Guardian 26,758 / Paul

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[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here

Not too taxing a puzzle from Paul today, with a number of anagrams, insertions, double definitions and charades to help things along.

Thanks to him for being fairly gentle at a busy time  – but I’m glad I remembered seeing 23,24 before!

Across

 

1 Pretty vacuous stuff, as in a pair of habits (7)
PYJAMAS
P[rett]Y + JAM [stuff – both as verbs] + AS – a rather peculiar definition

5 Turned over, grain soaks cooking vessel (7)
STEWPAN
Reversal [turned over] of NAP [grain] + WETS [soaks]

9 Athenian money requiring flash investment (5)
TIMON
MO [flash] in TIN [money]

10 Somewhat like 1 down? That’s too much (1,3,5)
A BIT THICK
Collins defines POTAGE [1dn] as ‘any thick soup’

11 Swimmer has old hair style (4,6)
GREY MULLET
GREY [old] + MULLET [hairstyle]

12 Ladies’ man — Agrippa, say? (4)
STUD
Agrippa sounds [to some, hence the question mark] like ‘a gripper’ [stud] – I like Chambers’ definition: ‘a sexually potent or active man, or one who thinks he is’

14 Maximum score on board, little time left in between, try to rebuild (6,6)
TREBLE TWENTY
T [little time] + L [left] in an anagram [rebuild] of BETWEEN TRY for the highest score on a dartboard

18 Altercations getting out of hand between New York and California, perhaps (12)
INTERCOASTAL
Anagram [getting out of hand] of ALTERCATIONS}

21 24th chap detailed? (4)
MANX
If MAN A is 1st, MAN [chap] X is 24th – and Manx cats have no tail; Paul’s being doubly whimsical here: ‘Manx’ [from the Isle of Man’] means ‘detailed’ only when applied to cats – again, hence the question mark

22 Cleaner cheek on bum (4,6)
FACE SPONGE
FACE [cheek] + SPONGE [bum]

25,24 Gather around to insist on a comfort break? Here’s the bad news! (4,2,3,4)
READ ‘EM AND WEEP
REAP [gather] around DEMAND WEE [insist on a comfort break]
I remembered this one from a fairly recent puzzle and found this from Screw: ‘Taking in order (small), gather the pot’s mine’; it caused some puzzlement here then but apparently it’s an expression from poker – see here

26 Certainly not close to autumn, the night before last in summer (5)
NEVER
[autum]N + EVE [the night before] + [summe[R]

27 Old man in want after potassium as protection for joint (7)
KNEEPAD
PA [old man] in NEED [want] after K [potassium]

28 Decide to do this puzzle again? (7)
RESOLVE
Doublish definition

Down

1 Vessel takes a long time warming food (6)
POTAGE
POT [vessel] + AGE [a long time]

2 Top steeplechaser, perhaps? (6)
JUMPER
Double definition

3 Author Thomas tours book fair in Parisian district (10)
MONTMARTRE
MORE [Sir Thomas, author of ‘Utopia’] round [tours] NT [book – or, strictly, books]  +  MART [fair]

4 Sloth, part Brazilian, sleeping upside down (5)
SNAIL
Hidden reversal in braziLIAN S[leeping]
Both Collins and Chambers have ‘snail’ as ‘a slow-moving person’ – presumably Paul is using ‘sloth’ in the same metaphorical way

5 Chicken partially boned? (9)
SPINELESS
Double / cryptic definition

6 Poet abandoning the top table (4)
EATS
[k]EATS – I’m not keen on my favourite poet losing his head!

7 Constable, perhaps, catching breath, an individual collared (8)
PAINTING
PANTING [catching breath] round I [one – individual]

8 Observer simply reviewing Yankee Doodle: “Gutless” (5,3)
NAKED EYE
Anagram [reviewing] of YANKEE D[oodl]E – my favourite clue

13 Gear to change as went past (10)
SWEATPANTS
Anagram [to change] of AS WENT PAST

15 Pathogen I guess consuming oxygen under blackhead (9)
BIOHAZARD
I HAZARD [I guess] round O [oxygen] under B[lack]

16 German statesman‘s doctrine dividing king and nipper after uprising (8)
BISMARCK
ISM [doctrine] in [dividing] a reversal of [K [king] + CRAB [nipper]

17 Very old figure breaking leg (5,3)
STONE AGE
ONE [1 – figure] in [breaking] STAGE [leg]

19 Whine, seeing scorpion’s tail in trousers being pulled up (6)
SNIVEL
[scorpio]N in a reversal [being pulled up] of LEVIS [trousers]

20 Stuff about English prince or king? (6)
GEORGE
GORGE [stuff] round E [English]

23 One or the other with a cold duck? (5)
EIDER
How ‘either’ [one or the other] might be pronounced by someone with a cold? –  surely [wherever one comes from!] it’s the pronunciation of ‘n’, not ‘th’, that’s affected by a cold? [but I don’t really want to quibble today]

39 comments on “Guardian 26,758 / Paul”

  1. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    A quick solve with no particular standout clues; MAN X was my favourite.

    INTERCOASTAL is an odd word. It isn’t in my Chambers, and I can’t think of a context in which I would use it; certainly not to describe the bulk of the USA. An inhabitant of Kansas, for example, would probably be bemused by being described as living in an intercoastal area.

    Although it is obviously correct, “author” is rather a loose way of describing Sir Thomas More.

    [Anyone else remember “Cold duck”? It was a wine that used to be sold exclusively in Chinese restaurants, as I recall.]

  2. guilty (ex)secret: for reasons which don’t now seem clear, I found myself Googling “Thomas Beaumarais” earlier this morning.
    Thanks to Paul and Eileen; nice weekend all

  4. Ian @3
    Not entirely surprising that “cromulent” isn’t in my Chambers either, though you are using it as Lisa Simpson intended!

  5. It wasn’t Lisa, it was Miss Hoover speaking to Mrs. Krabappel. I couldn’t resist a spot of mischief using the word on a site for wordsmiths, and it seemed appropriate as the Simpsons inhabit some vaguely intercoastal location.

  7. Thank you, Eileen; as you say this was a gentle solve. LOI 24,25 as I’d entered it instead of ’em so was stuck for quite a while – poker isn’t my strong point!

    Many thanks to Paul for an enjoyable puzzle. 1, 11 & 21 ac were my favourite clues.

  9. Thanks to Paul and Eileen

    I’m still trying to decide whether this was an infuriatingly enjoyable or enjoyably infuriating puzzle.

  12. I’m not keen on my favourite poet losing his head!
    Why not going for [Y]eats then? 🙂

    Yes, Conrad @10, I tried Bond too but the O couldn’t be right in 7d.

    Nice puzzle for those who still have to recover after yesterday.
    I failed on 25,24 but I don’t blame myself for that.

    Many thanks Eileen and Paul.

  13. Thanks Paul and Eileen (again)

    An enjoyable puzzle that I did take my time with … and savoured it for longer :). Did have to think a bit with a couple of the shorties – MANX (took a while to understand the context of 24th, although it is a favourite trick of JH) and my last one in STUD.

    Had a similar problem as Doofs, by writing in A BIT ROUGH (Australian slang nearly equivalent to ‘that’s too much’) at 10a, before solving POTAGE – and causing similar angst in the NE corner for a while.

    Finished in that top right hand side with STEWPAN, PAINTING and STUD as the last few in.

  16. I like bond for 12a but glad I didnt think of it.. My problem here ws 25/24-never been a Loafist and never heard of the title. But it parsed perfectly. Thanks paul and Eileen

  18. All pleasant enough, but for me a fairly routine Paul offering compared to some of the recent ones. Last in was SPINELESS, biggest groan EIDER. EATS makes its 5th appearance as a solution this year, and is now outright leader – these were the previous ones:

    Picaroon 26506 – Food from cooks in Hackney
    Rufus 26508 – Dines in style at smart restaurants
    Picaroon 26633 – Cooks throwing away hot food
    Otterden 26657 – Consumes a variety of teas

    STUD is more popular over the whole archive with 35 occurrences, but I’ll spare you that list.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

  19. Conrad @10 and baerchen @11 – I like it!

    xjpotter @6 and Sil @12 – that’s a good idea. I like Yeats, too, but JK would always be the first to spring to mind. I ‘did him’ for A Level – ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is perfection.

    IanSW3 ‘3 – I never thought to look up INTERCOASTAL. Thanks for ‘cromulent’ but I don’t think I’ll be using it- it doesn’t sound right to me, somehow. 😉

  20. Conrad @ 10 – me too! It meant I couldn’t get PAINTING. Ridiculous, with hindsight. I also failed on MANX, but enjoyed the tusslewith Paul as usual. Favourites were NAKED EYE, STONE AGE and GEORGE. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

  21. Eileen, Yeats is among my personal favorites. “Sailing to Byzantium” is glorious–and I’ll probably like iteven better when I’m actually old. Also a fan of “Easter 1916” and “The Second Coming.” But for the title of Mrpenney’s Favorite Poet, he’ll have to get in line behind a pair of Americans–Whitman and Dickinson. (Among the Romantics, Keats is my favorite…I guess I just like my poetry a bit more modern.)

    As for the puzzle, nice and straightforward. Didn’t parse Manx–thanks for that. The British spelling of “pajamas” was clued fairly, and thanks to Harry Potter I remembered that a sweater is a jumper over there. (Here, a jumper is a dress-like thing that little girls wear.)

  22. Doofs @ 8. I also wanted to put “a bit messy” for 10ac, but as I couldn’t really match it to “That’s too much” it only went in faintly, until my husband told me otherwise.

  23. Thanks to Paul and Eileen. For some reason I made a very slow start but after a while I did make progress. I had trouble seeing the “stew” in STEWPAN and the “treble” in TREBLE TWENTY (neither kitchen items or darts are my strength) but I did know READ ‘EM AND WEEP and did (to my surprise) manage to parse MANX, my last in. Lots of fun.

  25. What a good puzzle, spoilt for me only by my own ignorance – I’ve never heard of READ ‘EM AND WEEP and couldn’t guess it. Still, I wasn’t held up by it, as I could see from all possible crossers that it was a phrase I didn’t know. (There were three unknowns yesterday, and one is better than three!)

    It’s nice to see the poets getting mentioned: Keats today and Donne yesterday (in the blog, not the crossword) are favourites of mine. I didn’t spot Yeats, the other possibility for 6D that others spotted.

  26. Quite a gentle Paul but very enjoyable despite my making a few errors initially- Triple rather than TREBLE TWENTY,looking for Thomas Mann rather than MORE- which slowed me down A bit.Liked GREY MULLET and SPINELESS.
    Thanks Paul.

  27. Struggled but finished.

    The nicest thing you can ever say to a poker player is “I don’t know how to play”. The reply is obvious, and costly, “It’s easy, let me teach you.”. I suppose mentioning that I used to make a steady profit at the online version might spoil that plan.

  28. 23ac EIDER.

    Eileen, you don’t want to quibble but you quibbled!

    I poo-poo your quibbling. Or is it pooh-pooh?

    I understood the clue immediately and totally agree with the pronunciation (or is it enunciation?) implication (or is it explanation?)

    Such fun! (Hence no HH)

  30. Seeing EIDER reminded me of one of my favourite Araucaria clues: “Dis duck or dat?”

    OK, it doesn’t take a genius to work out, but it’s witty and elegant. Paul’s alternative is almost as good…

  31. An enjoyable puzzle as ever from Paul. However I didn’t find it as straightforward as many seem to have. (I was visiting our narrow boat to make sure it was all ready for our vist after Christmas and not damaged by Desmond! It’s just up to a reasonable internal temperature)

    I never considered beheading Keats as the far superior poet Yeats came to mind before I had even considered him 😉

    “Intercoastal” is definitely in the SOED. I believe Muffin hasn’t quite got the jist of the word as surely everyone who doesn’t live by the sea lives in an intercoastal area?

    Thanks to Eileen and Paul

    Now I’m ready for the hotpot that’s been 4 hours in the making 🙂

  32. BNTO @31
    Yes, I agree that I haven’t got the jist of “intercoastal”. By your argument, everywhere that isn’t coastal is “intercoastal”. How does that differ from “inland” (except in being longer, and almost content-free)? 🙂

  33. Mr Beaver @30, I can’t remember that one – but brilliant it is.
    Absolutely not hedgehoggy-proof, though.
    This is where Araucaria was different and The Guardian still is.

  34. Sil @ 33

    Absolutely nothing is Spiny Norman-proof.

    Blinkers, tunnel vision, narrowmindedness and neophobia ensure that.

  35. Muffin @32, I think what BNTO meant was that “intercoastal” refers to a connection between two coasts (trade, travel, etc.) not what lies between them. It could be used to refer to trade between the East and West coasts of the Pacific, which is in no way “inland”.

  36. HKRunner @35
    Yes, it occurred to me at about 6 o’clock this morning that it was probably referring to process rather than position (I had been lying awake worrying about it – not!)
    I think that Americans, specifically, would say “transcontinental”, though.

  37. Muffin & HKrunner

    Yes, you’re both right.

    SOED has

    inter?coastal adjective existing, carried on between, or connecting different coasts e20.

    So it can refer to the connection but the “existing between” tends to suggest that it can also refer to position. My point, made very imprecisely, was that, as we live on a roughly spherical 3D object, if you’re not on the coast then you’re between coasts. (I don’t think we need the likes of the Four Colour Theorem to prove this 😉 )

    I don’t think “transcontinental” means the same thing always as since in the case of Europe and Asia the same “island” is shared. Although in the case of the other continents it amounts to the same thing.

  39. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    Final run-up to the Guardian and FT Christmas specials.

    As usual with Paul puzzles, it took a while to get in – with INTERCOASTAL being my first before I worked my way back up to the top.

    Creative and witty as ever, I did toy with NECK SPONGE at 22 but wisely waited for the crossers to fall.

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