Guardian 27,043 / Crucible

39 comments on “Guardian 27,043 / Crucible”

1. Brilliant!

2. Thank you, Eileen, right up my street too.

   I went as far as looking up ‘novices’ and share your misgivings. It may be an oversight or just a tad loose.

   On the other hand I was unable to parse OPERAS as you did as I felt that use 1 too many Es.

   Favourites were many but would mention MEDUSAE (lovely plural), TEMPUS FUGIT, & TRUMPERY.

   Top job, Crucible, many thanks.

   Nice week all.

3. Quite right, William @2 – leading lady is R [as I read it when I first solved it!]

4. Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

   Really enjoyable puzzle; the phrases are pretty well-known I think.

   I too loved MEDUSAE for the PDM of West. Good to see the “politician” for TRUMP(ery.) There is a particularly scathing (and worrying) article in the G2 supplement today by Zoe Williams …

5. I didn’t take Latin at school but the phrases used here are tea-towel stuff so no problem, and I enjoyed the puzzle.
   “Magnum”=”bubbly”?
   Thanks to Crucible and Eileen

6. Struggled until I twigged the theme.

   I think that given the lack of punctuation in answers, “a mate’s” in 13 could equally be a genitive.

   Thanks Eileen and Crucible.

7. Another one who loved this, especially 7d – a brilliant clue. The Latin bits weren’t too hard, though I failed to make the giant intellectual leap to think NIMBI might be the plural of ‘nimbus’ and couldn’t see how ‘novices’ fitted in. The ‘Nice grocer’s offloading water’ was also, well, nice.

   Very entertaining mid-week fun.

   Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

8. Auriga @6 – but mate, as a noun, does not mean ‘couple’.

9. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

   Very entertaining. I managed most except the NW before having to go out; on returning I still had to stare at the NW for some time! I didn’t twig MAE West. I had INSISTS without parse too, and I’m not impressed by it now I’ve read it. Also “at the top” in 5a would have been more appropriate in a down clue, as you say, Eileen.

   Lots of favourites (TRUMPERY included), but top for me today were two late ones in, CHIMNEY POT and ELEGY (“exit lines” indeed!)

10. This was excellent. I’ve been waiting for the Trump clues (following the Brexit ones of the last few months) and 7d was brilliant.

    We had West for MAE in the FT yesterday which made 1a a bit easier.

11. (Eileen: for a second I thought that @8 you were addressing Auriga as “mate”…)

12. JimS 😉

13. Loved this, plenty of really good surfaces & much fun. I agree that 7d takes the crown for absolute brilliance – wonder if it would have worked had the result been different, though!

    Many thanks to Crucible for the entertainment and to Eileen for a very interesting & informative blog.

14. This was fun. I don’t tend to catch themes unless they’re thrust right at you, but I did of course notice all the Latin this time.

    TRUMPERY, while brilliant, is “too soon,” as they say. I’m still too angry to laugh about it. (On the other hand, the setters never let up about Brexit, so I guess I can take it.)

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

15. Love those Etruscan centaurs!

    Thanks for parsing MAGNUM OPUS, Eileen. I thought “bubbly” was the anagram indicator for “soup,” and then where could MAGNUM come from? Magnums (magna?) of champagne aren’t anything I think of often.

    Did anybody else try to work “mate” for “China” into 15A REFRAMING?

    This makes me think of a sketch by (I think) Beyond the Fringe years ago about a coal miner who had wanted to be a judge but “Hadn’t the Latin.” Instead he’s underground — day after day, “A piece of coal! the very thing I was looking for!”

16. Hi Valentine @15

    Huge thanks for giving me the excuse to provide this link! 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUZNynYXzM

17. Thank you Crucible and Eileen.

    This was fun, but, although I “solved” 14a, the satirist MARTIAL did not come to my mind – ARBUTUS I remembered from the strawberry tree, but first heard the word singing “My Love is an Arbutus” in primary school, as did Eileen.

    The clues for ELEGY and TRUMPERY were great.

    typo, 21 for UGHS, not 22.

18. This is turning into another fine week. I was a little apprehensive on getting the theme, but all of the phrases are very familiar. Annoyingly ACTIONING was last in – no excuses because we hear that kind of language all the time in the office. Remembered ARBUTUS from a Joni Mitchell song…

    Thanks to Eileen and Crucible

19. Delicious crossword. I spent the whole solve grinning, thinking “Aha…Eileen will love this clue”…”Eileen will love that clue”… so how fitting that you are on the blog. Maybe Crucible tipped gaufrid off!

    Completely agree with everyone bowing low in admiration for 7d. A classic clue in a classical crossword. 🙂

    Many thanks both.

20. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen. I needed help parsing EPIC but otherwise much enjoyed this puzzle. ET TU BRUTE does not turn up in any of Shakespeare’s sources for Julius Caesar, though the phrase must have been known earlier, for it turns up in the 1595 Octavo version of 3 Henry VI where Edward IV chastises his brother Clarence for switching sides: “Et tu Brute, wilt thou stab Caesar too?”.

21. We found this great fun even though we thought 23 was namoi, a river (water source) in Australia. It parses OK so we’re sticking with it! Thanks to everyone.

22. Couldn’t parse EPIC because I was trying to subtract from EPICIER – aaaargh! NIMBI was (were?) new to me and I had to reveal it/them. Loved 7d.

23. Yes, a great puzzle. The only time I remember seeing ARBUTUS in a paper was in The Times about 45 years ago when Bernard Levin did a column about extraordinary names of real people, which included Trailing Arbutus Vines, alongside Bump & Twinkle Quick, Pepsicola Atom Bomb Washington . . . I had better stop there as it’s completely off topic, but you can tell that they stuck in my head!

24. I am glad all those years at school studying the Bard and Latin have finally paid off! Great crossword. Thanks Crucible.

25. A goodie – but one that took me longer than it should have because I’m still infested with decorators! At least I think that’s the reason! Very enjoyable. ARBUTUS was entirely new to me and was LOI and the excellent SEEDCASE took some time too. I loved TRUMPERY despite the orange horror which our transatlantic cousins have unleashed!
    Thanks Crucible.

26. @20.There is some possibility that Marcus Brutus was a son of Caesar. Suetonius, as well as Plutarch whose translation by North was Shakespeare’s source, wrote a biography of Caesar (in Latin) and writes “when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, “You too, my child?” Some think this is the source for the quotation and could have been well known.

27. I had trumpery almost immediately but couldn’t believe the cleverness of it! Bravo Crucible! Truly a classic!

28. Eileen@8 but couple as a verb does mean mate, so mate + ‘s works for me.

    And many thanks for the review. Stupidly, I missed 5d.

    TRUMPERY is brilliant

    Many thanks Crucible

29. Gladys@22 – me too, took me ages. Shouldn’t it be grocery?

30. Dutch @28/29 – Yes, I said in the blog that couple as a verb means mate.

    Re 12ac: ‘I’m going to the grocer’s / grocery’?

    I don’t blame you for not getting 5dn – dreadful word! 😉

31. @21 Tenerife Miller. NAMOI occurred to me too, but wondered how Crucible or anyone else would know it as it’s TUO or KBCA, or beyond the black stump as we say.
    I fell short of the 5s too. But enjoyed Crucible’s linguistic melting pot immensely.

32. Fifteensquared is my favourite site but, true, I do not make as many contributions as, say, five years ago.
    That has to do with a few things, one of these being that I do the Guardian crossword only after 5:30pm (after my solving partner’s work).
    At this time of the day, most of the things have already been said.
    Nowadays, I mainly make a comment when I have an urgent question c.q. issue or when, like today, the puzzle is quite special.

    LATIN was our first one in, so there you go.
    Indeed, as baerchen @5 says a lot of tea towel stuff.
    No ‘alea iacta est’ or ‘veni vidi footsie’, though.
    While time flies, I’ll have to admit that I couldn’t make a Latin word of F,G,I,T,U.
    Latin was one the subjects when I was at school and I wasn’t that bad at it.

    Good to see Baldrick’s ‘magnificent octopus’ turn up again.
    That said, I can’t help thinking of icecream every time I see MAGNUM OPUS.
    Just like others tricked by ‘bubbly’ but it had to be it so let’s get on with it.
    [really sorry to sound like Tsarina May here]

    Never heard of the satirist MARTIAL but again, it had to be it.
    Heard of Anthony (of Man United fame) – missed copportunity, perhaps?

    5ac was a bit tricky if you’re not a botanist.
    Could have been RABUTUS or even RA + some other killer.
    Anyway, our initial RABUTUS was eventually dismissed because of the O of CHIMNEY POT (11ac).
    5d was the LOI, thought it might be AUTHORING (which fits, but does not fit the wordplay).

    Lovely crossword throughout.
    One of those puzzles in which one is so focused on the ‘theme’ that one cannot really be bothered about the surfaces of the clue.
    Usually very important to me.
    Were they good? Dunno, didn’t look at them well enough.
    In that respect it was a bit like wandering around in Araucaria territory.

    Thanks, Eileen.
    And Crucible – I know you write perhaps about 30 puzzles a month, year after year, but this one certainly wasn’t run-of-the-mill.
    Wonderful!

33. This was a lovely puzzle and, like many others, my favourite was TRUMPERY. Thank you, Crucible.

    And thank you too to Eileen, both for the blog and – perhaps especially – for @16, reminding me of the hilarious genius of Peter Cook!

34. Great crossword with a minimal quibble over MAGNUM OPUS in that a magnum does not specifically refer to champagne but (I think) generically to a large bottle of wine – made me try and look unsuccessfully for other parsings.

35. Thanks both,

    Defeated by 5d, but what a delight this was.

36. [Eileen – As you know, I often comment late; this is for various reasons, usually owing to time’s constraints, not least because reading 225’s offerings invariably takes a good deal longer than solving the puzzle itself! However, given your enjoyment of 7dn, I felt it my duty to draw your attention to a similarly excellent, though ironic, clue from Tuesday’s Times. “Let in respected, working individual heading for office (9-5)”. I gave it two ticks and, if anything, preferred it to Crucible’s offering on that person. But that may be because it came first. Hope you enjoy it…… ]

37. Thanks, William F P – clever wordplay, certainly, but, for me, Crucible’s is wittier.

38. Indeed. But I found the choice of “respected” to describe him so judiciously fanciful I nigh guffawed…. For me, it just trumped this one (which I agree is wittier) on the chortle scale. Have a lovely weekend.

39. I forgot to mention that I think the parsing of 25 should have mentioned that DIE (“go”) is contained in EM (“mid-December”) rather than the straight charade suggested in blog. This may be helpful to any confused future archive solvers.

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