Guardian Cryptic N° 26,027 by Paul

by

The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26027.

The humour of this one is to be found plentifully, mainly in its surfaces.

Across
1. Might a mouse stew do it as a dish of leftovers? (6,3,6)
BUBBLE AND SQUEAK A ghoulish clue to start with, which I would describe as a definition and literal interpretation. For those who do not know, bubble and squeak is boiled potatoes and cabbage (and maybe other items) left over from last night’s dinner, and fried up for breakfast.
9. Lacking leadership, sly fools, horribly good things? (9)
OXYMORONS [f]OXY MORONS (‘sly fools’) minus its first letter (‘lacking leadership’), defined by an example (and justified by the question mark).
10. One’s blooming rates out of order! (5)
ASTER An anagram (‘out of order’) of ‘rates’.
11. Problem with hose leak (3)
RUN Cryptic definition, with the ‘hose’ as stockings.
12. Combine procreation with some wriggling (11)
INCORPORATE An anagram (‘with some wriggling’) of ‘procreation’.
13. Cleric‘s target to arrest crook, a religious leader (10)
PREBENDARY An envelope (‘to arrest’) of BEND (‘crook’) plus ‘a’ plus R (‘Religious leader’) in PREY (‘target’).
15. Audible drop in harmony (4)
SYNC A homophone (‘audible’) of SINK (‘drop’).
18. Long trek ends in Crawley, no quantum leap (4)
YOMP Final letters (‘ends’) of ‘CrawleY, nO quantuM leaP‘.
20. One following chatter incessantly, partial to rubbish, their characters limited (10)
TWITTERATI An envelope (‘partial to’?) of WITTER (‘chatter incessantly’) in TAT (‘rubbish’); plus I (‘one following’), with an extended definition.
23. Once a safe pair of hands, Brown bailed out institutions (6,5)
GORDON BANKS A charade of GORDON (‘Brown’) plus BANKS (‘bailed out institutions’). Gordon Banks was a famous England goalie.
25. Boat with pronounced curve (3)
ARK A homophone (‘pronounced’) of ARC (‘curve’). I do not think there can be any controversy about that homophone.
26. Appropriate French square (5)
SEIZE Double definition: the French is sixteen (= four squared).
27. Bird during row starts to show some humility (9)
LOWLINESS An envelope (‘during’) of OWL (‘bird’) in LINE (‘row’); plus S S (‘starts to Show Some’).
28. Original title back in Motown to original children’s song (3,3,4,2,3)
ONE MAN WENT TO MOW An envelope (‘in’) of EMAN WEN, a reversal (‘back’) of NEW (‘original) plus NAME (‘title’) in ONTTOMOW, an anagram (the second ‘original’) of ‘Motown to’. I must admit that the answer came from the enumeration and the W, with the wordplay as an afterthought (considerably after).
…
Down
1. Life far more than a sentence? (9)
BIOGRAPHY Cryptic definition.
2. Going further shaking bottom, extremely cute singer (7)
BEYONCE A charade of BEYON[d] (‘going further’; a little loose) minus its last letter (‘shaking bottom’) plus CE (‘extremely CutE‘).
3. One going topless, idol is out to be lauded as a celebrity (8)
LIONISED An anagram (‘out’) of ‘[o]ne’ (‘going topless’) plus ‘idol is’.
4. Some heaven-bound nuncio zapped, lifeless (5)
AZOIC A hidden answer (‘some’) reversed (‘heaven-bound’) in ‘nunCIO ZApped’.
5. Ditch unfaithful lover for soldier (6,3)
DESERT RAT A charade of DESERT (‘ditch’) plus RAT (‘unfaithful lover’).
6. Clam — 50p with a pig? (6)
QUAHOG A charade of QU[id] (’50p’ – half a quid) plus ‘a’ plus HOG (‘pig’).
7. Current meeting place set to be switched before end of Jan? (7)
ESTUARY A charade of EST, an anagram (‘to be switched’) of ‘set’ plus UARY (‘end of Jan[UARY]’).
8. Change of heart in a little Australian prayer (5)
KYRIE KYLIE (Minogue, ‘little Australian’) with the middle letter changed (‘change of heart’).
14. Like this clue: “Bowel disorder” — its location? (4,5)
DOWN BELOW A charade of DOWN (‘like this clue’) plus BELOW, an anagram (‘disorder’) of ‘bowel’, with an extended definition.
16. Little pecker, a tool for the brave (9)
CHICKASAW A charade of CHICK (‘little pecker’) plus ‘a’ plus SAW (‘tool’), for the Native American tribe.
17. Change in wavelength, as Shed deciphered during break (3,5)
RED SHIFT An envelope (‘during’) of EDSH, an anagram (‘deciphered’) of ‘Shed’ in RIFT (‘break’). Clever chap, that Shed.
19. Stain on little baby’s pot (7)
MARMITE A charade of MAR (‘stain’) plus MITE (‘little baby’). If you look on the label, you will see a marmite, a cooking pot.

21. California city with an aspiration to accommodate man (7)
ANAHEIM An envelope (‘to accommodate’) of HE (‘man’) in AN AIM (‘an aspiration’).
22. Wine shop where old, old bar’s opening up (6)
BODEGA AGED (‘old’) plus O (‘old’) plus B (‘Bar’s opening’), all reversed (‘up’).
23. Try to outline philosophy that’s a contrivance (5)
GISMO An envelope (‘to outline’) of ISM (‘philosophy’) in GO (‘try’).
24. Just arrived, like a hopeless situation? (2-3)
NO-WIN NOW IN (‘just arrived’).

47 comments on “Guardian Cryptic N° 26,027 by Paul”

  1. Thanks Peter & Paul: this was brilliant. Loads of new stuff to me, but strangely not the 25a goalie. The novelties were all practically guessable without aids, thought I tried ‘quasow’ for the 6d clam and ‘yump’ for the 18a trek, before immediately sorting both out. CHICKADAW and RED SHIFT had to be right. Loved the surfaces, BEYONCE’s esp.

  2. Learned what marmite (lower case) was while having a ball. I knew I was going to like this when two of my favourite foods – one reviewed above – came up. (I see the write-up includes Kylie, which is rather serendipitous.) This being a Paul puzzle, I was having all sorts of licentious thoughts when left with –i-k at the start of the ‘Injun’ clue. Getting SYNC left me feeling just a tad let down…

  3. Thanks PeterO and Paul
    Very entertaining. I wasted some time trying to use “koala” as the little Australian in 8dn. “Twitterati” didn’t turn up in word searches, so I had to work it out for myself.
    I wonder why 21dn says “California city” rather than “Californian”? – it wouldn’t alter the clue to use the adjective rather than the noun.
    “French square” (though correct, of course) was rather an obscure way of defining “seize”, I thought, making this the weakest clue in the puzzle for me.

  4. Answering my own question, I suppose it adds an extra bit of misdirection – “California” often means “cal” in crosswords.

  5. Muffin @3 – I can understand the school of thought that is not keen on the unspecified use of ‘square’ or ‘key’, but I thought this was a pretty elegant clue. Also, I will now never mix seize and siege up again!

  6. Thanks, PeterO. I agree this was great fun from Paul (and by no means his easiest.)

    Two very small quibbles:

    I wasn’t too keen on TWITTERATI – the word is plural but the extended definition gives a bit of both…

    Also, I don’t see the need for the “as” in the clue for RED SHIFT.

  7. Neil @6 (and PeterO) – I’ve never tweeted in my life but I believe the reference is to the limit on characters (letters) that can be used on Twitter. Top clue, I thought.

  8. Loved it. Had to take a punt on ‘quahog’ as I didn’t know it, and I too considered ‘quasow’ before discarding it. I also looked at ‘koala’ for the little Australian before the crosser led me to Kylie. Always reassuring to find that others have examined the same misdirected path as me.

  9. Some difficult ones here! I tried to fit ‘INTERCOURSE” into 12ac knowing it was Paul.

    My son would have known QUAHOG as the setting for ‘Family Guy’, rather than the clam.

    My husband has just visited ANAHEIM, for a conference – not Disney World. Most of the accommodation in the hotel was not for men, but young families with small girls dressed up as fairy princesses.

    I smiled when I solved the fondly remembered GORDON BANKS, ex Leicester City goalie (like Peter Shilton) and with a safer pair of hands than Joe Hart in the first half last night.

    I also like MARMITE, but realise some of you may hate it!

  10. NeilW @6

    While adding two tiny quibbles to the two that PeterO includes in his fine blog of Paul’s fine puzzle you fail to observe that 11a RUN is a CD&D. Shouldn’t ‘leak’ be underlined?

  12. Hi rhotician. My tiny quibbles were with the setter, not the blogger.

    Hi ulaca. The TWITTERATI are the “elite” senders of tweets so, as PeterO says, one really needs to take the whole clue to get the definition.

  14. Off to a flying start thanks to one of my favourite dishes BUBBLE AND SQUEAK, and hence a whole load of consonants to start a host of down clues with. I was pleased to see Paul throw in a couple of contemporary allusions too, TWITTERATI and the altered KYLIE – he’s good at doing this. Despite having all the checkers, OXYMORONS gave me difficult until I twigged that FOXY had to be decapitated; I’d been trying to insert an anag of FOOLS, but that’s what misdirection is all about.

    Like yesterday, not the hardest puzzle that the setter has set, but full of clever surfaces.

  15. Yes ‘their characters limited’ is the def, the other parts are all ‘cryptic’, although I also feel that the ‘partial to’ is not good. A very small cirticisn though, because this was REALLY good.

    I probably like GORDON BANKS the best, and I remember his save against ‘Pele’!

    Rowls.

  16. I think an additional layer to this crossword is that Paul has ensured that all the letters of the alphabet from A to Z are used in the answers.

  17. Like George @9, I too thought Paul must have included INTERCOURSE at 12a!

    A brilliant crossword – splendid clues and fun throughout and I actually noticed it was a pangram.

  18. Fun crossword with some stunning clues.

    Thanks PeterO; I thought the ‘little Australian’ in 8 might have been a ‘kanga.’
    ‘Little pecker, a tool for the brave’ is a typical Paulian clue, which raised a smile. 🙂

    I didn’t know that marmite was a pot.

  23. Thanks Simon S; MYVC is the ‘Make Your Vote Count (MYVC)’ campaign organised by the PCS Union….. I’ll get me coat…….

  26. Thanks PeterO.

    A gem of a crossword. Top clues, too numerous to mention.

    I’m still with NeilW @6 on TWITTERATI being a plural. I can see how it works and understand the ‘whole clue’ comments remain unconvinced. Perhaps Paul would drop by and enlighten.

    Other than that, a beauty.

  27. As I understand it, “California” is the adjective – think of the Beach Boys’ song. A Californian is an individual from California.

  28. Hi NeilW @12

    Yes, but by implication you are criticizing as incomplete the blogger’s criticism of the setter. I am criticizing as incomplete your criticism of the blogger. There’s so little to complain about. I was sort of hoping that someone would criticize my post, possibly on the grounds of violation of site policy, and hopefully inaccurately.

  30. Thanks PeterO and Paul. I enjoyed this a lot. 2d, 12a and 14d were well up (down?) to Paul’s usual standard 😉

  31. Thanks to Crux for the blog and Paul for a very fun solve. I should say “partial solve” in my case, as I fell into the pangram trap after getting AZOIC and QUAHOG among my first three answers in. That left me hoping that MARJANE (just a letter shy of MARY JANE) was a slang for pot (19d) (but JANE = little baby?) and wondering if perhaps SUAVE was the French word for square (26a). (I actually jotted down SEIZE but couldn’t justify it, and it didn’t fit with my invented slang for pot.) Got KYRIE but wondered if perhaps KYDIE (“kiddie”) was Aussie slang. Didn’t realize Kylie Minogue was only 5’2″.

    Finally, I was most pleased to see the appearance of another keeper in 23a!

  32. Sorry, should have thanked *PeterO* for the blog! (Glanced up quickly and saw “Crux” at the top, which of course was just a link to the previous blog.)

  34. Thanks PeterO and Paul

    A high class puzzle which I only got to this afternoon in a rather too tired state after a three hour drive to do it proper justice.

    Like molonglo I tried quasow first and qhahog second @6d.

    I guessed twitterati but parsed it as twitter + a + ti(p).

    I failed on 26a (my last in). The given answer is clearly correct – but I guessed ‘swipe’ for ‘appropriate’, and then googled to find there is a new(?) swipe card system called ‘square’ which has been tried out in France by Macdonalds! It is sometimes hard to tell whether one ought to know that sort of thing!

    I ticked a few that happened to please – 9a, 28a, 17d and 23d

  35. Can’t see the problem with TWITTERATI, which parses as blogged I’d have to say. Maybe the cryptic engineering helps a bit, but the definition part pretty much scores a direct hit. Have you never tweeted? It’s a pain when you run put of letters, isn’t it. I always want to say more.

  37. Excellent puzzle. AZOIC and INCORPORATE were my last two in, and I don’t often fail to see a reverse hidden and an anagram until the end.

    I didn’t have a problem with QUAHOG. I’m a huge fan of Family Guy (and Seth MacFarlane’s other cartoons), and as well as Quahog being the name of the town the local bar in the show is called The Drunken Clam.

  38. Another good puzzle in what is turning out to be a good week.

    I found this at the difficult end of the Paul spectrum! I was held up by inserting PLACE at 26A. (Definitely a French square and possibly “appropriate” at a stretch?!)

    I have never understood the interest of certain people on here in “pangrams”. Why would one notice that all letters of the alphabet are used in a particular puzzle and more importantly why would one care? It’s not a particularly difficult thing to achieve nor is it a particularly exciting thing to observe??????????

    Thanks to PeterO and Paul.

  39. Dave E at no 33: that is indeed scary. Must watch what I post in future in case it comes back to haunt me.

    Delightful puzzle from Paul today. Thank you to him and to Peter.

  40. Brendan @38: I only learned of pangrams (and other so-called ninas) from this site. I have never attempted to set a crossword myself, but I suspect you may be right in that it is not a particularly difficult thing to achieve. Regardless of whether a setter creates a pangram deliberately or by chance, I can only attest that, on more than one occasion, suspicion of a pangram helped me figure out a remaining answer. Of course, in this puzzle, it had the opposite effect. I agree that it is not “particularly exciting”, but I would argue it’s still worth noting. Perhaps you could liken it to a pitcher tossing a complete game in baseball. Nothing so special as a no-hitter (or even a complete game shutout), but still of note.

  41. Keeper @40

    Well each to his own.

    As a pangram is almost never indicated it is certainly of no use in solving and I personally find it totally unnoteworthy!

    By the way your baseball allusions meant absolutely nothing to me as I don’t even know the rules of the game. 🙂

    (Please don’t try and enlighten me.)

  42. Brendan, I see now your question was a rhetorical one. Apologies for attempting to offer a divergent opinion. A mistake I won’t repeat.

  43. Ah, these maverick characters.

    Oh please, no, I don’t mean B(NTO) or Keeper, I mean Js, Qs, Xs etc, you know, the ones we see clued rather more rarely. And usually with a rare degree of skill.

  44. When you can get a small amount of help from the suspicion that there may be a pangram is when you spot several of the unusual letters eg Q, Z etc but notice that maybe eg K hasn’t turned up yet – so if you only have a few unentered cells left you could try K in one of them.

    Otherwise, I agree, spotting one after finishing the puzzle doesn’t make the earth move any better for me.

    Lovely puzzle – many thanks to setter and blogger.

  45. Keeper @42

    Sorry, I seem to have upset you? 🙁

    I was merely continuing the discussion and I am very happy for you to have different opinions than me. (Most people do and I almost certain that this isn’t a criminal offense.)

    Please accept my apologies.

    However I’d come with your emotional armour on next time as the forum has lots of feisty posters. (Mainly miserable old gits like myself.)

    While I’m here and totally off-topic. The references to a “marmite” reminded me of happy days in Antwerp. I was there for a year or two and remember that Friday night is the big night out around the hundreds of excellent bars and cafes there.

    People always start late and finish early. One particulrly fine establishment was called “Marmite” (Marr- Meet-ah). I recall one beautiful Summer when I was in there and it was totally packed inside and outside. I asked one of my Belgian chums what time it was? “Ah early yet. It’s only 3:30. (That was a.m. 🙂 )

  46. No worries, Brendan. After a solid night’s sleep, your post seems to lack the bite I read into it the first reading. That’s what I get for being up all night tending to a newborn. I shall come better armoured next time. And apologies for my own cantankerousness. 🙂

    p.s. I promise to abstain from future baseball allusions, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to produce any cricket, rugby or snooker allusions…now football (no, not the American version), there’s something I know a thing or two about.

  47. There were plenty of new words for me in this puzzle – QUAHOG, AZOIC, PREBENDARY, YOMP, footballer GORDON BANKS, CHICKASAW, RED SHIFT, MARMITE = ‘pot’, and the song ONE MAN WENT TO MOW.

    I particularly liked 25a, 9a, 24d and my favourites were 1a BUBBLE AND SQUEAK, 7d ESTUARY, 5d DESERT RAT, 15a SYNC.

    I couldn’t parse 26a (it’s very clever!) & 28a (forgot to try!).

    Thanks Paul and PeterO.

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