Guardian 29,785 – Tramp

73 comments on “Guardian 29,785 – Tramp”

1. Great puzzle and blog. For the anagram at 12a, I believe it should be minus 2 u’s.

2. Some clever definitions made this fun. I had “see” = “make out” for 1d, rather than “make out with” and the Dua Lipa anagram needs “- us” rather than “+us” but, as you said you were in a hurry, typos fully excused and thank you for the blog.

   This had the pleasurable outcome of unfolding with a few clues looking impenetrable at first which, with a crosser or two, saw the pennies tumble.

   Many thanks Tramp and Andrew.

3. I interpreted ‘only one of us’ in PARLOUR MAIDS as saying take just one of the U’s

4. I could not parse 17d.

   New for me: BREASTWORK; KEYHOLE SAW; SPLIT = rat / let on (for 24ac).

   I agree with PostMark@3 re parsing of PARLOUR MAIDS = Anagram of DUA LIPA RUMOURS using only U / minus 2 x U.

5. Lovely puzzle, thanks Tramp. I found this hard going in parts, but it all came out in the end. Agree with others about the number of Us in PARLOUR MAIDS. I especially enjoyed MOUTH-WATERING, COWPAT, SEDATE and SOUP SPOONS. (hm, not sure ‘mouth-watering’ and ‘cowpat’ really belong together). And thanks to Andrew for the super blog.

6. Thanks Tramp and Andrew
   I found the NW tricky, but eventually it came out.
   I was convinced that , despite it working,, 7d couldn’t start TENNIS as “tennis” appears in 14d.
   “Fit” for ASSEMBLE is a bit loose.

7. Nice puzzle, thanks to Tramp and Andrew.
   The enhanced search facility shows that Tramp has used “Dua Lipa” in clues five times since 2020.
   Tramp also tells us this morning that he wrote this puzzle in August 2022. Not sure if this is significant to any particular clue.

8. A really good puzzle. I think moh has picked my favourites. I realize now that I parsed RESIDENT wrongly, having pass as die.

9. The Scottish bank was unknown. Also CANTAB, although the wordplay led me to find it on the web. I’m surprised I managed the rest.

10. I’m due to go out very shortly but couldn’t miss commenting on another super puzzle from Tramp.

    Like Petert @8, I’m content to let moh @5 speak for me.

    Many thanks to Tramp and Andrew – a great team, as ever.

11. [GDU: A term like “cantab” is pretty rarely seen these days – usually to show off that one’s degree is from an ancient institution by postscripting “cantabriensis”, “oxoniensis” or “dunelmensis”, abbreviated to “cantab”, “oxon”, “dunelm”. It’s as useful as knowing that archbishops can sign themselves “Cantuar” and “Ebor” or that an old boy of Shrewsbury School is an “Old Salopian”. Handy in crossword land and in rather specific spheres of life. But I guess that’s true of most general knowledge…

    The Scottish banks are interesting because RBS is one of three which is allowed to issue legal tender, so a visit to Scotland means you often end up with a mixed wallet of notes of the same value but different designs. For a long time you still got pound notes when we had moved to coins only in England…these were always met with suspicion by shopkeepers (of which we are a nation, I am told).]

12. Thanks for the enlightenment, Jack! Most interesting, but I don’t promise to remember it all!

13. Excellent, especially MOUTH WATERING, RESIDENT and PROVERBIAL.

    Ta Tramp & Andrew.

14. [JOFT @11
    Your comment about bishops reminded me of this.]

15. Also a nice juxtaposition of OPEN KEYHOLE DOOR.

16. Could someone kindly explain 19d? I understand that a swinger is a door (and that’s how I got it) but I don’t see the parsing. Why is OR “men”?

17. OR = Ordinary Ranks = men in the army. A crossword chestnut worth remembering RabTheCat @16

18. Can someone explain 19ac OR meaning men?

19. RabTheCat, I’ve come to learn that it’s one of those many English initialisms with which very few people this side of the Channel are familiar. I think it’s Other Ranks, but I could be wrong.

20. RTC@16: OR = Other Ranks = men, as opposed to officers. Crossed with Geoff!

21. GDU @9: Re the CANTAB affectation, there’s also the claim that any graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, will contrive to inform you of such within 11 seconds of meeting!

    Cracking crossword, Tramp, many thanks for the fun, PROVERBIAL was my favourite.

22. Lovely puzzle, thanks to Tramp and Andrew.
    I especially liked ‘swinger’ for DOOR, ‘stock dropping’ for COWPAT, and the spicy SOUP SPOONS.

    There are a few body parts – HAND, ELBOW, SHOULDER, BREAST, ORBS, MOUTH – but not enough to constitute a theme.

23. me@17, my apologies, OR is Other Ranks, not Ordinary Ranks, although I guess it could be either. 🙂

24. I had PEGHOLE SAW for 16d, which is apparently a thing for making peg holes in violins. I think it works in that a peg could be your leg end if you are a pirate who has lost half his leg. Obviously overthinking it though, and KEY is a much simpler parsing.

    As others have said, much to like with this one.

25. I thought this was another toughie, mostly because of some sneaky definitions, but all fair and very clever in places. It has been a particularly tough week in the Guardian so not looking forward to tomorrow.

    Big, big like for the anagram in MOUTH-WATERING. I actually got it from the checkers before realising how clever it was.

    KEYHOLE SAW, CANTAB and BREASTWORK all new to me. Those being intersecting probably means I found this harder than others but assembled from the word play.

    Thanks Andrew and Tramp

26. I often find Tramp quite difficult, but less so this time (the NW being the least tricky, pace Muffin@6). EIther they are getting easier or I’m getting better (doubtful). I used to have an account at RBS when I lived in Edinburgh, so that was a write-in. It was at one time the largest bank in the UK if not the world, before the events of 2008 and after, but now belongs to NatWest.

    JOFT@11: Banks in Scotland and Northern ireland still issue their own banknotes, which are used interchangeably with those of the Bank of England, however in my limited understanding the term ‘legal tender’ has a strict technical meaning that doesn’t affect everyday transactions. I used to have to change notes when travelling to England, but nowadays the use of electronic forms of payment make the question moot.

27. I agree with moh @5
    – plus CANTAB & ELBOW-ROOM made me grin.
    Thanks Tramp & Andrew
    Joft’s comment about Scottish notes reminds me of the time I found an “enhanced” one in my change:
    when Thatcher’s lot brought in the dreaded Poll Tax they tried it in Scotland first. Whilst on a visit to Edinburgh I noticed on one Scottish note in my purse – I forget the denomination but it had Robert the Bruce on the back – someone had given Robert a speech-bubble: “ok boys, aim for Maggie!”

28. CANTAB twice in one day. Also in NYT Connections.

29. Enjoyed this very much, and am continuing my challenge to myself to complete every puzzle this week on the same day! Thank you Andrew for clarifying some puzzling parsing (why is afternoon a and not pm?). Some lovely misdirection here, I attacked the German dictionary.

30. Chard’@29, ‘A’ for afternoon is given in Chambers. If you ever have a spare hour it’s worth reading through all 26 single letter entries in Chambers. Some may surprise you.

31. William @21 – that’s a myth put around by those who didn’t go to Oxbridge. My wife and son never mention their education unless it’s relevant.
    Now vegans, they WILL let you know in a trice.
    Cambridge rivals are commonly known simply as “tabs” in Oxford.

    Great puzzle – always look forward to a Tramp day.

32. [William@21 an Oxonian vegan born again Christian had best be a very fast talker then!]

33. @17 Tim C and others, thank you very much for the explanation.

    Ahem. I am both Cantab and Oxon. Doesn’t make me a crossword whizz, that’s for sure.

34. JOFT@32: my urologist asked me whether I was a cyclist. I replied that if I were, I would have told him as soon as he came in. He laughed. I think it’s rare for a urologist to hear a joke they haven’t heard before.

    Anyway… found this challenging but enjoyable, and for once I had all the necessary GK. Found the SW trickiest, with the intersecting 17D and 18A escaping my parsing.

    One nit: ‘A’ for ‘afternoon’ seems pretty arbitrary to me, pace the “it’s in Chambers” justification. I remain of the opinion that something merely being in Chambers does not make it fair game: being in Chambers may be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition, as a mathematician might say.

35. Well said Jacob@34 re Chambers. What should be more important is whether anybody still uses the damn abbreviation.

    As for CANTAB, I never use it in the traditional way, nor do I even put a string of unadorned initials after my name. However, Cambridge does hand out a free-for-life cantab.net email address for those who want it. I use it as an alternate email, reserved for student correspondence when I’m teaching, so as not to lose those emails amongst the everyday clutter.

36. Another slow start but got there in the end. I liked the groom’s ELBOW-ROOM, the pass in RESIDENT, the PARLOUR MAIDS, where as usual, it took me ages to decipher us, and the good definition for COWPAT.

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

37. TripleJumper @31: similarly, mentioning one’s education at a certain university in Cambridge, Mass., is referred to by those of us who have it as “dropping the H-bomb”, which most of us do only either when relevant or when some blowhard needs to be shut up. It’s something that actually makes me uncomfortable to mention in most settings.

38. Took ages to get the long words for 4d _ BLADE, 10d MOUTH _ (“dressed up” as anagrind?). When they eventually fell they opened things up, but three short of a full deck in the end. 17d RESIDENT (Reticent? Sediment?), 27a EGGSHELL, 23d FELL. All gettable, though, so grr…

    12a PARLOUR MAIDS, twigged to the “us” trick for the first time, so yay!

    As well as the aforementioned long down clues, I especially enjoyed the clues with concise, meaningful surfaces — 15a OPEN, 19a DOOR, 26a SEDATE, 1d SEED, 20d STRIPS (that’s quite the trick!) — as well as 3d COWPAT for the great definition

39. Jack Of Few Trades @11 – I recently discovered that you can still get pound notes in Jersey. It’s almost worth trying to use one back home to see the reaction. I can’t help wondering if banks have to accept them.

40. Very enjoyable puzzle. I parsed 26ac as
    S[uprem]E + DATE (= court). Otherwise the word ‘Court’ in the clue does not perform any function that I can see.

41. Jacob@34 and others, I also huffed a bit at afternoon = A, and agree Chambers is (arguably) necessary but not sufficient. But that didn’t spoil a brilliant puzzle from Tramp, for which many thanks. To the many discussing CANTAB, I used it briefly, less from pride than embarrassment that my “MA Cantab” cost £10 and no further work beyond the BA, while friends at other unis had to study a year for theirs. I dropped it when I kept getting asked whether Canterbury medical school was any good.

42. [Ravenrider @39: similarly, the US has $2 bills. They’re legal, but so unpopular that they’re very rare. (Thomas Jefferson on the obverse, the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the reverse.) When you pay with one of them, there’s a better than even chance that the cashier will think you’re trying to pass fake money. Dollar coins are also unpopular, but are slightly less rare. Of course, these days cash transactions are getting rare altogether; this is probably the case everywhere in the developed world.]

43. Thanks Tramp for a superb set of clues. Despite some ‘guessing then parsing’ I enjoyed this immensely due to clues like SHOWCASE, ELBOW-ROOM, KEYHOLE SAW, PROVERBIAL, SEDATE, COWPAT, TENNIS SHOE, and BEFOREHAND. Thanks Andrew for the blog.
    [DrWhatsOn @35: The criterion, ‘whether anybody still uses the damn abbreviation’ (A for afternoon) has a big problem — how is a solver to know this? As an American solver I don’t always know what’s commonly used in the various parts of the US let alone Canada, Britain, or Australia. Having a common source like Chambers will have to do, at least for me.]

44. Thanks Tramp and Andrew. But 23D Fell = Heath is a bit off. Fell implies mountain or hill, while heath is lower-lying with scrubby vegetation. Not synonymous to me.

45. RESIDENT was our LOI because we were thrown by ‘on the contrary’ in the clue. It looks like the definition is ‘local’ and Andrew doesn’t mention ‘on the contrary’ in his blog.

    Otherwise we enjoyed this and completed it.

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew

46. Worryingly few answers on the first run through, but it all unfolded steadily once some crossers were in. Faves: KEYHOLE SAW, COWPAT.
    Thanks, Tramp & Andrew.

47. Another fine Tramp puzzle. CANTAB was a bonus write in due its coincidental appearance in this morning’s NYT Connections puzzle which I solved immediately before this. Favourites were COWPAT, PROVERBIAL and MOUTH-WATERING – all great surfaces.

48. Matts@41 You should not feel embarrassed that your MA was awarded in the way it has been awarded for centuries, denoting status. It’s not your problem if other Universities misinterpreted the rules and so make their students work for it.

49. I’m with PhilM @44 re 23D. Has anyone found dictionary confirmation that HEATH = FELL? It’s not in my Chambers and I can’t find it online.

50. PhilM @44; Zoot @49. Didn’t we have the HEATH / FELL debate relatively recently? Maybe it was MOOR / FELL.

51. fell2 /fel/
    noun
    2. An upland tract of wasteland, pasture or moorland

    heath /hēth/
    noun
    1. Barren open country, esp covered with ericaceous and other low shrubs

    Close enough?

52. No, that was MOOR/FELL. I’m not reviving that. I’ve said what I think. It’s whether that connection is being used to justify today’s clue. Have we got a case of A is equivalent of B is equivalent of C therefore A is equivalent of C? (Sorry, no appropriate symbols).

53. I know that Thesauruses cannot be totally relied on, but for what it’s worth, the Chambers Thesaurus for heath has:

    heath
    noun
    moor, moorland, fell, upland

54. Thanks Tramp & Andrew. I must say I can’t quite see “this” as the definition in 7D. Is there an &Littish element there? I had “no” taking care of the ‘o’ in “she”, making the defn “points (toes) in this”. Online Chambers defn 22 for point (n.): the tip of the toe. cf en pointe

55. “A” for afternoon can also be found in today’s Spectator. Always a good puzzle and today set by Doc (the editor) aka Maskarade.

56. Jay@51 – I agree with you and your post also illustrates why dictionaries are unsatisfactory. If someone set “fell” as “wasteland” I’d be much less happy than if it was set as “heath” (or “moor”).

57. Wasn’t Macbeth’s “blasted heath” an upland moor?

58. Jay@51 I think the upland part is significant. I did ask if anyone had found a dictionary definition. If there is one I’ll accept the clue even though I think the two things are distinct.

59. PhilM@44 et al I was surprised this wasn’t raised earlier. I am in the camp of fell and heath being quite different. My Bradford has heath listed under fell, but not vice versa, though B is suggestive rather than definitive. However I did find Waldridge Fell, one of Durham’s last remaining areas of lowland heath., which seems to be all heath

60. An AI in Google came up with :

    A fell is a type of landform.
    A heath is a habitat that can be found on various landscapes, including a fell.

    which seems fine to me

61. Dave Ellison@60 I’d go along with that. I’d include moor as a different habitat. New Naturalist book Mountain and Moorland definites the latter by soil type and vegetation.

62. Droid@45 – “on the contrary” refers to the order of the elements in the clue – “let ecstasy tablets” is around “pass” and not vice versa. Hope that makes sense!

63. I note two complementary themes: external body parts (ass, breast, hand, elbow, shoulder, mouth) and voyeurism (see, saw, keyhole, show, strips, and perhaps orbs/eyeballs). This makes mouthwatering, babe, and parlourmaids meaningful as well.

64. Neil@63. You could be right. Tramp has clued similarly before but never to my knowledge a theme built around that.

65. I managed the Dua Lipa clue by just having the one “u” i.e. dropping 2 u’s. Is the full parsing connected to U / non-U (that’s what I came here to check)?

    Anyway, I asked a chatbot based on chatgpt4.1 about the clue and it almost correctly “reasoned”:

    Let’s break down your cryptic crossword clue:

    Clue: They waited on Dua Lipa rumours circulating (having only one of us)? (7-5)

    Let’s analyze:

    Length: (7-5), which could be TWO words: 7 letters and 5 letters.
    Definition: The definition is usually either at the beginning or end. “They waited on” is a strong candidate.
    Wordplay: “Dua Lipa rumours circulating (having only one of us)”.

    Let’s try to solve using Python to look for possible anagrams or word combinations using the fodder “DUA LIPA RUMOURS”, perhaps removing a “U” (“us” minus one).

    Let’s get all 7-5 combinations from “DUA LIPA RUMOURS” minus one U, and see if any match phrases associated with “They waited on” (like “waiters”, “table staff”, etc).

    Let’s generate all 12-letter permutations that could be split as 7-5, see if any are English phrases relating to “waited on”.

    Analyzed

    It looks like the dictionary module required to check English words is not available in this environment.

    Here’s a summary of my cryptic clue solving so far:

    The surface “They waited on” is probably the definition (meaning someone who serves, like a “waitress” or “waiter on table”).
    The wordplay “Dua Lipa rumours circulating (having only one of us)” suggests an anagram (as “circulating” is a classic anagram indicator). The fodder is “Dua Lipa rumours,” with the instruction to have only “one of us,” possibly removing a “U” or the word “us” from the anagram fodder.
    The answer likely refers to people who “waited on” or served others.

    Given the enumeration (7-5), a well-known answer for people who “waited on” is WAITING STAFF.

    WAITING STAFF is 7-5 letters, fits the definition, and is made up of letters in “Dua Lipa rumours” (minus some extras, supporting the anagram theory, with “U” maybe omitted for “having only one of us”).

    Final answer: WAITING STAFF

    Let me know if you’d like a deeper wordplay breakdown or have more clues to solve! ]]

    So, it had not got rid of the correct number of U’s and did not actually do the anagram checking. I then explained that “having only one of us” means that the fodder should only have a single u remaining, and it came up with PARLOUR MAID.

    I then asked if it were sure that PARLOUR is correct and asked it to check. It purported to do an anagram check and decided that it was incorrect. Basically, it generates a likely answer than actually reasons.

66. Fun puzzle, though I guessed or bashed through many. I am confused though, how does “this” serve as an adequate pointer to the solution TENNIS SHOE in 7d?

    Thanks both

67. Can someone explain STRIPS for me please

68. Sugar butters @67

    I think “small bloopers while walking” might be better for that clue to give S + TRIPS, but it looks like “bloomer” can also be used for a small mistake. The mistake is tripping whilst walking.

    Can anybody explain the purpose of “on the contrary” in 17d?

    I’ll put PARLOUR MAID as fave as it was only one for quite some time.

    Thanks Andrew & Tramp.

69. Sugarbutties – apologies mobile UI does not allow editing of mistakes.

70. AR@68 re 17d: I think it’s because the clue, up thru the dash, has “ecstasy tablets pass” enveloping (around) “to let”: ES(RENT)ID. Then “on the contrary” inverts the envelopment: R(ESID)ENT

71. Coloradan @70 Thanks, that makes sense.

72. The aforementioned discussion on Cambridge and Oxford put me in mind of the Alan Bennett monologue “The Telegram”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiFL7jkIRT8

73. The Alan Bennet sketch was brilliant! Thanks!

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