Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 28,643 by Brendan (1 January 2022)

87 comments on “Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 28,643 by Brendan (1 January 2022)”

1. Splendid (again ) from Brendan.

   Eventually the penny partly dropped and I saw the months laid out – just in time to help with the last few going in.

   I could see there was something going on in the middle block but the subtlety of “new” year anagramming the letters eluded me.

   There were not so many fav clues as there can sometimes be;I guess the price one pays for such an amazing grid fill.

   Happy YERA / ARYE Brendan ,! And thanks mc-rapper67 for blogging through the haze.

2. Thanks for the blog, for once took me about 5 seconds to get the theme . Brendan used Janizary ( different spelling ) about a year ago in a puzzle with a similar theme. FEBRILITY and MARSHLAND confirmed it.
   Awful grid but I suppose it was needed for the twelve entries.
   Some very clever clues and not too many obscure words for a theme of this nature. The more obscure entries were very fair. I did wonder about APRIORISM as one word but Chambers and Kant give support.
   FEBRILITY , AYE and SHRIMP are my favourites out of many impressive clues.

3. Saw the theme too late for it to be much help, likewise the fun in the centre. I’ll claim the same, er, excuse as our esteemed blogger.

   Just the right level for a Prize puzzle – not too difficult to get a foothold, but some really tricky ones en route to finishing.

   One of those was KISMET: “a lot” was a clever disguise, and “key” was misleading because it was unnecessary I thought and triggered a number of blind alleys.

   I wasn’t initially too thrilled with SEPTETTES, but on realizing it also means a composition, all is good (I was thinking at first it means 7 musicians, but they might not be playing – they may be taking a break, maybe even doing the crossword).

4. Thanks for the blog mc, nicely detailed as ever. And thanks for the fun solve Brendan. Agreed that UNKNOT is particularly fine.

   No thanks to those who gave the theme away in comments on Raider’s Indy last week before I’d had a chance to solve this one. Chiz.

5. Thanks mc-rapper67. I didn’t spoil my record of failure to spot themes and did find this hard. 1a fell into place immediately but sat there in splendid isolation for quite a while. The rest followed only slowly but with regular moments of satisfaction and admiration. Your revelation of the theme now enhances my appreciation of Brendan’s ingenuity. KISMET was LOI, still not sure about the tense of the verb ‘run’, if I met someone I would have ran into them, if I run into them I would meet them.
   I like your revised layout.

6. I was just a tad disappointed when tackling this Prize puzzle as unlike Roz@2 I found a lot of the solution words tough and unfamiliar e.g. JANISSARY at 1a, SEPTETTES at 31a and APRIORISM at 14d. I also wasn’t fussed on clues like SEVERE at 26d where the “E” had to be derived from both “RomEo” and “JuliEt”. I was actually thinking that the crossword lacked some of Brendan’s usual sparkle and cleverness until I finished solving the grid and the scales were lifted from my eyes. All was quickly forgiven when I saw what Brendan had been up to with the months of the year – JAN., FEB. etc. I then highlighted these to make a very pleasing pattern. However I had to come here to see the icing on the cake – the little circular pattern of the “new years” in the centre which I hadn’t spotted. Many thanks to Brendan and mc_rapper and wishing you both a very happy 2020. Huge gratitude for what you two and other setters and bloggers do to contribute to our pleasurable crossword-solving hobby which gives us some much-needed respite from the worries of these uncertain times. And Happy New Year wishes also to all who are part of the 15² community.

7. Really enjoyed this one but didn’t notice theme until I was stuck on lower right corner. I was trying to put the PT later in SEPTETTES! Anyway, the theme quickly helped there.
   I also didn’t spot the central square with YEAR in it.
   Thanks both

   Ps Re mc-rapper67 re the blog style. I found it better than the 3 columns (on iPhone) but the solidi were distracting. The other bloggers seem fairly consistent and I think there is merit in having a standard format.

8. Thanks, everybody, I’ve really enjoyed being Brendan in 2021. As for 2022, living in what is amusingly called the United States, the only question is whether the 2nd Civil War is imminent or has already started. Crosswords provide an island of innocent play. All the very best for 2022, and may “Belfast” win many, many Oscars.

9. I missed it, was in bed before the fireworks, but love the New Years front and centre, in Times Square? A great feat of setting. Defeated by Janissary.

10. Thanks, Brendan, for quite a hard puzzle, though like some others I would have done better had I noticed the theme of months before the moment I completed the last answer – and I never spotted the ‘new year’ theme, or connected the whole puzzle with the date. It took me till Tuesday, on and off, to finish.

    Thanks, mc_rapper67 – as you say, the grid layout meant that there were effectively four separate puzzles, and (like Tim@7) I found the SE one (Jul-Sept) particularly problematical. Several unlikely words – FEBRILITY, APRIORISM, JULIENNES, SEPTETTES (so spelt), OCTACHORD, NOVELISED, PLAGUER – and some I could not parse.

    Happy new year to all. JulieinA@6, you are wishing a happy 2020 to some – has the time difference between us and Oz increased? If only the England cricketers could turn the clock forward or back!

11. Thanks mc_rapper for the change in format. Much easier to read.

12. I loved this. And I still missed the YEARs in the middle somehow. What an amazing feat of grid construction.

    The penny actually dropped on the ‘month’ thing quite early because the NW corner all went into place first and my eyes just alighted on JAN-FEB-MAR which was clearly no coincidence. It was almost a spoiler which made the rest of the grid easier (I had JUNCTIONS and NOVELISTS so it was clear what went where), but it was mostly just very, very satisfying.

13. Did Brendan do a month-themed crossword last year which didn’t quite get all the months in the grid or am I imagining that? Closure if so! Regardless, this was, as ever, a super way to spend the weekend and my thanks to him and the blogger too.

14. Another very satisfying puzzle from Brendan who has become one of my favourite setters.

    I had reached a bit of an impasse with the APR/MAY/JUN/JUL/AUG clues in. Happily, after stepping back, thinking ‘It’s Brendan, there must be something else going on here’, I spotted the theme which help unlock the rest, with the unfamiliar JANISSARY and OCTACHORD. LOI was SEVERE.

    Thanks mc_rapper for the blog, particularly for the parsing of JULIENNES which I never sorted out despite being an early entry.

15. Thanks to Brendan for a great puzzle, I was initially disappointed by the unfriendly grid, and was late spotting the theme, but soon enough to help with completing the last few tricky ones. Didn’t spot the New Years in the middle either.

    Thanks also to mcRapper for the animated grid. Re the technical question, I like what some other bloggers do, which is to underline the definition in the clue wording – I assume this also works on a phone? Although I prefer the site on a big screen, just too much to read on a phone-sized screen!

16. Thanks Brendan and mc_rapper67
    For once I saw the theme. Very enjoyable.
    Are all the performers in 31a female? I’ve only seen “septets”.

17. Tough puzzle but very clever. Solved/guessed quite a few and had to parse them later. I caught on to the theme very late when I had only a few of the months (Sept, Oct and Dec) left to fill in.

    New for me: JANISSARY, OCTACHORD.

    As with Epee@1, the subtlety of “new” year anagramming the letters eluded me.

    Thanks, both.

18. Did the puzzle, missed the theme. How on earth did I manage that? Several unfamiliar words which I thought were easy enough to figure out.

    JANISSARY rang a bell from another crossword. APRIORISM sounded like it might be a word, as did OCTACHORD.

    But the best bit was being able to UNKNOT granny.

    Clever puzzle, and I like the animated grid. Thanks Brendan and mc_rapper67.

19. I thought JANISSARY, my first entry, was a lovely clue – what a surface! – and it rang a faint bell, because I blogged the Brendan puzzle last January where it appeared with a different spelling (and, Forest Fan @13, he did get all the months – and seasons – in but some were in the clues rather than the answers). FEBRILITY and MARSHLAND followed quickly, so, like Roz, I twigged the theme very early, although it took a bit longer to see where he had placed the rest.

    Two blind spots: I didn’t see the triple definition in 30ac (seeing = since), nor the significance of the anagrams in the central squares. Practically every week I write in blogs, “anagram (new)” – Doh!

    Many thanks to Brendan for another super puzzle and for dropping in. (I’m looking forward to the release of “Belfast” here in a couple of weeks) and to mc for a great blog.

20. Thanks to Brendan and mc_rapper67.
    I don’t think it has been explicitly mentioned yet that the months are listed in order in each quadrant, going anticlockwise round the grid. Spotting this was an enormous help to completing the puzzle.

21. Brilliant as usual from Brendan. I spent some time looking for an eyes and ears theme, because of the central block until the penny dropped.

22. I know I asked for a non-themed puzzle, just for a change, in my post of yesterday but that didn’t mean I was complaining about this one. Even though I should probably have been on the lookout for something, given the day, I didn’t see anything for a while. By chance I had more non-themed solutions than themed. But FOI, JANISSARY, JULIENNES and AUGMENTED eventually caught my eye and it was a fairly swift romp thereafter. I agree UNKNOT is delightful but I also had big ticks for the triply defined SEEING, the smoothly surfaced SOLELY and ROTUNDA mainly due to living within striking distance of Birmingham for most of my life and we have one! (It’s actually pretty ugly! (oops – we’re back to yesterday)). MAYFLOWER was, surprisingly, last but one to fall followed by SEVERE where I thought I’d need to consult a Shakespearean cast list before the final trick suddenly made sense. All in all, very smoothly done.

    Thanks Brendan and mc

23. Magnificent puzzle with many splendid clues (and lovely words). To my shame, I registered the month in JANISSARY, which was my FOI, but I didn’t twig the theme until I surveyed the completed grid. How clever to include all the months of the year in such a symmetrical arrangement without recourse to words which were (too) recondite. Bravo Brendan.

    One tiny quibble: JANISSARIES were not Turks, at least for most of the history of the military corps. They were Christian boys from the non-Anatolian parts of the Ottoman Empire who were circumcised and forcible converted to Islam to serve as the elite guard for the sultan.

    Many thanks to S&B

24. I came to a stop halfway through this and had to finish it on another day with a fresh mind. This is one of not many puzzles that I appreciated a lot more afterwards than while solving it, simply because I never saw the (quite prominent) theme, which would have helped me with clues like SEPTETTES. I have to say now that the construction of this puzzle was amazing, in a particular grid that (from memory) has been used for some other amazing puzzles over the years.

    Many thanks to Brendan and mc_rapper67.

25. I remembered Puck using this grid for themed puzzles (eg 28,297 & 27,746) with an indicator in the centre so was on high alert and saw the ‘new years’ straight away but without 1a I still couldn’t see what else was going on and made very slow progress. After finally getting 1a about 2/3 of the way through the rest fell in place nicely

    Thanks for another excellent puzzle Brendan. Great theme plus the usual inventive clueing – I liked KISMET, SEVERE and many others. Thanks to mc_rapper too for filling in my parsing failures

26. Another splendid crossword from Brendan – I did spot the theme quite early on. My favourite clue was 17a

    Thanks to Brendan and mc_rapper67

27. muffin @ 16

    The first definition of SEPTETTE in Chambers is ‘A musical composition for seven performers’, hence the clue definition is ‘some music’.

28. Ingenious setting, thanks Brendan and mc_rapper67, and a happy erya to all!
    Of course I failed to see what was going on until it was too late to be helpful.

29. An enjoyable tour de force though I think that Brendan’s clueing was wittier before he insisted on involving themes. He is of course entitled to do so if, as he has said, he finds it more interesting as a setter to do so. On this occasion I spotted it about two thirds of the way through, early enough for it to help, though I didn’t spot the order until the end.
    Some clever misdirections – 1A where SAY is part of an anagram rather than indicating one of a kind, 9A where “initially” isn’t an instruction to use a first letter, possibly 10A where “heated state” could be an anagrind, and 27a where JUL isn’t part of the theme (it’s JUNES)
    “We hear” at 21a clearly indicated a homophone but shamefully I didn’t spot it. Couldn’t fit in an “aberrant squirrel-like lemur” (a Chambers definition of AYE)!
    Thanks to Brendan and mc_rapper 67

30. When I saw the unusual grid, I knew there had to be a reason for choosing it. I usually completely miss themes and ninas, but I knew JANISSARY from other crosswords and it went straight in — and not without me noticing the significance of the first three letters, so for once I was onto it, and able to get help from it, right from the beginning. I only noticed the ‘new’ YEARs a while after finishing, though, prompted to examine the centre carefully by remembering the Puck puzzles (ARMADILLO and ANTENNA) which used the same grid, as mentioned by Nobby@25, and it was the icing on the cake. What a stunning fill!

    The cluing was great, too: very clear, yet, in places, very original wordplay (17ac, EAR; 17dn, ERA; 26dn, SEVERE).

    I missed “since” as a third definition of SEEING, which makes an excellent clue from one I thought a little weak. Thanks for explaining, mc.

    Biggles@5, it’s run/ran/run. Perhaps ‘run/ran/ran’ is dialect?

    Mc, I think if you look up -ER in your e-Chambers, you will find it explains it can be added to any verb to give an agent noun.

    The new layout is very readable, but have you thought of adopting the system used by many, if not all other bloggers here by simply underlining the definition in the clue? “Occasional embellishments” can be added under the wordplay where necessary.

    HNY to all.

31. Simon S @27
    But why the feminine ending? “Septet” was good enough for Beethoven!

32. Pino@29, the “rare nocturnal arboreal prosimian primate of Madagascar, Daubentonia madagascariensis, related to the lemurs: family Daubentoniidae” (Collins) is an AYE-AYE, not just an AYE.

33. Super puzzle and great blog for the New Year puzzle. Thank you Brendan and mc_rapper 67.

    muffin @31, it was Septett for Beethoven.

34. Lovely way to start what will hopefully be a better year than the last two.

    I’m woefully bad at spotting themes as a rule, but managed to spot this one.

    It’s all been said above really, so I’ll just say thanks Brendan and a belated happy new year everyone.

    Also thanks to mc for his usual witty and thorough blog. The new format is indeed easier to read on a phone.

35. Thanks for the blog, mc_rapper67. The format is easier to read but I prefer when the definition is simply underlined in the clue, separately clarified if necessary, as most bloggers seem to do. I am not complaining too much though as I like your intros anyway.

    Not much to add to the accolades for the crossword. I am also in the camp of not having spotted the theme which seems almost unbelievable now
    it’s been pointed out (oh that we could all be like Roz@2 with her 5 seconds!?!). I guess I was too involved in the solving of some necessarily unfamiliar words. Really doubly appreciate it, although I was defeated by KISMET completely and the parsing of SEVERE so Bravo Brendan.

36. Ed@35 I usually miss themes completely, I only got this one so quickly because the last time Brendan used JANIZARY ( same meaning ) it was a MONTHS and seasons theme, so a bit of a give-away .

    mc blogger, I do not have a phone so does not really affect me, but I love your introductions just as they are for this and Cyclops.

    Anyone here who likes this blog, mc and Beermagnet both do a splendid blog for the Cyclops puzzle in Private Eye every fortnight. I am told the setter is Brummie. Always worth a look.

37. I managed to spot the theme in time for it to be helpful with the July-September quadrant (quite a feat of setting to get them all, and in the right order, too!)

38. muffin @31 & Cookie @33. My edition of Chambers has SEPTETTE deriving from the German Septett, which was derived from Latin, rather than being feminised from septet.

39. Quite a struggle if an enjoyable one, completely unaided by my failure to spot the nina. If I had spotted it I doubt I would have enjoyed the puzzle as much – as it was I only completed this (and all fully parsed) late last night (but with an intense sense of achievement). Now I come on to 15^2 to be handed a brass-bound tea tray. I had so many ticks for good clues but two Xs against JANISSARY and FEBRILITY for too great a level of obscurity – I now publicly and shamefacedly withdraw them. What fun.

    JinA@6: It’s nice to see you back contributing daily(?) as of yore. But (and there is no reason why you more than any other should know anything about this) I notice that grantinfreo has gone silent. Hopefully just on a sabbatical.

    The 15^2 community has helped keep me (what passes for) sane over the last 2 years and I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to you all for a constant source of wit and erudition. To Gaufrid and all the bloggers and setters also my heartfelt appreciation.

    HNY to all and on an optimistic note 2023 is a prime number (these are always good years – when my age is also (I think uniformly (it’s a long time since I checked this out)) a prime) so all we have to do is get there and all will be well.

40. For once I was able to use a theme to help me solve a couple of clues. Favourite would be the non-theme PLAGUER: it must have been a penny drop moment for the setter when ‘earplug’ turned out to be an anagram of a word for an ‘annoying person’!

    Another tour de force from Brendan, and a super blog from mc. (I didn’t have a problem with your original layout, but I can see how those using smaller screens might have struggled. I echo the suggestions of others: underline the definition in the clue and lose the solidi. That will reduce clutter for us and typing for you!)

41. Oh, I wish I’d spotted the theme (why didn’t I?!). I might have made more progress. I gave up about half way through when I realised that I just wasn’t going to get any further.

42. Brendan has compiled some great puzzles lately, and this one was an absolute cracker. Though everything was fair and not too tough, it still took months to complete (sorry, I’ll get me coat). I know it appeared on January the first, but this was the puzzle of the year for me (now getting hat, gloves and scarf to go with the coat).

    Splendid work Brendan/Brian, and thanks for popping in. Like you, I have high hopes for the “Belfast” film, not least because Caitriona (Outlander) Balfe may get some well deserved acclaim for it.

    Recognising that two out of the central square could be accidentally filled in without solving – just from the other clues that crossed them – I started there with EAR and ERA; I soon abandoned the theory, based just on those two, that all the answers would be anagrams of each other, and still managed to miss the New “Years” hidden in the centre: brilliant!

    Regarding the grid, Roz@2 described it as awful, and I have seen criticisms in the past of puzzles with effectively four separate quadrants offering few crossers beyond their borders, as somehow unfair (hardly an issue this time as the theme once spotted gave us 36 free letters).

    I actually thought this was an interesting grid because every black square was a solo as it were: no lines, angles, Ls, Hs, crosses, and thankfully none of the Ss that have caused political controversy in the past. This means, as far as I can see, that it had the minimum number of black squares practically possible, and inevitably as a result, the maximum number of white squares possible. Thus there were more letters for us fill in, and consequently more actual solving than rival puzzles!

    Thanks to Brendan and mc_rapper67

43. I’d like to echo what AlphaAlpha@39 said including the comment about JinA whose contributions are always welcome.

44. The grid has been described as ‘awful’, and relative to most or all other Guardian grids, ignoring any mitigating factors, that’s a fair desciption! (There are four almost isolated zones, and in each zone the ratio of checked letters is lower than normal.)

    However, as I implied earlier, in the right hands and with well-implented themes, some excellent thematic puzzles have been created with this grid, and this is just the latest. Puck, as I recall, is another setter who has used this grid to great effect.

45. No-one has explained why we need the word “septette” when we have “septet”, or, indeed, whether there is a difference between them. (Collins and Wiktionary make no distinction.) I’m curious!

46. I did call it awful but I also added that it was necessary for the 12 entries of the theme. I agree with your analysis Alan B @44 .

47. Sheffield hatter @38, yes, the French septette is a masculine noun…

48. muffin@45: I speculate that there is a convention (cf nocturne, fugue, caprice, fantasie) which requires that musical opera take a feminine ending by the time they are absorbed into English. But this less a speculation than a ball-hop….

49. Possibly Alphalpha, but I’ve never come across a String Quartette! In fact, I had never come across a septette until doing this puzzle…

50. Thanks Brendan for another super puzzle. I spotted the theme early due to the Indy blog on New Year’s. That puzzle had a similar theme and several posters thought it was uncanny that Brendan’s crossword did as well. (There was the requisite reminder by Julius/Knut not to post spoilers.) Happy New Year all and hopefully it will be a more normal one.

51. muffin @45 – Because SEPTET is two letters too short to fill the grid?

    To be (slightly) less facetious, I don’t know that “need” comes into it – it’s just a quirky variant spelling that has become accepted/widely used enough to earn recognition in Chambers and is therefore fair game for setters.

52. Thanks Brendan (and mc_rapper)!

    The theme (which I picked up on once I got JULIENNES) took care of the issues with the grid for me–there was a way to get started on each quadrant even if the crossers didn’t help.

    Funny to see two puzzles in a week with APEMAN as the first down clue, after Qaos’s Kinks-themed one!

53. We missed the theme too…. Might have helped if we’d got the NW corner first rather than last! Afraid we had to resort to crossword buddy for our last two as we couldn’t parse Juliennes. Not enough legal expertise here. Thanks Brendan and MC and Happy New Year to everyone

54. Thanks for all the comments and feedback, especially on the formatting/layout – I will try to incorporate some of the suggestions made.

    Apologies for late response, but I have been out and about all day. Looks like most commenters enjoyed the puzzle, and most queries seem to have been batted around and answered:
    – the ‘interesting’/awful grid, accepted as necessary for the symmetry of the theme
    – the SEPTET/SEPTETTE debate (both are given equal billing and no gender in my Chambers)
    – the speed at which the theme was spotted – ranging from 5 seconds after starting to 5 seconds before finishing…on to after finishing and, for some, on checking the blog!

    Brendan/Brian at #8 – thanks for popping by…good luck with that US ‘unity’…

    Gervase at #23 – on closer inspection, Chambers does mention the Janisseries as being ‘renegade prisoners’/’tributary Christian children’ (it doesn’t mention the circumcision!). However, it also gives ‘Turkish soldier acting as an escort for travellers‘ as a separate definition. So we can give Brendan that one for the latter, and we have all learned something interesting and new from the former.

    Roz at #36 – thanks for the plug for the Cyclops puzzles and my/beermagnet’s blogs over there – just a warning, Cyclops sometimes takes Grauniad-level innuendo/smuttery and magnifies it by a warp factor 10, so may not be for those of gentler dispositions!

    1961Blanchflower at #42 – thanks for the detailed grid analysis – looks like we all got our money’s worth from this puzzle…

55. Brendan never ceases to amaze me with his grid-fills, and with the brilliant cluing that accompanies them. Thanks for all the fun. (And let’s hope that this civil war isn’t as bloody as the last one.)

    mc_rapper, thanks for the excellent blog, and I loved your animated solution grid.

    Muffin@49, I have seen (and played) many a String Quartette, almost always from parts published in the early 20th century.

    Happy 2022 everyone, and thanks for all the fish (oops,I mean fun).

56. Interesting, cellomaniac. Can you give an example? All the ones I know of are quartets.

57. muffin@49: The group is a Quartet but the music is (as it turns out)(I was going to surmise it might be but see cellomaniac@55) a Quartette. I think we’ve touched a little-mined seam here. How interesting? Why is a musical piece feminine?

58. I suspect that the quartettes might be French….

59. … though Messiaen’s is Quatour pour le fin du temps

60. sorry, quatuor..

61. At the risk of being predictable, I will reach for the BRB (Big Red Book, aka Chambers) – which has QUARTET, QUARTETTE or QUARTETT as equal billing, again no gender implied, for a) a set of four; b) a composition for four voices or instruments c) the set of players performing such a composition.

62. [ Being an amateur, I play from the widely available (but not urtext) Peters Editions of all the major quartets – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven Mendelssohn, etc. The cover page, for example, of Volume 4 of the Haydn quartets reads: Edition Peters, Haydn Quartette IV. Peters uses Quartette on all of those cover pages. ]

63. mc_rapper67@: settler. (No score draw?)

    And so to bed. Thanks mc_rapper67. Thanks Mr Greer.

64. The extra letters seem totally unnecessary – think of the ink that might be saved 🙂

65. I should just add my appreciation for the animated solution grid.

66. Barely got anywhere with this and the mostly separate segments didn’t help! But I got a few clues anyway.

    Wanted to drop a comment to say thanks for the change in blog format which made it fit perfectly on my small phone screen.

    Plus thanks as always for the great explanations, maybe one day I’ll learn enough to complete the crossword before the week’s up!

67. [As Cookie noted, words like quartette and quintette are masculine in French. It’s unusual for a masc. noun to end in -ette, but not unheard of, eg le squelette = skeleton. In the case of quartette, it’s because it’s derived from the Italian quartetto ( -etto is a masc. diminutive ending in Italian, I believe – Gervase and muffin will know better than me).

    Quatuor is the most common French word for quartet. Quartette is defined here as petit quatuor (for a piece of classical music – literary usage) or ensemble de chanteurs/musiciens de jazz/musique légère. The French wiki entry helpfully adds that Dans le rock, on entendra rarement ces termes (par exemple, les quatre Beatles ne constituaient pas un quatuor). 😉 ]

    By the way, super puzzle, as everybody has already said; many thanks B & mc

68. muffin @64. Extra letters…unnecessary…in the English language! OMG! If only there were to be an unforeseen spin-off, such as, I don’t know, word games, or in the fullness of time, crossword puzzles! We’ll have to wait and see. 🙂

69. [ sh@68, my favourite English word with one or two extra letters is the name Featherstonehaugh. ]

70. Apologies to everyone for the typo – well spotted sjshart@10 JulieinA@6, you are wishing a happy 2020 to some – has the time difference between us and Oz increased? If only the England cricketers could turn the clock forward or back!
    Perhaps it was Freudian – I am either living in the past or wishing I could turn back the clock on COVID. I got a bit down in the dumps at the dawn of 2022 when someone pointed out that the Spanish Flu dragged on for four years. Thanks for kind words, Alphalpha@39 and Ed The Ball@43. I drop in when I can to have a look at the blog and sometimes add something if it hasn’t already been said (though I often feel my remarks are repetitive). Like you, Alphalpha, I hope all is okay with grantinfreo, one of my favourite contributors.

71. I do not think anyone has praised AYE at 21AC and I think it deserves more.
    “fairly violent exchange” is so misleading – an eye for an eye is a violent exchange that is “fair” according to the bible.

72. Roz@71 you are quite right, that had me wondering for over a day how to justify AXE beyond it being something violent with X for vote, in the end I got YOUTUBE so it had to be AYE but the biblical parsing took a lot of staring and it is brilliant. Thanks for helpful and colourful blog mc_rapper67, I did not get any of the theme having assumed that the relatively obscure words were there to justify the prize slot – finished this on Tuesday or Wednesday and mislaid the piece of paper so never went back to check, apologies for doubting Brendan as i am now even more enamoured of the puzzle. I had the same quibble as BigglesA@5 re the tense of ‘met’ and didn’t like SHRIMP (noun) = Tiny (adj) but think that may have been justified in the past and I have forgotten. Thanks Brendan, great to see the ROTUNDA get a mention and a late Happy New Year to everyone.

73. Disappointed that my “puzzle of the year” and “took me months to complete” comments above didn’t even raise a titter, groan, complaint or site ban in response.

74. [1961 Blanchflower @73, I’ve written a forthright email to site admin 😉 ]

75. 1961Blanchflower – it was another bit of your post @42 that got me thinking – the piece about the maximum possible number of white squares. I agree it does feel like this grid gives good value in terms of amount of solving to be done, although I reckon the way to get the absolute maximum number of white squares would be to have 15 letter entries for every across and down clue(?) Conversely however that would give the minimum possible number of different clues to solve!

76. I see there’s life left in this blog yet!…

    Brendan/Brian at #65 – I’ve been doing these animated grids for years for my EV (and Genius) puzzles, where there is usually some sort of dénouement/end game/grid manipulation – a (moving) picture sometimes being worth a thousand words. And they come in handy to highlight ninas and theme-ettes in other blogs. Very simple GIF animation, just takes a bit of effort to line up the different frames – a bit like the old stop-go animations before CGI – Clangers, Morph, Wallace and Gromit…

    GazzH at #72 – I did have a little eyebrow raise at SHRIMP/TINY, thinking ‘shrimp’ isn’t really an adjective, but glossed over it in the haze. In fact, I see now that Chambers gives ‘tiny’ as a noun (usually in plural) for ‘a small child’, which makes the clue valid.

    Nobby at #75 – a similar thought occurred to me last night – there could have been a couple of 15s in the central row/column, and I think I may have seen this, or a similar grid, like that – but it would probably have stretched even the setting superpowers of Brendan to squeeze those in with the thematic words… if you want an example of (nearly) your suggestion, head over to this month’s Grauniad Genius…

77. And last but not least…

    Roz at #71 – AYE-AYE – you make a fair point there!

    Gazzh at #72 (and BigglesA at #5) – run/ran, meet/met is an interesting one. I could say ‘I ran into him last week’, so I met him. Or, ‘I have run into him in the past’, so I have met him before. As Tony Collman suggests, there may be some regional/dialect forces at play as well… Ho hum…’I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still, Da doo run ran run, da doo run run…’ ( ; + > )

78. Thanks mc_rapper67, i think that Chambers equivalence was wheeled out last time, i just forgot if there was anything better. Much happier with have met/have run into, which I just couldn’t see. Also I have just looked at the blog on my mobile and it looks wonderfully clear, bravo!

79. Roz@71, Tony Collman@32, me@29
    I agree that 21 was clever, even though I failed to parse it. My apologies to Chambers for misquoting them – they too have AYE-AYE as the lemur.

80. As MC says, “met” and “run” can be past participles, so “have met” can = “have run”, no “have ran” about it.

    Nobody has mentioned the bears. Ursodeoxycholic acid refers to bears because it was first discovered in bears. To this day there are bears cruelly kept captive with ports to deliver their bile for its use in traditional medicine.

81. [Valentine @80 – I think your second para is meant for the discussion on the Everyman puzzle – see blog here.

    But, irrespective of crosswords and blogs, your comment deserves to be highlighted for drawing attention to the horrifying abuse inflicted on many thousands of ‘bile bears’.]

82. Mc@77, the dialectical forces I thought might be at play were in Biggles’ own usage, not Brendan’s. “Is run into” uses the standard past participle for ‘run’: “is ran into” does not, but might be used, I suggest, dialectically.

    Muffin (passim), also, why can’t we just Julian our vegetables? 😉

83. The converse of the maximum number of white squares, clues etc. is the puzzle whose source I can’t remember. It’s grid is 1 X 1. 1 across is a multiple definition clue (about 12 definitions/abbreviations), as is 1 down, the answer being A.

84. This was a tour de force IMO – yes, several unusual words, but all fairly clued. (At least, I managed them, and I’m not a particularly gifted solver…)

    The ‘new year’ central element dropped before the months for me, and if I hadn’t spotted the latter I would have been in some dire straits given the segmented nature of the grid.

    25D was my favourite, and ‘character in Romeo and Juliet’ was a delightful bit of indication.

    Thanks mcrapper_67 and Brendan.

85. Am outnumbered in the debate on how brill this puzzle was. Yes, an amazing concoction. But it didn’t feel like that when somehow (?!) solving it without spotting either theme.

    Puzzled by alphalpha@39 about next year being a prime. 2023 is divisible by 7. Thanks to all for 15**2.

86. Choldunk@85: Ooops! And by 17 come to that. How did that happen? (Always check your work). Guess we’ll have to wait until 2027.

87. Brian@83, I wonder if you are thinking of Spike Milligan’s Crossword for Idiots?

    I think this was published in his Little Pot Boiler.

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