Cryptic crossword No 29,694 by Philistine

79 comments on “Cryptic crossword No 29,694 by Philistine”

1. Thanks loonapick. I got TTTAA-C second in after one crosser and enumeration. BOB DYLAN last in. Surprised to find there is a band called Babyshambles, but relieved it wasn’t an abattoir for babies.

   FTSE rang a bell. Qaos Jan 25th very similar. YOURS TRULY and NAME AND ADDRESS my picks.

2. FTSE defeated me, though I totally saw it after hitting reveal, but yes this was fun.

3. Very enjoyable indeed. Got hung up for a while on parsing ANTIMONY by the brain insisting the Shakespearean element must be TIMON and trying to work out what ANY had to do with it and who was inspiring what. I think the word I’m looking for is “Doh”. Got there in the end though. Thanks Philistine and loonapick.

4. pedantically it’s “TTY A-Changin'”

5. This has been a good week for Guardian puzzles. I thoroughly enjoyed this one–thanks Philistine! My favorites were ABLUTION and FLYPAST (we call it a flyover).

6. Given that my first four solutions were the first four downs, by THE TIME(s) I had got to 8a, THE TIMES it clearly had to be which, as our blogger says, effectively opened up the grid and made for quite a gentle Philistine. Only the substitution in ABLUTION caused any bother so thanks to loonapick for that one. ANTIMONY required a second visit – I had the opening A, which is the third letter in ‘Shakespearean’, so I did briefly play with assembling every third letter in that word and its successor – fortunately coming up with gobbledygook fairly swiftly and dropping the idea. I’m glad I remembered HI-HATS, something I’ve only ever met in crosswords: at one point the anagram was looking very dodgy. YOURS TRULY is my runaway COTD with SURVEYOR and SHRAPNEL making up the rest of the podium.

   Thanks Philistine and loonapick

7. Thanks Philistine and loonapick
   The long one to start looked offputting, but once a few crossers were in it was obvious, and the rest fell quickly, though I didn’t bother to parse everything (in a bit of a hurry!)
   I too saw TIMON in ANTIMONY and didn’t bother to look any further.
   Why “simple” for TOGA? It doesn’t seem to add anything/

8. Yes, getting 8, 20, 26 straight away meant that this fell into place rather smartly, a gentler solve, for me, than is usually the case for this setter. Bizarrely, FTSE held me up at the very end for quite a while, and although I wouldn’t really class it a “proper” four letter word, it is a very nice clue in itself. Many thanks Philistine and Loonapick. Nice to get things done and dusted before the biffing and banging of the roofers overhead begins again chez nous this sunny morning, when my concentration might have wavered…

9. The hyphen gave it straight away. And, omg, TT certainly are a-C at this moment in history. (Maybe Bob will write another anthem …)
   Pdm @1, 🙂 for shambles.
   Footsie appeared a while ago.
   Fun puzzle, ta Phil and loona.

10. Thanks, enjoyed that. The last few Philistine puzzles have been great. I got the long clue quite late in the day, even with BOB DYLAN staring me in the face, so probably found it harder than most.

    I had ABLATION rather ABLUTION, I figured it was washing in some cryptic sense and I was expecting something medical. Thanks Loonapick for the explanation.

    Is THE TIMES ODOURS on the second row a mild dig at a rival publication?

    Favourite today: FLY PAST

    Thanks Philistine and Loonapick

11. Most enjoyable.

    I wonder if one of the verses of the song features two other lights; “as the PRESENT now will later be PAST, for TTTAA-C”.

    Many thanks, both.

12. I looked for a theme once His Bobness and TTTAA-C’ fell, but all I could find was ‘the PRESENT now will later be PAST’ (edit: snap, William @11). NAME AND ADDRESS was neat. Like many of you, I found this a pretty smooth complete. Thanks, Philistine and loonapick.

13. My Faves: TTTAA-C, N AND A, SHRAPNEL (Hope ‘with’ as a link word is fine with the experts) and LATENCY.
    Thanks Philistine and loonapick.

    (THE PRESENT TIME and FTSE: Seen before)

14. Anyone else have to look up PRESTO? I’ve, only ever heard it as one half of the exclamation Hey, presto!.

15. TassieTim @12: great minds? Or just similar 60s vintage?

16. Favourites: BOB DYLAN, YOURS TRULY, LATENCY, FLYPAST (loi).

    I couldn’t parse 14ac.

    Thanks, both.

17. It’s always slightly disappointing to solve a clue mainly by enumeration, especially when the wordplay is so clever. YOURS TRULY NAME AND ADDRESS and BOB DYLAN were my favourites. I particularly liked the “fission” anagrind in Babyshambles.

18. shrapnel is not explosive

19. Luckily I shrugged at the song title and thought i’d come back to it. I did not look at it again until I had solved pretty much all the down clues at which point it was obvious. So it did not make the rest of the puzzle a write-in luckily. More enjoyment for me solving them cold!

    David Cowling@18: But it can be a bit of an explosive.

    thanks to Philistine and loonapick

20. I’m wondering whether there might be more to the theme? There are a lot of song titles among the solutions. In particular COYOTE is a song by another Dylan (LeBlanc). But almost anything is the title of a song.

21. @18: I thought Philistine was taking ‘explosive’ in the sense of ‘occasioned by an explosion’. Chambers second def for ‘explosive’ is Worked, set in place, etc by an explosion

22. A helpful long opener, some that were quite easy, and a few that weren’t easy at all. I got the long song from the enumeration, and failed to parse it (don’t think I would ever have worked out “the times the” though I saw the hanging). Likewise missed the AB for SO substitution in ABLUTION and the LONDon bit of BOB DYLAN, and went down the same rabbit-hole as PostMark@8 on ANTIMONY. Favourites FTSE, NAME AND ADDRESS, YOURS TRULY, SURVEYOR. It was TOGA that held me up for no particular reason.

23. Agree with the blogger’s assessment – easy to crack this one once the long opener fell into place. Favourites were ABLUTION and HI-HATS. I was also among those held up by the fine FTSE.

24. Lots of fun in today’s!

25. Thanks P&L

    Some very enjoyable material; SHRAPNEL, NAME AND ADDRESS, PRESTO, COYOTE, EMPTY SPACE all very nicely crafted among many.

    For reference Babyshambles was Pete Doherty’s band after he left the Libertines (I appreciate that may complicate matters more than elucidate but hey…)

26. Same as Ronald@8 but without the roofers

27. It’s always good to see Philistine – without any of his tricks today, though.

    My favourites today were NAME AND ADDRESS, ABLUTION (for the substitution and for no sign of Usain Bolt this time ), SHRAPNEL, FTSE (we’ve seen it before but it’s still good for a smile: it took me a long time to realise what reporters on the Financial news on the radio were talking about), YOURS TRULY and ANTIMONY.

    Many thanks to Philistine and loonapick.

28. Lovely lovely puzzle. I did wish that the Bob Dylan theme had been further developed as that would have been great fun. [I only know “Coyote” as a Joni Mitchell song, David@20.]
    I agree with favourites others have named in preceding posts.
    Philistine is just such a great setter – his clues are clever, interesting and satisfying to solve. Thanks to him and to loonapick.

29. EMPTY SPACE
    WP into Def. Is acceptable, I guess.

30. As ilan caron says @4, strictly it’s A-CHANGIN’ not A-CHANGING, but I’m not complainin’. A few years after Blowin’ in the Wind, Freewheelin’, and others, Dylan produced his song and album John Wesley Harding about the outlaw John Wesley Hardin, and some critics suggested that the additional G was some little payback for all the earlier missing ones.

    Very enjoyable puzzle. Many thanks Philistine and loonapick.

31. SHRAPNEL
    Chambers

    1. A shell filled with musketballs with an explosive charge, invented by General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), or any later improved version of this
    2. Such shells collectively
    3. Pieces scattered by the bursting of a shrapnel or other shell

    SHRAPNEL is not a bit but a few bits?

32. I wonder how many solvers actually bothered to parse the long answer, aside from our esteemed blogger. It often seems that the setter invests more effort in constructing this sort of clue than it really merits, given that the answer is pretty obvious from the definition and a few crossers.

33. poc@32, I often back-parse but, to be honest, I didn’t with this one. Y + AREA + C + HANGING was obvious, but I didn’t bother with THE multiplied by THE.

    Overall, though, an entertaining puzzle. My favourite was probably NAME AND ADDRESS. I like that kind of clue, whatever it’s called!

    Thanks Philistine and loonapick.

34. For some strange reason, I put ‘and TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING’ at the beginning; subsequently corrected. I liked the quiet type of music to give SHRAPNEL, Babyshambles and BOB DYLAN, although I can’t see them playing together, the spy team with an EMPTY SPACE, and the Shakespearean films for ANTIMONY.

    Thanks Philistine for the fun and loonapick for unravelling TTTAAC and others.

35. I enjoyed the puzzle. The clues didn’t use too many bits of crossword lore. One exception being the sailors in ABLUTION. It went in as soon as I had the A. I couldn’t work out what to do with our rolling stone of time. It made the puzzle much harder but that is ok. It was in part that the clue was such nonsense that I was convinced that ‘punishment’ was indicating an anagram.

    Now for my quibble. ANTIMONY is awful. Antony is not Shakespearean, he might be a Shakespearen element, but then ‘element’ is doing double work. Worse ‘inspired by’ in no way implies ‘in’. I just don’t see how it could be solved without crossers. It is OK, we get there. I think that a clue ought to be able to stand alone.

    I wasn’t entirely convinced by ‘could turn’ in SURVEYORS. ‘Must turn’, yes, ‘could’? Not so sure. It is probably fine. It threw me off the scent, so maybe that is grumpiness.

    Absolutely heartfelt thanks to Philistine because it was fun and resourceful. Thank you to loonapick. I would never have found the parsing of the song unaided.

36. Roberto, I suppose I see your point about “Shakespearean” which as a noun strictly perhaps means a person who studies Shakespeare rather than a character in his plays. But I would have thought for crossword purposes it was ok. As for “inspired”, you have to take it in the sense of “breathed in” and therefore “taken in”.

37. William@15: definitely both.

38. Thanks for the blog , great puzzle , I was pleased to get the long answer purely by wordplay but had to read the clue again backwards in sections . Very glad that all the split entries were in clue order . BOB DYLAN my favourite for the fission of Babyshambles .
    Only dud clue was for STUCCO , stuc in the clue and the answer .

39. I parsed 15A (Last year’s pilot to start in rapid part of air show) entirely differently: I had PAST (“last year”) with FLY (“pilot” as a verb) and “to start” indicating the order.

    Anyway, 5D was my last one in, and I was at least halfway through before I got the long one, so it didn’t detract from the fun for me.

40. muffin@7: the definition is “simple wrap” as a toga is just a long bit of fabric that wraps around the body.

    found this fairly easy for a full cryptic, though i had to get a bunch of wordplay for the long clue before it fell out. FTSE defeated me as my usual hail mary strategy of trying plausible letters until i hit upon part of a word was useless here

41. A nice crossword.

    18D made me think of:

    For example, love to hate an ally of Caesar J. (7)
    (From Minute Cryptic)

42. Today, the beginning of the Dylan song looks like a message to climate change deniers:

    Come gather ’round people
    Wherever you roam
    And admit that the waters
    Around you have grown
    And accept it that soon
    You’ll be drenched to the bone

43. Who’da thunk that there really is something called Babyshambles? I thought it must be some damfool construction by the setter. Nope.

    KVa@13 Supposedly magicians say “Presto changeo,” when showing the magical result of a trick. I doubt that anyone actually does.

    Like Eileen, I’ve heard about the Footsie on the radio for years, but unlike her never did know how the word was actually spelled until now. So I had to reveal that one, having no idea what the clue was on about.

    Thanks Philistine and loonapick.

44. David Cowling @18. Shrapnel is the pieces of usually metal caused by the detonation of explosives contained within a shell case. The name shrapnel is attributed to a Lieutenant Shrapnel in WW1

45. Bev @40
    Yes, but “wrap” by itself would do the job – “simple” isn’t needed.

46. Thanks Philistine. It’s always a pleasure solving a Philistine crossword whether it’s challenging or ‘gentle’ like this one. My top picks were COYOTE, SHRAPNEL, USED CAR (liked the surface imagery), BOB DYLAN, YOURS TRULY, ANTIMONY, and HI-HATS. I couldn’t fully parse ABLUTION and THE TIMES THE. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

47. That first mega-clue looked like word salad, so I logged the final five words as the most likely definition and carried on. I was quite surprised when a single C from LATENCY made the whole thing drop. When I saw BOB DYLAN in the same grid, I assumed my lack of knowledge was hiding a theme from me, so thanks loonapick for saying it probably wasn’t. I was pleased with myself for writing ANTIMONY straight in and liked Hi-HATS, LATENCY and FLYPAST on a similarly self-congratulatory basis. Thanks Philistine. (I was too busy today to read everyone’s comments but I’m sure they were as erudite as ever.)

48. Valentine@43…I’m pretty sure I was at a Babyshambles concert at the Cambridge Junction about a dozen or so years ago. Not a pleasant memory for dozens of fans who had their mobile phones stolen in an orchestrated surge forward by the perpetrators. So Babyshambles was therefore known to this particular solver today…

49. David@20 Julie in Australia@28
    Here’s Bob with Joni singing her song COYOTE

50. Muffin @45: Of course ‘wrap’ by itself would do the job but not every clue needs to be stripped bare. I don’t have an issue with a setter adding a descriptive word to the definition to make the clue read better.

51. KVa@13, Eileen@27 – I remember the first time I saw FTSE in a crossword, clued almost identically, it was being passed round the orchestra, we all deemed it brilliantly difficult, I couldn’t solve it. Not saying Philistine knew of previous examples, or that there’s anything wrong if he did. As Stravinsky said “Lesser composers borrow, great composers steal”

52. Thank you Lord Jim @36. I see now that ‘inspired by’ is in fact quite inspired. Too clever for me, Mr/Ms Philistine. I guess that I am alone in objecting to ‘Antony’ as ‘Shakespearean’, but I still don’t see it.

53. Very enjoyable with the long one hiding out until nearly the end and then I clicked the brilliant BOB DYLAN and its link.

    Ta Philistine & loonapick.

54. A gentle romp, though with the long clue, FOI from enumeration alone, unparsed. I missed THE X THE as ‘By itself, the …’. Sort of accepted it now though. Thanks to setter and blogger, as ever.

55. Tony @50
    I disagree there – no superfluous words, please!

56. I parsed the long one a bit differently: By itself = THE TIMES, using itself as an emphasiser, as in, say, Tower Bridge itself = THE Tower Bridge. The second THE is then taken as is from the clue.
    Muffin et al, I think the “simple” in the TOGA clue is needed for the surface because it’s saying that a simple (ie light-weight) wrap only is required since the temperature has gone up. And it’s fine for the definition, so all good.
    Nice puzzle. Pleasure as always, Mr P and thanks, loonapick.

57. phitonelly @56
    The toga wasn’t “light-weight”. See Wiki, which includes this:
    “The toga was heavy, unwieldy, excessively hot, easily stained, and hard to launder”
    No superfluous words, please!

58. muffin @57,
    you’re conflating the surface and cryptic readings. Simple in the surface would mean light-weight, simple in the cryptic would mean uncomplicated (i.e a single piece of cloth).

59. Tony Santucci @ 50 and muffin @55 – your comments rang a bell.

    A rather weird coincidence: I had occasion the other day to revisit my blog of a Brendan puzzle https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/08/21/guardian-29154-brendan/#comments.
    Take a look at comments 50 (Tony) and Brendan (87).

60. Eileen @59, I was just about to quote Brendan on the subject too! On another occasion he said: “I don’t share the view sometimes expressed here that superfluous words in clues must be avoided at all costs” (@52 of 28,721). I agree — in my opinion a superfluous word, included to make a better surface, is only a problem if it prevents a clue from working properly on a cryptic level.

61. Apologies – I meant Tony @86 !

62. Sorry for the confusion – I meant comments 86 and 87!

63. Hi Lord Jim @60 – thanks for that and sorry for the crossing, I think my regard for surfaces (and Brendan) is well documented!

64. A good clue should avoid all words not just superfluous ones , a chain of logic symbols and letters should be quite enough . I would give an example but do not how to get the symbols on this keyboard .

65. Eileen @59: Thanks for enlivening this discussion.

66. I’m glad you caught that, Tony. 😉

67. Interesting difference of opinion! I really do think that every word in the clue should be there because it has to be there.

68. Problem we had is that if you’re doing the crossword from the new Guardian app, it doesn’t seem to tell you who is the setter. So the Philistine bit confused us

69. An ongoing one, muffin @67.

70. Bev@68 I find that on my android phone the new version of the app shows today’s crossword AND setter in the Archive crosswords section in the last thing in the Puzzles section.

71. muffin &67 et al…
    We need VAR? For crosswords?

72. Ah, so the Shakespearean wasn’t TIMON then. Saves the mental gymnastics of trying to get ANY from FILMS, at least.
    Gave up and revealed 2d – possibly too soon, although it’s not certain I’d have got there anyway. Appropriately kicked myself when I saw it, though.

73. Hugely enjoyable puzzle from Philistine. I think he was being very kind to us today but some lovely surfaces and lots of laughs. Particularly liked FTSE, CATNAP, THE PRESENT amongst many. Thanks to loonapick for the blog.

74. muffin @57 I once procured the longest piece of woolen cloth I could afford, to impress on my students how a Roman toga was anything but casual wear. Probably the lesson was lost when it came time for their first college toga party.

    [The delightful “By itself, the…” puts me in mind of the alphabet, when recited, with “and, per se and” as its 27th letter.]

75. I think that:

    The Times They Are Achange is OK

    The Times They Are Changing is OK

    The Times, They Are, Er, Changing is OK too.

    I’m not so sure about “achanging” any more than I would be about “aflaming” or “aglowing” though.

76. Thanks Crossbar@70!!
    I’d never have noticed that. Wonder why they don’t put it by the puzzle straight off?

77. Re 4D, not sure that anyone owning a year old BMW, say, would take kindly to it being lumped into the banger category. Not that I do, mind….

78. Thank you. I agree, a good week for puzzles. This is probably the first cryptic crossword I have solved more or less by myself, with a lot of help from the checker but not the reveal. I feel a massive sense of achievement, as my interest in cryptics dates from my student days, but I’ve never given full rein to this obsession. Thank you to everyone who sets and explains the clues.

79. Completed, except I couldn’t dredge FTSE out of the depths, so dnqf, missing by two letters

    Loved the charade of THE TIMES… — yes, I did take the time to parse it. Also loved the rest of the puzzle!

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