Guardian 26,481 / Paul

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A mixture of some very succinct / straightforward clues [the last three, for instance] which wouldn’t be out of place in a Rufus puzzle, and others which  were typically Pauline ones, in construction and / or  wordplay, making, for me, a most enjoyable solve. Thank you, Paul.

Across

1 Loud radio broadcasting that demands respect (4,4)
FAIR PLAY
F[loud] AIRPLAY  [radio broadcasting] – a very straightforward one to set us off

5 An item left in car (6)
COUPLE
L [left] in COUPÉ [car]

9 Street covered in rotten food, aside from the majority going downhill (3-5)
OFF-PISTE
ST [street] in OFF PIE [rotten food]

12 Lab MP taking month off, I claimed — a member there in spirit? (7,4)
PHANTOM LIMB
Anagram [off] of LAB MP MONTH round [claimed] I – with a cryptic definition and a great surface

15 Princess not popular as head of state? (5)
DIANA
The crossword princess in full, for once, but without ‘in’ [popular] ‘as head’, which would give Indiana [state]

17 It’s pinned to hold in fabric (9)
GRENADINE
GRENADE [it has a pin] round IN

18 The main quality that may be stainless (9)
SALTINESS
Anagram [that may be] of STAINLESS

19 Accessing honey, bee say is shut out (5)
DEBAR
B [bee say] in DEAR [honey]

20 On tour, gang is going round America — seemingly no end to it? (6,5)
MOBIUS STRIP
MOB IS [gang is] round US [America] + TRIP [tour] – there may be some discussion about the use of ‘on’ in an across clue

24 Difficult temperature, hot (6)
THORNY
T [temperature] + HORNY [hot]
Typical Paul, we might say – but he’s not the only one: just a week ago, Tyrus in the Indy gave us ‘Difficult time to get sexy’]

25 Bouncers raining down around hapless team, vicious deliveries (4,4)
HATE MAIL
HAIL [bouncers raining down] round an anagram [hapless] of TEAM, to give a neat cricketing surface

26 A howler banking gold in large amounts (6)
GALORE
GALE [a howler] round OR [gold]

27 She grooms partners for the Western Isles (8)
HEBRIDES
One of Paul’s ‘analogous’ clues: HE BRIDES could be partners for SHE GROOMS – I’ve seen several clues [the first was Paul’s, I’m sure] exploiting this felicitous charade but it’s always good for a smile, especially if you haven’t come across it before

Down

1 Kids suggested an old retainer for information (6,4)
FLOPPY DISK
A reverse anagram [floppy] of KIDS

2 Something to hide under after final bombs can be blown up (10)
INFLATABLE
Anagram [bombs] of FINAL + TABLE [something to hide under]

3 Direct to a specific location (5)
POINT
Double definition

4 Penned by a pen, some big shot penning end of nice old song (2,4,4,2)
AS TIME GOES BY
Anagram [shot] of SOME BIG in A STY [a pen] round [penning] [nic]E: nice penning – sorry, punning 😉

6 Finished with directors having made a splash? (9)
OVERBOARD
OVER [finished] + BOARD [directors]

7 Tip into newspaper, kippers (4)
PERK
Hidden in newspaPER Kippers

8 River Clyde’s first business leader (4)
EXEC
EXE [river] + C[lyde]

11 Agile unruly gathering against consuming a meat product (5,7)
LIVER SAUSAGE
Anagram [unruly] of AGILE round [gathering] VERSUS [against] round [consuming] A

13,10 Collaborative duo‘s stuff about art, bleeding ridiculous! (7,3,6)
GILBERT AND GEORGE
GORGE [stuff] round an anagram [ridiculous] of ART BLEEDING – another great surface!

14 Farm store left ’em upset in the city (10)
METROPOLIS
Reversal [upset] of SILO [farm store] + PORT [left] + EM

16 A country once in open revolt, initially in Anatolia (4,5)
ASIA MINOR
A SIAM [a country once] + IN + first letters [initially] of Open Revolt

21 Female monarch unqualified (5)
SHEER
SHE [female] + ER [monarch]

22 Second name for male (4)
STAG
S [second] + TAG [name]

23 Take in dessert (4)
FOOL
Double definition

41 comments on “Guardian 26,481 / Paul”

  2. Thanks to Paul, and to Eileen for the blog.

    15a caused me a few moments’ hesitation because it all seemed back to front to start with – as you say, we normally see the abbreviated form. Until I read your blog, I was about to challenge the ‘HE’ in 27a because I wondered where the ‘S’ of ‘she’ had gone (I’d split ‘she’ away from ‘grooms partners’).

    Fun but too quickly solved.

  3. Thanks to Paul and Eileen

    Lots of fun but I needed help in parsing 15a 14d and 16d .Also I had never heard of Gilbert and George but the cluing was clear.

    Is it my imagination or was Paul on his best behaviour today?

  4. Thanks, Eileen.

    Perhaps the neurones aren’t all firing properly today (I did attempt the puzzle earlier in the day than usual!), but I found this a lot trickier than most recent Paul puzzles. There is a sprinkling of straightforward clues, but I found it difficult to see ‘the join’ in many of the others. And most of the double defs I put in with a lot of trepidation until the crossers confirmed the answers. LOI was POINT.

    I didn’t help myself by overcomplicating things in places: for instance, I was convinced that ‘initially in Anatolia’ had to be -IA at the end of 16d – a plausible ending for the name of ‘a country’. Heigh-ho.

    As a sucker for reverse clues, I particularly liked 1d.

  5. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

    an enjoyable crossword.

    Got into trouble with 11d as “liver” was obvious from the crossers, took live as a synonym for agile and spent some time trying to fit sausage into the remainder of the clue.

    Can I also say that the main property of a Moebius Strip is that is has only one side. There are lots of other endless bands.

  6. Thanks Paul for an enjoyable puzzle and to Eileen for a nicely delivered blog.

    I think we’ve done the use of ‘on’ in across clues before. I prefer the way that Paul has used it here.

    I liked the pin in GRENADINE, the kids (although I’m so used to seeing disc for computers that I had to check that FLOPPY DISK could be spelled that way,) PHANTOM LIMB, ASIA MINOR and a few others.

  7. Thanks Eileen. Got Gilbert but had to look up George. Didn’t help myself by thinking the second word in 12a was ‘club’ for a good while. Last to parse was DIANA, and clarity brought joy. Otherwise straightforward, and very nice, Paul.

  8. Robi @6

    DISK (the standard US spelling) is customary for the magnetic storage device (see ‘Spelling of disc’).

    Similarly the spelling for a set of computer instructions is ‘program’ even in British English, where the spelling for other applications is ‘programme’.

    MOBIUS raises another spelling point: the word should be MÖBIUS, of course, and the German convention is to spell this out as MOEBIUS in a font that doesn’t have the umlaut diacritic. German Scrabble sets have separate Ä, Ö and Ü tiles, but the umlauted vowels are generally written as a digraph in German crosswords. French Scrabble and crosswords, on the other hand, ignore diacritics.

  9. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    I enjoyed this but needed help with some of the parsing. Well done Eileen.

    I liked GRENADINE with its grenade pin, the fabric is often used for ties, so yet another pin comes to mind.
    Other favourites were DEBAR, HATE MAIL, HEBRIDES, FLOPPY DISC and METROPOLIS.

  10. No problems. Good to see that where liberties are taken, say at 1 down, this is telegraphed. The HE-BRIDES and SHE-GROOMS joke was funny, and easy via the definition anyway.

    A very good Guardian puzzle.

  11. I always enjoy a Paul puzzle, so I was quite pleased as I printed this off.

    I had to guess at ‘Gilbert and George’, but they vaguely rang a bell.

    My biggest problem was putting in an enumeration of 5,5 for 2- don’t know how I managed to do that, but I nearly gave up. Eventually realizing my mistake, I filled in the obvious answers.

    It was only half an hour after finishing that I realized how ‘she grooms/He brides’ works. Another great Paul clue!

  12. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    Enjoyed this very much and was very pleased to finish. It’s the imaginatively sideways definitions that make Paul stand apart. That and his other usual trademarks…

    And a thumbs up from hedgehoggy! The lad done good!

  14. Yes, all very enjoyable as always from Paul. Last in was EXEC – spent far too long trying to parse EDEN before that. Ticked a few – COUPLE, OFF-PISTE, THORNY and FLOPPY DISK to name a few.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

  15. one minor typo in 11 – a is not part of the definition (just to show that I’m reading the blog properly for once)

  16. Metropolis took me ages to parse as I fixated on L for left… Big “D’oh!” moment when I finally started over.

    I agree, a very nice puzzle!

  17. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. You explained several where I had the answer but not the parsing.

    I initially went for FLOPPY DISC as an old container then finally spotted the reverse anagram so it had to be DISK.

    I loved HE BRIDES when I finally spotted how it works. 🙂

  18. Took me a while to get started on this but once I got started-COUPLE-the rest went in quite easily. LOI was EXEC. I agree this is a good puzzle which I enjoyed a lot. I’ve seen HE BRIDES before but I can’t remember where.
    Thanks Paul.

  21. Found this one of the harder recent Pauls, possibly because of the Rufusian clues Eileen refers to and my subsequent blank spots. Never mind, HEBRIDES, MOBIUS STRIP and especially ASIA MINOR made it all worthwhile.

  22. Hi all! Enjoyed this – LOI was THORNY & we laughed!! Please excuse my duffbag-ness: we got FLOPPY DISK, but I still don’t really know why…obvs get that DISK is an anagram of ‘kids’ & we solved it from the def, but – & pls forgive me: we’ve only been doing this seriously for about 18mths, so still learning – what does ‘reverse anagram’ mean in that context, & where is the indicator for floppy (unless it is suggestion)?!? Again, apols if I’m being really thick – but I take the view if I don’t ask, then I’ll never learn…!!!

  23. LilSho @22 – the reverse means that the anagram indicator (“floppy”) appears in the answer not the clue. Paul does this quite frequently.

  24. Thanks all
    The anagram indicator is ‘ floppy’. There are a vast number of acceptable synonyms for ‘ rearranged’!

  25. Thank goodness for gadgets, never heard of Gilbert and George, but then they’ve never done anything useful have they? Whereas Duddington and Bray did serious and hard manual labour, which was useful, throughout their lives and yet were world famaous in their day! But most of you won’t have heard of these world beaters. Once again, one man’s general knowledge is another’s yawning chasm and vica versa.

    If you need to look up Duddington and Bray, you probably have nothing useful to add.

  27. Hi beery hiker @19 and 20

    Thanks for the research – I usually enjoy a trawl through the 15² archives but I had to go out quite early this morning and I know how diverting archive-trawling can get!

    I’m glad to see that I was right in my guess that it was in a Paul puzzle I’d seen it first. Interesting to see that the blogger, rightback, over five years ago [!] was saying, ‘ I’ve seen this a few times before but it always amuses me.’ – more or less what I said this morning. This, of course, was well before we started giving clues in the blog. I’ve found it in the Guardian archive: ‘Lewis one of these hermaphroditic unionists?’ 😉 Nice to see that it’s a new one for some.

    [Logodaedalus, unlike Paul and Crucible [who very cleverly worked the joke into his diarists’ theme] doesn’t exploit the charade.]

    Hi LilSho @22

    I don’t remember seeing your name before, so welcome, if it’s your first comment – and apologies if it isn’t!

    I hope the reverse anagram is clearer now, thanks to bh – as he says, Paul quite often uses them but, there again, he’s not the only one. Some people really don’t like them. [I do.]

  31. Thank you so much everyone! That does make sense now, and I do remember a few other Paul clues like that, now I think about it… Have posted only a couple of times Eileen, but come every day to check my answers – esp when I can’t parse things!! I’ve learned so much from you all, so thank you – for your ‘remote’ teaching, and for opening my brain to this wonderful hobby ????

  34. A bit of a struggle for me but got there in the end. Particularly enjoyed GRENADINE, OFF-PISTE, HEBRIDES and THORNY. Many thanks to Paul and Eileen.

  35. Personally I thought point was pure Rufus, are clues like this easy or a complete bugger to get when you’re looking for more in depth word play. There are times when I look forward to nimrod/Enigmatist as he won’t do the easy clues that you only expect in the sun ????
    Thanks to the lovely Eileen and Paul – quite enjoyed that.

  36. Dear flashling @35

    Are your ???? the same as LilSho’s @31?

    Hi beery hiker, yet again, if you’re still there, this time @14. [As I said, I’ve been out all day, so am still catching up on the minutiae of comments.]

    8dn was my last in: I spent moments in the beautiful Eden Valley, route of the amazing Settle-Carlisle line, pondering leader Sir Anthony, but knowing really that Clyde and business had no place. ðŸ™

  37. Strange things these crosswords. Although Eileen and quite a few others appeared to find this easy I, like a few others, found this harder than usual for a mid-week Paul. However, having read the posts, I appear to be in good company 😉

    An enjoyable solve all the same. I particularly liked the implied comment on Gilbert and George. The fact that these two cretins appear to earn a living fills me with doubts about the future survival of the human race. ( I always like to maintain a level of equanimity 🙂 )

    Thanks to Eileen and Paul

  38. Hi BNTO @37

    “Although Eileen and quite a few others appeared to find this easy”

    I don’t think I actually said – or intended to imply – that, if you reread my preamble. For me, it was a satisfying mixture of gentle write-ins, together with some rather crisper wordplays and parsing challenges, combining to make an ideal mid-week puzzle.

  39. I rather think, and sincerely hope, that Paul’s clue (free of his own opinion, at least in SI terms) for G&G is ironic, being a parody of reactions by the uninitiated or benighted to the often superbly shocking and revelatory works of a great and lasting duet. ‘These two cretins’ (from equanimous BNTO) I also take as ironic.

    Like a fool.

  40. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    I was in the ‘harder than usual’ camp too – especially with some of the complex parsing of a few of the down clues.

    Finished with GILBERT AND GEORGE (whom I had not heard of) and DEBAR (which took way longer than it should have to see honey = DEAR!)

    Thought that ASIA MINOR was excellent after unravelling it.

    I especially like the wide range of subject matter that he puts into the grid. The surfaces of a number of them were excellent – 15a, 17a, 25a, 13d-10a and 16d.

    Paul does tend to have a lot of double definition clues – they usually have more substance to them than they did in this. Still a very enjoyable solve!

  41. A blog and 40 comments without a single negative remark about any of the clues! I will not therefore mention the petty and pedantic issue that (per 25a) bouncers do not rain down – they arrive on the rise.

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