Guardian26,893 / Pasquale

54 comments on “Guardian26,893 / Pasquale”

1. 10 ac IMAGO. I saw no problem with FRAYED meaning lose the last letter, but, then, I don’t need to think so deeply about these things as you, Eileen.

   Until I looked it up, I didn’t know IMAGO can form a plural IMAGINES. Scope there for another clue on the lines of FANCIES BUTTERFLIES??

   Thanks to Don for an enjoyable puzzle and to Eileen for the blog.

2. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

   Re 4, I don’t know if The Don is a fan of Bob Dylan (whose 75th birthday it was yesterday), but he wrote a song called Tears Of Rage, with a chorus that starts “Tears of rage, tears of grief…”.

   There may also be a biblical connection.

3. Thanks for MALI – that and NAPERIAN were non-starters as far as my general knowledge is concerned! I liked ANNEX and SUBZERO (which took me ages but was worth waiting for).

4. Thank you Eileen, needed you for the MALI gag.

   Dashed in recklessly with Hasidic instead of HASIDIM which held me up for a while.

   I liked the Slightly odd foreign thing but not sure quite what’s going on in the SUBZERO clue. ‘Sub’ is obviously short for ‘subscription’ but I’ve only ever used ‘subs’ in the plural, and I don’t see what information is doing.

   18d made me smile as it reads like the setting for of a joke…so there was this philanthropist, a composer, and a soldier in a church, and one says, “…

   Surely someone can finish it.

   Nice week, all.

5. I also enjoyed this puzzle rather more than usual for Pasquale, for the same reasons as Eileen.

   I needed help to parse 23a and 22d. New word for me was SEPT = clan.

   My favourites were TIRAMISU & ANNEX.

6. oops – NAPIERIAN. Shows how much I know about it (i.e.nothing).

7. Re TEAR, I read it simply as tear about or rage about.

8. Simon S @2 I certainly am a huge Dylan fan , Doesnt that track open the Band’s first album “The Big Pink”?

9. Fascinated to learn that TIRAMISU means ‘pick me up’ in Italian, but I expect 90% of crosswordland is already aware of that.

10. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale.

    A satisfying solve.

    I think I agree with you re “frayed” in 10a, Eileen. I got it without a problem but dropping only the last letter to me did not echo perfectly the idea conveyed in “frayed”.

    “Give some bottles a rinse” in 21a for SARIN seemed to me to imply taking some letters out, as you might shake out the contents of a bottle.

    New to me were 25a NAPIERIAN, which was all the anagram could be, and 23d SEPT for a clan…for which I just had to think of the month when winter starts to turn to spring in my part of the world. Mind you in Queensland, we have winter beginning next week and are still experiencing daytime temperatures in the high 20s!

    Also unfamiliar with TA for a volunteer force in 16a MILITARY ATTACHÉ, but fortunately I had enough from the anagram to solve it.

    4d, I thought to go into a TEAR was to go into a rage? But maybe that’s not an exact synonym either?

    Eileen, could you kindly explain the Caesar J/Antony M referenceyou made in discussing 22d (which was a guess for me without knowing why). Thanks.

    Favourite here was 24a LIONS, with NE corner the most challenging (3d VERTEX and 11a GAGSTER being last ones in, and now embarrassed that they took so long).

11. Sorry, crossed against other posts, thus some repetition of others’ points in mine.

12. Julie @10

    I’ve had a quick trawl through the archive and can’t find it. The answer was ANTONYM and the wordplay involved ‘friend of Caesar J’, I think. I have to go out now but I’ll have another look when I come back this afternoon.

13. A week ago I welcomed an Arachne blogged by Eileen, and I should have had a similar response to Pasquale, except that I found it uncharacteristically undemanding. My only failure was 22 down, which I couldn’t parse, although it could only be that country from the crossers – handicapped by ignorance of contemporary cricketers.

    Perhaps I had an advantage for some of the clues, living as I do within walking distance of Merchiston, home of Baron Napier, having been married (half a century ago) in Dunfermline, birthplace of the Scots philanthropist.

    William @9: you may also be fascinated that TIRAMISU originated in Venice (although the nearby Treviso claims it as theirs) and is said to have been developed by the ladies of pleasure to revive their clients after a night of more physical activities!

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

14. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale.

    I dithered about my LOI (MISSPELT) because I didn’t know the CAST = PELT connection; by this time I had forgotten the reference in 1d which would have quickly confirmed the answer.

    I initially 6ded NAPIERIAN, despite being in Napier Uni at Merchiston just last Saturday, giving an OU tute. A nice clue.

15. 6d not 6ded, that is

16. Julie @10 & Eileen @12
    There have been at least four previous outings for ‘antonym’ in the puzzles covered by this site:

    Guardian 24,717 / Araucaria / 4/6/09 – 7dn Oppo of Caesar, J., or the opposite (7)
    Guardian 25,645 / Araucaria / 25/5/12 – 8dn Friend of Caesar, J., or the opposite (7)
    Independent 8138 / Nimrod / 13/11/12 – 19dn Loyal friend of Caesar, J? The opposite! (7)
    Independent 9174 / Klingsor / 10/3/16 – 11ac Friend of Caesar, J? The opposite (7)

17. Mac Ruaraidh Ghais @11 Superb, I didn’t know that – many thanks.

    Gaufrid @16 Bravo. I thought I’d seen that device before.

18. copmus @ 8. Yes, it’s it does: it’s one of several Basement Tapes songs on Music From Big Pink.

19. I’ve thought of an ending for the joke…”A philanthropist, a composer, and a soldier meet in a church, and the result is a War Requiem concert with free admission”.

    I’ll get my coat…

20. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale

    I also found this more enjoyable than some by this setter.

    I read 14d as an anagram of ‘foreign’ around ‘ a’ plus ‘RM’ (fighting force).

    I liked the Id 6d link.

21. Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

    I kept trying to find a word other than “image” where the edges could be frayed, but the setter is male and with men’s clothing it is usually the trouser and sleeve hem edges that fray.

    22d had to be MALI, thanks Eileen for clarifying that and for the SEPT clan meaning. I loved NAPIERIAN and SUBZERO!

22. Thanks Pasquale & Eileen.

    I think coats, dresses, trousers etc get frayed at the end (bottom,) not at both ends, so I’m relaxed about that.

    I was going to complain that bus (information about) was not correct as a (computer) bus connects information rather than being information… and then I read the blog!

    Thanks William @9 & mac@13; I was in the 10% not knowing about tiramisu despite being a devotee of the Waitrose product.

    Entertaining puzzle; for once I knew all the words (or at least Hasidic,) although perhaps not GAGSTER. I even got the M. Ali gag.

23. P.S. cholecyst@1; I like your IMAGINES clue.

24. Clever. Thanks, Eileen.

25. Thanks Gaifrid. Oh how I still miss Araucaria! Such a clever setter; he first got me interested in The Guardian Cryptic back when it was printed in a local paper here in Queensland.

26. Oh dear, just thought of shirt collars…

27. Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen. I did not know Napier or GREEN POUND or the SEPT-clan link and needed help parsing MALI (given my usual cricket deficiency) and SUBZERO, but I did finally get through. A good challenge.

28. No blog on Monk as yet. Why?

29. copmus @28
    Please be patient. We aim to have blogs posted by mid-afternoon (UK time). Often it is possible to publish them much earlier but there are occasions when family/work commitments, illness or IT problems prevent this.

30. I like my cricket but didn’t have a clue about the parsing of MALI, and SEPT was new to me. I liked PROGRAMMER (also a clue elsewhere recently), TIRAMISU and SUBZERO which was my COD.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

31. I struggled with a bunch of unfamiliar words in the last Pasquale I tackled, but this one was very different on that score because I knew all the words except SEPT (23D) with its first meaning (clan).

    An excellent puzzle – the right level of difficulty for me being a bit of a challenge but everything well clued. Three or four of the answers I had to guess and then scratch my head over the parsing, but I got there in the end, even with M. Ali!

    Thanks very much Pasquale and Eileen.

32. Finished this, although I was baffled as to the parsing of MALI, since I’m not up on cricketers. One of these days, just for purposes of revenge, I’ll write a puzzle with nothing but baseball players in it, post it here, and cackle with glee as I watch you folks scratch your heads.

    Baseball terminology could actually sometimes be useful for setters, especially since some of the letters used in the score reports are non-intuitive: K = strike out; BB = walk, etc. (Many of the others match those in cricket; H for hit, C for catcher or caught, O for out, R for run, etc.) Oddly, American cryptics don’t use these either, since American cluing style (even for cryptics) tends to favor clarity.

    But I digress. I also needed help with the parsing for SUBZERO, so thanks, Eileen.

33. Gaufrid@ 29-thanks- I think I have it pretty well parsed but I’m not exactly gunning for a gig here.I always like Monk.

34. I found this relatively easy for a Pasquale. I’m another who couldn’t parse MALI as I hadn’t heard of Mr Ali. I had heard of Alistair Cook, but I didn’t think of trawling through his teammates and probably wouldn’t have bothered even if I had as the answer seemed clear. The parsing of a couple of the other clues caused me some head-scratching, but I got there eventually and I don’t have any quibbles about them.

    My favourite was NAPIERIAN, but that must have been a tough one for most who didn’t study maths in the days of slide rules and log tables. Napier was also famous for Napier’s Bones, which fortunately were not still in use during my schooldays.

    Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen.

35. More easy clues than we often get from the Don, but I was held up by gaps in general knowledge and found this difficult to finish, with SUBZERO last in after SEPT – the clan meaning was unfamiliar but I should have looked it up much earlier. All quite fair in retrospect. Liked PROGRAMMER, but then that has been my job description at times. Should have spotted MALI much earlier, after all it was in a table quiz at Derby on Saturday!

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

    To complement Gaufrid @16 – this is the full list of Guardian clues for ANTONYM and its derivatives:

    Shed 22064: Great lover married? Just the opposite (7)
    Gordius 22165: Strange man? Blair is held to be quite the opposite (7)
    Rufus 22638: Not many can provide a word of opposite meaning (7)
    Janus 22754: It’s the opposite of a thousand to an old Roman (7)
    Paul 23067: Boy, male, then female? (7)
    Araucaria 23470: Oppo, perhaps, of Caesar, J? (7)
    Taupi 24056: The opposite of two marks (7)
    Araucaria 24717: Oppo of Caesar, J., or the opposite (7)
    Gordius 25411: New man carries Old Labour leader or the opposite (7)
    Orlando 25428: Lover of drama getting married? Just the opposite (7)
    Araucaria 25645: Friend of Caesar, J., or the opposite (7)
    Gordius 26104: Man upset about Blair having contrary term (7)
    Arachne 26273: Time to interrupt unnamed person opposite (7)
    Orlando 23781: Lover of Shakespeare writing here and there, say (8)
    Brendan 24260: Chap writing War and Peace, for example (8)
    Orlando 24489: Character in Shakespeare manuscript – or ‘War and Peace’, for example (8)
    Orlando 25593: Role at Stratford – writing War and Peace, say (8)
    Brendan 25655: Old general writing 13, for example (8)
    Brendan 25725: 5 and 24 down, for example, in general writing (8)
    Enigmatist 25283: Manny R’s friend gets stuck into some opposition (8)

36. Thanks all
    I failed on Mali, a weak objection is that it is not really cryptic!Just a double definition!
    For a Pasquale I thought this was very easy, perhaps because ,I tackled it in the morning, much earlier than my usual time,
    BTW I taught Napier’s bones into the nineties, Jennyk,

37. PS for anyone wondering how Mali has been clued (Paul’s C Clay one is very similar):

    Gordius 22290: Illness one may find in Africa (4)
    Paul 23235: Somalian’s country (4)
    Paul 25151: African nation enclosed by another? (4)
    Brendan 25219: Part of Somalia or other country in Africa (4)
    Gordius 25333: Country with ill-will apart from the church? (4)
    Paul 26477: C Clay country? (4)
    Imogen 26617: Country church abolished out of spite (4)

38. RCWhiting @36
    Oops, then I had better amend my comment to “not in use at my school”, since my schooldays were over well before the 90s. I knew of them but I don’t think we ever used them, or even were taught how to do so.

39. Many thanks, Gaufrid @16 and beery hiker @35. I knew I’d seen it more than once but had no idea it was so many times. No wonder I [eventually] remembered it!

40. Can someone enlighten me on the cast = PELT connection? If it’s about throwing things then I submit they are not the same. In the “cast” case, the direct object is the thing thrown as in “cast a stone”, while PELT’s direct object is the thing thrown at, as in “they pelted the man in the stocks with rotten fruit”. I can’t see a way they can be substituted one for the other.
    Or am I missing something?

41. Hi jeceris @40

    I thought exactly the same and was going to comment, then found that the first definition of ‘pelt’ in Chambers was ‘vt to hurl or fire, in a repeated or rapid stream’, which I think lets Pasquale off the hook. We may not like it, especially as the second definition is ‘to assail [formerly] with repeated blows, now [usu.]with a torrent of missiles …’, which is more like the definition I would expect.

42. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    Late to this, so most has been said. I’m another failure on the parsing of MALI.

    I had a partially parsed MISSPENT at 6d until the solution to 1d pointed to the correct answer.

43. I came to this late and found most of it easier than usual for the Don. But the SE was hard. I didn’t know SEPT or NAPIERIAN and SUBZERO took ages to get-excellent clue in retrospect though.Then there was the cricket. I guessed MALI, having got the crossers but I’ve no idea who the bloke was-or A Cook for that matter. Oh well- sport free tomorrow?
    Thanks Pasquale.

44. I read 14d the same way as @20 – importantly, I thought, the anagram indicator is “slightly odd” since only the two last letters in FOREIGN change position.

    Thank you Eileen for the parsing of MALI and SEPT I had guessed MALI but missed SEPT altogether.

    I also thought this was an unusually interesting puzzle from Paquale, the puzzle is dominated by interesting wordplay rather than GK.

    Many thanks Pasquale, and thank you Eileen.

45. Hi Tupu @20 and dutch @44

    Yes, I think you’re right about A RM. Sorry for not having responded before: I’ve been out all evening after being home briefly this afternoon.

    dutch, perhaps the blog was ambiguous: I was trying to make the point that you made – that there was only a slight change in FOREIGN, which is what I thought was rather clever. And I totally agree with your last comment.

46. Spotted SUBZERO but couldn’t parse it and spent too long trying to fit “gen” = information in. I don’t think there is such a thing as a negative temperature. Subzero maybe below freezing but it is stll warmer than absolute zero. Still, people talk of temperature in the minuses so I suppose it’s acceptable.
    I’m still not sure how the clue works. Should it be read as “negative is information about subzero” which doesn’t work for me? Perhaps the definition is “negative information” but that doesn’t seem right either.
    That said I liked the idea that SUBZERO = free membership and MALI once Eileen had kindly parsed it.

47. William @4 ‘Sub’ (singular) is in ODO with this meaning.

    Pino @46 you make a good point. Since ‘subzero’ is an adjective, the literal cannot be ‘negative information’. I reckon the use of the question mark is the setter’s way of signalling that this clue cannot be analysed with mathematical precision!

    Another top notch offering from Don – is he ever humourless?- with 13a, 20d and 23d my favourites. My last in NAPIERIAN might have been, had I a clue of how it worked!

    With SEXPOT and GREEN POUND there is something of a retro feel to this one. As the Brexit vote approaches, the latter is as good a reminder as any of some of the nuttiness that has surrounded the whole adventure…

48. Pino @46, ulaca @47

    In 23A (SUBZERO) the definition is simply ‘negative’, i.e. less than zero, as indicated in the blog. I think the idea of temperature was introduced by Eileen just to give a typical use of the word. The whole of the rest of the clue is an alternative (imagined) definition of ‘sub zero’. The question mark might be there to indicate this is an example of information that could (conceivably) be given about the club’s free membership.

49. Many thanks, Alan Browne: that’s the whimsical interpretation of ‘information’ that suggested itself to me. And you’re right about my mention of temperature, too.

50. Alan Browne @ 48
    Thank you. Now I understand, I think.

51. Thank you Pasquale and Eileen

    Finished in record time for this setter – not that I was racing … it is just how the clock stopped slightly over half an hour after starting.

    Was pleased to remember the Shakespearean FESTE and for twigging that the logs in 25 were of the mathematical kind – still had to look up who it was that invented them though. Did not know the term GREEN POUND and had to see which of the CARNEGIE’s was the noted philanthropist. Had SUBZERO from the definition but didn’t think through with the parsing of it.

    ALOHA STATE was timely as all three of my children left on Friday for a holiday there! Thought that SEPT was very clever after getting into the Northern Hemisphere way of seasons.

    Ended up in the SE corner with SARIN, SABRES and that SUBZERO the last few in.

52. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale.

    Very enjoyable. I particularly liked NAPIERIAN (I did a day release at Napier Technical College – now University – many years ago so made the connection), and the linked MISSPELT/PROGRAMMER.

    SEPT for a clan was new to me too but readily gettable.

    I too needed your help to parse MALI. I must try to remember that device.

    Still not sure what “information” is doing in the clue for 23ac. Can anyone help?

53. Hamish @52

    Re ‘information’ in 23ac: see Alan Browne’s explanation @48, which is how I interpreted it, too.

54. Thanks Eileen.

    Got it.

    Nice to know that the tail-ender isn’t casting into the void.

    I really appreciate all your hard work in making these puzzles more fulfilling.

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