Guardian 26,916 / Pasquale

55 comments on “Guardian 26,916 / Pasquale”

1. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

   I often find Pasquale puzzles more work than pleasure, and that was true to some extent of this one, though it was partly redeemed by the amusing COBBLER. The two long ones went in quickly, so it didn’t take too long, either.

   I don’t see how the “must take” fits into 6d, or why YES BUT should be hyphenated (YES, BUT….?)

   I couldn’t find either spelling in my Chambers, but I think I would spell the word for “serving an ace” as ACEING.

2. Hi muffin

   As I said, I was surprised to find that ‘yes-but’ [sic] is, indeed an expression for ‘a qualified consent or agreement’ [Chambers].

   ‘C’ before ‘i’ is soft, so shouldn’t need an ‘e – cf ‘icing’.

3. Hi Eileen

   Yes – YES-BUT is in my Chambers too – rather to my surprise.

   The other derives from ACE, so the question is rather “why drop the E?”

4. Rather a slog for me, and I still don’t understand why INEAR comes from “mean”, nor the equivalence of cobbler and snob (it’s not in Chambers for one).

5. poc @4
   NEAR is “mean” with money.

   http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?snob

6. Pasquale missed the chance for a couple of film references. ROSEBUD was Kane’s last word in Citizen Kane, and I’m sure you all can place “Infamy, infamy – they’re all got it infamy!”

7. The OED has snob n.1 1 a dial. or colloq. A shoemaker or cobbler… .

8. Muffin – or even FACING. The only query I would have is whether ACING actually exists as a word?

9. I’m not questioning the pronunciation of ACING – it would be fine – just wondering why “to ace” would give it rather than ACEING. As I said earlier, neither is in my Chambers.

   (Though Google seems to prefer ACING – illogical!)

10. @8 The OED has an American citation dated 1983 with the spelling ACING (and none with the spelling ACEING).

11. muffin @6, the line is “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!” and apparently was written by Frank MUIR and Denis Norden for the Jimmy Edwards radio-show “Take it from here”, later used by Kenneth Williams in “Carry on Cleo” – but I do not see a theme.

12. Cookie @11
    Misprint of “they’ve”. Interesting it was Frank Muir – I didn’t know that. I wonder if Pasquale did?

13. Hi again muffin @3 [I went out immediately after my last comment.]

    “The other derives from ACE, so the question is rather “why drop the E?”.
    It’s usual for verbs ending in ‘e’ to drop it before adding ‘ing’ – make, dine, hope, etc. ‘Singeing’ has an ‘e’ to distinguish it from ‘singing’.

14. Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

    I enjoyed this puzzle. My dictionaries are too old, or too small, to have “yes-but”.

    The clues have lovely smooth surfaces, such as those for LINEARISE, MUIR, COBBLER, REVUE and OCCIDENT.

15. Here is a take on YES-BUT, it appears that it is better to use the expression “Yes and” so as to change the energy of a conflict or disagreement by validating the other person’s perspective. You don’t have to agree with them; just demonstrate that you heard and understand.

16. Checking in from the Western Hemisphere, I found this easier than most Pasquale puzzles, but still tough. I cheated on COBBLER, not knowing either cobbler=snob or cobblers=nonsense. Other than that, it all went in eventually.

    In US crosswords, MUIR is invariably environmentalist John, who probably is the only environmentalist famous enough to make the crosswords. Frank was unfamiliar to me, but the clue was clear and fair, so in it went.

17. Rufus on a Tuesday? That really would have been a seismic surprise – all of his many appearances since 1999 have been on Mondays. This was pretty straightforward for a Pasquale, but I still found a few of them tricky and enjoyed it – took me ages to see MUIR which should have been a write in.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

18. Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen. I needed help parsing GREAVE and did not know the various meanings of COBBLER, but I did know RING-FENCE from previous puzzles. BUFF was my last in. Lots of fun.

19. Mr. Penney, “cobblers” is short for “cobblers’ awls”, rhyming slang for “balls,” meaning “nonsense.”

    Eileen, the anagram for “white man’s burden” has to include the “a” at the end of the fodder phrase.

    “Linearise” is a new one on me, though its meaning is clear. Do people actually use the word? When?

    I had to try all the vowels in M_I_ before the “doh!” moment of “Muir.” I forget to think of him as a writer because I only know him through “My Word!”

    Those aside, thank you, Pasquale, for a puzzle neatly supported by its opposing black and white long columns. And thank you, Eileen, for a welcoming start to the day.

20. As a relative newcomer I find pasquale the hardest of all the setters. There are several things I don’t understand, can anyone help?
    17 – why does gen = dope?
    22 – why does boss = knob?
    27 how does ring come from “hot goods”?
    6d – where is the indicator that o is the new lead letter?

    Many thanks.

21. Quite nice from Pasquale today I thought, certainly not the usual tearing-out-of-last-remaining-hair job. LINEARISE (Idodn’t know NEAR could mean ‘mean’, but I went on faith) and HEATHENDOM were new constructions rather than new words.

22. Thanks, Valentine @19: the A was there in my original draft – honestly. 😉

    Re LINEARIZE: perhaps I was being disingenuous when I said there wasn’t a single word I hadn’t heard of but it was pretty obvious what this one meant and I didn’t bother to look it up. I have now, though: Chambers ‘ linearize [sic!] – to make linear’. Ugly word – especially with a Z!

    And I didn’t mention it but I think Paul might have had more fun with COBBLER – and another of the clues!

23. Welcome, Miyake @20

    Gen = information – that kind of dope
    Boss = ‘a knob, stud or other circular rounded protuberance’ [Collins] – we more often see the boss = stud combination in crosswords.
    Re 27 – apologies for not explaining further: ‘hot’ here = ‘stolen’ and a fence is a receiver of stolen goods, so a thief might phone/ring him/her.
    6dn: there isn’t an indicator and some of us don’t like that!

    Hi Trailman
    We’ve seen near = mean pretty recently, I think.

24. Valentine @ 19 Mathematicians use linearise, as in, for example, to linearise a set of non-linear equations.

    Thanks pasquale and Eileen.

25. Eileen @23 thanks, I shall try to remember!

26. I started and finished this sitting on a bench in the centre of Maidstone waiting for Mrs B to emerge from a shop. Either I’m a genius or …

    This was an enjoyable puzzle, with enough to challenge me, particularly on the last 3 or 4 to go in. I didn’t know GREAVE at 20D, but it’s good to learn as you go.

    The anagram fodder for 15A (ROSEBUD) is OUR BEDS, not IN OUR BEDS.

    The ‘must take’ in 6D (OCCIDENT) has been queried, and I would also query ‘makes’ in 16D (BEGETTER). They are basically padding to give a decent surface, but they are more obtrusive than the usual ‘in’ or ‘and’, both of which occur as padding elsewhere in this crossword.

    I was quick on the long anagrams yesterday but slow on 8D (WHITE MAN’S BURDEN) today – hence solving the NE and SE was slowed down a bit. I enjoyed puzzling over 17A (MUTAGEN) and 23D (EVERTON). In the former I first thought an anagram of AGENT was part of it and in the latter I thought of EMERSON before EVERT [before I got BEGETTER], making it rather tricky for myself.

    My favourite clues were 11A (CRAFTED), 17A (MUTAGEN), 19A (ENGAGEMENT), 1D (BLACK MARKETEERS) and 18D (GANGLING).

    Referring to my 1st paragraph: I’m not a genius – Mrs B gave me plenty of time to complete the puzzle!

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

27. Hi Alan and others

    Elieen wasn’t specific about GREAVE; greaves in fact protect the lower leg. (Does anyone else remember Jimmy, of that ilk?)

    The clue for OCCIDENT was a bit clumsy, both for the “must take” that I mentioned, and also the lack of indication of which letter to use in the replacement, as miyake and Eileen both commented on.

28. Took me an age to parse LINEARISE but mean =near is Ok- and YES-BUT was my LOI,and that took an age as well. I thought the rest rather good though.
    Thanks Pasquale.

29. Thanks Both,

    Valentine@19 and Dave E @20. I have a bit of a quibble with ‘linearise’ for ‘put in a row’. As Dave E says, the word is widely used by mathematicians, econometricians and statisticians to mean something like ‘convert non-linear equations to equations for straight lines’. OED has a more general and older meaning ‘to represent in linear form’. Neither of these really seems to mean ‘get into a row’. In the mathematical sense the points are already in a row, just not a straight one. The older sense seems to mean something more like make a pictogram of. However, having quibbled, the answer was clearly correct once I’d spotted the word, which is, I suppose, the acid test.

30. Thanks, Alan Browne @26 – typo fixed now. I meant to point out the echoes of that clue [15ac] in 4d – which reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYr0eNtpDHs which I heard at a concert last week, for the first time in decades.

31. I’ve only entered my first one in WHITE MANS BURDEN and was instantly horrified – why Brits? sounds rather chauvinistic, I thought the phrase was more general, ugly as it is in its sarcasm. Do I have a misunderstanding? I thought it was directed as U.S. Colonialism of Philippines.

32. And thanks Eileen (@30). I have now also heard that charming ditty for the first time in decades thanks to your link!

33. Dutch @31
    I wondered about this (the White Man’s Burden) myself. The entry for this in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is:

    “In the days of imperialism, the duty supposed to be imposed upon the white races, especially the British, to govern and to educate the less-civilized or backward coloured peoples.”

    followed by a quote from Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”

34. Thank you, Dutch and Alan Browne, for raising that. I wasn’t at all sure about it, so I made no comment and waited for others to do so. [I didn’t think of looking in Brewer’s. ]

35. ‘Infamy infamy’ predates Take it From Here. It was the last sentence in a piece in the 1951 Radio Fun annual, purporting to be Jimmy Edwards’ notes from his experience s as a headmaster. Written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden.

36. Eileen: re “ugly word, especially with a Z!” I realize that you might not sympathize with Americanization of the language, but Z (“zee” and never “zed”) is an underutilized letter whose vocalization is closer to what you find in ” linearize” than an S would be…

    Incidentally, I always spell “Anglicise” with an S.

37. Some “ise” words can be spelled “ize”; some cannot – it’s much easier to spell them all “ise”, so one doesn’t have to worry about which are which!

38. Thanks Eileen @23 that’s really clear

39. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen. I made a few attempts at fitting REFERENDUM into 14a, but fortunately ran out of wordplay.

40. mrpenney @36 and muffin @37
    I pondered about writing a mini-essay on this but decided I was too tired! Anyway, I found this
    http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ise1.htm
    which expresses pretty much what I would have wanted to say, particularly the last two paragraphs.
    mrpenney – I love your last paragraph. 😉

41. Thanks Eileen. I enjoyed this, but Heath as PM, Muir as funny man and Evert as tennis player (albeit retired) made it feel like we were back in the 70s. We’ll be having a referendum on the Common Market next.

    (mrpenney@16 – there’s a lot made of John Muir locally for me as he was born around here, but he is not so very well known in the rest of the UK)

42. Eileem @40
    What I said 🙂

43. Eileen @40 and others
    concerning -ize and -ise
    I think Eileen’s linked article summarises the issue very well. It highlights (1) OUP’s strong support for the -ize form, albeit subject to a set of words including compromise and surprise that ‘must’ have -ise, and (2) the fact that -ise could readily serve as the universal ending, as muffin noted @37.
    Interestingly, that great wordsmith Bill Bryson (who is British and American!), in his book ‘Troublesome Words’, says something very similar to what the article says.

44. I’m sorry. folks: it was a chance remark of mine, nothing to do with the puzzle [where the anagram made the spelling perfectly clear] that sparked this discussion – but I do enjoy these semantic exchanges. 😉

    Alan Browne @43
    I’m a Bill Bryson fan but haven’t come across that one – one to track down. Thanks.

45. Yes – a gentle Pasquale.
    I had RING-FENCE as a DD rather than a CD (though, strictly, the hyphen casts a little doubt)?
    We’ve had the -s- versus -z- debate before. As a boy the ancient masters at my school insisted on z where a choice existed and quivering, gnarled knuckles may have hovered over a threatening cane had we not used the version which is nowadays considered an Americanism! So, for me, linearise is the uglier. (As a pure mathematician – and cod philologist – I’m happy with the meaning; though “get into a line” would have been more accurate, it wouldn’t have worked as a clue!)
    I couldn’t understand dear muffin’s confusion with –cing spelling which Eileen, et al, explained clearly. (I always think of cat, cot, cut, cell and city; not just for the English use of e after c, but also when deciding whether a ‘softening’ cedilla is required in French or a ‘hardening’ h in Italian).
    [Eileen – thank you for mentioning Monday’s Tramp, a special favourite. I’d assumed Rufus and avoided!]

46. I failed to solve MUIR = a comedy writer that I have never heard of. I could not fully parse 27a (and did not get the RING bit until Eileen explained it at comment #23), 24a, 25d.

    My favourites were BLACK MARKETEERS & ENGAGEMENT.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

47. A crypto-connection: when I followed Eileen’s link to you-tube and played “Misalliance,” the Flanders and Swann song, I saw a link in the column down the right to another song of theirs, “Design for Living.” There’s Noel Coward again! Come to think of it, “Misalliance” is also a play, though not by NC.

    I forgot to mention that I played Madam Arcati in high school. Great fun.

48. William @45

    Confusion indeed! I couldn’t see why the E should be dropped from ACE, but all the equivalent examples (FACE>FACING etc.) failed to come to mind.

    It’s not a pronunciation thing, though, as either with or without the E would be pronounced the same way (soft C) – I would still be quite interested to hear why we do drop the E in these constructions.

49. muffin @48 –
    You’re absolutely right – it isn’t a pronunciation thing. I imagine I was, generously, trying to think of a reason why you happened on the wrong spelling (given the commonplace “racing”, “facing”, “placing” etc.). Only trying to help – and spare your blushes!
    Warm wishes – and don’t forget to vote!
    Wx

50. Thanks William – just off out to vote now!

51. @45
    I still think the blog is wrong – 27ac is a DD not a CD. Can anyone explain?

52. I’m sorry, William, I disagree. The answer is RING-FENCE, hyphenated. RING FENCE [phone a fence] is the wordplay which supplies the answer – it isn’t a recognised expression in its own right.

53. Eileen –
    I understand exactly what you’re saying about the hyphen (see my second sentence @45) – nevertheless, it’s hardly cryptic.
    Thank you for taking the trouble to respond.
    Wx

54. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale.

    An entertaining puzzle with some tricky words – such as the much-discussed LINEARISE, HEATHENDOM, and MUTAGEN – but in the end fairly benign.

    MUIR was in fact my first in – I always remember him on “Call My Bluff”.

    I concluded on LINEARISE quite early but couldn’t bring myself to put it in till I had all the crossers, and that had to wait until the final dawning moment with YES-BUT (for some reason I remembered Vicky Pollard!)

55. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    Enjoyed this ! There were a number of terms that were unfamiliar – WHITE MAN’S BURDEN, BUFFER (as the derogatory term), GREAVE, YES-BUT (as a word in itself) and MUIR (the comedian). However, all had a word play that was so clearly clued that they were all very gettable and then validate them with references afterwards.

    Finished in the SE corner with RING-FENCE (humorous word play), BUFFER and MINORS (where I had to do a double take to get the cryptic part).

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