Guardian Prize 28,661 / Vlad

86 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,661 / Vlad”

1. I didn’t get or parse MASS NOUN, CENTER

   Took me quite a while and some help to get the rest but did enjoy it and did much better than usual for a Vlad puzzle

   Favourites were: TREE FROG, INTUITS, SCALLION, AGITATE (very neat) and the best EMBER.

   Thanks Vlad and Eileen

2. Also really pleased that I remembered that a *scorer* can be a composer.

3. Thanks Eileen. Very hard, hard to get started and hard to finish. I had to seek Google assistance with MAENAD and still don’t follow ‘dropping a tab’. Never did appreciate the significance of 19 being under 20 but the same could be said for eighteen other numbers. Not that it matters but I thought hesitates = wavers in 9a. MASS NOUN was my LOI, never heard the term before, don’t like M = money much and was fixated on ‘coin’ for the second word.

4. Thanks Eileen, including for parsing MAENAD which baffled me all week. It’s probably OK for a setter – who aims to trick and treat us – to be inconsistent: so 21D has ‘of America’ for CENTER while behind=ASS in 5D has no such indicator. Nice frisson as the Psycho place to stay jumped out. Thanks Vlad

5. I think MAENAD is actually A in eND with an A + E as in a tab of drugs.

6. Sorry missed the M!!!

7. I thought the “their number 4” in 22a was referring to the letters of “their”, so to be an R the counting had to be off. Convinced it was another Guardian error I moved on, but should have looked inwards!

   Talking of errors, the argument that 24d is a down clue so you can use climbing to mean reversed – it’s a very common practise and is pretty standard nowadays, but really it’s a logical error, isn’t it? It is the answer that has an orientation, not the clue. Clues either have no orientation or inherit the direction of writing of the language they are written in, so here it’s English and horizontal. That said, I’m not really objecting to this practise, just thinking that we should all acknowledge the shared fantasy.

   On reading 2d, I was thinking that chaste meant abstaining from sex, which would make LEWD wrong (I’m sure a lot of the people here are neither chaste, in that sense, nor lewd), but I learned that it could also mean abstaining from sex outside marriage, which makes the clue somewhat better but still not perfect (what about committed unmarried relationships?).

8. I have never heard “tab” to refer to a tablet — of ecstasy or anything else. “Dropping a tab” always refers to a tab of blotting paper (containing LSD or similar). So I don’t think MAENAD was quite well-formed.

9. For AVERS I parsed it as WAVERS without the W. Hadn’t heard of havers!
   SMELLS I had as SMS around ELL, and griped about the clue. Yours is clearly the correct interpretation.
   Failed to finish this one off in the Top Left, but mainly to do with me forgetting to come back and look at it during the week.

10. I only got around to printing this out midweek and as soon as I saw it was Vlad I felt a sinking feeling that turned out to be completely justified. Missed this one by a few in the end; some I don’t feel bad about (MASS NOUN, MAENAD – well, maybe a bit bad there) and some I feel I should have got. But I treat a Vlad as a learning process, and some of these were very satisfying indeed to get. I was happy with ‘run’ in LOCAL DERBY, and thought the definition was neat. Thanks for the explanations, Eileen, and for the challenge, Vlad.

11. Well, I finished it, or we did, as Anna helped: a Vlad. So I am very pleased. Thanks, Vlad and Eileen.

12. Thanks Vlad and Eileen. 11A BATES MOTEL and 24A LUDO were my favourites in a sterling bunch.
    7D ASLEEP: I thought of paint also.
    13D LOCAL DERBY: if colours run, they end up where they are not expected.

13. Pretty tough in places. I too liked 11a BATES MOTEL, 24a LUDO and 19d INVOICE. I was unfamiliar with CRANFORD even though I have read Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Life of Charlotte Bronte”. Thanks Eileen for the explanations of 23a UNDERSCORE which I got but didnt understand – and I also didn’t really “get” fully how 18d THEODORE worked. I wasn’t fussed on 5d MASS NOUN either. But there was enough else to like so many thanks to Vlad, and to Eileen for a very much appreciated blog.
    [Re 17a INTUITS – I have a stab occasionally at setting words set by our U3A tutor for our Advanced Cryptic Crosswords class and last week’s was INTUIT – strange coincidence. I also saw INUIT straight away and cringed when I clued it as “Suspect eskimos at one time took temperature” as I well know Eskimo is no longer acceptable for that first nations group, so I was very glad to see that Vlad avoided my faux pas in his cluing. I did have a question mark against Vlad’s “T” for “town”, however.]

14. [Sorry still having trouble with the “Name and email” fields despite Gaufrid’s best advice regarding clearing all my browser history and all my cookies. So I am still filling it in each time. That’s how you got my full name instead of just “Julie in Australia” on this occasion!]

15. I met this Prize puzzle challenge full on and was doing quite well and I thought this is going well, as I live in Vancouver, BC I get most Cryptics early. and before went for a sleep and suddenly I realised I was doing the wrong crossword, Friday instead of Saturday, has this ever happened to you? it was solved but I had to laugh at myself, brought down to earth with a bump, enjoyable crossword and loved the fight..

    TIA

16. I met this Prize puzzle challenge full on and was doing quite well and I thought this is going well, as I live in Vancouver, BC I get most Cryptics early. and before went for a sleep and suddenly I realised I was doing the wrong crossword, Friday instead of Saturday, has this ever happened to you? it was solved but I had to laugh at myself, brought down to earth with a bump, enjoyable crossword and loved the fight, replies are welcome

17. Thanks for a great blog as ever, Eileen, always appreciate an extra titbit in your blogs.

    Very pithy indeed, Vlad. Many thanks too for the workout – worthy of the Prize tag – which lasted, for me, much of the week off and on. As with Eileen, I had quite a few ticks: LUDO, AGED and BATES MOTEL was exceptional on many levels. MASS NOUN was new for me and was the main block and LOI was MAENAD (I actually thought the clue was a bit MEAN (ha ha) as the word was unfamiliar).

    [I think an ELL is 45 cm not inches, Eileen, but I like the image 😉 and thanks for the explanation of cubit]

    [worworcrossol@15/16: no, it’s never happened to me. Being in the same zone as The Grauniad, I often don’t post here because I rarely finish a crossword in the morning and by early afternoon or evening most comments have already been posted. Touch of insomnia helped me get a post in today ]

18. Thanks for the blog, super Saturday once again , I wonder if it is the return of the prize.
    BATES MOTEL is so clever, will add EMBER and UNDERSCORE out of many. Only know DRAGOMAN from crosswords, have seen the dragon bit as mother-in-law, fiery character was very good.
    Minor quibbles, Vlad has form for using t=town. if it is in later Chambers I will withdraw my objection. The football team justification does not work , we do not have M=Midlothian , t=Thistle etc.
    Not a fan of first names in a puzzle but I think THEODORE was forced by the grid

19. Roz @18
    From the ODE under T:
    “4. (in names of sports clubs) Town: Mansfield T.“

20. Thank you Gaufrid, objection withdrawn.

21. One of the hardest Saturdays for a while. I just got there, picking it up again on Friday evening, for my last two, MAHLER and MAENAD, neither of which I parsed. Nor did I parse LUDO, so thanks, Eileen, for all your work.
    For flake=PEEL, Chamber’s Crossword gives each as a possibility for the other.
    I had no problem with THEODORE, but it would have been fairer if defined in more detail – eg, ‘old president’ (or ‘young president’ as Roosevelt was the youngest).

22. Typical difficult Vlad. Favourite BATES MOTEL. I share Eileen’s doubts about “run” as an anagrind, but I’ve come to accept that almost any verb seems to be considered acceptable by setters. Regarding AVERS, I’m with Biggles A@3 and Bodge@9: surely the word for “hesitates” is “wavers”; in Scotland at least, to haver is not to hesitate but to talk nonsense, e.g. after a few drinks.
    Thanks Eileen and Vlad.

23. I’ve had a tab open on my browser since last week when I completed the grid to my satisfaction bar one. To remind me to have one last bash at the solution that evaded me. Like Biggles A @3, I ended up with MASS COIN for 5d, which I’d never heard of and for which only the first part was parsed. I’ve not heard of MASS NOUN tbh and I wouldn’t have got it from the definition (did it pass your definition test, Roz?) So it turns out to be a DNF. No bother, it was a good puzzle with the highlights that have already been mentioned by others. Particularly BATES MOTEL, which I solved with only Psycho in mind, and EMBER for the delightful definition. Lastly, I’m another wavers, rather than a havers – which only makes me think of Nigel…

    Thanks Vlad and Eileen

24. FOI was BATES MOTEL so for once off to a flyer. Loved CAGED, INVOICE and MAHLER though, like others, thought number 5 ( of theiR) intended. I would have clued “Number” not “number”. Sadly a DNF. Never considered CENTER … so was struggling to accommodate CANDID or CANADA: thus missing the wonderful EMBER. Was trying to make DEBAR work with a RED revolutionary. Oh dear. Hated that I couldn’t parse LUDO: not seeing the Americanism (?) of “can”. Had an unparsed PASS DOWN for 5d. So a lost cause anyway. Thanks Vlad … and long-armed Eileen.

25. Colours RUN in the wash was my anagrind. Have finally twigged after several years: that’s short for ANAGRam INDicator.

26. Like many others, I found this a challenging but satisfying solve – worthy of a Prize. I particularly liked the touches of humour such as the use of the word late (i.e. dead) in the clue about Bates Motel (11A). Thanks Choldunk @25 for the origin of anagrind; I, too, had been unaware of this. I also agree with your idea of colours which run as,indeed, does paint. DrWhatson @7, whilst chaste can relate to marital fidelity, it also has a more general sense as pure / modest. Eileen, in 12A, I think you meant ‘followed by ELLS’ rather than ‘round’, and I believe you have misplaced the square brackets in 10A.

    Many thanks Vlad and Eileen.

27. MrPostMark@23, got the MASS straight away but not the noun. Once I put the Downs in I had the -O-N and the U gave it away, MASS NOUN cropped up in the blog last Saturday with regards to TILLAGE.

28. Thanks Eileen, cracking blog of a cracking crossword. BATES MOTEL the obvious standout here, but lots of great clues. Lovely stuff, thanks Vlad.

    Choldunk @25 – I’ll go along with that. Good call.

29. Good morning, everyone.

    Firstly, BigglesA @3, Bodge@9 and beaulieu @22 – and anyone else who may have crept in in the mean time …

    Whenever my late Scottish husband heard / saw ‘haver’ used to mean ‘hesitate’, he would exclaim, ‘Havers!!’ , which he told me meant ‘rubbish’. I took his word for it, because I’d always assumed that the speaker / writer really meant ‘waver’ – or even ‘hover’ – Chambers: ‘to remain undecided (with between)’.
    When it came to writing the blog, I had to finally look it up, of course, and, as many of you will have seen, Chambers gives ‘vi to talk nonsense (Scot and N Eng dialect); to waver; to be slow or hesitant in making a decision;
    n (usu in pl. Scot and N Eng dialect) foolish talk; nonsense.
    I had been intending to write all the above in the blog but decided that would be pointless, since I’d been proved wrong – but I’m glad to find myself in good company! I would still never use the word myself.

30. Thank you, Eileen. I was completely stumped by MASS NOUN, despite knowing the term. The only thing I could come up with was “mass coin”, thinking “not outside” gave me “in”, and that “money” was doing double duty for M and mass coin, which maybe was some sort of crypto currency. I know it doesn’t parse but it was the best the combined brains of the Crossbar family could come up with. Also I thought “ass” might have had an Americanism indicator

    And like you, Eileen, BATES MOTEL to me meant only Psycho. I’ve come across DRAGOMAN before, but only in crosswords and can’t remember when or where exactly. I’m also another one who parsed 9a as (w)AVERS.

    MAHLER was my favourite clue, though he’s not my favourite composer.

    I really enjoyed this challenge. It’s not often I remember the Saturday puzzle by the time the blog appears, but this one stayed with me. 🙂

    Thanks Vlad for the fun, and Eileen for the explanations.

31. I was unable to do this puzzle, but I have enjoyed reading the blog.
    Thank you, Eileen.

32. Thanks Vlad and Eileen

    Re ‘ell’ and in or cm, I think it’s had two different meanings over time. One was an old measure for fabric, of 1 1/4 yards, the other being the distance from elbow to fingertips (and hence a variable length). It would be most unfortunate were they to be confused in eg a clothing pattern.

33. Thanks, Larry @26 – both errors sorted now.

34. Many thanks, Simon S @32 (and Ed the Ball @17!).
    The 45 inches came directly from Collins, but, reading more carefully, I see ‘(the measure originally being from the elbow to the fingertips)’. I’ll come back to that if I ever manage to catch up!

35. By Wednesday, we’d managed to finish this, all except for MASS NOUN, a term we were unfamiliar with and less than obvious from the clue.
    I appreciate we’re not in the same league as some solvers here, and a spectrum of difficulties must be provided, but this fell into the “too hard to be fun” category for us!

36. More odds and ends …

    BigglesA @3 and George @8 – Chambers gives tab as an abbreviation of tablet;
    PeterO @12, Chaldunk @25 and Larry @ 26 – I did wonder about colours running in the wash, so thanks for that.
    PostMark @23 – my apologies for missing the last sentence, re haver, in your comment.

37. Many thanks, Eileen. I got MASS NOUN immediately from the definition, it’s a concept which crops up regularly on Countdown. Incidentally, it’s well worth appearing on the programme even if, like me, you lose on your first appearance, because included in the goody bag is the (pretty hefty) Oxford Dictionary of English. This volume has many entries that are not to be found in Chambers (see, e.g. Gaufrid @19 above).

38. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I particularly enjoyed the derivation of “cubit” from “recumbent”. (But see below about ELLS.) And I was with you on (h)AVERS – I’ve read and heard it many times, but I’m not at all familiar with “wavers”. But let’s not start another “pestle and mortar” debate. 🙂

    I had problems with ‘dropping a tab’ in MAENAD, which I thought was clumsily constructed, and although I got MASS NOUN readily (with thoughts of TILLAGES making it fresh in my memory), I thought the construction there was very deceptive – though whether in a clever or an unfriendly way I am yet to determine.

    Seeing the 45 inches between elbow and finger tips in Eileen’s blog and looking at my forearm of (being generous) only 18 inches, I thought that once again nature had failed to endow me with the length I surely deserve. Thanks to Simon S @33 for getting into what an ELL actually was, or were in this case.

    And thanks to Vlad for providing so many days of entertainment this week.

39. I got MASS NOUN from a partial spoiler in one of last Saturday’s posts, but I’m not complaining. Very satisfying to solve the rest. [In Southampton the ell is still used, as in he’s an ell of a good player]

40. Hi bridgesong @37 – years ago, my husband and I used to watch Countdown every day and compete with the contestants and each other. I continued on my own after he died but gradually lost interest – it was never the same without Richard and Carol – so I’m afraid I must have missed your appearance. That does sound like a prize worth winning – I only remember the teapot!

    Re ELL (thanks for your comments, sheffield hatter @38 and Petert @39 😉 )
    some quite interesting stuff here – see the first paragraph and ‘England’ under ‘Historic use’.

41. Thanks Eileen, I needed some of those explanations! Share your comments about the components of “Mass Noun” (I hate all such “crass Americanisms” in these crosswords). That one was my last one in, not just because of the complex/slang parsing, but it was also a phrase I hadn’t come across before. Doesn’t sound like I enjoyed this one as much as others did on here – I thought Paul’s Prize this week was much better.

42. An excellent crossword. Having got stuck in the SE corner, I finished it only yesterday, when MAHLER, THEODORE and CRANFORD tumbled into the grid. I liked the clues for MAHLER, BATES MOTEL and LUDO (my LOI) especially.
    From the blog I learned the word ‘haver’, meaning ‘waver’!
    MASS NOUN was not a favourite, but I thought it was Ok. There are various ways of dividing nouns into groups (common and proper, concrete and abstract, …), and I believe mass nouns are either a subset of or equivalent to uncountable nouns, as opposed to countable ones which can have a plural form.
    Thanks to Vlad and Eileen.

43. Two thoughts about ‘haver’, whatever its meaning.

    The most easterly part of Greater London is the borough of Havering. This has given rise to (perhaps inappropriate) jokes about the Havering Womens’ Institute and like bodies.

    The Attorney General for England and Wales and then Lord Chancellor in the 1980s was Michael Havers. Some used to say, ‘Yes he does’. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher thought so, and eventually dismissed him.

44. Fantastic puzzle – first one in ages that took me until Sunday to arrive bruised and battered at the finish line. Double ticks for LUSO and UNDERSCORE and HAVER – another word I learned from 80’s music – this time the Proclaimers I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)

    “And when I haver, hey I know I’m gonna be
    I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you”

45. LUDO!

46. suharto @43
    Re Havering Women’s Institute.
    There is a village just south of Maidstone (near where I live) called Loose. There really is a Women’s Institute there!
    I don’t wish to spoil it, but I should point out that the name of the village is pronounced ‘looz’.

47. Two proper prize crosswords in a row! Great stuff. Did not finish this one, as we got nowhere near Mass noun; As a teacher of English of over thirty years standing, that is bad. (Only excuse, here in France students know dénombrable/indénombrable from French, so countable versus uncountable was daily usage…) Dragoman I knew from Dorothy Dunnett’s writing, and as a southerner, I plumped for waver not haver. Both these puzzles took me till Wednesday, one finished, one not. I think the clue is in the name, for me a puzzle should take a while to work out. Thanks to Vlad and belatedly Tramp, and all the bloggers and posters here.

48. sjshart
    I’m so sorry – autocorrupt changed your name to suharto. (I now hate that feature! It even changed ‘autocorrupt’ to ‘autocorrect’ in that sentence until I corrected or corrupted it to what I wanted.)

49. Yes, like many others, I wrote: ‘v. difficult’ at the top, but a satisfying solve eventually.

    I ticked the splendid BATES HOTEL, MAENAD and the daft loo dough. I wondered about T=town, but Gaufrid @19 has settled that. A very enjoyable crossword. A couple of quibbles: I hate the unqualified you=U, it’s not the official spelling of the letter. If it’s a homophone or text, it should be indicated, I think. Slightly unfortunate that ‘scorer’ was just above the solution UNDERSCORE.

    Thanks Vlad for the challenge and Eileen for the great blog.

50. I don’t consider myself an ace crossword solver by any means, but I always finish the weekday Guardian crosswords the same day. As for the weekend prize crosswords, I usually finish them the same day, too, or ve-e-e-ry occasionally the next day. However, with this puzzle I just couldn’t get started! I gritted my teeth, though, and persevered, getting an answer here and an answer there, and finally finished it on Thursday evening. What a struggle! It’s the most difficult Guardian puzzle I’ve ever done. Many thanks to Vlad and Eileen.

51. [Alan B @46, and of course Idle Working Mens Club]

52. I needed some help with this puzzle, so for once consulted a crossword hints forum. I must not get into the habit of doing so at the first hurdle!

53. Monkey @52 I still prefer to do the crossword on paper. Too easy to check, cheat and reveal online. 😉

54. Quite a challenge, thanks Vlad! After solving 8a reasonably quickly I didn’t think it’d take such a long time to finish.
    I liked ENACTED for its economy and CRANFORD for its humour, amongst others.
    Thanks Eileen for the blog especially the ell/cubit info, which is fascinating.

55. Tough, tricky and enjoyable: favourites EMBER, MAHLER, BATES MOTEL, LUDO, UNDERSCORE. Like Roz, I remembered seeing MASS NOUN in another context – otherwise I don’t think I’d ever have got it.

    [Rivers can give rise to some surreal organisations too: down in Cornwall there is the Camel Waterskiing Club.]

56. Thanks to Vlad for the distraction and all praise to Eileen and anyone who finished it. I was defeated by MASS NOUN, MAEDAN, THEODORE and (annoyingly) MAHLER. More of a labour of work than anything else (for me). Oh, and CENTER.

    Move on.

57. Thank you Eileen for the background to ELL and especially parsing MAENAD which eluded me entirely, having had to cheat to get the word from a list in the first place. My only gripe was well articulated by Dr Whatson@7 in the 2nd paragraph and I waited until my otherwise LOI LUDO to be confident of entering LIFE. But this kept me entertained until Thursday, thanks Vlad.

58. Excellent puzzle. It’s all been said, but I’d like to vote for BATES MOTEL as COY so far. A chilling classic.
    Thanks, Vlad and Eileen.

59. gladys @55 – “Like Roz, I remembered seeing MASS NOUN in another context – otherwise I don’t think I’d ever have got it.” Indeed so: last Saturday JohnH @7 used the term in respect of TILLAGES, but then molonglo @8 chipped in to say that the term might be more relevant to the then-current Prize. Reference to the current Prize on the blog for the previous week’s Prize is considered a serious breach of good conduct hereabouts, and contributors have been reprimanded for less, but no one seemed to call this out as a spoiler at the time. It did, however, help me to get MASS NOUN.

60. Sc@59 I alluded to the spoiler above, but couldn’t remember the precise details, so thanks for that.

61. Sorry, haven’t got time to read the comments just now, but here are a few notes. Apologies for any repetition.

    LUDO (24ac) What Eileen said.

    DRAGOMAN (1dn) is a corruption of the Arabic tergoman (??????) with Cairene pronunciation of the ‘g’ (pronounced as /dj/ most places).

    Re 2dn, LEWD, and the suggestion that W would be more accurately clued as ‘wife’, I thought that too, but isn’t it now a criminal offence to keep a wife under control, even an unchaste one? Not very Guardian either way.

    Re peel/flake (7dn), I wasn’t totally convinced at first, but see Collins online for peel:

    “4. (intransitive)
    (of a person or part of the body) to shed skin in flakes or (of skin) to be shed in flakes, esp as a result of sunburn”

    @Eileen, “the difference between number and amount”. So annoying, isn’t it? And yet, though it grates every time I hear it, I have to admit, it doesn’t really matter.

62. Tergoman meaning translator, as I forgot to say @61

63. Tony @61 – thanks for that.

    Re 2dn : I only added ‘wife’ as a feasible alternative abbreviation as an afterthought. It was in no way implied by the clue, so nothing to do with either Vlad’s or the Guardian’s credentials.

    Re your last paragraph – there has been lengthy discussion over this in the past and, as I said, I had no wish to discuss it further (although it actually does matter to me – and some others, but I fear it’s a losing battle).

64. Eileen: The best way to ensure that lengthy debate occurs is to say “I don’t wish to start a lengthy debate…” 🙂

    Sort of on that subject, re 17a I’ve never seen the word “Inuits” – I always thought the plural was Inuit.

    Like many others, this one took me most of the week, so a real Prize puzzle. I failed, sheepishly, on MAENAD – the dropping a tab part eluded me.

    Everyone loved 11a BATES MOTEL, and rightly so, but I equally liked 26a CRANFORD for the same reason – the surface was bitingly to the point, especially in the UK and US.

    Thanks Vlad for the challenge, and Eileen for the eloquent elucidations.

65. Hi cellomaniac @64
    Not my exact words but I know, I know – I can’t help it! But mercifully, on this occasion, it doesn’t seem to have turned out that way. (Tony admits that he hasn’t read any of the 60 comments anyway.)

    It often seems to turn out wrong for me: if I try to forestall a discussion, it turns out there’s no occasion for one and if I let something go it’s the opposite. Today’s case in point is, of course, 9ac. I should, after all, have included my thoughts @29 in the blog. As I’ve said, I would go for waver, and would never use the word haver but it’s in such widespread use that I thought that was the one to indicate. Since it’s a Prize puzzle, there’s no way of knowing which was intended, because there’s no annotated solution – but I practically always forget about it, anyway – unless Vlad drops in, as he sometimes does.

66. Eileen @65
    Actually, the Graun does publish an annotated solution for the prize. Here‘s the one for Vlad. It favours wavers 😉 .

67. Eileen@65. The annotated solution on the Guardian website has ‘wavers’.

68. Many thanks, both – I rest my case. 😉

69. Eileen, I must, of course, now read all the comments. For the record, although I would be more likely to say “wavers” than “havers” (which I don’t think I’ve ever used), it was the latter I thought of to explain the clue when I solved it.

70. Biggles @3, George@8, when I was a teenager, “dropping a tab” meant taking a TABlet of LSD (usually very small tablet, known as a ‘microdot’). LSD on the medium of blotting paper was known to us as a “blotter”, iirc. Later, I think tabs might have referred to tablets of Ecstasy, or ‘E’, as in the clue, 22ac.

    Incidentally I didn’t get the answer to 22ac until I had fed the crossers to Chambers WW. I did recognise the word (from earlier crossies, probably — certainly not at school or other formal education).

    In fact I found the whole puzzle quite difficult and was pleased to solve it all. I deduced the existence of ‘neb’ from the clue and confirmed it, perhaps ringing a very faint bell (yet another puzzle, probably).

    CRANFORD I definitely recognised only from other crosswords — specifically the TLS

71. Didn’t get going on this one and when I saw some answers glad I gave up. E.g MASS NOUN, MAENAD, wouldn’t have got. T for town! Didn’t know HAVERS.
    My bad Vlad
    Thanks though..both

72. Alan@42, I know MASS NOUNs better as ‘uncountable’ (as opposed to ‘countable’) nouns and in fact I used those terms in a comment to the blog of Guardian 28,649 by Paul, when approving “some wind” as a definition for GALES. Wikipedia seems to treat MASS NOUN as the default, though, or headword, at least. I did also notice the use of MASS NOUN in a comment about TILLAGES in the Tramp blog last week, and a subsequent spoiler mentioning the instant puzzle.

73. [Eileen, similarly to the subject we don’t want to take any further, (but different) how are you on e.g., “there’s three buses …”?]

74. Havers? See 500 miles by the Proclaimers.

75. Tony Collman@70. Thanks, I obviously had a sheltered upbringing.

76. Tony @72
    Although I knew ‘mass noun’ (making that clue not a difficult one), I much prefer the term ‘uncountable’ because it makes that property crystal clear. (This is not a comment on Vlad’s clue, of course!)

77. Only got MASS NOUN after cheating with a word searcher. I don’t really think “money” is legit for M, any more than “legit” would be for L. Monetary would be ok (IMF) but I can’t think of a widely used abbreviation where M means money. And I won’t even get started on ASS. Other than clue, that this was a lovely puzzle.

78. Msg @ 77

    As I’ve posted here several times before, M, generally with an accompanying numeral, is a standard abbreviation in economics for the various definitions of money supply.

79. SS @78
    Thanks – just spent some time on Wiki learning about M1, M2, M3, etc. No longer grumpy.

80. Matt Not-so-grumpy, ‘monetary’ wouldn’t be ok for M just because it figures in IMF. It’s pretty much established cluology that you can’t pick one initial out of a set of initials like that for what it represents in that particular set. Once you start to consider the overwhelming number of possibilities allowing such a policy would open up, you will soon see why. E.g., ‘Cruelty’ for C? (RSPCA). On the other hand, the R for ‘royal’ is in so many sets of initials, that substitution is considered reasonable. Similarly the F denoting a ‘fellow’ of this or that body (FRCS, etc.).

    Not everyone considers that M1, M2 etc sanctions ‘money’ to mean M in a clue, either, in fact. (See Biggles A @3), but this certainly won’t be the first (or last) occasion on which it has been (or will be) used.

81. Tony @73, if you’re still there – I haven’t been ignoring you: I’ve been out.

    I didn’t understand your query to begin with: I certainly wouldn’t say, ‘There’s three buses’ – I’d say ‘There are (or there’re’). The latter set me thinking so I did a bit of research and found this
    which gives two possible explanations of why some might say ‘there’s three’.
    I don’t think I need to say how I am on that. 😉

82. Many thanks to Eileen for an excellent blog and to others who commented.

83. Eileen, thanks very much for the link. I think this commenter on that thread has hit the nail on the head regarding ‘there’s’ with plural noun:

    John Millson December 23, 2010 7:33 am

    This is something that has bothered me since a came to North America in ’81. Now I have the explanation – “there’s” is used in the plural case because 1. “there’re” is too hard to pronounce for those without a British accent and 2. because those without a British accent are too lazy to say “there are”.
    
    And the reason you hear even BBC news readers saying it is because they copy everything American (except the actual accent), whether because their masters make our whether because they think it’s cool.

    So basically, BBC newsreaders say “there’s” + plural noun because it’s hard for Americans (and others with rhotic accents — like the Irish(?) author of that piece, Maeve) to say “there are”.

84. *whether because their masters make them or whether because they think it’s cool.*

85. Many thanks, Vlad, for popping in. 😉

86. Tony @83 thanks – till the next time! 😉

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