Guardian 28,210 / Pasquale

78 comments on “Guardian 28,210 / Pasquale”

1. 16d is Street (St) holding firm (Co).

2. 16d   = ST (street) holds CO (firm) giving SCOT

3. Did not parse HOLDS FIRM and will be interested to knwo what it is. Do not yet understand what Andy posted above @ 1.

   Failed ROTENONE.

   New: NISEI, ENNIS (did not parse, found via google), Martin KETTLE, PLOUGH = fail; and Wang Ming – senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for 4ac. Never heard of Menzies Campbell – his nickname was MING?

4. Very cleverly spotted Andy – I was clueless on 16dn! And thank you Eileen I’d missed “failed” as the definition on “ploughed”. Otherwise, I am at total odds with the commentators on the Grauniad website complaining this is too hard. Of course it is hard, but is mostly fair. Some long anagrams of which “restitutionism” was great – I guessed it had to be “re…ism” and the rest slowly came together. “nestorian” came out of somewhere and “nisei” had to be built from the ground up but I knew there was a word like it.

   My only complaint was “rotenone” – using the clue parts I tried “nonerote” at first, which fitted the crossers and the clue just as well. I think obscure words like this do need a bit more indication of the order of the parts.

   Many thanks to the Don and to Eileen.

5. Grim and Dim @ 2

   thanks for explaining 16d – I get it now. Wow, that’s convoluted!

6. Michelle @3 the name “Menzies” is Scots and pronounced “ming-iss” (the “z” is a substitute for an old English letter “yogh”). He was known as “Ming” for short so this also needs to be included as a homophone (“report of”). Hope that helps.

7. Thanks very much, Eileen, for explaining a few tricky ones. I needed to look up Insecticides in Bradford’s Red Book to get my LOI, which was the unfamiliar 25a ROTENONE. Others I didn’t know but worked out were 4a BLOOMING (didn’t know that pollie, although during my childhood we had a very long-serving Sir Robert Menzies as Aussie PM who was also given the nickname MING), and the Guardian columnist KETTLE providing the fodder for TEAKETTLE at 14d. I wasn’t really sure about 8a and tried a few varieties of Institutionalism which clashed with some other words before 1d EUROPASSPORT gave me the R and I got RESTITUTIONISM. Clues I liked were 15a ASHER, 21a BETHESDA, 3d STING, 4d BOULEVARD (the street where I live sounds fancy as it is Jessica Boulevard!) and 23d RENO. So a lot of lovely PDMs amongst them, although I am sure a couple might attract criticism as not being General Knowledge! The work-out today from Pasquale was much appreciated.

8. [There was only one comment when I started mine – note to self – refresh – sorry for not acknowledging what some others have said.]

9. Four clues were outside my GK, but all gettable with a degree of plumping and googleing. This isn’t an enjoyable way to do crosswords, for me. The excellent 16d shows what can be done without relying on obscure words. Anyway, my usual grump over, thanks setter and blogger.

10. TheZed@6

    thank you – I know zilch about Scottish pronunciation.

    Anyway, I got there in the end. A google search on the words ‘ming party leader’ does not bring up this UK politician. I am happy to have reached the answer via Wang Ming 🙂

11. Despite being a DNF the ones I got I enjoyed. Failed on ROTENone and NiSEI. Which had me doubting 4a since I could not parse the MING bit.
    Like SHORT CHANGED and the long anagrams. Thanks to parsers of HOLDS FIRM – clever. Thanks of course to Pasquale and also Eileen for an early blog as once it gets later it’s hard to construct a reasonable post!

12. There seems to be s lot of French creeping into the crosswords lately.

13. A slow and steady solve, except for 1ac, 25ac and 7d which I had to reveal (and then google). 2d was also new to me, although worked out. Ditto for 8ac, which I was chuffed to extrapolate from the N in MENDICANT and no crossers. 4a was a shrug ‘n bung. Somewhat entertaining, but too many recondite answers to my liking.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

14. Surprised, Eileen, as St holding co was one I did manage, in a puzzle littered with dnks, nhos and riddles. Eg, Ming is what we called our Menzies (Sir Robert, long-serving Liberal, ie ‘Tory’, PM)..not sure what the connection is. Plough as fail must be before my time. Nestorian beyond my heathen ken, as was the ‘philosophy’ of returning to the original Christianity. Mr Kettle…another dnk (not a subscriber, but I do donate..honest!). And as for the insecticide, I got the none at the end, but couldn’t get rote as mechanical process..dim!..so a fair win to the Don. All told, not a bundle of laughs, but thanks both.

15. Eileen: re 7d, NI is Japanese for two and SEI refers to age.

16. A measure of my age is that I thought of Rix for the Brian in 23D.  In my youth Eno was a stomach upset remedy and I see from Amazon that it still exists.

17. HMHB joy was unconfined at my FOI RENO with its allusions to “Eno Collaboration” from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road and also “Hair Like Brian May Blues”. And a reference to the wonderful French actor Jean Reno too! Happy days

    Here’s hoping the forecast thunderstorm brings some relief from the heat

18. Thanks TheZed@6, I guess ‘our’ Ming got named the same way (surely not via the CCP, michelle, but for solving purposes..whatever works!).

19. Now this was a real challenge, and as has been commented on, it needed quite a diverse general knowledge. Had to look up NISEI and ROTENONE, and thanks for some of the revelations with the parsing of some of these clues, Eileen.

20. …and Togs@16, many years ago as a little boy of about 6 years old I got into trouble with Mum by coming back from the Chemist with a bottle of Enos instead of Venos, which she had wanted for my even younger brother’s nasty winter cough…

21. I had a problem with 14 because here in France there is no note Te. We say Si, as in do, re mi fa so la si do.

22. I parsed HOT in PHOTO as stolen = recently taken

23. I thought this was relatively straightforward apart from rotenone and soi doisant which was new but solvable. I was desperate to use the ‘Old Firm’ rivalry between Glasgow Rangers and Celtic to parse 16d but thank you for the explanation. Ta Eileen and Pasquale

24. I really enjoyed this, especially the imaginative clues for HOLDS FIRM and SHORT-CHANGED. I’m never going to love anagram clues to arguably obscure words though, although my “thing learned today” is that NESTORIAN is an anagram of Don Quixote’s nag, in case Don is interested

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

25. Like bodycheetah I parsed the ‘hot’ in PHOTO as ‘recently stolen’. Thoroughly enjoyed this crossword, especially HOLD FIRM, a lovely clue. Couldn’t parse BLOOMING; assumed there was a Conservative leader by the name that I’d never heard of. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale.

26. Thanks very much for explanations Eileen and of course Andy and Grim and Dim for 16D (I noticed the old firm coincidence, as AlanC did, which led me nowhere for a while) – I still don’t quite get it as I think “what street does in Scot” describes the mechanism better but makes little sense as a surface – never mind, that one at least had friendly crossers and the definition was clear. Lots of lucky/semi-educated guesses plus checks, and rummaging in the lumber room, but very enjoyable puzzling it out and learned a lot too. I sympathise with anyone who didn’t know/recall Menzies Campbell, he seems a lifetime ago to me especially given the frequency of party leadership changes since then. Thanks Pasquale.

27. bodycheetah @22 – of course! It crops up about once a week, doesn’t it? I seem incapable of seeing the simplest things today. I’ll delete my comment.

    baerchen @24 – thanks for that little gem.

    I’m going out shortly for my first pub lunch since March. Thanks again for all the help.

28. …and as for the intended (Brian) ENO at 23ac, when I was at College in about 1970, the social secretary had managed to get hold of a band called Roxy Music to play one evening for the princely sum of £25. Unknowingly rubbed shoulders in the bar beforehand with the glammed up Eno, Brian Ferry et al…This before they became famous and unaffordable…

29. bodycheetah @22 Of course Eno Collaboration but we also have Sting singing on the roof of the Barbican and where Johnny Cash shot a man, just to watch him die.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

30. Sorry michelle@3, Julie@7 and others, of course i failed to acknowledge that there are other better known MINGs with leadership experience, not least this one!

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

    Which would make much more sense that expecting us to know the nickname of a brief leader of a minor UK party over a decade ago!

    (a quick scan of wikipedia has not clarified whether anyone of the MING dynasty in China actually had that name.)

31. A good, tidy crossword that I enjoyed solving while I was out. I missed out on ROTENONE, not knowing it and also unable, at the time, to work it out.
    Coincidentally, I saw Rosinante (baerchen @24) before I got the correct anagram NESTORIAN.
    I was pleased to get started with RESTITUTIONISM. I’d never heard of it, but I made it up (as it were) by trying -ISM and then -TION-ISM. The crossers from that helped with EUROPASSPORT – then onwards and upwards (diagonally downwards, to be more precise).
    I couldn’t parse HOLDS FIRM, so I was pleased to see how that was done.
    I knew Martin Kettle, fortunately, but I still might have seen what followed TEA from the definition a fraction of a second before recalling the columnist.
    Many thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

32. Foiled by Rotenone, and like Eileen, utterly stumped by the parsing of 16d, but I should have expected something seriously lateral from Pasquale. Particularly liked 4a when the penny dropped. My natural reading of the words fell into two pooh traps. The required (and unexpected) gaps between Conservative / party leader no longer / thriving are just the sort of thing I love about cryptics.

33. penfold @29 one might also be numb from the STING if one had been tending the wrong grave for 23 years

34. Great stuff.  Yes some obscure words, but what do you expect with Pasquale?  Favourites 4a BLOOMING (I think Steve Bell used to portray Ming Campbell as Ming the Merciless, Gazzh @30), 15a for the reminder of the lovely Jane ASHER, and 23d RENO for the reminder of the brilliant Fulsome Prison Blues by Johnny Cash.

    Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

35. 9d, both subject and predicate, reminds me of the old joke whose punchline is “I’m thore too, but I’m thatisthfied!”

36. [PS That should be Folsom Prison, not Fulsome!  My favourite version is by Bob Dylan and the Band on the Basement Tapes, listening to it now.]

37. At least with Pasquale one need never worry about an unlikely combination of letters being a genuine word. That meant I was fairly confident about the leap of faith that was ROTENONE.
    My BLOOMING made use of the same Ming as Gazzh @30 – why not, all Tory leaders are merciless – and AlanC @23, you are not alone in failing to shoehorn in the Old Firm; it made more sense than anything else that I could think of at the time.
    Nice to see Martin Kettle credited. I wonder if anyone has told him?

38. Hard work this. I am not sure how I managed to finish it, but google, a map of Ireland and some educated guesses got me there. I couldn’t parse HOLDS FIRM either and I am glad to see others got hooked on the old firm too. I didn’t see the parsing of BLOOMING either. I admit to not knowing NESTORIAN, RESTITUTIONISM NISEI or ROTENONE .Bethesda came via the town in North Wales rather than the bible. I had Timid for 26ac parsing it: I’m in Tid as in tidbit. I think that works equally as well as TAMED.
    Thanks to Eileen and others for help understanding some of the clues as well as the devious Pasquale.

39. That was a BLOOMING good puzzle with a fair amount of varied general knowledge needed.

    I got 4Ac without understanding why, vaguely thinking it might somehow refer to May blooming. It’s far cleverer than that. ENNIS, SHORT-CHANGED and HOLDS FIRM are all very neat. Fine, decade-spanning cultural knowledge shown by ASHER, king of the lute STING and RENO, which I used an oblique strategy to solve.

    Perhaps I should be glad I’ve never had cause to hear of ROTENONE.

    No grousing from me today, as I might get shot.

40. 2Scotcheggs@39 Glorious! Though you should have been shot yesterday for Gecko and the Bunnymen.

41. [Julie in Australasia – I’ve made a late comment re your view of Brummie’s surfaces on yesterday’s thread. Sorry, Don!]

42. Pasquale can always be counted on to deliver a fair challenge. I failed by one letter on this one, but happy to have gotten the tough ones and to have parsed HOLDS FIRM. Along with others above, I really liked that one along with SHORT-CHANGED, and I’ll throw in DOUBLE-STOPPING, which I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet. Thanks to Pasquale, Eileen, and other commenters who have enriched the experience.

43. I failed on ROTENONE. Even when I revealed the first, then third letters. My pet hate – a clue with only vowels for crossers. Got, but could not parse, HOLDS FIRM (I see I am in good company there). Some very nice stuff elsewhere. Jane Asher my FOI – I thought it was a straightforward quiz clue until I looked at it a little closer. Thanks, P and E.

44. While SHORT-CHANGED was my favourite, I also enjoyed STING, RENO, and ASHER and the mini-theme of music. Eno is a staple in American crosswords but I don’t think I’ve come across him in British ones in my several years of solving (more or less) those. Failed at ROTENONE and couldn’t parse BLOOMING or the clever HOLDS FIRM. Thanks to all.

45. I thought the SCOT trick was very clever, but as Gazzh@26 pointed out, it doesn’t quite work if you look at it closely enough.  So maybe don’t look at it closely!

    Given the number of us who didn’t know ROTENONE, I think it fair to say it is objectively obscure.  Some setters take the trouble to ensure that obscure words are crossed at their consonants.

46. As I’ve maybe mentioned here before, there’s a dive bar (or maybe was–the pandemic is in the process of laying waste to that industry) about a mile south of me called the Nisei Lounge. It used to serve that community. Their last NISEI patron, an old barfly in his nineties at the time, died about fifteen years ago. (Like most immigrant communities, the Japanese-Americans who once clustered here dissolved into the fabric of American life and dispersed into various neighborhoods and suburbs a couple generations ago.)

    So I did know that one. I didn’t know ROTENONE, and rather than Google I just cheated.

    There were also a couple I couldn’t parse–the same ones everyone else had issues with. Thanks to Eileen for that.

47. Pleasant puzzle, some baffles (never heard of rotenone).  Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

    i knew soi-disant but had no idea it could be considered an English word.

    Getting a bang for your buck is an American expression meaning getting your money’s worth.  I’ve never seen it in plural like this before.

48. Thanks, Eileen.

    My first dnf in quite a while, ROTENONE having defeated me. I see I’m not alone. I managed to get/guess a couple of others (NISEI, NESTORIAN) from wordplay and crossers.

    Like Valentine @47, I don’t think I’ve come across “bangs” for your buck. But it’s the definition that seems to me a bit off: if you don’t get enough bang(s) for your buck, you haven’t had good value for money; if you’ve been short-changed, you’ve been deceived.

49. I remembered NISEI from a previous Tramp crossword which I thought had appeared quite recently but was actually in May 2018!

50. Difficult verbiage, but as one would expect, the cluing was so precise that you could write them in one letter at a time. Exactly what I did with SOU DISANT and ROTENONE, both new to me.

    I do wonder about HOLDS FIRM, though. I think it really should be ‘What Scot does to street…’ but I accept that diminishes the surface reading.

    Having S_I__ at 2d, I filled in SLICK (as in Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane), which I thought was pretty fair.

    SHORT-CHANGED and BOULEVARD (a clue that led me literally a letter at a time to the answer) were my favourites.

51. A personally uncanny theme crossword experience for me, with the answers FINISH, INCURABLE, SHORT-CHANGED, DIASTOLIC . . . STOPPING, and OBIT appearing, along with ASHER, since my son named Asher died several years ago on August 13. The grid also includes an unintended Nina, spelling “TO BE . . . NOT,” with the NOT directly under ASHER in the grid.

52. I have finally finished a Pasquale!! I didn’t parse a handful but I don’t care, I feel great!

    Thanks to Pasquale & Eileen.

53. Thanks both,
    Quite anagram heavy, I thought, but everything fell eventually except 25a. Being a mathematician by training, I fail to recognise my biases. To me, ‘n’ denotes an integer so definitely cannot represent any number. Consequently I guessed ‘rotexone’ and had to correct it with google. Otherwise, being forced to explore the fringes of my GK was quite enjoyable.

54. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    You have to be at least as old as me to remember Paul McCartney’s brief fling with Jane Asher (whose brother, Peter Asher, was the Peter of Peter and Gordon, if you want another tangential musical reference.)

55. Cineraria… a favourite flower of my late dad and uncles, keen gardeners all.. condolence for the loss of your son.. I have a cousin Asher in NYC…I wish you long life..

56. Iam following a comment from Fremantle,and Julie has revealed that she livss on the Queensland coast – so the crossword and blog are coast to coast in Australia!

57. That was quite tricky today for this newbie as I couldn’t give it my full attention (downside of students being back in a few weeks…) but got there in the end and a few good laughs to-boot.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen!

58. I see I’m in good company on failing with ROTENONE and NISEI and being bamboozled by the parsing of HOLDS FIRM. SOI DISANT and PLOUGHED for failed were also new to me. ASHER was my favourite. Many thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

59. Tyngewick@53, I sympathise having toyed with Rotexone and Rotezone, but dragging up my own education many years ago argued that x,y,z are usually used for a very finite set of specific unknown numbers (eg find x such that x^2 – 4x +4 = 0) whereas N or n usually represents a broader set of possible numbers eg prove that, for all positive integer n, the nth triangular number is 1/2 n (n+1). (Pretty sure there was discussion of this very result on here somewhere not so long ago!) SO while maybe not quite exactly as we would understand it, I was ok with it given the general imprecision around mathematical/scientific terms in crosswordland, and think that there is enough in my reasoning to make N a superior guess to X or Z. But without any mathematical training you would have to rely on guessing the first letter of the word as the abbreviation required, which is always a last throw of the dice for me, but maybe a bit unfair. Sorry for going on a bit!

60. I knew, this being Pasquale, there’d be a number of new words. On days like this, I either guess first & parse later, or sort of “make the answer up as I go along” – which is certainly what happened with RESTITUTIONISM and SOI DISANT (although, since there are so few english words s _ i, I spent a while combing Law books to see if “sui something-or-other” was a goer.) When there’s so much that needs google, wiki and specialist tomes, I consider it a minor miracle to have completed the thing, so I shall award myself a pat on the back. (Two quibbles: I would have said 1d and 14d are two words – at the very least, with a hyphen between them.)
    I rarely succeed in parsing all Pasquale’s clues, and like many others assumed “old firm” played some role in 16d. I also wasn’t originally impressed by ASHER, feeling it belonged to a very different sort of crossword – but then Eileen’s explanation of the true parsing shows how wrong i was.
    STING made me grin, as did BOULEVARD – and BLOOMING is masterful. Thanks to Eileen and Pasquale

61. The Old Firm refers to Rangers football team which many glaswegians hold firm to.

62. This was quite agreeable -despite the heat:it’s baking here in N Devon- though I didn’t parse everything. Especially dischuffed to have missed BLOOMING even though it was obvious what the answer was. I see I’m not alone in not parsing HOLDS FIRM but everything else went in nicely.
    ASHER was FOI,but then I’m even older than Muffin (sorry mate)
    Thanks Pasquale.

63. Like others, I had never heard of ROTENONE. A good challenge from Pasquale – I liked BLOOMING, SOI-DISANT and PUNIC in particular. Many thanks to him and to Eileen.

64. Very clever, but not much fun.

65. Jennifer @61

    Wasn’t the “Old Firm” more specifically the Rangers v. Celtic match?

66. Boffo@50 I’m inclined to agree with you – Street (or ST) holds “firm” (or CO) in the word Scot. Equally “Scot holds firm in street” but I think the leap from that to “What Scot does in street” is grammatically questionable. But like many others I had to put it in unparsed and I can’t imagine the odd grammar was the only reason I didn’t see such devilish trickery.

    Overall I really like seeing Pasquale pop up. Knowing there will be multiple obscure words I won’t know means I’m glad he doesn’t come round as often as Paul it Vulcan but every now and then I like the rather different style of challenge he provides. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

67. Thanks to Eileen and to Pasquale !  I finished with the aid of some unashamed cheating – in my case Chambers Word Wizard. On the other hand,  unlike some I don’t feel that arriving at an answer and then Googling to see whether such a word exists, and if so does it mean what I think, as cheating.    For some reason I understood 16d straight away – warped brain, methinks.   Incidentally I’m sure I have seen it said that the lovely Jane Asher was the perfect girfriend for Paul McCartney, as she was one of the very few girls at the time that could not possibly be accused of wanting him for his money – because she was even richer than he was !  Whether that was actually true, I have no idea.

68. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen. Tough to finish.
    I did think 16 was backwards, but am persuaded otherwise.
    What does ‘scot’ do in ‘street’? ‘Scot’ holds ‘firm’ in ‘street’.

69. ROTENONE was a bit of a cheat. Looked up ROTESOME and the answer jumped out at me. Didn’t parse 16d either. I did wonder if there was an athletics theme with ENNIS(-Hill) and ASHER-(Smith).

70. 25 ac: rote?one inserted X rather than N -  the earliest record of the now-known rotenone-containing plants used for killing leaf-eating caterpillars was in 1848, and for centuries, the same plants were used to poison fish.

    Lockdown: Label showing plants safe for bees and butterflies: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53678798

71. Very late to this as I have been camping in the Lake District, where the combination of the absence of home comforts and the attention of the midges must have affected my concentration and I was unable to finish. Brought my Guardian home with me for recycling, and all-but-finished today, with the almost ubiquitous stumbling block of ROTENONE. I do like the challenge that the Don’s puzzles set, but they’re hard enough without ambiguous clues for obscure words. I remember reading somewhere that Araucaria always sent his puzzles to a friend before submitting them, and maybe that is something this setter could consider. Unless, of course, he used to do that but has run out of friends!

    Congratulatipons to everyone who parsed HOLDS FIRM.

72. What’s going on with 17a? The answer is not “the old city” but “the name of the war that Rome fought with ‘the old city’”? How is this a legit clue? (Haven’t read other comments because I’m not yet done with the puzzle.)

73. Hi NewbieLurker @72 and welcome to the site.

    The answer is ‘OF the old city’, as I underlined in the blog (= ‘of or relating to ancient Carthage or the Carthaginians’ – or the three wars they fought against the Romans).

74. Hi Eileen, another of my late posts. Like Munromad at 38, I thought that TIMID fitted the clue better in 26ac as it utilises BEING whereas it appears almost superfluous if the answer is TAMED

    For “bit” I had TID (tidbit) and that is about “your setter being” which I had as I AM shortened to I’M.

    And timid is precisely what like a Pussycat means.

    Was the official answer TAMED ?

    Thanks for the blog and Pasquale for the workout.

75. Sugarbutties  @74

    Yes, rather late but, since I was in the chair for this one, I feel obliged to respond – but I suspect you’re just having me on. 😉

    TID doesn’t appear in any of my dictionaries (‘tidbit’ does as a US version of ‘titbit’).

    I suppose I could have underlined ‘being’ as part of the definition.

    “Was the official answer TAMED ?”

    Well, I confess to not checking it at the time, because no other answer occurred to me but I have just done so here

76. You are a star for answering and no, I wasn’t having you on. I’m just not as good as some as the others who post on here so thanks again.

77. So sorry, Sugarbutties. Please keep posting – I enjoy your comments.

78. i had 3d as “swift” (taylor swift), no wonder i couldn’t get 10ac

    “bang for the buck” Maybe more of an American phrase, since we call our money “bucks.” Simply means return on investment, value for money spent.

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