Guardian 26,134 by Philistine

by

A week to Christmas, my first Philistine I believe.

Some very terse cluing and some rather misleading to those used to Rufus’s style but not too difficult in hindsight.

Hope to see some of you Saturday.

Across

8 Rate it in green (8)
CELERITY
IT in CELERY, Green meaning celery is pushing it a bit in my opinion

9 See 3
 

10 Modern and successful city hotel (2-4)
HI-TECH
HIT & EC(london postcode) & H(otel)

11 Start to act strangely once seen (5,3)
SCENE ONE
[ONCE SEEN]*

12 Long live the test! (4)
VIVA
Double definition

13 Aunt is prim as a result of this (10)
PURITANISM
[AUNT IS PRIM]* I guess this an old favourite but a nice anagram

15 Artist picked up according to girl (7)
CEZANNE
Sounds like SAYS ANNE

16 Wine served in cabarets in Amsterdam (7)
RETSINA
Hidden answer

18 A toast and thunderous applause starts after Schubert composition (10)
BRUSCHETTA
SCHUBERT* & T(hunderous) A(pplause), seem something very similar recently.

19 Having polished off dregs, drunk daughter’s in a state (4)
UTAH
[DAUGHTERS (- DREGS)]*

20 Shiny animated design (8)
DIAMANTE
[ANIMATED]*

22 One by one, outspoken junior medical staff put in prison (6)
INTERN
Three parter: sounds like IN TURN, and 2 defintions

23 <sub>c</sub><sup>o</sup><sub>u</sub><sup>r</sup><sub>s</sub><sup>e</sup> (6)
SLALOM
Anyone else have problems reading the font on this? Anyway it’s a weaving course or slalom

24 Birds fight and have arguments (8)
SPARROWS
SPAR & ROWS

Down

1 The real McCoy (8,7)
DEFINITE ARTICLE
The is the definite article and so is “the real McCoy”

2 All nations enlarge (7,8)
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
ENLARGE* assembled

3,9 Lightly seasoned (4,1,5,2,4)
WITH A PINCH OF SALT
Double Definition, taking lightly or disbelievingly and straight def

4 Caesar declared this second blot on the landscape (7)
EYESORE
Veni Vidi Vici etc, I came I saw…. the 2nd bit heard

5,21 Warning call from Christian, perhaps? (8)
FORENAME
FORE (warning) and CALL (name)

6 Most enthusiastic, like Spooner’s cheap crème anglaise (2,4,2,7)
AS KEEN AS MUSTARD
Creme Anglais is custard so spoonerism of AS MEAN AS CUSTARD

7 Arms and a form of arm support make smooth replacement for 24 leaders (6,3,6)
SLINGS AND ARROWS
SLING and SAND replacing SP in (sp)ARROWS (24)

14 A jerk leading the Catholic Church? (3,7)
THE VATICAN
This appears to be A TIC (jerk) in THE VAN (leading). Doesn’t work perfectly but well enough to give me the answer

17 I don’t believe articles first present in robbery (7)
ATHEIST
Another 3 parter: Def and A THE (articles) & 1st and AT HEIST

21 See 5
*anagram

41 comments on “Guardian 26,134 by Philistine”

  1. Thanks Philistine and flashling
    Although this was a rapid solve, I really enjoyed it. Favourites were CEZANNE, EYESORE and THE VATICAN (which worked for me, flashling).
    Veni, vidi, vice – the second is “vidi”, which is “I saw” – homphone for “eyesore”>.

  4. Thanks, flashling, for the blog and Philistine for another most enjoyable puzzle.

    I agree with muffin re EYESORE [apart from the typo for ‘vici’ 😉 ].

    THE VATICAN works for me, too: ‘leading’ is ‘*in* the van’

  6. Muffin, you’re too keen, I was still proof reading! Doing this on my laptop I keep hitting the touchpad by mistake and accidentally deleting stuff… Hmm clue for 23a hasn’t come out too well. Sigh.

  7. Thanks flashling. Arachne had BRUSCHETTA on 31 Oct. I found the long ones easy but THE VATICAN hard, thought it might be a wrestling term. I liked the double clueing in 17D.

  9. Good puzzle with nice variety of cluing.

    Thanks Flashling; I thought 23 was something to do with bumpy golf courses until I got the crossers. I particularly liked EYESORE, GENERAL ASSEMBLY and CEZANNE.

  10. Thanks flashling and Philistine. The ones I thought the weakest, ie those I didn’t get 🙂 I now see are the best. Thanks Eileen for ‘in the van’. Brilliant. Had to be Utah but I failed to see why. I loved this crossed but all over too fast.

  11. I do enjoy Philistine’s wit. My only comment, and I am patriotically biased here of course, is that given how easy 16A was, he might as well have gone all the way and made it Athens instead of Amsterdam!

  13. Thanks, flashling

    Enjoyable puzzle. The RHS fell out very easily for me, with the LHS taking just a little longer – inexplicably, 1d didn’t spring immediately to mind.

    I agree with the quibbles about ‘green’ = CELERY. As a shorthand term for ‘green vegetables’, the word is generally plural (‘greens’) – and in any case celery is often blanched and therefore white!

    But this is a very minor point in an interestingly clued crossword.

  14. Thanks Philistine and flashling

    I think there is a third element to 6D

    “Most enthusiastic, like Spooner’s cheap crème anglaise (2,4,2,7)
    AS KEEN AS MUSTARD
    Creme Anglais is custard so spoonerism of AS MEAN AS CUSTARD” seems to me to ignore the ‘cheap’.

    My take is that it’s a double (? triple) Spooner, the phrase being A MEAN-ASS CUSTARD.

    Any takers?

  16. Thanks flashling and Philistine

    22 clues in a 15×15 grid must be about as few as you can get – that coupled with this being at the very easiest end of Philistine’s range made it a very quick solve indeed. But very good fun, nonetheless, and I agree with most others that the West fell into place more easily than the East.

    Simon S @14 – I thought “cheap” was there to indicate the “mean” part of the Spoonserism, simple as that.

    Many have argued previously that sometimes it would be better for individual word counts not to be given. I think a good example is 3,9 – a lovely clue, but given the (4,1,5,2,4) a complete give-away. Would anyone else have prefered (15 letters, 5 words) to make it a bit more of a challenge?

  17. Re the last para in the Comment by Mitz:

    I don’t quite agree! It is necessary for the solver to know that the solution is not just one word. If the enu is given merely as 16, solvers, all but especially beginners, would grope.

    After all, they need to know what they are looking for!

    If as you and some people believe that the multi-phrasal enu is a dead giveaway, then the indication must be (5 words) – just enough hint!

  18. hi all,

    been away for a while but i want to come back soon. Got distracted by other activities, but i now realise that cryptic crosswords are the best brain workout!

    And ….. glad that Australia regained the Ashes

    warm regards from michelle

  21. I enjoyed this but had Cezanne but could not see why. I still do not understand how picked up = sounds like;or have I got it wrong?

  23. John M @ 21/22

    Someone says “Says Anne” but you pick it up as “Cezanne”

    Cf the source of the noun for this
    “They have slain Sir Richard and Lady Mondegreen” where the original was “They have slain Sir Richard and laid hom on the green”

    hth

  24. …laid *him* on the green…should look at the screen, but if I didn’t look at the keyboard the results would be even worse!

  25. Hi JohnM @22; Collins gives this for pick-up: ‘ to notice or sense ? she picked up a change in his attitude.’ ….. if that helps.

  26. Easiest of the week so far, but enjoyable nonetheless (especially the EYESORE). I am surprised nobody has commented on 23 yet, which is more Dingbats than crossword clue…

  28. Thanks flashling and Philistine

    Very enjoyable with a nice turn of humour.

    I particularly liked 19a, 1d, 2d, 7d, and 14d.

    I only managed 23a after getting all the crossing letters. My reaction was to see it moving up and down rather than from side to side.

  29. If you ‘pick something up’, you ‘hear’ it.

    Re enumeration, all that ‘5 words’ stuff is for making harder puzzles even harder: these are dailies, and we should be given a helping hand here and there.

  30. My smiley to Michelle didn’t work. Unlike most my lhs fell in and the rhs needed a bit more work. Eileen thanks I knew that and misled myself whilst blogging, a mistake no-one else ever makes 🙂

  31. This was the sort of puzzle I really enjoy: clever clues, a good challenge but nothing that should make a reasonably experienced solver go scuttling for the dictionary, a good variety of clues and nothing to make a maiden aunt blush. Very appropriate for a ‘broadsheet’ crossword
    I thought initially that 1d would lead to the name of the actor who played ‘Bones’ McCoy in Star Trek, but quickly saw that the numeration would not work, and it would have been too obvious.
    Best wishes to everyone for Saturday’s get together: I would love to be there, but logistical considerations make it impractical for me.

  33. Although this was a fun solve a lot of the definitions were too obvious, to me at least, and it was over far too quickly for me to rate this puzzle as highly as some of you have.

    I’m another in the camp of those who found the RHS easier than the LHS. CELERITY was my LOI after DIAMANTE. The clue for THE VATICAN worked for me.

    Welcome back Michelle. I’m glad you hadn’t come a cropper in one of the bushfires or fallen into a sinkhole.

  34. Apart from “something which might be rated” there seems no definition for CELERITY. This led me to TEMERITY, which could at least be greenness, abruptly as just green I supposed.

    That was my only quibble, several beauties here e.g. 2d.

    Thanks one and all.

  36. An enjoyable puzzle but definitely the easiest Philistine I’ve ever done.

    Luckily I had a mental block on ID and 8A otherwise it would have been all over in 15 minutes!

    Thanks to Flashling anf Philistine

  37. Thank you, Philistine – nice to finish a Guardian crossword and to parse the clues to my satisfaction. Just a bit dubious about WITH A PINCH OF SALT which didn’t seem very cryptic.

  38. I didn’t think this was Philistine’s easiest – for me that was his first ever, a couple of years ago, one in which the definitions weren’t concealed enough.

    I liked a lot in this crossword.
    Philistine is a thoughtful setter with some original ideas.

    But there were also a few things I wasn’t very happy with.
    Just minor quibbles but I feel the need to mention them.

    While I can live with ‘green’ for ‘a vegetable’ (eg WordWeb gives us that), I think in 10ac ‘city’ for EC is false decapitalisation. In my opinion, it should be ‘the City’ or at least ‘City’.

    In the otherwise very nice 2d, I think there is a question mark needed to indicate the reverse anagram. Thus far, I have never come across a situation in which the setter didn’t add anything (like eg “as suggested by” or the like).

    That I do not like clues with two definitions or two constructions (22ac, 17d) very much is just a personal thing. So, no criticism. To me, it feels like a kind of padding which I would like to avoid.

    But.
    All in all a very enjoyable puzzle for which many thanks to Philistine.

    Thanks, Flashling [hope to see you coming Saturday]

  39. Just a quick last comment. I have read the comments but perhaps I missed it.

    However I have no problem with celery = green as I read it as a type of green. There are lots places on the net which in defining colours have a “Celery green”

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