Guardian 26,697 by Orlando

by

Really enjoyable and not too difficult, with lots of neat cluing and surfaces. Favourites 10ac, 28ac, 8dn and 13dn. Thanks, Orlando.

Across
1 DECOMPOSE
Dopes come out as rotters do (9)

(Dopes come)*
6 SQUIB
Lampoon francophone who resides in centre of Lisbon (5)

QUI=French for “who”, inside [Li]SB[on]
9 DURER
Old master more convinced when daughter replaces son (5)

Albrecht Durer [wiki]. SURER=”more convinced”, but with D[aughter] in the place of S[on]
10 PREGNANCY
Start of parenthood: man and woman having swell time? (9)

P[arenthood] plus REG=”man” plus NANCY=”woman”
11 PALMERSTON
PM, close to tears, hugged by non-U comedian (10)

Lord Palmerston [wiki]. The close to [tear]S, inside PA[u]L MERTON the comedian, but non-U
12 BRIO
Dash from Brazil’s capital city (4)

=spirit, vivacity. B[razil], plus RIO=”city”
14 DAWDLER
Bad lad drew trailer (7)

(lad drew)*
15 GROMMET
Monty’s opponent with large cast in great ring (7)

Erwin ROMME[l] was the opponent of Bernard Montgomery or Monty [wiki], with L[arge] cast out, and inside G[rea]T
17 VISTULA
View taking in both sides of unusual river (7)

A Polish river. VISTA=”View”, taking in U[nusua]L
19 LIKENED
Fancy man compared (7)

LIKE=”Fancy” plus NED=”man”
20 RUMP
What’s left behind? (4)

double def: =a remnant; or =the buttocks
22 PROMENADES
Walks made person fit (10)

(made person)*
25 ON IMPULSE
Showing sign of life, Orlando’s dropped in without thinking (2,7)

ON=”Showing”, plus PULSE=”sign of life”, with I’M=”Orlando’s” inside them
26 PHASE
Rattle heard in part of cycle? (5)

sounds like ‘faze’=”Rattle”
27 ENTRY
Vestibule no good for posh people (5)

[g]ENTRY=”posh people”, with no G[ood]
28 CUTTY SARK
Injured boxer not on one vessel or another (5,4)

CUT=”Injured”, Mike TYS[on]=”boxer not on“, plus ARK=”vessel”
Down
1 DID UP
Welshman, gutted by party, redecorated (3,2)

D[a]I=”Welshman, gutted”, plus D[emocratic] U[nionist] P[arty]=”party”
2 CARL LEWIS
Will race upset singular athlete? (4,5)

(Will race)* plus S[ingular]
3 MARVELLOUS
Wicked poet’s house contents (10)

Andrew MARVELL=”poet” [wiki], plus [h]OUS[e]
4 OPPOSER
One who resists work with model (7)

OP=”work” plus POSER=”model”
5 ERELONG
Without delay, say, loner dashed in (7)

E.G.=”say”, with (loner)* inside
6 SINE
Function without Latin (4)

double def: =mathematical function; or =”without [in] Latin”
7 ULNAR
Useful narrow section of a bone (5)

Hidden in [Usef]UL NAR[row]
8 BOYCOTTED
Cricket commentator has Edgbaston openers sent to Coventry (9)

Geoffrey BOYCOTT=”Cricket commentator”, plus ED[gbaston]
13 LOOK SNAPPY
Get your glad rags on — and your skates (4,6)

double def: =dress well=”Get your glad rags on”; or =hurry up=”[Get] your skates [on]”
14 DOVER SOLE
Bird only grabbing tail of saltwater fish (5,4)

DOVE=”Bird” plus SOLE=”only”, grabbing [saltwate]R
16 MONODRAMA
Old bird with no drink in singular performance (9)

MOA=”Old bird”, with NO DRAM=”no drink” in it
18 ACRYLIC
Paint tea party attendee almost eating blubber (7)

ALIC[e] in Wonderland=”tea party attendee almost”, eating CRY=”blubber”
19 LAMBENT
Keen to accept book shedding some light (7)

LAMENT=”Keen”, around B[ook]
21 MOIST
Damp area avoided by chairman’s follower (5)

M[a]OIST=”chairman’s follower”, avoiding a[rea]
23 SPEAK
Start from scratch and reach the highest point, say (5)

S[cratch] plus PEAK=”highest point”
24 SPRY
Lively spot around year end (4)

SPY=”spot”, around [yea]R

44 comments on “Guardian 26,697 by Orlando”

  1. Fairly easy but enough of a challenge to keep me happy. The parsing of 11ac took me longest – nice one!

    Many thanks to Orlando & manehi.

  2. Nice range of references, with even the perhaps more obscure words gettable from the clues, though there’s a lot of cut-and -paste going on.

  4. Got a bit stuck on the bottom half, but very nicely clued all round. Hadn’t heard of VISTULA. Favourites were CUTTY SARK, SPEAK, SQUIB. Many thanks to Orlando and manehi.

  5. Thanks manehi, and thanks Orlando for an enjoyable puzzle, although I must admit that I enjoy puzzles less when they contain a lot of proper nouns. Here, five answers are proper nouns, proper nouns abound in the clues AND I had to come up with a lot of first names plus Mao plus Paul Merton, who was used to make me arrive at yet another name. However, since JuneG @1 loves this clue in particular, this is not meant as criticism in any way. Just my personal taste…

  6. Thanks Orlando and manehi.

    I went to the wrong tea party and had never heard of PAuL MERTON, but by chance had just been reading a reference to MARVELL.

    I did like SQUIB, GROMMET, VISTULA, CUTTY SARK, DOVER SOLE and LAMBENT.

  7. Re LAMBENT: I rejected this at first because of Chambers’ (1972) definition: “licking; moving about as if touching lightly; gliding over; flickering.” But googling it gave a rather different meaning: “glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance”.

  8. I have always understood ‘lambent’ to mean ‘softly bright or radiant’. Not being a native speaker of English, my vocab is mostly from reading and it’s just that I have not come across ‘lambent’ in the sense that drofle mentions above in #7.

    I should think that even native speakers are unlikely to use ‘lambent’ in everyday conversation so they too must have these limitations of not being aware of all the senses of a word.

    So there must be these dictionary look-ups. New learning.

  9. 13dn. ‘Look snappy’ refers to smartness of appearance, quite distinct from ‘look lively’ which means ‘hurry up’, surely. I’ve never heard or read of it used in the latter sense.

  10. Crossbencher@9 “I would like a crocodile sandwich and make it snappy” would be a good example of the second sense. I take it you have never had to suffer Christmas cracker jokes.

  11. Thanks Orlando & manehi.

    Chambers gives ‘look snappy, make it snappy’ although my ODE and I are only familiar with the latter phrase (perhaps the former is old/dialectical usage?) I was not familiar with SQUIB=lampoon but that IS in my ODE. Thanks for the PA(u)L MERTON, which I missed.

    I liked PREGNANCY, GROMMET, CUTTY SARK & ACRYLIC.

  14. I can nearly match alt-Paul, for I was on my way to a walk when I solved PROMENADES. First in was the very good PREGNANCY, which reminded me of some of yesterday’s clues.

    At the walk’s end I sat down with my sandwich to wrap up the remainder, only to stare blankly till I got on the tube. Then DOVER SOLE unleashed the floodgates. I liked LAMBENT – remembered it vaguely from a chemistry textbook and a reference to a lambent flame. Maybe the dictionaries were different then.

    CARL LEWIS threw me as the ? implied something non-literal when it’s simply there because the clue is in the interrogative.

  15. Orlando’s all too rare appearances are always worth waiting for. Found this quite challenging in places, and beautifully constructed. Liked DECOMPOSE, PREGNANCY, PALMERSTON, CUTTY SARK, ACRYLIC and MOIST. LOOK SNAPPY was last in after PHASE.

    Thanks to Orlando and manehi

  16. This was rough for this non-Brit.

    I was unfamiliar with Paul Merton, but Lord PALMERSTON is familiar to me and the answer was obvious enough. Also unfamiliar with cricket commentators of any kind, and with the expression “sent to Coventry,” but it could hardly have been anything but BOYCOTTED with those crossing letters. I don’t have the expression “get your skates on,” or even “get your glad rags on,” and “look snappy” only refers to dress for me.

    I cheated on pretty much the entire southeast corner. Ugh. The rest of the puzzle was fun, though.

  18. Thanks to Orlando and manehi. I shared mrpenney@16’s problems with Paul Merton and Boycott though I was familiar with “sent to Coventry.” Last in for me was PHASE (I took a while making the rattle-faze connection). Much enjoyed this one.

  19. David@3: It’s a dead heat in my view – I think both are good in their own special way.

    Andreas 61@5: I wouldn’t say that I loved 11ac exactly; it’s more that I was tickled by it when I finally realised who the comedian was (not the first one to spring to my mind, I must say). Like you, I don’t usually enjoy puzzles which contain too many proper names, but I can make an exception for this one – even found Carl Lewis easily from the wordplay & crossers, despite the fact that the world of athletics is completely foreign to me!

  21. I’ve never heard LOOK SNAPPY in the sense of “hurry up” and only got it from the crossers. This rather spoilt an otherwise entertaining puzzle. I must say I liked GROMMET and CUTTY SARK and,grudgingly, PHASE which was my LOI
    Mostly enjoyable.
    Thanks Orlando.

  22. Thanks, manehi. Orlando twice in a week, because he produced the Quiptic on Monday too.

    Wit and precision, as tupu says. Only the last three or four that I got held up on. I got PALMERSTON, although I couldn’t understand it, despite being a HIGNFY fan. SQUIB for ‘lampoon’ I didn’t know, but it couldn’t be anything else.

    Hope that Orlando keeps them coming. I always enjoy his puzzles.

  23. ‘Look snappy’ is a variation on ‘snap to it’, both of which my mum used to say when I was dragging my heels getting ready for school. Both are/were in common usage in Lancashire.

    Thanks for the crossword and blog.

  24. Thanks Orlando and manehi
    Totally agree with manehi – not difficult but very enjoyable. Lots of favourites, but I must single out “swell time” for PREGNANCY.

    [I don’t know if anyone else here does the Guardian Sudoku, but something odd seems to have happened today. As far as we (wife and I joint effort) can see, there are two different valid solutions. Not differring by much, admittedly, but different all the same. Has anyone else found this?]

  26. I had to give up on 13D (LOOK SNAPPY) and therefore 26A (PHASE) today. Having now seen the answer to 13D and read the various comments on it, I have to say that I have never heard of ‘look snappy’, only ‘make it snappy’ in the sense of ‘hurry up’. I also know what a ‘snappy dresser’ is, but the phrase ‘look snappy’ with either of the two meanings intended by the setter is, to me, just two words put together that make sense and not a recognised phrase that belongs in a crossword.
    That said, this was a super crossword to follow Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s. It was clever and varied, and of a level of difficulty that I can cope with and enjoy.

  27. An “attendee” in the clueing – when did that word get a licence for use in the sense of someone attending at, say, a meeting? Am I the only one that cringes? Any other “cringees”?

  28. Alphalpha @27: “When did that word get a license for use in the sense of someone attending at, say, a meeting?”

    My dictionary says 1937–which makes it relatively recent as far as words go, but still not exactly a neologism. It’s only illogical to me now that you point it out.

  29. In response to muffin at 24: I’m not sure where the ‘General Discussion’ is (ref. Tupu at 25), but I have just solved today’s Sudoku no. 3,248 in the print edition and it does seem to have a unique solution.

    In response to Alphalpha at 27: the same topic came up a couple of days ago with regard to ESCAPER. Obviously you are referring to 18D in today’s puzzle. I too cringe at ‘attendee’ (one who has been attended!), but ‘attender’, which I cannot fault, sounds so affected that I would not use it. Also, ‘attendee’ is in the dictionaries as ‘one who attends’, and that just about settles it, although my dictionary also gives ‘attender’, without definition, as a noun derived from ‘attend’. I think that would be called a typical ‘agent noun’, and in this instance it is surely valid.

  32. Alan Browne @26: Chambers gives “look snappy” as meaning “hurry up”, so, as I see it at least, that makes it acceptable in a crossword. The problem lies in regional variations of the English language; I solved it very quickly, but there again I hail from the same city as Orlando, others may see it differently!

  33. Thank you, JuneG. Although I have Chambers at home I didn’t use that dictionary to look up this phrase. I stand corrected. If it’s in Chambers I have no argument at all. It just happens that I’ve heard ‘make it snappy’ many times but not Orlando’s ‘look snappy’. I’m in Kent – it must show sometimes!

  34. Thank you, Alan – hope you didn’t think I was correcting you. My daughter is moving to Kent very soon so I’ll have to learn a new language!

  36. JuneG – no, not at all. I’d rather be corrected than remain ignorant. Don’t worry about any new language. I don’t know how far from Kent you are, but I can tell you that the Yorkshire word ‘ginnel’ meaning a passageway between buildings is also used in Kent. Apart from that, Kent could be anywhere in the south-east. (Don’t take me too seriously – I’m sure Kent people like to be distinctive like the residents of any historic county.)

  37. Alan Browne @ 36. Who says it’s a Yorkshire word? Ginnel is used in my native Lancashire, too; wynd and vennel up here (Scotland)

  38. Dave Ellison @ 36. I was born in Yorkshire, but I didn’t mean to claim that any particular word was used only there. In fact, ‘ginnel’ in my dictionary is described as a Northern word.

  39. Kent had a rather large influx of Yorkshire miners when the Kent coalfield was developed so not that surprising that words travelled with them.

  40. I was completely stumped by the parsing of 3d because I was absolutely certain that the poet had only one “l” & for the life of me I coudn’t figure where “lous” came into anything. One of those occasions where Google would have been a big help to me!

  42. All except the SE corner done in 15 minutes. Then “monodrama” held me up for ages, trying all the crosses for monologue, monomania etc. So overall solving time average in the end. Good puzzle.

  43. Thanks Orlando and manehi

    Found this a really enjoyable crossword – so much depth in the range of subject matter / people in the solution and a lot to work out with some of the clue constructions as well. Add to that the cleverness / humour in the likes of PREGNANCY and CUTTY SARK together with the clarity of each clue, made for a very pleasant solving experience.

    Finished in the SE corner, as did many by the looks, with LAMBENT (new to me), GROMMET (which took an age to parse) and MONODRAMA the last few in.

    Finished in a couple of short sessions and learnt quite a lot in the process.

  44. Thanks Orlando and manehi.

    Fairly straightforward and enjoyable.

    Good surfaces to DECOMPOSE and PREGNANCY and I liked the construction of PALMERSTON.

    SE corner was last to fall to steady work.

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