Guardian 26,499 by Paul

58 comments on “Guardian 26,499 by Paul”

1. I thought “dish” for 9a.

   But 6d??

2. 9a DI(sh), I reckon

3. Sorry…

   Thanks Paul and flashing.

   ps I’m rubbish at themes but boloney not baloney drew my attention to lots of “O”s.

4. Almost finished this on the way into work but had to cheat a bit using Check to get my last in GENOME. That doesn’t mean that it was especially easy, just that having caught an early bus to avoid roadworks I had longer than usual to wait at the station armed with the paper. Liked MOOBS, PORN, GANGSTA and BEARNAISE so there was plenty of entertainment. The BOLONEY spelling was new to me too.

   Thanks to Paul and flashling.

5. 6d is a hidden answer & lit. (“less than” is the indicator). Nicely done. Three very short & lits. In the puzzle (23 and 24d too, as blogged).

6. … and Knuckle dragger meant nothing to me either – Paul is always a good source of modern slang – I like the expression but if it derives from gorillas, chimps are a stretch!

7. Thanks, flashling.

   I thought MOOBS an excellent clue: brief, UNFORTUNATE an anagram indicator, BOSOM a definition as well as both words together forming an &lit, BOOBS the obvious misdirection.

8. Thanks Paul and flashling
   A mixed bag, with the bottom half decidedly easier than the top, I thought. I tried BALONEY first – ALONE in BY, but couldn’t explain the BY, so found the alternative spelling (which actually is “more correct”, as it is a corruption of Bologna sausage).
   I couldn’t parse BEARNAISE, but I’m familiar with the sauce, so it went in.
   Didn’t we have SKI PANTS a few days ago? I thought that the editor tries to avoid this.
   I parsed GENOME as you did, flashling, but thought the clue unnecessarily wordy.
   IGLOO was by far my favourite, though MOOBS was good too.

9. I saw an alternative parsing (probably wrong) for 17, which I read as MALL or C(&)A, either of which could be described as a retail giant. As for 6d, which at first seemed too obvious to ink in, in the end I decided it was quite clever — an almost &lit with the “less than” indicating that you had to drop some of the letters.

10. Thanks, flashling.

    Like muffin, I thought this a bit of a mixed bag. I smiled at the trademark 10ac and the thought of Paris without his jumper, but I agree with flashling’s reaction to CROSSWORDS – and IGLOO seemed more than a bit famiiar, too.

    And – 25 ac! ‘Venetian traveller [5,4] – Erm…

    [I did initially cringe at ‘*less* than ten’ – and then realised that I could say, ‘I finished this crossword in less than ten minutes’ – grammatically, that is. 😉 ]

    Thanks, Paul.

11. I misremembered. SKI PANTS was in a different crossword. I won’t say which, as it is still live.

12. Thanks flashling. Entertaining as usual. Paul played with MALL-ORCA some time ago ( no 25,369). I rather wish I hadn’t checked MOOBS afterwards on Google.

13. Thanks flashling and Paul, especially for 23d. Hehe.

    I’d put BALONEY for 1a, assuming it was somehow BALY around ONE. Never seen it spelt like that but the clue is sound. Just annoying to fail a crossword on a single letter!

14. John Appleton @13, could you consider BAY, i.e. sick bay, where youth has solitary confinement?

15. Thanks, flashling.

    Paul’s puzzles rarely fail to raise a smile or two: one reason why I enjoy them.

    Some intricate charades (especially 3d) and allusive wordplay, with some pretty easy clues scattered round to assist the novice (‘Venetian traveller’, with the enumeration 5,4, is as loudly announced a definition as you’re likely to find in ex-broadsheet 11a).

    Together with ‘Aida’, ‘Norma’ is a favourite opera amongst cruciverbalists. Although the whole work is perhaps not very well known, the aria ‘Casta diva’ pops up frequently on sound tracks (where did La Fleming get that frock?).

16. Thanks Paul and flashling.

    I enjoyed the crossword, but where is the Quiz?

    New word was SIGNAGE, probably a common usage, but my English is rusty (perhaps as well as it is Paul).

    I liked DIG IN, PARA, MATCHWOOD and NANOSECOND.

17. Cookie @14: Sneaky. Stretching things a bit, but I’ll take that!

18. Thanks flashling and Paul
    A good workout. Igloo was my favourite.
    The answer to 22 was clear enough but I did not know the definition – apparently used of thick fellow humans so a bit hard on chimpanzees!
    17d’s orca is used by Tolkein to mean an ogre.

    Overall I found the bottom half easier than the top. The whole puzzle was a bit like a hard sudoku with lots of write-ins then grinding to a head-scratching halt.

19. btw is the first part of BEARNAISE pronounced “bear”? I thought it was BAY-AR.

20. The parsing of LAGOON escaped me – I got fixated on GO ON (continue), and tried to make something work with the LAG bird (which I realise now is not a duck but a goose). Thanks for setting me straight.

    I think there might be a minor error in 24d. It looks like the “of” and the “in” are the wrong way around – unless “of” can be an insertion indicator, the word play indicates ORPN. “A choice in extremes of perversion” would surely be better. Shame, because it’s a nice &lit.

21. Muffin, it is nearer to ‘bear’ in French, not sounding like mayonnaise in English.

22. Thanks, Cookie

23. 20d
    i thought shrivelled old man was O(ld) M(an), and somehow the rest pointed to GENE around it (foundation?)….so arrived at GENOME…

24. I usually enjoy a Paul, so I was surprised today by how many problems I had with this one.

    1a seemes forced; 10a many animals growl, so it’s not very clear what’s meant; 18a as blogged; 21a painfully obvious; 22a as blogged; 25a why ‘from the East’ (or the other reversal ind); 28a ‘show’ is imperative, but ‘recovery’ for a rev ind?; 1d is BO ‘a stinker’?; 4d is the B reall a ‘hat’?; 6d very nice but not really &lit because the def is changed by ‘I need’; 16d ‘comprehending’? ‘Grasping’ would be okay, but a step too far here; 17d Orca = giant? It’s a big fish for sure; 23d & 24d okay but again not really &lits.

    Having done my list, I should say that this had far more quality than… some recent ones, but it did seem to be compileritic.

25. Schroduck: it’s just ‘P or N’.

26. hedgehoggy @ 24
    Are you using “fish” metaphorically? Orcas, of course, aren’t fish; they’re mammals.

27. Muffin, it does have an accent though, béarnaise, so it is possible it is pronounced in some regions as you say it. The OCED gives the pronunciation the same as for béchamel.

28. Fayol @23, that crossed my mind, sounds more pauline…

29. I loved this, maybe because I have Paul’s sense of humor. Favorites included bearnaise, igloo, moobs. On the boloney issue: the meat is bologna, and is common as an inexpenisve food item in the US. Pronounced by lazy Americans as “baloney.” In that spelling, it has a long history here as a slang term for “rubbish,” “bull [dung] ,” etc. It crossed the Atlantic with the GIs, and was picked up by British yobs who weren’t too particular about spelling. Boloney, balonie, and everything in between are seen in British sources. Baloney remains standard, howeve unless you’re talking about actual meat.

    As for Norma, it’s pretty good. A showpiece (like all bel canto operas) for the soprano, it depends on having good casting in the title role. For that reason, it tends to go in and out of fashion with the availability of good bel canto sopranos. It was one of Maria Callas’s favorite roles; Sutherland also recorded it, I believe.

30. Fun as usual from Paul. Couldn’t get PARA or MOOBS (settled on MOONS instead, which sounded quite Pauline). I particularly liked BOLONEY, BODICE and GANGSTA. Top left corner was definitely the most tricky for me.

31. That’s an amusing spelling of ‘inexpensive’ Mr Penney. You do indeed have a ‘Pauline’ sense of humour 😀

    Re fish, yes, just playing. Torpedoes are fish too.

32. Glad to see I’m not alone in getting beaten by PARA. It’s a great clue, I never even registered “is” as a component of wordplay.

    Hoggy @ 24, I really liked 16d. Collins gives “comprehend: 2. (transitive) to comprise or embrace; include” so I think that’s as fair as can be for an inclusion indicator.

33. Hedgehoggy @31
    I’m reminded of E.L.Wisty’s question (Peter Cook)
    “Did you know that the whale is not a fish?

    It’s an insect, and it lives on bananas”

34. Thank you Paul for making me laugh out loud on a grumpy morning (23d)

    Thanks to Flashling too.

35. HH, yeah, that one is funny! I’m typing these comments on my cell phone, which makes it hard to edit. This phone has its share of annoying quirks, too: for example, about half the time I type a period or a comma followed by a space, it thinks I want to hit backspace twice. Those I usually catch and fix—but not always, as seen above: “howeve” instead of “however,”. Aaargh. Anyway, apologies.

36. Om= old man in gene

37. After yesterday’s disastrous attempt, much better today with about two thirds completed.

    Not good enough at these to be able to comment on the quality of the clues as often happens here. As a beginner I compare such debates to when my wife and I listen to music: she enjoys it by listening to the overall sound but I enjoy it by focusing on individual elements.

    Having said that however, am I right in thinking that sometimes it’s about looking at the answer and working backwards? For example I got 18a from the definition and worked out the clue by crossing out letters. Thus in 10a the growling animal becomes clear – at least in my mind…

38. Manners….forgot to thank setter and solver.

39. Pilchards @37 – “am I right in thinking that sometimes it’s about looking at the answer and working backwards?” is an interesting question, and I think if we’re being honest most of us would say yes – I think it’s about 50/50 whether the definition suggests itself first or the wordplay suggests it, but I think this ratio tends to change in harder crosswords, particularly once you start tackling the liked of Azed. But I think we all use whatever techniques work…

40. Re the dreaded list: Chambers gives “to comprise or include” as a definition of “comprehend” – so what’s wrong with that?

41. I’m a fan of Paul’s puzzles usually but I can’t say I enjoyed this one very much. I resorted to the cheat button to get PARA which annoyed me once I saw the reasoning. Perhaps I was in the wrong mood today but I found this laboured. I’m very much in the hedgehoggy camp today!

42. Neil Parker @36
    Shrivelled old man secreting foundation in exquisite set of personal make-up?
    You say “Om= old man in gene”
    I don’t think this works. Where is “gene” indicated, and what’s the exquisite doing? Also genome is the sum total of the genes, so it would be too close for a good clue.
    No, I think it’s the E in GNOME thing – not that great either!

43. Thanks all
    Last in was nanosecond.
    Favourites were 26,27 ac and 23 down (clever!).

44. I struggled with 9 ac because I was swiftly convinced it was. ??s/up.

45. Hi all! And thanks Paul & Flashling for the blog… Found this much harder than Paul normally is for us…there were a few we couldn’t parse: GENOME being the main one – we had O(ld) M(an) & GENE meaning foundation, but yours is much more sensible Flashling!!

    Pilchards @37 – I’ve asked that very question a number of times!! We often get the answer and then parse it, but we have a rule that we don’t don’t write in what we can’t figure out!!

46. It took me ages to see PARA but I got it in the end. Then to my annoyance I realised that my hastily entered “baloney” from the definition was incorrect, and it isn’t like I hadn’t see the wordplay either ………… Very dumb.

47. Well ‘gridman’ it has the ‘prehendere’ thing from old Rome, but we never use it like that. Why not say ‘grasp’? Same meaning, and it works both ways. It makes the clue better anyway.

    To me 😀

48. Should have said, ‘same DOUBLE meaning, BUT it works both ways in common parlance’.

49. There are plenty of examples where “comprehend” means “include” in a physical sense – look it up and you’ll find quite a few scholarly mathematical and geographical texts containing something like “the area comprehended by…”

    It may be rare and a bit old fashioned but the justification is there.

50. Enjoyed this a lot and finished by lunchtime. I would agree with flashling. Is porn a perversion?

51. I suppose in its correct sense, a perversion is any deviation from what’s considered normal (sexually or otherwise) – porn in that sense as a perversion would be debatable. But often we hear “perversion” used to mean almost any sexual proclivity. In that sense it might be a suitable definition, though Chambers doesn’t recognise that meaning.

52. RCw re 9a me too.

53. I think moobs is a modern day word for men who are carrying a lot of weight in the bosom area!!! Still don’t get dig in. Thanks flashing and Paul who always makes me smile.

54. Sorry should also have said moobs short for man boobs perhaps therefore the unfortunate bosom.

55. RCw and Tupu re 9a. Well that makes at least three of us.

56. Charles Tupu RCw – 9a was one I got (for once!) plate is a dish half of which gives you DI and the drink is GIN giving DIG IN – a polite instruction at dinner parties to get the guests to eat.

57. Pilchards@56
    Yes, that was the parsing I arrived at once iI’d got 3d.

58. Thanks Paul and flashling

    Another mop up puzzle – done late. At the harder end of his setting scale I found (even with the couple of gimmes), but very enjoyable.

    Another who originally wrote in BALONEY which was picked up in the final parsing run. Had an unparsed BOOBS at 23 which hindered the search for CHIMPANZEE (clever definition, once the penny dropped). An unsatisfactory SIGNALS similarly held up the getting of GENOME.

    The great thing with Paul is that you know that if it doesn’t parse properly, you’ve probably got the wrong answer – that helped with all of the above.

    PARA was one of my favourites after getting out of the mind set of making P[A]RIS work somehow.

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