Guardian 26,629 – Shed

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I started off slowly on this one (for no obvious reason), but it yielded steadily, making a very enjoyable and satisfying solve. Thanks to Shed.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
9. OBBLIGATO Part of the score Bilbao got wrong (9)
(BILBAO GOT)*
10. RHYME Match ends of “star” and “catarrh”, say? “Hum” and “come”? (5)
Last letters of staR catarrH saY huM comE – and the two pairs of words rhyme with each other
11. ECUADOR Country road bizarrely appended to old coin (7)
ECU (old French coin – not to confused with the European Currency Unit, which didn’t have any coinage) + ROAD*
12. DEFLECT Shortcoming involving student getting put on new course (7)
L in DEFECT
13. SKIMP Cut corners and speed-read page (5)
SKIM + P
14. KERFUFFLE UK reel, triple forte, causing commotion (9)
(UK REEL FFF)*
16. DANCE ATTENDANCE Wait to catch volunteers, returning, breaking balls (5,10)
Reverse of NET TA (Territorial Army, now renamed the Army Reserve) in DANCE DANCE
19. STREAMLET Small waterway or roadway concealing a mussel shell (9)
A M[usse]L in STREET
21. DOWSE Jones’s partner goes to middle of 21 down to seek water (5)
DOW (as in the Dow Jones Index) + [de]SE[rt]
22. PORTEND Threaten to be left to finish (7)
PORT (left) + END
23. MUSKRAT Animal shelter overturned, engulfed by unpleasant smell of animal (7)
Reverse of ARK (“animal shelter”) in MUST
24. OPTIC Dispenser of Dutch courage (nerve of sorts) (5)
Double definition – an optic is the device used to dispense spirits in pub
25. UNDERWEAR Pants, perhaps, at bottom of river (9)
UNDER [the river] WEAR
Down
1. SOBERSIDES Puritan‘s urgent call about birdseed mostly getting scattered (10)
BIRDSEE[d]* in SOS
2. ABLUTION Cleaning number one instrument holding laptop up (8)
NO I + L[aptop] in TUBA, all reversed
3. WIND UP What fearful people have to finish? (4,2)
Double definition (with different pronunications)
4. PARR Fish wife (last of 6)? (4)
Double definition – a parr is a young salmon, and Catherine Parr was Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife (and she had three other husbands apart from him)
5. WONDERMENT Custom keeps the German people marvelling (10)
DER MEN in WONT
6. PROFOUND Without supporting rising, poet’s deep (8)
Reverse of FOR (supporting) with [Ezra] POUND outside or “without”
7. MYSELF Personally intervening, stifle symbolist’s ascent (6)
Hidden in reverse of stiFLE SYMbolist’s.
8. VEST Match lacking a bit of 25 (4)
VESTA less A
14. KETTLEDRUM Exercised crowd control with peculiar instrument (10)
KETTLED (police technique of containing demonstrators in a small space) + RUM
15. ELEMENTARY Simple city housing oriental soldiers and sailor (10)
E + MEN + TAR in ELY
17. EVANESCE Blades slicing bits of peaches regularly disappear (8)
VANES in [p]E[a]C[h]E[s]
18. NEWSREEL Grins salaciously about following novel footage (8)
NEW + reverse of LEERS
20. RARITY Right cultivated, collecting one collector’s piece (6)
R + I in ARTY
21. DESERT Rat, of course, gutted (6)
DESSERT less its middle letter – does that count as being “gutted”?
22. PLOT Story in bed (4)
Double definition
23. MODE Fashion, or endless exhibitor thereof (4)
MODE[L]

43 comments on “Guardian 26,629 – Shed”

  1. Thanks Shed and Andrew

    Surprisingly quick solve for a Shed puzzle. PARR was my favourite; I also liked 15a, MUSKRAT and OPTIC. I don’t like “anagram, mostly” clues like 1d; I think they are lazy.

    Is “about” OK for a reversal in a down clue? Wouldn’t 18d have worked better as an across?

  2. Loved this from beginning to end. Lots of different ideas, accessible definitions and nothing too contrived. Perfect for a Tuesday morning.

    Many thanks to Shed and Andrew – it cheered me up no end that you, as just about the best solver here, had a slow start!

  4. Thanks for another great blog, Andrew.

    Like Limeni, I loved this – especially for the inclusion of words like SOBERSIDES, which I haven’t heard for years, EVANESCE and KERFUFFLE. I liked the breaking balls and the idea of going to the middle of the desert to find water – and the fishwife.

    I had no problem wth ‘gutted’ or ‘about’.

    Many thanks to Shed for the fun.

  5. Eileen’s right, full of fun, not least in the vocabulary selection. To her list I would add a nice phrase I rarely hear (or use), DANCE ATTENDANCE.

    I liked the misleading 6 in 4d. ELY (in 15d) seems to have become a regular city of late, even if it’s one of the smallest.

  6. Very enjoyable, and I was glad to have something gentle since I’ve been having a bad run lately. 3d was my favourite for the nice moment of surprise in discovering the pronunciation shift. Thanks Shed and Andrew.

  7. Not too difficult but with some nice clues and interesting words, as others have said. Hadn’t heard of SOBERSIDES. Thanks to Shed and Andrew.

  8. All jolly fine. Got stuck on Parr, but hey ho, my problem. However….

    From sundry online and paper dictionaries….

    Waterway

    1. A navigable body of water
    2. A conduit through which water flows
    3. A channel at the outer edge of a deck of a boat that allows water to run off

    I found 1. all over the place, 2. most places 3. some places

    None of those are a STREAMLET, none of those dictionaries gave any other meanings. Maybe Chambers On-line differs from Chambers paper (again)? I don’t have the latter. Maybe some kind soul can check it?

    Watercourse on the otherhand works perfectly.

  10. Thank you, Andrew and Shed. In 16a, isn’t the phrase ‘dance attendance on’, or is there a common usage which dispenses with the ‘on’? Sorry for my ignorance.

  11. I failed to solve 4d PARR – I’m familiar with the woman/wife but not the fish and the clue stumped me anyway.

    I was unable to parse 3d.

    New words for me were SOBERSIDES, DANCE ATTENDANCE, VESTA (although I probably have come across it in crossword puzzles before and had forgotten it!), OPTIC (device for measuring spirits).

    I liked RHYME & KERFUFFLE.

    Hugh C @ 9 – yes, I agree with you.

    Thanks Shed and Andrew

  12. MikeP @ 10

    the phrase was totally new to me

    from my online dictionary:

    dance attendance on chiefly Brit. do one’s utmost to please someone by attending to all their requests. she’s got that man dancing attendance on her.

  14. Thanks Shed & Andrew.; interesting puzzle.

    Yes, DANCE ATTENDANCE seems to be Shakespearean, I can’t really imagine anyone using it these days – the context given in Dictionary.com is: He expected his secretary to dance attendance on him so she quit her job. Is it present-day American usage?

  15. Thank you Andrew, that’s very helpful. But even Shakespeare adds ‘on’ to the phrase. Unless it is common to use OE in crosswords, as per the first example in the link, I’m left feeling there is something missing here. OK, a minor detail perhaps (no pun intended), but the blog is often a forum for discussing such things.

  16. I tentatively think that “to wait on” would be “to dance attendance on”, so “to wait” would be “to dance attendance”?

  18. Thanks Shed and Andrew.

    This was a most enjoyable puzzle even though I could not fully parse PROFOUND or KETTLEDRUM.

    So many good clues, impossible to list them all, but KERFUFFLE, DANCE ATTENDANCE, ABLUTION, WIND UP and PARR stand out.

  19. Lots of fun. I did not know the pub context for OPTIC or “kettle” for police control of a crowd and got PARR from the crossers without seeing Catherine Parr. Thanks to Shed and to Andrew for the helpful blog.

  21. My thoughts more or less agree with Eileen’s, including the ‘fun’.

    Thanks to Shed and Andrew.

  22. All good clean fun. Thanks to Shed and Andrew. Parr was last one in, and one of my favourites.

  23. I enjoyed this thoroughly. Thanks to Shed and Andrew. That said, I rather agree with Derek’s quibble about 19. I kept trying to fit ‘canal’ in somewhere to make an obscure word for mussel shell I’d never heard of.

  24. As with Andrew, I started slowly but the answers came steadily and in a satisfying manner. My LOI was PARR which actually made me laugh when I finally got it. Other favourites were DOWSE,KERFUFFLE and VEST. But I thought all the cluing was good.
    Thanks Shed.

  25. Thanks to Andrew and Shed

    Most enjoyable and went in more quickly than is usual for me with Shed. Usually when this happens the blogger comments it was an easy solve, so like Limeni it cheered me up that you had a slow start, Andrew.

  27. Shed’s rare appearances are always a treat. Not too difficult this time, and I can no longer claim any unfamiliarity with OPTICs. Last in was PLOT. Liked ABLUTION, RARITY and SOBERSIDES.

  28. Good fun, although I admit I did this late last night when I really ought to have been in bed, and I fell asleep halfway through!

    The only one that defeated me was VEST, since I had not heard matches referred to before as Vestas.

    It seems fair enough to me to leave the preposition out of the phrase “Dance attendance on,” since it’s also left out of the definition (as noted by muffin @16). (In an American-style non-cryptic crossword, it’s a common enough thing to do. The standard way of indicating that it’s going on is to put the preposition in parentheses in the clue. In this example, the clue would be “Wait (on).”)

    Robi @14: the phrase is no more common on this side of the Atlantic than on yours. I know it, but I never hear it used.

  30. I was delighted when I saw it was a Shed puzzle. As I have said before he’s one of my favourite setters and we don’t see enough of him, IMHO. It took me a while to see PARR but it raised a smile when the penny dropped. It also took me a while to see EVANESCE, but nowhere near as long as it took me to see PLOT at the end.

  31. A most enjoyable puzzle. (As ever from Shed)

    Not one of his most difficult but it at least offered a reasonable challenge.

    Lots of really good and inventive cluing none of which I have any quibbles with.

    By the way Derek @8. The SOED has

    conduit

    1 A (natural or artificial) channel or pipe for conveying liquids etc. ME.

    I think a streamlet qualifies as a “natural channel through which water flows”.

    Thanks to Andrew and Shed

  32. @17 By which logic we can call a puddle a pond; a pond a lake; a lake an ocean.

    @31 No, it qualifies as a conduit, not a waterway, otherwise by your logic, we can call the Panama Canal a streamlet, because all conduits must be equated.

    Isn’t it hilarious how people can be so deliberately stupid just because they are obsessed with disagreeing with me? Grow up.

    An intelligent person would have spotted a far more valid observation, which has nothing to do with streamlets. But you guys missed it, so by your own methods of overly tenuous associations I guess that makes you….

  33. Thanks all
    I thought this was unusually easy for a Shed, except that I failed with parr; I saw I was the only fish which fitted but completely missed the royal reference.
    I liked 16 across and last in 6 down.

  34. Very enjoyable – I didn’t fully parse PARR missing some enjoyment there, but all else was fine. I thought RHYME was nice.

  35. Enormous fun – and no quibbles whatsoever! Loved SOBERSIDES (which was new to me, and a super word, clearly clued), KERFUFFLE, PARR and DANCE ATTENDANCE (equating perfectly with “wait” as explained by muffin; for myself, this is not archaic as I’ve used it myself – and I was born a little after Shakespeare had passed away). I had no problem with STREAMLET being a small waterway, nor with use of “gutted”.
    A perfect puzzle. Thank you, Shed! (and to Andrew)

  37. [Derek Lazenby @32, actually I agree that STREAMLET does not equate with ‘waterway’, and spent quite a time on the web trying to find a connection. I do not have, or want to have, the paper version of Chambers.]

  38. Thanks everyone. I think Derek Lazenby @8 is right that ‘watercourse’ would have been a better definition for 19ac. But he should have said ‘None of those is a streamlet’, not ‘None of those are a streamlet’, which may be what he was getting at @32.

  40. DL @32

    a) If you continue to be abusive I will report you.

    b) My logic was flawless. I merely took one of your listed definitions of waterway and showed it could apply to a streamlet.

  42. Thanks Shed and Andrew

    Not sure why this one wasn’t done closer to the time – but glad to get to it eventually !!! As has been said, a great puzzle and one in which I had one short session on the train to work that accomplished very little and another longer session later last night where clues fell very steadily until it was done !!!

    Finished with clues all over the place – the last three in being NEWSREEL, MUSKRAT and PROFOUND which I wasn’t able to parse at all – Ezra Pound as a poet just didn’t enter my head ! Didn’t see the very clever spelling out of RHYME with the ends of the rhyming pairs though – that’s special!

  43. Still catching up.

    A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle with a smattering of new words, (Sobersides and Obbligato) and some nice surfaces.

    Very much liked the clues for Sobersides, Parr and Optic.

    So thanks to Shed and Andrew.

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