Guardian 26,486 – Shed

by

A good week for Guardian puzzles continues with a welcome return of Shed after a bit of a gap (his last weekday puzzle was last September). My first one in was 1a, and I thought it might be leading to some kind of theme, but I can’t see anything. Nothing too hard here, but good solid clueing. Thanks to Shed.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. JABBERWOCKY Poker and frying pan limiting 100-year piece of nonsense (11)
JABBER (poker) + C in WOK + Y
9. COWSLIP Primrose‘s bovine insolence (7)
COWS’ LIP
10. RIVULET Compel attention about empty urinal producing stream (7)
U[rina]L in RIVET
11. ABHORRENT A tendency to admit Hungary’s leader, or Romania’s, is revolting (9)
H OR R in A BENT (tendency)
12. ROOST Bunch of birds in ruler’s domain? (5)
Double definition, the second referring to the expression “rule the roost”, though as I learnt a while back from a Pasquale puzzle the “correct” or original version is “rule the roast” (i.e. to be at the head of a table where a roast is served)
13. EIRE Land secured by heiress (4)
Hidden hEIREss
14. PARDONABLE Instructive tale about academic not beyond forgiveness (10)
DON in PARABLE
16. BRAINSTORM Pool ideas of weather-beaten undergarment? (10)
BRA IN STORM
19. FIRM Stable concern (4)
Double definition
21. FINAL Last bit of fish? One left (5)
FIN + A + L
22. MANDRAKES Supplies crew garlanding sea dog with noxious plants (9)
DRAKE in MANS – the mandrake is a poisonous plant with various magical and mythical assocations, mentioned several times in the Bible and Shakespeare
24. ETHANOL Intoxicant making wound not heal? (7)
(NOT HEAL)* – the scientific name for the intoxicating ingredient in alcoholic drinks
25. LUGHOLE Expression of amusement about one of disgust on electronic channel of communication (7)
UGH in LOL (“laughing out loud”) + E
26. UNDERSTATED Showing restraint when temporal record missing, though formerly included (11)
ERST (archaic or poetic word for “formerly”, as found in “erstwhile”) in UNDATED
Down
1. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU Statesman to talk at length to one acceptable to 20, admitting redtop elevated women-only sport (10,5)
JAW + A + R[ed] in HALAL + HEN< + RU. I didn’t know Nehru's first name, but just about managed to construct it from the wordplay before checking
2. BALER Agricultural equipment‘s loose ends in pub (5)
L[oos]E in BAR
3. EMPYEMA Site of infection getting payee 2,000 off? (7)
(PAYEE MM)* – “a collection of pus in any cavity, esp. the pleura”: lovely!
4. WORSTED Material set out in program (7)
SET* in WORD, the “program” (note spelling) presumably being Microsoft Word
5. COVERING Old boy band recording someone else’s music (8)
COVE (like “old boy”, slang for a man) + RING
6. YELLOW BRICK ROAD One dollar 1 across wanting inoculation to show the way to fantastic city (6,5,4)
Angram of I DOLLAR + [jab]BERWOCKY – the Yellow Brick Road is of course the way the the Emerald City in the land of Oz
7. SCRAPE Tight corner to fight with energy (6)
SCRAP + E
8. STATUE 3-D representation of girl consuming tawdry goods (6)
TAT in SUE
15. INCLINED Popular disc including verse from In the Mood? (8)
IN + LINE in CD. I wondered about line=verse, but Chambers has verse = a line of metre.
16. BUFFER Polisher of protective device (6)
Double definition
17. TUMBLER One falling for acrobat (7)
Double definition – rather a weak one as the meanings are very close
18. RINGLET Girl, 10, changed lock (7)
(GIRL TEN)*
20. MOSLEM Camel sometimes upholds such a believer (6)
Hidden in reverse of caMEL SOMetimes – the spelling “muslim” is preferred nowadays: see here for some reasons.
23. ROGET Wordsmith, say, raised amid rubbish (5)
EG< in ROT – I'm not sure if Roget, of Thesaurus fame, was exactly a "wordsmith", but close enough I suppose

38 comments on “Guardian 26,486 – Shed”

  1. Thanks Shed and Andrew

    May I make a couple of additions to the parsings?

    In 11A the initial A from the clue leads the solution off, and in 1D there’s also an A (one) before HA(R)LAL.

  2. Thanks Andrew and Shed.

    16 down was another of those clues with an equally plausible, if slightly less polite alternative. I had ‘RUBBER’ in there, until the B of 16a set me right. 🙂

    Lots of fun.

  3. I was another RUBBER person, which bollocksed me in the SW corner. A bit of a stodgy puzzle for me today, and I thought the NEHRU clue was just impossibly convoluted, particularly since you had to have 20 before you could have a crack at it.

  4. Thanks, Andrew.

    Good to see Shed again after a long absence.

    Entertaining puzzle, very much at the easier end of this setter’s spectrum. Some bizarre surfaces, especially for the longer lights, though the constructions are imaginative. 6d went in immediately and without crossers, purely from the enumeration, and I’m afraid I didn’t stop to parse it.

    ‘Primrose’ for COWSLIP is slightly dodgy, though both are species of Primula. (COWSLIP, incidentally, is from the Old English ‘cuslyppe’ = cow dung – a rather prosaic derivation for an attractive plant).

    Favourites were LUGHOLE and COVERING.

  5. The only real problems for me here were Nehru’s first name (his surname going in quickly) and EMYEMA. The latter, although an obscure word, was accessibly clued, although I was left having to guess the most likely anagram from the checkers. Spent a while trying to fit SHARIA into JN’s first name, and kicked myself when I realised that the Moslem reference was HALAL.

    A Jabberwocky theme would certainly have been nice. I often quibble at it being referred to as a nonsense poem, despite its numerous neologisms. It seems to me that Carroll was creating these new words to be as descriptive of the picture he was trying to paint as possible – they seem more thought-out than being mere random-ish nonsense.

  6. Thank you Andrew, I needed your parsing of old Pandit, and also ROOST which was a write in but I missed the 2nd def.

    I’d rather forgotten about Shed’s somewhat wordy elliptical style – welcome back.

    The anagram of JABBERWOCKY and I DOLLAR was impressive

    EMPYEMA was new to me, and I didn’t know ‘bail’ was also ‘bale’.

    I thought COVERING was neatly clued, and enjoed LUGHOLE.

    All in all a jolly good puzzle and a welcome return.

  8. Thanks Shed for nice puzzle, and Andrew for parsing. Dunno why I was so blind to 6 down.

    Thanks for passing on the ‘rule the roast’ thing. Interesting.

  10. Thanks for the explanation about Moslem/Muslim – nice to know that there is a sensible reason for the new spelling, not some arbitrary change of political fashion.

  11. Now this is more like it. Most enjoyable and a welcome return by Shed. I got JABBERWOCKY early on and was expecting a theme too. The J gave me JAWAHARLAL NEHRU which I must admit I put in without parsing. Many years teaching politics comes in handy sometimes I’m pleased to say.
    Nice puzzle.
    Thanks Shed

  12. Thanks Andrew and Shed
    Some new words/meanings for me – empyema and covering. 1a my favourite clue.
    Thanks for the parsing of understated – got caught up with TIM and underestimated with, of course, no result.
    I too nearly got stuck on rubber for 16d.
    Very good to have Shed back again.

  13. @John Appleton
    There are some interesting books by Jean-Jacques Lecercle about just that meaning-through-nonsense aspect of Lewis Carroll. It’s certainly not just nonsense, as you say.

  14. Yes, the link to explain Moslem/Muslim was very intresting. I grew up thinking they were an adjective and a noun respectively and I missed the moment when both uses assumed the same spelling.

    Thanks, Shed (and don’t stay away so long) and Andrew.

  15. I like Shed’s puzzles and this was no exception. Count me as another who had “rubber” for 16dn until I realised 16ac had to be BRAINSTORM so revisited it. I couldn’t remember Nehru’s first name but managed to decipher the wordplay correctly, and I was pleased that my guess of EMPYEMA from less than straightforward anagram fodder (K and G can also mean 1,000) was correct.

  17. Thanks Shed and Andrew.

    This was relaxing after yesterday’s Picaroon, most enjoyable. I liked LUGHOLE!

    I, too, was looking for a theme related to ‘Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There’ and the ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ (although the name YELLOW BRICK ROAD is used only in the film, it is never referenced by that title in the book). I found nothing.

    John Appleton @5 points out that the JABBERWOCKY is not a nonsense poem, likewise the YELLOW BRICK ROAD is not just fantasy, there are apparently several such roads in the USA.

  18. Thanks Shed & Andrew.

    I don’t suppose many people knew NEHRU’s first name but getting it opened the door for JABBERWOCKY. I was thinking then that a pangram was on the cards, but no.

    The BRA IN trick has been used before but still amusing. Favourites the same as Gervase @4.

  20. Well, very happy to have completed and correctly parsed (and greatly enjoyed) a Guardian crossword so thank you Shed and Andrew. I did use a dictionary for Nehru’s first name and then parse it so maybe the achievement is not 100%. I liked UNDERSTATED when I saw how it worked and was sidetracked for a bit by the rainstorm in BRAINSTORM.

    Thanks again. I got virtually nowhere yesterday…

  22. Thanks, Andrew, especially fot the MOSLEM explanation.

    I had to go out early this morning and have only just done the puzzle, so nothing to add, really, except to join the chorus of ‘Welcome back, Shed!’.

    Many thanks to Shed – please come back soon!

  23. Thanks all
    Like Andrew @2 I had rubber which I felt was at least as good as buffer. Hence I failed with 16 & 21 across, which puzzled me since I had rated the rest of the puzzle as easy.

  24. All fairly straightforward but pleasant. I must admit that I wasn’t aware of the controversy over the spelling of MUSLIM. Last in was LUGHOLE. Liked ROGET and BRAINSTORM. EMPYEMA was new to me but seemed the only plausible arrangement of the fodder.

    Thanks to Shed and Andrew.

  25. Very nice puzzle and blog. It’s a long time since I’ve heard the fine word LUGHOLE. Not so hot on 6d; there is no anagram indicator, and the clue doesn’t mean much either.

  26. Yes, ‘to show’ isn’t really enough, and the mixed ‘one’ and ‘1’ made me feel uncomfortable too. In fact I found this a little bitty here and there: usually Shed is so good.

  28. A delayed start plus a lengthy interruption for me today, but the resumption yielded the final clues quickly. As soon as I worked out that 1d was a NEHRU, I knew it must start with a J, hence JABBERWOCKY for the across and a quick google for Mr Nehru’s first name – I could roughly pronounce it but not reliably spell it; must admit I couldn’t be bothered to work through the convoluted clue, which is naughty I know, but it was nearly five o’clock.

    Oh and I had to get Mrs Trailman to check whether RUBBER was right. Didn’t tell her what the clue was.

  29. A nice puzzle. I am not a strong solver but enjoyed. I thought I had parsed 6d with Yellow being the colour of the original US 1$ bill, B Road being a “way” and “rick” being an inoculation (prick) wanting its first letter! Andrew’s exlanation was much simpler, neater and more accurate…….

  31. I actually DID know that Nehru’s first name was Jawaharlal. Which, when “halal” came out of the wordplay, let me get Moslem easily enough. In fact, I was in the process of writing in “Muslim” when I realized that the older spelling was being clued.

    As a whole I found this easy; the only hold-up was that I was one of those who started out by having “rubber.”

    So in Britain, you have computer programs, and programmes in all other contexts? Or is it a program only if it’s an American one–that is, is British software “programmes”?

  32. ‘Rubber’ isn’t really a device, is it? I consider a device to have (and I hesistate to say this) more than one ‘part’.

  33. Yes, Tim, it is. Perhaps your familiarity with computers leads to that more recent meaning. Originally it meant something devised, which it is.

  34. mrpenney @ 31

    We have computer programs but television programmes, management programmes (posh word for processes & intentions), generally, yes, programmes…

    hth

  36. Sorry about 16dn. I agree that RUBBER is at least as good an answer as the one I wanted. This is the risk with double definitions.

    And apologies to any adherents of Islam who were offended by 20dn – it certainly wasn’t my intention to offend. Though frankly, I think that quibbling about the ‘correct’ transliteration of any word from one writing system to another is rather pointless, given the varieties of pronunciation that almost always exist in both systems. Thanks to Andrew for the link, though, and to Yi-Anne for the undogmatic explanation. I opted for ‘Moslem’ purely on the grounds that I needed the fifth letter to be E.

  37. Simon @34, mrpenney @31 – the American influence has long been stronger in IT. When I used to have to write COBOL I used to hate initialization, and I still dislike American spellcheckers.

  38. Thanks Shed and Andres

    Nice puzzle after such a long break away by this setter … needed some electronic help to get some of them and missed the parsing of YELLOW BRICK ROAD. Was pleased to work out some of the other convoluted parsings.

    Let’s hope that it isn’t as long for his next one!

Comments are closed.