Thanks(?) to Enigmatist.
Apologies again for the late blog. It was a slog not helped by what looked like jumbled wordplay. Is that a theme?
Across
8. This fighter set out to damage legislature (8)
GUERILLA : “set” deleted from(out) anagram of(to damage) “legislature” . Wordplay seems to be jumbled.
9. Split personalities then repair boat? (6)
VESSEL : SELVES(personalities/the qualities that make people unique individually) divided into 2 halves(Split) and rejoined with the second half first(then repair).
Defn: An example of which/? is a ….
10. Right to back vote for a woman (4)
KAYE : Extreme right letter of(Right to) “back” + AYE(a yes vote). Does “right” indicate “extreme right”?
Defn: Name for a woman.
11. More than one competent fighter strips outside town (5,5)
GREEN BELTS : Double defn: 1st: Those/more than one martial arts fighter who have achieved a certain level of competence; and 2nd: Areas of open land surrounding a town/city on which building is restricted.
12. Entity issuing fire, like working TV? (6)
DRAGON : [DRAG ON](like a TV/a person wearing drag/clothes normally associated with the opposite sex performing/working – “TV” being derived from “transvestite”).
Defn: Mythical ….
14. Italian writer admitted time was not kind to those hearing this case (3,5)
THE COURT : ECO(Umberto, the Italian writer) contained in(admitted) [ T(abbrev. for “time”) + HURT(was not kind to/caused pain to) ]. Another where the wordplay looks jumbled?
15. Sort of mechanical man’s knocked out of cup (7)
CHALICE : Anagram of(Sort of) [ “mechanical” minus(…’s knocked out of) “man” ].
17. Writer emphatically does not like the teeth of some animals (7)
ISODONT : [ I SO DON’T ](what the writer, using the first person pronoun self-referentially, might say to emphasise that he/she does not, say, want to do).
Answer: Describing some animals’ teeth which are of the same size and shape.
20. Armstrong, say – or GNORTSMRA? (8)
SPACEMAN : Reversal of(as “GNORTSMRA” is of “Armstrong”) [NAME in CAPS](an example of/say what “Armstrong” is written in capital letters like “GNORTSMRA”).
Answer: Neil, the first person to walk on the moon.
22. It houses royal secretary who’s paid to assist doctor … (6)
PALACE : PA(abbrev. for “personal secretary”, a paid employee serving as an assistant) + LACE(to doctor/to add and mix an ingredient, say, alcohol into a drink)
23. … the King was in this depressed state (4,6)
BLUE HAWAII : BLUE(depressed/sad) + HAWAII(a US state).
Answer: Film which starred Elvis Presley, nicknamed the King of Rock and Roll..
24. A selection of Turkish tobacco rolling one way and the other (4)
BOTH : Hidden in(A selection of) reversal of(… rolling) “Turkish tobacco”.
25. Quietly great player acquires instrument for a pound? (6)
PESTLE : ? PELE(great Brazilian football player) containing(acquires) ST(quietly?)
Defn: A heavy tool used for pounding, say, spices in a mortar.
26. Is it Lynam and O’Connor circling one officer sees? (8)
DIOCESES : DESES(plural of the first name of Des Lynam, sports commentator and Des O’Connor, singer and TV presenter) containing(circling) [ I(Roman numeral for “one”) + CO(abbrev. for “commanding officer”) ].
Defn: …/seats of authority of bishops or archbishops.
Down
1. Gulf City, Japanese mount, securing Ascot’s first cheer (8)
FUJAIRAH : FUJI(mountain in Japan) containing(securing) 1st letter of(…’s first) “Ascot” + RAH!(a cheer of encouragement or approval).
Answer: Capital city of the United Arab Emirates on the Gulf of Oman.
2. Read cons will be waiving right (4)
TRUE : “construe”(to interpret/to read) minus(… will be waiving) “cons”. Another jumbled wordplay?
3. Wine-carrier fine muddling along (6)
FLAGON : F(abbrev. for “fine”) + anagram of(muddling) ALONG.
4. The authority with which one rules one’s robes a joke (7)
MAJESTY : MY(the first person possessive pronoun for one/oneself) containing(robes) [A + JEST(a joke) ].
5. It’s payback time for us English, landing in States (8)
AVENGERS : ENG(abbrev. for “English”) contained in(landing in) AVERS(states/declares).
Defn: The “us” in ….
6. A rising couturier Nick dresses like a star (10)
ASTEROIDAL : A + [ DIOR(Christian, French couturier) contained in(… dresses) STEAL(to nick) ].
Defn: Something shaped ….
7. Employee of 14 bar counsel at first oddly rejects (6)
JESTER : 1st letter of(… at first) “counsel” deleted from(bar …) anagram of(oddly) “rejects”. Another clue with what looks like jumbled wordplay?
Defn: Employee of the court(answer to 14 across), the royal courts of old, that is.
13. Good Catholic is still looking after aging birds (10)
GOLDCRESTS : G(abbrev. for “good”) [ C(abbrev. for “Catholic”) + RESTS(is still/lies without movement) placed after(looking after) OLD(aging/elderly) ].
16. After correspondence, friend departs to the far south (8)
COMPARED : COMPADRE(a friend/companion) with “d”(abbrev. for “departs”) moved down(to the far south, in a down clue).
18. Refinement links to the French Riviera? (8)
NICETIES : TIES(links/bonds) of(to the) NICE(city in and representative of the French Riviera).
19. Broadcast grenade warning on the piste (2,5)
EN GARDE : Anagram of(Broadcast) GRENADE.
Defn: In a fencing bout, which sport is conducted on a piste/a marked rectangular area, a call to a fencer to adopt a defensive position in readiness for an attack.
21. Rising marksman recording shot (6)
PELLET : Reversal of(Rising, in a down clue) [ TELL(William, the legendary Swiss crossbowman/marksman) + EP(abbrev. for “extended play”, a format for a music recording) ].
Answer: A small bullet.
22. Corrupt chamber appears to be working (6)
POISON : PO(a chamber pot, or, obsoletely, a chamber) + [IS ON](appears to be working/operating).
24. Beer in a fancy wine bar’s neglected (4)
BREW : “in a” deleted from(…’s neglected) anagram of(fancy) “wine bar”. Another one where the wordplay seems jumbled?
Enigmatist is usually too much for my 4 a.m. brain and I tend to turn over and leave him until the daylight hours. But I thought I’d see if I could just establish a foothold and slowly solved five clues. Three of these were (FOI) FLAGON, plus TRUE and THE COURT. Lightbulb moment. This was THE COURT JESTER, starring Danny KAYE, and the famous, ‘FLAGON with the DRAGON … VESSEL with the PESTLE … CHALICE from the PALACE’ sequence. And having seen where JH was going with this, I now had about ten more solutions looking for a clue, which made things a great deal easier and quicker. By the time I was left with the remaining non-themers I had a lot of crossing letters to help. Never has a theme been so helpful. Good fun, which Enigmatist generally isn’t.
Man this was tough.
The theme totally passed me by…
I had exactly the same experience as Balfour@1, but I did have to check the words of the song online. Enjoyable but very tricky in spots – I failed to parse SPACEMAN and AVENGERS.
Obviously on a different wavelength to me.
I haven’t got a clue how to parse most of these
As always, I didn’t get the theme until everything was solved. and then it screamed at me, as my dad took me to see the film when it first came out in 1955. But there were a number of solutions I couldn’t parse, so well done scchua – as there were hundreds of solvers like me attempting to reach the blog and get explanations
So. I finished it (a bit of a challenge). And then looked back at it one last time to check a couple of parsings. And the theme suddenly popped out. Why had I missed it before?
Wonderful!
Thanks to E and S!
And here it is…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ9f2rnjB84
Thanks Enigmatist and scchua
A DNF – I revealed KAYE and TRUE and still didn’t understand them. There were several other ones unparsed too.
I questioned the PO in 22d. A po is the slang term for a chamber POT, not a chamber.
I still don’t get SPACEMAN even with your explanation.
There’s a theme, but I didn’t remember it until I was walking back from shopping!
I loved this but found it extremely difficult. I’m OK with ‘the jumbled wordplay’ if one inserts commas into the clues. So, 8a “….set out, to damage legislature”. And 14a “Italian writer admitted, time was not kind”. I think those work for me.
Great stuff, thanks both.
Thanks for the blog scchua.
As you say there seemed to be a number of clues where the wordplay seemed hard to follow. Impossible for me to follow. Having never heard of the film it’s not surprising that the theme was of absolutely no help. Little fun and a DNF.
Muffin @8. If you put Armstrong in capital letters, you get ARMSTRONG, which is, I think, NAMECAPS. If you reverse NAMECAPS, you get SPACEMAN, i.e. Armstrong.
Tough one! But I thought all fair. I’m afraid I don’t see the supposed jumbled wordplay – I thought it was a matter of reading the clues differently.
Thanks Crispy. I saw people praising it on the G site, but I’m not impressed. Why should it be NAMECAPS? Not a usage I’ve ever seen.
Classic sour grapes, Ed @6. The fact that you could not do it does not make it unpleasant. Regrettably, a not uncommon reaction on these forums.
@12
I agree. The only arguable one, I think, is 2d, where perhaps the excluded element “waiving” (its right to a place?) is a bit poetic. Otherwise, it just seems to be a question of inventive, clever wordplay that won’t work if you misread it.
Thanks Enigmatist and scchua, blogging this one was above and beyond the call. The theme wouldn’t have helped me as it is a NHO. Can someone please explain why ST = Quietly. I have it in my notes but forgot to add the reason why. Thanks.
Had to reveal the crossing KAYE and TRUE, and also ISODONT. And I still don’t understand the parsing of PESTLE – how does ST give quietly?
Many thanks to sschua and also to Enigmatist.
Edit: crossed with dod @18
dod @18, TanTrumPet @19. I’ve looked it up in Chambers (sorry – somebody had to), and it gives st or ‘st – hush. Can’t say I’m a fan.
Didn’t say it earlier, but big thanks to scchua on this one. Also, well done to anybody who figured out the Danny Kaye thing. May have heard it years ago on Ed Stewart’s Junior Choice, but wouldn’t have recalled it in a million years.
NAMELESS @16 and 17
Quite apart from the tone of your comments, why are you shouting? Is your Caps Lock stuck on?
Got about halfway through this with a lot of help from Word Wizard and the check button. Which is something, given that I’ve found this week overall to be one of the most difficult in recent memory. Today’s DNF is better than my DNS on Tuesday.
Enigmatist is usually too much for my brain at any time of day, but Paul and Vlad used to bamboozle me several years ago and persistence has paid off.
So instead of ignoring this puzzle, as we usually would, Princess and I proceeded via a series of Reveals, use of the check button, and the handful of solves that we could work out for ourselves. Perhaps in a few more years, older and maybe wiser, we will make better progress. But it’s good to be challenged, so thank you Enigmatist. And scchua, I can only stand back in awe at your ability to make sense of this and explain it
Wow! Finally got there, after a couple of hours. Worth the smug feeling of completion – when you see the name Enigmatist, you know you’re in for a challenge! I thoroughly enjoyed it, though. Unlike some here, I’m always impressed with the craft and verbal dexterity these compilers display for our entertainment – whether I can complete or not! Thanks Enigmatist and Scchua!!
Well, I thought this crossword should have been a quiptic …
Only kidding! After an hour of head-scratching, I gave up. I’d solved only nine clues, and even though the grid now contained FLAGON, DRAGON, CHALICE and PELLET, I still hadn’t spotted the theme.
So, my hearty congratulations to scchua for a marvellous blog.
And to Enigmatist for reminding me – however tortuously! – of the wonderful Danny Kaye.
And many thanks to Hornbeam@7 for the link.
I found this very difficult but I persisted and solved more than half with some help from the check button and Crossword Solver. Quite pleased with that.
Enigmatist, in all his guises, is generally above my pay grade and this was no exception. First pass through gave me two solutions – one of which was the relatively unhelpful BOTH! Taking breaks for Phi and Solomon, I persevered until I had about two thirds done – some unparsed – before it was time for the reveal button. I did note some rhyming couples but was unaware of the Danny Kaye thing. I’m definitely ‘Tim, nice but dim’ today – even with the various explanations given, I don’t get SPACEMAN. I don’t see how putting Armstrong in capital letters leads you to the word ‘namecaps’. That said, I did manage to make sense of some of the ‘jumbled wordplay’; as Aoxomoxa, Arklark and Herb observe, it’s about putting commas into the clues and reading them the right way. Sometimes easier to clue than parse.
muffin@8: Chambers gives one definition of ‘chamber’ as ‘chamberpot’ so I think PO can work with either of them.
Thanks, I think, to Enigmatist and to scchua who deserves congratulations for a Herculean effort. I wonder whether it felt more like slaying the Hydra or clearing the Augean stables … 😉
Some crosswords are hard and some are easy. It would be quite unfulfilling to have every one in the Goldilocks zone. I was beaten by 2 and 10, but Aurighetta managed them for me.
My thanks to Enigmatist and scchua.
Admins: Please remove NAMELESS, whose comments meet no-one’s idea of civilized discourse.
I find it interesting that many frequent commenters have decided not to comment. Silence is golden.
On scanning all the clues I succeeded in solving precisely two, and after revealing answers, in most cases still didn’t understand them. But I mustn’t be ungrateful — Enigmatist made me feel young again! This is how I felt decades ago when I could make no sense at all of the world of cryptic crosswords.
It occurs to me that PESTLE could be P=Quietly and Estle = Great player (apparently he is an electronic musician).
Also, “jumbled wordplay” seems an apt description of Danny Kaye’s forte in this scene.
I saw Enigmatist’s name and groaned.
I read through the clues and solved one.
I persevered and actually managed to finish (albeit with a couple unparsed and a couple needing to be checked). Think this is the first time ever for Enigmatist!
Was thus expecting to come here and find a lot of “easy for this setter” type comments, so now feeling very smug at my “success”!
Puzzled by the “CO” reference in DIOCESES. The clue gives no indication of reversing it to “OC”. The “circling” is already used to indicate “containing”.
Hi Ian @ 35. It isn’t a reversal, the blog should read OC (Officer Commanding).
1. First pass, solve 24a BOTH
2. Second pass, solve 19d EN GARDE
3. Report failure to fifteensquared community
4. Admire how clever the puzzle is, and kick myself for the clues I should have solved
5. Get on with life
Thanks Balfour@1 for pointing out the theme. The referenced movie sequence is absolutely hilarious, a true classic!
That was tough. But for the first time ever I got the link early on.
And that made the puzzle solvable. My LOI was a -A-E which is no help but thankfully the girl’s name had to be Kaye not Faye, Gaye or Raye.
If I had never heard of that scene from the Court Jester I would still be stuck on about five answers.
In some ways it was like the 11+. It looked like a test of brainpower but was mainly reliant on cultural background.
@35 Agreed. I took the officer to be Officer Commanding, or OC. This fits with your reading of the rest of the wordplay.
Loved the puzzle. I wink at various Enigmatistic compromises generally (call me prejudiced). That said, SPACEMAN looked a bit of a stretch to me.
Thanks Enigmatist for the great puzzle.
Thanks scchua for the superb blog. Very neat and detailed. Not an easy task.
DIOCESES: It seems OC is an ‘Officer Commanding’ in the RAF. (Looks like I’m slow to comment!)
DNF because of KAYE, I tried RAYE. A handful of others unparsed. Too young to know the theme.
GUERILLA: Chambers has it as an alternative spelling for guerrilla but searching gives no real world examples. I put it in then erased it, then in again with the crossers.
On the whole I liked the wordplay.
I don’t attempt Enigmatist puzzles, but i have no issue with the crosswords.
The Guardian needs to cater for solvers of all levels.
I wondered if 10a “right” = “k” was in the sense of right, OK, K?
I struggled a lot with this one so spent a lot of time today wondering!
Some very new ones with ST being quiet, NAMECAPS, and the clue jumbling was humbling!
Afternoon all,
Finished this – a few I had to use my ‘hit it with a hammer’ approach of going through the alphabet to get a few extra letters – but this is an Enigmatist, and the first grid of theirs I’ve ever competed. Thanks for all the help upstairs, which explained quite a few of the parsings I hadn’t fully seen, and reassured me that nearly everyone found this tough
I don’t want this to sound like sour grapes because I couldn’t parse a few, and of course missed the theme. I do like the occasional extra-hard puzzles, but would prefer thet were in the prize slot, so we have a whole week to work on them, and can still participate in the comments live.
I had a different formulation in my mind of what was going on than what scchua@blog said, but maybe they amount to the same thing. Some setters, Paul comes to mind, are notable for loose synonyms – what we have here is loose wordplay. Extra unused words, operators in weird places, etc. It seems to fly in the face of Afrit’s injunction: “I may not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean”.
This took me an unusually long time, and I put in ‘pestle’ without ever knowing why, but everything else was ok. I thought the Armstrong clue was one of the very best we’ve had for a long time. Didn’t spot the emerging theme until I had nearly all of them. The chalice from the palace has the pellet with the poison, the vessel with the pestle is the brew that is true etc – made me smile a lot. Thank you Enigmatist!
When DRAGON and FLAGON were my first entries, a lightbulb went on and I looked for CHALICE, PALACE, PELLET, POISON, VESSEL, PESTLE, BREW and TRUE – all spottable from definition once you suspected they were there. Parsing them was a different matter: PALACE, PELLET, POISON, VESSEL and PESTLE remained unparsed. JESTER, THE COURT and KAYE came later. I wonder if Enigmatist deliberately made the themed entries harder: I certainly had more trouble with them than the rest. Chapeau to Enigmatist for getting all of them in, and to anyone who solved it without help from the theme.
I did enjoy SPACEMAN, I SO DONT and the lovely neat surface of BLUE HAWAII.
Buoyed on by finishing Enigmatist’s last prize I was quickly brought down to earth. Finished the bottom half and had ASTEROIDAL shooting up aptly but just ground to a halt.
I’m usually happy with half from this setter so will take it as a win.
Thanks bloggers for pointing out the ones I should have got and where it was beyond me. And thanks to Enigmatist.
Liked ASTEROIDAL
Very very hard. But one expects that from JH . Needed a fantastic blog to understand some of the parsing. Totally missed the theme. Saw the film as a kid many years ago. Danny Kaye was a superstar then.
Thanks, Crispy@20
I don’t see how you jump from ARMSTRONG to NAMECAPS, it’s a logic-leap too far
I’m not usually that bothered about extra words, but secretary=PA at the start of PALACE is so well-known that the “paid to assist” bit is really unnecessary.
I did about half of this before I started revealing. I do wish the Guardian site had the option to reveal single letters rather than whole words. (Sometimes when you’re stuck, what you’re looking for is a little nudge, not a full-on shove.) The other two free dailies do this, so it can’t be a technical issue. Does the Guardian’s app have that functionality? If so, maybe I should switch to that.
I think I’ve seen the movie, once, many long years ago, but don’t remember any details at all, so the theme was not there to help.
I agree with the sentiment that having hard puzzles are good, since advanced solvers also need something chewy. I imagine our former commenter Roz would have been praising this one, for example. But it was too chewy for me.
mrpenney@54, I did resort to the poor man’s single-letter reveal at some points, where I bung in parts of the clue and then check until something clicks.
Mixed bag for me, some of the clues I thought were brilliant (I liked GNORTSMRA even if it’s not quite defensible) and others were beyond me. There’s been a lot of precedent for grammatically convoluted clues; the one I found to be beyond the pale was 24d, where no matter how many commas I put in, I can’t see how “neglected” can attach to “in a.”
I half-got the theme, noticing a lot of vessels and other things that fit into a cod-medieval fantasyish setting (thought Poison, Majesty, and En Garde might be part of it), but this left me high and dry on KAYE–I thought it might be RAYE which is as legitimate a woman’s name, which is why I grumble about clues like “a woman” for a woman’s name.
For Pestle, could “ST” be a short form of “hssst”?
Thanks to Enigmatist for a challenge and scchua for taking it up.
Got about halfway and gave up in despair, so well done scchua for unraveling this brilliant but clunky puzzle. (FLAGON is missing the F in your blog btw). Great spot again Balfour @1, I knew the Danny KAYE tongue twister but apart from DRAGON and BREW, I didn’t have the fodder to twig it. I will try the setter again, but with much trepidation.
Ta both.
You can reveal single letters on guardian website
Being a bit of a beginner, I was pleased to solve one clue(en garde) on an Enigmatist crossword! Thanks to this blog, I’ve now understood the rest- but I fear it may be years before my brain learns to work this way!
Saying that I looked up the ‘pestle / vessel’ scene from the movie and had a good laugh. Definitely a great theme for a crossword. Easter eggs, I believe they’re called? A little treat for those in the know.
@57 Dinsdale: how?
Dinsdale @57
Could you explain how, please? I can’t see a way to reveal anything less than the word you have clicked in.
I was all ready to comment this morning and then the delay overlapped with a busy day, so now I am late to the party. At least it meant I had to go back and finish parsing the ones which eluded me at first – including pulling my ancient Chambers off the shelf to see if “st” meant “hush” which it confirmed.
I thought a couple verged on unfair – usually when removing or adding words to an anagram, setters use a separate anagrind if the letters of the added/subtracted word are also scrambled. “guerilla” doesn’t have that unless “out” is doing double duty. I also balked at “asteroidal” being described as “like a star”. Stars and asteroids are totally different things – can anyone give a decent explanation or shall I chalk it up as an error? Another who saw what was happening in “spaceman” but thought it more of a dingbat than a cryptic clue.
Anyhow, thanks to Enigmatist – tough as expected and I was late to see the theme which would’ve helped distinguish “Kaye” from “Raye” (my first thought, being “right” backed on to “aye” with some vague excuse as to why “back” means “on the front”…) and thank you scchua.
Thanks AlanC. Blog corrected.
Phew that was a struggle – nearly made it but had to reveal 10A in the end – amazing how many words you can come up with for “a woman” to fit _A_E – needless to say I didn’t spot the theme which would have helped in theory although it was unfamiliar to me – I’m better with Cambridge colleges 😉 I loved SPACEMAN…
Tricky puzzle which I managed to finish and largely parse, despite all the anastrophe in the clues. GUERILLA, AVENGERS, ISODONT and ASTEROIDAL were my pick of the bunch.
I rarely spot a theme and this was no exception; in fact I’m quite pleased about this because there are so many thematic entries that, had I spotted it as soon as Balfour @1, the whole thing might have been completed quickly – although the parsing would have taken longer than the grid fill! The song does ring a very faint bell, but I SO DONT like David Daniel Kaminsky (am I the only one?) that I don’t think I would have spotted it even if I had thought to look for it
Thanks to scchua and Enigmatist – bravi!
I wasn’t keen on ASTEROIDAL either but I enjoyed the puzzle although it was tricky and I agree with scchua that some of the wordplays were a bit all over the place.
I’ve never liked Danny Kaye, and I didn’t like this crossword. I too found much of the wordplay jumbled, and wonder why it is necessary to get the theme in order to understand the clues, whose answers will then lead you to the theme, which you are already presumed to have got.
And now I’ve got “Inch Worm” stuck in my head.
DNF so must avoid sour grapes as per Balfour@21, but the clueing at 10 and 16 for example seemed borderline unfair to me. A real buzz when teasing out some of the others though. One for the clever clogs, obviously. Thanks both.
Have to agree with Danny Kaye’s detractors. His performance in White Christmas is excruciating.
I enjoy the challenge of Enigmatist and I’m delighted if I finish one, but it wasn’t to be this time. I gave up with about nine clues left. If I’d persevered maybe I could have got GREEN BELTS (good clue) and a couple of the others in the top half but I think TRUE and especially KAYE would have eluded me. Well done to anyone who got the theme!
The wordplay isn’t so much jumbled as tortuous, I would say – it’s an Enigmatist trademark and *generally* it is fair once you unpick it all.
I thought GUERILLA and DIOCESES were among the best clues. GNORTSMRA is truly on another planet but I did work it out.
Oh and I got BIER for 24 down because there’s apparently a fancy wine called Barbier. Seems to fit the clue equally well? But not the impossible-for-me-to-get theme, of course.
I found this really difficult, I have been going off and on for 7 hours, finally completed with palace unparsed (thanks scchua) and pestle parsed with the same query over “st”.
I had Raye in 10A a long time, convincing myself that there were some odd wordplays elsewhere, which could mean that R for the right was useable despite the spare words. But in the end K for right of back seems a bit better, especially as I’d thought for a while there was an Arthurian theme and remembered Sir Kay (sic) from the Sword in the Stone.
I was one of the (apparently small number of) people who thought that Spaceman was a great clue.
PESTLE jumped out because I assumed it was the usual poking for piano. How does PELE + ST work?
Took me 50% longer to complete this and, like with Paul, left feeling dissatisfied. Plus the theme was a 1955 film I’ve never even heard of. Oh, well.
Re Number 20
How to go from the clue to the answer
“Armstrong, say – or GNORTSMRA?”
Armstrong’s name is in caps. And reversed
If you reverse NAMECAPS you get… spaceman
If it wasn’t for the theme I’d say Raye is a better answer than KAYE
This was hard work and brutal in places but ultimately satisfying. By the end, I had a record eight double ticks
He does seem to like using the complex subtraction technique a lot
I feel like I learned a lot about solving by doing this. At times it felt like doing one of those block puzzles where you just have to keep moving the pieces around until something fits. It was definitely a lot harder than this week’s IO in the FT
Cheers S&E
JOFT @58 and manhattan @62: as well as the more familiar meaning of “asteroid” the SOED includes: “adj Star-shaped, star-like”.
Mesnilman @67
But how do you justify going from NAME is in CAPS to NAMECAPS?
muffin @70 Rebus. ‘Say what you see’ NAMECAPS
Sorry, I’m not buying it!
Kay is a women’s name. Kaye isn’t.
Wikipedia lists 18 women called Kaye (in all of history, worldwide), so yes, perhaps we could have been given a little more to go on than “a woman” for the definition. A nudge towards the theme might even have been appropriate here.
I was born in 1952 and have never heard of this film. Liked GREEN BELT but I’m afraid much of the rest went over my head. Sorry. Thanks to both.
SPACEMAN: I agree a literal parsing of the clue would have an answer corresponding to NAME in CAPS reversed. Io’s “Politician” from yesterday was ‘correct’ in this regard – the answer needed ‘something in italics’.
I think it is fair as a visual pun and no less valid than some number clues by Qaos for instance.
Pestle has to be the solution to 25a, but how?
I had the same experience as Balfour@1, in my case being clued in by FLAGON and DRAGON. I usually don’t spot the theme, I very rarely see it before I’ve filled in the puzzle and I’ve NEVER been able to use knowledge of it to solve any clues. But this time once I had PALACE @22a I filled in POISON@22d. And with both blank at 24a and 24d I put BREW in both places and hit the check button. One stayed, one went away. That was fun.
I found the rest of the puzzle mostly impenetrable, especially the parsing. I’ve never heard of Fujairah or either of the Deses. And I think that the surface of 4 (MAJESTY) is gibberish.
mesnilman@67 If you reverse “name is in caps” you get SPACNISIEMAN. How are we supposed to know to leave out “is in”?
I had an Aunt Kay, but I’ve never heard of any woman called Kaye.
You could say that an asteroid is like a star, sort of, but something asteroidal is like an asteroid, which is a hunk of space rock.
Two comments were deleted, and I’d hoped that when that happened they’d be replaced with “comment deleted” or something like it, but instead the numbering was off. So nothing’s changed since before the numerical scramble we had a few days ago.
Thanks for puzzle with its fun theme, Enigmatist, and for the huge help, scchua. No pictures this time?
Valentine
Struggled a lot with this – some of the constructions were far from obvious, and the definitions very loose (asteroidal – come on, the clue to its actual meaning is in the name).
As for the theme, just feels pretty obscure to me. I picked up some rhyming clues, and some connected to castles, kings etc, but the specific line from the film – nope. Looked it up and it’s quite clever, especially how many words Enigmatist fitted in to the grid.
Some of his clues are clever in a good way, and some are (imho) clever in a bad way. Not sure in the end this was that fun to solve.
Lord Jim@69: If “asteroid” is already an adjective for “star-like” how does that justify “asteroidal”? An adjectival form of an adjective? That’s a bit of sillyficasiousousness. Thank you for consulting a dictionary I don’t have access to (my library district stopped paying for this service…) but I don’t think it works in this case.
My 1980’s Chambers does give “st” for a word to mean “shush” (I suppose a shortening of “hist”) so inserting that inside Pele works for me. But asteroidal I think I shall file under “errors made by setters”. They do happen.
I had exactly the same experience and sentiments as GDU.
Thanks and admiration to Enigmatist and chia.
For a setter who is capable of such elegant and smart clues as 11 and 23ac, it does seem like Enigmatist writes too many that are (for me) impossible to solve through piecing the elements together (who would guess “Po” for chamber – never heard of it – or “ST” for quietly when there are several well established letters for that) – so the number of clues you can use to get started with is fewer than in many other cryptics, which makes getting a foothold a bit tough and frustrating.
The “subtraction anagram” construction is over-used, which is just strange. As it’s not even in service of a particularly nice surface reading in most cases.
And 20ac has the illusion of cleverness, but doesn’t in fact work. Very generous to argue it does.
I did watch the video posted @ 6 – thanks for that. Very enjoyable.
BH@81 I didn’t need to guess PO – it’s come up before and I was so incensed the first time it must have stuck in the memory banks. See also ST
20ac just made me chuckle when the penny dropped – it’s just a bit of fun as Keith Barrett would say
I struggled to get into this with the south east corner being where I got a lot of progress . However when I saw 24d Brew with its absolutely horrible word order jumble I refused to continue. I also found a lot of the surfaces to be very clunky, they just read so awfully.
JOFT @80: I bought my SOED (2 vols) at a local second hand bookshop for £6 a few years ago. Prior to that I did actually own a copy of the second volume (MARL to Z) which I acquired when working in a bookshop in my youth. Someone had pinched the first volume and the second was unsaleable on its own, so the staff drew lots for it and I won. That was good, but more recently I thought I might like to know what was happening in the first half of the alphabet.
I like your “sillyficasiousousness” which deserves to be in a dictionary soon.
Pretty tough but got there in the end, with lingering doubts about “ST” for “quietly” & ASTEROIDAL. Not only did I miss the theme, I had never heard of the film – is it a musical or something? Next time Enigmatist uses a theme I hope to God it’s something I’ve heard of.
JOFT @80: I quite agree with you on ASTEROIDAL. Enigmatist has set for us an ingenious, extremely tough challenge, much of whose WP would have been lost on me without scchua’s exegesis. Perhaps in the case of 6D the setter could step in to offer a justification, or a mea culpa.
[Lord Jim@84: I recently won a £25 book prize from the Gemelo puzzle in the Observer and should, in all honesty, have used it to update my dictionaries. However a friend who with cancer recommended “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande and I was so impressed by his equanimity and peace in face of death I felt I had to follow his suggestion. Next prize, I promise I will get a better dictionary, though most of the problem is actually in bothering to reach for it rather than relying on the internet!]
I could have got 20ac sooner if I hadn’t, as usual, been thinking of the other Armstrong.
Aster is Greek for star, so asteroid means ‘ like a star’. ASTEROIDAL must mean ‘like an asteroid ‘.
Another non-fan of DK.
Well done scchua and thank you.
Did anyone complete this on the dead tree version, without aids, and without knowing the theme?
I appreciated comments here to point the way to approaching Enigmatist in the future. I noted the grammar in the ones I did solve. Others have mentioned “anastrophe” and Enigmatist’s “trademark”, and imaginary “commas”. In my case I imagined pauses and intonation as would occur in speech, with phrases not necessarily where you would expect to see them in text, and needing to be re-ordered. I believe they were more like examples of hyperbaton (appropriate word 🙂 ) than anastrophe, a subset of this. Yoda on steroids.
Zoot: English is not Greek. A word may have an etymological root, but it does not mean that it has that meaning – words derive from others. An asteroid is not a star any more than a planet is a wanderer or a comet is a hair. Etymology is fascinating, informative and fun but it it is not the definition of words.
“st” for quiet, besides being new to me, was particularly confusing because it was in a word beginning with p, which as any fule kno is musical notation for quiet… I never did parse that one.
Valentine @ 78 Re the numbering and deleted comments.
kenmac/admin, after a lot of discussion on Site Feedback and his post New approach to comment numbering has decided to revert to the old way and advised that deleted posts will not be indicated.
I believe that once people realise what’s happened, which became obvious earlier on today, the best workaround is to refer to the comment you wish to reply to, with the name and timestamp, eg Valentine @ 7.13 pm.
From observation, comments which don’t comply with site policy occur more frequently in a contentious puzzle like this, and the sequencing has a greater impact when there are numerous comments. Deleted comments aren’t common but present a problem for Admin and bloggers.
I got it done. The theme means nothing to me even now it’s been discussed. I agree with Bodycheetah @68 about Raye (who I saw on TV this week) over KAYE, and the much easier Io in yesterday’s FT.
Thanks Scchua, that was a task.
No one commented on the ellipses “linking” 22a and 23a – I couldn’t see any reason for them
Dave Ellison @95/12:06: Ellipses rarely mean anything. Sometimes they help the setter make half-sentences into plausible clues but usually they can be ignored.
paddymelon @ 9.40pm: Yes, I completed it in the newspaper and didn’t spot the theme. It did occur to me that THE COURT was a rather odd inclusion, so perhaps I should have twigged that it connected to other entries. Not that it would have helped me because I don’t know the film. Themes are great when you know them, a bit annoying when you don’t. I managed to parse everything except SPACEMAN but, like others, had some doubts here and there.
There seems to be little consistency in ratings of Guardian Cryptics of late.Seemingly innocuous quick cryptics and quiptics can be more challenging than the weekday ones.At times we are alerted by the reputation of certain setters.Lately everyone seems to follow the template set by a ‘notorious’ setter(I think you know who he is).So instead of censoring comments come up with a difficulty rating score so the average crossword enthusiast/solver won’t be frustrated.Leave the tougher ones to the braniacs.
Wow Hector @ 12.38 am. I am impressed! Gives me hope for the future, following on what I’ve learned today.
I’m far from Enigmatist’s wingman here but ST for quiet and PO for chamber are fairly common, particularly in barred puzzles. That said, you can try and convince me from now until the end of time that SPACEMAN works but it just doesn’t.
Thanks, paddymelon @ 12.50 am. Experience counts for a lot. I’ve been doing Guardian crosswords for even longer than Enigmatist has been setting them.
Jack @96 12.11am thanks. Except there was a pair of clues the other week with AUNT and UNCLE and without the ellipses the second was unsolvable.
I got a tiny handful of clues, liked DIOCESES even if I did spend too much time trying to work out the missing OC letters. And even after revealing didn’t get much of the parsing. Most enjoyable. After all, if every crossword were in one’s Goldilocks zone (Monday) there would be nothing to strive for in improving. Thanks both!
Surely a three-digit number is easier to remember and follow than the time – which has to be qualified with ante or post? Ah well!
Being born in 1956, the year the film was released I am, at 69, going on 70 perhaps too young to know the film. I am also too old to know ‘How to train your dragon’ Dungeons and Dragons and not into The Game of Thrones – all of which I assumed were where the theme might have come from.
Mr Google, presented with the words I had solved then supplied the tongue twister scene and I completed the rest. I think the younger cruciverbalists would have also struggled.
But parsing of a few, even with the above explanations seems weak. I agree that reading some clues with pauses where a comma might be inserted makes sense.
Well, I filled the grid and reverse engineered the parsings – using every available aid.
There were plenty of belly laughs, at the often comically-contrived wordplay, so thanks Enigmatist for those.
Incidentally I had RYAN – the Irish lady’s name – at first for 10a, which works, and held me up for some time.
Cheers all.
After getting FLAGON, NICETIES and EN GARDE I had to reveal everything else and even then could only parse a couple of them. Enigmatist is out of my league and I’m in awe of schua and all the others who completed and parsed this.
James@102: You are quite right and it just goes to show that every crossword rule is there to be broken (especially if Paul in the setter). IIRC the fact that the ellipses were meaningful was commented on at the time as being the exception. Keeps us all on our toes, beginners or old hats.
James@102 (or @ 7.13 am) Using the timestamp was a useful measure during the recent period when the means of referring to an earlier comment was changed twice within a few days: the one thing that remained constant was the timestamp, and some of us began using that rather than the suggested 3-digit number.
Hector @ October 18, 2025 at 12:38 am
I am very impressed. This was way, way, way beyond my level. I only got the right answers because classic movies are my thing and I got the theme.
How did you parse Kaye?
I couldn’t decide on which girl’s name to go for (best guess R for Raye) until I got the theme.
MCourtney@108:(if you’re still here) – I parsed KAYE in the same way as scchua, sharing doubts about whether ‘Right to back’ can mean ‘right-hand, ie last, letter of back’. RAYE didn’t occur to me because it’s not a name I know. If I had thought of it I would probably have rejected it on the grounds that ‘Right to back vote’ suggests – to me, anyway – R after AYE, not before it. Oh, and the list of names in Chambers includes KAYE but not RAYE.
What a joyless grind that was.
It’s Sunday and we’ve finally thrown in the towel on this. A DNF for us by a long way! Never heard of the film, which didn’t help, and not on this setter’s wavelength yet.
Loved DRAGON, and really loved SPACEMAN … what a fabulous clue (when we finally got it).
Having finally admitted defeat and revealed some 4 clues (with another couple unparsed) I can admit it was just way above my level. Maybe if I’d heard of the film in question I’d have enjoyed it more. Thanks to blogger and setter.
In defence of 6D, my Chambers app has ‘A starfish, a member of the Asteroidea’ as second definition of asteroid, so ‘like a star’ works. I spent what felt like hours staring at that one with a couple of crossers in thinking ‘but it’s too many letters for sidereal…’
Just finished. We got everything right apart from inserting RAYE (a popular singer apparently) instead of KAYE. We parsed ‘to back vote’ as AYE, and so had no spare bits of clue. I suppose we would have realised had we known about the theme, but I still feel mildly cheated.
Lizzie @ 73 and others. KAYE is listed in the Some First Names section of Chambers, so I don’t think there can be any objections to its use here. I liked SPACEMAN – the “?” at the end alerts us to a bit of a liberty. I found every clue perfectly sound, as I would expect from JH; I was initially unhappy about the definition of ASTEROIDAL but that definition is supported by Chambers.
Suspect no-one will read this. Took the wife and I three days and several sittings to complete this. What a toughie! Had never heard of the film (but was aware of Danny Kaye when I was very young) so didn’t get the theme.
One small quibble: 6 down: asteroidal is to do with asteroids, not stars and they are VERY different, not “like” one another at all.
Thanks to the blogger and the setter
SPACEMAN, an awesome clue
Finished! Looks like some people were a bit quicker than me.
Getting more zen about these things. Got 7 answers and just now looking at the solution parsing understand why. It’s a game getting good at these things and there are levels. GK, abstract thought and rule following in varying measure. I’ll never be a grandmaster but my chess gets better the more I play. Ommmm.