Guardian 29,683 / Paul

72 comments on “Guardian 29,683 / Paul”

1. 12A. BASIC = ELEMENTARY, which is a really horrible* soundalike for A LEMON TREE?
   * the best kind?

2. I found this to be another Paul that I could make sense of… what’s going on?!

   My podium was the brilliant TU-WHIT, SWARMING and MOURNFUL – and probably would have included CONTRAFLOW had I heard of that meaning of “chicane”.

   I thought 11a BASIC was somehow a dodgy &lit for basil until CHICKEN OUT put me right on that final “c”. But I never did parse the “sauce of herb” bit.

   As for 12a LEMON TREE, I took it as – when preceded by “A” as indicated by the “a ___” in the surface – a soundalike of “elementary” (= BASIC) from the previous clue. I guess that’s ellipses done right!

   LOATHSOME was another that I pencilled in and yet took a while to parse, convinced as I was, right from the start, that “54-letter words” was a divide-and-conquer telling us to use the various letters from the solutions to 5d and 4d – which made sense when I only had LET ME SEE and the crossers of COOL IT; and so I was stuck on my hypothetical HOLL AT for a stupidly long time :-D. When the penny did finally drop, it was nice – but my basic suspicion had been right so I didn’t feel I’d been completely duped.

   Nho E W G, but the crossers made it clear. Likewise FOWLS; isn’t FOWL – like sheep – invariable? I suppose it must be like fish, in that “it depends”. Also, are PIN[ETA] and needle really synonyms?

   Thanks both!

3. Many thanks Eileen. I found this very tricky in parts, and I’m afraid I can’t help at all with LEMON TREE [Ah, thank you to Blaise and AP for the elucidation! “Hmmm” pretty much sums up my reaction]. In 11a I’d parsed the SIC part as meaning “it’s said” but of course you must be right, otherwise there’s no reason for “green” in the clue. I was similarly surprised by the spelling of TU-WHOO, so thanks for confirming that this is the authorised version! My parsing of 15d was the same as yours, assuming “con” means something like “chicanery”.
   As is usually my experience with Paul, there are some groanworthy jokes/puns, several clues where I feel the elasticity of the definition is really testing the fabric of meaning, and some that are excellent. I particularly liked MOURNFUL, TEMPO, PIRATES and LOATHSOME (my LOI). Thanks P & E.

4. I think a LEMON TREE comes from sounding (sort of) like elementary i.e.basic in the previous clue.

5. Blaise @1 and Crispy @4 – I think you must be right , thanks, but Oh dear!

6. Eileen @5. Indeed. Is it just me, but Paul seems to be becoming a parody of himself with all the lavatorial humour.

7. “Loosely” certainly doing some heavy lifting for LEMON TREE!

   Top ticks for GOTTA, LET ME SEE & GILBERT though disappointed that neither GEORGE nor SULLIVAN could be fitted in

   TU WHOO! HOO KNU?

   Cheers E&P

8. I liked Lemon Tree, but my first thought was Apple Tree as in ‘A paltry…’ = basic. An even worse homophone! Thanks for a very enjoyable puzzle, Paul.

9. AP @2 – my apologies: in my haste to forestall any further comments on 12ac, I didn’t read your comment properly and therefore failed to include you in my thanks.
   (I think it must be one of the very worst soundalikes I’ve ever seen.)

10. Thanks Paul and Eileen
    A DNF – I put an unparsed TO WHOM for 23d. (btw no owl says “tu whit tu whoo”; the second is a reply by a different owl to the first.)
    I didn’t parse LEMON TREE or CONTRAFLOW.
    Why is FAB “sterling”?
    I liked COO LIT and MO URNFUL.

11. Found this a steady, gentle solve. Unusually for me and Paul as the setter. Last to yield were the FLAB, UVULA and finally SOUL of the SW corner. Not sure I ever would equate Gut with Soul, but hey! it is Paul this morning. And several of these seemed quite impenetrable in their parsing, but I went strongly with the definition several times and retroparsed. So many thanks as ever Eileen for the clarity…

12. muffin @10 – Sterling in the sense of good quality, e.g. I used to do a sterling job of making things.

13. I thought ETON WALL GAME was a very good clue-as-definition. Absolutely sums it up, very pithily.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

14. muffin @10

    Re 23dn: you may be interested in this,
    https://www.birdforum.net/threads/tu-whit-tu-who-shakespeare-was-right.73424/
    which I found on my travels earlier.

15. Thanks Crispy @12 – pretty loose!

16. Eileen@9, no worries at all! The soundalike is indeed atrocious – though in fairness to Paul I think he’s merely citing the literature there… I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “A lemon tree, my dear Watson” as the punchline of some entirely forgettable joke.

17. You can certainly split fifty-four into two parts but I think it’s a stretch to do it with 54. That would give 5 and 4. Or maybe I’m being too literal.

18. Thanks for the link, Eileen. “Ke-wick” is much more like what our owls call.

19. well done, eileen – I completed it but would never have managed to parse it all. Elementary is funny but a bridge too far in my book.

20. I still don’t get TU-WHOO, whatever the spelling.
    Me too ronald@11 about gut and soul. I almost admit defeat about fish clues before I’ve started, but this time it was the synonym for ‘gut’. I did look it up, but no luck.

21. [AP @ 16. I also recall “A yellow manta ray” as a bad punchline, possibly from a Sherlock Holmes spoof which had John Cleese as Holmes, and Arthur Lowe as Watson. It also had “A lemon entry” in reference to a yellow door. ]

22. I thought this was quite accessible for Paul, with his usual wit, especially the bird noises in COOL IT and TU WHOO. Also enjoyed the lift and separate in LOATHSOME, TEMPO, METRONOME and MOURNFUL. I liked the symmetry in the grid of GILBERT and PIRATES (nice &lit).

    Ta Paul & Eileen.

23. Liked PIRATES, SON OF A GUN, COOL IT & CONTRAFLOW.

    Notice vs SACKING: Is there a part of speech mismatch? Some help will be appreciated.

    TU-WHOO
    partner onto it …sounds like partner of tu whit (‘loosely speaking being the norm)?
    Or else, does ‘partner on tu-whit’ make sense?

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

24. KVa@23, I took “on” to mean “next to” – in the cryptic usage that we so often see; tu-whit is not just the partner of tu-whoo but the inevitable follow-up to it (whether or not from the same bird; it seems like it is the same one in the end!)

    [Crispy@21 I’m quite glad that I inadvertantly overlooked that particular Cleese offering!]

25. KVa @23 – I must admit that I was not entirely happy with notice / sacking. I can’t think of an instance where they could be interchanged in a sentence – but they do refer to the same thing. More looseness – it seems to be the theme of today’s puzzle. 😉

    Like AP@24, I took ‘on’ to mean ‘next to’.

26. I managed to parse LOATHSOME and LET ME SEE, but Paul’s un-soundalikes get me every time: LEMON TREE remained a mist-tree and so did BASIC (like others, I was trying to involve Basil). Didn’t know con=chicane and gut=SOUL was far enough away to make that one my last in. I see Paul resisted the temptation to make the Metro-gnome a full sound-alike: it could have worked that way without messing about with subtracted Gs.

    I liked the female owls crossing with TU-WHOO, the COO LIT and MOURNFUL, and of course WEE!

27. a-LEMontree…a-lemONtree…e-lemONtree…e-lemENtree… elemENtary… loose indeed. Probably just bitter lemons from me because I couldn’t parse it. Well held Eileen, thank you Paul.

28. KVa@23. I have a major quibble about. SACKING. A person is given notice that they’re about to be sacked. That is not the sacking.

29. I took “sacking” as a noun – “there’s been a sacking at the football club – the manager’s been given his notice”?

30. paddymelon @28

    Your law may be different but here the notice period is the time between the sacking and the termination of employment – see here:
    https://www.acas.org.uk/notice-periods

31. It’s specifically the European brown or tawny owl that does the tu-whit tu-whoo performance. Other owls make different noises, and I notice that TU-WHOO was unfamiliar to some Antipodeans on the Guardian comments.

32. Wow, not only completed another Paul but actually really enjoyed it this time. I couldn’t parse LOATHSOME, TU-WHOO or LEMON TREE. So thanks Eileen and earlier comments. I guess it’s just not a Paul puzzle without some questionable homophones.

    Think I have cracked this setter now. You just need to whip out the whimsical synonym list.

    Lots of good clues here: Liked SWARMING, SON OF A GUN and UVULA plus quite a few others.

    Thanks Eileen and Paul.

33. As always, my heart sank when I saw the setter. Muddled through but can’t say I enjoyed it. Maybe it’s a wavelength thing.

34. That was fun, but I certainly needed parsing assistance with BA(y)SIC(k), LEMON TREE (not a hope there), tOME in the clever LOATHSOME and PIN ETA. Thank you Eileen and others for elucidation.
    I loved the humour of TU WHOO and COO LIT and of so many of the surfaces.
    Ticks also for the GILBERT and PIRATE duo, SWARMING, MO URNFUL, METRO(g)NOME.
    Thank you to Paul and Eileen.

35. I absolutely loved the puzzle with CONTRAFLOW and LOATHSOME being my favorites. Much thanks to Paul for an enjoyable evening.

36. Darn these earworms!

    Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
    But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

    And …

    He’s a high-falutin’, rootin’ tootin’
    Son of a gun from Arizona,
    Ragtime cowboy Joe.

    Darn them, I say. They have coloured my entire morning. I blame Paul; I also blame my father, who used to sing these songs accompanying himself on guitar.

37. Lots of this was completely against the rules, in an Araucarian sort of way. I loved it.

38. A couple of things I hadn’t heard of here so new learnings for me – 6,19d ETON WALL GAME, 15d CONTRAFLOW and 22d PINATE, though they were all gettable. Quite a few unparsed. Nevertheless, I soldiered on and thought I’d managed the solve, though I now see I was off the mark. I misspelt 23d TU-WHOO which I thought was spelt TO-WHOO.
    Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

39. Another lovely Paul puzzle though I found it more Tuesday than Thursday, but not complaining as a busy day and it was just right for a quick coffee break
    As soon as I solved the first Qaotic clue, LOATHSOME, I felt rather protective of our numbers-loving compiler and that JH was invading his space!
    It was a great clue, as so many others…
    But as for the owl – I entered, gingerly, TOWHOO, knowing it was correct aurally at least; I didn’t think to check the BRB!
    Eileen – great blog as ever but PIRATES is not an &lit. Personally I’d describe it as a ‘WIWD’ or perhaps ‘&littish’ (though I’m never sure about the latter, I think I first met WIWD on the Times blog site)

    Thanks to Paul – it was a hoot!

40. Re comments 1,4 and 16, I got this by recalling the sketch from (I think) “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” on the radio that comprised a number of questions from Watson (along the lines of “what’s that with the yellow fruit, Holmes?”) to which the responses were various puns on the reply “Elementary, my dear Watson. Another was “what’s another name for the canal through which we swallow food” , to which the reply was “Alimentary, my dear Watson” as I remember. Must have been late 1960’s when I was a regular listener on Sunday evenings.

41. me@39 – WIWD (Wordplay Intertwined With Definition?)

42. [Chris @ 40 – me too, but I remember it being broadcast at around 1230; I used to listen before Sunday lunch]

43. Crispy @21
    More terrible homophones from The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It

    [Watson is reading clues from a crossword puzzle to Holmes]
    1 Across. A simple source of citrus fruit, 1, 5, 4.
    A lemon tree, my dear Watson.
    [Elsewhere in the hotel, Moriarty shoots Sam Spade]
    2 Down. Conservative pays ex-wife maintenance. 7, 5.
    Alimony…alimony Tory, my dear Watson.
    Never cease to astound me.
    [Moriarty takes a sword to Hercule Poirot]
    2 Down. Southern California style. 1, 2, 8.
    A la Monterrey, my dear Watson.
    Really good, holmes.
    [Moriarty shoots M]
    4 Down. Burglar’s entrance
    Alarm entry, my dear Watson
    That’s rather poor, isn’t it, Holmes? Right. One to go. A cowardly fish with a sting in its tail.
    Yellow manta ray, my dear Watson
    Brilliant, Holmes
    [Moriarty does in McCloud with an arrow]

44. Looking at _H_C_E_ O_T I put in CHUCKER OUT, thinking that “ounce” was somehow “bouncer” without its boundaries. Anybody else?

    Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

45. I found the bottom half pretty straightforward. As to the top half, the less said the better. LEMON TREE had to be, but the clue is one of the worst reaches I have come across in years of crossword puzzling. Very dischuffed.

46. Nothing like a Paul to stimulate discussion. We had a resident owl a while back, it roosted on a veranda lightshade (coolie’s hat-shaped) and, throughout its couple of months stay, it uttered nary a tu, whit or whoo. Nice puzzle, thanks PnE.

47. Thanks both (but I was well beaten).

    Back in working days when I had ‘seniors’ (never superiors) I was delighted with the irony of one, in writing, accusing another of producing ‘pigeon English’.

48. Alphalpha @47

    😀

49. The two Ronniesdid a wonderful skit on Ragtime Cowboy Joe that took homophones to a new level.If any one can find a link I would love to hear it again.

50. I’m sorry but never in a million years does “a lemon tree” sound like “elementary”.

51. Particularly enjoyed this, ticks for MOURNFUL, FLAB, COOL IT, TEMPO, and LOATHSOME. FOI was ETON WALL GAME, which is an “I’ve kind of heard of it in puzzles” but once GAME was subtracted from the anafodder it wasn’t too bad to figure out. Technically a DNF as I had TO-WHOO but I’m awarding myself that. Didn’t parse BASIC but got it backward from LEMON TREE–which I class as “closer than some of Paul’s homophones, at least for me.”

    [grantinfreo@46–it’s only certain owls that do the classic WHOO noise I guess? but I’m not sure which. not screech owls, for sure.]

    Had to type CONTRAF into a search engine to get an autosuggest for CONTRAFLOW and then thought “is LOW wind because of cows?” Of course “down” makes more sense.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen!

52. 11ac I got to BASIC as follows: source of herb = first bit of basil (ie BASI) + C (as in it sounds like the sea in sea green). I am quite new to crosswords but to me this is still OK. Happy to be corrected.
    I thought 12ac was excellent. I like an appalling pun.

53. Apologies if I’ve missed a response to this above but re 24d – how is SOUL a synonym for GUT?
    Thanks

54. One of these days, I’ll find a Paul straightforward. This wasn’t the day but I enjoyed it. I didn’t parse the lemon tree either and was surprised by the spelling of the male tawny owl’s response. I liked a lot of clues e g., LOT ME SEE, CONTRAFLOW, and am very comfortable with the toilet humour. Thanks all.

55. Yogdaws @53

    Apologies for the delay: I was sitting waiting for a bus home when I saw your comment, with no access to dictionaries.

    We can’t think of the anatomical ‘gut’ as being synonymous with ‘soul’ but both Collins and Chambers have definitions for both words as the innermost, essential, fundamental part or nature. I didn’t look it up this morning but that was my, er, gut reaction and I was happy with it, I think.

56. Yogdaws@53, I justified it as something like ‘I felt in my gut / soul that it was wrong’.
    I enjoyed this much more than many Paul puzzles I have tackled (never give up 😊).
    Thanks to all.
    Crossed with you, Eileen. Similar, I think.

57. Yes, I think so, Sourdough. 😉

58. William F P @ 39 ‘quick coffee break’ – really?

59. Very tricky, and loved it. Cannot understand the negative comments about LEMON TREE. It’s not a homophone, it’s a bad pun, as “loosely speaking” pretty fairly indicates. No stretching required, and it made me laugh. I have never understood why “we hear” or similar has to indicate a homophone (in rhotic and non rhotic accents) anyway. Such clues are funny and to me that’s the point.

60. Thanks for the blog , I have been trying really hard to be positive lately but I am soundly beaten today . Being kind perhaps Paul is just trying to mimic the setting skills of his editor .

61. I remember “Lemon entry, my Dear Watson” as the punch line to a rude joke in an 80’s student rag mag.

    I fumbled through most of the puzzle but got stuck in NE with VASSAL, COOL IT, and GILBERT, but made a lot more progress than the previous one. I liked 21a and 24a.

    Thanks Eileen and Paul.

62. Ayeaye @43. Thanks for that – I think!

63. AR @61. That joke was the first thing I thought of when I saw the discussion. Thanks for sharing.

64. We considered ourselves victors today! Laughed at mournful (how inappropriate!), and were amazed that: abuttal and vassal could be solved logically using standard crossword meccano.
    Sometimes the subliminal solving machine won’t turn on but today it had great fun.

65. Can someone, please, explain “OATHS = 4 letter words”?

66. Frogman @65 – 4 letter words is a euphemism for swearing , many examples have 4 letters .

67. The spirit of Denis Norden lives on.

    Thanks all.

68. Re A LEMON TREE, I preferred it as a loose homophone of ALIMENTARY, being as close to ESSENTIAL as GUT is to SOUL. Also the it shares the initial A as in CAT sound rather than the E as in PET on the initial stressed syllable.

69. Maybe everyone already knows this, and if you follow the link that Eileen posted @14 you’ll find out, but just in case: “Tu-whit, Tu-who” is the sound of an owl as recorded by Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost. In the version I found online, the last syllable is spelled “who” with one O rather than two, but Shakespeare was famous for a lack of consistency in spelling.

    Like others, I wonder about the “on” in this clue. And like AP @2, I raised an eyebrow at FOWLS, having only ever seen the plural of this word as FOWL. But I didn’t go trolling the dictionaries and wouldn’t be at all surprised if they back Paul up on this.

    I usually get on well with Paul, but not this time. I had to cheat on two: PINETA (of which I’d never heard) and SOUL (which I should have gotten). And I had to come here for a few additional parsings.

70. I’m surprised that TO-WHOO is actually spelt with a U in the first part. Why? Is it because of Shakespeare, who didn’t even spell his own surname consistently? And as Ted@69 points out, didn’t spell WHOO with two Os either. I was a little put out to find I had a dnf because of a letter that does not feature in the wordplay or crossers.

71. Hi sheffield hatter @70 – if you’re still there,
    I can only reiterate my comment in the blog, that that’s the only spelling I could find.

72. I sort of completed this. For some reason I had PARTIES at 22a (“villainous” as anagrind?), so had to correct that before getting TO-WHOO, and then correct again for TU-WHOO. Also surprised that the former isn’t given as a possible spelling. So it was completed, but with an asterisk

    I like funny clues, so especially enjoyed COOL IT, METRONOME, and MOURNFUL

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