Guardian 26,368 by Brummie

by

Really liked this. Started quickly…

…with my familiarity with the 8/21/25 theme helping me out, but struggled towards the end, with the last two 1dn and 17dn being new to me but guessable.

Across
1 BLUE SKIES Down with runners fitted with electronic part of 8 21 25 (4,5)
A song from T.G.A.S., written by Berlin and sung by Ella Fitzgerald among others. BLUE=”down”, plus SKIS=”runners”, around E[lectronic]
6 ANYTHING GOES See 16
8,21,25 THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK Possible allusion to Fitzgerald’s work about dynasty: “A major 20th-century contribution to culture” (3,5,8,8)
=”A major 20th-century contribution to culture” [wiki], notably sung by Ella “Fitzgerald” [wiki]. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is referred to as [a /] “THE GREAT AMERICAN BOOK” [/ Novel], around SONG=a Chinese “dynasty”.
9 BERLIN Timber-lined housing contributor to 8 21 25 (6)
Irving Berlin [wiki], contributor to T.G.A.S.. Hidden in “[Tim]BER-LIN[ed]”
10 INDENT Start a new paragraph: “Accepted depression …”? (6)
=”Start a new paragraph”. IN=”accepted”, plus DENT=”depression”
11 UNLISTED Made upright again, so not officially recognised by the Stock Exchange? (8)
=”not officially recognised by the Stock Exchange”. LISTED/listing=not upright, so UNLISTED=”Made upright again”
12 CANTOR Religious choir leader causing prison uprising on Dartmoor, say (6)
=”Religious choir leader”. CAN=”prison” plus TOR=a hill/”uprising on Dartmoor, say”
15 THE ALAMO Fort put right inside specially constructed moat (3,5)
=”Fort”. HEAL=”put right” inside (moat)*
16,6 ANYTHING GOES You name it, it’s acceptable as part of 8 21 25 (8,4)
A song from TGAS, from the Cole Porter musical of the same name. Also =”You name it, it’s acceptable”
19 NUDISM Peelers’ practice of immersing the underworld in biblical content, briefly (6)
=”Peeler’s practice”. DIS=”the underworld”, in NUM[bers]=the common abbreviation for the Biblical book.
21 THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK See 8
22 PORTER Old drink, one much represented in 8 21 25 (6)
Cole Porter [wiki], writer of many songs in T.G.A.S. ; also=”Old drink”, a dark London beer.
24 INDIGO Violet almost lodging with love (6)
=”Violet”. Almost IN DIG[s]=”lodging”, plus O=”love”
25 THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK See 8
26 ELLA Great interpreter of 8 21 25 (but not the one mentioned therein) (4)
Ella Fitzgerald, an interpreter of T.G.A.S., but not the Fitzgerald that the 8/21/25 clue refers to.
27 DISCOVERY Record past, up to yesterday’s ultimate revelation (9)
=”revelation”. DISC=”Record”, plus OVER=”past”, plus [yesterda]Y
Down
1 BEHAN Playwright: “I didn’t get that in bar” (5)
Playwright Brendan BEHAN [wiki]. EH=excuse me?=”I didn’t get that”, in BAN=”bar”
2 UNGUENT Gunshot tune played as preparation (7)
=”preparation”. (Gun)* plus (tune)*
3 SMELT Sensed salmon (5)
=”Sensed”, =”salmon”
4 IN TRUST Battered tin (result of too much rain) being cared for (2,5)
=”being cared for”. (tin)*, plus RUST=”result of too much rain”
5 SUBALTERN Officer getting vessel to change direction (9)
=military “Officer”. SUB[marine]=”vessel”, plus ALTER=”change”, plus N[orth]=”direction”
6 GIRASOL Gloria’s sporting fine opal (7)
=”fire opal”. (Gloria’s)*
7 EPIDERMIS Fancy rim is deep, which is not skin-deep (9)
=”not skin-deep”, the outer layer of skin. (rim is deep)*
13 ADNOMINAL A word to the wise exemplifies such usage of a retuned mandolin (9)
Of an adjective being used as a noun, such as “the wise” in that phrase. A plus (mandolin)*
14 RAIN CLOUD Fixed, in-car, flashy water holder (4,5)
=”water holder”. (in-car)* plus LOUD=”flashy”
17 TORMINA “Matron, I developed stomach pains” (7)
=”stomach pains”. (Matron, I)*
18 GENESIS Kelly and relative forming group? (7)
=the rock band or “group” [and =”forming”?]. GENE “Kelly”, plus SIS[ter]=”relative”
20 DURABLE Persistent Egyptian god breaks twice as much, having no oxygen (7)
=”Persistent”. RA=”Egyptian god”, breaking into D[o]UBLE=”twice as much” but with no O[xygen]
22 PANTO Lowbrow entertainment — god, turn over! (5)
=”Lowbrow entertainment”. PAN=the Greek “god”, plus T[urn] O[ver]
23 EPOXY Perverse old you, catching a viral disease which is connected with resin (5)
=”[connected with] resin”. (YE)*=”Perverse old you”, around POX=”viral disease”

45 comments on “Guardian 26,368 by Brummie”

  1. couldn’t get 12ac in spite of having all cross letters. Not familiar with the theme but Berlin and The great American …opened doors. Fav. 1d. Thanks Manehi and Brummie.

  2. Thanks manehi. In my case, 1D was the first I got having judged that 8 began with THE, and probably THE GREAT. Didn’t know TGAS, and even after getting AMERICAN was still struggling. But it all fell into place, with the 13 & 17D anagrams – and PANTO, oddly, last of all. Good fun, so thanks Brummie.

  5. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    My experience was similar to molonglo @2 – 1d first, the PANTO/PORTER crossers last.

    I had “the great american” quite early on, but struggled to get past “novel”.

    I didn’t know TORMINA (Google finds also an Italian resort with this name – unfortunate destination?) or GIRASOL as an opal, though both were fairly obvious anagrams.

    In principle I don’t care for crosswords that hinge on solving one long clue that other clues refer to – generally, solve one, solve the lot – but in this case that didn’t occur!

  9. I enjoyed this a lot – looked a little impenetrable at first but once I’d got from “The Great” to “American Songbook” it got a lot easier despite my rather sketchy knowledge of the theme. ADNOMINAL defeated my old Chambers but had to be right. TORMINA and GIRASOL were also unfamiliar but fairly clued. The SE corner was last to crack – last in was PORTER.

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi

  10. CC@6. What on earth provoked such a contribution? Despise??? Enjoy her work or not, that’s your privilege, but EF is widely regarded as a great interpreter of TGAS. And exactly how does your comment add to our enjoyment of the crossword and Manehi’s helpful blog?

  12. As Fitzgerald got me thinking of Omar Khayyam, I set off on the wrong foot, whilst having ADMONITION at 13 (from the definition without thinking enough about wordplay) made the key work look like “The Great Anglican Hymnbook” and 16 impossible.
    Eventually the checkers made it clear what 1 had to be, and soon all became clear.
    I agree wholly with togo@10

  13. Thanks Brummie & manehi.

    I’m another who had THE GREAT AMERICAN but took a long while to find the ending.

    I quite liked the flashy water holder.

  14. Thank you manehi for the blog, and particularly for the explanation of 8,21,25, which I got from the crossers but had never heard of.

  15. Re 24A, indigo and violet are separate, though adjacent, colours of the spectrum. “almost” therefore might be doing double duty.
    I also fail to see how anybody could “despise” Ella Fitzgerald. Who are the “us” referred to?

  17. THE GREAT came before the other bits but after convincing myself that BRITISH BAKEOFF didn’t fit, I wasn’t too long to the answer.

    ‘Lowbrow entertainment’ seems a bit disparaging for PANTO. Surely just about the one art-form that appeals to all brows?

    But I enjoyed this crossword loads (as I usually do for this setter), and the unfamiliar words (or unfamiliar usages, as with GIRASOL) yielded easily from anagrams.

  19. I just dropped in to see if anyone had offered an explanation for the inclusion of the word “causing” in 12a, and I was frankly astonished to see the remark by Conrad Cork at post 6. How on earth could anyone despise Ella Fitzgerald?
    many thanks to Brummie for a good challenge and to manehi for the blog

  20. Thanks for the puzzle, Brummie, and for the blog, manehi. Permit me to say that I do not think that Mr Cork @6 and his ilk are aware of whom Ella Fitzgerald is!

  22. I enjoyed this a lot. I got the theme quite quickly thanks to BERLIN and the Fitzgerald ref-how on earth can anyone despise Ella of that ilk?-and I had never come across 6,13and 17 down. Still they were anagrams.
    Thanks BRUMMIE

  25. With Manehi in really liking this. Just a tiny quibble about 19a – ‘Dis’ was ‘Pluto’ when I was a lad, the god of the underworld rather than the region.

  27. Funny, as I was starting to solve this, I was thinking about Cole Porter anyway. And then BERLIN fell, which gave me “the Great American Songboook” (recognizing the Gatsby reference but unable to parse the clue). From there it was a breeze. But hey–I’m a nerdy American gay man, which means I was pretty much weaned on this theme.

    Why do Irving Berlin and Cole Porter regularly make it into these things, while the rest of that gang (Rodgers, Gershwin, Kern, Loewe, Loesser, etc.) rarely do?

    I like Ella, but there are some songs in the GAS where her interpretation isn’t my favorite. As with any great singer with a long career, she did make a couple records she shouldn’t have. So if you didn’t like her the first time, whoever that naysayer was up there, try again. If not–de gustibus.

  29. mrpenney @27

    Perhaps because Berlin and Porter did both words and music. Loesser sometimes did but the others are best known for one or the other.

  31. Rhotician, Gershwin of course also represents both words and music, though that’s two people (George the music, big bro Ira the words).

    Of course, a bigger worry in that case is that “Gershwin” looks pretty resistant to cryptic cluing. (Never mind: upon further review, it anagrams as “Swing her”! That’s pretty cool, although Gershwin predates swing by a couple years.

  33. It s true that it s not mandatory to like Ella Fitzerald but it s also correct to say that such vitriolic and frankly totally irrelevant comments have no place in the blog My only quibble with today s excellent puzzle is that at 12a “uprising” suggests the answer should be nactor !!

  36. ‘Uprising on Dartmoor, say’ is very fair, isn’t it, for TOR. And there’s no mishtake with that definition either.

    Re Ella, I don’t see what’s wrong with Conrad’s comment, apart from the fact that it may be a bit confusing. What people may not know is that he is something of an authority on jazz, and so the ‘us’ may mean ‘jazz fans’ generally, rather than 15/2 users for example. He will correct me if I am wrong about any of this I’m sure, but perhaps there is a faction that doesn’t think much of Ella’s warblings. Is it analogous to people not liking Araucaria? I don’t know, but they’re out there, aren’t they.

    I do like that live version of Mack the Knife though. Cor.

  37. Count me as another who finished with the PANTO/PORTER crossers. I was also trying to make “bingo” fit but in the end I accepted that if there was a god called “Bin” I’d probably have been aware of it, and “go” for “turn over” (as in an engine) isn’t strictly accurate because if it doesn’t fire it doesn’t go. I was trying to think of something medieval for the old drink rather than something more modern, although why Cole Porter didn’t occur to me until I had PANTO is a mystery.

    I’m so used to seeing The Great Gatsby described as “The Great American Novel” that it took me a while to realise that Brummie was using BOOK instead of NOVEL. The “possible allusion” at the start of the clue is obviously his justification for the change.

  38. I’m not much of a jazz “fan”, Jelly Roll Morton aside, and I don’t associate the great American standards primarily with jazz. By not identifying “us”, and using the word “despise”, which amounts to fanaticism, Conrad’s comment is just trollery.

  39. rhotician @ 38
    I agree – I can see “dislike” (possibly, though I wouldn’t concur), but “despise”……….?

  40. Thanks all
    I think the word despise would be more appropriate applied to a person rather than their performance.Despise certainly carries much more meaning than dislike.
    I found this quite straightforward for a Brummie except that I spent a long time sorting out what and why ‘adnominal’.

  41. I survived “The Great American”, fell for “Outdoors”, rather than”Songbook”, presumed “Lotto”, and was scuppered until a 7 0 stuffing at darts, 7 pints of Guinness, and a reappraisal!

  42. 50/50 on this – some of the obscurities a bit far-fetched.

    Liked theme and the unstated connections between some of the themesters but the biggie gave it away too easily – surprised it couldn’t have gone a bit farther.

    Here’s 26a singing 1a – a jazz classic.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epRXoS_P0lk

    Obviously one would expect negativity from the anti-jazz industry but “despise” seems a bit strong to me.

  43. I’m probably a bit late in on this, having been out all day. But I started last night with the conviction that I was looking for something about “The Great Scott”, so (perhaps understandably) extended that to “The Great Scottish Outdoors” — and felt on reasonably safe ground, what with a certain independence referendum taking place only the day before . . .. Getting “Blue Skies” didn’t do anything to disabuse me, unfortunately.

    After a few hours of zizz, however, I woke up, got “Porter” and the rest didn’t take too long to fall into place. Odd how that happens.

    I love Brummie’s setting: you just have to tune in to the required wavelength, and it’s all so fairly clued that even things you haven’t knowingly heard of (“adnominal”, “tormina”) fall into place.

    Thanks to all concerned

  44. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    Actually did this one last Thursday, but only got around the last check of parsing and then the solution this morning. THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK was all new to me which led to a bit of online help to complete some of the songs contained here. Didn’t know that ‘The Great Gatsby’ was referred to as THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL (book).

    Was also surprised to see PANTO referred to as ‘lowbrow entertainment’.

    Typical crisp clueing to compliment a theme that did not readily give the puzzle up. Nice work!!!

  45. Me too with Bingo @22 dn, and trying to figure out Barrel, Barley etc. etc. for 22 ac. And I really like a pint of Porter! (and an earful too). Great puzzle.

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