Guardian 27,096 / Crucible

68 comments on “Guardian 27,096 / Crucible”

1. Many thanks Eileen and Puck. A most enjoyable puzzle.

   In 7d I took the definition as “Playboy for cash”, so I don’t think this is a lift and separate clue.

2. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

   Very clever. Quite a mixture, though. I had a fast start with 1d jumping out at me, preparing me for 8d. HOUSE, ADIEU and SHOP were also write-ins…..then it got harder! I didn’t parse AFFLICT (not knowing “flic”), LITTLE, OLIVE (which I should have got from the theme) or AFFAIR, and I’m still not sure I see the latter – in what way is FF leaves? (I’m probably missing something.)

   Favourites were SHOP and SERF, for their well-hidden definitions.

   Two very minor quibbles: C & A haven’t existed in the UK since 2001, as you say, Eileen, so would “old clothes store” have been fairer? Also (extreme pedantry), CHELSEA isn’t a club, it’s an area of London, which happens to contain a club called “Chelsea Football Club”.

3. 1a is a tale of two cities – one in the clue and one in the solution.

4. Oh, and I was convinced that 3d was BIRDCAGE, not knowing that example of rhyming slang. It works too, except for the A crosser!

5. Good fun, although I couldn’t properly parse BIRDLIME. Favourites were SPECIFIC, CLUBFACE (despite muffin’s quibble about Chelsea FC), CURIOSITY and GIGOLO (I agree with Giudice @1 about the definition being ‘Playboy for cash’). Many thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

6. . . . Where is the LIME part of BIRDLIME in the clue?

7. 20a (AFFAIR) looks rather like two different draft clues accidentally mangled together.

8. muffin: ff can be an abbreviation for FOLIOS, according to the BRB.

   I found some of this very easy – the long down clue Dickens books were write-ins. But some eg GIGOLO (Iwas trying to include an anagram of BOY) more difficult All in all, an enjoyable solve.

   Thanks Eileen and Crucible.

9. Forgot to ask: For what does C & A stand for? (We always uses to jokingly answer: “Coats and ‘ats”)

10. …delete one of the “fors”

11. VW @ 3: Well spotted, though not sure if its intentional.

12. cholecyst
    Thanks for FF

    BIRDLIME is a sticky stuff spread on branches to trap birds. I first came across it in “Swiss family Robinson”!

13. a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle as ever; thanks to Crucible & Eileen.
    “Refuse tosser” quite brilliant.
    @cholecyst
    Clemens & August were the two Dutch brothers who founded C&A. Your joke is much more genteel than mine, which is unrepeatable.

14. Somehow I found this much easier than yesterday’s puzzle.
    I’d never known why prison was “bird”, so thanks for the elucidation, Eileen and thanks to Crucible for the fun.

15. “Clemens & August”, cholecyst (and their surname was something like Breninkmeyer).
    “Scandalous affair” might also refer to CD.

16. {re baerchen @ 13 – First Lady “How do I know which is the front and back of these pants?” Second Lady “Look, they’re marked C and A”}

17. Muffin @2 (Even more extreme) pedantry: in fact, Chelsea Football Club is in Fulham, which is perhaps why the clue starts “The other…”

18. drofle @6 – the full Cockney term for prison is BIRDLIME, abbreviated to ‘bird’.

    cholecyst @9 – I heard that C and A joke in a pantomime as a child. I was a lot older before I heard Shirl’s and baerchen’s version. 😉

    Thanks, van Winkle @3 – I hadn’t spotted that but I did wonder about the SCANDALOUS AFFAIR, Lilibet, which I remember finding out about in a previous blog.

    I was hoping someone might have found Dorrit by the time I got back!

19. Shirl @ 16: Ha-ha, very good!

    But I wish I never started this!

20. Thank you Crucible and Eileen.

    Great fun, I too searched everywhere for DORRIT. I had the definition for GIGOLO as “playboy for cash”, as did Giudice @1, “refuse tosser” for LITTER LOUT, and “flush access” for TRAP DOOR, the door being “flush”, level, with the floor.

21. Great puzzle-thanks Crucible and Eileen.
    baerchen@13 your secret is safe with me.

22. My memory of C and A is that the original shop was called C and A Modes. They were all over the place. I suppose Primark has taken over from them and BHS in affordable clothing. Also down in Sussex we have a lovely river Ouse- feeds the wells for Harveys beers at Lewes. Nice crossword Crucible.

23. Charles Dicken’s mistress was Ellen Lawless Ternan, an actress whom he first saw in 1857 on the stage of the Haymarket Theatre.

24. Cedric: Harvey’s briliant beer is brewed using water from an aquifer (the same that feeds the Pells Pool), not from the Ouse. The river, being tidal at Lewes would not make for good beer at all!

25. Thanks, Cookie – I hadn’t noticed my careless omission of the underline in 14ac, fixed now.

26. [Sorry Eileen, Wensleydale’s lovely river is the Ure – the valley is sometimes known as Yoredale. The river doesn’t become the Ouse until it’s out of the dale, near Great Ouseburn.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Ouse,_Yorkshire

    There’s a “Great Ouse” in the fens too.]

27. Enjoyable as I relished all the Dickens references. Interesting throwback to the talk of Mme Defarge on yesterday’s Rufus forum in Van Winkle@3’s suggestion.

    Sadly, while I solved them all, my parsing was parlous in a few places – had not heard of “C and A” as fodder for 19a SCANDALOUS, forgot that “flic” was a French cop for 24a AFFLICT, and missed the notion of Chelsea as a club for 17d CLUBFACE. Really appreciative of the blog for these and other elucidations, Eileen.

    Thanks to Crucible and forum participants for a lot of fun.

28. C & A, along with SCANDALOUS, reminded me of Nina and the five hats.

29. muffin @26 – I am mortified!! [And how did no one else spot it?]

    I think of Wensleydale as my second home and of course I know that its river is the Ure /Yore. I can only plead that URE and OUSE are the most common crossword rivers and I mixed them up this morning in my still light-headed state. I shall expunge the remark straightway.

30. Don’t feel too bad, Eileen. If you look at the link, you will see that the Ure become the Ouse, but only after it has been joined by the Swale and Ouse Beck.

31. I spent a while looking for Dorrit too, after the penny finally dropped. My guess is she is still doing bird.

    Great puzzle, thanks to Crucible and Eileen

32. A very enjoyable puzzle, though i had difficulty in parsing AFFLICT and LITTLE. I also solved 4d as BIRDLIFE not BIRDLIME and will need further convincing before accepting I’m wrong! If BIRDLIME is indeed correct would the clue not feature “FLYER” instead of “FLYERS”? Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

33. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    lancolver @ 32: as muffin clarifies @2, birdlime is a sticky substance spread on branches to trap any birds that land there, so the plural is absolutely correct.

    hth

34. Re 4d, am I to understand that “prison” and “time in prison” are the same thing?

35. One of those annoying days when a single letter invalidates all the rest of my efforts. I had BIRDLIFE not BIRDLIME. Birdlife = fliers, I reasoned, and if you’re stuck in ‘bird’, you serve time. Well why not.

    That aside, I did enjoy the solving. Dickens got twigged along the way, which helped with a couple. CLUBFACE was a late entry, as the Chelsea reference led me first down the football path, St Andrews being the home of Birmingham City, entirely a blind alley of course.

36. Crossed with lancsolver @32, I see!

37. When I were a lad, we used to refer to C & A as ‘Cheap and Awful’.

    4dn struck me as a little bit unfair. If you don’t know ‘birdlime’ or the origin of the rhyming slang, you would get no help from the crossers, and there is no wordplay in the clue to assist. But I’m only griping because I didn’t, and had to resort to an online aid to complete my LOI. Otherwise, I enjoyed this (and, as a Chelsea fan, relished the fact that the letters I had in 17dn were CFC, picked out in blue on the Guardian app grid).

38. An enjoyable puzzle. Most of this went in very smoothly, saw the theme and 1d pretty early, but there were a few tricky ones to finish, with FACTORIES last in. Liked AFFLICT

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen

39. Good puzzle. I’m another who went for birdlife in desperation, having not heard of either the sticky stuff or the CRS derivation. Lots of clever clues, but 8 is strangely tame. I so wanted 21 to be THE OLD, but SCANDALOUS put paid to that. (PS Thanks to Shirl @16 for the laugh of the day)
    I can’t find Dorrit either 🙁
    Thanks, Eileen and Crucible.

40. I wonder whether Crucible is having a little joke in 7d by mentioning Joe, hoping we will think of Joe Gargery (Great Expectations) and then linking him with Playboy? Joe G was, of course, as far away from a Playboy as it is possible to be.

41. Steady plod through a typical Crucible. Good clues and nice answers all around. Didn’t know about the lime bit of the cockney slang but got there in the end. Thanks to everyone.

42. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen. C and A was new to me (so I got but did not fully parse SCANDALOUS), but I did know the use of BIRDLIME and checked the slang usage via Google. As a Dickens fan I much enjoyed this puzzle (and I too spent time looking for Dorrit).

43. I think the definition of 2 down is just “flush access”, not the whole phrase, as Eileen suggests. A trap door is flush with the surrounding floor. At most, “lifted” could be part of the definition as well as an upward indicator for the clue, but not when you consider that a trap door might be opened downward (e.g. on a scaffold).

44. Do “Men of Kent” have an adjective for themselves? I ask because, although there are several definitions of the difference, it is only in the west of Kent that the natives refer to themselves as Kentish Men, whereas Margate is quite definitely in the east of the county where Men of Kent come from. However, if men, and hence all that relates to them, who are Kentish only come from the west of the county, then clearly that adjective only applies to that area, hence not to Margate.

    How much should we respect local tradition over what might be common usage elsewhere, given that you would have to duck if you called someone from Margate Kentish to their face?

45. An enjoyable crossword which I finished quickly having spotted the Dickens link early on. I came up with the same answer as lancsolver for 4dn.

    I usually read two Dickens novels around the Christmas period, this year, I started on the Uncommercial Traveller a few days before Christmas,then…

    I was given the GCHQ quiz book for Xmas. Unlike last years GCHQ competition, I’m finding this year’s competition (p120 onwards) incredibly difficult.

46. I didn’t do at all well with this despite getting the two book titles straight away. The theme largely eluded me even though it was handed to us on a plate! Ah me!
    I liked AFFLICT and SERF. The former took me an age to get but,in retrospect, it is quite brilliant.
    A very poor performance from me today- perhaps I shouldn’t have watched Theresa May’s speech!
    Thanks Crucible.

47. Isn’t MARGATE/CHELSEA the gate in the Marshalsea?

48. Can someone please explain “Twist nonstop….”? I cannot get my head around it at all. If it’s supposed to equate to “not stopping” I don’t think it works.

    And what’s the “other” doing in 17d? This, plus the definition, (to call the CLUBFACE a “striker” is a real stretch, at St. Andrews or anywhere else) and the nonsensical surface make it WCOD for me.

    I’m not even going to mention U for “unionist”.

    Thanks Eileen and Crucible.

49. James @47

    Mar[gate] Chelsea in the middle row has been gnawing away at me as a homophone for Marshalsea all day – Dickens’ father was imprisoned in Marshalsea debtors’ prison and his wife and younger children [not Charles] joined him there. And he used it as a setting in ‘Little Dorrit’.

50. Jaceris @48
    The solution to the “other ” 17 clue (17a) is Chelsea, which is supposed to be a “club”.

    Not my favourite clue either!

51. I don’t think, however clever Crucible is, that you can get “Marshalsea” from margate chelsea

52. Why are Margate and Chelsea in there? I can find no specific links to either in Dickens’ life, nor are they forced by other entries. If anything, I think they are the solutions that are keeping more thematic entries out of the grid. Dorrit has disappeared off the bottom of the grid, as she has just gone through the gate (tee hee)

53. James@52: Dickens had close links with both Chelsea & Margate (see Eileens’s blog). He was married in Chelsea and was a frequent visitor to Margate when he stayed in Broadstairs, his favourite holiday resort. A Chelsea bun used to be a favourite tea time treat in our family – haven’t seen one for years!

54. PS: enjoyed this puzzle, thank you Crucible & Eileen.

55. Absolutely astounded, as a student in London I lived two doors up from Dicken’s house at 28 Doughty Street, my bed used to shake uncontrollably on and off at night, but there was no underground railway beneath it, now on googling I find that the London Post Office Railway ran beneath it!

56. correction, that should be 48 Doughty Street.

57. Thanks both.
    Factories took me an unconscionably long time. JuneG @54, if you are ever in Cambridge, Fitzbillies sell Chelsea buns that are the finest of their kind.

58. My penny dropped at 8d. My wife and I are reading the Dickens novel a chapter a day. I picked up the crossword in a cafe after finishing chapter I/iv, got a few clues (including A CHRISTMAS CAROL, which I just took as a one-off), felt the slight nag of familiarity at 8d, glanced down at the table, and lo, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND!

59. Failed on 6d – thought it was BATTERSEA (Mainly oppose?); did it have CD connections?

    Thought about Marshalsea and Dorrit, too, but can’t see anything for the latter.

    Thanks Eileen and Crucible

60. FACE in two clues, too: 6d and 17d

61. Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

    Late in the day, but moved to point out that 2D: Cross section lifted for flush access? is ROOD (which for some reason is a cross, must look that up) PART (section) “lifted” to give TRAP DOOR, an access which is flush to the surrounding surface.

    G’night all

62. I solved 17d but couldn’t parse. I was locked into thinking [the other 17] referred somehow to every hole on a golf course bar the last.
    Thanks to C & E (not C & A)

63. I solved 17d but couldn’t parse. I was locked into thinking [the other 17] referred somehow to every hole on a golf course bar the last.
    Thanks to C & E (not C & A).

64. Dave Ellison @59

    Yes, I initially had BATTERSEA – and decided not to comment on the two ‘faces’.

    Alphalpha @61 – that’s what I tried to convey in the blog: ‘rood’ appears fairly often in crosswords, more often than not in reverse: ‘a crucifix, especially one positioned above the rood screen of a church or on a beam over the entrance to the chancel’.

    I’m going to bed now…

65. Thanks all
    Over many years as a maths teacher, I used C&A modes as an aide memoire for the most fashionable average
    Of course it all stopped when they closed!

66. This was quite hard work!

    New words for me were LITTER-LOUT and I had never heard of C&A clothes chain but I found it via google.

    I was unable to parse 26a, 21d.

    Thanks Eileen and Crucible.

67. I’m so pleased to read that I wasn’t alone with Battersea!

68. Bird(lime) is “time” spent in prison – “doing bird” – not the place (no one says “in bird”). Rarely does “prison” mean “imprisonment”, which gave me some pause, but Chambers (all I have to hand) does give it.

    “Cockney rhyming slang confusingly omits the rhyming part”. That is generally held to be the point of rhyming slang – that a hearer not in the know would be unable to guess the meaning. Two fairly common ones that may not be spotted as rhyming slang because of this are “take a butcher’s” (hook – look) and “use your loaf” (of bread – head).

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