Guardian Cryptic 28,191 by Crucible

72 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,191 by Crucible”

1. All nicely clued I thought. One small quibble. I think the enumeration for 28ac should be 1,1,5. AS stands for Advanced Subsidiary

2. We spotted the theme fairly early on, which is unusual for us!

   Not too challenging today for the most part, although we did get held up in the SE corner for a while.

   Favourites were FORSAKE and VEIL

   Thanks to loonapick and Crucible!

3. Struggled with the SE corner which contains some of the more obtuse clues as well as unhelpful crossers, but that’s a minor quibble really. Especially because I failed to read the wordplay in TREADLE.

   Because my brain isn’t attuned to early mornings at the minute, I googled LBD and got some very nice surprises. On that note, I also enjoyed the clue for TOPLESS.

4. Tough puzzle, but I was slightly helped by the theme.

   Liked TOPLESS, TREADLE.

   Did not parse GO-KART, and for 14 I did not know that a trousseau was kept in botton drawer.

   New: DELIQUESCE, AS LEVEL, KA (car), TIPPET.

   Thanks B+S

   Thank B+S

5. Nothing on my first pass :(  Eventually EGG CUPS, GO KART and CLOTHIERS slotted in and I could complete the NE corner, as well as COCKTAIL DRESS (after googling LBD).  Then a steady solve until my last one DELIQUESCE stumped me (I needed a dictionary for DE-I-U etc. being hung up on synonyms for clique when I should have been looking at [SEE CLIQUE]* … with QU already visible). More accessible than Monday’s, once I got going. DELIQUESCE and TIPPET new to me.

   Thanks Crucible and loonapick.

6. Most enjoyable. Went in steadily, favourites FLOOR SHOW, CLOTHIERS and TOPLESS. Only major hold up was at the very beginning with 1a, where I tried to make an anagram from  EXASPERATED having removed the letters for PETE. Many thanks to Crucible and loonapick.

7. And there was I thinking ‘what’s a treadle got to do with sewerage?, and my late ma-in-law’s Singer is in the parlour..talk about dense! Other wobbles were not knowing the Ford model, spelling kart with c at first, and not getting dress = line up (still don’t). Otherwise a fun stroll, with GOD (Groan Of the Day) to bolt cutters, very droll. Only ever heard A Levels, so AS Level was a bung-and-shrug. Lots to like along the way, ta to Le Creuset and loonapick.

8. ..can’t remember when, or even whether, I ever saw a tippet, but it emerged from the tangle of neurons and glia somehow…

9. Not a lot to say other than to register thanks to Crucible and Loonapick. That was fun, witty and had a couple of new words which I was (slowly) able to piece together. I am sure the setter was chuckling over some of the misdirection, including “sewer” which held me up for ages, “bolt cutter” and the Hardy girl.

10. grantinfreo @7 I seem to recall that dressing (‘Take your dressing’?) refers to lining up troops. Each trooper looks right and places his/her finger tips close to the right neighbour and shuffles appropriately.  I was also bamboozled by sewerage.

11. T for that, Hmmm, sounds right..

12. As usual I didn’t notice the theme until I came here. Technically a dnf as I had tapped for 24ac ( well you tap someone for cash) but I couldn’t fully parse it of course. I have never come across TIPPET before (though I have heard a lot of Tippett’s music!). Otherwise I too groaned at bolt cutters and FORSAKE. Having just finished watching the reruns of the Tess if the D’Urbervilles on BBC 4 last Hardy girl came straight away. DELIQUESCE is a lovely word!
    Thanks Loonapick and Crucible

13. I thought this was pretty faultless with too many ticks to mention. Deliquesce was new but solvable and I laughed at Study. Thanks Crucible and loonapick

14. Enjoyed this, and spotted the theme (it takes a very obvious one for me to spot it, I’ve found!) I liked KERCHIEF, and funnily enough ‘BANDANA’ is an answer in today’s Quick. Thanks Crucible for a fun and witty crossword and thank you Loonapick.

15. Being a fisherman I was a bit confused by TIPPET.

16. Like Munromad@12, a DNF for me as I have never heard of TIPPET, and had a couple of tries via the check button before the penny dropped; nevertheless I like the use of PPE, surely something a few months ago we never would have heard of.  Lots to enjoy, some great misdirection (eg I tried to get an anagram out of “exasrad” before another pdm).  I was bemused by AS-LEVEL, so thanks for the elucidation Frankie the Cat @1, like GinF had only heard of A-levels.

    Favs were TOPLESS and DELIQUESCE- what a lovely sounding word.

    Thanks to Crucible and loonapick

     

17. Xword made easier by the obvious Nina.

    Re 28ac: In my day (60’s), there was an examination called S level which was much more difficult than A Level.

18. Thanks for the blog, loonapick.

    What a lovely puzzle – I enjoyed it from start to finish.

    Favourites were 1ac FORSAKE (I initially went up the same garden path as drofle), 16ac JEANS (I love those Nice /Nancy clues) 19ac FLOOR SHOW, for the surface, 24ac TIPPET, for the topicality. 26ac DELIQUESCE, for the surface and because it’s a lovely word and 18dn TOPLESS for the definition and because, like Munromad, I’ve just finished watching (and weeping over) the repeats of ‘Tess’, one of my favourite books since school days.

    Many thanks, Crucible, for a lovely start to a sunny day.

19. ngaiolaurenson @16 – I see I nearly bumped into you, too, on the garden path. 😉

20. Thanks Crucible and loonapick

    Re LINE UP = DRESS, in shops tidying shelves, facing items out etc is known as shelf dressing.

21. What Eileen said – I wonder if she solved it sitting in the sunny garden like I did? – although no excursions were taken up the garden path!

    Thanks to Crucible and loonapick

22. Thanks Crucible and loonapick

    Very clever to fit all that in. I didn’t see the theme until quite late on, so it didn’t help. Favourite CLOTHIERS.

    A question for the purists. I had no idea on 9d until I too Googled “LBD”. Is this regarded as cheating?

    Pedants’ corner: “deliquesce” doesn’t mean “melt away”; it means” absorb water from the atmosphere to form a solution”.

23. For kerchief (from couvre chef – head cover) and bandana (from Sanskrit)  see

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerchief

24. I know in the past I have been, albeit against the general consensus, somewhat negative about Crucible’s crosswords and I can’t say that this did anything to change my opinion. Mercifully, for me, free of classical references but beyond that I really struggled to find anything to raise a smile. Of course this could be confirmation bias in action – maybe I should get the setter redacted before starting? Ticks for FLOOR-SHOW & UNDERSIDE. 1A summed this up for me. Cheers all

25. muffin @22 – perhaps “Scientists'”, rather than “Pedants'”: Collins and Chambers give (only) the chemical definition  but my SOED gives ‘melt away, dissolve’ as the first definition. It’s from Latin ‘deliquescere: to melt away, dissolve, vanish, disappear (Lewis and Short).

26. That was a nice solve to an all round decent puzzle, I thought. Two new words for me, DELIQUESCE and TIPPET, but both gettable from the very fair clueing, as was the case with the whole thing.
    Quite a few solutions were “d’oh!” moments for me, trying to over complicate them, especially FORSAKE and PATTERN, but aided OVERALL by some write ins.
    Thanks Crucible for a lovely themed crossword, and Loonapick for the blog!

27. I enjoyed this and thought the clues well constructed on the whole.  The theme jumped out after a couple of clues and enjoyed the attempted misdirection of the sewer and stole which was foiled by the theme.

    I made allowances for the non-scientific definition of DELIQUESCE having winced at NEBULA some days ago.  I twigged the French connection of NICE immediately and so was trying to find something more French than JEANS to fill 16A. Is there an issue with the apostrophe here?  Didn’t like AS-LEVEL when other, less parochial candidates are available.  TIPPET wasn’t the best clue with its slang for idiot and garb that is not hospital specific. I note that that old river has made another appearance!

28. Hmm, yes Eileen, perhaps a case of science adopting and formalising an etymologically suitable term. I associate deliquescence with those sachets in a pill container that absorb moisture to prevent the ‘melting away’ (ie becoming a solution, as per muffin) of the contents. Bet there’s a Linguistics thesis about it somewhere!

29. If I’ve got a mini-moan, it’s that if you know LBD, then the latter part of COCKTAIL DRESS is ready and waiting for you. Otherwise though this was pretty damn clever throughout, with a theme that even yours truly couldn’t miss and lots of clever clues scattered everywhere. Had to check TIPPET however, and couldn’t parse SALSA.

    I know I was in a minority in not much liking Anto’s puzzle yesterday but this one was in a different league. But then Crucible has been at it far longer.

30. grantinfreo @28 Scientists (for it is they who name things, not science) have adopted various tactics over the years. At times they have used words that in common language and then used them in a specific way so they effectively gain a scientific definition (force and energy leap to mind). At other times they invent phrases for when they need to refer to a specific thing (Newton’s “quantity of motion”, for example, or “quantity of matter” for momentum and mass as we now call them). For new elements and particles new words are often invented – “oxygen” for the “acid former” and “electron” from the Greek for amber would be good examples. And then they sometimes abandon etymology altogether and we get wonderful things like Murray Gell-Mann’s “quark”, the acronyms “wimp” and “macho” and evocative terms such as pulsar and quasar. All, I suspect, no different from how any part of language evolves.

31. grantinfreo @28 – yes, of course, science – along with other disciplines – has been doing this for years – quite legitimately. I just objected to the original meaning being dismissed as wrong!

32. I can’t believe I was misled again by sewer, but I was!

    I didn’t know TIPPET, but the parsing led me to the answer.

    I thought this was a very good crossword with clues having smooth surfaces. I particularly liked FLOOR SHOW, PATTERN and CLOTHIERS.

    Thanks Crucible for the fun (and not roasting me this time), and to loonapick for the comprehensive blog.

33. TheZed @30 – We crossed, of course and then I temporarily lost internet access. Many thanks for your lucid explanation. 😉

34. Thanks, Crucible, for that sartorial romp. I share ngaiolaurenson @16’s liking of PPE, no longer just a university degree. I got DELIQUESCE from recalling the related adjective in school chemistry lessons. Wasn’t fooled by ‘sewer’ or ‘Nice’ because many years of solving have trained me to look at once for alternative pronunciations, such as the ancient ‘flower’ or ‘number’. Hadn’t heard of that meaning of TIPPET.

    I was also confused by LBD, thinking “What the Coco Chanel does that stand for?” until the theme brought the answer to mind.

    AS LEVEL was, I think, the one slight weak spot. A different answer with the same crossers could have been clued by “Showed old woman inside (7)” Not brilliant, I know, but then I’m just an amateur compiler.

35. Yes, TheZed and Eileen, naming, ‘languaging’, is since the dawn of consciousness. I love, eg, charm as an attribute of quanta.

36. Posters frequently justify misugaes by “it’s in Chambers”. How about “it’s not in Chambers”?

    😉

37. …misusages, in case anyone was wondering!

38. I really enjoyed this, albeit I needed the blog to properly parse two of the clues. I spotted the theme early and it actually added to the fun, for me; often I find them to be less fun to solve than to set.

    Thanks Crucible and Loonapick. 🙂

39. grantinfreo @35, Eileen @33 and I further love that many of these neologisms are “of their time” – perhaps, in science, never more so than the quarks, charm, strange, truth and beauty (now renamed top and bottom) that Grant mentions, which came out of the 60s and early 70s. By contrast we have 19th century coinages with classical etymology and early 1900s mishmashes such as “televsion” (one early inventor called it the “iconoscope” (“ikonoskop” in the German patent) which at least has the civility to be entirely Greek in etymology.) By the 1930s the power of language was clear and names such as “cyclotron” for an early particle accelerator were as much to attract awe and wonder as they were to describe the instrument. I find it a fascinating part of our recent history…sorry to go on about it so but I am sure you understand 🙂

40. TheZed@30 the word quark was, I believe, invented by James Joyce, but you make a good point.

41. All solved and parsed, though not without a struggle. The obvious theme helped a bit. I didn’t know TIPPET, DELIQUESCE, or AS-LEVEL, and it speaks to the quality of the cluing that I was able to get them all from the wordplay. I did need to look up LBD (used Collins, so missed the ‘nice surprises’ noted by Boffo @3). Lots of ticks, TREADLE stood out for its clever misleading definition, and FORSAKE drew a laugh. (Like several others, I first tried an anagram of ‘exasperated’ minus ‘pete’.) Thanks to Crucible and loonapick.

42. In my circle ladies call it a LBN little black number. Never used the word dress. Ta for blog as some parsing difficult

43. TheZed @39

    I quite understand – I’m equally fascinated. Thanks again.

44. Very enjoyable.  My favourites were 1a FORSAKE (I looked for an anagram of “exasrad” too!) and 8d PATTERN.  For 16a JEANS I initially considered SERGE (well a serge jacket could be an item of casual wear, couldn’t it?).

    [Re the discussion of neologisms – early in the 20th century, before “science fiction” became the accepted term for the genre, there were various alternatives in use, one of which was “scientifiction”, which is clever because it is of course an overlapping of “scientific” and “fiction”.  The difficulty is to pronounce it so that both words can be heard!]

    Many thanks Crucible and loonapick.

45. No need to be sorry, TheZed@39, all part of the flavour and charm 🙂

46. Enjoyed this, got most of it last night, completely missed the theme (how could I?).  Thanks to Crucible and to loonapick for improving my morning.

    15A I couldn’t get past “cook” as a verb, trying “roast” or “boil” and who knows what.  I thought the cabaret would be an anagram of “housewife” (it’s the right length), but if it were some kind of SHOW, that used up all the consonants except F, leaving USEFE, almost all vowels.

    Googling LBD got me “Lewy body dementia,” which seemed an unlikely thing to expect everybody to know. Fortunately “dress” emerged from the bottom half of the light, and I’d heard of a little black dress.  I vaguely remember having such a thing as a cocktail dress, though what I wore it to I can’t imagine.

    Drofle tried removing “Pete” from “exasperated” for anagrind material leaving just the right number of letters — was this fiendish cleverness on Crucible’s part?  I’m impressed.

47. Thanks, loonapick.

    Count me among those who wasted some time trying to find an anagram of EXAS[pe]RA[te]D before the penny dropped.

    Frankie the cat @1: Guardian style on enumeration is to treat initialisms (and Roman numerals) as if they were words. So BBC TV would be (3,2), not (1,1,1,1,1), Henry VIII (5,3), etc.

48. Octopus@17, where is the nina..?

49. (I meant (5,4) above, of course.)

50. I’m surprised to see that amongst all the praise there are no objections to 3 dodgy, if not wrong, anagram indicators:

    ‘unevenly’, ‘split’ and ‘collapsing’. None of which suggest mixing up.

    Must be just me!

     

51. Eileen@18, good to know I wasn’t the only one in tears at the end of the Tess adaptation on BBC4!

52. Munromad – not just at the end!

53. Thanks Crucible, loonapick

    I tend to agree with bodycheetah @24, in that I usually find Crucible puzzles quite dry (this one not so much), though unimpeachable.  Confirmation bias is also definitely a problem and often spoils puzzles before they’re started; I wish all puzzles were anonymous.

54. TheZed@30 – by the way, it’s amusing that the oxygen and hydrogen were named the wrong way round, as it was only later that it was found that the latter was the element essential to acids.

55. Pedro @50; uneven and collapse are in the Chambers list of anagrinds. Split is given in the Chambers Thesaurus as: ‘split the logs’; ‘the cloth split’:

    break, cut, splinter, shiver, crack, burst, rupture, tear, rip, chop, slit, slash, open. Most of these synonyms are also in the Chambers list.

56. Thanks Crucible for the challenge — enjoyed the very simple VEIL, KAFTANS, BLOUSE, and STUDY (great surface.) Missed TIPPET and AS LEVEL, as they were new to me. Thanks Loonapick for parsing — CLOT (halfwit in CLOTHIERS) and WEAR (river in OUTWEAR) were also unknown to me. Another unfamiliar word, DELIQUESCE was easily gettable from the wordplay. Learning so much made this worthwhile.

57. Lovely! I really enjoyed this. I did have to look up LBD and I don’t think I knew the abbreviation. Does anyone use this anymore? Come to that, TIPPET is hardly contemporary usage even if I did know it- and it was my favourite clue.
    I didn’t really see the theme until I’d completed the puzzle so it didn’t help but really everything was pretty well clued so I didn’t need the aid.
    Thanks Crucible

58. I enjoyed this enormously, even though it wasn’t all plain sailing. Top half went in like a dream. Bottom left took longer but the answers slowly and steadily coalesced. Bottom right took an eternity.
    However, a lovely selection of clues that were so delicious i could have eaten them on toast. I was frequently taken in by the misdirection: bolt cutters and sewer slowed me a tad, but I fell hook link and sinker for “runner” (& just when I’d grown smug about “flower” & “banker” not necessarily being connected to Kew Gardens & Nat West). Hey ho.
    I grinned at FORSAKE, TOPLESS and KERCHIEF and thought the surface of DELIQUESCE was classy. And I got the theme, for once! But not the Nina. At least I can take comfort in knowing the capable Grantinfreo also missed it. Octopus @17, if you’re still there, where is it?
    Thanks to Crucible for the fun and Loonapick for the explanations (I, too, hadn’t heard of that kind of Tippet. Only the composer.)
    It’s too hot to dig out an LBD, but i might slob about in a 4D for the rest of the afternoon…

59. Great puzzle and entertaining blog and discussion generated from DELIQUESCE. many thanks to Crucible on top form and Eileen for the excellent blog.

60. The blogger today was loonapick, WhiteKing (though Eileen’s posts were insightful too!)

61. 24a Tippet, missed the PPE & TIT completely, but knew tippet as a stole and also as that little half-cape you see in old pictures of nurses, so “hospital garb”

62. Thanks muffin – and my apologies to you loonapick. I did see your name at the top and then obviously forgot that when I posted – I’m sorry.

63. Thanks Robi (55)

     

64. Slow start but once a few in, away I went!

65. Muffin re “cheating” – I don’t think anyone has answered your early query as to whether googling LBD was or not. Of course, it’s for you to set your own standard, but I think to some extent the setter is pushing you in that direction. Rather like Boatman with his “Spenser’s miscalled” the other day. Whether you consent to be pushed is still up to you, of course. And of course you don’t have to lose any sleep over it either.

66. Nice puzzle. Thanks to Crucible and to Loonapick. We put in ‘underline’ for 15d, which I now see was a half-parsed answer, and means we just broke a run of 9 days’ finished puzzles. Ah well.

67. Thanks loonapick for clearing up a lot of bits and bobs, I didn’t get Tippet and was annoyed, having spotted the theme, to have fixated on sewer in the lavatorial sense for far too long, but from above I seem to have been in good company. Octopus@17, the S level was still going strong in the early 90s although readers of other broadsheets may claim that grade inflation etc made it equivalent to a 60s A level by then. But as a result of my struggles with them I am able to enjoy the digression into fundamental particles above, which along with Ballard’s Crystal World made DELIQUESCE my favourite today, just beating Topless and Patterns. Thanks Crucible for education and more entertainment.

68. Very enjoyable puzzle – only quibble was with AS-LEVEL; as a non-Brit I’ve heard people talk about A-Levels in reference to school exams, but never of As-Level.  Guess this is something I am ignorant about…

69. Re cheating: if you can finish without looking something up, you never learn anything new.

70. Philip – isn’t that what this blog is for?

    Incidentally, I had HOOKBALL TRUSS for 9d, but only for a nanosecond. It would certainly “lift bottom” but I didn’t bother googling it.

71. Just a guess, but I suspect that Octopus@17 meant “theme “, not “nina”.

72. My view is that if you look something up then you are no longer completing a cryptic clue. You are sort of answering a quiz, eg is tippet a word that means stole ? My learning comes from looking up the word after coming here or, more usually, from what people say in the comments here. For 19 across, I initially had REVUE SHOW because I thought REV could be an anagrind and the letters for HOUSE and W (for wife) give you the UE SHOW. Wasn’t sure where the mystifies came from but it initially sort of made sense.

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