Guardian 29,541 / Boatman

74 comments on “Guardian 29,541 / Boatman”

1. 3d god + eg + as u + as All reversed

2. Dachshunds were originally bred for hunting, so perhaps it’s “game” in the animal sense.

3. Dachshund means badger dog, so sausage dogs were originally hunting dogs – following game.

4. Thanks Boatman and Eileen
   Easy grid fill, as a lot were guessable from definition and crossers.
   I think that sausage dogs were originally bred to go into badger setts to drive the animals out.
   (Wiki tells me that dachshund translates as “badger dog”, but there is some doubt about whether they were actually used to hunt badgers.)

5. Fun while it lasted. Shame the Boatman doesn’t set sail more often. Some of his more allusive definitions may irk the quibblers but I rather like them

   Interesting to see TOM WAITS turn up again in UNCLE TOM and AWAITS

   Ticks for REPROACH, LAID-BACK, URNS & the GLOBAL IT OUTAGES

   Cheers B&E

6. 3d The dachshund was bred as a hunting dog – we wouldn’t think of badgers as “game” now but I presume that’s the meaning.
   I enjoyed the “delay” clues and thought the identical clueing at 4 and 17 particularly clever.

   Thanks Eileen and Boatman

   Edit: too slow off the mark with the badger dog!

7. I parsed SAUSAGE DOG too, but came here for the definition, even though I knew about the hunting and badger meaning.

   He missed frozen points, lack of drivers and/or staff illness and broken down trains. We also get person on the line / customer incident which are both ambiguous.

   Thank you to Boatman and Eileen. Best wishes for the hospital appointment.

8. Odud @1 – thanks: I had the wordplay, as in the blog.

   Thanks to Jay, Petert and muffin (comments 2-4) – I’ll amend the blog. No further acknowledgments from me on this: I’m awaiting a telephone call within the next hour, concerning a hospital appointment.

9. Got right up to the buckle end with this, but a frustrating DNF as I couldn’t see what GLOBAL something T and another 7 letter word could possibly amount to. And therefore didn’t manage to get URNS either. Wouldn’t have been able to parse that, as well. But I thought THROUGHOUT and UNCLE SAM terrific clues. REPROACH took a while, too. Many thanks Boatman and Eileen…

10. Thank you, Eileen, needed your blog for URNS, which I’m still a bit unsure of. It’s the ‘here’ part that I find odd.

    The first two long downs went in pretty much from the enumeration and the parsing took somewhat longer.

    Thanks to others about the origin of the sausage dog, the answer came rapidly enough but not the parsing.

    UNCLE TOM went completely over my head, I’m ashamed to say.

    Many thanks, both.

11. Wrong UNCLE,…I did mean TOM, not Sam…

12. Well, I thought about game animals when solving SAUSAGE DOG, but I’m not entirely convinced by that as the definition. Still, I can’t think of anything better and it supports the surface reading. Found this hard going today. Spent too long trying to make an anagram of ‘German rail user’ minus ‘line’ before the crossers revealed the obvious. I note the question mark as definition by example, but I don’t primarily think of GUERRILLAS as saboteurs. But it seems churlish to quibble at a fine Friday morning challenge. Liked 6 and 7, even though 6 was my LOI. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen (and hope you don’t have problems with your hospital appointment).

13. Loved this. I’m only sorry that Boatman missed out my favourite rail excuse:
    “This train is delayed because of the late arrival of an incoming train”. Translation: it’s late because it’s late.

14. Shouldn’t 6d be 6,1,1,7?
    I’m guessing that this has been discussed before.

15. Not much delay in completing this, but I enjoyed it, despite failing to parse a couple. I surprised myself spotting ISNT quickly, but seeing IT as my department at work took a little longer.

16. Nicely done theming and largely gettable cluing though LOI SHELVES held me up more than it should.

    Fellow lovers of Reggie Perrin will, I am sure, be disappointed at the omission of such classics as

    “Eleven minutes late, seasonal manpower shortages, Clapham Junction”
    “Eleven minutes late, somebody had stolen the lines at Surbiton.”
    “Twenty-two minutes late, badger ate a junction box at New Malden.”
    “Twenty-two minutes late, fed up by train delays, came by bike. Slow puncture at Peckham.”
    “Twenty-two minutes late, escaped puma, Chessington North.” and my favourite
    “Seventeen minutes late, water seeping through the cables at Effingham Junction – there was a lot of Effingham and a good deal of Blindingham!”

    Thanks Boatman and Eileen

17. poc @16: great minds and all that. Hope you don’t mind if I leave mine standing.

18. Boatman gets promoted to Admirable for this one.

    Not a breeze, on the Beaufort scale, and the North-Easterlies blew me back for a while, but pretty much the perfect puzzle; can’t fault it.

    The grid threatened to be a problem, with a massive 16 solutions having their opening letters in non-crosser squares, and only 24 clues to tackle.
    Counter-balanced by lovely setting, and, a diversity of cryptic devices.
    11(ac) LAID-BACK stands out, for me, as concise, elegant, and crafty. But it’s like being asked to pick your favourite from a Cadbury Christmas Selection Box. All tasty.

    I salute you, Admiral, & Eileen

19. Good fun all round, though I’m not sure about the adjective BRITISH clueing the noun ‘nation’.

    I had flashbacks to Reggie Perrin’s glorious plethora of lateness excuses in the Fall And Rise of same. They can be seen at https://youtu.be/VJVAHpBUUbI?si=RsbDH3qc5_nv0o6U

20. The first two excuses went in from def+enumeration (though I did parse them later), but GLOBAL IT OUTAGES defeated me (couldn’t identify the right fodder for an anagram of an unfamiliar phrase), as did the parsing of URNS.

    A SAUSAGE DOG isn’t the first breed that comes to mind as a game hunter, but that must be it. INKPADS weren’t obvious either.

    Lots to enjoy though: EVENTS and THROUGHOUT my favourites today.

21. Witty and enjoyable and I’m always like Eileen’s blogs
    Thanks both.

22. @7 Shanne, the reasons behind the euphemistic phrases which inevitably refer to what used to be called a “fatality” are twofold… One to offer the deceased some dignity, and two to not encourage others; unfortunately taking ones life is statistically “contagious”. The railway is doing what it can to reduce incidents for many reasons, not least the lasting impact it can have on its staff.

    Anyway, on cheerier matters… Boatman, as always, has battered me. Way too obtuse for me! (which is not a criticism in the slightest, rather a self-reflection on how far I have to go to consider myself good at this lark!) – I really liked the train delay clues though; I knew Reggie Perrin would be mentioned @16 and @19 🙂 that video’s brightened my day up no end.

    Thanks Eileen, and happy weekend all!

23. Not sure if it was the grid or the elaborate cluing, but this was very much an ‘answer first, parse after’ puzzle. I enjoyed the delay-related long down clues, but suspect that fitting in these answers led to some of the verbosity elsewhere. SHELVES was my LOI and favourite after a great deal of hard staring. And LAID BACK was lovely. Thanks Boatman and Eileen (hope that the appointment call gave you what you wanted).

24. [Phew!! Back again – that turned out to be a (very) lengthy questionnaire / information session concerning a procedure I’m to have next week. Thanks for your best wishes.]

    Thanks for all the comments so far, especially the Reggie Perrin additions . William @10 – I wasn’t altogether happy about ‘here’, either but I think it just about works. (Perhaps ‘hence’ would be better!)

    Lyssian @14 – yes, it has!

    poc @19 – the question mark, signifying definition by example, as mentioned in the blog, makes the clue work for me.

25. Fun puzzle, which I finished on time 🙂 Some nice constructions, though I thought the surfaces were a bit rough in places.

    Daunting grid, as E.N.Boll& noted @18, but I spotted LEAVES very early, which, with the numeration, gave away the game. The other long downs went in quickly, apart from G-I-O which was my penultimate entry, leaving only the tricky double manipulation for URNS as my LOI.

    LAID-BACK, INKPADS and REMITTANCE were my pick of the day.

    I agree with the dachshund interpretation for SAUSAGE DOG, though I think of ‘game’ as being edible quarry (I believe badger can be eaten, but it that isn’t the usual reason for hunting them).

    Thanks to Boatman and Eileen

26. poc @19 and PM @16:

    Unless I’ve made it up, my fave Perrin excuse was, “Eleven minutes late, leopard in the signal box at Tring”.

27. I enjoyed this. Yes there were the traditional two “Boatman” clues, and the second was interesting in that it didn’t directly indicate a specific boatman (tar, AB etc) in the answer but was part of the definition. Very good.

    Was UNCLE TOM maybe intended as an extended definition?

    Many thanks Boatman and Eileen.

28. Thank you Boatman & Eileen for this morning’s entertainment, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Favourites are the supine LAID-BACK and the uneven, rhyming ‘insanity’.
    I hope it all goes well next week, Eileen.

29. Thank you PostMark@16 and poc@19! Great! Super!

30. Delayed starting this after ‘a procedure’ – it must be catching.

    I liked the well-hidden CLOSETED, the reverse clue for WRONG TYPE OF SNOW, and the good anagram for REMITTANCE.

    Thanks Boatman and Eileen.

31. Excellent fun although a couple held me up for far too long – 4 down and 8 across – once I got the latter the former fell into place but why could I not think of shelves?
    Thanks Boatman, the theme helped a lot, and thanks Eileen as your blogs are always fun.

32. Interesting that I am not seeing many posts from those of us Down Under. I suspect that 1d and 2d are to blame. Unlike others here, I struggled to remember the two excuses, which I had heard of – vaguely – while living in the UK. I doubt that they are gettable if you have never heard them. Thanks, Boatman and Eileen.

33. Was this easier than usual for a Friday? I assume so, since I completed it, and on the same day to boot. Still enjoyable.

34. On further study of the clues, I am in agreement with poc @19 that ‘British’ (adjective) doesn’t really match ‘nation’ (noun), even as a definition by example. I didn’t notice this at the time because the solution went in from the definition, the numeration and a few crossers. I didn’t stop to parse it….

35. This USAnian has heard of LEAVES ON THE LINE but had to google .
    “delay kind of snow” to get WRONG. Had no crossers up there. And as a foreigner I felt entitled to google for it.

    “Saboteurs” as a definition of GUERRILLAS seems pretty loose to me. There is some overlap, but I don’t necessarily expect saboteurs to be guerrillas or vice versa.

    “Trespasser fatality” was the term used on a Baltimore-NYC train a couple of months ago.

36. Great puzzle and blog, but oh dear, if there’s an optical equivalent of an earworm, LAID-BACK has me visualising a certain former MP, supine in the Commons. (I nearly wrote “lying”, but that would have been ambiguous).
    Thanks to Boatman, and Eileen with best wishes.

37. Steppie @36

    🙂

38. Perfidious Albion @22 I’d always presumed it was kids messing about on the tracks. I’ve had my fair share of that and of suicides too so thanks for your sensitivity.

39. [Perfidious Albion @22 – customer incident doesn’t always mean a fatality, it can mean someone taken ill or drunken yobs being taken off trains. Ditto person on the track often means trespassers – the three hours delay in June was a mixture of stolen wires for signalling and trespassers. The two and a bit hours in April was a fatality. The two hours plus in October was lack of staff.]

40. best guardian crossword to come along in ages

41. I actually managed to complete this and enjoyed it very much. Did plenty of checking as I went along but I’m very new to crosswords and didn’t get far with other cryptics this week. Must be on Boatman’s wavelength. I’d like more of these.

42. Congratulations, Amma – a good feeling, isn’t it? 😉

43. poc@19 and Gervase@34 I wondered about “british” as an adjective but it can also be used as a noun – “the British are a very stoic nation – they will put up with all kinds of excuses for train delays”

44. Very nice. Unfamiliar with the BritRail phrases but was able to get them from the wordplay and crossers and was amused about the background to “wrong type of snow”–though we do sometimes get the kind that needs blowing rather than plowing here so I have some sympathy for Terry Worrall! Thanks Boatman and Eileen [and belated well-wishes for your procedure, Eileen!]

    [Steppie@36: Oddly enough that clue gave me an auditory earworm, Snoop Doggy Dogg saying “laid back” in the chorus of Gin & Juice.]

45. Thanks, Eileen & All – Glad you’ve had fun with this one.
    Bodycheetah @5 – That’s an excellent unintended NINA! I must spend more time looking for them, so that I can take credit where, in this case, it wasn’t due!
    Shanne @7 – Although I’d probably have ruled it out on grounds of sensitivity, PERSON ON THE LINE is a good spot, as it has the requisite 15 letters. CUSTOMER INCIDENT, sadly, has one too many.
    MikeStockport @13 – I know. That used to drive me crazy in my commuting days – on a par with “delayed due to operational difficulties”. Don’t get me started on STAFF SHORTAGES, which at least you were spared as it has only 14 letters.
    PostMark and all the other RIP aficionados – Thanks for the memories! I’m off to watch the video recommended by poc@19 now.

46. Eileen you referred to Southern for an S. Your summise as a train operator is correct. I guess Ashley (Boatman) put that in as he resides in Ditchling not far from the Brighton main line!
    As usual superb crossword up to his high standard. Also ta for the blog

47. Cedric @46 – Glad that reference wasn’t wholly lost!

48. I couldn’t get “skidpan” out of my mind initially, so INKPADS (not (3,4)?) took a few minutes. And I was held up by only having GLOBAL but, unlike Gladys, I did find the IT OUTAGES
    I’m a little worried about stating my overall impression – that this was the speediest Boatman solve I recall – lest I’m upbraided for “showing off” or, dare I say it, lacking decorum! But others are not discouraged for mentioning the difficulty of (some) Monday puzzles, so why shouldn’t I be honest about a surprisingly easy Friday Boatman? Or should I be anodyne – and say nothing?! 😇 It’s simplicity was the main impression I took away. I almost saved for weekend enjoyment (as I often do with the “chewier” compilers – Enigmatist, Vlad, Boatman, Friday Pauls ….) but I’m glad I didn’t

    In any case, this is not a complaint. For I also thought this was Boatman at his most elegant and I thoroughly enjoyed the bright wit of his clueing; the first two down answers had lights so bright that the remainder also shone…

    I so often congrue with Eileen, and today is no exception; I was cloudy on the definition for SAUSAGE DOG, and though I’d presumed it must be as others have opined (by dint of “game”), I came here hoping for more ….

    Thanks, Boatman, for the first rate entertainment – I like your softer side – and Eileen, of course, for your wonderful interest in our addiction and the joy and enlightenment you selflessly, unremittingly give. (It is in all our interests that you made your ‘phone call successfully – and I, for one, have everything crossed for the best outcome possible from next week’s procedure!)

49. I had “cafe” at 19a for a while. I was thinking along the lines of losing face.

50. Wow, very tough. I forgot to look for a theme but I noticed a lot of stuff about railway company delays. I catch trains a lot to travel round the UK – luckily for me, the services are almost always good and the delays are minimal.

    New for me SAUSAGE DOG = badger dog.

    I did not parse 18ac.

    Thanks, both.

51. By the way, for those of you who still subscribe to Musk’s evil empire or who now reside in the newer, bluer alternative, I’ll be running my Seasonal Reposting Competition, starting today and continuing over the weekend, in both places. Do please follow and repost for a chance to win a signed copy of one of my books. That’s here – in the place formally known as Twitter or here – in Bluesky, the place with the butterfly.

52. Suzydimple @49 – Interesting! There must be the basis of a good clue there …

53. Enjoyed this, a rare event – completing a cryptic over lunch!
    To add to the compendium of frequently-heard tannoy heart-sinks:
    “cable theft in the Wakefield area”

54. [Boatman @45. Firstly, thanks for the puzzle, even though it beat me.
    Secondly re NINAs. Row 7 “O yes ‘e is”. Are you appearing in panto this year?]

55. I had not heard of either LEAVES ON THE LINE or WRONG KIND OF SNOW, so those were both eventually put in with a shrug emoji. Now that I see the explanation, it all makes sense.

    I have a German friend who is constantly posting gripes about Deutsche Bahn on Facebook, so the clue for GUERRILLAS made me think of her. I don’t think she’s had delays because of sabateurs, though…..yet.

    [The most interesting delay excuse I ever heard on a train was that they were late because it was too hot. The conductor gave a detailed explanation, though: rails, like anything else, expand and contract in heat and cold respectively. The joints between two pieces of rail are deliberately built with some tolerance to absorb this expansion. But when it’s over 100F or so out, it’s possible that that tolerance is exceeded and the joints have buckled some, especially on older stretches of track. To avoid the derailment this would cause if they went full speed, they have to slow down to something like 30 mph.]

    [That was on a commuter train, back when I took those. On the CTA el here in Chicago, which is my commute these days, they have pre-recorded delay explanations to cover about five or six different common situations (such as “crews are working on the track ahead,” “police activity,” and the dreaded “equipment problem”. Then they have the uninformative catch-all “We are being delayed and we regret the inconvenience,” which we always assume is what they use to cover general incompetence. So I don’t think you’ll ever hear any of the silly ones on the CTA!]

56. Crispy @54 – Oh no I’m not! Heh heh …

57. [mrpenney @55: Talking of recorded delay announcements, when I took my son to Rome we rode the train from the airport to Roma Termini. As I translated the announcements for him I had to stop and laugh as I realised one of them was simply saying “This train is xx minutes late” where the “xx” part was inserted in another (probably computer-generated) voice as it was clearly such a common event it was not worth having a human make the announcement all the time.]

58. Cedric@46 – beat me to it! My favourite clue, given the setter’s location.
    Not the hardest Boatman today but plenty to enjoy.
    Thanks both.

59. Could not get on Boatman ‘s wavelength at all today.
    Shame as it would have meant a complete set of finishes this week.
    Thanks both.

60. Commiserations, Hoofit@59 – there were some tricky bits here.
    Better luck tomorrow: Onward and Upward! 😉

61. Thanks Eileen, I think that’s the first Boatman I have attempted.

62. Fun crossword and helpful blog. Thanks to all.
    When I saw the thumbnail of the grid on the Guardian website, I was very confident it would be a Boatman as his nearly always have a similar layout i.e. one where the even letters of the “northern” down clues are the crossers and the top row don’t cross at all.
    Is this a thing or am I imagining it?

63. OK, Hoofit, it’s well worth remembering that Boatman’s always have a theme (he maintains that they must have) and they’re not usually ‘ghost’ ones ( I think you’ll agree that this one was quite obvious) – so better luck next time!

64. Sorry, Forest Fan @62 – I can’t help you: I’m not an expert on grids. 🙁

65. Just finished before midnight.

66. epop @65 phew, well done 😂⏰! Loved this voyage, like so many others I thought LAID-BACK was the best among many a gem. GLOBAL IT OUTAGES took me about as long as the whole of the rest of it, but no complaints, quite the opposite. Thank you both.

67. Thoroughly enjoyed this despite not having heard the cited delay excuses myself. Used to commute along the south coast to school back in the 40s/50s and I don’t remember ever hearing excuses being made. Delays were too commonplace perhaps. The “wrong type of snow” brought a smile and then a thought of the multiple Inuktitut words in use to cover them. One needs the right type to build an igloo after all.

68. [MarkonCan: The Inuit snow vocabulary myth originated as a rather racist demonstration of how such ‘primitive’ people were different from us. In fact, there are only a few basic words for snow, but because the languages are agglutinative, these words can have prefixes or suffixes, which in English would be adjectives, to modify them]

69. The basic problem for me with the IT OUTAGES was that I took the “long time” to be AGE rather than AGES, and as a result I miscounted the remaining fodder and was looking for an anagram of NEEDED IT’LL GO “about” AGE – which of course didn’t exist. That’s my excuse…

    Speaking of excuses, on London Transport buses you get the dreaded “The driver has been told to wait at this stop for a while to even out the timetable.” In other words, the bus is getting ahead of its scheduled time, and we can’t allow that.

70. I think this was the puzzle I most enjoyed this week, and much of it was a breeze, though about 1/4 of it held out for a while longer.

    Just on SAUSAGE DOG, I enjoy the Polish name for them, which is Jamnik: the ‘jam’ part relating to a hole/burrow, since they hunted burrowing animals (hence their shape).

    ‘Jamnik Parade’ is worth doing a search for, if sausage dogs are your thing.

71. gladys @69 – I had exactly the same problem with GLOBAL IT OUTAGES meaning it was my penultimate entry, with the crossing URNS my loi.

    This was on the harder side of puzzles that I’m capable of, so I was very pleased to finish it – thoroughly enjoyable.

    (Belated) thanks to Boatman and Eileen

72. Gervase @68. I had no idea the saying was thought racist/colonial and I apologize to anyone I may have offended. I always thought it illustrated the wonderful world of languages and their construction and how they evolve to fit the needs of their users, just like terminology specific to a particular sport, occupation or locale.

73. MarkOnCan above — that’s what I thought too. If something is central to your way of life, then fine distinctions will be more important to you than to others. I bet jockeys have a lot of terms for track surfaces.

    And thanks to Boatman and Eileen.

74. Valentine@73….you’ve won your bet.
    The Clerks of the Course issue the “official going”, and the “modern” (!) way is to push a going stick into the turf, to see how far in it goes.

    When you see a lot of non-runners at a race meeting, it’s odds-on that the “official going” has been, shall we say, “slightly mis-reported”.

    In England, we have 6 basic goings, from “Firm” to “Heavy”. Around the world, you might see, “Yielding”, “Muddy”, and the evocative “Sloppy”: USA, of course!

    The jockeys know the true score, and their descriptions are usually more on the flowery side, reserved for the post-race post mortem to owners of horses that have run poorly.

    A couple from my jockeys, expletives deleted:

    ” Good-to-Firm? It was like riding up xxxxxxx Coronation Street!”
    “Good-to-Soft? She needed xxxxxxx water-wings out there today”.

    ( the latter was from a demure lady jockey, and I couldn’t see her face for mud. )

    If you like a flutter, Valentine, the going is the absolute key thing: forget the form and the odds. Pick a horse which has won in the past on the going.
    Good Luck! Ian B

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