Guardian 26,115 by Philistine

31 comments on “Guardian 26,115 by Philistine”

1. Thanks to Philistine and manehi. Agree that there must be something more to AMMO but it’s
   beyond me. Had to confirm 1ac; doubt I’ll ever see it again. JFK on Friday. LBJ today.
   Is Tricky Dick next?

   Cheers…

2. Thanks manehi. I wondered too about 19a and could only assume the quotation marks meant slang. Guessed also that the little dots in 2D meant the list could go on, courtesy of the thesaurus. No resort to that or other aids even for the Glam town. Liked the LBJ clue: and urge readers to read the Caro biography, esp the topical (re JFK) latest vol. Thanks Philistine.

3. Thanks manehi
   My take on 19ac is that the definition (bullets) is in the middle of inverted cOMMAs.

4. Thanks, manehi.

   Gaufrid, I am sure that is it – well spotted. I was staring hard at “quotation marks” and couldn’t see anything useful.

5. Thanks, manehi.

   Another excellent puzzle from Philistine – lots of fun and some very clever cluing. I agree with your three favourites [7dn is wonderful!] but must add SAMARITAN for the great surface and definition.

   I’d never heard of the unlikely-sounding GRUNION but the impeccable clue led straight to it.

   I don’t think I would ever have got 19ac , so many thanks to Gaufrid for that – and, of course, to Philistine, for a splendid start to the day.

6. [I should have said, ‘I don’t think I would ever have parsed 19ac’.]

7. Thanks manehi and Philistine
   Great fun. Favourites were ENRAGES and NOSTRIL. Unusual grid?

8. Completed an excellent puzzle. A bit cheeky, but I rather liked the homophone for ‘you’re in’ at 20a. On 19a, which I could not parse without Gaufrid’s help @3, I wonder whether there is a further dimension? Bullets are also ’rounds’ of ammunition, and the clue may be indicating that the ‘omma’ contained in ‘inverted commas’ needs to be reversed.

9. Hi George @8
   My view was that ‘inverted’ indicated the reversal in cOMMAs. OK, this would probably work better in a down clue but I’m not going to nit-pick.

10. Thanks Philistine and manehi, and also Gaufrid for what must be the correct explanation for 19.

    Very good crossword. Sometimes a grid with many long answers like this one seems to be more than half over before it is started, but that wasn’t the case for me here with both 8 (d’oh!) and 1d holding out until near the end.

11. Brilliant, Gaufrid. Many thanks!

12. Thanks Manehi. An enjoyable solve, and managed to parse most.

    Lately, I only comment when what I have to say hasn’t already been covered – in this case, it’s 1ac, which I’ve actually been through. I think the parsing of the first part is TH(e) in MERRY with the last two flipped (tailspin), rather than an anagram ?

    Thanks to Gaufrid for explaining 19ac.

13. Thanks Philistine and Manehi

    I had 5 as FLYERS plus O = a round plus U = univerity, all distributed.

    Very sad news about John Graham, though not entirely unexpected.

14. Thanks Manehi. This was very enjoyable and fell out quite quickly for me, although I was initially daunted by all the long answers.

    Thanks to Gaufrid for explaining 19ac, which I couldn’t parse. V clever!

    I can see that 2dn is in the form of a thesaurus entry, but for me it didn’t quite have the cryptic snap. Tiny quibble, though.

    As others have said, 7d is lovely.

    Thanks Philistine.

15. Thanks, manehi.

    Easier than the average Philistine, I felt, but just as enjoyable. I couldn’t see that parsing for 19a either – how appropriate to have such an Araucarian clue on this particular day.

    1a uses the ‘in Glamorgan’ device, which so 9a some solvers!

    Favourite emphatically SAMARITAN: great construction and surface.

16. Thanks manehi and Philistine

    Many thanks Gaufrid re 19a. I can now see that ‘ammo’ is ‘omma’ ‘in commas inverted’, but I can’t say I’m altogether happy with it, clever though it is.

    I had to check ‘grunion’.

    An enjoyable puzzle otherwise. I particularly liked 16a, 21a and 1d.

17. With long clues not yielding early, I thought this was to be a long and tortuous solve if not a failure, but ENTANGLEMENTS started the ball rolling for a rare bottom-up solve. URINE had been first in and I’m not sure what that says about me.

    So glad I had finished it before reading the news about John Graham; it might have taken the wind quite out of my sails. Not inappropriate though for Philistine to include a few biblical references to send the Rev on his way.

18. Thanks all
    Lovely puzzle especially ‘ammo’.
    Last in was 1d, I was confused by ‘Martian’ from red planet!

19. Very good and funny but not as accutrate as the Indy. I liked the clues but not some of te ‘bits’ of them.

20. Hello Gaufrid’s @9
    Thanks for your coment. I was a bit dubious about the clue because I saw ‘inverted’ only as ‘upside down’, but in checking the online Oxford Dictionary I see that invert is defined as “put upside down or in the opposite position, order, or arrangement”. In that case, the clue is fine as it stands, and as per your parsing, and works as well in an across clue as it would in a down.
    Regards,
    George

21. 13 ac recalls one of the more memorably stupid jokes from the Muppet Movie:

    DOC: Don’t you frogs expand? (Blows his cheeks like a toad)
    KERMIT: That’s a myth.
    DOC: What?
    KERMIT: Myth! Myth!
    WOMAN (pops up from behind billboard): Yeth?

    And as for M. Roget: I read it as a sort of double-def: the clue was also a list of synonyms, which is itself a definition for Roget (the book, as opposed to the man).

    The Not For Americans clue of the day was 1-across–never heard of the danged place.

22. Should it be ‘fair for Americans’ ?

23. Rowland, no, of course not–the Guardian cryptic is a British puzzle, so you expect it to be laced with cricketers, Labour politicians, and towns in Scotland. In fact, I have a working theory that every one of these puzzles has at least one clue that I don’t have the cultural equipment to solve. It’s just my way of saying “Couldn’t get that one.”

    (On the flip side, I wouldn’t expect baseball players, congressmen, or towns in Nebraska, though “Babe Ruth,” “Newt Gingrich,” and “Omaha” all could yield a wealth of good clues.)

24. Count me as another who entered AMMO unparsed, so thanks Gaufrid. I entered 1ac and 7dn from their definitions once a few checkers were in place so the cleverness of the cluing was wasted on me. I parsed 5dn the same way as Manehi.

    1dn was my LOI although I’m surprised it took me so long to see it. My excuse is that because of the two “I” checkers in the second word I was trying to fit “IV” in there as the “six up” in the clue, and it took me a while to step back and look at the clue afresh.

25. And for 2 down they all refer to the same thing, which is what Roget’s Thesaurus does for you.

26. Excellent crossword from Philistine.

    Although I was lucky enough to see the long clues quite early so it succumbed fairly quickly. The giveaway for me was “it’d fly off in Glamorgan” which jumped out at me as Tydfil.

    I was another who couldn’t parse AMMO so thanks to Gaufrid.

    I parsed 2d as “Doctor, physician, medic,” as entry from a thesaurus and “author, compiler, lexicographer” as an indication of what was required. However now I’ve read Wiki I see that Roget was indeed all of these!

    Great fun.

    Thanks to manehi and Philistine

    I am truly saddened by the news about John Graham which I only just picked up from here. His last published “Prize” was indeed ominous as we suspected.

    Araucaria is definitely the man who kindled my love for cryptics and has given me so much pleasure over the years. A true innovator and entertainer. He will be greatly missed.

27. I don’t usually come to this site until I am finished or vanquished, but tonight… something about clue 1 struck me.

    Normally a place name clue/answer like this would be very hard for an ex-pat, but…

    I was born there.

28. By the way, it is/was also my first answer in.

29. Re 19a.

    I now humbly withdraw my comment @16. The penny suddenly dropped this morning and it is now clear to me that the clue is simply ‘bullets in inverted commas’. It is discomforting that it can sometimes take so long to see something.

30. My Hats Off Award goes to Gaufrid, and anyone else who parsed AMMO.

    Thanks all.

31. FWIW, I parsed 1ac as Stella Heath @12 and 5ac as Simon S @13. I could have pondered 19ac for decades and never come up with the inverted commas parsing. Thanks, manehi & Philistine.

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