Guardian 25,984 / Brendan

45 comments on “Guardian 25,984 / Brendan”

1. Delightful, cleverly constructed crossword. Thank you for elucidation of 5 and 23 down.

2. Thanks Eileen but I think you’ve got the explanation of 23D the wrong way round. It’s the Church of England who are supposed to be the Tory party at prayer!

3. Doh!

   Many thanks, Shirley – I’ll amend it. 😉

4. Thanks, Eileen, for an excellent blog. A real tour de force from Brendan this morning – my kind of theme. I got CONCEALED WEAPON about a third of the way through without being able to parse it (well done you) and that made the rest of the solve a lot of fun. SPIKENARD and DECROWN are unusual words (if, like me, your Bible knowledge isn’t great, that is) but that is nothing more than a minor quibble given the excellence of the theme.

   Bravo, Brendan.

   [Eileen, isn’t the game in 22ac GO and not NO? Still can’t quite get it, though – GO isn’t particularly a game in Japan, is it?]

5. Thanks, K’s D – quite right: I meant GO, of course, but in writing it up must have confused it with the familiar ‘Japanese drama’, which, along with the game, I initially heard of through crosswords. According to Wikipedia, Go originated in China but it seems to be popular in Japan, too.

   [I seem to be a bit befuddled this morning so it’s just as well I’m going out to lead a walk soon: I’ll apologise in advance for any more daft mistakes and deal with them this afternoon.]

6. Thanks Eileen
   Regarding GO in 22ac, COED has “a Japanese board game of territorial possession and capture” and both Collins and Chambers give the derivation as ‘Japanese’.

7. I enjoyed solving this puzzle and finding all of the concealed weapons within the across clues.

   My favourite clues were 4d, 12, 21d, 23a, 19a, 2d & 14d.

   For 10a, an alternative/additional concealed weapon could be ‘bar’.

   I don’t recall ever seeing a square pizza, but I have seen rectangular and oval-shaped pizzas. Of course, round pizza is the most common. And I did enjoy this clue (18d).

   Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I couldn’t parse 22a or 5d (apart from FREED) and now see how clever it is. Nor did I realise the full parsing of 16a. I also did not parse 23d correctly, although I did find out today that Tory/Whig can mean a 17th century Scottish Presbyterian.

8. A very enjoyable puzzle. I think the EXES in 17 is ‘excess’ when spoken.

9. What a great crossword and blog. I am thick enough to have completed it without seeing the theme, so it was lovely to come here and finally grasp the parsing of 16A, 22A and 5D. Of course, looking through the completed across clues the 16A became clear. Stunning!

10. Thanks, Eileen

    Another marvellous puzzle from Brendan, similar in flavour to his last offering in the Guardian.

    I was more than half way through the puzzle before cracking 16a, but this helped a lot with its completion. Many splendid clues, as expected: I particularly relished the double anagram at 12a, the ‘H and E’ in 5d and the simple but very clever &lit at 22d. Last in for me was URGE ON! (lovely clue, and I did kick myself).

    Re 18d: No self-respecting Neapolitan would ever consume a pizza that was not (more or less) round, but there are plenty of places in other Italian cities and elsewhere which serve ‘pizza al taglio’ – pizza by the slice – baked in large RECTANGULAR trays.

11. Thanks, Eileen. Very clever but quite easy for Brendon. A game within a game in that the theme was wholly unnecessary to solve the puzzle itself. That said, the appearance of PIKE reassured me when reaching for Chambers to check the existence of the word SPIKENARD!

    Nice idea, leslie @8 but I think Eileen is right about the EXES.

12. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

    By the time I had got to 16 I had solved all of the clues above it except for ERODE. “Something offensive” could only be profanity or weapon, and knowing Brendan it wasn’t too much of a leap to look at the solutions already in place and spot what was going on.

    Once again, the master of the theme has constructed a beautiful and ingenious grid. Not particularly tricky to solve, but one can only admire another extremely clever crossword.

    By the way, loved the clue for PIZZERIA, but in my house we have two baking trays suitable for the preparation of pizzas – one is round and the other is square, so in answer to your question, Eileen: me!

13. What a great crossword from Brendan, just about my level but full of great ideas!! Much prefer this sort of theme to one based on a clapped out Pop group or girl band!! Thanks Eileen for a great blog and for assuaging any doubt I had about the parsing of 5d

14. The theory on the Guardian blog is that the wording in 16a “- and other across answers” was as a result of editorial intervention(interference).

    In fairness, even Eileen commented on it, it is a little cumbersome and has a ‘tagged on’ and decidedly unBrendanlike feel.

    That said, the crossword as a whole was typical Brilliant Brendan.

    Thank-you Eileen for the blog.

    ps @12 Mitz I think the answer is ‘yes’ not ‘me’ !!

15. Ver y clebevr, as things should be dsone.

    Cheers
    Rowlu

16. A lot of very nice clues – second time in three days that ISOBAR has shown up in the Guardian (after Nutmeg’s Quiptic).

    Re pizzas, there’s certainly Detroit-style pizza which is square (supposedly because it was cooked using leftover trays from the car factories around the city). I don’t think that really detracts from the clue though – both Collins and Chambers describe pizzas as being round (“disc” and “circle” respectively), and even people from areas where square-pizzas are common would recognize the stereotypical round one.

17. What eileen said in her introduction … Thanks to her and the brilliant Brendan .

18. Great crossword; very good setting.

    Thanks Eileen; especially for the H and E explanation in FREE-HANDED. Until I got CONCEALED WEAPON, I thought the link with across clues might have had something to do with ‘Es’ as 9,11,12 & 13 all started that way. SPIKENARD was new to me: ‘The Vatican has said that the coat of arms of Pope Francis includes the spikenard in reference to Saint Joseph’ …. so, now you know.

    SURGEON and SEE YOU were among my (many) favourites.

19. Excellent puzzle. Many thanks to Brendan, and to Eileen.

20. Woild like to hear what Mr Jolly Swatgman thinlks of this great XIMENENEAN puzzle!!!

    Cheers
    Rowly

21. Thanks Brendan and Eileen

    Agree that it was another entertaining edition from the theme-master. Took about half way through till I got it with 16a, although it wasn’t all that great a help in the bottom half – more got the word and had to find the weapon still.

    A brain slip with 1d where I wrote in DEFERENCE for some crazy reason!

22. Very clever stuff, and most enjoyable. The WEAPON bit of 16a came quite early, so CONCEALED was a possible addition, but as I couldn’t then parse it I left it for a while. The penny dropped a few clues later, noting ARM, MINE, UZI and others.

    SHOGUNS (after a false start with SUMO rev) and SEE YOU amongst many favourites. SPIKENARD, EPISTOLER and DISCROWN previously unknown, but the latter two easily derivable.

23. Ha – yes, quite right ToniL @14.

24. Gaufrid @6. Oh dear! After all the discussions here (not all due to me!), you still make the mistake of relying on dictionaries when they go outside their core area of expertise!

    GO is Chinese in origin, see http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoHistory, the confusion as to who’s game it is no doubt arises because of the explanation at the head of http://senseis.xmp.net/?TheGameOfGoTheNationalGameOfJapan%2FhistoryOfTheGame

    It’s on a par with calling cricket Australian!

    Good Xword though.

25. Thanks Eileen and Brendan

    Only got to this fun puzzle this afternoon.

    I liked the theme which only hit me about two thirds of the way through. I had the same idea as Leslie @8 for 17d.

    I ticked 14a, 19a, 5d, 7d, 15d and 23d on the way through.

26. Hi Derek @24
    I made no assertion as to the origin of Go but merely pointed out that there is justification for Brendan to clue it as ‘game in Japan’.

27. Maybe that wasn’t your intention, and I’m sure it wasn’t, but it’s what the quotes you gave imply!

    I found another, completely unrelated, definition that I’ll bung in General Discussion!

28. Mr Lazenby @24: what a daft assertion!! If a setter clued something as “game in Australia” and the answer was cricket no one could complain. as the game is loved and played in Australia. Furthermore, is there anyone who can say he did not write in Shogun because Go is Chinese not Japanese? No of course not,7 this is just silly nitpicking. Great puzzle great blog end of story!!

29. What a fabulous puzzle ! Thanks , Eileen for your entertaining and enlightening comments,and explanation of “collapsing” and “shoguns”.

30. coltrane, I was not commenting on the clue I was commenting on the dictionaries. These are plainly wrong. Plainly wrong is not nit picking. Did I mention the clue? No. So try reading more accurately please.

31. The derivation of Go is Japanese, but only because that’s the Japanese name for the game (I-go). The origin of the game itself is indisputably Chinese, where it is called Weiqi. So Derek’s right. And in any case I’m not sure Brian really had to qualify it, with Japan’s or any other country’s name.

    Jolly super puzzle in every respect in my view, and lovely to see in the generally rather horrid soup of Guardianisms we are served up (not that there aren’t some other very good G compilers).

32. Thanks Eileen for the blog. We entered CONCEALED WEAPON based on the across clues and then forgot to check the parsing. It was only when we read K’sD @4 that we realised what we had done.

    A lovely puzzle from Brendan. The last few days in Another Place have not been as good as usual so it was good to have one that we thoroughly enjoyed.

    Thanks Brendan – great fun!

33. I thought this was an absolute gem. Everything I wanted to say has already been said so I’ll leave it at that.

34. Lovely crossword from my namesake, as usual. A little easy, again, for Brendan but no less enjoyable for that.

    I did see the theme quite early as we were almost bludgeoned with the clue in 16A. (I too don’t feel this was the original B clue!) However I didn’t find that this helped much in the solving of the remaining acrosses. It was however quite elegant!

    Feel I must agree with Eileen Leslie @8. EXES is much more likely to refer to Expenses than Excess. (A common abbreviation and also very much exaggerated in my experience 😉 )

    Yet again more entertainment from the absurd discussions on here (concerning GO in this case). Although sanity was sadly restored by the erudite comments of Paul B @31. Killjoy!

    Thanks to Brendan & Eileen

35. Admirable Brendan compilation – but fairly straightforward to solve (an observation not complaint).
    I surmise (but of course can’t demonstrate) that the solution to 16a might have been more obvious without the purported ‘editor’s tag’ (see theory of ToniL @16).

    DISCROWN a new word for me – don’t imagine I’ll ever use or hear it.

    Many thanks, Eileen – hope the walk went well today.

36. Paul B @31 says “So Derek’s right”. In this case none of the dictionaries referred to by Gaufrid goes “outside their core area of expertise” and only COED has an inaccurate definition. Collins and Chambers don’t. You elucidated that yourself. Sweeping generalisations about “the dictionaries” are not to be encouraged, especially those that begin “Oh dear”.

37. to bertandjoyce@32 which other place might that be ?

38. Well Rowly #20, you see (or maybe you don’t) the point is that ximenean puzzles are perfectly well able to be good but a small number of their adherents lack the intellectual wherewithal to realise that there are other ways of cluing which are equally valid; some have even developed a bizarre theology which leads them to a form of quasi-religious zealotry which observers might mistake for obsessive compulsive disorder.

    You might compare them to F R Leavis (ignorant and proud of it) in literature.

    If you look on the G thread you will see not only that I praised this puzzle but, as I have said frequently before, I usually expect to enjoy B’s puzzles.

    Since the regular theme of you and your pal is that you dislike G puzzles it’s a wonder that you bother to do them – taking away your garbled typing your comments do have an incredibly similar style. Just coincidence I suppose.

    Cheers JS 🙂

39. Re GO – I was happy with it anyway – but on the more general point of the possibility of dictionaries being wrong – obviously it can happen, and although the G doesn’t nominate one dictionary in the way that some other puzzles do, the G crossie editor (HS) has spoken of Collins and OED as the main ones; so if a “wrong” dictionary entry in either of those supports what a setter has put I am inclined to accept that as the “umpire’s decision” even though there may be real-world arguments against that point if view.

    That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with highlighting one’s view on the subject here.

40. Yopu seen vehery angryr Joll y Swghaman!!! Abpout cerossword puzzles or something else??

    But you’re wrong really as i like Guardiamn generally. If they copukd hjust tweak one or two things, then most puzzles wouod be better as the good ideas woud show througfh i’unstaiined’ asa it were! And today’s sasay, buy Orlando , is veret goood. Some ofd the newer stuff van be too complicated i thinkl., but Isuppose stromng htpoughts count for more.

    Be happyt!
    Cheers
    Ropwelu

41. 24ac equates ‘marble’ with ‘agate’. They are different minerals, how does this work?

42. Hi Jane @41
    Under ‘agate’ Chambers gives “a marble used in games, made of this material or of variegated glass” whilst Collins has “a playing marble of this quartz or resembling it”.

43. Ah yes of course, I had a vague memory of that definition, I should have got my Chambers off the shelf.

44. Swagman has insufficient knowledge to offer an opinion @ 39. I enjoyed his ‘way around’ as we might call it!

45. I didn’t get it all in the end, but my, what a great puzzle.

    And Eileen is my favorite blogger, great job highlighting the theme and explaining why the answers are the answers.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen for a tour-de-force team effort.

    Minor (incredibly minor) quibble: a SCUD is not really a weapon – the acronym is for “sub-continental unarmed decoy”. Now to do my sums and submit my comment…

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