Guardian 26,338 by Brummie

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Found this very difficult, and in the end had to guess-then-Google a couple of unfamiliar words…

…at 21ac and 7dn. A lot to like though, including the theme around dance – a mention in the first clue 8ac, then QUICK/STEP, JITTER/BUG, VIENNESE WALTZ, BEGUINE, VILLANELLE, TARANTELLA, FOX/TROT. My favourite individual clues were the charades of 1, 6 and 13dn, as well as 19 and 20dn.

Across
8 EXCUSE ME Caught with dancing muse in river, I’m sorry I have to go (6,2)
=”I’m sorry I have to go”. C[aught] is a cricketing abbreviation, together with (muse)*, all inside EXE=”river” in Devon
9 QUICK Perfunctory “medic” with heart replacement (5)
=”Perfunctory”. QUaCK=”medic” complete with skeptical quote marks, and with the a at it’s heart replaced with an I
10 STEP Second favourite revolving stage (4)
=”stage”. S[econd] plus reversal (“revolving”) of PET=”favourite”
11 FEUDAL LORD Old master’s dreadful composition — see inside (6,4)
=”Old master”. (dreadful)* with LO=”see” [over there!] inside
12 JITTER Tart’s topping dislodged by Jack’s nervous movement (6)
=”nervous movement”. bITTER=”Tart”, with the top b dislodged by J[ack]
14 NAFFNESS Back cooler on top of fur cape, which is just awful (8)
=”which is just awful”. Reversal (“Back”) of FAN=”cooler”, with the top letter of F[ur], plus NESS=”cape”
16 NAIROBI Capital new look waistband (7)
=”Capital”. N[ew] plus AIR=”look” plus OBI=”waistband”
18 EXCLAVE A bit of a state when completely surrounded by foreigners (7)
=a portion of a state (nation) that is entirely surrounded by other states’ territory. The cryptic definition suggests a personal unease at being among foreigners.
21 ROENTGEN X-ray unit processes not green (8)
=an old unit of measurement for X-rays. (not green)*
23 PREFER Like more piano? Relate (6)
=”Like more”. P[iano] plus REFER=”Relate”
24 STEER CLEAR Take care to avoid ox on plain (5,5)
=”Take care to avoid”. STEER=”ox” plu CLEAR=”plain”
26 TONK Beat bird back (4)
=”Beat”. reversal (“back”) of KNOT=a wading bird
27 WALTZ Easily get through Disney zone? (5)
=”Easily get through”. WALT Disney, plus Z[one]
28 RESPONSE Insecure person taking drugs as the answer (8)
=”answer”. (Person)*, taking E’S=plural of E[cstasy]=”drugs” inside it
Down
1 EXIT VISA A country’s get-out: providing former broadcaster with tax-free investment (4,4)
=”A country’s get-out”. EX=”former” plus ITV=”broadcaster” plus ISA=”tax-free investment”
2 PARISH-PUMP See 23
3 HEIFER Livestock provided in here free (6)
=”Livestock”. IF=”provided” in (here)*
4 BEGUINE Old lay sister being involved with EU (7)
=”Old lay sister” – members of a female lay Christian order. (being EU)*
5 AQUA Paraquat has no peripheral role as water (4)
=”water”. Hidden in [Par]AQUA[t]
6 VILLANELLE Poem: “The Holiday Home, the Royal Mistress and Earl” (10)
=”Poem”. VILLA=”Holiday Home” plus NELL Gwyn=”Royal Mistress” to Charles II plus E[arl]
7 SKYROS Blue-pink endless island (6)
=a Greek island. SKY=”Blue” plus ROS[e]=”pink endless”
13 TARANTELLA Lively Italian piece of music: thank-you rave by jazz legend (10)
=”Lively Italian piece of music”. TA=”thank-you” plus RANT=”rave” plus ELLA Fitzgerald=”jazz legend”
15 FOX Cause discolouration of a Quaker? (3)
=”Cause discolouration” of paper”, =”a Quaker” – George Fox [wiki] was one of their founders.
17 BUG Plumb ugly housing tap (3)
=”tap” as in listen in on e.g. a phone line. Hidden in [Plum]B UG[ly]
19 VIENNESE Like Schubert’s rocking “Seven” in E (8)
=”Like Schubert”. (Seven in E)*. Schubert’s Seventh symphony was indeed in E major.
20 UNLEARN Forget studies of tragic role in curtailed Nunn production (7)
=”Forget studies”. LEAR=”tragic role” in (Nun[n])*. Trevor Nunn directed a 2007 production of King Lear.
22 OTTAWA Capital raised by ace inventor: zero (6)
=”Capital”. Reversal (“raised”) of all of A[ce] plus WATT=”inventor” plus O=”zero”
23,2 PARISH-PUMP Petty mythological abductor with hard footwear (6,4)
=”Petty”, parochial. PARIS=”mythological abductor” of Helen in the Iliad, plus H[ard] plus PUMP=”footwear”
25 COZE Intimate chat of a lord with a good track record, reportedly (4)
=”Intimate chat”. Sebastian Coe is a lord with a good record on track events, and COZE therefore sounds like “Coe’s”=”of a lord with a good track record”
26 TROT Pace is wrong on the rebound (4)
=”Pace”. Reversal (“rebound”) of TORT=”wrong”

44 comments on “Guardian 26,338 by Brummie”

  1. Thanks, manehi. Good fun – as you say, there were a few unfamiliar words but all very fairly clued. The theme helped me to drag the meaning of FOX from the recesses – last seen in another crossword a while ago – once I’d got TROT.

    But the pangram was of no use at all…

    There’s a little more going on in AQUA – the subtracted letters form “part” = “no peripheral role”.

  2. Thanks manehi. I made some blues, beginning with ‘enclave’ (which the Shorter defines as “a piece of territory entirely shut in by foreign dominions.” I got Lord Coe, but opted for ‘cozy’; never heard of this word, but do know its probable origin in ’causer’. ‘Naff’ is off my radar so I blew that, too. But it was all fair, so thanks Brummie.

  3. I found this quite difficult, and did not see the theme at all until I read this blog. But I did find it easy to parse, so it seemed very fair even though I needed to use dictionary and google quite a lot.

    New words for me were SKYROS, PARISH-PUMP, TONK, COZE, VILLANELLE, EXCLAVE.

    My favourites were 13d, 11a, 28a, 24a, 27a.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

  5. Thanks Brummie and manehi
    I disagree with NeilW – I got JITTER and COZE (without understanding either!) solely from the requirement of the pangram for J and Z.
    ROENTGEN my favourite.
    Obligatory pedantic quibble – “bitter” isn’t the same as “tart”; “tart” is “sour, bitter and sour receptors on the tongue are distinct.
    BEGUINE (in the non-dance sense) was my new word of the day.

  6. One wrong, having opted for ‘cozy’ (as I had never knowingly come across the word ‘coze’) even though I had reservations about the American spelling.
    I liked the clue for ‘Nairobi’ at 16a, and found the puzzle a good an enjoyable challenge, despite my error. A cleverly constructed pangram, and a theme that eluded me (unsurprisingly as I have the proverbial ‘two left feet’).

  9. Thanks, manehi.

    At first, I found this quite easy for a Brummie, but then slowed down in the TL corner.

    I spotted the theme which helped with JITTER and FOX, though I wasn’t convinced of FOX because I thought 18a should be ENCLAVE; Crossword Solver helped with this. However I toyed with SKERRY for 7d which held me up considerably.

    A satisfying crossword.

  10. Thanks manehi and Brummie

    Sadly I failed to notice the theme – I was too busy looking for a nina around the edge – despite the fact that I knew villanelle was a dance and had to check its poetic status. Clearly not seeing the wood for the trees.

    Otherwise an enjoyable solve with some very good surfaces and misdirections.

  11. [Those who maintain that setting pangrams is easy or pure serendipity, please ignore this comment.]

    muffin @5, I guess it just depends on the order of solving… more often than not, I agree, spotting a probable pangram can aid, especially with an an obscure word with an unchecked letter towards the end of a solve.

  12. Thanks, manehi.

    I enjoyed this. I should have remembered Brummie’s fondness for hidden themes, as I failed to spot this one (or the pangram). However, I didn’t find the puzzle particularly difficult, so it wouldn’t necessarily have helped much.

    Nicely constructed clues, but I disagree with tupu @10 about the surfaces, many of which don’t make a lot of sense. Favourites were the two capitals, EXIT VISA and FEUDAL LORD.

  13. Hi Gervase

    I take your point – good surfaces should be semantically interesting. I think your own characterisation ‘well constructed’ is more just and what I vaguely had in mind.

  14. CynicCure@4, I am unaware of the dance called “Excuse me”, but I see the phrase as a prelude to an invitation to do a fox trot or a waltz or a jitterbug.”Excuse me, may I have this dance”? Thanks for the blog, manehi, and thanks too, Brummie.

  15. This was an interesting challenge, but at least for me it was not as difficult or as entertaining as yesterday, though I learned a new word in COZE and new meanings of BEGUINE (last in) and FOX. Found the NE corner caused the most problems, and though I saw the possibility of the pangram quite early I agree with NeilW that it didn’t help.

    Thanks to manehi and Brummie

  16. Top half took longer than the bottom half but by then had just DHJ left in the pangram, which helped. But I’m another who was so busy crossing out appearances of the 26 letters that I missed the theme – even after BEGUINE was second last in (followed by VILLANELLE, which joined COZE as new words to me).

    Good stuff all the way through I thought.

  17. Thanks to Brummie and manehi. A theme and a pangram – both went over my head or under my feet in this case. Learned new definitions for beguine and fox. Great puzzle!

    Cheers…

  18. Jeff@14: A gentleman’s excuse me is a dance where a gentleman may cut in on a dancing couple and carry off the lady as a dance partner with a polite ‘excuse me’. You may have a lady’s excuse me too.

  20. I missed the theme too – leaps off the page now I know what it is-and I’d never heard of EXCLAVE. I had ENCLAVE which threw me off FOX,for which I could kick myself given the QUAKER reference in the clue. I had to guess TONK. I originally put in TUND which is Winchester slang for BEAT-apparantly-but couldn’t reconcile it with the rest of the clue.
    Good puzzle though!

  21. I found this easy to get into but difficult to finish, and I spent an age at the end getting BEGUINE, FOX and EXCLAVE. I then found out I’d got one wrong because I’d entered a lazy “cozy” at 25dn on the basis of “what else could it be from C?Z? checkers?” without bothering to think about its parsing. I’d say “that’ll teach me” but it never seems to. I think cluing a word like EXCLAVE with a CD and only three of seven checkers was a bit much, although to be fair they were very helpful checkers. When I only had F?? for 15dn it took a while before I convinced myself that the answer wasn’t “Fry” from Elizabeth Fry.

  22. An enjoyable challenge with some nice clues. Sad that we had to wait until Thursday for a proper crossword.

    I too wasn’t helped by entering ENCLAVE leaving the last one in as F?N. After a long time deliberating I realised that FOX was a contender and discovered EXCLAVE. (Never heard of it!)

    I won’t repeat my rant against the futility of pangram-seeking but it’s nice to see that the endless hours these “seekers” have wasted on the hundreds of non-pangrams is now finally rewarded. (At least for one of them anyway) Logic obviously plays no part in this type of thinking 😉

    Thanks to manehi and Brummie

  23. B(NTO) @22
    I suspect that you were referring to my post. Generally pangrams, ninas etc. pass me by, but, being left with three clues to solve and only missing J and Z from the complete list, a pangram loomed large in my thinking.

  24. Impressive stuff. Having assembled his dances he must have noticed that he was only D,H and Y short of a pangram.
    A happy accident surely, and no problem to complete later.

    The real problem arises from having to find words to cross with the theme words. Hence EXCLAVE and NAFFNESS, words one would not normally include by choice. (The spell-checker has underlined both!).

    Then there’s 11ac. With ten letters and only U and L prescribed it must at first have seemed easy but finding FEUDAL LORD is quite a feat.

    I think the obscure SKYROS and COZE are a bit naughty. He could have finished the pangram with SKIRTS and COZY.

  25. rhotician @24
    I’m truly shocked! You suggest that a ghastly American spelling (COZY) would have been better than a time-honoured English word (COZE – admittedly a word I had never heard before researching it today).

  26. muffin – nice to see irony more subtle than plain sarcasm.

    Suggest you ignore the bee in B(NTO)’s bonnet. He has toned down the rant, although ‘endless hours’ is still hyperbolic.

  27. Muffin, there is one thing that still intrigues me.

    How did you know that you were “only missing J and Z from the complete list”?

  28. B(NTO) @27
    As I had already entered all the other “high-scoring scrabble letters”, I did a quick read through to check that the low scoring ones were all there too.

  29. At the risk of reopening a tired old debate (for which I apologise), some of us just notice certain letters (muffin’s high-scoring Scrabble letters sums it up nicely) and make a mental note, and if, say, 3 of J, Q, X and Z appear it really can save solving time to know what the missing letters are – it takes less than a minute to scan most crosswords.
    To most of us this is a harmless diversion. So the supposed hours of searching for pangrams are a tiny proportion of the hours spent, well, doing the crossword, which is an equally futile activity to the rational mind, but one which all of us enjoy for other reasons.

  30. Nice puzzle.
    rhotician@19 – Chambers has “parish pump” without a hyphen.
    muffin – my post (earlier in week) too late to be seen by you. You insisted that “theory” and “hypothesis” were not the same. I disagree; perhaps you meant “theorem”?
    Two examples where I consider setters were absolutely right in spite of contrary assertions by compilers.
    Many thanks to Brummie and manehi.

  31. ….for ‘compilers’, please read ‘contributors’. No better way to start a day than by admitting a mistake, eh?!

  33. So Muffin it’s not a pangram but a puzzle with all the high scoring scrabble letters.

    Or did you check afterwards?

    I still don’t see the point of this exercise as the puzzle is either a pangram or not. If it is, it is still likely to be one by chance.

    Or do the setters state that they will attempt to achieve a pangram if possible? (I don’t think so)

    I really don’t think that this “looking for pangrams” strategy has any merit in a “game theory” context! But it obviously amuses a lot of people so who am I to disagree? 🙂

  34. B(NTO)
    “I still don’t see the point of this exercise as the puzzle is either a pangram or not. If it is, it is still likely to be one by chance.”

    I think that highlights the difference between us. If you are right, then I agree that it would be pointless to use the possibility of a pangram as an aid to solving. However I think that it is most improbable that a pangrammatic crossword is accidental.

  36. Hi muffin –
    That’s the trouble with you scientists! You deal with inexactitudes by necessity.
    We pure(r) mathematicians deal with universal truths (my University, for example, awards MAs, not MScs, to mathematicians, recognising the crucial difference).
    I maintain that a theory is but a hypothesis, and if there is a consideration that a hypothesis may be other than a theory then….
    One is bound to look at it verbally; it’s a bleeding crossword after all! And Chambers (having each word given in the other’s definition) agrees with the setter – and me, I’m afraid! In any case, it may simply have been the seemingly dogmatic way in which your opinion was pronounced the other day that raised my hackles.
    The Wikipedia article you cite states “….in common uses of the word “theory”….is better characterized by the word “hypothesis” …..” so you’re hoisted by your own petard!
    As I had sought to make clear in my earlier construct @31, it is a good thing to admit a mistake.
    You take care
    W

  37. William @36
    Fair enough – I will agree that in common usage, “theory” and “hypothesis” are interchangeable.

    It’s another example of the question “Can incorrect common usage change the meaning of a word?” (viz. “epicentre”, “alibi” etc.). I seem fated to be on the losing side of this argument!

  38. Hi muffin –
    A magnanimous reply. My respect for you remains undimmed, which gives me genuine pleasure.
    Though not the same as epicentre (where the colloquial meaning is incorrect – and Chambers only has its proper ‘scientific’ meaning) In the case of “theory” the scientific use to which you refer is a bastardisation of its true (mathematical and ‘common’) usage. Methinks your self-justification may be your true Nemesis!
    I will always defend a compiler whose clueing is accurate.
    Have a lovely weekend!
    W

  40. Indeed I have (though many moons since – why must time speed up as we slow down? Sigh!) One joy of our 225 (though not the greatest – that might be its warm camaraderie, sometimes cunningly disguised!) is coming across such as yourself. You have prompted me to put it on my list of things to return to/ investigate further when the nights are drawing in….
    Thanks – and peace, muffin man!

  41. Enjoy, William!

    He was eventually proved correct about communism – i.e. that it was a scientific theory that had been “falsified”.

  43. Downright unfair puzzle. That’s what we in the U.S. Say about a puzzle that uses very obscure words. In this puzzle, those words for me were “tonk”, “coze”, “exclave”. I figured out “naffness”, but that was equally obscure.

    I’ll bet not a one of all who commented on this puzzle knew all four of those words before.

    Let alone ever used even one of them in conversation.

  44. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    Did finish this last week, but only got around to checking it today … and I also slipped on COZE.

    Hi Bill … did know TONK … but down here it means something different … an effeminate man. Also have heard of the hit definition as well. Certainly NAFF is used extensively in the UK. As for the others … I didn’t know them.

    I thought it still an enjoyable solve … with help … notwithstanding the theme completely passing me as well … just makes it that bit better.

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