Guardian Cryptic 29,538 by Paul

75 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,538 by Paul”

1. Good to see Paul’s name appear again after a slight absence. Enjoyed his SAUCY SEASIDE fun and games as ever. Last few in were new ones for me GASOHOL, OAHU, and the tricky AVIATE. The Donald McGILL collection in the Museum of Ryde on the Isle of Wight has a very large collection of those POSTCARDS. Of their time, as the saying goes…

2. Couple of minor typos in the blog, loonapick – CHIPOLATA needs HIP not HIT and SAUCY POSTCARDS needs CARDS not DECK.

3. “Doing a Paul” is like my marathon running…start too quickly, get slower, limp painfully over the line: in a time that I would really rather not discuss with anyone.
   Why do it? Well, you get a medal for completing.

   This one, not so painful, until I hit the wall near the end.

   No quibbles with the wordplays, and a lot of good stuff.
   Reversing ” Tra-La” is borderline genius in my book.
   Not so, with SMALL-MINDED, or am I being petty?
   OAHU, a bit obscure, but lovely use of “AH”.
   I got HERALDIC, but without any clue how. (ta, loonapick).

   “Mole” has appeared before as ” a stone breakwater”, but GROYNE was just a gungadin from the wordplay, for me: convinced myself that Ivor Groyne must have been a university pal of Burgess, Philby & Maclean.

   A really good challenge.
   Hats off, Paul & loonapick

4. Thank you loonapick. Your preamble was exactly my experience in the north east corner.

   I have reservations about some clues, but I enjoyed some of the surfaces, eg the one for GASTROPOD.
   SLOT MACHINES was clever. I liked the sunburnt shoulders in TOSTADA.
   For a long while I thought the def for GOODNESS ME was O no! Had to get out paper and pencil to set that right.
   Liked EXPEL and COINS.

5. Thanks Paul and loonapick. Bit of a slog for me. No memory of optics in bars, unfamiliar with seaside naughty pics, and strop for pet was too oblique for the sluggish ginf brain. Hey ho, try again on the morrow … if I’m in the mood.

6. Not too tricky once I’d got SEASIDE. Have we seen that clue before or is my memory playing tricks with me? Enjoyed this from Paul today, though I notice there are still those that are offended by the lavatorial references. Well, you know what to expect. OAHU came from the wordplay followed by a Google check, as did GASOHOL. Liked the seaside references, including GROYNE, plus TOSTADA and GASTROPOD (though could have done without the latter in the garden this year). Thanks to Paul and loonapick.

7. Thanks Paul and loonapick. Struggled more and enjoyed less than most of Paul’s crosswords. Still great fun. Needed the blog for more than one.

8. Tough slog. I am never on this setter’s wavelength.

   New for me: GROYNE; CASHIER = expel; MONTPELIER= capital of Vermont; GASOHOL.

   I did not parse 11ac apart from rev of TRA-LA.

9. I had a similar experience as ginf and Michelle. Too many unfamiliars and stretched definitions for me. Funny, because Paul was my favourite setter for a long time and I rarely failed to complete. Thanks anyway Paul and loonapick.

10. Solved and mostly parsed, but I didn’t find it as quick and easy as the blogger.

    Interestingly, according to the most recent Guardian crossword blog, Paul’s style of cluing that is more allusive beats AI solving.

    Thank you to loonapick and Paul.

11. Thanks Paul – perfect level for me. The seaside theme helped with GROYNE (hadn’t come across “mole“ in that sense). Also unfamiliar with the (USA?) term GASOHOL though I was helped by a recent lecture from the bloke who sold me my lawnmower. Favourites were OPTICAL ART (brilliant!), ASSONANT, PEERAGE (Dad-joke punning) and ROCKPOOLING (scataluvverly).

12. Thanks Paul and loonapick
    I keep saying that I won’t bother when I see it’s Paul, and I wish I hadn’t here. I did nearly throw it away when my first one in, SHORT SIGHTED @18a, didn’t fit.
    Lots of irritating loosenesses and obscurities, and some “inventive” (i.e. off the wall) anagram indicators.
    I did like LOI PEERAGE.

13. A slow start, but it became an odd mixture of bewildering and enjoyable as far as solving goes. NHO cashier-EXPEL, and some of the other parsings were lost on me, but no more so than other clues at the trickier end that we’ve had recently.

14. Great salty fun with the usual twists and turns, I could almost smell those childhood holidays. I thought the link between COINS and SLOT MACHINES was brilliant, especially the latter’s surface. HERALDIC was loi as I imagine it will be for others. Was surprised that genitals and groin are synonymous.

    Ta Paul & loonapick

15. Splendid stuff. I found the related clues a help rather than a hindrance for once

    Top marks for OPTICAL ART, HERALDIC & GASTROPOD

    Is it Paul’s “allusive” style that rubs some solvers up the wrong way maybe?

    Cheers P&L

16. Quite hard but got there in the end with a bit of help at the end from my lodger, for whom it was the first cryptic crossword answer he had ever done! Heraldic! He now thinks he could pass the test he has on Saturday, as part of his application for citizenship!
    Thanks Paul and loonapick

17. I had to reveal about half of this. nho GASOHOL, EXPEL-cashier, GROYNE, ASSONANT (although I got the latter thanks to the clear wordplay and remembering “assonance” from Educating Rita, a film which I always enjoy).

    It took me two different internet searches to understand GROYNE – never heard of the word itself, and never heard of ‘mole’ in the sense of pier/causeway/breakwater.

    Oh well, every day’s a schoolday.

    I liked OPTICAL ART, SAUCY POSTCARDS and SLOT MACHINES.

    Thanks Paul and loonapick.

18. Some excellent clues here. Paul is a very imaginative setter, though I sometimes feel that his high output comes at the expense of quality – but no complaints here.

    For once, the trademark ribaldry fits well with the kiss-me-quick theme. Favourites: HERALDIC (Charlie wasn’t C, sneakily). GOODNESS ME, COINS (cleverly thematic) and particularly SLOT MACHINE for its &litteriness.

    LOI was GROYNE – ‘groin’ is not strictly genitals, but they are ‘the desmesnes that there adjacent lie’, as Mercutio put it. But it did remind me of one of the puns that the Sunday Times put every week in the colour supplement:

    When she said I could kiss her on the groyne
    I knew I was on a shore thing

    Thanks to Paul and loonapick

19. TanTrumPet @17
    “Mole” is pretty loose for GROYNE, as a groyne isn’t a pier/causeway/breakwater. It’s a structure built out on a beach to limit “longshore drift” – the tendency of currents and waves to move sand, pebbles, and sediment in a consistent direction along the coast. Where needed, there are usually several/many of them built at intervals along the beach.

20. The usual slow start with Paul but some good examples of Paulian humour.

    I only got COINS after back-solving from SLOT MACHINES. I liked the SAUCY POSTCARDS, the PEE RAGE, INSECURELY and LAST TO GO. All the main dictionaries give GROYNE as a breakwater.

    Thanks Paul and loonapick.

21. Robi @20
    Wiki has it right, though!

22. For “gentry”, the SOED has “the class immediately below the nobility”, which does not equate to PEERAGE. On the other hand, although Chambers’ primary definition is “the class of people next below the rank of nobility”, it then gives “nobility, aristocracy”, which is a bit confusing.

    The SEASIDE theme was nicely done. Thanks Paul and loonapick.

23. Thanks for the clarification muffin @19

24. Quite a few I couldn’t parse, some unsolved, which turned out to be very clever. A few unfamiliar words and arguably loose definitions, but all with fair wordplay.

    “recognised” in 23d seemed redundant, but I thought it might indicate “tu” rather than “vous” – you referring to somebody you recognise and therefore might be familiar enough with to use “tu”?

25. Re. ‘groyne’ and muffin@19: hmmm… but the word breakwater makes clear the semantics, which is the effect of obstructing the ocean’s currents/waves so as to reduce their driving force. As you say, groynes are constructs designed to do just that… to ‘break’ the ‘water’ and thereby reduce or eliminate the longshore drift.
    So it seems to me that groyne, mole and breakwater are pretty much synonymous.

26. pserve_p2
    I think of a breakwater being a wall mostly surrounding a harbour, for instance, stopping the waves from affecting moored boats – “breaking water” literally, not stopping longshore drift.

27. Re. ‘longshore drift’ (muffin@19): I note in Paul’s puzzle the phenomenon of ‘semantic drift’, by which an earlier (more technical?) meaning of a word drifts into a more general meaning. Peerage used to denote the nobility, quite distinct in Britain’s historical class-structure from the gentry. But with the modern dissolution of the old class distinctions, gentry are now seen as sort-of posh and the nobility is also sort-of posh and so peerage becomes synonymous with gentry.
    Similar process with myopic overlapping semantically with small-minded. In my idiolect, those two are in no way synonyms.

28. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Like AlanC@14 I had the mental image of a young boy spending a week in a caravan in Margate but dreaming of Mexico and Hawaii.
    Last two were AVIATE, which brought a smile when the penny dropped, and GROYNE, which I’d vaguely heard of. I remembered reading a novel years ago in which people kept going for walks ‘on the mole’.

29. pserve_p2 @27: I agree with your rationalisation of ‘gentry’ = PEERAGE, and like you, I don’t think ‘myopic’ and SMALL MINDED are really synonymous. We can call ‘short sighted’ someone who fails to take into account the consequences of their actions. Small-mindedness is insularity of outlook – not quite the same thing, but you catch Paul’s drift.

30. Props to Paul for getting Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian into the same puzzle. I thought there might be a minitheme, but that seems to be it.

    12,17 is quite brilliant.

    As far as gentry goes, I think it is fair to see that it has a formal but obsolescent definition as the tier below the nobility and an everyday usage that includes them. For a long time British politics could be characterized as a power struggle between the gentry and the nobility.

31. If you look up GROYNE in OneLook, you see mole in the info-box on the right, under Similar. One-stop shopping for two less-familiar meanings!

32. The online edition, and loonapick’s blog (much needed today), show a comma at the end of the clue for 19, which confused me – I thought perhaps the solution might rely on a grammatical term for it. Oh, and 28 may be familiar to those of us of a certain age. TTS&B.

33. I needed to commune with the check button a good deal this morning. But all good fun.

    Seems a little unfair to expect UK solvers to know US state capitals ==most Americans wouldn’t know Montpelier, I’d bet. I did because I’m a New Englander and it’s in a neighboring state, where I used to go several times a year for work. I was surprised so many didn’t know Oaahu, but then I’m a Yank.

    Thanks for the Gulliver bits.

    Steppie, what’s TTS&B?

    And thanks to Paul and loonapick.

34. Groin rang a Wilfred Owen bell. His ‘Strange Meeting’ is about as far from genitals as you can get. But there is a mole resonance in the tunnelling. Just saying.

35. Thanks Paul & loonapick for the lovely SEASIDE outing, complete with donkey ride, stick of ROCK, CHIPs and PEER amusements.
    SLOT MACHINES is brilliant

36. I had to consult a list for MONTPELIER, the clue for OAHU is deceptive even if Hawaii is a US state, and GASOHOL was new, but they gave me less trouble than stretchy definitions like myopic=SMALL MINDED (yes, I wanted it to be short sighted!) cashier=EXPEL and meat=CHIPOLATA. I needed to stop with half a dozen to go and sleep on it, but I got there eventually: enjoyed the SEASIDE theme with the saucy postcards etc. and the seagulls stealing chips in the clue. I laughed at PEE RAGE and the surreal image of the ASS ON ANT. I wish I had spotted the backwards TRALA in OPTICAL ART, but the second half of that one defeated me. Last in HERALDIC, a disgracefully long time after I knew it was an anagram.

37. I liked some and disliked more. The only one I didn’t get was gasahol, which bothers me not one whit as it means my head is not so far up my cruciverbal posterior as to be impressed by such showboating. All in all one of my better Paul experiences.

38. Valentine @33, it’s “Thanks To Setter & Blogger”. I was happy with OAHU since our daughter worked in Hawai’i for a while.

39. SECTOR was my favourite, perhaps because I am a bear of little brain. Enjoyed looking up ‘mole’ and GROYNE once the crossers had made the answer obvious (which it wasn’t at all while I was thinking of a scene from Johnny English in which the spy meaning and bodily mark were confused) and learning that EXPEL and cashier can by synonyms. Thanks Paul and loonapick

40. 7d a reference to Robert Duvall’s ‘Charlie don’t surf’ line from Apocalypse Now?

41. @40 Jamjar and subsequently title of a Clash song.

42. Valentine @33: US state capitals pop up quite often in quizzes, so they aren’t too out-of-the-way for us Brits. In fact I’m better on them than the equivalent traditional UK county towns. Actually, I have visited MONTPELIER myself several times – a pretty little town, especially in the fall.

43. I don’t think I have ever heard Op Art called Optical Art. It would strike me the same as would someone calling Warhol’s soup cans Popular Art. Yes, the terms are abbreviated forms, but the full forms are never used, as far as I know.

44. lots of new words there, but the clues were so good that even I got them – cashier, gasohol springing to mind. slot machines was a great anagram. loved the theme – and lots of words relating to it. I really don’t think I’m good at cryptics at all but only had one reveal – the groin – because I went down the spy path, and didn’t know mole in this way. I think the people complaining about this clue are quibbling, tbh.
    It was great fun.

45. Is Optical Art the same thing as Op Art? I took it to be those strange pictures that you have to look at crosseyed to make an image appear. Showing my ignorance I expect.

46. Another American who is surprised at how many of you did not know OAHU. Incidentally, it is the third- or fourth-most populous US island–after Long Island, Manhattan, and Puerto Rico (which you might not count–it is second if you do). 59th most populous in the world, the Web says.

    I had heard neither of a GROYNE nor a mole in that sense. And yet, they do have them here in Chicago–the prevailing currents on Lake Michigan carry sand to the south, so the east-facing beaches all need them. (I’d always called them jetties, but I guess that’s not quite the same thing.) [Most of the beaches here are north-facing. Nearly all the shoreline in the city is artificial; they built peninsulas every so often and either deliberately put beaches on their north sides, or allowed them to develop there naturally. In many cases, some of each–my local beach at Montrose Point is much bigger than it started, and they’ve allowed a big section of it to get taken over by a dunes ecosystem, with still plenty left over for beachgoers.] Anyway, that was my lone failure in this difficult but enjoyable puzzle.

47. My usual approach to a Paul puzzle us to quickly scan the clues and throw my arms in the air complaining that the crossword is far too difficult.
    Today I persevered and completed the crossword with everything parsed (almost).
    Scant use of the check button, just the SE corner held me up for a while, not knowing the state capital of Vermont.
    Thanks both

48. This transported me very happily back to childhood Blackpool holidays, though my solve was much more stony than sandy underfoot, Paul at his brilliant awkward best.

49. Yes it was tricky in places – but I managed to complete it so I’m feeling dead chuffed.
    Valentine @33: thanks for caring! Fortunately, I guessed the anag – then looked it up (having previously only encountered the french city of that name).
    Somehow I doubt one can still buy saucy postcards at the seaside – but gulls certainly still swipe food: last time I was on a beach (Lyme Regis, couple of months back) one sizeable beggar knocked the entire blob of pistachio ice-cream out of my cone – then stood beside it on the sand and cackled at me. Some things never change.
    Thanks to Paul for an enjoyable time, and loonapick for the blog

50. Re, GROYNE, I’m a little surprised that no one has cited MR James’s famous ghost story, ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You,” where Parkins has a repeated, troubling vision of “A long stretch of shore—shingle edged by sand, and intersected at short intervals with black groynes running down to the water …” The word occurs several times there, and was where my memory sourced the solution to 20d.

    A recommended read for anyone who does not know it and is not of a nervous disposition. It is on Gutenburg.

51. A hard but fair solve with a few more going in on each go.

    Fortunately I’ve just finished reading a book where the central character is an army officer cashiered for cowardice on false evidence, so didn’t need to dredge round too much for that meaning.

    Montpelier was easy enough from the anagram, even if, like me, you didn’t know it was a state capital.

    Similarly tostada didn’t require knowledge of mexican cuisine, and if you combine gal with Soho you get E10 fuel, whether you care to call it gasohol or not.

52. Apart from the comma at the end of 19d FIBULA (Steppie@32), 25a ANNIE HALL contains a single opening quote, instead of an apostrophe.
    [But at least it’s in the right place.]

53. As is almost always the case, muffin @12 sums it up for me.

54. Rockpooling isn’t a word in any of the dictionaries of repute in English (Chambers, Collins, OED), nor Websters.

55. Andrew @51: a TOSTADA is essentially a flat, crispy taco, usually served as an appetizer or small meal. The name refers to the fact that the tortilla is usually toasted (it can also be deep-fried). [There’s a Mexican restaurant a couple blocks from me that does a really good ceviche tostada, which now having talked about it, I’m kind of hungry for. In this city, you are never far from good Mexican food, so I actually haven’t been to that particular place in a while.]

56. Well spotted, FrankieG @52 – not terribly obvious as rendered on my screen, but still better than having it between the 70 and the s!

57. The word GROYNE comes up a lot in a book I read recently (PD James, Death in Holy Orders). But I still didn’t come up with it.

    I found this quite difficult. I failed to parse quite a few, although they all make sense now that I see how they work.

    I know that a rockfish is a fish, but unless people refer to the fish as a “rock” (which, for all I know, perhaps they do), I don’t like using FISH to clue ROCK. But that’s probably just me.

    Because I’m still juvenile despite my advanced age, I quite enjoyed 28ac (PEERAGE).

58. Ted @57 – In my experience, ROCK is often offered as a fish option, alongside haddock and cod, in good Fish and Chip shops. Alas, I have a F&C shop less than 40 yards from my residence, but it appears to be more concerned to flog kebabs and fried chicken to the local populace, so, being very particular about the freshness of my fish, I have never tried it.

59. Balfour @58
    I’m curious. Is the “ROCK” on offer actually Rock Salmon (aka dogfish)?

    Frankie @53
    I can’t decide if you were being ironic!

60. “Accessible” is a very subjective description!😂

61. When I am reading the blog I understand the parsing but can’t imagine ever working it out myself! Pleased I correctly completed 7 clues today – Paul usually defeats me utterly.

62. I’m glad I’m not the only one who had trouble in the NE corner. OAHU was a gimme though since that’s where my partner is from.

    A couple of questions for my British friends: does “chips” in the COINS clue simply refer to fried potatoes or have I missed something?
    And is SAUCY POSTCARDS a phrase that people would recognize? Saucy was one of the words that I considered for “S*U*Y” but I dismissed as being nonsensical for the theme.

63. Welbeck@43
    I had the same experience with a gull nicking my ice cream at Lyme Regis a couple of years ago. Same bird? I can’t remember the flavour but it won’t have been pistachio.
    Muffin@59
    The ROCK on sale in my local fish and chip shop in Leeds seventy years or more ago was certainly dogfish. It was cheaper than cod.

64. Re POSTCARDS George Orwell wrote an interesting essay on The Art of Donald McGill.

65. If that’s an accessible Paul I’m glad I haven’t run across any of his inaccessible ones yet. Completed about 2/3 with a lot of effort. Above my pay grade I fear and only Tuesday… 🙁

    Does anyone else have an issue with OPTICAL ART; I’m not sure that’s a legit usage?

    BlueDot@62, yes, SAUCY POSTCARDS would be a well-known British phrase at least until the 1960s or early 70s. Might not still be in common usage though as I’m not sure the genre still exists.

66. I usually enjoy Paul and there was much to like here, but also a few things that irked me, in particular:

    – I don’t really like “myopic” as a definition for SMALL-MINDED – a stretch at best.

    – I’m not keen on “getting tanned” as an anagrind. I always appreciate new and original anagrinds, but they do need to carry some meaning of disarray or rearrangement, which I don’t think this does.

    I also thought PEERAGE was a bit tenuous but it amused me so I’ll let it pass!

67. BlueDot@62 In seaside amusement arcades you would sometimes need to exchange your coins for tokens, sometimes called chips, to use in certain machines – a bit like chips in casinos. The idea being that it’s easier to spend bits of plastic than real money, even if they’re worth the same.
    “Saucy postcards” were definitely a feature of seaside culture in the UK – you might say we we’re easily pleased!

68. This was a curate’s egg.

    I will excuse any clue revolving around puerile humour, even the “mole” one which I had to guess. But “optical art” isn’t a thing, and that parsing for “gastropod” is like something HP Lovecraft would write about.

69. muffin@12-I tend to feel the same about Paul-I was feeling upbeat after Grecian
    This was less flowing and natural but there as a bit of vintage bikeshed humour in ROCK POO LING
    I first put in SILLY postcards which delayed the finish
    Finally I decided the the tasttiness of the puzzle went perfectly with the clues

    So all s forgiven

70. Postcards in general, not just the saucy ones, are becoming an endangered species now that postage is so expensive and so much of the wish-you-were-here communication now happens online. From recent visits to the SEASIDE with an elderly friend who still sends them, it’s obvious that fewer shops stock them, and those that do don’t sell many.

    I took the “chips” to be the kind used in casinos, and ROCK in the UK is indeed dogfish, rebranded in all fish and chip shops as “rock salmon” (very nice too).

71. Bobtato @68: Might HP Lovecraft enjoy SAUCY POSTCARDS?
    I’ll get me coat.

72. Muffin @59. Not ironic. I usually find we are of similar mind.

73. “Fine rockpooling coast, this Starfish-on-the-Toast.” Donovan, ‘Gift from a Flower to a Garden’ (1967)

74. I cheerfully withdraw my objection to cluing ROCK as “fish”, now that I know that people actually do use the word in this way.

75. I’ve had this one on the back burner for quite some time, and finally gave up with GROYNE and SUCK still glaring balefully and incompletely at me. I assumed that the word “accessible” in the blog header was used sardonically.

    PEE RAGE is excusable and amusing, even if wrong, but having written in SHORT SIGHTED_ and being away from home with no Tippex, I’m less inclined to forgive ‘myopic’. I struggled with FIBULA but that was my own fault for thinking of LIE for story and not being able to rid myself of it – typical example of concrete brain.

    New for me was ‘being’ to clue GOD in 5d, without either supreme or imaginary to qualify it. Favourite was HERALDIC when I finally spotted how the clue could work, and it really did!

    Actually, ROCK POOLING was also good, even if not in Chambers – their loss. It would be nice to see Paul’s sense of humour described as just that, without the adjectives smutty, toilet, schoolboy or bike shed attached. It’s just humour, and I enjoy it.

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