Guardian 29,486 – Fed

80 comments on “Guardian 29,486 – Fed”

1. I started slow with this one – the first few down clues did not ring bells and the long ones looked like they were going to take some assembly for which the odd crosser would be helpful. SEDER was the first (and rather unlikely) solution to fall. However, the crossers proved far more tractable and those awkward early clues all fell on second attempt. Often I found that I had identified the germ of the idea correctly and it was satisfying to discover crossers confirming or clarifying it. STEARATE, OFF-THE-PEG, UNSELFISH, EBULLIENT and REGIONAL all fell into that camp. GALLON was my favourite, though I liked the use of GESTATE in HOUSING ESTATE. ‘One from Genesis’ seemed somewhat of a vague indication for ONAN – definitely one to be parsed afterwards rather than correctly identified during the solve – but I can see why it appealed for the surface.

   Thanks Fed and Andrew

2. Thanks Andrew.
   ON AND OFF: I looked up the drummers of Foo Fighters and Genesis, got their initials, but absolutely no help with the parse. I just went for the def and waited for Andrew!
   EMU: Saw the wordplay, and thought what’s that? Not an Australian runner? Google let me know the Hull connection.

   Apart from those two, all solved and parsed ok. Didn’t know FAST and FURIOUS as a media franchise but the cluing led me to the solution. I was chuffed to figure out material for stole. I knew what a stole was, my mother had one. Also to get the separation in u – kippers and the terms NSEL in UNSELFISH. And the wines on the counter in SEDER, even though I hadn’t heard of the answer. Credit to Fed, not to me.

   I enjoyed it. Favs EBULLIENT, HOUSING ESTATE, and REGIONAL for surface and wordplay,

3. Finished, but quite a few unparsed. Fed was too clever for me – statement of fact, not a criticism.
   Thanks to Fed and Andrew.
   Andrew – ARSONIST is an anagram of
   [C]ROISSANT[S]

4. And the 8 word clue for the 4 letter answer for PAYWALL was very funny in the verbosity, and the surface.

5. Enjoyable and thanks for the explanations for 15a, 16a, 4d, 6d, I’m still confused for NN = NEWS though…how so??
   On first look, it looked a bit daunting, and it was a bit ‘solve first, parse later’…
   I thought the use of UKIPPER was inspired, shame I could not parse the rest of it, I have not seen TERMS to indicate the last letters and I’m still a bit ‘hmmm’ about it.
   Many thanks, both…

6. I wondered if non-UK solvers would be puzzled by the clue for EMU (which notably attacked other people like Michael Parkinson). SEDER took a while to surface even though ‘wines’ always suggests ‘reds’ in crosswords. Another appearance for ONAN as well, having appeared recently with relation to his weakness.
   Lots to like in the puzzle with the East side taking longer than the West. Liked HOUSING ESTATE when I finally parsed it as well as lots of others. Thanks to Fed and to Andrew.

7. Liked UNSELFISH, OFF-THE-PEG, LOVE KNOT, INDENT and A F A FIDDLE.

   Thanks Fed and Andrew.

8. HIYD @5 – N is NEW, so NEWS is NN

9. I’m afraid Fed’s puzzles tend not to be to my taste. I completed the last half-dozen or so answers from definitions and crossers and couldn’t be bothered to work out the parsing – too much convolution for my liking in some clues e.g. UNSELFISH.
   Some others were just a write-in (GALLON, ROWAN).
   There were quite a few I did like including HOUSING ESTATE, EMU, UDDER, ON-AND-OFF.
   Thanks Andrew and Fed.

10. Crispy @8 – Thanks…(grrr)

11. Tomsdad@6. Yes, ONAN/ist has come up a few times in cryptics. Didn’t know he was in Genesis. Not a weakness, just rebellious?

    [According to Wiki: After being commanded by his father, Judah, to perform his duty as a husband’s brother according to the custom of levirate marriage with the late Er’s wife Tamar, Onan instead refused to perform his duty as a levirate and “spilled his seed on the ground whenever he went in” because “the offspring would not be his”, and was thus put to death by Yahweh.[2] This act is detailed as retribution for being “displeasing in the sight of Lord”.[3][4] Onan’s crime is often misinterpreted to be masturbation but it is universally agreed among biblical scholars that Onan’s death is attributed to his refusal to fulfill his obligation of levirate marriage with Tamar by committing coitus interruptus.[5][6]

12. Slow start but once the caffeine kicked in we were off to the races. Hard to pick favourites from such an array of ingenious and innovative clues but INDENT, UNSELFISH and the delightfully daft EMU stood out though I could have ticked just about everything. Each to their own 🙂

    Cheers F&A

13. Hard work, this one, though I eventually entered everything correctly. LOI UNSELFISH? No idea at all. STEARATE? I got the (set)* around… but that wasn’t how it worked. Like PM@1, I did like GESTATE. While there were some other nice clues, overall I found it a bit too wordy, and needed multiple returns to get to the end. Thanks, Fed and (especially) Andrew.

14. Very clever but a few clues not to my taste. I’m a wee bit surprised that HOUSING ESTATE is so popular given the amount of the answer that is in the surface. The use of NEWS to mean NN always catches me out resulting in a kickself.

15. I find with Fed that I have the answer 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through parsing and I tend to move on to the next clue or if I’m checking a guess, I basically do the same thing. I come here and think, Oh I forgot about that bit. Sometimes it comes back to bite me when I get a bit wrong, I had YOUR instead of ONE’S in 1,5 until I realised that I only had the O in the anagram fodder.
    Thanks both.

16. A slow but steady solve. For those unfamiliar with Rod Hull and Emu here is an appearance on Parkinson.

17. [Tom’s Dad@6, Paddymelon@11. On Discworld you will find the thriving theological college of St. Onan’s.]
    Fairly rapid solve this morning, but needed Andrew for a couple of parsings.
    Thanks F&A

18. [Thanks to paddymelon @ 11 for the Onan information. When I lived in the South West, this practice was known as “buying a ticket for Plymouth but getting off at Devonport”]

19. Agree with nicbach @15 – such fiddly parsings often result in an inability to be fully arsed to follow them all the way through. I don’t think I’ve seen ‘terms’ used to indicate final letters before. How does this work? Short version of ‘terminals’? Not entirely convinced, personally. But thanks to Fed for an interesting challenge, and to Andrew for ironing out the more crumpled bits of wordplay

20. I didn’t find this much fun – just convoluted

21. re Onan, we had Onanist in the recent Prize Puzzle 29,464 in August by Brockwell with
    “Granny is taken in by old-time Cockney merchant?”.

22. [Shirl@18. LOL. I can’t think of an Australian equivalent. Devonport here is in Tasmania. 🙂 ]

23. Not convinced that INDENT means cut, and the parsing is very obscure. I struggled with a few others but with your explanations that was clearly just me.

24. Properly difficult; for me at least. Nice to get a real challenge at end of the week. Not sure I would have managed with that level of cluing without the long multi-light answers.

    More like this please

    Thanks Fed and Andrew

25. It took me a while to complete the assault course but I enjoyed the workout.
    Thanks Fed and Andrew.

26. Jw@23 INDENT Chambers 2. To cut into zigzags

27. Sorry to quote Ch****rs, but:

    For term, the first definition in my edition says “an end”. It’s a device that is not uncommon in clues, and gets me every time.

    For indent, the first definition is to cut into zigzags. I’d not come across this before.

28. Many thanks to Fed and to Andrew. I needed help with some of the parsing. I think I am slowly getting used to Fed because I was able to work out some of the more convoluted ones, but only by reverse engineering. Also thank you to pdm@11 – I’ve learnt something new today. moh@19, term as the end of something e.g. pregnancy, terminus etc I think 😎

29. One of those crosswords where you can hear all the fiddly little bits of Lego click-clicking into place – sometimes enjoyable, sometimes exasperating. The answer was sometimes apparent without doing the Lego, as in FAST AND FURIOUS and AS FIT AS A FIDDLE, while others like UNSELFISH and NEATENED wouldn’t click at all. Putting together EBULLIENT and ON AND OFF was fun. But I think I most enjoyed EMU and the boring AWL.

    nicbach@15: there seems to be an unstated convention that where a phrase in common speech can be either of A FLEA IN YOUR/ONES EAR, the crossword answer is always the ONES version. No idea why, but it’s so.

30. Found this trickier than recent Guardian Cryptics. Was going to say that when FLEA IN ONES EAR eventually hopped off the page it was my COTD. However loi REGIONAL topped it, I thought. Nho STEARATE but bunged it in with all the crossers in place, and had a vague notion that SEDER was a thing as the clueing was pretty definite. Needed Andrew to explain how INDENT and NEATENED worked exactly. A satisfying challenge this morning, many thanks Fed…

31. Inventive and fun. Loved it, especially 6 and 13.

    Thanks Fed and Andrew.

32. I always enjoy Fed’s puzzles and I think this was one of his best yet – chortles and ‘ahas’ galore.

    Lots of fun teasing out the parsing – defeated only by INDENT (Grrrh – thanks, Andrew!)

    I’m in my usual Thursday rush to go out so I’ve no time to list and justify my (many) favourites – but I must just mention my admiration, as ever, of the skilful ‘run-ons’ of all four composite clues (1/5, 30/31, 2/20 and 8/22 – excellent setting.

    Many thanks to Fed for a lot of fun and Andrew for the super blog.

33. This was as difficult as I imagine a Saturday Prize puzzle should be. I’m not used to this setter’s style and I found the clues quite wordy. Can’t really say I enjoyed it but I was glad to complete it even though I did not parse 13ac, 16ac, 4d (I suspected it had something to do with City of London but I couldn’t remember the postcode), and the EATE bit of 6d.

    New for me: rocket = reprimand = a flea in one’s ear; SEDER – heard of it but never knew exactly what it was; ASA = Advertising Standards Authority (for 8/22); STEARATE = salt; Rod Hull & emu connection – found this via google, I had imagined the emu was a mascot/logo for Hull football club!

    Favourites: HOUSING ESTATE, FAST AND FURIOUS, EBULLIENT, UDDER.

    Thanks, both.

34. Paddymelon@22 , at least in Sydney the equivalent is ‘getting off at Redfern’, one stop before the main station at Central

35. What Eileen said, including the fact that we too are just about to go out

    Many thanks to Fed and Andrew

36. Enjoyable, typically ingenious puzzle from Fed, with some clever devices. I do find some of his clues somewhat over-engineered and verbose. This can make the parsing much harder than the solving, which I often find comes from the definition and the crossers. Not spotting the definition is a problem, of course; REGIONAL was my LOI because I was convinced ‘local’ was part of a charade.

    However, all this verbiage does produce some wonderful surfaces – something which I esteem highly. And hearty congratulations for placing all the split entries running consecutively in the grid (Paul, please note 🙂 ).

    Thanks to DG and Andrew

37. By the by, when I first read 12ac I thought – there’s no such team as Hull United as far as I know. Hull Kingston Rovers and Hull FC play Rugby League and Hull City play soccer. But the United bit only turned out to be an important part of Rod Hill’s bird. Of course a local person in the East Riding may well tell me that there is in fact a Hull United playing in the lower leagues, or representing a team in another sport there..

38. Inventive and enjoyable, although a few left not fully parsed, such as DECENT, which I now admire.

    Not come across the terms ruse for ‘last letters’ before and totally ignorant of the media franchise.

    Still struggling with ENTAIL = need, but no doubt someone can provide an example.

    Many thanks, both.

39. UNFINISH
    Seen ‘terms’(in this sense) in several puzzles earlier.
    Chambers quoted already. Collins & a couple of other online dictionaries give terminus, terminal as meanings of term.

    INDENT
    Chambers has ‘a cut or notch’ as one of the entries under ‘indent noun’.

40. Took me a while to the first few in and then was stuck for ages. Once a couple of the long ones fell, I was flying. As usual expect Friday to break my streak.
    Thanks both.

41. William@38. What does solving Fed’s clues entail ? Name your own terms. 🙂

42. I finished with several unparsed and, like some others here, little desire to pursue the parsing. I respect those of you that enjoy and indeed master the challenge of Fed, but for myself the convoluted constructions are often only visible in hindsight, which is little fun.

43. Actually we did get quite a lot of it…

44. Paddymelon @41: hmmm… paraphrasing to understand… do you mean, “What do you need to solve Fed’s clues?” Sorry to be thick, but I still don’t see it.

45. ronald @37: I am a long way from the East Riding and certainly no Yorkshireman but, as requested, here you go

46. [And who knew PM @45 that I could be an owner of a football team for 20 quid. 🙂 ]

47. Oed.com: ‘… II. To INDENT a document, and senses thence arising.
    II.2. 1385– transitive. To sever the two halves of a document, drawn up in duplicate, by a toothed, zigzag, or wavy line, so that the two parts exactly tally with each other; to cut the top or edge of two or more copies of a legal document in such an exactly corresponding shape; hence, to draw up (a document) in two or more exactly corresponding copies.
    This was done in the case of a deed, covenant, agreement, etc. in which two or more parties had an interest, so that one copy was retained by each party; the genuineness of these could be subsequently proved by the coincidence of their INDENTed margins. See INDENTure n. I.2.’

48. That was just brilliant – thanks for making me seem much more clever than the reality!

49. Quite fun to unpick the clues, some of which were rather wordy.

    I was another who was misled by ‘set out’ not meaning set*, drat! I liked the A FLEA IN ONE’S EAR and OFF-THE-PEG anagrams. I also ticked UDDER, UNSELFISH, EBULLIENT, INDENT and NEATENED. Rod Hull and EMU would be rather challenging for some overseas solvers, but there is always the Web to consult.

    Thanks Fed and Andrew.

50. I failed to parse UNSELFISH; I figured some UK political nonsense that I didn’t know about was involved, so I just plunked it in and came here to be enlightened. Of course, it was nothing of the kind.

    Re SEDER (“Why is this night different from all other nights?”), and all the people above who have said they’ve never heard of one, it seems like that’s always the case when Jewish culture or Yiddish loan words come up here. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I just know more Jews than most of y’all.

    Oh, and yes, my eyebrow did raise at ASSAULT = battery, but it’s not quite as bad as the more common legal error rob = steal. I’ll spare you the full law-school lecture, but in a nutshell assault entails using a threat of force, whereas battery is the unwanted touching of another person. In many criminal codes here, the two have been merged, with the old crime of battery being reclassified as an aggravated assault. But in tort law, the distinction remains, and you can in fact have one without the other.

51. Oh, meant to mention that I had no problems with EMU, since seemingly every time that bird shows up in one of these things–and that’s pretty frequently–the clue involves the puppet, not the actual bird. So despite not having the cultural referent directly, I know it by now.

52. Good stuff from Fed. As usual some complex parsings but all fair when you’ve (eventually) worked them out.

    The way I understood the definition of EMU was that the bird’s attacks were actually (sorry to shatter any illusions) attacks by Rod Hull, as in his famous assault on Michael Parkinson.

    Many thanks Fed and Andrew.

53. I liked the puzzle, but had to guess EMU. When I saw Geoff Hurst I immediately thought “This can’t be a reference to 1966, surely”, and surely it wasn’t.

    Thanks to mrpenney@50 for the discussion of ASSAULT and battery. My first thought was they have to be different, or you wouldn’t need both in the phrase, but I also knew it had to be more complicated than that.

    I understand that lagers are served cold, but they are not intrinsically cold, so I felt the clue for REGIONAL would have been better if it had an indication of this. Got it anyway.

54. Tough going at first but rewarding.
    I wasn’t aware of Fast & Furious as a media franchise, but a combination of the crossers and the wordplay made the answer clear enough. UNSELFISH is quite brilliant, as is NEATENED.
    The surface of 19a was amusing. Someone kindly posted on Facebook this morning a link to a slightly less English/jingo commentary on the 1966 World Cup Final.
    Thanks, both.

55. Is it possible Fed was using battery in its legal sense but ASSAULT in its more general sense i.e. “a violent attack”?

56. Many thanks for the assault on assault, Mrpenny @50, very interesting.

57. Thanks Fed. Much of this was guess-then-parse for me (and there were bits I couldn’t parse) but all went in eventually. I did reveal UNSELFISH — clues that read so awkwardly are not my cup of tea. I did enjoy clues like ON AND OFF, FAST AND FURIOUS, EBULLIENT, and REGIONAL. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

58. Dr. WhatsOn @53: in REGIONAL the “cold” is the C you have to remove from ICON, and LAGER is just “beer”.

59. After a morning of HACK AND SLASH, I wondered if I could be bothered tackling what was described on the G site as verbose but I’m so glad I did. Just fabulous, worth untangling and not really that difficult as it turned out. EMU was superb and ON AND OFF reminded me of the fabulous Taylor Hawkins RIP
    https://youtu.be/tN_Z5CANMyY?si=ylLc1ueiUPcG1AAj

    Ta Fed & Andrew.

60. mrpenney @50: agree with your battery quibble, a bit like breaking and entering, but it was a nice clue all the same.

61. Assault courses are training grounds for soldiers ‘privates’, hence the ‘private assault courses?’

    In my paper edition, 1/5 across was missing the final ‘a reprimand’ of the definition!

    Thanks to all

62. Bodycheetah @55: yes, I’m sure that was what he intended.

    [As an aside, if you want an example of the tort of battery without the tort of assault, consider the case where a surgeon operates on the wrong leg.]

63. Nic @61: if you’re being funny, then LOL. If not, ASSAULT COURSES are for training of privates (and many corporals and some lieutenants). No genitalia involved!

64. Not sure how the possessive ‘Cupid’s’ fits with the clue other than to make the surface less clunky, and NHO the media franchise. Otherwise straightforward and fun.

65. Writing this without looking at the many comments first, so I’m aware that much if not all of what I mention will already be covered (and if so then please don’t feel the need to repeat it as I’ll be looking through them later).

    Thought it was going to be impenetrable on first pass, but found my way into the clueing style and was able to work through steadily/satisfyingly. Said clueing style meant that a good few clues were answered on definitions and not parsing, which left the following:

    NHO EM = Printer’s space (is it related to typesetting?) but got EMU from the reference to ‘the attack of Hull’.

    Would never have been able to parse UNSELFISH through ‘split Ukippers’.

    NHO EC = City Of London, so INDENT was purely from the definition again.

    Overall I found this good fun and not marred by lack of parsing where that was the case.

66. Ended a recent – possibly complacent – run of 100% completions with an ignominious 50% at best.

    Enjoyed reading the parsings and wondering whether I will ever solve clues that convoluted. Fun trying, though.

    Thanks both.

67. By coincidence (?), “Fast and furious” is one of the multiple choice options in the Trivia corner in G2 today, except it is listed as The Fast and the Furious!

68. Scraggs @65: an em is indeed a space (or width) in printing, equivalent to the width of a lower-case m (which of course varies in exact length depending on the typeface). The standard dash used to connect related clauses or phrases is an em dash. (Though when typing instead of printing, you substitute a double-hyphen for an em dash–like that.) There’s also an en dash, which is longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash.

    Muffin @67: The first movie in the series is The Fast and the Furious. The various sequels mostly have used variations on that rather than numbers, so the series as a whole is usually referred to as just Fast and Furious. (I have never seen any of them–totally not my cup of tea.)

    Edit to add: it looks like whatever program is running here automatically converts double hyphens into em dashes! How convenient.

69. Thanks for the blog, good set of clues , EMU had an original defintion but was a bit long. REGIONAL was very neat . INDENT was a clever idea, this meaning of indent is similar to “Moscow rules” where a postcard is torn in half.
    For UNSELFISH I would prefer not to be told about the split.

70. MrP @68
    I’ll take your word for it – not only have I never seen any of them, I don’t recall even having heard of them!

71. 24a was my only success, and I was so proud to to have solved it.

    The rest was indecipherable for me.

    Thanks for the explanations.

72. mrpenney @68 – thank you. It might have scraped some vague memories from when I did some typesetting as part of my studies, but that was a couple of years shy of 4 decades ago.

    Anyone got anything as to why EC = City Of London in 4d, ‘INDENT’?

73. Thanks both,
    I rather like Fed’s wordy clues. The answer is in there somewhere and with sufficient application one can usually tease it out. ‘indent’ was the only one I couldn’t parse.

74. Scraggs @72; EC is the postcode for the City of London.

75. Thanks Andrew and thanks all.

    Ronald @37 it turns out there is a Hull United, albeit a small team playing playing in the Humber Premier League.

    Dr WharsOn @53 I think from your comment that you’ve misunderstood the purpose of ‘cold’ being in the clue. It isn’t ’cold beer = lager’, it’s ’icon wanting cold = ion’

76. Re P.E.= games. In my experience as a pupil and later as a teacher these were always different activities, though nowadays they’re probably squeezed together into one half-hour a week.

77. Zoot @76
    Totally agree. When I was at school, games was always fun (except for the day when the ground was too frozen for rugby, so the teacher had the mad idea to get us to play hockey instead – rugby with weapons!), but PE wasn’t, unless it was basketball or pirates.

78. Muffin @77 [We didn’t play rugby at all in the spring term for the same reason. Instead we were sent on runs supervised by prefects while the masters stayed in the warm. I can’t remember the last time the ground froze solid. It used to be permafrost until March. How the world has changed.]

79. I thought this was fun; some very nifty connections between wordplay and surfaces, the latter clearly being important to this setter (if less so, usually, to this solver…) which is why, for example, UNSELFISH is so enjoyable to solve; I thought it a great clue
    This setter is growing on me – there is an impeccable fluency to his clueing which can make for a less challenging solve than I may hope for on a Thursday – but that’s a lonely plaint (and my problem anyway)
    So thanks, Fed, for growing – and growing on me
    Good stuff all round

80. Robi @74 – thanks.

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