Guardian 26,367 – Logodaedalus

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My hearyt sank rather when I saw the Logodaedalus, as his puzzles tend to be on the excessively easy side (and sometimes with irrelevant rhyming couplets). However, while there were still quite a few write-ins here there were also some clues that held me up a little longer, and the whole thing is generally sound and competent (apart from a couple of quibbles), if not particularly exciting.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. CANASTA Give hunk of American a start in this game (7)
Hidden in ameriCAN A STArt
5. SAD SACK Blundering American gets miserable discharge (3,4)
SAD (miserable) + SACK (discharge). “A person who seems to attract mishap and disaster; a misfit.” says Chambers
9. LIPPIER Cheekier Italian painter meets the Queen (7)
LIPPI + ER
10. ENCHANT Captivate, using central part of men’s chorus (7)
Middle of mEN’s + CHANT (chorus)
11. BLACK SPOT Fungal disease found in a dangerous place (5,4)
BLACK (dangerous) + SPOT (place); Black spot affects roses
12. MOOSE Deer making animal noises with force (5)
MOOS + E for energy; it may be that energy = force in informal usage, but if you’re going to use the scientific abbreviation (as in e = mc2) then it seems to me that the equivalence is not valid
13. NUDGE Draw attention to end of leg seen in the altogether (5)
[le]G in NUDE
15. LEFTOVERS Remains with port on top of sideboard (9)
LEFT (port) + OVER (on) + S[ideboard]
17. SHOWCASES Displays what Latin teacher may do to class (9)
The Latin teacher may SHOW the CASES of nouns to the class
19. EMCEE Short announcer says: “Get me back to the church on time, eventually!” (5)
Reverse of ME + CE + [tim]E – “short” because it’s the spelling out of the abbreviation MC for Master of Ceremonies
22. ANGEL Have some American cake, darling (5)
Double definition; is angel cake really American?
23. CATCHLINE “Listen to the band” is a slogan (9)
CATCH (listen to) + LINE (band, as in a band of colour, perhaps)
25. AVIATOR High-flyer takes one through rocky place (7)
A (one) VIA TOR
26. ANTENNA Girl one way or another holds back material for the aerial (7)
Reverse of NET in ANNA (palindromic girl)
27. SUGARED Sweet Sue needing drag, perhaps? (7)
(SUE DRAG)*
28. KNAVISH Wicked king has his van repaired (7)
K + (HIS VAN)*
Down
1. CALIBAN Savage and deformed slave keeping a liberal in prison (7)
A LIB in CAN. Caliban is described in The Tempest as “A freckled whelp hag-born—not honored with a human shape.”
2. NAP HAND Quick sleep and a round of applause after five wins in a row (3,4)
NAP + HAND
3. STICK Persevere with criticism (5)
Double definition
4. ACROPOLIS Citadel produces a yield on bad soil (9)
A CROP + SOIL*
5. SWEET You and I in group that’s pleasant (5)
WE in SET
6. DECOMPOSE Hide half what Bach did? Rot! (9)
Half of hiDE + COMPOSE (as Bach did)
7. ABALONE Single sailor gets seafood (7)
AB ALONE
8. KITTENS Pets for nervous people? (7)
People acting nervously are said to be “having kittens”
14. ESCALATOR A lost race, wandering, has its ups and downs (9)
(A LOST RACE)*
16. FAST TRACK Rapid route for diet course (4,5)
FAST (diet) + TRACK (Course)
17. SEA BASS Swimmer with the deep voice? (3,4)
A sesquidef, as Bass is a low voice
18. ONGOING This is about departure in progress (7)
ON (about) + GOING (departure)
20. CHIANTI Almost stylish, certainly not in favour of wine (7)
CHI[C] + ANTI
21. EYELASH I, reportedly, stroke hair (7)
EYE (homophone of “I”) + LASH (stroke)
23. CURED Made better with copper colour (5)
CU + RED
24. HUTIA Rodent found in shed in Austria, originally (5)
HUT + first letters of In Austria.Hutias are a family of rodents found in the Caribbean (as I didn’t know)

36 comments on “Guardian 26,367 – Logodaedalus”

  1. Re I Down: in the character list for The Tempest Caliban is actually described as ‘a savage and deformed slave’.

  3. Thanks Logodaedalus and Andrew

    It has been a while since the last time with this setter. Was slightly harder than the last couple, but didn’t present too many problems. Last in was DECOMPOSE for no particular reason.

    No real stand out, although there was new learning with HUTIA ( I wonder how many more of these little known rodents that there are out there). 🙂

  4. Thank you Andrew.

    Last time out I made a bit of a meal of Logodaedalus but found this considerably less taxing.

    I was sure Angel cake was English so looked it up…”Angel cake is a type of layer cake that originated in the United Kingdom. It consists of two or three layers of sweet sponge cake, often coloured white, pink and yellow with a thin layer of white cream. It is traditionally sold in long bars or small slices. The cake has won many awards, most notably ‘English Cake of the Year’ in 1986.

    I wonder why he gave it colonial status – was it to fit the mini theme, perhaps.

    {My Captcha is 42/7…now that’s taxing!)

    Nice week, all.

  5. This was fun for me being relatively new to cryptics

    22a “angel cake” originated in England, “angel food cake” in America (often called “angel cake” there)

    12a the old “e” force/energy quandary again

    Thanks Logodaedalus and Andrew

  6. William @ 4

    according to Wiki the original “Boston Cooking School Cookbook”, published in 1884, had a recipe for “Angel Cake” mentioning the name for the first time. In the updated version of the cookbook, 1896, the recipe is renamed “Angel Food Cake”

  8. Sorry, but this one had a few too many of those “simple charades” for my liking, the ones where the setter just takes a compound word and clues each component separately. SAD SACK, CATCHLINE, NAP HAND, FAST TRACK, ONGOING, and then EYELASH (which includes a homophone) and BLACK SPOT (which is actually a double definition according to my dictionary) are only one step up from those. If there’s only one or two of these in a puzzle, I can forget about them and move on, but more than once in solving this one I thought “Seriously? Another one? Are you kidding me?”

    I realize it’s tough writing a good cryptic clue, but they usually give me the impression that the setter phoned it in, and IMO the less I see of them, the better.

  11. I can’t find much to enthuse about today, though this didn’t take long, and HUTIA was new to me, and Fra Lippo LIPPI was only familiar because of the obscure early 80s band who took his name. Last in with CATCHLINE mainly because I wasn’t convinced by line=band, and I agree with Andrew’s criticism of Force=E, which is clearly wrong.

    Thanks to Andrew and Logodaedalus

  12. Thanks Logodaedalus and Andrew.

    Largely straightforward but I got stuck for a while in the SW corner, with SHOWCASES one of the last ones in. CANASTA was quite nicely hidden.

  13. Thanks to Andrew for the blog.

    I also agree that E=force is wrong. Because of that MOOSE was my last one in as nothing else would fit!

  15. Thanks Logodaedalus and Andrew.

    We get some strange single letter equivalents sometimes, but S=sideboard? Not the first thing I think when I see the letter S.

  17. Cookie @6/7 Many thanks for that bit of research. Wouldn’t you say the essential thing about Angel cake is the layers?

    Crosswords take one to some very strange places, don’t they?

    Nice day.

  18. Shirl @ 15

    S = ‘top’ (first letter) of sideboard, so it’s not an equivalent.

    hth

    William @ 4: my captcha is ? x 6 = 42!!

  19. While I can’t say this was a complete write in,it mostly was and really seemed too easy. I expect the gods of crossword will have their revenge tomorrow!

  20. Thanks for the parsing of AVIATOR, which I didn’t see. I don’t see how “sideboard” is an “S” though – I’ve never seen “board” as a first letter indicator.

  21. I enjoyed this.

    I had no problem with E for force as Chambers has it as an abbreviation for ‘electromotive force’.

    Whether you would use that abbreviation yourself is another matter, but it seems fine for a cryptic. (It’s a word puzzle, not a physics exam!)

  24. Thanks, Andrew.

    Pleasant enough, and clearly a good one for the neophytes, who need plenty of encouragement to persist at this bizarre pastime.

    I had to check HUTIA, but otherwise the puzzle was straightforward. I agree with the quibbles about E = ‘force’ – didn’t we have this discussion very recently?

    6d reminded me of the quip, attributed to various different people: when asked by a gushing female admirer if X was still composing, our wit said, ‘Madam, he is DEcomposing’.

  25. Thanks Logo……and Andrew
    I just ploughed steadily through, mostly writing the answers straight in. I hadn’t heard of NAP HAND or HUTIA, but both were easily clued.
    I did like LIPPIER. LIPPI (though a very naughty boy) is my favourite renaissance artist, especially for his Madonna here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_and_Child_(Filippo_Lippi)
    reputedly a portrait of the novice nun who became his wife.
    E = force (or not!) was much discussed last week. For the record, I remain on the NOT side of the argument.

  26. Re nap hand. My father in law, when playing nap, where you had to predict the number of hands you would win, up to five, a nap hand, would recite this WW1 rhyme.” I’ll go one said Russia, I’ll go two said France, I ‘ll go three said Belgium and lead them all a dance. I’ll go four said Germany and wipe them off the map, but they all dropped dead when England said’ Gor blimey, I’ll go nap! ‘ “

  27. I didn’t see the discussion about E = force last week, but a script capital E has been the symbol for electromotive force for as long as I can remember. That’s a symbol, not an abbreviation. The usual abbreviation is EMF or emf.

  28. William @17 I have never seen English angel cake, let alone tasted it. I can remember tasting American angel cake. We were flying from one dangerous strange place to another, and had to pass through Washington. Our plane was late and our booking at the cheap hotel lost. The company put us into a luxury apartment in the Watergate (before the scandal). It seemed like paradise, and down stairs there was a supermarket. I had never been in one before, and we bought an angel cake.

  29. Re passerby’s comment (1) I think he meant to say
    ‘A salvage and deformed slave’.
    It is taken from the cast list for The Tempest given in the First Folio, which is the only source we have for the play.
    Modern editors usually emend salvage to savage.

  31. William @ 30 Thanks, YUM, looks a little like battenberg cake, one of my favourites. Have just been checking Mrs Beeton’s 1861 recipes (you know, “take a dozen eggs….”), but cannot see anything like either of the two angel cakes.

  33. 5ac I recall having heard the name Sad Sack for an American? comic character. …don’t know the name of the series.

  34. Thanks Andrew.
    Your thoughts about this crossword reflected most of mine today.

    Logodaedalus is one of the few Guardian setters who, in the past, nearly always got a bad press.
    But I must say that this crossword, while not hard, was surprisingly well clued.
    With some really nice clues too (e.g. 19ac).

    Since the sad demise of the much missed Araucaria there has been quite a re-shuffle at the Guardian offices.
    Hardly any Brendan or Orlando these days (which is real shame. Logodaedalus is still part of the game but what about Gordius?

    Anyway.
    My expectation was zero today but it certainly wasn’t too bad after all.

  35. ‘force’ for E is as you say ‘not valid’. Litotes – affirmation by negation of the contrary. To put it another way, it is WRONG. He could have used ‘energy’.

  36. In your last line you absolutely hit the spot, rhotician.
    But I think we have discussed the use of E more than enough in a blog of a recent Chifonie puzzle – so let’s not start all over again.
    And remember, some posters then thought that E can be justified!

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