Guardian 26,435 by Crucible

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Tricky fun from Crucible today…

…with mini-themes on Genesis (1ac, 5ac, 12ac) and Irish politics (10ac, 14ac, 24dn/21ac) that make me wonder if I’m missing something more. Favourites were 14ac, 18ac, 27ac and 15dn.

Across
1 COLLINS
Phil‘s in pieces going over lines (7)
=”Phil” Collins the singer and DRUMMER of Genesis. COINS=”pieces” around two [L]ines
5 DRUMMER
He beats stranger after dreadful start (7)
=”He beats”. RUMMER=”stranger” as rum=strange, after D[readful]
9 MINUS
Deprived of minibus not in the same place (5)
=”Deprived of”. MIN[ib]US, without ib[idem]=Latin for “in the same place”
10 MESSIANIC
Fervent disorder with Paisley, perhaps, in charge (9)
=”Fervent”. MESS=”disorder” plus IAN=”Paisley, perhaps”, the Unionist politician in Northern Ireland, plus I[n] C[harge]
11 DICTIONARY
Journal covering leaderless lawsuit’s volume of words (10)
=”volume of words”. DIARY=”Journal” around [a]CTION=”leaderless lawsuit”
12 MAMA
Masters Genesis number (4)
 a song by Genesis. MA plus MA is two “Masters”
14 EASTER RISING
IRA’s grit seen to emerge from this event? (6,6)
=&lit – [wiki]. (IRA’s grit seen)*
18 THE MOONSTONE
He makes cheeky revelation in Times about English novel (3,9)
=an early detective “novel” [wiki]. HE MOONS=”He makes cheeky revelation”, in two T[imes] plus ON=”about” plus E[nglish]
21 FINE GAEL
See 24
22 MAGNUM OPUS
Masterpiece of gun surgery by American (6,4)
=”Masterpiece”. MAGNUM=”gun” plus OP=”surgery” plus US=”American”
25 STABILISE
Steady second indep­endent Liberal returned in contested seat (9)
=”Steady”. S[econd], plus a reversal (“returned”) of I[ndependent] LIB[eral], both inside (seat)*
26 E FLAT
Key to apartment No 5? (1,4)
=musical “Key”. If apartments were assigned letters alphabetically, the fifth one would be the E FLAT.
27 TRAPEZE
Hunk goes over to relax, say, in swingers’ bar (7)
=”swinger’s bar”. PART=”Hunk” (of bread, meat etc), reversed (“goes over”), plus -EZE which sounds like “ease”=”relax”
28 DESPOTS
Such rulers stop seditious faction after revolution (7)
=&lit. Hidden reversed (a faction after revolution) in “STOP SEDitious”
Down
1 COMEDO
Arrive at party and face problem (6)
=”face problem”. COME=”Arrive” plus DO=”party”
2 LUNACY
Girl entertains a name over in folly (6)
=”folly”. LUCY=”Girl”, around A N[ame] reversed (“over”)
3 INSTIGATOR
One of the originators, possibly, but no hero (10)
=”One of the originators”. (the originators)* minus hero
4 SIMON
Writer’s filling issue for singer and playwright (5)
 =”singer” Carly or Paul Simon, =”playwright” Neil Simon. I’M=”Writer’s” inside SON=”issue”
5 DESERT RAT
Shore grass for sand hopper (6,3)
=”sand hopper”. DESERT=”Shore” plus RAT=”grass”=inform on someone”
6 UNIT
One needing exercise wants female (4)
=”One”. UN[f]IT=”needing exercise” without f[emale]
7 MANDARIN
Bloke’s endlessly reckless language (8)
=”language”. MAN=”Bloke” plus DARIN[g]=”endlessly reckless”
8 RECHARGE
Soldiers rush to load batteries again (8)
=”load batteries again”. R[oyal] E[ngineers]=”Soldiers” plus CHARGE=”rush”
13 PIN NUMBERS
They check cards and figures on green flags (3,7)
=”They check [bank] cards”; or the figures/numbers on green flags/pins, marking the holes on a golf course’s greens.
15 TENTATIVE
Hesitant but alert, relegating leading pair (9)
=”Hesitant”. ATTENTIVE=”alert”, and moving down the leading pair gives TENTATIVE
16 STAGE SET
Mark to remain a long time confined in flats, typically (5,3)
=”flats, typically” – the painted flat pieces of stage scenery. ST=saint “Mark”, plus SET=”remain”, with AGE=”a long time” confined within
17 DEMERARA
Rum compound made out of rare fluid (8)
a type of rum. (made)* outside (rare)*
19 APOLLO
Spacecraft left in a swimming pool (6)
the APOLLO program of US spacecraft. L[eft] in A plus (pool)*
20 AS IT IS
The way things are, wine’s flooding Italy (2,2,2)
=”The way things are”. ASTI’S=”wine’s”, around I[taly]
23 NO END
Lots light up, beginning to drink (2,3)
=”Lots” – ‘lots of X’=’no end of X’. Reversal of NEON=”lights up”, plus D[rink]
24,21 FINE GAEL
Party‘s feeling agit­ated about answer (4,4)
a political “Party” in the Republic of Ireland. (feeling)* around A[nswer]

52 comments on “Guardian 26,435 by Crucible”

  1. Thanks, manehi. Quite gentle from Crucible today…

    I guess COLLINS is the unifying theme..

    Phil – the DRUMMER with Genesis, as you say. SIMON is his son, also a musician.
    The DICTIONARY
    Michael – involved in the EASTER RISING and founder of FINE GAEL
    Wilkie – THE MOONSTONE
    Michael – the APOLLO 11 astronaut

    Can’t think of any others but that doesn’t mean much! 🙂

  2. Thanks manehi. There’s certainly more: COLLINS has a Michael in 14A and a Wilkie in 18A. How does desert=shore, I wonder.

  3. I found this difficult, and ran out of time. I failed to solve 5 clues – 12a, 17, 24/21 (never would have gotten that one!), 25 and 27.

    New word for me was COMEDO and I needed help to parse 5d, 28a, 18a. I still do not understand why desert rat = sand hopper, nor why desert = shore. My dictionary describes a sand hopper as a small type of crab so I am really quite confused over this answer.

    My favourites were 5a, 7d, 19d.

    Thanks manehi and Crucible.

  4. When will they learn that PIN = Personal Identification NUMBER, so that PIN stands on its own without Number!

  5. Phil Collins’ son is SIMON Collins but that may just be a coincidence.

    I made 16d AGES inside STET (“mark to remain” in proofreading)

  6. Thanks Crucible and manehi

    Mixed bag – lots to like, but a couple don’t work for me. I’m with Gladys on STAGE SET – “stet” is a mark to tell the printer not to make the suggested alteration.

    I don’t understand “desert” = “shore” either – manehi hasn’t explained, so presumably it’s supposed to be obvious!

    The two I took issue with are 7d – why should the “s” of “bloke’s” disappear? – and 17d, where “out” to mean “surrounding” was a step too far for me.

    COMEDO was a new word for me. Favourites were THE MOONSTONE and APOLLO (lovely misdirection of “swimming pool”!)

  13. Thanks Crucible and manehi

    This was fun. I needed help with the parsing of a few (don’t ask, but did we finally agree on Gaufrid’s more than two but less than a handful?). COMEDO was new to me.
    Liked TRAPEZE among others and THE MOONSTONE made me smile.

    There is also a Rum Collins to which a teaspoon of DEMERARA sugar is added.

  14. As expected another fine puzzle from Crucible.

    5d I needed RAT to come from GRASS – the only way I could make DESERT from SHORE was to consider SHORE as the antipodean version of the past participle of SHEAR – more normally SHORN in English English – “desert of” and “shorn of” meaning essentially the same thing – you ain’t got none – the only difference being that in the case of SHORN, you had some once.

    A bit of a stretch though. Open to other offers.

    16d I too got via STET but the other way works OK too.

    Many thanks S&B.

  18. Thanks both. Noticed the Irish politics but not the other thematic entries. A tricky puzzle, but not one without its fun. I particularly liked DEMERARA for the clue, being full of anagrinds to really confuse.

  20. I had eudemonic for 10ac for a while. Wouldn’t that be a nice answer if ‘fervent’ was simply ‘positive’?

  23. A sand hopper is a craft that accompanies a dredger. Dredgers were used to dredge up mines during WW2, mainly in the Suez Canal. They worked alongside the 8th Army, i.e. the Desert Rats.
    Can anyone tie this in?

    I have yet another captcha of 0.

  24. Thanks all for the comments, especially the additional COLLINs, the STET parsing and Cookie for the pointers to some interesting Googling.

    On desert/shore, I had meant to flag this in my blog – I originally wrote that Chambers Thesaurus gives “shore”=”sands” but that I wasn’t at all convinced by it. Deleted that, then forgot to leave a comment or question mark. JollySwagman’s idea is pretty cool though.

  25. Enjoyed this – found most of this straightforward, particularly by Crucible’s standards, but maybe I was just on the right wavelength today. Last in was DEMERARA but COMEDO was new to me so I had to check that after finishing it on paper. Liked THE MOONSTONE, INSTIGATOR, FINE GAEL and TENTATIVE. Could have done without the 80s Genesis references – I much preferred the Gabriel era…

    Thanks to Crucible and manehi

  27. Needless to say I failed to spot the rest of the Collins references.
    Cookie @19 – I have a copy of that album, which is an acquired taste I failed to acquire, consisting mostly of dreary dirges accompanied only by a harmonium.

  28. Regarding all the Collinses, is there always a (non-vital) theme? And how long has this been going on?

    Lots of good stuff and some really challenging clues. I did spot comedo, but only through the parsing. I entered it rashly, since I had never heard of the word (despite suffering a few myself); comedy would have been more ‘ackneyed, or maybe less.

    I nearly refused to enter PI* Numbers as it is an egregious and far too commonly used redundancy.

    Agree with beery hiker regarding the far superior Gabriel era.

  30. Cookie et al

    Although “shore” = “sands” (as in Saunton Sands, for instance), it isn’t sand that defines a desert – it’s the (lack of) rainfall. I think the cutoff is less than 8 inches a year (I remembered that figure from school Geography; Wikipedia gives 10 inches). Deserts are often sandy, but also commonly aren’t sandy at all. Regions of Antartica are deserts.

    The Breckland in Norfolk is technically a desert in many years.

  31. I loathed Genesis collectively but reserved my particular contempt for the appalling COLLINS- so I was a bit prejudiced against this theme. That said I rather enjoyed this. COMEDO was new to me-good clue though- and I couldn’t parse STAGE SET,so thanks to Gladys for explaining. I liked EASTER RISING and THE MOONSTONE- clue worthy of Paul – and E FLAT. The latter put me in mind of the late Acker Bilk who used to announce “the next number is SOMETHING WONDERFUL in A flat” but I digress-
    Thanks Crucible.

  32. muffin @30, I know only too well. Lived in Egypt for 8 years and worked quite a lot of the time with the University of Alexandria’s agriculture department. We often had to visit groundnut farms etc bordering the Sahara Desert. In certain areas added to the adverse effect of low rainfall were those resulting from the Aswan Dam (no more annual flooding, hence no silt fertiliser and a build up of salt).

  33. What a relief after yesterday – probably the same level of difficulty, overall, but without the strangulated parsings we had to suffer then. OK, an exception for sand = desert (for the def in this clue I just went for “sand hopper” being a DESERT RAT soldier hopping over sand dunes). And a clever link to follow it through. Congratulations Crucible.

  34. Sandy Shore is good enough for me. But I too hate Phil Collins. It was unfair to inflict that music on anyone.

    A good puzzle from Crucible today.

  38. Was anyone else miffed by the anagram fodder distribution in 17d? I feel it would have been fine if the two separate anagrams formed two halves of the solution, but I don’t think ‘of’ adequately conveyed the necessity to combine them.

    I was also unconvinced by the hidden answer indicator in 28a, ‘faction’: as far as I know this word only applies to groups of people, so it seems like a bit of a stretch to apply it to a group of words or letters.

    That said, I did enjoy this puzzle despite my two minorcomplaints – neither of which held me up in the slightest. Thanks Crucible and manehi.

  39. Angstony @38
    17d and 7d were the two I said didn’t work for me in my post @6. I think that “out of” is supposed to suggest that one anagram surrounds the other, but I thought that it didn’t work.

  40. muffin @39
    So you did. Sorry, I somehow missed reading that post altogether.

    As for your remark about 7d: maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t that a fairly common misdirection, where a possessive apostrophe in the surface reading becomes a contraction of ‘has’ in the wordplay, thereby making it a simple juxtaposition?

  41. Angstony @40
    I think I see what you mean. I thought “Bloke’s endlessly reckless language” clued MANSDARIN; but you are saying it should be read as “Bloke has endlessly reckless language”. Is that it?

  46. Thanks all
    Enjoyable and quite easy until I hit the SW corner
    16d,24,21 and stabilise all needed a lot of thinking.

  47. I have never consciously heard any Genesis song, and certainly couldn’t name any. I managed most of the puzzle but was also puzzled about “shore” = “sands”.

  48. I didn’t find this easy although I did complete it.

    “desert” = “shore” is still unexplained to me????

    I find Crucible’s style of cluing rather “old-fashioned” although he is obviously trying to get “hip” with clues such as 27A.

    It’s obviously a very good crossword but I just find his puzzles hard to enjoy! (It’s probably me.)

    I did replace the 4 batteries on my canal boat today and I feel like I’ve been in a fight with Mike Tyson! Perhaps that’s why I’m so grumpy 😉

    Thanks to manehi and Crucible

  49. Bit of a strange puzzle today.
    I mean, not much wrong (if at all) with the clueing but after we solved half of the grid within ten minutes, MAMA being the first one in, we thought “hey, what’s this?”.
    Is this Crucible?
    Some clues were very easy and probably we just chose the right ones at the start.
    On the other hand, these easy ones might have been a relief to solvers who never want to do an Imogen or, to a lesser extent, a Picaroon again.

    Fortunately, we came to a grinding halt and resumed, still grinding and grinding …..
    We missed Imogen’s nina and, of course, didn’t notice all these Collinses. A bit of a pity, would have been the icing on the cake.

    Easy clues like 9ac, 4d, 8d, 19d or 20d were amply compensated by gems like 14ac, 18ac, 27ac, 3d (INSTIGATOR, trademark Crucible!) and 15d.

    So, well done Crucible, the best of both worlds (although that’s the late Robert Palmer, not Phil Collins).
    Approved by the Crossword Police of Great Britain (#34) – I am only joking (that’s Rod Stewart, not Phil Collins), and I like your joke too!

    Many thanks manehi and the, as ever, excellent Crucible.

  51. my brain’s not working – the ‘bliss’ was from the Brummie prize, which I was also checking … am not suggesting a crossover theme.

  52. Thanks Crucible and manehi

    Still getting through backlog … and found this one a bit of hard work. Saw the Genesis and Irish things going on, but the Collins theme looks most relevant – and very clever how there are a couple of related clues to them.

    New learnings with THE MOONSTONE and FINE GAEL along with a memory jog with the EASTER RISING. The last couple in were COLLINS and SIMON, so it was obvious that the Collins theme provided no help.

    Another who couldn’t equate DESERT with shore.

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