Guardian 29,588 / Paul

85 comments on “Guardian 29,588 / Paul”

1. I was once again not on the setters wavelength, but all the clues are nice in retrospect.
   Landrace was new to me, and even though I guessed it could be that after getting the related anagram, it looked unlikely as a synonym for pig, so a nice bit of education there.
   Sometimes I arrive at the correct answer via a wrong guess at the parsing, as in today I thought there might be a single l from ho(ll)ow heart, even though it didn’t make sense, which with the D in place let me see the answer and the correct parsing.

2. Thanks for the insightful blog again, Eileen. Couple of minor typos in the solutions – ON BOARD and it’s 9,23 the fodder for CALENDAR (as you’ve put in brackets but not at the end). Thanks for pointing out RUNT=Hamlet in 1, as I see I failed to go back and properly parse that. I agree with your estimation of the puzzle. Paul seems to be varying his style recently. I found this tough to get started, with SPAM being my first entry. I guessed that 10,21 would be S_ WINE but I needed the crossers to complete it. Liked HOOK, LINE AND SINKER, of course, and CHESHIRE. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

3. Thank you for explaining ham-let. I don’t think it’s have ever got that!

4. I preferred this to the previous two – I have a purely personal bias against puzzles which use the same word over and over in clues. It can be clever, or showy-offy, but often ends up being a stretch. However, here I thought all the synonyms very close to the keyword and familiar, apart from “landrace” which I also solved, like Tomsdad@2, after getting calendar.

   “Dalek” wins the prize for misleading me for longest – I tried thinking of sci-fi warriors with an “ht” in the middle (heart, hollowed out) or an “ll” (heart of hollow) before I realised I was being suckered. “Road hogs”, for me, is a perfect cryptic definition – once you have the answer you are in no doubt it is right.

   Many thanks Paul and Eileen.

5. Thanks, Tomsdad @2 – corrected now.

6. A Fun Friday frolic. Loved HL&S which I solved by accident thinking husband was part of the anagram fodder

   There’s also a pig runt called hamlet which seems to have gained some degree of online fame

   Cheers E&P

7. Not telling too many porkies when I say that this was a Paul puzzle that I managed to solve without too much bother.
   Except to say that I couldn’t parse DALEK and that the word SPORK was new too me, felt almost like a word from an Edward Lear poem…

8. Fun puzzle – not for vegans. Many clever constructions and mercifully few split entries and cross-references.

   H,L & S popped out from a couple of crossers, as is often the way with a complicated enumeration.

   Particular favourites were:: RECOUNT, SOMEHOW, CALENDAR and PLIANCY.

   DEIONISED, a word used mainly in the context of water purification, reminded me of Asimov’s suggestion of how to identify a chemist: the word ‘unionised’ is generally interpreted as ‘union-ised’, but to a chemist is more familiar as ‘un-ionised’.

   Thanks to Paul and Eileen

9. Another sparklingly inventive puzzle, like a silk purse.
   Thanks Paul and Eileen

10. How to use 5 vowels … take charge was a nice sneaky def for deionise. Hamlet for runt was pretty cute too. Thought one of the long ones might’ve been to do with roast beef or going to market, but no. No toe-toes but all good fun, ta PnE.

11. Favourites: DALEK, SPORK (loi).

    New for me: DEIONISE; DOLE = charity; LANDRACE = a pig of a white lop-eared breed.

12. ronald @7 – SPORK came up as recently as Everyman’s puzzle on 15 December, but maybe you don’t do Everyman on Sundays.

13. As an ex-cop, I was anticipating a couple of pejorative porcine puns but mercifully not. I fairly romped through this last night and really enjoyed it. My favourites were the consecutive LEG BREAK, DALEK and WEATHERED. Crackling puzzle.

    Ta Paul & Eileen.

14. Even I saw the theme early , for once, and I wondered will LANDRACE appear, and it did. I remembered the breed from an episode of A Country Practice from many years ago.
    Paul has come in for quite a bit of criticism lately, but this time we solvers were the pearls and Paul was casting swine before us.
    Thanks Paul and Eileen

15. Nho LANDRACE and didn’t like SPAM=pig, but otherwise clever and unobjectionable. Unhappily my increasingly jaundiced view of Paul dampens my enjoyment of even his more straightforward fare, but that’s on me.

16. [Gervase@8: The way I was taught to recognise a chemist, at least a practical one, was that they would be the person washing their hands *before* going to the toilet (as well as after)]

17. After yesterday’s DNF with Imogen I must concede I was a bit disheartened initially to see the same tough grid with potentially an even tougher setter. Glad that it wasn’t as tricky as Paul could have been, and it was quite a fun solve throughout!

    Couldn’t parse DALEK at all, so thanks, Eileen, for that! And for the runt being the ham-let, which I’d just parsed as Hamlet being the youngest of other siblings whom I couldn’t recall at that point and had marked to check later but forgotten to.

    Some NHOs here – had never heard of Landrace as a breed or ROAD HOGS as a term – but all quite helpfully clued so cannot complain. Thanks for the fun puzzle, Paul!

18. Brilliant fun! So many great clues to choose from but esp RECOUNT, SOMEHOW, DEIONISE, DESIGN, SPORK and DALEK.

    I thought this was Paul at his best – the ham-let, messy home and pig elided, the eating hybrid, take charge and grass skirts – all very funny and clever.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

19. Commenters here sometimes say that on seeing the answer to a witty clue they laughed out loud . This is something I almost never do, but did twice today, for the porcine parts of both HL&S and RECOUNT. Other favourites DEIONISE and PLIANCY for the definitions. Generally an example of Paul at his best. Some clunky surfaces, but that doesn’t bother me.
    Thanks Eileen and Paul.

20. Was 17A a leftover from Paul’s Christmas offering?!

    Enjoyed this, found it a slightly more accessible Paul offering.

    Thanks Eileen

21. Like AlanC, I was expecting some alternative senses of pig. I got fixated on all the wrong Hamlets but Cifogar, smofoke and decorane all turned out to be meaningless. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

22. I’d forgotten my misspent youth so I didn’t make the obvious connection between grass and weed, but my favourite book on lawn care does have a chapter on non-grass lawns, based on thyme or chamomile, for instance. It ends “In the non-grass lawn the roles are reversed –fine-leaved grasses become common and highly undesirable weeds!”

23. Echoing ArkLark@18, much enjoyed thank you Paul. Thanks too Eileen for help with parsing 22a. I don’t know why I find the military bits so challenging!

24. For 20a DALE[k], join your local (not just UK) library and get free access to oed.com: “… 2. Old English–1489 † A hole in the ground, a hollow, pit, gulf. … Obsolete.”
    [earworm 15a<]

25. I had a sinking feeling on the first couple of passes, and when I did manage to start filling in the grid then much of this was a parse-free zone. I was a handful short of completion and decided to throw in the towel.

    None of this is a complaint, as I appreciate the construction of many of the clues. I also think this puzzle is more accessible than I found it, but that’s because I’ve been up against flu symptoms all week. Flu isn’t the best companion for solving, as I’m sure I’m not the only one who can attest.

26. Nho LANDRACE pigs, so thanks for enlightening me on that. I was also puzzled by DALEK, having assumed ‘hollow heart’ to mean LL and then, having got the answer from crossers and def, wondering where the ‘darkish’ bit was. What would we do without the 15² bloggers? Anyway, this was great fun from Paul. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

27. Bit of a beast to start with, but it all fell into place subsequently.

    I liked the ham-let in RECOUNT, the DEIONISED and PLIANCY anagrams, the heart flutters in WEATHERED, and the eating hybrid for SPORK.

    Thanks Paul for the entertainment and the always reliable Eileen for the context.

28. My sympathies, scraggs@25: despite having had all the jabs I was eligible for, I’ve had one of this year’s crop of nasties ever since Boxing Day, and it doesn’t do wonders for your solving ability.

    I liked this version of Paul, though it took me until CALENDAR to solve my first clue, but after that, they went in fairly steadily.

29. DNF but had fun throughout. I did wonder, without any reason to do so, whether DALEK would be considered a “sci fi warrior” – it certainly is, but thought it might be a bit out there for people to think of it as a warrio. Glad to be proved wrong.

    I often struggle with Paul, but can never really find reason to complain once I get here and see the cleverness of the cluing.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

30. gladys@28 – thanks, and get well soon. Same to anyone else on here similarly afflicted.

31. I’ll echo scraggs @30 😉

32. I enjoyed the sandwiches and loved the parties, but this time Paul has really brought home the bacon. Oink oink oink!!!

    Thanks too to Eileen for the appreciative parsing.

33. Found some interesting Hamlet / runt connections online, but none which seemed credible for a cryptic parsing. However, ECO plus crossers made it obvious what the answer had to be. The actual parsing is brilliant, classic Paul, and I don’t think I ever would have seen it. Top puzzle!

34. [JoFT @16: In these more health-and-safety-conscious days, chemists usually wear gloves for all experimental operations, so such precautions are otiose. O for the early 18th century, when gentleman chemists, wearing frock coats, performed experiments on mahogany sideboards.. and often tasted their reaction products 🙂 ]

35. AlanC@13. I too anticipated puns around (say) COPPER, IRON, PEPPA, GLUTTON and so on but this was very tight clueing from Paul – all animal and meat. More of a Monday vibe than a Friday’s, very nice indeed. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

36. ….and get well soon, scraggs and gladys

37. Really good crossword. NHO Landrace and also could not parse Dalek as I went down the same deadends as others have already mentioned. Thanks to E & P.

38. As ever, not a Danny about a Paul crossword.
    Total admiration for.anyone who cam do this.
    I did get 1 answer though, which is 1 more than normal.

39. Lovely puzzle! Witty, misdirecting, sneaky definitions (eg ‘worn’ and ‘give’) great surfaces. It took me a while to get onto Paul’s wavelength, probably due to the misdirections, but I found it a lot more doable after a break.
    New – LANDRACE is a breed of pig.
    Top laughs – the ham-let and the eating hybrid.
    I was unable to parse NORM. Thanks Eileen for explaining.
    My favourites included WEATHERED (top fav), RECOUNT, H,L&S, LEG BREAK, SPORK, CALENDAR, PLIANCY.
    Thanks Paul for the fun and Eileen for the great blog, as usual.

40. It’s good to have the non-annoying version of Paul back. This was witty and fun, for all the reasons already stated. I must confess that I misread “corps” as “crops”, so was expecting to come here to find that RM stood for something British and agricultural. Oops. I really should start wearing glasses.

    It turns out that the word LANDRACE, which I didn’t know, can refer to any variety of plant or animal that has adapted naturally (as opposed to bred selectively) for domesticity. And it also turns out that landrace pigs are not actually landraces! Like some others, apparently, I back-solved that one after getting CALENDAR.

41. A fun puzzle, very much in my experience of Paul with the answers going in pretty rapidly and the full parsing coming along some time after (in the case of ham-let, not until reading Eileen’s blog!). My favourites were when the reverse was true, DEIONISE (not de-ionise? Perhaps one of the scientists on here can tell us which is more commonly used), BETA, and LEG BREAK. I was expecting something more Pynchonesque with the pig theme of the clues – more breeds perhaps. But it was a welcome aid all the same. I suppose that weed = grass (WEATHERED) when used as slang for cannabis? Did not see how dole = charity if it referred to a tax-paid benefit and couldn’t fit dole the verb to charity either, so thanks Eileen for unearthing the archaic definition. Thanks Paul for the enjoyment and thanks Eileen.

42. According to Chambers:
    VALLEY means “hollow”
    – and –
    DALE means “valley”

    I guess that makes them interchangeable.

43. For whatever reason I often find myself on Paul’s wavelength, and this was no exception. A real joy to solve, I thought. Particularly after a – for me – very bad week, with every other puzzle DNF.

44. Thanks, Admin @42 – but I think you meant to write “DALE means valley” (or we have different editions).

    Admin note: Oops! The perils of posting in a hurry. Fixed now.

45. Usual top class job from Paul . Laughed out loud at hamlet! Thanks Eileen for the blog.I suppose if I hadn’t finished it then it would have been a pig’s breakfast as we say down south. I wonder what Mr H will up next for us?

46. Sorry should have said serve up!

47. Excellent puzzle. The grid was troublesome and I had a bit of the holdup with the cryptic definitions but everything turned out to be fair and parseable.

    Didn’t parse DALEK (it was an obvious bung from the L and K and somehow I didn’t see “heart in darkish”) but “hollow” meaning “valley” and thus “dale” is pretty familiar to me, as in Junction Hollow in my native Pittsburgh and Hootin’ Holler in the long-past-its-sell-by Barney Google and Snuffy Smith comic strip. Is this more of a US usage?

    The synonym I had trouble with was “plonk” for “park.” Is this because plonking something down is parking it somewhere? It feels short a preposition–though Collins suggests it doesn’t need one, I guess?

    Like some others I wrote in CALENDAR From the C and got LANDRACE from there. Especially liked DESIGN, HOOK LINE AND SINKER and BEACON with great use of pig synonyms, and WEATHERED. Thanks Paul and Eileen!

48. matt w @47: ‘Hollow’ as a place name element for a valley, rather than a more vague term for a depression in the ground, is more of a US usage – as in Irving’s ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.

49. Really good.
    I failed several in the NE corner, but I can see that all of them were solvable. All very clever – I should have held out for longer (and looked up DEIONISE, which I’d guessed at … and decided could not be a word).

50. Well I actually finished this, after a long break in town at appointments. Phew! I agree with almost everyone that the clueing was much clearer than some of Paul’s past offerings. Thanks Paul and Eileen

51. I’ll just add my appreciation. Thank you very much Paul and Eileen. It’s all been said already. My long list of great clues is the same as identified by Eileen in the blog and my particular favourites were WEATHERED, DALEK, HL&S and CALENDAR. Some really funny pig puns throughout. Took a few moments to spot OINKER 😎. Like others I was misled into looking for varieties of pig, sadly the Empress of Blandings was nowhere to be seen…

52. MattW@47… “please take a seat over there” = ‘park your bum over there” ≈ ‘plonk your a*se (down) over there”. I guess some sort of prepositional phrase is needed but never mind.

53. Ricardo @52

    As your example shows, both park and plonk (your whatever) can be followed simply by ‘down’.
    What I particularly liked about the clue was the surface reading of ‘plonk’ for (cheap) wine.

54. Having looked up “land race” I found that it meant a variety of domesticated plant or animal which has evolved naturally to fit local conditions. I didn’t find the breed of pig, so was mystified by the clue. As well as the Empress, Pauline in Brum, the Emperor was missing — Napoleon of Animal Farm.

    Thanks for the park/plonk explanation, all. Looks weak to me.

    I think of a runt as the smallest in a litter of any species, didn’t know it had to be a pig particularly.

    Thanks to Paul for the puzzle and Eileen for the participation.

55. Paul must still be filled with Xmas good cheer, maybe still digesting some pigs in blankets?
    Surprisingly completed much more quickly than most Paul offerings, and most Friday offerings in general.
    Great puzzle and blog, thanks Paul and Eileen!

56. What Ralph Houston @55 just said! Totally enjoyed this puzzle!

57. Was this easier or am I getting better at it? I enjoyed (truly) this one by Paul. Thanks, and to Eileen for her inimitable warmth. Learnt about the general term LANDRACE, and absolutely loved CALENDAR. Also remembered a forgotten author, Umberto Eco.

58. JOFT@16 [In my student hitch-hiking days, the lorry driver who was giving me a lift and I headed for the gents. He went straight to the wash-basin while I went for the porcelain. He said “You can tell you’re an office worker”, and then explained.]

59. [Valentine @52, I had not thought of Napoleon but it’s a fair point. I rather doubt they would have got along with each other 🤣]

60. Gervase @48 Apart from the place in Devon where I live – Hollocombe!

61. RECOUNT, huh? I doubt if using ‘Hamlet’ to mean ‘little pig’ is quite kosher (well – none of the pig-related clues are ‘kosher’ of course – but that’s beside the point!) Oh well, it’s Paul so we have to expect a bit of licence. I wrote it in unparsed.

    The other one I failed to parse was DALEK – but I should have: me stupid!

    Plenty to like here: I’m ticking WEATHERED (reminds me of that old joke about what’s worn under the kilt!), SPARKLING WINE, HOOK LINE AND SINKER (I guess if a pig is an OINKER, does that make a dog a WOOFER? 🙂 ); BEACON; and SPORK (yes I knew the word). But as always, this is just a random selection.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

62. @42 dale means valley and valley means hollow….
    and with a long enough chain anything means anything.

63. Frogman @62

    I’m struggling to see where this discussion arose. As I said in the blog, I found enough agreements in several reliable lists of synonyms to satisfy me and, going through the comments again, I can’t see any objections from others.

64. [matt w @47: my own native West Lafayette, Indiana, has Happy Hollow, which is a giant ravine in the part of town east of the university; it was made into a park long ago. It was originally called Happy’s Hollow; Happy having been the 19th-century proprietress of a brothel located there.]

    [Gervase @48: I don’t have the stamina to make whole puzzles, but I do write clues every now and then; one of my more recent creations is this:
    Macabre American “Sleepy Hollow” in verse (5). ]

65. Superb puzzle, with ingenious but exact clueing.

66. Amusing and a faster solve than we anticipated. That left us extra time to discuss portmanteau vs hybrid for that combo eating implement at 14D.

67. ravenrider @1: [sometimes I arrive at the correct answer via a wrong guess at the parsing] This happens to me occasionally, and I’ve wondered if there’s a single word to describe the phenomenon. A web search turns up only neologisms, so I thought I’d try one of my own: How about “benignorance”?

    Something tells me to be on the lookout for a Spoonerism involving SPORK (no, that would NOT be a Sporkerism). Thanks Paul and Eileen!

68. Loved it, my only tiny quibble being that I think of NORM as a standard rather than an average, but I suppose common parlance and the adjectival form do tend to use it in that sense.

69. [Valentine@54. Pauline@59: this all reminds me of the hoary old trope: “It is illegal in France to name a pig ‘Napoleon’.” So I checked it out and apparently it’s just another urban myth (like the one about killing a Scotsman in York, etc. etc.).

    Talking of France, perhaps I should relate that when we sold the house we used to own in France, we dubbed the elderly Parisian lady who bought it “Miss Piggy”. Partly because of her general appearance, partly because she beat us down to a painfully low price, but also because her name rhymed with ‘jambon’ (ham in French). I just hope she isn’t reading this!]

70. Valentine @54: Runt is indeed used, by extension, for the smallest, weakest member of the litter of any animal, but is applied particularly to pigs, which have an exceptionally large litter for such an animal of their size and almost invariably produce one.

71. As you might guess from my moniker, I thoroughly enjoyed this one! 🙂 Thanks to P and E.

72. Piglet @71
    🙂

73. I have managed to solve 2d, and I’m rather chuffed about that.

    Are there any anagrams?

74. Steffen @73: 13 across is an anagram. 25 across is one letter plus an anagram. 17d is an anagram–but of an answer that you have to get first. (Or do it in the reverse order if you want; the definition half of that one is sort of cryptic and should be enough on its own, and then you can anagram 17d to get the other answer.)

75. I wondered how many would be familiar with the Landrace pig. When I was in my teens I was interested in pigs and the Swedish Landrace was then a popular breed. I haven’t seen it mentioned in years. I still like to go round the animal sheds at the local agricultural show and I don’t recall seeing any Landraces.

76. Really enjoyed this, as ever with Paul. I’m a bit distressed by the several comments that compliment this crossword on the grounds that it is somehow more like ‘early period’ Paul. If there is such a thing it’s surely not for us to expect him to revisit those years, which is anyhow no more likely or possible than a composer or a painter doing so. Like any creative genius (yes I really believe he is that important in our cruciverbal world) his evolution should surely be celebrated, not deprecated. I’m convinced Middle and Late period Paul will be better appreciated in years to come, and eventually become as popular, if not more so, than earlier compositions.

77. Thanks both (but Eileen for parsing (the (all-too) biffable (and so (lazily) biffed)) HOOK, LINE AND SINKER).

    Worth the week’s wait for SPORK. Hah! I’d seen it before but lo(oo)ng ago.

    Adrian@76: I agree. A collector’s item…

78. Thank you 74 MrPenney

79. Adrian@76 I do appreciate your thoughtful post which makes a good deal of sense to me…

    wynsum@9 – Nice!

    (Eileen, I’m not sure that I’d describe 5dn (DESIGN) as a “lift and separate” but would agree that 16ac (CHIME) is a super example)

    Paul as coruscating – and creative – as ever. How does he keep on doing it? And still a youngster…. We are fortunate!

    As we are with Eileen, too… Many thanks, both and all

80. William F P @79

    Re 5dn: from shuchi’s excellent website ‘crosswordunclued.com’, which is the authority on ‘lift and separate’:

    “A major part of solving cryptic clues is identifying which is the definition, which the wordplay. This can be quite easy in clues like:

    FT 13525 (Dante): Colin acted badly in Western (10)

    “badly” jumps out as a possible anagrind and the ten letters before it look like anagram fodder for the ten-letter answer. Of the rest, we reason, “in” must be a connector and “Western” the definition.

    FT 13570 (Falcon): Vessel from Kenya or Tanzania (5)

    The definition has to be “vessel”, we decide. The word “from” flags that the definition lies before it and the definition for a 5-letter word is more likely to be “vessel” than “Tanzania”.

    Not all clues let us detect their structure so readily. Some create a joint so compelling between definition and wordplay, it takes an act of supreme will for the solver to pry them apart. This is popularly called “lift and separate”. Apparently the term was coined/first used by reigning Times Crossword Championship winner Mark Goodliffe – anyone know when/where? [Update (11-Oct-2015): It was on the blog for Times 23496 in Jan 2007. (source)]

    Here are a few clues that require the “lift and separate” treatment, for you to admire and solve:

    FT13571 (Aardvark): Aching to cook and eat Welsh rabbit (7) C_____G

    Times 24702: Odin’s son has a mark on map to denote treasure chest (6) T_____”

    More examples here: https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/12/lift-and-separate.html

    I agree that ‘ boxing champions’ does not create ‘a joint so compelling’ as ‘ringleader’ but I thought it was worth a mention (especially with the ‘fit’!).

    You might be interested in visiting shuchi’s site – she was a blogger on 15² years ago: it’s a mine of information and includes a lengthy interview with Gaufrid, which is well worth a read.

81. Most fun I’ve had with a crossword in a while. Many thanks to Paul.

82. Late to the party as only did this today but wanted to add our appreciation to Paul. Loved it – laugh out loud funny. Perfect.

83. [Eileen @ 80 – Bless you for taking the trouble

    Coincidentally, cosswordunclued.com is exactly the site I’ve referred to here (on more than one occasion) when I was trying to ‘educate’ folk about the correct meaning of “lift and separate” and I think it was I who first explained that Mark Goodliffe coined the phrase… It was a little bugbear of mine several years back and I recall being relieved when you eventually took up the cudgel and I felt my work was done
    Ironically, you seem to be repeating my message right back to me – and almost identically!

    Your penultimate paragraph is exactly the point I made @79 !!

    And I first knew of/visited schuchi’s website years ago which is why I advised people here to visit it…

    With the greatest respect (and affection), your post is a perfect example of teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs…. !

84. Eileen@80

    …and I couched my comment @79 as I did in order not to offend; in truth, I wouldn’t have described it as a ‘lift & separate” so much as simply a good choice of word (“champions”) to make a meaningful surface. I certainly wouldn’t have described it as a “neat” example! 😇

    I’m pretty sure I started the move to get people here to use the term correctly and mentioned both “crosswordunclued” and Mark Cunliffe’s parenting in this connection repeatedly. I was as relieved when I realised you had started to echo my discomfort as I, honestly, was saddened – and a touch offended – when I read your comment today 😢

85. All but six, which was better than I expected, with some help from the check button a couple of times

    Pig-headed persistence paid off with some of the tougher ones, like DEIONISE, PLIANCY, and LANDRACE

    Lots to enjoy

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