thanks both,
    A very satisfying puzzle that started as difficult but then gradually gave way.

    Taking up Gazzh@51’s point. The clue seems to suggest all assets are property, however, the rules of accounting allow the recognition of assets which are not owned by the entity accounting for them. Some kinds of goodwill and research and development fall into this category. A technicality.

61. AlanC@59
    I`m a bit puzzled. Having spent a fair bit of time in the Stroke City area, I recall often hearing eg “I`m after having a few pints tonight.” This, as per the “wanting” meaning. Could you give a example of the “just done it” meaning, as per Eileen`s post ?

62. PS Can anyone help me as to why PASS gives GO ?

63. Just missed the edit countdown. I now see that it could refer to passing in a final sense.

64. Wellcidered@61 – Well, here’s an example from “The Playboy of the Western World”: “I’m after meeting Shawn Keogh and Father Reilly below, who told me of your curiosity man, and they fearing by this time he was maybe roaring, romping on your hands with drink.”

65. EleanorK@64: Thank You – and a lovely repost to my ugly example of the other usage.
    Embarrassed to recall that I had a small part in TPOTWW at school many moons ago. Sadly, I don`t remember having any wonderful lines such as above.

66. I found this a bit tougher than average, and didn’t help myself by putting in tankiny. Oh, mini is actually used to clue mini? How clever. Marching orders was my last one, where I was expecting an anagram of rules – fooled again.

67. MANKINI went in early, but that’s because it’s indelibly etched on my mind’s eye, after removing a picture of the Head of PE at the local secondary school wearing one from all the Youth Centre computers, repeatedly. Yes, there are PE teachers where this would not have been quite such an unpleasant sight, but this guy was not in the first flush of youth.

    I completed the right hand side then ground to a halt with things I needed to do, so walked away for a bit, and found when I came back the rest went in fast, and my time was quite quick for a Tramp crossword.

    Thank you to Tramp and Oriel.

68. Thanks for the blog, very good set of clues with neat and tidy wordplay .
    Only frown was for MANKINI , mini in the clue and answer, not actually wrong but I am never fond of it.

69. Good fun!

70. Laughed after reading yours @56, Caroline. And thanks for the Irish bits Eileen and AlanC @ 47, 59.

71. 8a – ON/LIT: I don’t quite understand this.

    13a – AIR/FEELING…?

    26a – should B & A not be the padding of R?

    10d – never heard of ducks = sweethearts

    14d – what does OFF mean in this clue?

    16d – is ADMIRED DRESS something to do with mathematics/number?

    I have many other questions…

72. Steffen –
    If a light is on, it is lit – if off it is unlit
    ‘There an air/feeling of mystery about the paintings of De Chirico’
    This time it’s like the padding inside a cushion (but yes, can be the other way around on other occasions!)
    ‘Duck’ is used for ‘darling’ in Northern and Midland England
    Off is an anagram indicator
    A dress can be called a ‘number’ – usually admiringly – as in ‘I liked that little black number you wore at the party’

73. Steffen@71
    I have many other questions…
    Please feel free to ask. There are many here willing to answer them.
    You can even post a bunch of your questions in the General Discussion section.

74. Steffen @71 I agree with KVa , you could list some clues on GD while you are trying the puzzle and people could give you extra hints to help you solve yourself. GD is more leisurely than the blogs and I do not mind typing a longer post. You could even keep a puzzle going all week and not look at the explanations in the blog.

75. 72/73/74

    I did not know a General Discussion page existed.

    Do I just add a post to the existing thread?

76. Steffen add a post whenever you want to , it moves very slowly , I check it now and then , I will give answers when I can.

77. Admin@38 – N\&\#x1D52\; to get Nᵒ – looks far too complicated – I CQBA (© grantinfreo MMXXIII) 😉

Comments are closed.