Guardian 28,178 – Carpathian

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I initially thought this was Carpathian’s debut in the Cryptic slot, but a little research showed me that I had in fact blogged her first such effort a few weeks ago. I can pretty much repeat my remarks from that one: “This puzzle could easily have been a Quiptic, with lots of helpful anagrams [actually not so many of those this time) and generally straightforward constructions, but it’s nicely done, so a pleasant, if brief, diversion.” Thanks to Carpathian.

Last time I missed that it was a pangram: this one isn’t (no F or J), but we do have a theme, of Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men, with an impressive roll-call of Messrs BOUNCE, BUMP, MUDDLE, STRONG, GREEDY, CHATTERBOX, SNEEZE, TICKLE, NONSENSE and RUSH, along with Mr RUDE, a later addition to the series from Roger’s son Adam.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
7. DISTINCT Sharp detectives returned fool to court (8)
DIS (Detective Inspectors) + reverse of NIT (fool) + CT
9. BOUNCE Resilience of black cat (6)
B + OUNCE (the Snow Leopard)
10. BUMP Prang rear end of jeep (4)
BUM (bottom, rear) + [jee]P
11. EXCRESCENT Recent sex: cold, messy and unnecessary (10)
Anagram of RECENT SEX C; the noun form “excresence” is perhaps more common – often used as an insult by Bertie Wooster
12. MUDDLE Mix up wet earth with roots of old laurel tree (6)
MUD (wet earth) + last letters (“roots”) of olD laureL treE
14. LEVANTER Let raven free in wind from the east (8)
(LET RAVEN)* – another less-common word, though easily gettable from the anagram and a few crossers
15. STRONG Powerful ballad captures Beatrice’s heart (6)
[Bea]TR[ice] in SONG
17. GREEDY Excessively craving grass after good year (6)
G + REED (grass) + Y
20. ORIGINAL First exam includes one trap (8)
I GIN (trap) in ORAL (exam0
22. TASTER Sample from tesla plant (6)
T (tesla – unit of magnetic induction) + ASTER; I think the “tesla” in the clue would benefit from a capital T, as the surface is suggesting the car company
23. CHATTERBOX Caught milliner with case for windbag (10)
C + HATTER + BOX
24. RUDE Verbally cross and discourteous (4)
Homophone of “rood” – old English name for a cross, supplanted by the Latin/French word we now use
25. WALRUS Creature fell finally during hostilities with America (6)
[fe]L in WAR + US
26. LIAISONS Affairs where cats entertain ladies regularly (8)
Alternate letters of lAiDiEs in LIONS
Down
1. LIQUEURS Left squire dancing, having consumed posh drinks (8)
U (posh) in anagram of L SQUIRE
2. STEP Stamp stuck to envelope portrayed heads (4)
First letters (“heads”) of Stuck To Envelope Portrayed; I suppose a stamp is a sort of step..
3. SNEEZE Start to smoke joints audibly, showing sign of irritation (6)
S[moke] + homophone of “knees” (joints)
4. OBSERVER Old boy has computer paper (8)
OB + SERVER
5. BUCCANEERS Curse can be broken for pirates (10)
(CURSE CAN BE)*
6. SCONCE Voices concerns about candlestick (6)
Hidden in voiceS CONCErn
8. TICKLE Touch hat covering Charlie King (6)
C K in TILE (hat)
13. DEROGATORY Embarrassed about own goal, a politician becomes offensive (10)
Reverse of RED + O.G. + A TORY
16. NONSENSE Aroma around poles inside of tent is rubbish (8)
N S (poles) + [t]EN[t] in NOSE (aroma – as in wine)
18. YIELDING Diligently ignoring timeline in order to be flexible (8)
Anagram of DILIGENTLY less T[ime] and L[ine]
19. GLOBAL Posh lass hiding fling with general (6)
LOB (to throw, fling) in GAL (girl, as said by a toff)
21. REHEAT Upset after woman rising to increase temperature again (6)
Reverse of HER + EAT (to worry, upset)
22. TAXMAN Volunteers mutant superhero to be one overseeing duty (6)
TA (Territorial Army) + X-MAN (one of the X-Men)
24. RUSH Smooth surface partly turned over for race (4)
Hidden in reverse of smootH SURface

59 comments on “Guardian 28,178 – Carpathian”

  1. Thanks Carpathian for a gentle start to the week. All went in pretty easily, except for new words EXCRESCENT and LEVANTER.

    Favourites were SNEEZE and WALRUS.

    Thanks to Andrew for the blog.

  2. Cheerful little dalliance, thanks both. Now Andrew’s told me the theme, I fancy we’ve had Mr Men before, missed it then too…our kids are too old, let alone me. Didn’t know excrescences were necessarily unnecessary..are they? Not sure I’ve heard of that wind either…like the fernsehn (sp?) or the simoum, maybe?

    [The quiptic was good, took a touch longer!]

  3. Yes, a good Monday puzzle. I liked YIELDING in as well as brojo@1’s favourites. Thanks to Carpathian and Andrew.

  5. Nice easy puzzle.

    New: OG = own goal

    Could not parse YIELDING

    Why is GAL a ‘posh lass’? I thought gal is American slang. I thought posh Brits say “gell”.

    Never heard of Mr Men, so I missed the theme!

    Thanks B+S

  6. Very pleasant.  A couple of slightly obscurer words (EXCRESCENT and LEVANTER) but they were clearly clued.  Well done on spotting the theme Andrew.

    michelle, I thought the same about GAL in 19d.  The ODE has for “gel” (with a hard g obviously) “British informal, an upper class or well-bred girl or young woman”.  For “gal” it has “Informal, chiefly North American, a girl or young woman”.

    Thanks Carpathian and Andrew.

  7. Yes, we have had the Mr Men before but they make for a very pleasant puzzle, with happy memories of reading  them with children and grandchildren. I didn’t see the theme until I’d nearly finished, so I enjoyed chasing up the last two or three. I particularly like (Mr) CHATTERBOX.

    Many thanks to Andrew and to Carpathian. [Now to try your Vigo in the Indy. 😉 ]

  8. Thanks Carpathian and Andrew.  Similar Monday experience but nice to have a new-ish setter.  I’m another who enjoyed SNEEZE and TAXMAN made me smile.

    michelle @5 and Lord Jim @6: I’m with you on the gel/gal issue.  Having considered and dismissed ‘deb’ which is my go-to posh girl, ‘gel’ was certainly next to mind. I agree ‘gal’ suggests an American female though I appreciate it’s now ubiquitous.

    grantinfreo @ 2: it’s truly amazing how many locally named winds there are.  I experienced the Fohn whilst skiing a few years ago.  It was strong enough to bring me to a halt and quite bizarre to face the onrushing leaves and debris being swept up the slopes towards me.  It inspired me to look into it and – Wikipedia, naturally – delivered this comprehensive list here.  I was very surprised to discover we have a named wind in the UK.  Just the one, the Helm Wind in a specific place, Cross Fell in Cumbria.  And then coincidence delivered an interview with a farmer who described how the Helm Wind actually shifted a barn full of hay .

  9. Good Monday puzzle with precise cluing (apart from maybe the hidden [about?] SCONCE).

    I was desperately looking for a ‘J’ towards the end as Carpathian/Vigo often does pangrams. I didn’t spot the Mr Men.

    Thanks Carpathian and Andrew.

  10. As per usual, hadn’t noticed a theme. But the fact that there was one, and so well represented, I think adds to one’s appreciation of this otherwise fairly straightforward Monday offering…

  11. Slightly distracted looking for a J in the bottom half after Q, Z, X and V all cropped up early on, but I actually spotted the theme, which often seems to be beyond me.

    I see the problem with 19d, and if asked in isolation I’d probably make the same gal/gel distinction, but the answer came immediately to mind, so I’m not inclined to be too bothered by it.

    Very nice Monday workout.

  12. Slowish start, but nothing too taxing overall. Three new words: SCONCE (whence ensconced), EXCRESCENT and LEVANTER. There were some I could not parse, but no reveals. Agree with comments re GAL/GEL.

    Thanks to Carpathian and Andrew.

  13. One of those crosswords where, once you have got on to the setter’s wavelength, everything can just be written in. Too pedestrian and predictable for a cryptic, I felt.

     

  14. Thanks for the blog. Nice neat puzzle IMO.

    36 years with Mrs Smith has revealed an oversight in Roger Hargreaves oevre – there is no “Little Miss Makework”

  15. Pretty gentle even for a Monday. As others have said we’ve definitely had a Qaos Mr Men theme in the last year or so. Pleasant enough while it lasted but ultimately slightly unsatisfying to win the battle quite so quickly and conclusively.

    Thanks all.

  16. Re the possible capitalisation of tesla,all the names of SI units start with lower case letters. The official abbreviation for tesla is T.

  17. Yes, Mark@8, here we have the Fremantle Doctor (much noted by swing bowlers..airflow, humidity and all that). The thing I heard about the fohn though was from a German girlfriend in the ’60s who said that old law used to recognise its effects, excusing certain behaviours because it could drive people wild. Not sure, but I don’t think she was winding me up!

  18. Very satisfying in that there was no doubt with any of the solutions, confidently writing in ink from the start. Favourites SNEEZE and YIELDING. Thanks Carpathian and Andrew. Now back to the remains of some of last week’s puzzles.

  19. That was fun for a Monday, if indeed that is what this day is…

    grantinfreo @ 2 and  mark @ 6.  There is a wind in Southern California that does so much to fan the fires in the state called the “Santa Ana.”

    SCONCE and EXCRESCENT my new words-of-the-day.  Thanks for that!

  20. gif @ 17: I was pretty sure you were in the right area for the FD but not enough to raise it in my earlier post!  It’s only as I type that I have learned that Freo is actually the diminutive for Freemantle.

    There is actually a word – Fohnkrankheit – for a range of malaises attributed to the Fohn though I’ve not come across any legal application.  Suicide rates are known to climb when the wind is blowing.  The mistral in France is also similarly blamed.  Last Fohn fact: it’s also the name given to a hairdryer!

  21. I liked the Mr Men theme and I found it interesting (when I followed up the reference mentioned by Eileen@7) that there is both a Mr and Miss CHATTERBOX in the series, indicating that “windbag” can apply equally. The clue I most liked was 4d OBSERVER, even though it is a UK reference. Thanks to Carpathian and Andrew.

  22. Quite fun, with a few needing some serious thought. Andrew, you say that the anagram and crossers make LEVANTER “easily gettable”, but I found that neither distinguished it from Laventer. ‘Vent’ related to ‘wind’ could be misleading, though The Levant being in the East (at least, for Europeans) hints the other way. Mark @20: Freo = Fremantle (one ‘e’ after ‘r’) – but that’s a very common mistake. We Aussies, by the way, are very fond of shortened forms. I liked the ‘posh’ doing double duty in 1d, as liqueurs are definitely posh drinks. Thanks, Andrew and Carpathian.

  23. Ah yes, I can hear Arthur Lowe’s warmly comforting tones: “What a lot of Mr Men there are!” I liked WALRUS and YIELDING, while BUCCANEERS was simple but neat. I agree with Frankie @4: if the answer’s hidden in the clue it’s always fairly simple, but I don’t think “about” is an adequate indication of containment. One other little quibble is that “stamp”, with its suggestion of force, doesn’t quite mean the same as “step”. Cilla Black’s song wouldn’t have felt so welcoming if it had been “Stamp Inside, Love”.

  24. Straightforward but well clued, so no complaints. I needed Collins only to confirm LEVANTER. I outsmarted myself on YIELDING, taking an anagram of ‘diligently in’ minus ‘t’ and ‘line’, then wondering where the extra E came from, so thanks to Andrew for pointing out the more obvious parsing.

    Andrew, I think the clue for 2d works better if you take both STEP and stamp as verbs.

  26. A slight niggle with 22 – a perfume sampler is a tester, and e.g. methyl acetate is generated in an ester plant. With no crosser to distinguish which is correct this one is a little leaky I think.

  27. Like others LEVANTER and EXCRESCENT were new to me but readily seen from the clues.  Liked TAXMAN and YIELDING.  Looked at ‘eat’ of REHEAT for a bit before I remembered the eat away at meaning giving a synonym for upset.  Agree that stamp is not really the same as STEP,  my LOI.  And totally missed the theme, but in my defence, I am not familiar with the books.

    Thanks to Carpathian for the fun and Andrew for the blog.

  28. Never spotted the theme, even though we did have it a while back.  Pleasant puzzle, helpful blog.

    The only named wind I have a personal experience of is the Chinook in Western Canada.  I lived in Calgary for a while, and remember it from January and March (it doesn’t come in February, I was told).  On the evening before a Chinook was coming you could see the welcome  Chinook Arch over the Rockies to the west, and the next day all the snow would melt and you could walk around without a jacket.  Next day the jacket was back on.

  29. Ah yes the winds are blowing (in) now, what with mistral and chinook, not to mention Maria..

  30. I don’t remember Carpathian’s previous effort but on this showing I will be very happy to settle in more regularly to the Monday slot. Nice variety of clues with sensible surfaces. And a theme to boot! Missed that of course, despite having read Mr Men to my boys when they were small, but in mitigation that was a good quarter-century ago!

  32. Quite pleasant although I completely missed the theme. I suppose you’d have to have been a parent!
    Thanks Carpathian.

  33. I’ve never heard the sailors in Sardinia use a direction to describe a wind. Clockwise from N they are Tramontana, Greco/Grecale, Levante, Scirocco, Ostro, Libeccio, Ponente and Maestrale (or batten down the hatches), the last of which used to give one Horatio Nelson a few headaches when he was in this neck of the woods.

    Thanks to Carpathian and Andrew.

  34. Comprehensive wind list indeed from your link, Mark@8; sirocco is another I recognise, prob from high school geog..

  35. I was misled by “roots” in 12A, which means the first letters to me, not the last. But being misled is half the point of cryptics, I suppose.
    Also, once I saw the patently obvious anagram for BUCCANEERS, I was annoyed and amused at myself for spending so long working out that “profanities” is not an anagram of “for pirates”, and is one letter too long anyway. I felt a right nit 🙂

    Very disappointed that Mr Derogatory has yet to be written.

  38. Pleasant as a garden party until two skunks showed up — LEVANTER and EXCRESCENT — despite having all the letters I could not make them coalesce into recognizable words without an anagram finder. Favorites were WALRUS and LIAISON. Thanks to both.

  39. gif @34: I was curious about the impact on behaviour/moods of some of these winds and did some further internet trawling.  Googling “scirocco + behaviour” didn’t work, however.  Just lots of articles from people complaining about faults with their Volkswagens!

  40. I don’t think I’ve ever come across the word “excrescent”, but the noun form shows up memorably (to me, anyway) in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: “A red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.”

    I’m with many others in not knowing LEVANTER (although it was easy to guess once some crossers were in) and in being puzzled by the posh GAL (although again the intent was clear).

     

     

     

  41. DavidT @26:  I was another tester/ester for 22a.

    [ginf @17 and Mark @20/39:  The story that ginf heard from his German girlfriend, that the law used to recognise a ‘Föhn mitigation’ defence, is one I’ve heard many times in Switzerland.  You often see it in journalistic writing, e.g. this article from the Los Angeles Times:  “In western Austria and parts of Switzerland, the foehn is recognized as a mitigating factor in criminal proceedings. The foehn defense won’t get charges dropped, but judges have issued lighter sentences in a few cases.”

    As Nick Hunt pointed out in ‘Where the Wild Winds Are’ (2017), the “popular assertion was that… if a defendant successfully argued that ‘the wind made me do it’ – they stood a chance of receiving clemency in court.  I heard this so many times I lost count… but supporting evidence was always strangely lacking […] Perhaps this judicial anecdote was little more than popular myth; as with all myths, of course, the truth it contains is real”.

    The concept of Föhnkrankheit itself is a contentious one, despite being deeply embedded in popular culture.  I for one am inclined to give it some credence.  I am all but certain I’ve experienced some of the weird psychological effects myself, though these things are notoriously difficult to prove empirically.

    As a postscript: I can never hear the word without thinking of Peter Sellers and this clip from ‘Return of the Pink Panther’.  “I am from the tele-foehn company.  There is something the matter with your foehn…”]

    Oh, by the way, thanks Carpathian and Andrew!

  42. essexboy@41: thanks for that.  The Föhn articles are interesting. Some element of urban myth clearly surrounds it.  And the Sellers excerpt is a scream.  His accent was simply sublime.  The team at ‘Allo Allo’ did quite a good job with “outrageuse” French accents but Sellers was top drawer.  I feel a late-lockdown re-run of some Clouseau’s might be in order…

  43. Mark @39

    You might have had a bit more luck with the English spelling, “sirocco”. I found this (after wading through several hits about a kakapo parrot!)

    Thanks Carpathian and Andrew

  44. muffin @43: thanks.  I think I’ve probably had my fill of wind-related behavioural problems for today(!)  And, even better, I now know far more than I did about the Mk 2 fusebox!  My cup runneth over…

  45. Not bad for a Monday. YIELDING pick of the bunch for me. Not sure about ‘roots’ to indicate last letters and clues like 2d should always include the word ‘primarily’ 🙂

  46. An enjoyable solve with nothing too hard.
    To add to the conversation on winds I believe the sirocco is mentioned in Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons.
    I have climbed Cross Fell a number of times but haven’t experienced the Helm wind. The worst it has ever been is “Mildly annoyed” Fell
    Thanks Carpathian and Andrew

  47. Well I thought it was a perfect Monday for beginners/ intermediates. No double / cryptic definitions either. Hurrah.
    It wasn’t meant for you lot so stop being so sniffy.

  48. This was exactly at my level – the new words that others have highlighted were also new to me. By the time we get to Thursday & Friday I’m down to one or two answers….

  49. Really enjoyed this… I didn’t find it that easy, but it yielded steadily in one sitting. Nice to see LEVANTER, which I knew from Patrick O’Brian. Lots of other neat clues, too.
    Thanks to Carpathian for a pleasant hour after dinner, and to Andrew for the blog, not least for pointing out the theme, which as usual I completely missed.

  50. [drhhmb @16 – an exception is Celsius, for some reason] Thanks both for an elegant ease into the week.

  51. Sorry, drhhmb – there are lots of SI units with capital letters:

    A – ampere

    K – kelvin

    N – newton

    J – joule

    Hz – hertz

    I could go on…

     

  52. My wife’s grandfather, who farmed in Sussex, used to say that a strong wind would make his cows restive. It didn’t have to have a name.

  53. Sorry muffin@51, I think you misunderstood drhhmb’s comment. drhhmb@16 wrote that the names of SI units are usually written with small letters (tesla, ampere, kelvin, newton, joule, tesla), not the abbreviations.

    Anyway, Andrew’s point in the blog was that writing “Tesla” in the clue would have aided the misdirection of suggesting the car company instead of the unit.

  55. I wasn’t going to comment on this one, but I’ve just remembered that I complained (fairly mildly, I hope) about what I saw as an oscure word being clued with an anagram and unhelpful crossers. The word was NILGAI, and I had plumped for LINGAI (which fits the crosswers but is wrong), and another commenter had mentioned there was an alternative spelling for the same animal: NIGALI (which doesn’t fit the crossers but is an anagram of the same fodder and so potentially right).

    One of my first ones in here was LEVANTER. That’s pretty easy, I thought. But no, at least half a dozen contributors here have mentioned that it was a new word for them. Only one of those dared to mention that it was unfairly clued, because unless you knew the word (like me or Troglodyte @49), or were prepared to look it up online or in a dictionary, how would you know if it was LEVANTER or LAVENTER? An inspired guess (Lebanon=eastern end of Mediterranean=Levant) might do it for you, but you’d be entitled to feel very pleased with yourself.

    I’m not complaining that the clue is hard. That’s what we do these puzzles for, isn’t it? To test our flexibility, lateral thinking and, to some extent, general knowledge. To give ouselves a bit of a mental stretch. But I just want to suggest that before posting that the clue was “hard but fair”, perhaps commenters should pause for a moment and think “anagram + GK – maybe some people will find it hard and unfair?”

  56. Completely missed the theme but thoroughly enjoyed it. Plenty challenging enough for the likes of me with nothing ridiculously obscure. Nicely clued throughout I thought.

    thanks Carpathian & Andrew

  58. Sugarbutties@57: Yes, Vivaldi appended a seasonal sonnet to each concerto. They are unattributed, but some scholars think they were Vivaldi’s own.

    I too wrote in LAVENTER, with the same French logic as TassieTim@22, so a DNF.

    Thanks Carpathian for an excellent Monday-style puzzle, and Andrew for the informative blog.

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