Guardian 26,582 / Paul

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A quick solve for me today with Paul in benign mode. A lot of relatively easy ‘entry’ clues which meant a significant grid fill after the first pass through them.

27ac went in quickly from the definition and enumeration, then I wondered how I was going to parse ‘une année’ as it doesn’t have any ‘t’s.

The only clue not parsed when initially entered was 19ac, partly due to my not seeing ‘in hand’ as part of the definition and partly because, for me, TEL is an abbreviation for ‘telephone number’ rather than simply ‘phone’.

Across
1 Garment for Wayneee and Terryyy? (9)
LONGJOHNS – the cryptic indicator referring to John Wayne and John Terry

6 Food, hot beef sandwiches (4)
CHOW – COW (beef) around (sandwiches) H (hot)

8 Material cut, the lot turned back (8)
PRUNELLA – PRUNE (cut) ALL (the lot) reversed (turned back)

9 Walls of Alcatraz, behind which a meadow plant (6)
AZALEA – A[lcatra]Z (walls of Alcatraz) A LEA (a meadow)

10,21 Saboteur, important bird poking my darling up the Eiffel Tower? (6-8)
MONKEY-WRENCHER – KEY (important) WREN (bird) in (poking) MON CHER (my darling up the Eiffel Tower {in French})

11 Best sell screws, as trousers falling down? (8)
BELTLESS – an anagram (screws) of BEST SELL

12 Investigators tucked in to perfect cold tart (6)
ACIDIC – CID (investigators) in (tucked in) A1 (perfect) C (cold)

15 European capital not entirely behind revolutionary bloke, a very old European (8)
YUGOSLAV – GUY (bloke) reversed (revolutionary) OSL[o] (European capital not entirely) A V (very)

16 Coming up, / floating (2,3,3)
IN THE AIR – double def.

19 Tool in hand, phone line’s cut (6)
TROWEL – ROW (line) in (‘s cut) TEL (phone)

22 Cook too much food, revolting part sent back (6)
OVERDO – hidden reversal (part sent back) in ‘foOD REVOlting’

24 Badger / epidemic (6)
PLAGUE – double def.

25 Reptile smart as a peacock? (8)
BOASTING – BOA (reptile) STING (smart)

27 End of August, then a year in Provence? About time for a chat (4-1-4)
TÊTE-À-TÊTE – [augus]T (end of August) ÉTÉ À ÉTÉ (a year in Provence {summer to summer, in French}) around (about) T (time)

Down
1 Broad collar, gold catches (5)
LARGO – hidden in (catches) ‘colLAR GOld’

2 Dinks on knots designed to avoid slips (7)
NONSKID – an anagram (knots) of DINKS ON

3 Very / merry (5)
JOLLY – double def.

4 School leader, male, wise character standing to welcome first of boarders (4,3)
HEAD BOY – HE (male) YODA (wise character) reversed (standing) around (to welcome) B[oarders] (first of boarders)

5 Such twinkling remote around the black stuff (9)
STARLIGHT – SLIGHT (remote) around TAR (the black stuff)

6,23 Actor wasting ton at end of one trip — on another? (7,5)
CHARLES DANCE – CHARLES[ton] (wasting ton at end of one trip) DANCE (another {trip})

7 Exaggerate rubbish in old poem (9)
OVERSTATE – TAT (rubbish) in O (old) VERSE (poem)

13 Drawl finally nailed by actor, not bad voice (9)
CONTRALTO – [draw]L (drawl finally) in (nailed by) an anagram (bad) of ACTOR NOT

14 Smash up the cars on street to check for their roadworthiness (5-4)
CRASH-TEST – an anagram (smash up) of THE CARS plus ST (street)

17 Aggressive invader gripping with good arm (7)
HANDGUN – HUN (aggressive invader) around (gripping) AND (with) G (good)

18 Welsh food, peculiar taste (7)
RAREBIT – RARE (peculiar) BIT (taste)

20,26 Lower so very high? (4,3,4)
OVER THE MOON – cryptic def. referring to the cow (lower) in the nursery rhyme

22 He’ll be leaving home next year with no degrees (5)
OBAMA – O (no) BA MA (degrees)

67 comments on “Guardian 26,582 / Paul”

  1. Not often Paul is in read-and-write mode but the usual fun. I particularly liked 20,26 (I presume there’s a lot of nursery rhyme reading going on in the Halpern household at the moment) and the d’oh moment when I realised what 22d was all about.

    Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid too. I suppose I’d better start work now but there’s Monk in the FT…..

  2. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid.

    Anyone else confidently plunk down LIGHT for 3 down (Very Light and light=merry)? I felt so smart. Afterwards, not so much…

  3. Game of two halves for me. I had the entire right hand side filled and the left side completely blank. OBAMA was a nice clue. The left came in dribs and drabs, LOI (with a suitable groan) was Longjohns, which for me will always be Bird and Fortune.

    I don’t always look at the compilers name as I start (doesn’t fit on the screen with the grid), saw the first clue, thought it was a bit strange, scrolled up, ah – that explains it.

    Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid.

  4. Somehow I put in YUGISTAN instead of YUGOSLAV, which almost worked (ISTANbul is short capital). Was foxed by PRUNELLA. All good stuff from Paul as usual – favourites were OVER THE MOON and MONKEY WRENCHER. Thanks to him and to Gaufrid.

  5. My favourites were 4d, 10/21, 25a, 5d, 22d, 15a.

    New words for me were PRUNELLA and MONKEY WRENCHER.

    I needed help to parse 27a, 19a, 20/26.

    Thanks Paul and Gaufrid

  6. Thank you Gaufrid. TROWEL went in unparsed for me, too. Still not keen on it, but then I often feel this way about clues I have been unable to parse!

    AndyK @3 we must be crossword clones; right half straight in then having to pick off the left in 1s & 2s. Also, thanks for the memory of the Long Johns, this made me laugh all over again

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJmTCYmo9g

    I’d not heard of a MONKEY-WRENCHER in the sabotage context before, being familiar with the tool only. I believe the original French saboteurs threw their wooden clogs (sabots) into machinery to purposefully wreck it.

    Favourites include OBAMA & HANDGUN.

    Nice week, all.

    PS What is the correct way to insert a web link in this blog, anyone?

  7. Thanks Gaufrid. Paul generally delights partly because he often seems to be enjoying himself – here in clues like 1A, 10,21 and 20,26. Even the easy ones are accordingly forgiven, and the recycled ones: he had YUGOSLAV clued three years ago as ‘Man returning with endless capital, a very old European.’13

  8. William @6
    “PS What is the correct way to insert a web link in this blog, anyone?”

    See the FAQ page.

  10. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid.

    I think this is the first Paul puzzle I have managed to finish (apart from some parsing). Over the last two weeks I have been expecting LONGJOHNS and MONKEY WRENCH, perhaps because there have been several underwear and tool clues.

    I had to check YODA and ‘dinks’ (dual income, no kids: knots to ensure this?).

  11. Count me as another who found this one towards the easier end of Paul’s spectrum but the usual enjoyable solve nonetheless. I might not have been so quick had I not read 1ac as soon as the puzzle had loaded and then went to get something out of the oven. The answer hadn’t sprung to mind immediately but I’d sussed it by the time I got back to my laptop, and its helpful checkers meant I got off to a flying start. Had I not gone to the oven I would probably have skipped 1ac and gone on to the next clue. Anyway, MONKEY-WRENCHER was my LOI after I finally untangled the wordplay. Like others I knew the tool but not the saboteur connection.

  12. Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid for an entertaining puzzle, starting with a 1ac smile.

    18dn – my battered 1974 Chambers has the delightful entry: “Welsh rabbit … sometimes written ‘Welsh rarebit’ by wiseacres.”

  15. Far easier than the last Paul although the SW corner did give a little trouble. I have to say that I didn’t manage to parse everything even when the answers were quite clear. TETE A TETE springs to mind. I hadn’t heard of PRUNELLA or at least I didn’t know what it meant.
    But all in all an enjoyable puzzle.
    Thanks Paul.

  16. Monday’s Rufus was not cryptic even by Rufus’ standards, and yesterday’s effort was also very pedestrian. So what a joy today to see Paul’s name. Streets ahead of the rest, for me. You can f-9 = zeroeel the intellect and wit at work.

  17. Sorry about that. You can tell I’m not a regular contributor. I meant: you can feel the intellect and wit at work.

  18. I got off to a fast start, slowed down in the middle and then crawled. MONKEY_WRENCHER was my big problem as I too did not know it used in that way. Once I got that Y, my last two (JOLLY and LONGJOHNS) followed quickly, my first association with the latter being Long John Baldry. I vaguely remembered that PRUNELLA could be a fabric, but I checked online to be sure.

    Among other nice clues, I particularly liked CHARLES DANCE, CRASH-TEST and OBAMA.

    Thanks to Paul for an enjoyable puzzle and to Gaufrid for the blog.

  19. I got deeply confused by 4/23D because I assumed that it was one *actor* wasting “ton” – that actor being CHARLTON HESTON! You can imagine how agonising it was trying to make that work, despite “end of one” serendipitously providing a much-needed E.

    Fun puzzle all round, and I agree the best of the week so far. Thanks Paul, and blogger for putting my mind out of the above misery!

  20. This was great fun, and over too soon. Witty as ever. I wasn’t OVER THE MOON with the clue for TROWEL, but if you can only muster one quibble among such glories as OBAMA, OVER THE MOON, and CRASH TEST, then you shouldn’t quibble at all. The CRASH TEST clue was particularly nice; I’m a guy who likes great surfaces, esppecially ones that also suggest the answer.

  21. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid.

    Enjoyed lots about this, especially LONGJOHNS, YUGOSLAV and HEAD BOY, but I did exactly the same as Steve B (@2) – “light” seems to be a perfectly logical answer to “very merry”.

  22. I had trouble parsing CHARLES DANCE and TROWEL and did not know PRUNELLA as a fabric or MONKEY WRENCHER as a saboteur so this puzzle was a struggle. Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid.

  23. Thanks to Gaufrid for the blog. You explained a couple where I had the answer but not the parsing.

    Many thanks to William @6: that link pointed to a marvellous piece of work.

    As a sideline I seem to remember that Prunella Scales is a fan of Grauniad crosswords.

  25. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid

    Yes, very easy for a Paul – I did it over a bowl of soup at lunchtime. I wasn’t familiar with Prunella as a material – it’s a type of plant for me – and, though I knew “throwing a monkey wrench in the works” as a more extreme form of sabotage than just a mere spanner, I’ve never heard the person doing it described as a “monkey-wrencher” – he would just be called a “saboteur” wouldn’t he (though strictly, that would be a wooden clog in the works).

    I laughed out loud at OVER THE MOON, and at HEAD BOY when I worked out the parsing.

  26. Mostly straightforward, but for me this was quite tricky to finish, particularly the NW corner – prunella was new to me and I’m still not entirely sure I understand the definition of LARGO. LONGJOHNS also took far longer than it should have, and I spent too long looking for a parsing of ETRUSCAN for 15. All quite enjoyable though.

    Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid.

  27. beery hiker
    “… and I’m still not entirely sure I understand the definition of LARGO.”

    Perhaps this will help:

    Chambers: “largo (music) – adjective and adverb – broad and slow”
    Collins: “largo (music) – adjective and adverb – to be performed slowly and broadly”

  28. Gaufrid @27 – thanks – I saw those when I Googled it – my problem was understanding what broad means in a musical context!

  29. ‘Up the Eiffel Tower?’ just means ‘in France’ as in ‘in French’ with added compileritis. I too do not know the phrase, and it is not in any dictionary that I have with this meaning. I accept that it is an urban phrase, but it should not really be in a crossword. 1 across show compileritis too I think, and does not really work.

    This was a good puzzle however which avoids the usual unfair tricks we see.

  30. beery hiker @28
    Sorry, my misunderstanding. Oxford on-line has “in a slow tempo and dignified in style” so presumably ‘broad’ = ‘dignified style’.

  32. Gaufrid @30 – thanks for that. Having done a bit more digging, it appears that the primary meaning of largo in Italian is broad, so maybe the usage of broad in the dictionary definitions is there to explain the etymology.

  33. Dear several

    Why do you quote/comment on the arithmetic and entry required to be allowed to ‘submit a comment’. Why o why?

    yours

    Celia

  34. I am not as happy about this as the rest of the contributors.

    Taking 10,21. I cannot imagine how I would ever parse that. As for the definition; a monkey wrench is american for an adjustable spanner, a saboteur throws a spanner in the works. How on earth do you get from that to saboteur = monkey wrencher? An illogical step too far for me.

    I could go on at length but I am a lone voice.e

  35. JohnM @34
    “How on earth do you get from that to saboteur = monkey wrencher?”

    See: Oxford on-line

    Specifically, verb and derivative. A similar definition can be found at dictionary.com.

  36. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid. Too much French for my taste. 27a Foi without parsing. 19a had a t and e, and guessed ‘cel'(l) ending but tercel is not a tool. Again guessed trowel without parsing.

  37. Finished this quickly, ages ago, only just got round to commenting. Didn’t know any meaning of PRUNELLA that didn’t involve Scales, but that was hardly a problem. At the end, PLAGUE was, for some reason.

  39. Celia @33, do you mean when someone enters a Captcha sum(Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) ? It is just for fun. If they propose an answer to a clue that seems way out to them, and the Captcha sum is, for example, 3 – three = ?, then the chances of it being right appear very poor, if the sum is nine x 9 = ?, then the chances of it being right appear very high.

  41. JohnM
    Not a lone voice!
    And I did not need an obscure reference to know monkey wrench, and is it solely American?

  43. Hi Gaufrid
    I’m afraid that link gives me a “404 – not found” (I looked, because I didn’t believe “monkey-wrencher” either!)

  44. Gaufrid, your link at #35 is malformed – I think due to “curly quotes” in the HTML, which were added because there was only one slash after the “http:”.

    This should be correct.

    PS thanks for the blog, and to Paul for the puzzle.

  47. Chambers doesn’t (explicitly) list MONKEY-WRENCHER, but the OED does, labelling it “Chiefly N. Amer.” and defining it as “A saboteur, esp. one who acts in the cause of environmentalist protest.” with the earliest citation from 1978.

  48. Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid.

    It wasn’t Paul at his most difficult, but it is only Wednesday – even so, despite having all the crossers I couldn’t see BOASTING!

    Could I make a plea to bloggers for those who don’t have the time, or in my case the inclination, to follow up solutions, for a little more information, for instance who is John Terry, what kind of material is PRUNELLA, what is a YODA?

  49. Thanks Andrew @44 and my apologies to all for the inconvenience.

    I think I know what happened. I was being lazy and copied/pasted the HTML from the FAQ page before pasting in the URL and changing the text. In the FAQ “full URL” is italicised and the paste operation converted ” “ to ” “ (the latter should be proper rounded quotation marks – double superscript commas – but WordPress seems to interpret some ALT+ codes incorrectly).

  50. alexandra @16

    I wonder how many of us, on reading “f-9 = zeroeel”, went hunting for a cryptic interpretation?

  51. MRG @48 (I’m not risking spelling your name!)
    John Terry is a quite well-known footballer; YODA is Luke Skywalker’s wise teacher in the Star Wars trilogy; the only Prunella I know is Prunella vulgaris, common name “self-heal” (a plant).

  52. Mac Ruaraidh Ghais @48

    Bloggers have time constraints as well and they already spend a fair amount of time solving the puzzle and writing the post.

    When I first started blogging, many years ago, I used to include the definition (usually from Chambers) for words that were likely to be unfamiliar to some but, now that there is a full version of Collins and a good version of Oxford available on-line (along with many other dictionaries and, of course, Wikipedia), I have, in the main, stopped doing so because it only takes a few seconds for someone to look up the meaning of a word. They are also more likely to remember a word for future use if they have to type it into a search box.

    One of the functions of this site is to help people understand how to solve cryptic clues and to help them improve their solving ability. I don’t think that spoon-feeding every last detail will help that process, some personal research would be much more beneficial.

    To answer the questions that you didn’t have the inclination to look up:

    John Terry is the captain of Chelsea and was the captain of the England football team for a number of years.

    Prunella is a strong silk or woollen material, formerly used for academic and clerical gowns and women’s shoes (Chambers).

    Yoda is a ‘wise character’ in the Star Wars series of films (Wikipedia).

  53. Finally, this week, we have first cryptic worthy of the name and it’s only Wednesday!!!!!

    Although this was towards the easy end of the Paul spectrum it was still enjoyable. I personally thought all the clues and their parsings were fine.

    Thanks to Gaufrid and Paul

  54. “Yoda is a ‘wise character’ in the Star Wars series of films.”

    Green is he. Green and old and small. But weak is he not. Strong in the Force is he. Surprised am I that Yodafication of language has not in a cryptic crossword yet as a cluing device been used.

    It pains me to think that those of us who were the “right” age group when those movies first came out are now firmly middle-aged. And I’m surprised when I discover that I have students who have never seen the movies–they’re now too young.

  56. Dave E @55
    Yes – I’ve only seen all of the first one (just bits of 2 and 3, and apparently, of the rest, less said the better). However I’ve never seen a James Bond film that didn’t star Sean Connery either!

  57. mrpenney@54 Agree I with you. My children used to annoy the heck out of me by using Yodaspeak all the time. Now it just seems quaint …

    I assume that everyone commenting here must, by definition, have access to the internet and could therefore look up any word they don’t understand rather than expect the poor blogger to know exactly what is within the knowledge of any particular commenter.

    As my son always tells me: “Google is your friend …”

  58. I believe the ‘shoe’ reference in the word sabateur relates to the brake ‘shoe’ of a cart and the tampering with thereof.

  61. It just occurred to me that Obama does not leave the Whitehouse until Jan 2017. So 22d is not quite correct!

  62. Gracious Gaufrid,

    I haven’t read a post here yet, and came late, for 27…

    You,I know, have done more than anyone to nurture the likes o’ me. (Four whole years.)
    I’m snatching the chance to tell you and to thank you,
    whole-heartedly…

  63. re 10 across – “up the Eiffel Tower” sounded a bit rude, so, knowing Paul, in desperation I googled its slang definition. Well, yes, it was rude.

    I can only assume Paul used the phrase deliberately; otherwise he would have put “in Paris or in France, etc.

    My education has been broadened, not in a very nice way.

  64. @tonyoz. Oh my god, I wish I hadn’t read your post! Curiosity sent me to the Urban Dictionary … I don’t think Paul used it deliberately, he may be a little rude at times but NOT crude!

  65. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid

    An enjoyable Paul puzzle as per usual and ended up in the NW which I did find a bit harder than the rest. LONGJOHNS, LARGO and MONKEY WRENCHER were my last few in.

    Was chuffed to be able to understand 27a and eventually the 10a,21a parsings !!! TROWEL provided a bit of trouble too …

  66. I know this is late in the day, but I should like to add my twopenn’orth on the issue discussed at 48 and 52. As someone who does a blog here I’m always worried about appearing patronising and I therefore agree with Gaufrid on letting people find things out themselves.

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