Guardian 29,384 / Pangakupu

92 comments on “Guardian 29,384 / Pangakupu”

1. I took COLOURS to be a party symbol and PRIMARY is of course American election.

   All I could make of END ON is that indication does.

2. *implication

3. PRIMARY COLOURS
   US election=PRIMARY
   Should it be ‘party symbols’ to mean COLOURS rather than the ‘party symbol’?
   Not sure.
   END ON
   Implication, perhaps=END (I think)
   By=ON
   Start off with END. Does it work?

   Found these Maori words in the grid:
   NIOISA news
   REMUTAKA diary

   COTD: AT ONE FELL SWOOP. Liked many others.
   Thanks Pangakupu and Eileen!

   Ian SW3@1 Sorry. We crossed.

4. I could not parse 20ac.

   New for me: KEELBOAT; OTALGIA; GLYCOSE = sweet; ETIOLATES.

   Favourite: YOU’RE ON.

   Thanks, both.

   I parsed 1ac as PRIMARY = US election + COLOURS = party symbol as in an item or items of a particular colour worn to identify or distinguish an individual or a member of a group.

5. I thought END ON was “start off” being seen from the other end: i.e. the opposites of the two words: start/end, off/on. If that’s it, it isn’t very clearly expressed.

6. Eileen, thank you for your blog and engaging us, as always,
   BREAD BINS. I’d go with money, +bins=rejects.
   RUN TO SEED I liked, very subtle. SEED for top player may need a tennis reference for those who don’t know the game.

7. If Start is Off, the END is ON?

8. I don’t know much Maori, but I do have relatives who live in the Wairarapa in the North Island. Travelling there from Wellington Airport we invariably stop for a photo at the top of the very picturesque Remutaka Hill in column 2.

   Never knew it was Diary Hill, thanks KVa@3!

9. Start Off may imply End On?

10. END ON If start is off, by implication end is on

11. Crispy@7
    END ON
    I think you have it right!

12. Thanks all – that’s all I could think of for 1ac .
    20ac:I think gladys @5 has it: the kind of clue Paul likes.

13. Thanks Pangakupu and Eileen
    I was puzzled by those too. In particular, how can the PRIMARY COLOURS be the “full spectrum”? By definition, it’s only 3 of them.
    I wouldn’t use RUN TO SEED to mean “become exhausted” – “become decrepit”, rather.

14. Just beaten to it by Crispy and sipuith

15. Thanks, crispy and siputih for explaining END ON

16. I certainly read 20ac as meaning: if the start is off then the end is (probably) on. I read 16d as tin is slang for money, as is “bread,” and “bins” means rejects. Fairly smooth ride today, otherwise. Thanks all round.

17. I didn’t know TOOK OFF=hit the jackpot, and inevitably had GLUCOSE at first: never heard of the other one. I thought etiolated was drawn out thin rather than blanched, but I expect I’m wrong.

    I liked PARKING METER.

18. Actually, now I’ve seen it, I think crispy@7 et al have the right parsing for END ON.

19. gladys @18 – I thought that’s more or less what you were saying!

20. The Nina. REMUTAKA. Column 2. I found this in various places.
    Remutaka means edge of his cape touching the ground on that spot. Remu means edge. Taka means ground. Also a noted Māori iwi ancestor Haunui–a–Nanaia of the Kurahaupō people was resting or sitting on the pass while looking over Wairarapa when he first saw these ranges. Remu means buttocks. Taka means rest. It was named as part of his journey of discovery across the southern North Island.

21. That show really took off/hit the jackpot. Hmm, spose so …

22. UGANDANS. Why ‘on the contrary’?

23. paddymelon@20
    REMUTAKA
    So it doesn’t mean a ‘diary’ then?

    Redrodney@22
    UGANDANS
    The clue says ‘with American importing various guns?’ On the contrary.
    So we should read it as ‘Various guns importing with American’.
    GUNS* importing AND A (as explained in the blog already. Just restating it).

24. Redrodney @22 – in the clue, the wordplay is the other way round.

25. KVa@23, not that I have seen.

26. I found I solved this faster that I can solve Pangakupu, and even spotted the Remutaka (Hill). But came here to clarify END ON and PRIMARY COLOURS because the full spectrum rainbow is made up of primary and secondary colours.

    Thank you Eileen and Pangakupu.

27. Agree Jack@8. The Remutaka hill is on the road over the Remutaka Ranges. My dictionary translates it as ‘sitting down to rest’ which seems appropriate because it’s a steepish climb both ways as you will know. I guess you could sit down to rest at a dairy too. The name was changed from Rimutaka (which has no meaning) in 2017 at the wishes of the Rangitane tribe in accord with treaty settlement legislation. I liked SHIRTIEST and ETIOLATES which I couldn’t spell without help. Thanks Eileen and Phi.

28. paddymelon@25
    REMUTAKA
    Thanks. I just asked Google to translate it.
    On other sites, I am able to see what you have posted. Thanks.

29. I wondered if COLOURS referred to a flag or ensign which would indicate your allegiance to a particular side or “party”. But on checking Chambers I see it specifically has “a symbol of membership of a party, club, college, team etc”.

    Some nice clues, favourite probably NAAN BREAD. (Though it did seem a bit odd to have BREAD twice, crossing at the first letter.)

    Thanks Pangakupu and Eileen.

30. Thanks, KVa @23 – you overtook me while I was struggling (and failing, within the time) to express it. 😉

31. Enjoyable crossword, but I still don’t see how PRIMARY COLOURS works.

    I understand kVA’s explanation of the 2 words but aren’t the primary colours red/yellow/blue? That’s not the full spectrum. Must be missing something.

32. Quite easy for this setter.
    I was disappointed not to find a nina, though I did look at a few promising candidates in my dictionary (Te Aka).
    So it turns out that Remutaka is the name of a range of hills. What annoys me is that I did actually look up both remu and taka separately. Google says it means ‘a resting place’ but I can’t find any meaning of taka to fit in with that. Remu as ‘hem’ is OK, but I can only find taka as ‘heap’. ‘Where the hem of your coat heaps up on the ground’ so, ‘sit down’??
    Frustrating and annoying that I don’t know enough Māori yet to make an intelligent comment.
    Anyone from NZ like to help?
    (And I am currently looking for information on how Māori deals with what we could call modal verbs in an IE language).

33. Eileen@30!
    UGANDANS
    I knew you would soon visit the blog to explain it to Redrodney but
    1. I was overenthusiastic as usual.
    2. Wanted to save you some work (however little). 🙂

    Fiery Jack@8
    REMUTAKA
    Sorry for misleading you. Please check the post by pdm@20.

34. Enjoyed that. Thank you Pangakupu and Eileen. And for once finished in time to post here. I usually take all day and then everything’s been said. ETIOLATES was new for me and I got hung up trying to use rainbow in 1 across. Otherwise no problems and all good fun. Found REMUTAKA and go-ogled to find the range in NZ, which was satisfying.

35. Etiolation is what happens to a sun-loving plant if it’s kept in a dark room: it gets all pale, thin and spindly. So “blanched” is fine.

36. Anna@32. You’ve been hanging out for Pangakupu for days, with your diacritics on Maori, which I can’t reproduce.
    Does this help with the modal verbs? https://talkpal.ai/exercise_language/verbs-maori-exercises/

37. I enjoyed the whole puzzle, with queries only on the same two clues: PRIMARY COLOURS and END ON. Thanks to Eileen and to those who have added their explanations of these clues and of the nina – which I knew would be there but knew equally well that I would not recognise it.

38. Anna@32. It’s difficult even for locals. The culture, which was not even called Maori until perhaps the late-1800’s, by the settlers, was a group of disparate often warring tribes, and was exclusively oral for so long (600 years) that names now have ambiguities and have been layered over by other names over time. What paddymelon says @20 sounds fair enough.

39. I had doubts about PRIMARY COLOURS as noted by several others. Two possible justifications:
    1) Include ‘showing’ in definition – ‘showing full spectrum’ can be done by using primary colours
    2) There is actually no fixed definition of the primary colours – they depend on various factors including whether transmission or reflection of light is considered, and the physiology of colour perception. There are not necessarily 3 of them. See wikipedia article. Undeniably one could produce any colour using the full spectrum as a palette.

    But I do agree that clues should have points deducted if they require such semantic gymnastics.

    Anyway, thanks Eileen and Pangakupu.

40. William@31
    PRIMARY COLOURS
    Leaving VIBGYOR to scientists, if we think of how artists for ages achieved the complete spectra of colours (spectra in the simple sense of range) by mixing these PRIMARY COLOURS, the def makes sense. And the question mark provides the defence to the setter from purists, I feel.
    beaulieu@39
    Sorry. we crossed.

    Sofamore@38 and elsewhere
    Thanks for the enlightenment. Quite interesting to know about different cultures.

41. I’ve been overtaken by cooking dinner and eating it by all the above comments. No real problems and it went in fairly smoothly for me.
    muffin @3… “By definition, it’s only 3 of them.” yes, but they are primary which means that you can generate all the other colours from them.
    William @31, if you’re an artist then red/yellow/blue are the primary colours. If you are a physicist, then red/green/blue are the primary colours.
    Whatever…. the scientist and the artist in me says it’s the full f*****g spectrum.

42. Thank you Pangakupu & Eileen, that was fun.
    I liked AT ONE FELL SWOOP and the ‘red banana’, which sounds like it should be a thing.

43. I enjoyed this and managed to parse most. Many thanks to P and E. I think others have already covered END ON and tin = BREAD = money. I’m not sure about the definition of PARKING METER either Eileen. I suppose you don’t stay there long.. not in Brum anyway.

    Thanks to pm @20 for the explanation of REMUTAKA and to Fiery Jack @8 for setting the scene. I’ve been trying to think of an earworm for the view from REMUTAKA, but nothing quite fits so I’ll leave it for others…

    My favourite was AT ONE FELL SWOOP.

44. I agree 1a doesn’t work; ‘Red and blue in the US?’ would have been fine as a CD rather than charade.

    ‘By implication’ = ‘opposite implies another opposite’ also was a stretch, but just straddling legitimacy. I think the ‘rear’ part is not meant to be taken beyond just a definition.

    Never seen that spelling of peony either side of the ocean!

    Quibbles aside, this was fun and much easier than yesterday’s.

45. Sofamore @ 38
    Yes, that is a problem with all minority languages. Welsh …
    What paddymelon says @ 20 is out of Google, I think, and I have a deep mistrust of anything on Google.
    I am also forming the impression that a lot of what passes for ‘Māori’ on the internet is of appallingly poor quality. Again, like Welsh.
    Mountains as sitting places for heroes and chiefs is not unknown elsewhere. I am thinking of Y Gadair in Dolgellau. (Cadair Idris – The chair of Idris).

46. Tim C @41
    The clue says “showing full spectrum”, not “making full spectrum”. There’s nothing about mixing them.
    Red, yellow and blue are primary colours for physicists too if they are referring to pigments; red, green and blue only apply to light.
    As beaulieu implies, the “primariness” of the colours is more about the colour receptors in our eyes than the colours themselves.

47. paddymelon @ 36
    Thanks for that link, which I will definitely pursue.
    Are you in NZ?

48. “Primary colours are fundamental colours that serve as the foundation for creating all other colours in the visible spectrum.” – this would explain 1ac possibly? Thanks Eileen for the blog, from a cryptic crossword newbie!

49. Welcome, Naomi! 🙂

50. Enjoyable puzzle and reassuring when even the blogger fails to parse a few.
    Thanks both

51. No, Anna@47. I’m in Oz, a linguist by training and passion, as I think you are. Don’t get me started on Australian indigenous languages. So complex (to a non indigenous person).

52. Anna@45
    REMUTAKA
    I have a deep mistrust of anything on Google.
    Depends on which site we’re gathering our info from. Google after all throws up
    everything it can get a hand on to. It’s for us to ‘select’ the right site. How to do it?
    Maybe we refer to more than one site to cross verify info taken from one site.

    Google Translation failed me today but still I get so much from Google searches,
    I will feel handicapped without it.

    pdm@51
    There was another word NIOISA in the grid. Does it mean news or has Google got that too wrong?

53. paddymelon @ 51
    I was interested in learning an Australian indigenous language long before I got interested in Māori. But it is virtually impossible to find any decent material on the internet. And there are so many of them!
    Only a handful seem to have survived sufficiently well enough to be used as the means of daily communication. Is that right?
    It was a long standing desire of mine to make a linguistic tour to Australia and NZ.

54. My last two in were the PRIMARY COLOURS and then IAMBI once I realized I had incorrectly inserted Recap instead of REMAP at 8ac. Lots of sparkling clues this morning, I thought…

55. KVa @ 52
    I wondered about NIOISA too.
    But it’s not in Te Aka dictionary, nor given under ‘news’.

56. Thanks Anna@55
    Must be another Google Translation error.

57. KVa @ 56
    Not necessarily. It just means it’s not in the dictionary I use.
    To me it looks like an attempt to transliterate ‘news’ into Māori spelling.
    We need a native speaker!!

58. Thanks Pangakupu for an enjoyable puzzle and Eileen for brilliant parsing. As there are many fells in Northern England 27a went in easily, then I had to work out the rest. I wanted 1a to have a rainbow and 1d to have a hotel but had to backtrack when the crossers went in. New word for me today was ETOLIATE. I put it in then had to look it up. I like the interesting comments about the Māori language.

59. correction. Etiolate

60. [Where is Paul, T when we need him? Anna@53. Haven’t seen him for a while. I’ll put a request through Admin if we can exchange emails, if you wish. And if you ever want to come down here for immersion, I would so like to come along.]

61. Lovely! I do like Pangakupu. Favourites were etiolate and at one fell swoop, which l thought was brilliant. Thanks to Eileen and Pangakupu

62. I think I’m more on Eileen’s wavelength than P’s, having the same head scratchers with some of the cryptic definitions. Also wasn’t sure about BREAD appearing in two crossing solutions.
    Favourite would be ETIOLATES as it’s a new word for me.
    Thanks Pangakupu and Eileen.

63. NHO 26A, and if the comments are anything to go by, I am all but alone in that.

    Otherwise, the usual good fun from this setter.

64. With the 7, 7 enumeration in 1 across, I had so many attempts before I got that right and needed to solve others first. Painted? Rainbow? Rainbow something? The scales fell off my eyes when I finally got PRIMARY COLOURS. Was party necessary? So happy to get that from US elections that I didn’t trouble to look at what were primary colours, as per the scientists amongst us..

65. paddymelon @ 60
    Do you know of anywhere that would teach an Australian language? If so, I’ll be there!!
    Yes, you ask Paul T and I think I may send an email to Pangakupu’s website and ask him.
    (I’ll wait until this evening, as they are probably all going to bed now in NZ).
    I wonder if we should continue in the General Section, as we are straying off the crossword now?

66. This was a satisfying, quick solve. After a few challenging Fridays, it is good to be here on an easy Thursday. Thanks all.

67. Oakville reader@58: I misspelt Etiolate in the grid, although I am familiar with the word. Held me up for a while. I sort of parsed everything, but at times it was like looking through fog.
    Eileen, you missed the L in NYLON. It hardly matters, but you might want to correct it for posterity.
    Thanks both and all the comments. It’s considerably less foggy now

68. Surprised it took me only 20 minutes.

69. Thanks, nicbach. I’m not at home at the moment but I’ll correct it later this afternoon when I get back. It does need to be right for the archive, as you say. (I thought I’d got away with no careless errors today!)

70. The reversed Sn at the end of 16 down and ref to tin in the clue had me going round the houses trying to Parse it. Then I remembered Kay Harker.

71. I don’t know a word of Maori, but I play “spot the Nina” anyway by seeing which of the Nina columns or rows looks like something pronounceable. That eliminates, say, LNLNEL or RIYKOBLR. I got this one, probably will some of the others.

    A KEELBOAT is a yacht?

    Paul@70 I had the same tin problem.

    Nice puzzle. Solved it all last night. Thanks to Pangakapu and lucky Eileen.

72. KVa@33: no worries about misleading me, the “rest your buttocks” translation is a lot more fun and actually quite appropriate 🙂

73. muffin @46 For physicists, primary colours of pigments (also known as subtractive colours) are cyan, magenta and yellow. I understand that artists use red, yellow, and blue, but as I’m not an artist, I fail to understand why. You may remember being puzzled as a child on finding that when you mix red, yellow, and blue you always get a muddy brown rather than black. It’s something to do with how colours are perceived.

74. I realise that I’m late to the party, but I just wanted to add that I parsed END ON very simply: if you END ON, you must, “by implication”, START OFF. It was fun reading all the other possible ways to parse it – no idea what Pangakupu had in mind but there seems to be a lot of choices!

    One that held me up today was RED FLAG. Until the crossers put me right I was convinced it was RED TAPE. If you take the definition as Official delay it parses rather nicely: RE (involving) D (democrat) and TAPE (a warning sign).

    Thanks to Pangakupu for the fun and Eileen for her always very enjoyable blog.

75. Eileen@blog seems to be despairing of recognizing Pangakupu’s Nina’s. It may help to know that the Maori alphabet misses a lot of our letters – according to Wikipedia the alphabet is just: A, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, R, T, U, W, Ng, Wh. Apart from the digraphs (the last two) the language seems to avoid consonant clusters entirely. This doesn’t help you know what the words mean, of course, but it might help you spot them. Then you can look them up, or use Google Translate.

76. Valentine @71 – keelboat suggests sails, as the sails need to be counterbalanced by something big enough and heavy enough underneath, or the boat blows over when the sails fill, hence the keel.

77. AllyGally@74 – never really too late, but I think the majority of the suggestions for END ON say more or less the same thing, in different ways.
    I like to think that if it had been a Paul puzzle I might have seen it more readily – it’s a favourite device of his – but perhaps that’s just a form of sour grapes!

    Dr. WhatsOn @75 – thanks for the hints but I’m not despairing at all. I haven’t mentioned this before (and wouldn’t have now – and certainly don’t want to start an argument) but, given, for instance, the criticisms earlier in the week about French expressions in the clues / answers, I’m mildly surprised that these Ninas go down so well. I’ve regarded them as being gifts to our New Zealand friends, who, together with some other non-UK solvers, sometimes get a rather raw deal – and, if others have a smattering of the Maori language, it’s nice for them, too. I’ve never felt it incumbent on me as the blogger (I’ve blogged quite a few of Pangakupu’s puzzles and enjoyed them) to find random half-hidden unknown words which appear to have nothing to do with the puzzle and have been very happy to leave it to those who know more than I do and can have a bit of fun enlightening the rest of us. (Just for the record, as I’m not the best at spotting Ninas, I found it hard enough to see even after being told what to look for. 😉 )

78. I found this a very mixed one.
    Lots to like (including being able to solve it): eg “red banana” conjures up a great image, and it’s fun that it’s an anagram of another food.
    However, I wasn’t keen on several of the definitions: in particular, I am another one who frowned over PRIMARY COLOURS (though I could nearly justify it as “primary” simply meaning “main”).
    I was impressed by the subtlety of GLYCOSE being defined as was sweet.

79. As a US solver, primary colours was a write-in because of the Joe Klein novel, a fictionalized account of the first Clinton campaign. I was worried when I couldn’t parse Ugandan, but what else could it be? I suppose they’re still discussing Ugandan affairs over at Private Eye.
    I was chuffed to parse end on, my LOI.

80. Thanks both.
    Comfortable solve today. Thanks for clearing,up END ON.
    Lots to like, favourite was PARKING METER.

81. Re 1 ac, there was a book published in 1996, author Joe Klein, called Primary Colours, about an American presidential campaign. I think I read it.

82. UGANDANS. Where does “on the contrary” fit in with the clue?

83. UGANDANS
    Please see my post@23

84. Steffen @82 “on the contrary” is an instruction to reverse the order of the previous 5 words, so “various guns (UGNS) importing with Americans (ANDA)”. It is a useful device for setters to make the surface reading of the clue make sense. “Africans with Americans importing various guns” makes sense but “Africans various guns importing with Americans” sounds nonsense.

85. Timc C@84
    UGANDANS
    You have explained it much better! Thanks.

86. Thank you. I think I understand that now.

87. The Māori ninas are just a bit of fun, but I’m pleased they attract so much interest. I have tried to fit them to the number of the puzzle I’ve submitted (this was the 21st) but some of the numbers aren’t tractable, and they’re being used out of order anyway! So in this one I just bunged in the hills about 20 minutes to the north of us.
    Māori is a vocalic language so you get clusters of vowels and the consonants act as fenceposts. REMUTAKA is a little unusual in having a nice alternating pattern. The change from I to E is significant because the vowel sound matters – Māori does not allow for the ‘i’ sound of English to replace the ‘e’ sound of te reo. So ‘rimutaka’ was incorrect, though I assume if you had a reason for ‘rimu’ and ‘taka’ to occur together it could be created (tree heap?). ‘Remu’ (like many Māori words) can mean several things (including ‘buttocks’), but the conjunction makes it something like ‘viewpoint’.
    Film buffs will know of Weta Workshops. Be aware that the insect they’re named after needs a macron on the ‘e’. As it stands, it means ‘excrement’. The company do get embarrassed about it, but it’s a bit late to change.

88. Thank you Pangakupu for your elucidation about the Ninas and the Māori language. It’s good fun and interesting to wordsters from all over the planet.
    No, I didn’t know about the connection between Wētā and Peter Jackson.
    The ”excrement” thing reminds me of my time teaching English to adult refugees from South America in Sydney. We took them on an excursion to the city and they were gobsmacked to see, on top of one of the tallest buildings, a huge sign bearing a financial company’s acronym, CAGA, which means excrement in Spanish.

89. Just to say thanks to Pangakupu for his contribution.

90. Took a couple of days, but I completed a Thursday for the first time in a good while.

91. I’m a bit late to help anyone with Maori ninas here. (Ironically my Maori studies have kept me from crosswords lately.) I’ve only been studying Maori full time for a couple of years so I’m I’m by no means an expert. For future reference though all Maori words end with a vowel and there are only 9 consonants: H, K, M, N, P, R, T, WH (pronounced ‘F’ in most parts, ‘W’ in others) and NG. This makes it easy to eliminate potential Pangakupu ninas (such as NIOISA). I recommend Te Aka online dictionary once you’ve spotted one. Note that many Maori words are conjunctions so you may want to break up a word to explore its meaning.
    If anyone can help with writing macrons on this site I’d appreciate it. I’ve given up after they just got replaced with a question mark but it grates to write ‘Maori’ without one.

92. “GLYCOSE” is pretty obscure, and I would shun anyone who uses the plural form “IAMBI” as I would a rabid dog. Otherwise very entertaining. I liked ETIOLATES, a reminder that T.S.Eliot can be used for other things than an anagram of “toilets”.

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