Guardian 28,164 / Pasquale

83 comments on “Guardian 28,164 / Pasquale”

1. Thanks, Eileen – and Pasquale of course.  I did not get “in on” for 12ac and found myself wondering where the homophone indicator was for “knowing” (no in when read in reverse around the “n” for any number).  I could not load the crossword this morning other than in PDF or print form.  It did me good, I am sure, not being able to use the check button – I always resist that but it is so tempting when the puzzle gets knotty.

2. I meant to add – the worst thing about not being able to read the crossword in the usual form was that I cannot read the forum.  I sometimes get almost as much enjoyment as reading that and checking what the regulars have to say.

3. Wow that was tough – all in but a few unparsed so thank you Eileen for enlightening me on “ninon” and “slavishly”. Oddly, although it was tough, about half went in on first reading. I think the clues were all very fair and in some sense straightforward. With Brendan yesterday I was looking at most of them thinking “what on earth am I meant to make of that?” whereas here the anagrams were obvious, and the charades clear, though the answers were not necessarily so!

   Luckily my GK seemed to overlap pretty well with what was needed but I can imagine this being very frustrating if that was not the case. And I dare say I was not the only one to write “goldbach” in for 1dn at first, having conflated the composer and the keyboardist!

   Many thanks Eileen and Pasquale for a super puzzle. I was also hunting for a J and a Q by the end…

4. The jockey, Kieren Fallon, is now retired, but his son Cieren rode a 200-1 winner on Saturday and rides Keep Busy in the first race at Royal Ascot today. Is Pasquale giving us a tip? Thanks also to Eileen.

5. The paucity of my ornithological and geological knowledge meant I had to check a couple after completion but nicely clued as Eileen says.

6. Tough for me as I didn’t know Ninon was a fabric, nor did I know Berg’s first name. And just to be picky, the clueing for 2 suggests that the egg is bar-bound rather than the reverse, doesn’t it? Maybe I’m being obtuse.
   Overall very enjoyable.

7. Charles @6 – I read it as – “bar” binds “egg” – or the egg is bound by a bar.  I boggled at “get this” though.

8. After a week of variable standards, you can always rely on a Pasquale. Immaculate as always, although I will confess to being beaten by NINON (I’m not the only one, by the looks of thing) and filled in RING DOTTEREL while thinking ‘well, that’s probably a bird – sounds vaguely familiar’ (apologies also due to Pierre at that point). ATHENAEUM also required a spell check. Maybe one too many long anagrams on the whole?

   Favourites were definitely the GOLDBERG/NABLA pairing. I was pretty sure that spelling JS BACH backwards would end in nonsense and was pleasantly stumped for a while.

    

9. Terriblislow @7 – I agree with Charles Marshall: if the bar gets egg-bound, it’s bound by egg. [I did mean to comment on this one and I’ve amended the blog.]

10. Agree with bloggess; straightforward. Pasqualian-lite in that less common words all known. I was a little unsure about EGG-BOUND (could one argue that the wordplay indicates the egg is “barbound” rather than vice-versa?)
    I did enjoy DIRECTION.
    Thanks to S and B.

11. (Sorry to repeat others re EGG-BOUND. I was interrupted while posting!)

12. I enjoyed this for the most part, despite what I felt were a couple of awkward surfaces (2d already commented on).  The “one” in 5d was tricky, needing to be absorbed into the “could make”, not the first thing you’d try. The “frustrated” in 2d gave me pause for 1 1/2 seconds while I wondered how we knew what a bird felt, but then I realized it also has the unemotional sense of prevented, so all was well.  All in all, quite fun, and not too difficult.

13. [Eileen et al – hope you’ve caught the current repeats of ISIHAC with Tim Brooke-Taylor (also, this week, the much missed Jeremy Hardy in full flight with ” one song to the tune of the other”). If missed on Sunday they’re repeated on BBC4Ex. Gaufrid, please forgive my off-topic post; I know many here are fans – and feel it my duty just in case this is fresh information for anyone. I’d hate to set a precedent but this is a touch exceptional given T B-T’s recent demise and the popularity of ISIHAC here. And I know Eileen to be a JH – and ISIHAC fan. Moreover, I rarely post early enough to reach many …. so felt Fate forcing me!)]

14. LOI was EGGBOUND, and unknown expression and a rather odd clue. I was misdirected by “of” in 22d. Anyone else think 20a was “plate”?

    French is not one of my languages, so 17a took a while. German is so a slight wince at the homophone.

    Thanks for parsing the dark corners, Eileen and thanks to Pasquale.

15. Despite being a naturalist with a good knowledge of British birds, I’d never heard RING DOTTEREL used for the ringed plover (sandiloo in Shetland). Troisieme age was also new to me. What is the “one” doing in 5 down? I agree about egg-bound being the wrong way round. And is “ill” a valid indicator of an anagram. I like challenges, but found this puzzle a bit irritating. I’ll go for a walk in the rain.

16. [Many thanks, William @13. 😉 ]

17. German is, so…

18. Found this a little tougher than most recent Pasquales – maybe I wasn’t fully awake. No complaints.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

19. Hi copland smith @15 – I balked at the ‘one’ in 5dn [obviously needed for the surface but not the anagram fodder] but decided, as Dr WhatsOn @12 noted, that we had to take the indicator  as ‘make [for] one’, as I indicated in the blog.

    I got the ringed plover from Chambers.

20. Auriga @14 – Yes, I had ‘plate’ initially.

21. Worth it for GNEISS alone which I thought superb, though plenty more to enjoy and admire.  A DNF for me – never heard of NINON and couldn’t get nylon out of my head so LARYNX  didn’t fall either. And my GK doesn’t extend to FALLON (or does it?  I thought accident suggested an anagram of race followed by on which gave me Cearon which I thought might be a jockey.  So some GK must be lurking)  And I had to look up NABLA and only then remembered Alban Berg.  So not a very good performance from self today.

    I’m sure I’ve seen SYNONYMS clued similarly to this in recent times but agree with Eileen it’s a lovely clue. The surface for ATHANAEUM raised a smile: before Covid I spent a lot of time working in London across the road from said club – and never a he-man to be seen, let alone one dancing!

    When I was growing up in the late 60’s my mother used to cook “‘Ada in Aspic” – which had no aspic in it at all!  A concoction of tinned tuna, potato crisps and tinned mushroom soup which, for some reason, tasted like chicken.  Sounds disgusting – but tasted OK!

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

22. This took a lot of completing, with loi SLAVISHLY, as I wasn’t really sure about it. Pasquale up to his usual tricks today. Plenty to admire, though…

23. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    I think 2D works if you see ‘bound’ in the culinary sense. If you add (beaten) egg to a mix, it’s in the metaphorical middle holding the other ingredients together.

24. I didnt like “river floods country”-doesnt work for me .”river in country ” maybe.

    But my main objection is 22.Goldberg could have been “composed” by his maker whoever that may be.

    I believe Herr Goldberg may have been the first  to try out Bach’s variations.(I call them the Gouldberg variations)

    Berg is the composer IN 1a and his first name was indeed ALBAN-and not a bad muso it would seem

    So the clue doess not work for me

    I normally like the Don in his Pasquale hat but after the brilliance of Brendan yesterday this fell a bit flat. Phi was my fave today.

    But thanks muchly to Eileen and sorry for soundinvg a bit hedgehoggy.

25. I’m not sure what the problem is with EGG-BOUND. ‘Bar gets egg bound/held …’ gives beggar to me – maybe others are using the hyphen?

    Difficult to complete; I got stuck in the SE corner.

    I was another liking GNEISS – I’m just an aged rock-and-roller.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen – I managed to drag Douglas Bader from my memory bank.

26. Re: EGG-BOUND. I’m not an expert on poultry, but isn’t the condition one where the egg is stuck in the oviduct? So, in the clue, BAR gets an EGG stuck inside – BEGGAR.

27. copmus @24. I read the 22d clue “composer of 1 down” as the composer was part of the answer to 1d. Wouldn’t “composer in 1 down” have been too obvious?

28. Penfold@4…I see that Fallon junior has one other ride at Ascot this afternoon in the 2.25. Papal Bee, currently on offer at 200-1. Surely lightning is not going to strike twice in less than a week…?

29. sheffield hatter @26 That’s how I parsed EGG-BOUND too.  There seemed to have been plenty of discussion before I posted so I left it alone but, since you’ve raised it…

30. For a non-Brit, there was some rather obscure GK such as FALLON (thanks google), John LOGIE BAIRD (found him in my online dictionary), ditto Douglas BADER.

    New: NINON (could not parse this), TROISIEME AGE, NABLA, GNEISS, and RING DOTTEREL.

    Like: EGG-BOUND

    I found it ironic that the word NABLA was in the puzzle on a day when a red nabla was making news (Trump and facebook).

    Thanks, Eileen and Pasquale

31. Mark @29 and sheffield hatter @26

    Yes, that works for me – but the more I look at that clue, the more weird it seems!

32. Re 2d Reading egg and bound separately resolves any issues – and I also cannot believe that anyone (on being told by a poultry keeping friend that “one of my chickens is ill, she’s egg-bound”) would believe that the chicken had got herself stuck inside an egg!

    Fairly gentle although the first ‘In’ in 16 threw me for a while.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

33. The phrase egg-bound used to mean one was constipated. Would that explain it?

34. Lots to like today, and steadily filled in, apart from LOI 2d. Still none the wiser, but I’m not the grammatician that so many of you are! Oh, well! That’s why I come here.
    Loved SYNONYMS and TROISIEME AGE, but never heard of MADE THINGS HUM before, or NINON. All gettable, so a very fair puzzle.
    Thanks Pasquale, and Eileen for the blog

35. Fascinating discussion on egg-bound. I checked on my birds this morning and 4 of the 6 of them have produced eggs so I think all is fine!

    Auriga @14 I sympathise and I would pronounce the scientist in the German fashion (closer to “hair-ts” than “hurts”) but the unit is always pronounced like it ought to be a measure of pain rather than frequency.

    Copmus @24 I think the Don is fairly playing on the ambiguity of “of” here. If I asked who the leading character of/in Wuthering Heights was I think the question would make perfect sense either way.

36. I don’t find that MADE THINGS HUM quite fits the starting-off definition: it’s just general industriousness, isn’t it?

    I agree with Copland Smith that even if RING DOTTEREL is in the dictionary, it isn’t in current use to describe what is usually called a ringed plover. Unknown to birdwatching me.

    Also new, NABLA and NINON.

37. I liked 25a SYNONYMS (and I didn’t have any problem with “ill” as an anagram indicator).  Also 6d for the nice surface, rather amusingly at odds with the image of the ATHENAEUM itself.  I thought the “composer of 1d” in 22d NABLA was clever.

    Like Dryll @34 I was unfamiliar with the phrase at 10d MADE THINGS HUM.  It is in Chambers (“to set things going briskly”) so no complaints.  A website called Said What? says “if you can get things to work smoothly, then you can make things hum”, and suggests that its origin is in the sound of machinery working in the mills of the industrial revolution.  Getting things to work smoothly doesn’t seem quite the same as getting off to a brisk start, so does it maybe have varying meanings?

    Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

38. Classy as ever from the Don but I didn’t find it a straightforward as others seem to and certainly harder than the periodic table prize which I believe is his most recent Graun puzzle. To be honest I always know I’m in for a bit of googling around some of the more GK words/terms he often uses. Perhaps the easy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday triple dulled my faculties.

    I came at the linked clues back to front, remembering NABLA from its recent appearance which gave ALBAN and thus BERG in 1d. I didn’t know a few of the more obscure words including GNEISS but the clue is rather neat.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

39. Ronald @28 Good spot. I’d missed that one. We had to wait 4 years until Saturday for a 200-1 winner. For the same jockey to then ride two in a week would be quite something.

40. This was a bit of a workout for me, but a satisfying albeit somewhat slow and steady solve. Never heard of EGG-BOUND – I feel very sorry for the birds who end up like this, and never knew that they could suffer from obstructed labour.

    I had heard of NINON- my mother had a saying “ninon over nylon”, which as a child I thought was just a bit of nonsense. I have not thought of this for years, but now it makes more sense.

    SLAVISHLY was LOI and I failed to parse it, thinking of L for liberal and then making no sense of the rest of the clue- and Eileen I would tend to agree with you that sly is nastier than roguish. Was held up with LARYNX as could only think of lion for a cat initially and nho FALLON, but it seemed the most likely answer.
    Favs: GNEISS and SYNONYMS- neat surfaces.

    Thanks to Pasquale for the fun and Eileen for the blog.

41. That will teach me to exercise my parsing muscle a little harder – given all the crossers, 15d was so obviously BARONIAL that I decided to come back later and see why. Cue three disappearing letters when I pressed ‘Check All’…

42. Loved SYNONYMS, GNEISS was nice but BERMUDAN could try harder as my school reports invariably said. I came across this great feudal terminology site while looking for words for “Lord’s Estate”. Cheers all

43. I don’t know French beyond the articles in crossword clues, and the phrase wasn’t in Collins (perhaps I should switch to Chambers?), so today was a dnf. Even apart from that I found it quite tough, although fair, so thanks to Pasquale for keeping me humble. Thanks also to Eileen and previous commenters for sorting out my parsing questions.

44. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    I found RING DOTTEREL by Googling, but I’ve been a bird-watcher for over 60 years and have never heard the ringed plover so named – it’s not in any of my many bird books either. Fortunately the anagram was pretty obvious.

    I loved the clue for GNEISS – one of my favourite rocks. There lots of it in Sutherland, where it gives rise to “knock and lochan” topography.

45. On the sly v. roguish debate…

    It feels to me as though each word can describe the same behaviour, as seen from both critical and benevolent perspectives.

    Critical: “He’s sly. Don’t trust him”. “You’re nothing but a rogue. Roguish is all you are”.

    Benevolent: ”You sly fox!” “Well you have a roguish charm, don’t you!”

    I think it’s fair to treat them synonymously in crossword-land.

46. One of my favourite Pasquales for some time, and I usually quite enjoy winkling out his obscurities. Not that I would count GNEISS amongst them – like muffin above, it’s familiar from knowledge of the north of Scotland.

    Like boffo @8, I tried strange things with many combinations of Bach and his forenames before looking more closely at the answer to 1d. But NINON?

    And in racing news, Fallon jnr came in a handy second at 6-1 in the first at Ascot but perhaps unsurprisingly was unplaced in the 2.25.

47. The “But NINON?” should have been at the end of par 1 not par 2 above

48. Didn’t get a lot of time for this today, but managed all but three. I guess I ought to have remembered NABLA, but I never got to Berg because of the ‘of’ (which should have been ‘in’, I reckon – I tried all variations on Bach). I gave up on NINON, which rings no bells whatsoever, and that obscure jockey. Having no interest in horse racing, even here in Oz, my knowledge of Pommy jockeys stops with some guy called Piggot.

49. My lack of GK — FALLON, RING DOTTEREL, LOGIE BAIRD, and NINON were unknown to me — diminished my enjoyment of this puzzle. However, there were bright spots — LARYNX, ASPIC, and MEGAHERTZ especially. Thanks to both.

50. A dnf as I’d never heard of NINON, and I think it could almost as well be “nonin”, with “about” in the clue as a reversal indicator. Having a passing interest in birds I knew DOTTEREL as a bird and the first word could then only be RING, and I just assumed this was a common name for a bird with which I was unfamiliar. I vaguely thought that, strictly, SYNONYMS had to be single words, not phrases; but according to online dictionaries, I was wrong. None of the above is a complaint. Favourites were GNEISS (which I knew from having studied geology for a short while) and TROISIEME AGE.

    Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

51. I thought NINON was a reasonably familiar crossword fabric [like NANKEEN]. Its last outing here was in a Qaos puzzle in March.

52. Eileen @51

    I’m pretty sure that’s where I knew it from.

53. 1 d caused delay as I could not get Elgar’s Enigma Variations out of my mind..And did not like Ring Dotterell.But I did like Mikes reminder of 60s cookery ,ingredients on my shopping list,will try out on grandchildren.

54. I enjoyed this even if I fouled up in the NE corner. Having never heard of NINON I blindly put in nylon even being unable to parse it and finished 7d with loreli—well she did have something to do with sound! Doh!
    Otherwise everything was nicely clued favourite being gneiss my foi as Sutherland is one of my favourite hill walking areas. I wonder when I will next be able to get there?
    Thanks Eileen and Pasquale

55. Mostly not Munros, though, Munromad!

    We were talking about Foinaven and Arkle last week, I think.

    Ben Hope is the most northerly Munro. I’ve been on it!

56. Found this tough although I knew knew ALBAN BERG and I remembered NABLA from a few weeks ago. Put PLATE in at 20a. Only jockey I could think of was CARSON which almost worked. DNF. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

57. Yes muffin you are right. Been up Ben Hope twice but still not seen the view! Foinaven is a cracking hill as are all the Corbetts up there plus Suilven which isn’t even one of those. I have one Corbett left to do in Fisherfield having finished the Munros in 2003. It is a long way from Suffolk!

58. GNEISS to see you, to see you GNEISS.

59. Prompted by 19d. – does a flood inundate or exundate? Depends on your point of view, I suppose. Rarely obvous which way the compiler is thinking until the answer arrives (or crossers)

    A lovely puzzle – one of those, where you’re really delighted when you tease out some solutions.  Note to self, must remember ninon.

    Many thanks, Pasquale and Eileen

60. Mostly enjoyed this, though NABLA was new to me and I have a Maths degree. Crops up all over multi-dimensional calculus but we always called it “Del” when I were a lad. Well, an undergraduate anyway.

61. [Hi Munromad

    I’ve done all the Sutherland Munros except Ben Klibreck – the day we attempted that, the weather was against us.

    None of them are as good as the lower ones, though. Suilven (from the east) was my best ever mountain day. Foinaven and Quinag are great, and Stac Pollaidh was my daughter’s second mountain (after Blencathra via Sharp Edge at age 4!)]

62. I was chuffed to get BLOCKADER without any crossers but had a helping hand in that Douglas Bader was once the guest speaker at my school’s prize day, so he was the first wartime pilot to occur to me! The parsing of LARYNX works as is but use of “covering” as the includicator might have been nice. Talking of which, I enjoyed GNEISS very much, only seeing the anagram very late. LOI was SLAVISHLY partly because I expected “liberal” to be L, but also because I was looking for an adjective. I think the definition works both ways though.
    Thanks, all, for the EGG-BOUND discussion. I learnt something today about fowl problems!
    Thanks also, Eileen and Pasquale.

63. After a prolonged struggle I somehow completed the grid without ever feeling I was getting on top of it.

    Quite a few educated and uneducated guesses though, and as I discovered a more obscure bird than the RING DOTTEREL (the lesser spotted ring dotteler), this was a DNF for me.

    Lots of fun and variety though, so thanks Pasquale, and thanks Eileen for sorting out a few I had never heard of (as well as the bird!).

64. Hi Muffin
    Serious respect to your daughter!
    Ben Klibreck is amongst the half dozen most boring Munros imho…..
    I agree about all the others.

65. I enjoyed this. At the end I was thankful that NABLA has appeared recently (in a puzzle by Qaos, as Eileen noted), otherwise I might have had to leave both that answer and FALLON.
    I liked GNEISS especially – also TROISIEME AGE, which I got on seeing the M there and thinking this might be the French ending ‘-ieme’ (prompted no doubt also by the clear indication in the clue).
    Excellent puzzle and blog. Thanks to both and to commenters.

66. It seems like I’m the only one who dnf because I failed to see the hidden BERMUDAN! I did remember NABLA from the recent Qaos but not NINON – not helped by having misspelt ATHENAEUM and had a word starting with E. Like many I liked GNEISS as well as SLAVISHLY and SYNONYMS. I’m another who thought he knew all about (British) birds and who had never heard of the RING DOTTEREL although knowing DOTTEREL meant it had to be.
    Thanks to Pasquale for an excellent puzzle and Eileen for the blog and others for the EGG-BOUND and GOLDBERG debates.

67. Well, having half done over brekkie, then a long lunch away, then blearily a few more, fell asleep and just woke up with four to go: 1, 2, 18 and 23. Finally nailed them. Oh, forgot about ninon, nho, so a dnf, too dopey to think of in on, even with the three ns in. Phew, A long day and a patchy effort. Now I can review, read comments and enjoy.

68. Being d’un certain age helps…remembered Logie Baird and Bader (the latter from a school library book in which at one point he says “This is bloody dangerous!”, which made we 11-year-olds feel very grown-up).

69. michelle@30, just now heard about the red nabla thanks to BBC World Service

70. Thanks to Eileen and Pasquale

    I can’t see

    was troubled = ailed

71. Did he say what ailed him

    Did he say what was troubling him

    the clue requires

    Did he say what was troubled him

72. Fun puzzle, thanks Pasquale and Eileen.
    (‘Ail’ can be intransitive.)

73. Nor can I see

    knowing about = in on

74. @72

    Yes, all examples gratefully received.

75. He was in on the joke

    He was knowing about the joke?

    No

    Knowing about, means being in on –

    Did knowing about the plan help?

    Did being in on the plan help?

76. Jeremy @58 – does GNEISS (a great clue I saw early – but I did Geology at Uni) rhyme with ‘nice’ or with ‘niece’? Depends which university you went to. At UTas, it was always the latter.

77. Perhaps someone could advise me whether Pasquale regards cryptic fodder as a singular b plural, or c either as suits?

    6d suggests b but is inconclusive in isolation.

78. Dansar @71 and 75

    He ailed = he was unwell = he was troubled (e.g. because of a cough)

    For the second one, your first example works.  He was in on the joke = He was knowing about the joke = he knew about the joke.  It’s not usual usage, but it’s OK grammatically, isn’t it?

79. phitonelly @78

    Thank you but I would appreciate “ailed” examples in a full phrase/ sentence.

80. Dansar,

    He ailed because of a cough = he was troubled because of a cough.  Again, usage is more common in the second case, but I think it works grammatically with the verbs used intransitively, as Gonzo said.

    Wrt the fodder as singular/plural issue, I think both are fine.  In the example here, the clue can be read as [These letters] dance outside university…  In a different clue, you could read it as [This phrase] dances outside university…  This comes up a lot, I find, with hidden word clues where the inclusion indicator can indicate singular or plural.  e.g. Inca tamers conceal lion? vs Inca tamer conceals lion?  I’m pretty sure Arachne, for one, has used either style in her embeds.  Talking of whom, I do hope she is OK and just on some sort of sabbatical.

81. Thank you, that works for “ailed”, but I do think it’s a rather rarified usage for a daily crossword.

    I recognise the dance/dances distinction and I have recently discovered that Ximenes and Azed are (perhaps surprisingly) on the either/or wing, but I did wonder whether Pasquale had declared for a particular side.

82. I do object to the requirement to speak french to do a crossword in an English language newspaper, the odd well known bits OK but troisieme age, come on.

83. 11ac – HMHB reference ?

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