The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/30060.
It’s deja vu all over again. No, I have not quite reaced the stage of forgetting that I blogged yesterday’s Guardian, but scchua needed a substitute, and as no-one else leapt in, you are stuck with me again. This one was distinctly easier than the Paul, but it did have traces of Anto’s quirks, or thinking outside the box to put it more positively. These were more prominent in his earlier offerings, and seem to have been toned down more recently.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BLOATED |
Shifting a lot into base that’s feeling full (7)
|
| An envelope (‘into’) of LOAT, an anagram (‘shifting’) of ‘a lot’ in BED (‘base’). | ||
| 5 | TEARS UP |
Causes damage to and gets emotional (5,2)
|
| Double definition, with different pronunciations of TEARS. | ||
| 9 | CHASM |
Partially staunch a smoking fissure (5)
|
| A hidden answer (‘partially’) in ‘staunCH A SMoking’. | ||
| 10 | BARRICADE |
Block local commercial involvement in staple food (9)
|
| A charade of BAR (‘local’, drinking establishment) plus RICADE, an envelope (‘involvement in’) of AD (‘commercial’) in RICE (‘staple food’). | ||
| 11 | UNINSPIRED |
Like church’s addition to wedding without ring? It’s so dull (10)
|
| A charade of UNI[o]N (‘wedding’) minus the O (‘without ring’) plus SPIRED (‘like church’; the church that I attend has a tower, not a spire). | ||
| 12 | ERE |
Atmosphere that’s spoken of before in poetry (3)
|
| Sounds like (‘that’s spoken of’) AIR (‘atmosphere’). | ||
| 14 | GRAPHOLOGIST |
You must write to get her to analyse you (12)
|
| Cryptic definition. | ||
| 18 | ONE FOUR SEVEN |
Maximum break adds up to 12 (3,4,5)
|
| 1 + 4 + 7 = 12 (‘adds up to 12’); one hundred and forty-seven, 147, is the maximum break in snooker (unless the player has been awarded a free ball as a result of a foul, when the break could reach 155). | ||
| 21 | GUT |
Wind has no singular source from which it comes (3)
|
| i find it hard to pin down the wording of this clue, although (I think) I understand its components: the ‘wind’ is the gut, the area of skin over the stomach – the solar plexus if a boxer manages to land a punch; and wind as flatulence comes from the guts. | ||
| 22 | DOUBLE DATE |
Repeat take out – it needs to feed two couples (6,4)
|
| A charade of DOUBLE (‘repeat’) plus DATE (‘take out’); any relevance of ‘it needs to feed’ is just tangential. | ||
| 25 | AMERICANO |
On camera, I spilt coffee (9)
|
| An anagram (‘spilt’) of ‘on camera I’. An Americano is a coffee made with an espresso roast, but with boiling water poured over the grounds, rather than using an espresso machine. | ||
| 26 | RANCH |
Farm starts to rear another new cattle herd (5)
|
| First letters (‘starts’) of ‘Rear Another New Cattle Herd’. | ||
| 27 | TOP HOLE |
Spot on jumper? That’s just great (3,4)
|
| A charade of TOP (‘jumper’) plus HOLE (‘spot’ – perhaps in the sense of a “drinking hole”). | ||
| 28 | FASTEST |
Most secure force when cold war sides abandoned leaders (7)
|
| A charade of F (‘force’) plus [e]AST plus [w]EST (‘cold war sides’) minus their first letters (‘abandoned leaders’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BUCK UP |
Become encouraged as dollar gaining value (4,2)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 2 | ON A BIT |
Performing one piece that’s old? (2,1,3)
|
| A charade of ON (‘performing’) plus A (‘one’) plus BIT (‘piece’). This needs a context: “getting on a bit’ / “getting old’. | ||
| 3 | TIME’S ARROW |
A worm tries wriggling but it always goes forward (5,5)
|
| An anagram (‘wriggling’) of ‘a worm tries’. | ||
| 4 | DUBAI |
Name top class capital (5)
|
| A charade of DUB (‘name’) plus AI (A1, ‘top class’). Dubai is the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, one of the seven Emitates of the United Arab Emirates; the capital of the UAE is Abu Dhabi, although Dubai is its largest city. | ||
| 5 | THREESOME |
See mother cavorting in erotic adventure (9)
|
| An anagram (‘cavorting’) of ‘see mother’. | ||
| 6 | AKIN |
Like coming around without clothing (4)
|
| A subtraction: [w]AKIN[g] (‘coming around’) minus its outer letters (‘without clothing’). | ||
| 7 | SNAKE OIL |
Dodgy treatment leads to almost bare ground outside (5,3)
|
| An envelope (‘outside’) of NAKE[d] (‘bare’) minus its last letter (‘almost’) in SOIL (‘ground’). | ||
| 8 | PRESENTS |
Bushes, for example, I’d left as gifts (8)
|
| A subtraction: PRES[id]ENTS (‘Bushes, for example’ – George H W and George W) minus ID (‘I’d left’). | ||
| 13 | LOVE HEARTS |
Fancy suit will send sweet messages of endearment (4,6)
|
| A charade of LOVE (‘fancy’) plus HEARTS (‘suit’). Love hearts are confectionary inscribed with love messages. | ||
| 15 | PERFORATE |
Bore winding up for repeat (9)
|
| An anagram (‘winding up’) of ‘for repeat’. | ||
| 16 | POIGNANT |
Moving location where gunman occasionally hides (8)
|
| An envelope (‘where … hides’) of GNA (‘GuNmAn occasionally’) in POINT (‘location’). | ||
| 17 | SETTLE UP |
Pay to have seat lifted (6,2)
|
| A charade of SETTLE (‘seat’) plus UP (‘lifted’). | ||
| 19 | SARNIE |
Snack, core part of unsafe carnal diet (6)
|
| A sandwich; ‘core parts’ of ‘unSAfe caRNal dIEt’ | ||
| 20 | RED HOT |
Extremely rare dish, opulent and very popular (3,3)
|
| Outer letters (‘extremely’) of ‘RarE DisH OpulenT‘. | ||
| 23 | BE OFF |
Live abroad? Get lost (2,3)
|
| A charade of BE (‘live’) plus OFF (‘abroad’). | ||
| 24 | LIFO |
Initially it’s used to determine the order of firing (4)
|
| An initialism of “Last In First Out”. |
21a Gust less s. Thanks Peter and Anto.
My picks: BARRICADE, UNINSPIRED, GRAPHOLOGIST, GUT,
FASTEST, AKIN and POIGNANT.
Thanks Anto and PeterO.
24 down is a bit iffy. It could just as easily be FILO, FIFO or LILO. Not sure even context saves 2 down. While getting on a bit means old, on a bit by itself doesn’t.
Other than those two, a pleasant solve.
Desmodeus@3 – agreed. I guess LIFO is more like “order of firing” than the others, but an obscure “word” with only a CD? Meh. And agree re: 2d.
That said, fun puzzle with a lot of nice clues and only the one or two quibbles.
In 27, I took SPOT = HOLE = a bit of trouble.
Thanks Anto and PeterO (especially stepping in to do double duty!)
Agree with Jeffrey T #1 re Gust minus s in 1ac
27ac ‘hole’ = ‘spot’ in the sense of being in trouble?
Juan Dango #5 must have pressed send just before me!
Had to drag LIFO and TOP-HOLE from somewhere in my memory. As already said alternate answers are just as acceptable but thought LIFO is the most commonly used in that context and was luckily what I opted for. Otherwise not too much trouble with this one.
Liked PRESENTS and LOVE HEARTS
Thanks PeterO and Anto
FIFO is – stupidly perhaps – a firing strategy; a companies longest employed staff will often be the best remunerated . You lose all the knowledge base and experience (and tend to go bust) but it’s far from unknown (especially if asset stripping)
Lifo and On a bit were pretty bad clues. I still enjoyed crossword but I think a clear and unsettleable ambiguity is a cardinal sin
I didn’t enjoy this, it reminded me of Anto’s early efforts.
Without crossers, how are you supposed to know which of AIR/ERE is the required answer?
Hmm don’t like DUBAI as a capital, who can name the capitals of all seven emirates?! The wordplay was easy but that’s more than likely a genuine oversight I feel.
Thanks Anto and PeterO
I agree that this reminded me of why I so disliked Anto’s early efforts. A DNF, in fact – I’ve never heard of LIFO, and it could have been anything.
I wrote in AIR instead of ERE until it blocked the NE.
“needs to feed” makes no sense in 22a. I agree that ON A BIT also makes no sense by itself.
Favourite GRAPHOLOGIST.
Heracles @12
DUBAI is well known to those of us who follow golf.
DUBAI is very well known (probably better known than Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE), but it is slightly a stretch to describe it as a ‘capital’. It is a bit like calling Atlanta a capital, because it is the capital of the state of Georgia. I too suspect it was a mistake that inadvertently was technically correct.
I found this fairly easy but had a couple of issues. I wrote in FIFO straight away but I suppose LIFO is more likely. Also wrote AIR instead of ERE which slowed me up.
Did not parse BARRICADE trying to make arcade work, nor GUT but both obvious.
Ta Anto and PeterO
I’ve always enjoyed Anto’s quirkiness but LIFO just ruined what was a decent puzzle. I did like UNINSPIRED, GRAPHOLOGIST and FASTEST.
Ta Anto & PeterO.
Lots to like but unfortunately for me, lots to dislike too. As others have said this reminded me of Anto’s early offerings.
I echo the reservations already stated above, and add that 19d should read ‘core parts’, not ‘core part’.
Had no idea of 24d. I’m familiar with FIFO and LIFO from computing (applied respectively to queues and stacks), but didn’t know they were used elsewhere.
Tough puzzle. I failed to solve 24d – never saw this word LIFO before and still did not really understand this clue – thanks Matthew Newell@9 for explaining it (sort of).
3d I wonder what a TIME’S ARROW is….
I couldn’t parse 28ac, 6d, 7d, 20d.
New for me: 147 = maximum break in snooker (for 18ac) – thanks, google for this trivia!
Like some others, I also first wrote in AIR not ERE.
[TIME’S ARROW reminded me of this, first seen on the wall of the loo in the Genetics Department in Cambridge:
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.]
I liked this but struggled with LIFO. My fave was probably 8d for the Bushes misdirection.
People in Dubai don’t like THE FLINTSTONES. But people in Abu Dhabi do.
TIME’S ARROW (Wiki)
The arrow of time, also called time’s arrow, is the concept positing the “one-way direction” or “asymmetry” of time.
I think an Americano is an espresso (single or double shot) with added hot water (to water down the intensity of the espresso). Pouring boiling water over espresso grounds produces a different style of coffee drink: a “brewed” coffee as from a cafetiere or filter.
TIME’S ARROW was also a great Martin Amis novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
I thought much the same as poc @18 about LIFO. Referring to a stack in the computer science sense would have been clearer. Most who have commented have said they’ve never heard of it in the sense of a firing strategy, but would a computer stack have been considered less obscure?
A DNF here both because of LIFO and DOUBLE DATE. I didn’t fight to the last breath over this one as I thought the clueing would be a bit off. And it was. ‘needs to feed’ as just padding for the surface? And ‘taking someone out’ is not the same as ‘dating’. Dating is a mutual thing but you could take your grandchild out to the circus or whatever. Anyway it’s just ANTO. Liked AKIN and UNINSPIRED.
Thanks for the blog , buen dia a todas mis amigos . The good outweighed the problems , could have done with a bit of editing . PRESENTS and POIGNANT very neat .
TIME’S ARROW , don’t tell the tachyons .
I had FIFO, I think in retrospect LIFO is a better answer.
We put in Double Fare for 22ac which fits the feed part, and could be used on the bus for two
Agree with Jeffery@1 about GUT. That’s how I parsed it, as Gust with “no Singular source” (S being the source – or first letter – of “singular”).
27ac TOP HOLE is a phrase I’ve never heard before, but I parsed the wordplay as the “top hole” of a jumper being the bit you stick your head through – so naturally at the top of a jumper as you wear it.
Thanks to Anto and PeterO
Agree with the grumbles above, although out of the various possible acronyms, LIFO is certainly the most common one used for “order of firing”, in my experience. It felt rather a lazy crossword compilation to me – several inaccuracies (ON A BIT, TOP HOLE, etc), and elsewhere too many very easy write-in clues.
Baffled at all the nitpicking. Grumpy after the football?
I had SNAKE PIT, thinking of a spit of land. SNAKE OIL is obviously the correct answer but I’d sort of lost motivation after being frustrated by LIFO/FILO/LILO or whatever it was. I remember Doc getting into a tangle over LIFO (or one of those) in the Spectator a while ago – perhaps it’s a cursed word for crosswords.
GUT, FASTEST and AKIN were probably the best ones.
Amusing enough to start with, but the last few in were a bit of a grind. Agreed over FILO / LIFO / FIFO etc.: even once you’ve got the idea (which took me ages, this one being my next-to-last in), it’s still entirely unspecific about which variant is “correct” ; any of several could be. POIGNANT was LOI: a neat clue as the alternate letters to be used aren’t the immediately obvious ones (to me, anyway).
LOVE HEARTS: I remember them from primary school years. “Oh You Kid” and other such messages, more than a bit baffling to a 7-year-old.
Thanks Anto and PeterO.
(I am still struggling with yesterday’s Paul but have not yet given up. )
[I wonder if, with “order of firing” in 24, the setter is referring to bullets loaded into a firearm’s magazine. I’m no expert but I believe this would almost invariably be Last In First Out. Thanks AlanC@24 for reminding me of Amis’s book, whose central conceit, a la Roz’s tachyons, refutes the premise of the clue.]
I think the parsing of 21 is just GUST (wind) without singular source (S) = GUT
Defeated by AKIN, SNAKE OIL and LIFO (what?!). Apart from those three immovable objects this felt fairly straightforward…
LIFO used to be very common when redundacies occured , anyone who has had any connection to unions will know the term and the clue is a clear description .
A little rough in places and took a while to get my LOI 7D Snake Oil. Agree with Roz@38 re LIFO, as I have dealt with unions in my past.
I made rather heavy weather of this. I always find dds and cds difficult to tie down. I liked the UNINSPIRED church, 147 adding up to 12, the SNAKE OIL leading to bare ground outside, the POIGNANT gunman, and the extremely rare RED HOT dish. Of course, the FIFO/LIFO conundrum could have been avoided by using lido.
Thanks Anto and PeterO.
Thanks Anto for the usual fun. Most of this was smooth sailing but I missed ON A BIT, the nhoTOP HOLE, and LIFO. Favourites included AMERICANO, RANCH, THREESOME, PRESENTS, POIGNANT, and RED HOT. Thanks PeterO for the blog.
I have no objections to LIFO: although there are many strategies for firing, in my mind the most traditional is LIFO. It’s very much the case in union shops, where seniority trumps everything else. It is also used in situations where “low skill” workers are being trimmed from the workforce.
I agree with the quibbles about ON A BIT. But otherwise this was a lot of fun and I always admire Anto’s surfaces.
Time’s arrow refers also to Boltzman’s link between the flow of time and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The disorder of the universe (entropy) always increases with time.
Thanks both
I share the lack of enthusiasm for ON A BIT and LIFO (I’ve encountered the latter – indeed, one of my redundancies was due to it – but have never heard it said aloud as a 4 letter acronym. Liffo? Or is the i long, to rhyme with Lido?)
However, other clues were pleasing, my favourites being PRESENTS, POIGNANT, SETTLE UP, BLOATED and GUT – which I parsed in the same way as Jeffrey T @1. The last two were amongst my earliest solved, along with SARNIE and AMERICANO – so I spent a while wondering if there was a digestion-theme…
Thanks Anto and PeterO
(PS Hershel @32: not everyone on this site supports England. Some of us are still blubbing into our bières at France being booted out. And on the Quatorze, too, of all days.)
Always late to this! Thanks P and A.
A little shocked in 25A at the anathema of pouring boiling water on to coffee grounds – I reckon this is why the French make better coffee than tea (very hot water) and the British better tea than coffee (boiling water).
I am just glad that football fans will get their just deserts on Sunday . I read in the paper that the half-time show is being “curated” by the chief bed-wetter himself .
[Don’t worry, Ralph #45. Our blogger is mistaken. An Americano is generally made by topping up an espresso or two with very hot water (90 degrees or so at most).
If you don’t want to be horrified, don’t Google ‘Cowboy Coffee’]
Thanks for the blog, which explained PERFORATE to me – I’d completely failed to spot the anagram, so I must tip my hat to Anto for the misdirection.
Also for explaining LIFO – I’ve encountered the principle ‘last in, first out’, but never the acronym.
In 11a, I think the clue for SPIRED is ‘Like church’s addition’, rather than ‘Like church’, so it’s not suggesting a spire is as essential to a church as @PeterO thinks.
And in 22a, the relevance of ‘it needs to feed’ could be in relation to date as a fruit, although I’m not 100% clear about the parsing of that clue.
When it comes to redundancy in a business, the rule is generally Last In First Out, so I don’t understand the confusion this generated.
Ref GUT, ‘Singular’ can be abbreviated to S. It’s in Chambers and Collins. The definition for GUT that Anto has given us is ‘Source from which it comes’. The wordplay, as Jeffrey @1 indicated, is ‘Wind has no singular’ = GU(s)T has no S. I don’t believe ‘singular source’, as wordplay, comes into it at all.
Fault not yet mentioned – for 8d PRESENTS, the two referenced presidents would be Bushs and not Bushes.
Again – and I can’t stress this enough – I do so abhor Monday and Tuesday crosswords set at the level of Friday or Prize.
You know this, because I often complain about it – and whilst I do for good reason, I don’t want to just come on here to browbeat people who essentially are trying to entertain us.
Though sometimes they can be a 5 letter plural of a Danish king with the second and third letters rearranged 😂
All that being said, I can’t see the problems here.
Mostly good clues that I could parse in the end – albeit taking a while to fill in without help (and yes, sometimes I need help because Mondays and Tuesdays are not the days for going full on, despite what the editor may think!)
TOP HOLE, is a phrase I’ve never heard before, but I don’t see any inaccuracies with the wordplay (see my comment above), and I got it by the wordplay (then looking up the phrase to see if I was right).
And despite me not knowing the phrase and getting a bit frustrated because of it, probably my favourite clue.
It’s a Thursday, let the compiler fly a bit, I say.
By Thursday it’s near end of the week, I’m feeling good about the coming weekend with one day to go, so I can afford to spend a bit on a crossword.
There was nothing I found contentious about this one.
As for some of the puzzles that preceded it this week – oh, boy!
Someone should explain to the editor how the days of the week work for everyone with an actual job 🤦♂️😂
At worst, I’d say this was a Wednesday puzzle rather than a Thursday puzzle for those above my grade of solving, which I understand is a fine rope to walk for both the compilers and the editor.
But there is a difference between doing manual jobs all day and getting to be on a computer during your lunch break.
I can imagine Bertie Wooster saying TOP HOLE, but not many people since.
This one had a rather larger number of British turns of phrase than usual, and since it’s also Anto being Anto, it was harder for me than the usual Anto. TOP HOLE is a set phrase for you lot? Really?
I’ve certainly heard of LIFO, but it didn’t spring to mind, since the wordplay in the clue was kind of nonexistent. So I revealed that one too. Also, at least over here, we make a careful distinction between layoffs (job ending because the employer makes financial or structural changes) and firings (job ending because employee does something wrong or just plain sucks), so it might not have come to mind anyway.
I also agree that the ERE/AIR clue committed the foul of putting the homophone indicator in the middle.
Same result as yesterday — two short (27a TOP HOLE, 24d LIFO, two nho’s). I enjoyed it nonetheless — maybe the best Anto puzzle I’ve seen. Not difficult, many good surfaces
I liked the set of anagrams and their corresponding surfaces: 25a AMERICANO, 3d TIME’S ARROW, 5d THREESOME, 15d PERFORATE. Other favourites 11a UNINSPIRED (“Like church” = SPIRED), 1d BUCK UP (good DD and surface), 2d ON A BIT (surface), 8d PRESENTS (misdirecting surface), and others
Apologies, no time to read the comments. Maybe more later…
Thanks Anto for a fine puzzle, and PeterO for the double duty!
I wonderered if Double Date got parsed as Doubled (repeat) and Ate (take out it needs to feed)
I know this isn’t quite there but otherwise it felt like a lot of the clue was superfluous
Further to me@55, I see many others shared my two nho’s. Surprised to see criticism of 2d, one of my favourites. As noted in the blog, “old” and ON A BIT are certainly equivalent. Is the criticism that the phrase shouldn’t appear on the grid by itself, without GETTING?
Interesting attempt Charlotte@56, but I don’t think it quite works. “DOUBLED” (past) = “repeat” (present)? And “take out it needs to feed” doesn’t make sense
“ere” = “air”? I never get these southern homophones until it dawns on me that you need a particular regional accent for it to work.
Mog @57 yes I thought it wasn’t quite right but it didn’t quite seem to need all of the words in the clue for the answer.
One more thought on LIFO: among software developers, the term is also used to describe a “stack” – a way of buffering work to be done in which things go on top of the stack, things come off the top of the stack, hence last in (on), first out (or off), and this is pronounced lie-fo rather than spelled out (as is the wont for software developers). This contrasts with a “pipe” which is FIFO (as in fee-fi-fo-fum) where newest items go in one end, oldest items come off the other end so items are processed in the order they arrived.
This leads to all kind of programmer humour such as “FINO” for a bureaucratic or support process that appears to function as a black hole: first in, never out.
All of this to say… while familiarity with FIFO in the hiring and firing context is clearly mixed, those of us with a software background would be more familiar with the term.
Enjoyed this far more than yesterday’s Paul. 147 perhaps my favourite. Thanks to Anto, and PeterO.