Guardian 26,026 / Brendan

53 comments on “Guardian 26,026 / Brendan”

1. Brilliant! I always enjoy Brendan’s crosswords but this was exceptional. I particularly liked the word-chain ‘lightening up’ from black to white.

2. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

   I thought the clues were quite easy, for the most part, taking 15′ for three quarters, but another 15′ for the rest.

   As ever, a very cleverly constructed “theme” from Brendan. Very enjoyable.

   I didn’t know KATHAKALI, but clearly it was so once I had remembered HAKA; and KATYDID came from some distant memory.

3. Did this over an admittedly extended coffee break, so just bunged BLACK in without bothering about the paper chase. One rather hopes ‘chop logic’ has died a death by the time they do the next Chambers…

4. Thanks Eileen. The BLACK-BLANK-BLINK was nice, but went in quickly, as did everything except the Indian dance.

5. I think that Brendan is brilliant. I particularly liked 14d, 26a & 16d and my favourites were 27a STERILE, 21a MECCA, 23a WASP WAIST, 10a TEACOSIES, 17d ELICITING, 11a BREAKNECK, 1a RELABEL.

   New words for me were CHINE, CHOP LOGIC.

   Thanks Brendan and Eileen. I couldn’t parse 3d: I had never heard of this game ‘Doublets’ – it is very clever. I already loved the puzzle, and this makes it even more impressive.

6. Thanks Eileen and Brendan

   A very good puzzle. I got black after seeing through the misdirection of ‘jet’, and only worked out the chain of shifts at the end – very nice.

   I did not know ‘Kathakali’ and did not remember ‘haka’, so I guessed ‘kattawali’ and found the correct answer on checking in Chambers.

   An excellent blog as usual. 🙂 I looked in vain for Brendan at the top of the puzzle, but eventually found him at the bottom!

7. Hi tupu

   Sorry for the wild goose chase: I looked online to see whose puzzle it was before my paper arrived – and in that version the name is at the top. 😉

8. 🙂 Of course, I see now I found him at the bottom of the grid and ahead of the clues – I’m in a hole so I better stop digging!

9. Cleverly constructed crossword; I realised the general drift when I saw BLINK and BLANK.

   Thanks Eileen for a good blog. Once I had HAKA in 17, it was just a question of arranging the I talk, not forgetting KALI – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. 😉

   I quite liked the imagery in BREAKNECK; desperate measures for dipsomaniacs!

10. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. You explained why I was correct with DEPOSITED – I had been quite unable to parse it.

    On 27 I was held up for a while by theatre. I was picturing a stage with actors and unable to see where STERILE came in. Eventually I thought of surgery 🙁

    I worked out BLACK, BLANK…WHITE only after I had filled in all the answers so sadly it was no help to me. When I came here I saw also the positioning of these words in the grid – amazing!

11. P.S. The Saturday Prize Puzzle says on the website that it is set by Boatman, but on the puzzle itself it says Orlando – anyone know who it is?

12. Hi Robi

    I think solving the puzzle removes any doubt. [It said Orlando in my paper. 😉 ]

13. Very enjoyable – thanks Brendan and Eileen. I rarely do those puzzles where you go from one word to another by changing one letter at a time (e.g. in the Evening Standard) as they aren’t terribly exciting, but it was a clever device to link a number of clues.

14. I enjoyed the puzzle, but I’m a bit confused by the parsing of ‘katydid’. I can see ‘end’ signifying the ‘y’ from the termination of ‘very’, but what signifies including the ‘d’ from ‘end’? What am I missing?

15. Hi George

    We need to take the last letters [finally] of verY and enD.

16. Very clever fron Brendan, who never disappoints, he gives fair clues always, and uses themes that are always fun and ‘light-hearted’!! That’s the spirit of crosswords to me, not being horrid or dark.

    I too liked the image of a dseparate drinker SMASHING the neck of the bottle to get at the ‘booze’! Really great.

    Thansks Brendan and Eileen.

    Rowly.

17. Thanks Eileen. Of course, I should have read the clue more carefully (not for the first time).
    Regards,
    George

18. Thanks Eileen. And thanks to Brendan for a very clever puzzle, the theme of which completely escaped me until I had finished it – all the more satisfying as a result. Incidentally (6d chop logic) – my 2003 Chambers has it as a verb “to argue contentiously or fallaciously”. Have a look for the entry after CHOP AND CHANGE.

19. Clever and brilliant as always – thanks to both Brendan and Eileen.

20. Thanks, cholecyst @18.

    That’s really weird: you’d think it must have somehow got misplaced but it’s the same in my 2011 edition.

    [I said it was a new expression for me but it’s a wonder no one has used it here. ;-)]

21. The link clues were some of the last in, and very fulfilling because of it. Well done Brendan!

    Last of all for me, in what was not a difficult solve, was ELICITING, which I liked very much as a clue. For example, ‘for example’ hardly ever means eg.

22. Trailman@21
    exactly – that’s why I liked the clue for ELICITING

23. Very enjoyable puzzle and a fine blog. But please, why is ‘macho man’ = LAD? I would have thought they were closer to antonyms.

24. Thanks for the blog Eileen. Brendan at his most entertaining.

    I was soundly misdirected into thinking (with smug satisfaction) that I had cottoned on to a theme of ‘body parts’ – (BACKbit, breakNECK, CHINk and wasp WAIST)

    Mercifully, I was rescued by 3d!

    Thanks Brendan

25. Hi HKColin @23

    I thought someone might query that. I decided to take it as ‘he’s a bit of a lad’ but didn’t bother to verify it. I’ve just looked it up and found: Collins: 3. ‘a lively or dashing man or youth [esp in a bit of a lad] 4. a young man whose behaviour is characteristic of male adolescents, esp in being rowdy, macho or immature’ and Chambers: ‘a dashing, high-spirited or extrovert man’.

26. I meant to say, ‘I decided to take it as ‘*in* he’s a bit of a lad …’

27. Thanks Brendan for making the breaks in my gardening and washing so enjoyable and to Eileen for ENLIGHTENING me on several solutions that I was not sure about.

    I particularly enjoyed solving BREAKNECK, which I have never resorted to as wine may be spilt, but in the absence of a corkscrew I have pushed the cork in to the bottle with a toothbrush handle!

    PS LADs’ mags have of course been in the news recently . . .

28. Hi Robi, Rowland and George

    I’ve never resorted to quite such desperate measures either but I do remember how speedily my daughter and I learned how to use the ‘waiter’s friend’ type of corkscrew, which had always seemed impossible, when there was nothing / no one else to hand! 😉

29. Thanks Eileen and Brendan. Neat clues; good fun.

30. Many thanks Eileen and particularly for explaining KATHAKALI which I had never heard of.

    I sang a Cole Porter favourite when I uncovered KATYDID:

    Mosquitoes, heaven forbid, do it
    So does every katydid do it
    Let’s do it, let’s fall in love

    Also many thanks to Brendan. You are one of the very best!

31. With reference to 11A, I once saw the speaker at a winetasting successfully open a champagne bottle with a sabre.

32. Hi PeterO

    My stepdaughter-in-law [who comes from Rheims] has one of those sabres and, when she has a party, invites anyyone who has never used one to open a bottle of champagne. [I’ve never had the nerve to do it but I’ve seen it done many a time – quite spectacular [and not a drop wasted, george. 😉 ]

33. Thanks, Eileen. A bijou puzzle from Brendan; I don’t understand really the way it works but I would have thought this ideal for his occasional Monday spot.

    As for how to open wine bottles, here’s the highly sophisticated French way: http://youtu.be/YAx2TXt1v_I

34. Chop logic….Hamlet…

35. Thanks Eileen and Brendan
    I found this very easy apart from the word I had never heard of (kathakali – Chambers found that for me).
    A couple of questions. Is the haka really a “dance”? When the All Blacks do it, it seems more of a threatening invitation to warfare!
    Did anyone else think that TEACOSIES should have been given as 3-5 rather than 8?

36. Thanks Eileen for @25. In my mind macho means more manly and lad means not yet manly, but I did some research and it appears that both terms have very different meanings in contemporary English usage. I still haven’t got used to fit = attractive and now have to remember that a ‘just a lad’ doesn’t mean what it once did. It isn’t just villages in Shropshire that add a degree of difficulty for foreign solvers.

37. Nice puzzle with a small – 10a surely TEACOSIES should be two words. The sterile theatre was easy for me; I spent my previous existence there.

38. Muffin @35

    “When the All Blacks do it, it seems more of a threatening invitation to warfare!”
    What you might call a war dance, then? Chambers: ‘a Maori ceremonial war dance; a similar dance performed by New Zealanders, eg by rugby players before a match.’

    I think I would write TEACOSIES as two words [no hyphen], as Gasman Jack says, and that’s what Collins and Chambers both say. I can’t say it bothered me – which, I think, goes to show how often I write it!

39. Fair enough, Eileen – the haka is a dance.

    I don’t think I have ever written “teacosies” (hyphenated or otherwise) either.

    I wonder which word of my contribution triggered the “comment is awaiting moderation” (or similar) message?

40. Such an enjoyable theme (not just the word chain, but appearing in the correct order in the grid) that I wouldn’t have minded having to work a bit harder to discover it. But perhaps I just struck lucky today. Needed Eileen’s help to understand 16d (thank you kindly).

41. Hi Muffin @39
    “I wonder which word of my contribution triggered the “comment is awaiting moderation” (or similar) message?”

    You must have received that message in error. I have checked the history associated with your comment and there is no indication that it had to be approved before appearing on the site.

42. Thanks Gaufrid – that’s a relief. I thought I might have accidentally transgressed an unwritten rule!

43. Absolutely delightful crossword so thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

    Personally, it was so evocative of childhood for me – first of all because I first encountered ‘katydid’ (the insect)in the foreword by Susan Coolidge to the What Katy Did Omnibus we used to have and which I re-read several times. I think it was the very first time I’d read a foreword in a book – very grown up.

    And the ‘word ladder’ (as I would call it) was a regular feature of the Beano puzzle section. I think I once submitted one, and won ten bob.

    It wasn’t a very challenging puzzle – even the Indian dance was easy enough to work out (needed dictionary confirmation) but it was just perfect.

44. A very enjoyable solve. I saw the theme fairly quickly but decided to solve each clue on its own merit and “play the game” post-solve.

    I didn’t parse MECCA until I had solved the puzzle, and the previously unknown KATHAKALI was my LOI from the wordplay.

    TEACOSIES as one word didn’t bother me, although I would usually think of it as two words.

45. Not that it is the world’s most reliable source, but Wiktionary gives TEA COSY and TEA-COSY, not to mention TEA COSEY and TEA COZY (U.S.), but not TEACOSY!!

    So ya pays yer money and takes yer choice!

46. Thanks to Eileen and Brendan. Would someone please explain how ch comes to be an abbreviation for check. In my dictionary it’s chapter, church or chestnut (or Companion of Honour with caps).

47. judy@ 46
    Chess abbreviation (ch = check)

48. Tis good to be alive on 15^2 sometimes: a fab puzzle, and a friendly, fun blog. Wow!

49. Another superb puzzle from Brendan. He really does go the extra mile.

    Only held up a little at the end by the wrong “theatre” and “licit” as my brain seemed to clock off early.

    As usual the theme was of almost no help to me as by the time I saw it the only relevant clue to fill in was WHITE. But it did speed up that solution and parse.

    I too was confused by the ORLANDO/BOATMAN Prize Puzzle quandary. To make it even more confusing the HTML seems to suggest that the puzzle might even be a collaboration of the two of them. (Yes I know it’s sad that I looked!) However it’s hard to think of two more incompatible partners as far as style goes.

    Back to today and thanks to Eileen and Brendan

50. “chop logic” comes from “Romeo and Juliet”. It is said by Lord Capulet to describe Juliet’s apparently contradictory responses when she is trying to appear grateful for the marriage he is arranging for her to Paris without revealing that she has secretly married Romeo. The chopped logic of her responses are a result of this terrible double bind that she finds herself in.

51. Here it’s a verb, as it is in Collins, whilst in R&J a nounal phrase that’s often reinterpreted as ‘fuzzy logic’ (in the original text, ‘chopped’) as I recall.

52. Really enjoyed this, and thanks Eileen for the blog. CHOP LOGIC comes from Romeo and Juliet – Capulet admonishing his daughter and forcing her to marry Paris. If Shakespeare didn’t originate the phrase this would be a very early usage I’m sure.

53. Thank you Muffin @ 47 if you’re still reading this.

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