Guardian Cryptic 29,461 by Yank

76 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,461 by Yank”

1. A slow and steady solve. I got there in the end. Ta PeterO and Yank.

2. Thank you Peter O. Your comment about the two decommisioned queens made me laugh. It was my last to parse. Sometimes you just can’t see those pesky bugs.
   I really enjoyed this. Yank’s earlier puzzles attracted some quibblets, but none from me today. All parsed beautifully and lots of chuckles to boot.
   I liked TEST CASE, ACUTE ANGLE and SEX PISTOLS, PUMICE and IAGO, amongst others.

3. AMPERSANDS
   The def should be ‘and in symbols’?

   Good puzzle and great blog as usual!
   Thanks Yank and PeterO!

4. Yes a nice steady potter, no gremlins, though pearl onion was new (pearl barley, yes). And the l2i, stump and tesrcase, took a bit, but that was just me being a bit dim. Much enjoyed, thanks Yank and Peter.

5. Thanks Yank, right up my street this. Loved the lateral thinking definitions and smooth surfaces. Sex Pistols the favourite in a strong field.
   And thanks to PeterO for 3, 6 and 14 parsings. Now, I wonder if those elements spell anything 🙂

6. Liked this more than previous puzzles from this setter. DNF though, didn’t get “zone”, because of the “in” was looking at it the wrong way round…

   Couldn’t parse 16a nor 14d.

   Liked the “Sex Pistols” clue surface. Also liked 6d.

   Was reminded of 2 songs “Charlotte the Harlot” by Iron Maiden and “St Elmo’s Fire” by John Parr from the film.

   Thank you to Yank and PeterO

7. I’m not a fan of the construction used for HARLOT, where we’re told to lop off some of a word not given, but not told how much to lop off: “I’m thinking of the name of one of the thousands of desserts out there; most of that word gives you a word meaning ‘tart’.” Thanks for that.

   [I’m also wondering how well-known Ellen DeGeneres is in the UK. I doubt her talk show has been exported; was the sitcom?]

8. Agree KVa@3 about underlining “and in symbols” as the def for &s.

9. I’m more used to “pea-souper” for the fog. I haven’t heard of stump/platform — I guess it makes sense. Couldn’t parse SERENE — I looked up the Oscars host and got Jimmy Kimmel, not a great deal of use.

   All else was straightforward and fun. Thanks, Yank. (Don’t see you very often?)

10. GDU @9: he did say “Oscars host Ellen”, which should have gotten you there.

    [Besides the Oscars gigs, she also has had a 40-year career as a stand-up comic, a sitcom actress and a talk-show host. One of the first openly lesbian TV personalities here, also. Ironically, she has a reputation for being the opposite of SERENE offstage; several ex-staffers of her talk show have made her out to be the boss from hell.]

11. TEST CASE is a bit unfair, likewise the strange ‘lopping’, but a good challenge which I couldn’t win in time (late for golf). Thanks both.

12. Seem to think I struggled with Yank last time, but found this a pleasant challenge. Thanks to him and PeterO.
    By the way Peter, COLOUR SCHEME is an anagram Of CLUE MOOCHERS, otherwise the S is unaccounted for.
    [Mrpenney@7 – Ellen DeG’s sitcom was shown in the UK, but a good few years ago]

13. Mrpenny@10, yes, if I’d googled “oscars host ellen” rather than just “oscars host”, my life may well have taken a different course. As you might have gathered, the Oscars are not high on my list of interests. 😉

14. 26 took me a while, and I got the clue from the crossers then vaguely remembered a name (well actually misremembered it as ‘Generes’ first until Google put me right). Mind you, DEPRESSION also took me too long as I didn’t remember who Celine was. I agree with PeterO about the enumeration of TEST CASE, though the clue was clever, as was the clue for OCEAN LINER, which was a good spot. Thanks to Yank and to PeterO.

15. paddymelon @2: I would be surprised if PeterO was referring to our dearly departed Queen as ‘decommissioned’ and would be offended if he was. I found this very quirky with some lovely clues such AMPERSANDS, PEARL ONION, SERENE, ACUTE ANGLE, IAGO and the funny SEX PISTOLS (resisting an earworm, even though I was a big fan).

    Ta Yank & PeterO.

16. 13 D might also be an oblique reference to a ‘bawdy record ‘ from The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. The last three words of its title are ‘In The Rigging’. Don’t look it up if you’re easily shocked.

17. Very enjoyable puzzle from Yank. Thanks.
    I was unable to parse SERENE, too confused by the word play to see how it worked. Of course it seems quite clear now. Thanks to PeterO for the explanation.
    I enjoyed the device used in AMPERSANDS, with the ‘minus’ energy, and using another symbol to denote this. It took me a while to account for that lost ‘e’. Likewise for TEST CASE; although I’ve met the device previously, it was nicely clued. The blind trio in PUMICE was amusing.
    Favourites were OCEAN LINER (my last in) and ACUTE ANGLE.

18. Completed but found it irritating rather than entertaining. I agree with PeterO about the enumeration of 6d. I also thought that 26a was a bit of a stretch.

19. Bit of a mixed bag – liked “&&”, TEST CASE and OCEAN LINER but some of the subtractions could have done with a polish

    Hats off to Celine Dion for banning Trump from using her Titanic song – hopefully the sinking ship metaphor will prove prescient 🙂

    Spoilt for earworm choice today so here’s The Specials with Free NELSON MANDELA

    Cheers P&Y

20. @PeterO. Anagram fodder for 12ac includes the s of moocher’s

21. [AlanC@15. Apologies if I’ve caused offence, or indicated that Peter O might have done so in his comment about the decommissioned Queen/s. Misread Peter’s comment about both ships. Didn’t think of the fact that if there was a QE2 (on my bucket list) there must have been a QE(1). (Have since looked up.) It may have been the colonial/republican in me coming out. Great respect for Queen Elizabeth II though.]

22. mr penney@10. Oscars host Ellen would not necessarily have gotten GDU there, or many of us in Oz. But you didn’t mention that Ellen de Generes’s partner/wife, now Portia Lee James DeGeneres, is Australian born.

23. AMPERSANDS always reminds me of my school maths teacher who expressed his excitement at one day’s clue in a lesson which was something like….

    &&&&&& food (6)

    Maybe that seed resulted in my later love of cryptic crosswords.

24. [pm @21: thx for that. I do not bang a drum for the Royals, but like you, had great respect for ER. As for the rest, not much].

25. Especially liked 16a AMPERSANDS, parsed as PeterO with Amperes and the sands of time. But it also works as a literal definition:
    “Current” = still in use, not yet obsolete
    “–” taken as a dash, not a minus sign
    “energy + time, figuratively” – the E and T of the Latin “and” stuck together to form…
    “and in symbols” – the definition. (Agree with KVa@3)
    [An earworm for 19a ELMO (& BB, & Mr. S, & Gordon, & Gabby, &c.)]
    Thanks Y&PO

26. SERENE
    I have a different observation/question. This is about the device ‘by and large’. When ‘mostly’ is used in a clue with a word, only one letter of that word is removed. If ‘by and large’=mostly in this case, removing 30% of the word seems to be a deviation from the ‘norm’. Is my understanding flawed?

27. Mostly very good, though I didn’t understand everything (TESTCASE for example). I found 1d a bit unsatisfactory – it was far too obvious how it worked, so very little cryptic about it, just a matter of memory or looking up.

28. Wow, very tough. I failed to solve 23d and I could not parse 6d (the test = TT bit) and 14d.

    New for me: PEARL ONION.

    Favourite: SEX PISTOLS.

    Thanks, both.

29. Moocher earworms.
    More recent
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ5gCGJorKk

    but I loved the original
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mq4UT4VnbE

30. Some of it relatively straightforward, some less so, and some very chewy indeed. I didn’t parse OCEAN LINER, one of those that’s very clearly clued but just passed me by, or I succumbed to misdirection.

    NHO STUMP = speaking platform, or cHARLOTte = dessert.

    Loved FIFE, ACUTE ANGLE, AMPERSAND and, well, plenty more. Puzzles like this one serve to stretch me a little bit whilst still remaining doable.

31. 1d FIFE – Knew it started with an “F” from ‘Here Lies Beery Bill Caught Napping On Friday…’, but cqba Googling 53 and 26 – they had to be I and Fe.

32. [paddymelon @22 Ellen DeGeneres was also the voice of Dory, the Blue Tang with short-term memory dysfunction, in Finding Nemo, a film not without Australian connections, traversing as it does in the waters between the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour.]

33. Thought it a bit much that as my knowledge of the periodic table has dimmed over the years I had to look up (yes I did) the three elements that made up FIFE, and that was my first one in. Thereafter some challenging clues, though three four letter hidden words in the same puzzle might be some kind of record for the Guardian Cryptic. Liked PUMICE and of course the SEX PISTOLS brought a nostalgic smile to my features. Thanks Yank, and PeterO. In a dash, so haven’t read the other comments yet, so hope I haven’t duplicated too much…

34. TimC@23. &&&&&& food (6) Viands? Good one! Wished I’d had a maths teacher like that.

35. I have a comment awaiting moderation, probably because there are 2 links in there. Used to be 3 was the trigger.
    So as not to put everyone’s comments out, here is a moocher earworm. There is a more recent one that people may know, but I love the original.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mq4UT4VnbE

36. By and large I liked 26a SERENEGeD<, and for the most part I liked 3d CHARLOTTE, but I wouldn’t like to say how much I liked them, preferring to keep it vague. (67%)

37. Very pleasant puzzle, SEX PISTOLS being my favourite. Like others I haven’t come across TESTCASE as a single word. Is there any support for it or is it just a mistake in the enumeration?

    I think the definition for OCEAN LINER is “ER’s namesake’s one”.

    Many thanks Yank and PeterO.

38. [pdm @33 you’d have needed to go to an English Grammar School for that. Mr Horner also instilled in me a lifelong love of mathematics.]

39. The enumeration of TESTCASE is certainly wrong, but it may be a traditional Grauniadism rather than the setter’s fault. I didn’t like HARLOT for the vagueness of the clue, as already mentioned above.

40. FrankieG@36. 🙂

41. OCEAN LINER and AMPERSANDS the clear favourites for me. FLATIRON LOI. This was a different challenge, which was nice – thanks Peter for helping me get a few that I otherwise groped at using crossers. And thanks Yank.

42. FrankieG@35
    😛

43. Not too bad. I’m struggling with COVID brain fog at the moment, and didn’t expect to finish today’s, but everything slotted in nicely. Slight eyebrow-raise at the imprecision of HARLOT, but PUMICE, AMPERSANDS and OCEAN LINER were brilliant.

44. Thanks to Yank for the challenge, & PeterO for explaining SERENE & HARLOT.

    I like that a FARTHING is ‘an amount you barely notice’, which could also be a far thing!

    I also like the reference to Lee Harvey Oswald in 4d, the definition for ACUTE, ‘the drunken exploits’ in 13d, and the clever subtraction in ‘sadly unrecognisable’.

45. I really enjoyed this with just the SERENE unparsed, because I was batting around doing other things while completing this and didn’t bother looking up the required knowledge.

    AlanC I thought the earworm.ought to be the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen

    Paddymelon@34 – moderation is now more than one link, and there are only two people can moderate – the blogger and kenmac, who has delegated that job to the bloggers. So if you post a comment that needs moderating when the blogger is asleep, at work or otherwise unavailable, it may be some time before they check their emails to see there’s a problem that needs resolving. Always assuming the email doesn’t go into the spam folder (I find it’s a bit hit and miss whether 15^2 emails end up in my inbox or spam folders.)

    Thank you to PeterO and Yank.

46. Bit of a struggle to complete but in retrospect the clues were all fair.
    Thanks both

47. [TimC@23 et al. Funny, I thought the answer to &&&&&& food (6) was going to be HAMPER (Ampers/and/’ampers/and… As in a picnic hamper). VIANDS is better, obviously.]

48. Pleasant solve after yesterday’s torture (for me).

    I liked the wordplay of FLOOR PLAN and PEARL ONION, and the anagrams for AMRICANO, SEX PISTOLS and OCEAN LINER. I do like reverse clues, so TEST CASE also got a tick (TESTCASE is in Wiktionary as an alternative). There are some people (including at least one crossword editor) who insist that subtraction anagrams have to have two anagrinds if the letters to be removed are out of order in the fodder. However, I think that is wrong when the anagrind comes first; thus an anagram of unrecognisable is OCEANLINERbugs, so no need for a second anagrind, in my opinion.

    The removal of an unspecified number of letters has irked some, but once one sees (deg)ENERES, it’s fairly obvious what is required. Maybe, trio or some such could have been used.

    Thanks Yank and PeterO (my current was AMP, so I got a bit confused with that parsing).

49. Mostly straightforward with lots of nice surfaces and constructions and good anagrams, and for once I had all the necessary GK. The parsing of 14D foxed me, but in hindsight it is very clever. For a while I was misdirected by the thought that A&E is the British ‘namesake’ of the American ER.

    27A was a favorite.

50. Who is Yank? I loved this.

51. Komornik@50 (or@whatever, my numbering’s out).

    This is Yank.

    https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/piscop-puzzlemaster/

52. Test case and flat iron are both two words (4,4) not one. As mentioned above, pea soup is not a fog; pea-souper is.

53. Thanks to Yank – I felt more on their wavelength than last time they appeared – and PeterO.

    I think “stump” is more of an Americanism – they have the expression “stump speech” as a standard form of words repeated at many rallies, originating from the idea of standing on a tree stump. I’d say that “soap box” would be more common here.

    I can’t let “amperes” go without a complaint, however. We had this once before where “current” was meant to be replaced by “amps”. It just won’t wash with me. It’s exactly like using the wrong part of speech in a clue. You can ask “How much current is flowing?” or “How many amps are flowing?” but not “how many current…” or “how much amps…”. In the same way you’d never ask someone “What metres are you?” instead of “what height are you?”.

    Having spent 20+ years trying to drill into students the difference between a quantity, its units, the symbol for the quantity and the abbreviation for the unit (e.g. current, amperes, I and A in order) I am rather sensitive to this point.

    Rant over – loved a lot of this. I thought “test case” (apart from the enumeration) a very neat invention, “sex pistols” a fabulous surface and some devious but getable definitions.

54. Mostly enjoyable, but I ground to a halt with some of the NE corner unsolved: my fault,not Yank’s, though TEST CASE is definitely 2 words and I’m not happy with being required to remove an unspecified amount from both ends of an unknown word for HARLOT.

    Neither PEARL ONION nor the STUMP as a public speaking platform came immediately to mind (though I’ve heard “on the stump” about US policians campaigning). Being no scientist, I forgot that an amp was an ampere so didn’t get AMPERSANDS properly parsed, and needed to look up the relevant elements for FIFE.

    Liked the blind trio and the Rotten bunch, EACH, OCEAN LINER, ACUTE ANGLE, AT HAND and FARTHING.

55. [Shanne @44: yes indeed. I’ve just finished a tour this morning of the Irish Emigration museum in Dublin and Johnny Rotten featured in the music section, because of his Irish parentage. Maybe explains a lot about the song. Well worth a visit].

56. I solved 4d and 10d.

    I still don’t understand how you solve TESTCASE. I’m sorry to ask for further explanation.

57. Steffen @55
    The wordplay is in the answer: the CASE (i..e. the outer letters) of TEST are T T.

58. Didn’t quite finish because I couldn’t parse a few. But I found this playful, and I really enjoyed it.
    I had similar thoughts to Jack of Few Trades @52, but that didn’t impair my enjoyment.

59. Steffen @55, how you solve it is: wait until you’ve got enough crossing letters to see that the answer must be TEST CASE because it fits the definition. Understanding the wordplay comes afterwards. If anyone says the wordplay helped them solve it, they are lying.

    Found it quite entertaining. SERENE(ged) and (c)HARLOT(te) were simple enough but just fell flat because of the randomness. By and large doesn’t mean most of something. I didn’t like or understand the reason for the indirectness of ‘ER’s namesake’s one’. Is it trying to make us think of ER the TV show? Not very successfully, and not worth it IMO. The anagram’s the good bit of the clue and that would have worked just as well with Queen Elizabeth.

60. In no known universe is TESTCASE a single word. And the device of saying ‘think of a word then lop off the first and maybe the 5th and possibly the last’ and describe it as ‘for the most part’ is the sort of device I would expect a novice to come up with and then roundly reject as being absurd. The fact that the G editor thought otherwise is bizarre

61. @58 – spot on in all respects

62. @52 – but I think the two can be used interchangeably in another construction:
    that cable can carry a lot of amps/ carry a lot of current

63. Paddymelon@21

    The story is the second liner called Queen Elizabeth was to be called just that, but our late queen named it “QEII” at the launch and Cunard had no option but to stick with it. It’s sister ship, the Queen Mary, is called just that despite being the second of that name.

64. I always start top left corner. First clue? Farting.
    Thanks Yank, the schoolboy in me liked that.

    Nice crossword, despite the lopping. Degeneres is the 1st name that comes to mind for Ellen, I don’t watch the Oscars so wouldn’t know her from there. She must be in the news a lot.

65. No idea who Ellen is, but 26A could only be SERENE once the crossers were in. And the clueing of HARLOT is a bit approximate for my taste. Even so, a satisfying solve.

66. I obviously have trouble with subtractive anagrams, as I was beaten twice today (here and in the FT cryptic) by this type of clue. The subtraction at 14d OCEAN LINER was four letters, which made it difficult for me to see that the 14-letter UNRECOGNISABLE provided the fodder for the 10-letter anagram. Will this be an ongoing blind spot? We’ll see.

    Thanks, Yank for the excellent puzzle, and PeterO for the characteristically fine blog. Favourites were the superb surface of 13d SEX PISTOLS, and the jazzy record label solution to 27a BLUE NOTE.

67. Stephen @61: Interesting point – I’d assert that the example with “amps” is grammatically incorrect, and a colloquialism at best. Consider the examples, using more familiar quantity/unit confusions as “That job’ll earn me a lot of pounds/money” or “That bridge can carry easily enough tonnes/weight”. Both of those sound wrong in the first instance (although I fully accept people would say them!) and right in the second.

    Is there a phenomenon here whereby something which is less familiar means that fewer people have an instinctive reaction as to whether or not it is correct? So a confusion of amps/current is more likely than one of metres/height? Oh, there’s the bell – discuss among yourselves!

68. How about “Dessert without extras, on reflection, is tart”?
    Or even “Dessert without being covered in extras, on reflection, is tart”?

69. Thanks Yank. This was slow going at the start but once I got a foothold (SW corner) everything came into view nicely. Great clues/surfaces overall with my top picks being ACUTE ANGLE, DEPRESSION, SEX PISTOLS (COTD), PUMICE, and IAGO.Thanks PeterO for the blog.
    [paddymelon @50: Thanks for the link. Many years ago I was a regular NYT crossword solver and I recall Joe Piscop quite well.]

70. Paddymelon@34 I thought of the Hoochy Coochy Man too, and the song contains several BLUE NOTES.

71. The above posted as I was editing. Write out 100 times Hi-de-Ho Man.

72. Excellent xword

73. Apparently Steel was a super hero, a brilliant engineer who tried to outdo Superman by building a suit of armour etc. I’ve never followed the exploits of Superman and don’t get the irritability reference. Anybody?

74. Endwether: I don’t know if you’re just having us on, but Superman has the moniker The Man of Steel, so when he’s irritable, he would have NERVES OF STEEL. Get it?

75. Jack of Few: Trades@67. I’ve discussed the questions in your second paragraph with myself, and I think you’re right about familiarity. As a non scientist, I enjoy the debates here about the language of physics etc. But there are other fields of endeavour represented in our 15 sq community whose contributions I also appreciate, eg music. I’ll never remember the finer points raised , but it’s interesting for the few nanoseconds that my brain retains that information. It’s the way these arguments are presented which I find interesting from a sociolinguistic perspective, the precision of the scientists, the tolerance for latitude (usually) from the non specialists. My specialty is the perception of homophones, but that discussion has been almost universally shut down. 🙂

76. What a fun solve! 13 dn was my favorite.

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