Guardian 28,113 / Brummie

82 comments on “Guardian 28,113 / Brummie”

1. I found this quite difficult. I failed to solve SMEW which is a word I have not heard of – but I do know MEWS so I should have guessed SMEW.
   Other new words for me today were ESCAPEMENT, CATAMOUNT, ROCHE LIMIT.

   I could not parse 11a, or TEA in 2d.

   Thank you, Brummie and Eileen.

2. Not sure why but this fell a bit flat for me and I was glad when it was over. WATCH just seemed a bit lazy. Quite liked ISRAELI. I’m going back to bed! Thanks all

3. Thanks both. Does an APERTURE still appear on digital cameras/phones?
   I knew TEA from West Side Story, “Gee Officer Krupke”, “…My grandma pushes tea..”

4. Found parts of this a little tricky, with the NW last to crack. CATAMOUNT and ROCHE LIMIT were new to me. Only saw the theme after looking at the completed grid.

   Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

5. Tick tock. Being a ‘horolophile’ (why isn’t this a word) this was just the tick-et. Many thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

   Just one question Eileen; why is aperture thematic?

6. Shirl @ 3

   Digital SLRs use essentially the same aperture system as film cameras, but phones, tablets etc don’t.

7. Lovely puzzle: As a physicist, I should have know Roche limit, but only worked it out from the wordplay. Tea I di know, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84iizCSjYjk.

    

8. Found this tough and, frankly, rather dull. Too many weak synonyms for my taste, lazy clues like “watch” (“catch” for “nick” is pushing it and then change one letter to something, anything, else?) Why are “owners” those who “admit possession” rather than those who possess? What is a “reverse-call”? Is it a reverse charge call? “fear” = “alarm”? “temper” = “sweeten”? “evil” = “vice”, hardly… “roche limit” very poorly defined and clued for an unfamiliar term to most. “aperture” also badly defined – in cameras the physical device is a diaphragm. “escapement” is not a timing device – the pendulum sets the timing, the escapement allows the weights or spring to drive the pendulum.

   I know some will argue that I got there so the definitions can’t have been that bad, but I got there by dint of disbelieving some of the information given. Thanks Eileen for the brave effort on the blog, and Brummie for the themed puzzle. Maybe I’m in a nitpicky mood today!

9. Vague memeories of CATAMOUNT and the ROCHE LIMIT, but I didn’t know TEA was dope. There are 3 dope references to add a mini-theme (12a 2d 13d). When people solve crosswords in 2120 (if we’re still here), will they still have AL for gangster and ET for alien?

10. il principe dell’oscurità @ 4 on a timepiece with a date wheel the current date is seen through an aperture.

11. Enjoyable crossword; I watched it closely.

    I didn’t know the ROCHE LIMIT. I liked the clues for APERTURE and KASHMIRI – nice picture of the opera singer.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

12. Enjoyed this and Brummie seems to be continually improving so good for him.

    Re 12 I think it’s meant in the sense of owning an issue or owning up (owners = ‘ones who admit’ and having as in structure to add hip.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

13. me @ 12 not sure what happened at the end of the post, should have been…

    Re 12 I think it’s meant in the sense of owning an issue or owning up (owners = ‘ones who admit’) and ‘having’ as an instruction to add ‘hip’.

     

14. TheZed@8

    I’m OK with “owners” as ones who own up to something and “temper” can mean to moderate.  As the escapement enables the pendulum to control the mechanism, I think it’s fair to call it a timing device.

15. Ve hav vays of making you tock.

    I thought STOOL fitted for 28 until I sussed summat were amiss.Revised answer fitted both the crosser and the theme.

    Nice puzzle-thanks Brum and Eileen

16. Hi il principe @5 – sorry for the delay: I lost my internet connection.

    If you google ‘horolophile’ you’ll find it’s been appropriated! As for 18dn, that was a bit of a long shot: I just googled ‘aperture, clock’.

17. That’ll sweeten/temper his mood..? Hmmm. A few gimmes–preview, unconcern, secondhand–helped; in fact I thought overall a Tuesdayish Brummie lite. The puma was in there somewhere but took dredging; tea known from Kerouac (of whom I read about as much as I did Joyce); nho the satellite thingy, but gettable. My school science teacher said glass is a slow moving liquid, was he right? And waddya know, another bird, and it’s a merganser (also nho, but it turned up in a Times cw Saturday, reprinted in our broadsheet a month after its UK appearance). I do like clues like 18d, no grist, just a domain-leap. And you couldn’t get more contrast than between fruit-slathered erotica and a clock part. And the medical cast made a change from throw etc and players. So, nice puzzle Brummie and ta Eileen. PS: registered some bits, but no aha re theme.

18. TheZed @ 8 The synonyms are all run of the mill, opening of the diaphragm (which is always present) creates the aperture briefly, the Roche limit is the lowest a satellite can orbit and still exist and an escapement is designed to regulate a mechanism in set increments of time or distance; I can’t see anything wrong unless you happen to fix on a different interpretation of the clue and blame the setter when it turns out to be the wrong one.

19. Like others didn’t know CATAMOUNT and ROCHE LIMIT, but worked them out and enjoyed the puzzle, particularly NUPTIAL, MIRTH and NOTICE. Sort of missed the theme, but I wasn’t looking for one. Many thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

20. Maybe NUPTIAL could also be a theme word? In Scotland there is a tradition for the best man to give a clock to the happy couple – I’m not sure it is ever called a nuptial clock, though.

21. Thanks Brummie and Eileen, I failed to see the theme until alerted by the introductory para of the blog which is included on the ‘Guardian Category’ page – incidentally, it didn’t affect me as I’d already completed, but I know some solvers who go to that page to seek earlier blogs experience a ‘Please don’t tell me the score!’ moment in such cases.

    Perhaps the LED in GNARLED should be counted as a themer?  I still remember the excitement in junior school when the first boy in the class got an LED digital watch.

    Glad to make the acquaintance of the SMEW, got there tentatively by cycling MEWS and was delighted to find it actually existed.  Does that make it a JORUM?

22. Gut vun copmus. I think you said before you love Freo. Let me know if you’re ever passing thru..few shirazes?

23. grantinfreo @17 your school science teacher was wrong, but subject to a very common fallacy. Glasses are not a liquid as they do not flow at all but they are unlike most solids known until relatively recently as they have no long-range structure (much as liquids don’t). Certainly glass is not a crystal in the scientific sense, but “crystal” in the sense of “glassware” makes sense – “lead crystal” is not *a* crystal but you can make a glass from it, and it’s a type of glass.

    PeterM @14 from an engineering perspective my question would be “what happens to the timing of a clock without the escapement?”. I think the answer is, nothing at all, but it’ll wind down quickly.

    Robert @18 I was certainly on very different wavelengths from Brummie all through this. In my defence, I love being misled by clues, particularly ones which make me think about words the wrong way (nouns for verbs is always a neat drink). I am not a fan of clues where the synonyms are vague.  Personal taste I guess, and (as I said) maybe I am more nitpicky about the definitions than many.

24. Bodycheetah @2
    13A is for the gnarled face of someone who’s on £90,000 a week and reckoned he should have had a throw in.

25. Hi essexboy @21 – thank you for pointing that out. My sincere apologies to anyone whose solve may have been spoiled. I do reckon not to give anything away at the beginning of the preamble – but obviously today my first ‘paragraph’ was too short! I’ve inserted a longer space.

    Yes, that is what I call a JORUM [newer readers see 8ac here ] – a lovely feeling, isn’t it?

26. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.
    I enjoyed this despite going up a few dry gullies along the way. For instance, I had STAGE for 10a for a while, which seemed to me to fit the definition. But as the crossers became vexed I had to re-think and eventually saw ENACT. Similarly I had OWN (“secure”) for 19a until that didn’t work either, and once I solved the “Swinger” at 19d, I re-thought 19a and got PIN. A couple of the “unfamiliars” as others have already mentioned – ROCHE LIMIT at 3d and ESCAPEMENT at 15d – were gettable fortunately. I do relish learning new things!
    I must say that I did like that mini-marijuana theme which was a lovely misdirection at 12a (“admit having joint possession”) – that one then became my favourite.

27. Just couldn’t seem to penetrate the left hand side of today’s Brummie offering. ROCHE LIMIT being completely off my radar. A DNF therefore today

28. Ta for that TheZed, it seems that ‘thicker at the bottom’ is a not evidence for flow; that many ancient panes do not display this and, anyway, that it would take longer than the universe is old for such putative flow to be evident. Always learning, part of the fun.

29. Grant @28 I love the “thicker at the bottom” example as it is a classic very reasonable misbelief to hold. It makes so much sense until you find out some quite obscure technical details (to do with the way float glass is made). My favourite counter-example was to look at the beautiful Roman glasses in gold claws found at Taeppa’s Mound and shown in the British Museum. Much older than cathedral glass and no flow at all!

30. Thanks Brummie & Eileen!

    I initially entered GRASS for 13d and I actually think that’s a perfectly legitimate parsing (you quite often see ‘<answer> would give you Z if you change Y’), which would make that an ambiguous clue.  Doesn’t look like anyone else felt the same though and I agree GLASS is better.

    A few references to cannabis in here – which I thought might be in honour of 4/20 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)) until I checked the date and realised today was 4/21 ?

31. Generally enjoyable, though I completely missed the theme. I’ve been enjoying Brummie more lately and assumed it was because I was improving, but perhaps he is also, as Robert @12 suggests. ROCHE limit and ESCAPEMENT were new to me as they were to a few previous commenters, but fairly clued (imo). I was sufficiently close to the 1960s drug culture to hear several synonyms for marijuana, but never ran across “tea.” Thanks to Shirl @3 for reminding me of the West Side Story song, now today’s earworm. I knew the line but never realized that marijuana was the drug in question.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

32. Another DNF for me – I should have got GLASS which would have opened up that tricky NW corner( the possibility of a word beginning GN didn’t come anywhere near entering my mind for 13a), but I had got stuck on points of the compass and didn’t think of the simpler L for R change in grass; also I had forgotten that “crystal” is the watchmaker’s term for the glass covering the face. I agree with some of the comments above about vague definitions, SWEETEN being one: I was looking for synonyms for anneal. ROCHE LIMIT is another that wouldn’t come to mind (though I got as far as _O_H_  LIMIT), and I struggled with the anagram fodder because of the M from ALARM – couldn’t make the connection from “one’s” to “I’m”. I guess my brain is just not flexible enough for a Brummie today!

33. An enjoyable puzzle and blog conversation. Thanks to TheZed for disabusing me of my long held belief hat glass is a very viscose liquid! Anyway I had this the other way round with CANNABIS as the definition and GRASS entered into grid. I fell into the same trap with STRAP and spent some time trying to get C_P_ and M_S_ for 24 and 25 down. ROCHE LIMIT was new to me and CATAMOUNT was another of those ‘When I solved it I knew I’d heard of it but would never have known I knew it” words. I also needed Eileen’s help with parsing ICE TEA and didn’t know TEA as a synonym for marijuana – and for pointing out the theme that I forgot to look for. Many thanks to to Brummie and to Eileen.

34. Yes Coxy@30 – you posted whilst I was typing.

35. 18d was my last one in as I wanted it to be ARMATURE! Thanks to Brummie and Eileen, and keep stayng safe ….

36. Thank you Brummie and Eileen.

    I liked the WATCH theme – was on the lookout for HUNTER, which reminded me that it is ER’s birthday to day, I wonder how often that has been used in crosswords …

    … sad about the CATAMOUNT being declared extinct because of over-hunting – it seems they may re-introduce the western cougar to keep deer populations in control. The lynx might be reintroduced into Scotland for the same reason – it has been successfully re-introduced into France, here is a lynx on the forest road just above our village.

37. PS, here, hopefully, is the Scotland link.

38. Roche limit, smew, catamount and tea = MJ new to me too. Eastern half went in quickly with slow progress on the western side. APERTURE LOI and a chuckle when the penny dropped. I also liked 23d.
    Thanks for the helpful and informative blog Eileen. Loved the photos of THE Smews – what lovely birds. By the way, there’s a typo- Kiri’s surname TE KANAWA (in te reo Maori every consonant is followed by a vowel (with wh and ng being regarded as consonants)).
    Thanks also to Brummie.

39. TheZed  @23. I think that GiF’s science teacher was right. Glass is a fluid – it has, as you say, no long range order, and it will flow given time and sufficient stress. The time might need to be quite long (longer than hostorical – geological will do) and the stress less than the fracture point. Even crystalline substances will flow under sufficient stress for long enough. Examples: the isostatic rebound of Scandinavia and the Canadian shield after the removal of the ice sheets, the folding of rocks in orogenies (i.e. mountain building episodes) without fracture. My Geology professor, S Warren Carey (a genius and continental drifter from the 1930’s) taught us that, and demonstrated with silly putty – smash it with a hammer (large stress, short time) and it shatters, hang it from the lecturn at the beginning of the lecture (longer time, lower stress) and it dribbles of it through flow. He called it rheid flow.

40. Rheids, hmmm…the debate flows back and forth; even granite flows under stress it seems, which rather strips glass of any special flow status.

41. ngaiolaurenson @38 – my apologies for the careless typo, corrected now.

42. [TassieTim @39 As grant points out, your claim seems to be that rocks and crystals are liquid which is not a debating point I’ve heard before. Two things seem to be key here – one is “sufficient stress”. Fluids don’t need large stresses to flow, but e.g. metals will flow under stress (it’s called “creep”) and they are not liquid at room temperature either. The other is time – I’ve heard it pointed out that the time scale for glass to flow is longer than for it to crystallise. Is isostatic rebound really a flow? Or is it just like any other solid when the stress is removed, ie elastic deformation? A second point on time – our understanding of non-crystalline solids (including amazing quasicrystals ) has changed significantly since I was at university and since many of us were taught this stuff. Back then (for me the 1980s) it might have been reasonable to say glass is a sort of fluid as it has no long range structure but now we have other materials of huge importance which are similar and newer classifications. Either way, the idea that glass flows as supposedly seen in old window panes is definitively a myth.

    Cookie @36/37 thank you for those fascinating lynx!]

43. I enjoyed the challenge of this. CATAMOUNT and ROCHE had to be looked up and I failed to parse ISRAEL (even though I could believe I’ve seen this before). Also I didn’t parse ICE TEA. I’ve since spent a bit of time googling escapement for an explanation of how it works! Every day we learn.

44. Thanks Eileen for doing that

45. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

    CATAMOUNT kept me out of the SW corner so a DNF for me.  I did enjoy GNARLED, one of my favourite words –  now to introduce it into conversation…

46. Excuse my ignorance, but why does “corporations” = “pots” ?

    Thanks to Eileen & Brummie.

47. Pot-bellies – what we’ll all be getting soon!

48. Also look out for corporation = tum, which crops up quite often.

49. Well spotted Watto @24 and a welcome reminder of Nigel’s static (naturally) caravan in Zeal Monachorum

50. Thanks for the heads up, and correcting my thinking for 11a, I had nick = scratch with the scr changed to a w.
    The SW corner eluded mainly due to the Puma.
    I only needed to reveal the Puma to complete and that represents a success for me.

51. Thoroughly enjoyed this until I came to the SW corner; 24 (and 3, for that matter) beyond my GK, so the last five or six were a struggle, with liberal use of the check button. Another good workout though, so no complaints.

    Thanks Eileen and Brummie.

52. For an excellent example of an escapement in action, visit or go ogle the Chronophage in Cambridge.

53. Thanks Brummie. I got ICE TEA early on and when I saw “cannabis” in 13d and “joint” in 12 I thought I was onto a theme but I was barking up the wrong tree. In fact, the clearly clued OWNERSHIP took me far longer to get due to this misconception. Thanks Eileen for parsing — I never got SWEETEN, ROCHE LIMIT, GNARLED, or GLASS.

54. Simon S @52

    I know it’s a typo, but I love the idea of going to ogle the Chronophage!  How long before we see that in a clue?

55. grant @ 17. I also had 24 dn as  CAST. However it appears to be CASE. I still like CAST.

56. Don’t like ambiguous clues like 1dn which can be read in two ways. Without  crossers MEWS is  just as valid an answer.

57. Back to front smew would make wsme, wouldn’t it?

58. FRONT to BACK  smew would make mews.

59. Or it could be argued that back to front smew would make wems, perhaps?

60. I take your point. I suppose it depends on which you regard as the back and which the front of a word.

61. Or for that matter  that back to front mews would make swem.

62. Thank you Jeceris for reminding me of the tangle I used to get into whilst trying to teach my EFL students inside out, back to front and the wrong way round , not mention upside down with my jacket!

63. copland smith@9 … possibly a few more references, including to that unhappy day when you meet your roach limit :-).  Thanks Brummie and Eileen for the great puzzle and blog.

64. Hi jeceris @55 /56 [and grant @17]

    I’m struggling to see your parsing for CAST. [I’m afraid I was beguiled by grant’s story of his school science lesson and overlooked his comment, ‘And the medical cast made a change from throw etc and players.’] Are you taking the whole clue – ‘It’s made to hold a medical patient, say’ as the definition? I can’t quite make that work – and there’s also the point that CASE is one of the theme answers.

    Re 1dn: I have to say that I saw no ambiguity in the clue when I first saw it* but, rereading it, I see that you have a possible point. We’ve had many a discussion here on this issue: I’m one of those who maintain that, if the crossers make the correct answer clear, the clue is perfectly valid. It’s crosswords we’re doing. 😉 [*I solve the clues in order, so I did already have the crossers in place!]

    [I missed the amusing exchange 57 – 62 while composing this: I was dipping in and out of the daily news conference – why on earth do I subject myself to this?]

65. – why on earth do I subject myself to this?

    The conference or us, Eileen?

66. essexboy @ 54: not a typo, it was deliberate. But the chronophage does have a tendency to hold your attention.

67. I had GRASS for 13dn probably because of the dope references in the puzzle, and I knew TEA from the beatnik era and several records-When I’m in my Tea by JoJo Adams and Maxwell Davis from 1946. I didn’t see the theme and I’m not sure it would have helped if I had. I didn’t know ROCHE LIMIT,THIN SPUN or ESCAPEMENT but I managed to work them out. I did know CATAMOUNT probably from American comics read in my youth.
    Thanks Brummie.

68. I’ve thought of a way to make it ambiguous:

    Diver’s -is/= smew

    Smew back to front = wsme

    converted (anagrind) wsme becomes mews

    def. stable area

69. il principe @68

    Ingenious – but doesn’t that take us into dreaded indirect anagram territory?

70. Not to mention, what’s a mews?

    Today it’s a converted stable area but the original meaning of mews was just stable area. I’m beginning to find the alleged ambiguity of this clue a little ambiguous.

71. Il principe @65 – yes, I recognised another possible ambiguity here as soon as I’d posted but hoped I wouldn’t be misunderstood! I’ve  in the meantime  been watching The News, which is a much more sensible thing to do.

72. TheZed @23

    “What happens to the timing of a clock without the escapement?” The escapement allows energy from the prime mover (e.g. weight or mainspring) to “escape” into the clockwork. It also gives a tiny impulse to the timer (e.g. pendulum or balance wheel) to keep it moving. Without an escapement the hands would whizz round as fast as the prime mover could manage against the friction in the works.

    I agree with others here that it’s reasonable to describe an escapement as a timing mechanism.

73. Totally missed the theme as per.Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

74. Never posted before, and completely off topic, but – Cookie- a lynx in Gex? Wow. Wish I could see it!! Hope life is good over there. Am missing the Jura.

75. [TheZed @42. (Just awake again here). No, I’m not claiming rocks and crystals are liquids. I’m claiming that glass is a fluid – i.e. it lacks long range order, and it flows. A crystal has long range order, so the fact that it can also flow does not make it a fluid – the flow is, as you say, due to creep. Isostatic rebound definitely involved rheid flow (as well as a bit of elastic rebound), and folding in orogenies is not elastic rebound by any measure. As you say, there are two factors – stress and time. The amount of stress needed depends on the viscosity of the fluid as well as time. Glass is very viscous – at room temperatures, anyway. The flow of glass in old windows is indeed a myth, but not the fact that glasses can flow under the right conditions. But none of this is meant to take aaway from our enjoyment of the crossword. Too much time on our hands, possibly.]

76. [TheZed again: just looked at your link. Very interesting.  It puts me in mind of Sam Carey’s favourite saying – “Disbelieve if you can!” – i.e. reject ‘settled’ science if the evidence forces you to. As a continental drifter through the 1930s-late 1960s (when the discovery of sea floor spreading vindicated him and other drifters), he was well used to being classed with the flat-earthers.]

77. Not as tough as I’d expect from Brummie.

    24ac, ‘catamount’ was a corker of a clue, which demanded a deep delve into my mental database of words from American literature.

    21ac, ‘sweeten’, I did not solve, & I still don’t like the clue.

    I agree with others who did not like 8dn. I think the definition to be poor, & the use of ‘pots’ for ‘corporations’ to be lazy; vague rather than cryptic.

    But, yes, once I got 15dn, ‘escapement’, several others tumbled into synchronicity. It is a rather good clue.

78. [Nicola @74, there are quite a few lynx in the forest above us and further over into the Jura. We also have ‘wildcats’, Felis silvestris, luckily they eat different prey to the lynx so there is no competition.  For shooting a lynx you can get three years in prison and a fine of 120,000 euros!]

79. Cookie@78

    Could your ever imagine such a penalty being imposed in the UK, if lynx ever get reintroduced?

    Off to tackle the latest, from Vlad, with a glass of Beaujolais, not a Jura.

80. A glass of 2d for me, though a Beaujolais might be better for Vlad!

81. Pedro @80

    Is there such a wine as a ‘Wallachian red’? That would be the ideal accompaniment to one of Vlad’s ‘feasts’.

82. I am very late to the discussion as I never really got on Brummie’s wavelength and took several long pauses to eventually reach the end with Google/Wikipedia help required for the obscurities mentioned already by many. I have a vague interest in old watches and for once was onto the theme fairly early but can’t say it really helped me much. Special thanks to John Miller for the Teagarden link and to Zed/Grant/Tim for the flowing glass discussion, I recall my chemistry teacher telling me about the “true” liquid nature of glass and repeating the stained glass window myth, so this was a very Reithian set of posts for me! Thanks too of course to Brummie and Eileen.

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