Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,207 / Philistine

59 comments on “Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,207 / Philistine”

1. Thank you Philistine for this proper weekend fair. I particularly enjoyed 10/16, 7 and 12. And of course, some spectacular anagrams. I have slight reservations about 4: it was clearly too good a joke to pass up it I felt it lead to a somewhat sloppy clue. But, all in all, lots of fun and head-scratching.

2. PS can anyone explain to me what &lit actually means? It’s baffled me for years

3. Thanks Eileen. I too have my reservations about lengthy clues like 11,21 which are clearly anagrams and which occupy a good many squares even if they take some time to emerge. Still, they do provide a useful number of crossing letters. Not too demanding but another pleasant interlude though which I enjoyed. I wondered about POTENTIAL in 25a which seemed superfluous to me and had to seek confirmation of the stone which I had not encountered before.

4. I had mixed feelings on this one. I thought it was the right level of difficulty for a Prize, even though that doesn’t seem to be a thing any more, and a nice assortment of clues.

   On doing CONQUER my first thought was that this is going to cause problems for those without a UK background. TWO HORSE RACE was certainly gettable, but needed a Google check of Citroen brands to be certain.

   There were a couple I wasn’t so sure of though. Sweets promote cavities in teeth, to be sure, but as a clue I’m not sure 5d works. THE seems a bit forced in the right-hand part of 12d, Eileen seems to think so too.

5. Jaydee @2: &lit is short for “and literally”. It means that the complete clue is used to provide the wordplay, and also (when read literally) to provide the definition. As Eileen suggests in her comment, it’s rare to get a clue that works completely in both readings. The alternative term clue-as-definition (cad) means the same thing.

6. Thanks to Philistine and Eileen. I managed to finish but did not parse CONQUER and even with all the crossers was slow to get SALINE SOLUTION.

7. Like last week, very enjoyable solve. I was held up in the NW a bit, but the one that gave me most trouble was 25a – and me with a geology degree, Actually, I suspected ONYX for the end for quite a while, but couldn’t figure out the SARD bit until the (obvious) ‘try an anagram of x-rays’ finally surfaced. Like Eileen and Dr WhatsOn @4, quite puzzled by THE in 12d, which held me up. Lots of nice clues – too many to list them all – but OUT OF… was lovely, as was the reference to the 2CV in 10a/16a, and ATROPHIES. Thanks, Philistine and Eileen.

8. Not that it matters much but I think you mean ?n?o for the sixth word of 11.21.

9. Dr. Wh is right about conkers, which I’ve heard of but didn’t spring to mind.. bunged in chequer instead of conquer and hence failed on Fingal, which wouldn’t have come to mind albeit vaguely familiar. Enjoyed the rest though without too much trouble, the long anagram helping as Eileen and Biggles A have said. The booty map was cute, as was badinage now that I see how it’s parsed 🙂 , and a trophies (groanish). Thanks both.

   [Not usually up at 7 on a chilly morn but there’s a film crew here shooting a doco .. anniversary of the Azaria Cbamberlain saga..]

10. Thanks, Biggles A @8 – amended now.

11. Rather to my surprise I solved and parsed pretty mich everything in quite a short period of time. Well looking again. I did not understand the cleverness of BADINAGE( nice word too).

    Worth noting online Chambers does not give reside as a def for Inhere. I liked LOCUST (LOI) BADINAGE ( even more retrospective ly) and AIRLINE especially.

    The very long clue was gettable from a combo of the enumeration and the wordplay – I didn’t feel the need to check!!

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen and all contributors to this lovely corner of the internet!

12. I agree with Eileen – Philistine is one of my favourite setters too. I have written across the top of this one “Clever puzzle!”, and then ticked several clues. I liked 9a FINGAL (we have a place called FINGAL Head in northern NSW named after yours – it has tessellated rocks like a mini Giant’s Causeway – but sorry gif@9, on the other side of the continent from you), the long one 11,21a OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE, and 18a MAP OF ITALY (my LOI: I had to smile at ‘booty’ in this clue). I also thought the anagrind for 23,24a ISOTONIC SALINE (an unfamiliar solution!) and the surfaces for 15d HIPFLASK and 17d CANDOUR were good. Like Biggles A@3, (and echoed by TassieTim@7), I had not encountered the word SARDONYX at 25a before, but it was quite work-out-able (!) from the anagram. DrW-O@4, I do recall playing conkers as a child (2d CONQUER) with a sort of water chestnut from a tree my grandmother had in her yard), so that homophone went in okay for me. (I probably knew to call it conkers because I read so many books set in Britain as a kid – Enid Blyton and the like.) [BTW, keep your eye out for the dingo, gif@9.]

    My appreciation to Philistine and Eileen, sent from the other side of the world. As Epee sharkey@11 says, it is good to be part of this connected community of cruciverbalists.

13. New words for me: SARDONYX, ISOTONIC SALINE, FINGAL

    Failed 1a LOCUST.

    Thanks, Philistine and Eileen

14. Thanks Eileen, and Philistine for a fun puzzle.
    Not much to add, except that ‘neon’ is used on its own regularly – “a neon indicates when power is on” – even when some other gas is in the tube.

15. I really liked this one. There seemed to be a number of clever, slightly different but not actually obscure, clues here. I see Julie in Australia @12 noted ‘forced’ as an anagrind, and I was struck by the variety – ‘source of’, ‘could be’, ’embarrassing’ as well as the more obvious ‘dodgy’ and the ‘drunk’ part of half-drunk. Yes, the long anagram simplified things, but on the other hand SARDONYX and the ISOTOPIC part of the saline solution were new to me. MAP OF ITALY was neat. I also liked FINGAL, although I wasn’t sure how well known that particular man is – my music master at school was a fan of the Mendelssohn piece, and despite having no musical aptitude at all, I’ve always remembered the name. So, yes, lots to like – including BADINAGE, but only now Eileen has explained the parsing to me. Thanks for that, Eileen, and thanks Philistine for the puzzle.

16. Like ginf @9 I put in chequer instead of CONQUER, one of those annoying cases where an answer seemed good enough until you thought of an obviously better one. So FINGAL was my LOI.

    Fingal’s Cave on Staffa is one of those rare A-List tourist destinations that is even more impressive in reality than you’re expecting it to be. And as the boat carries out the very tricky manoeuvre required in order to reach the landing point, the skipper switches on a recording of the Mendelssohn. Corny but surprisingly moving.

    Thanks to Philistine and Eileen for a great puzzle and blog.

17. Thanks Philistine and Eileen

    The anagrams made this rather easy for a Philistine, though fun. I loved FINGAL (g larsen @16 – the Villa d’Este in Tivoli is another that’s even better than its reputation).

    “End of the Georgian era” for “regency” is inaccurate. The Prince Regent was King George IV for longer than he had been Regent, after George III died, and his brother, William IV, is generally regarded as a Georgian monarch too.

18. I think SHADOWED is OK.

    The -had- element isn’t part of the verb, it reflects the ‘and’.

19. Thanks, Eileen, not least for helping me understand at last how BADINAGE works – the penny has finally dropped.

    Like others, I liked the puzzle, though I did not think NEON and A SWEET TOOTH  were really cryptic.  Initially I shared muffin@17’s reaction to ‘Regency’, but I felt the clever clue was worth any pedantic point about dates, and Eileen’s Wiki page reference makes clear it can cover different stretches time.

    As to SHADOWED, in the days I had a mortgage (now happily gone), I was in debt to the bank, and had owed them a sum of money.  The ‘had’ could be omitted, but is not incorrect.

20. I’ve looked at Eileen’s link now, and it does justify “regency”. I don’t understand the usage, though!

21. To sjshart@19

    Thank you for ignoring my comment on SHADOWED.  It’s all coming flooding back, why I left this site.  Should have stuck to my guns.

    I think you are the one getting your tenses wrong now.

22. Regarding NEON, may I cite Robbie Robertson’s “Somewhere down the crazy river” as an example of NEON alone meaning light

    “Yeah, I can see it now
    The distant red neon shivered in the heat
    I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land
    You know, where people play games with the night
    God, it was too hot to sleep”

    I know how he feels after this week’s weather 🙂

    Cheers P&E

23. Thanka to Philistine and Eileen – a good challenge with some lovely pennydropping moments. Was held up by NW corner for a bit. LOI SARDONYX which sounds to me like a character in an Asterix and Obelisk cartoon!
    Also can someone explain why in 7d ‘lacking aspiration’ means losing the h from ‘hairline’. I thought the clue worked without ‘aspiration’,though didn’t give a satisfying surface.

24. I had 6d but did not enter it as it does not mean reside.

    as a result I did not get badinage and still do not understand the clue

    ina inside badge? why?

25. We visited Fingal’s Cave on a beautiful sunny day in a flat calm – impressive even so, and it must be awesome in rough weather. Yes, we got the Mendelssohn performance too.

    “Long legged Italy
    Kicked poor Sicily
    Right into the middle
    Of the Mediterranean Sea”
    – at least, that’s what we used to say at school.

    I’m another who thought the game might be chequers – but I think it’s only called that in the USA where it’s spelled checkers.

26. Burnbake @23: ‘aspiration’ in 7d refers to the sound sometimes called an ‘aspirate’, or more technically a voiceless glottal fricative (see here), or more simply just ‘h’ 😉

    Anna @18: I did see your had/and suggestion, but my parsing was more along the lines of excusing the imperfect/pluperfect mismatch on the grounds that everyday English usage often does this anyway.  Other languages, I realise, are more precise on this point, but at least in spoken English an emphasised was can do duty for ‘had been’.  Imagine a discussion about events in 1986.  Speaker 1: ‘We need to address this question of whether he was in debt or not’.  Speaker 2: ‘Well he was in debt, but in 1986 things took a turn for the better.

    Many thanks Philistine for a fun puzzle, and Eileen for her customarily helpful blog (I’m another one who couldn’t parse BADINAGE until I came here!)

    (Brian @24, if you have another look at Eileen’s comment, you’ll see it’s not ina inside badge – as I (had!) wrongly thought, but ‘bad in age’, giving ‘a BADge’)

27. I enjoyed this, thanks.

    But do mermaids have fins?

    And does arraign = incriminate?

28. My two favourites were 4a BADINAGE and 9a FINGAL.  Luckily the former came to mind as soon as I saw “banter”.  (I always think of “badinage” and “persiflage” together as they are such lovely words.)  And FINGAL was very neat and clever – apart from anything else, a cave is just the sort of place where a “fin gal” might hang out.

    On the slightly more quibbly side, I’m not sure I really get 5d.  Ok, A SWEET TOOTH might get you cavities (in your teeth), but like you Eileen I wondered if there was something more to it.  And is MAP OF ITALY (18a) actually a “thing”?  Could you have “map of” any country as a crossword answer?

    Despite the quibblets, a very enjoyable puzzle.  Many thanks Philistine and Eileen.

29. Some inventive and amusing cluing, especially some of the anagrams. Most inventive was BADINAGE, and I can sympathise with Brian @24 with his “ina inside badge? Why?”. But it’s a reverse clue, where BAD IN AGE tells you to insert BAD inside  A GE to get A BADGE. (Eileen explained this very well in the blog, which I assume Brian didn’t read.) I tend to agree with his “why?”, though.

    The four clues leading down from BADINAGE all had eyebrow raising moments, for one reason or another. A cryptic TOOTH that needs to stop eating sweets? Does INHERE really mean reside? Well, no, not really, but Chambers has “to stick, remain fast in something”, which is a bit more than an overnighter. AIRLINE with no aspiration to being a hairline, yes, I can sympathise with that. And I liked the upset leaders at the end of the Georgian era.

    I was happy to see that Anna had rejoined us @18, and thought of replying to her comment about HAD in 3d, but unfortunately it only took half an hour for her to be ignored and she appears to have left us again. HAD OWED is very awkward, and looks like it’s the wrong tense, so I would have said a tentative Hi! to Anna’s suggestion, but would Philistine really have clued HAD with “and”? It doesn’t seem likely. I reckon he was thinking along the same lines as sjshart @19, and I agree with Anna’s parting rejoinder @22.

    My last one in was SARDONYX, which I entered confidently (“potential source” is such a devious and well-disguised anagrind) and then Googled to make sure it really was a stone (and rather a pretty one at that) rather than, as Burnbake @23 says, a character in the bande dessinée Asterix and Obelix.

    Thanks to Philistine for the entertainment, to Eileen for the enthusiastic blog, and to Anna for putting your head round the door. Please stick around a little longer next time.

30. essexboy @26. You posted while I was typing, so I did not read your comment on the pluperfect/imperfect imbroglio. I’m sure you are right about the way we deal with this in spoken English, with emphasis on was, but does it really work in a crossword? Perhaps it does.

31. to the hatter@29

    Oi!  I haven’t left yet – and I’m keeping an eye on you!!  (said while smiling)

     

32. Lovely crossword – took my time with it and to my surprise with the help of the crossword dictionaries and a little use of the check button I got all but three of the clues and only needed Eileen’s help with parsing on one other. I only started trying to do cryptic crosswords during lockdown and have a long way to go – lots of things that seem obvious to others go right over my head. And even the easier ones take me a long time. But I am learning and it is so satisfying when I recognise how to solve a clue using something I have learned when doing a previous crossword. Thanks to Eileen and Philistine.

33. Anna @31. Glad to have raised a smile!

34. Essexboy @26 Thank you. Not seen that before. ?

35. Wynsum@27: Tail fins, certainly.  Dorsal & ventral fins, not in the pictures I’ve seen.

36. Gladys@25. I’ve always called the game draughts, but there are boozers locally called “The Chequers”.

37. Having entered ACROPOLIS unparsed at 13d (not many other words that fit A*R*P***S, apart from ATROPHIES and I’m unfamiliar with A = Academic) only rethought when there was no alternative to the answer to 23,24.
    I had the same reservations as others about 5 and 6 and didn’t like “source” as the anagrind at 25 but “potential source” is better. I should have spotted.
    For the rest, enjoyable as usual from Philistine and thanks to Eileen.
    Burnbake @23,34
    One of the most often quoted clues of all time is Heggs? (11) that you may find your new-found knowledge helps with.

38. Enjoyed this even though I didn’t bother to parse 11/21ac which,of course provided some of the raw material for other answers. I really liked both FINGAL and CONQUOR.
    Thanks Philistine.

39. We always enjoy a Philistine, but had to come here for an explanation of BADINAGE, thank you Eileen.

    And thanks for the puzzle Philistine.

40. Thanks Philistine — there was a lot to like — LOCUST, MAP OF ITALY, ATROPHIES, CANDOUR, and especially HIP FLASK were among my favorites. I failed at FINGAL and CONQUER due to a lack of GK. Thanks Eileen for write-up, particularly on BADINAGE.

41. Thanks Philistine and Eileen

    Re draughts/chequers a chequer was originally a heraldic device consisting of alternately coloured squares. Presumably during downtime in a campaign knights played a game involving pieces of some sort on a shield laid horizontal, which was eventually made in a flat version. So presumably both terms for the game are correct, though I’ve no idea how draughts entered the picture.

42. Thanks, Philistine and Eileen. I confess that for the life of me I still cannot understand how \’badinage\’ is parsed. BAD IN AGE? And \’conquer and \’win\’ are not really synonyms. \’We conquered WWII and won the Nazis\’? I don\’t think so.

43. Re 42 from me: I’m sorry about all the stray obliques in that comment. I don’t know where they came from. I’m using a new laptop for the first time

44. Epeolater @ 43

    It was not your fault! Your original comment was considered by Akismet (the site’s spam filter) to be spam and was treated accordingly. To avoid false positives, I use another WordPress plugin that presents a Captcha for anything intercepted by Akismet and if this is completed correctly the comment appears. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, Akismet inserts a \ before every apostrophe.

45. Gaufrid @ 44. Thanks for this epiphany! I’m still not sure what’s happened. Is Akismet semi-illiterate?

46. Pino @37. “I’m unfamiliar with A = Academic”.

    It doesn’t, as far as I know. The clue was “Academic top prizes for shrinks”. Eileen wrote in her blog, “A[cademic] (top of, in a down clue)”. Hope this helps.

47. I came here hoping for enlightenment on 5dn, but I guess there’s none to be had. Like some others, I don’t see how it’s intended to work as a cryptic definition. Oh, well.

    I was very impressed by the &lit / cad 11ac. I failed to finish the puzzle without resorting to a bit of cheating on 9ac and 25ac. Before coming here, I didn’t understand the Citroen part of 10ac (although I guessed the answer).

    Thanks to Philistine and Eileen!

     

48. Skip @36 & Simon S @41. Not strictly relevant to the crossword, but some people had CHEQUER at 2d when CONQUER was required, and there’s been some discussion about pub names and draughts. This link provides some information about the former. I think the game of draughts is older than heraldic symbols on shields, so the idea of knights playing on a shield during downtime, leading to modern flat boards, seems a little fanciful.

49. Sheffield hatter @48 interesting link on Chequers – the pub in Weston-on-the-Green has a chequers board as its pub sign but it is recent. In Black Park, next to Pinewood, there is an info board on the wild service tree, also called chequers and checkers tree because of its chequered bark. It used to be more commonly known and its fruit is edible (it’s related to the rowan) and the info board suggests it is why there are pubs named after it – the tree could have been used as the symbol, or a notable tree might’ve grown nearby.

    Yet another hypothesis to add to the mix!

    BTW Anna – don’t worry about being ignored. The last comment on yesterday’s blog asks if anyone else was misdirected by thinking about “Jerusalem”. I and about 3 other posters had said just that!

50. Thanks to both for an enjoyable lunch time diversion and breakfast coffee companion. Loved MAP OF ITALY and FINGAL – my sense of humour probably.
    Um, Eileen, when I was growing up we used to call all the town advertising lights NEONs but often added a colour for emphasis. From the Chemistry side, neon has the atomic number 10, so is a light gas with an atomic mass of 20.2. That means the clue reads two ways – neon is a gas that makes a light and is a light weight gas.

51. In 1ac, a LOCUS is not the point, but the path of the point’s motion, to be finnicky. As in, “A circle is the locus of a point which remains equidistant from a fixed point”;the circle is the locus, not the point.

    Re 3dn I had been thinking the same thing, Eileen, but then I decided English almost certainly isn’t even his first language, so I think we can cut him some slack. I don’t go for Anna’s theory @18, though and I think sjshart’s example sentence @19 is just wrong to use “had”.

    14ac I think this would have been better as “Gaslighting”, suggesting the practice named after the play, Gas Light. Whether or not you can describe a neon light simply as ‘a neon’, it can definitely be an uncountable noun, as in ‘Downtown was a sea of neon’, can’t it? (This could also be its use in Somewhere Down the Crazy River, bodycheetah@22.) It’s slightly disappointing that both definitions are really referring to the gas, the second as a metonym.

    25ac, SARDONYX was new on me, but I worked it out and was pleased to find it in the dictionary.

    I read 5d as meaning A SWEET TOOTH is one which must be ‘for’ (in favour of) (having) cavities

    6dn ‘Inhere, not in there’ made me laugh.

    12dn Interesting point about majority vs the majority. We talk about reaching ‘the age of majority’, don’t we? But you never hear of people leaving ‘the age of minority’, do you? Conversely, we speak of those below the age of majority as ‘minors’ but we don’t refer to those over that age as ‘majors’. Or do we?

    SimonS@41, the word ‘chequer’ derives from the word for chess and a chequered pattern, literally mean the pattern of a chess board. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=chequer. Chess did come to Europe from the Saracens via the Crusaders but its history is a lot longer than theirs. (I wrote that before I saw that sheffield hatter had pointed you to the blog of my old chum Martyn Cornell, Zythophile. I haven’t read that but I can assure you it will be right! Here, in my (and Martyn’s) hometown of Stevenage, there are two pubs called the Chequers.)

     

    Thanks for the conkers link, Eileen. And the Fingal’s Cave.

52. A challenging but satisfying solve from Phillistine, thouh I fell at the last hurdle, MAP OF ITALY.  FOI was TWO HORSE RACE. Who (of us of a certain age) could forget herds of 2CVs rattling around with their lawnmower engines?

    I couldn’t think of a four-letter psychopathic word for gaslight, so it had to be neon (which gives an orange hue). Neon lighting is a term that refers to a number of colours, so it could well have been hydrogen (red), helium (yellow), carbon oxide (white) , mercury (blue), but none of those are  four-letter wiords.

    Like Burnbake @23, I too thought of Asterix and co with SARDONIX, who would fit it quite well if he/she existed.

    Many thanks to Eileen

53. Lord Jim @28  I don’t know whether “map of Italy” is a thing, but “map of Ireland” certainly is.
    “

54. Fiona Anne
    I did not see any other more senior members reply so “Welcome to 15^2”. Hope you will find it amplifies and extends your cryptic solving – I have certainly found that to be the case.

    Happy solving!

55. Tony Collman @51. In 1ac, a LOCUS is not the point, but the path of the point’s motion, to be finnicky. As in, “A circle is the locus of a point which remains equidistant from a fixed point”;the circle is the locus, not the point.

    That is correct from a mathematician’s point of view, but the word comes from Latin for place. The first definitioin in Chambers is “a place, locality, location”. I think point is fair enough.

56. sheffield hatter @55

    Fair point

57. Much enjoyed and … for once … solved with minimal aids. Would have been extra chuffed (in happy sense) had I parsed the brilliant BADINAGE.

    Mystogre: Much appreciated the illumination on NEON. Your name should be up in …

58. Thanks to Eileen and Philistine

    I doubt many, if any, solved 4a from “a badge?”.

    If the order had been the more natural “A badge for banter?”, then some may have. With “Describe a badge for banter”, or some such, then perhaps even more would.

    But Philistine’s purpose in these clues is surely just a bit of fun – obvious answer, now see if you can work out where it comes from.

    Thing for suggesting? (7)

    I spent a while looking for a bit more in 5d.

    Came up blank.

59. sheffield hatter@46
    Belated thanks. I should have spotted t in the first place and then I can’t have been paying attention to Eileen’s blog. Apologies to her.

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