Guardian 27,462 / Brummie

46 comments on “Guardian 27,462 / Brummie”

1. Thanks for getting around to posting this Eileen, and for spotting the theme, which I missed. By my count there are eight blues, if we include turquoise, teal and violet, which are not strictly blue.

   An enjoyable puzzle, though on the easy side, I thought. Thanks Brummie.

2. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen. As Eileen said a very enjoyable puzzle and for once I got the theme, probably meaning it was not that difficult to spot. A nice steady solve for me but the top half seemed to go in quicker than the bottom. Lots of nice clues but really liked supremes. Thanks again to Brummie and Eileen.

3. Another who managed to complete without spotting the theme. Maybe because 3D was my LOI.

4. Sorry to hear of your internet hassles, Eileen. Is it part of the cold snap when you should, by rights, be welcoming early Spring? Hope you see signs of that soon, so you and other Northern Hemisphere colleagues can shake off the BLUES (3D) in their many forms.
   Found this not too hard, not too easy.
   What a delightful anagram@13, TURQUOISE!
   I also liked 12a ATHENA, 21a SUPREMES, AND 3d BLUES (of course!).
   LOI 22a VIOLET – I needed the crossers but it still took me ages to see the wordplay. [Eileen, you have forgotten to remove “N” for “nameless” in the blog.]
   With thanks to Brummie for a well-clued, fair and fun puzzle, and to Eileen for your (as usual) interesting blog.

5. By the time I posted, I had crossed with you all, Stella, PetHay and Tyngewick. Forgive my lack of acknowledgement of your remarks.

6. Thanks, Julie @4 – fixed now.

7. Seeing as my FOI was CYAN, closely followed by TURQUOISE and TEAL, the theme sprang out at me almost at once.  So I found this a slightly gentler ride than otherwise would have been.  No complaints really – I was stuck for longer than I ought to, on VIOLET – I should have remembered A Clockwork Orange (who doesn’t, who’s seen it?) and its bouts of “ultra-violence”…

   Themers are CYAN, POWDER, PRUSSIAN, VIOLET (not “violent”, Eileen!), TEAL, CAMBRIDGE, ROYAL, OBSCENE, BLUES, DEPRESSED, TURQUOISE.  That’s 11 at least.  DYESTUFF is loosely connected I suppose, but doesn’t suggest the colour blue.  I know little about the SUPREMES, so I don’t know it there’s a ‘blue’ connection there too.

   Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

8. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen. Very enjoyable and colorful. DECOKE was new to me and I took a long time before parsing VIOLE(N)T. I haven’t heard MAC used in this sense in some time, but yes, it can’t be faulted.

9. It was ‘POWDER’ that I’d missed, Stella @1. Thanks for that, Laccaria.

10. I only ever see themes once I finish the puzzle (if i see them at all) I’m gonna pay more attention next time! My LOI was AWESTRUCK, I didn’t know a ruck was a crease. Thanks Brummie and Eileen

11. Two themes spotted in a row! This one more satisfying than the last, because (a) I didn’t need it to complete the puzzle (b) yesterday I blanked on HENRY – which, if I’d properly read my list of Carry Ons, would have swiftly led to completion … much wailing and nashing of teeth this morning.

    And today went in smoothly for me, which probably means it’s not at the end of hard Brummie’s range of difficulty.

    CYAN is the C in the CMYK colour printing process. Look on any page of the latter half of the paper Guardian, and you will see a little block of four colours and some greys, with CMYK printed beside them. These are for printers’ proof readers to check that colour alignment is satisfactory – each of these colours (Cyan, Magenta, Red, Black – K for the latter, not B for that is Blue in the primaries Blue /Red / Green) is printed by a separate pass of the paper along a drum bearing a particular ink, and if the registration were out even by a miniscule amount then all the colour work would bear psychadelic fringes.

12. Oops Cyan Magenta Yellow Black = CMYK

13. Took ages trying to find an obsolete band called the quorumes.

14. EmilyM@10 I was looking for a theme all the time I was solving, except for my last half dozen or so clues which I couldn’t get first time. To no avail, of course, chiefly because the last ones I solved included BLUES, CYAN, ROYAL and TURQUOISE (my LOI).

     

    Thanks Eileen and Brummie

15. Super blog of a nice, bluesy puzzle. I thought there might be a lot of anagrams, but it seems the across clues were a bit laden with them: down below not so many.

    Thanks Eileen and Brummie.

16. Dave Ellison @14 Is Brummie a setter who uses themes a lot? I use to only solve the prize crosswords but after getting a new job recently I’ve got time in the morning to solve them daily!

    Tc@13 I was also thinking drink = rum!

17. Dave Ellison @14 I’ve just realized Eileen mentioned that he does in the blog. This is why I never spot themes!

18. Thanks Brummie and Eileen

    BLUES my last one too, so no theme for me. Quite easy, though very enjoyable (two sessions, as golf intervened!). Favourites OVERACTS and SUPREMES. I’m not keen on “back” as a reversal indicator in the down clue for ROYAL.

    Trailman @11

    K in CMYK actually stands for Key. It is black, though…

19. TC @13
    Lol, but not as obscure as The Ginquoes, whom I was sure are still touring

20. I got BLUES early on but I still didn’t get the theme. I quite liked this. I suppose it was a little easier than usual for Brummie but as I’m getting to like this setter more and more,I didn’t really notice until others mentioned it.
    I particularly liked DECOKE and RECENTRE- LOI.
    Thanks Brummie.

21. Unlike yesterday, I completed this crossword and saw the theme.  It’s true I felt sharper today, but the friendlier grid might have helped too.

    Eileen, I think UPFRONT, an adjective meaning ‘frank’, would be written like that whether it appears before or after the noun it qualifies (‘an upfront person’, ‘she is upfront with me’), but as an adverb meaning ‘ahead’ it would normally be written as UP FRONT after the verb it modifies (‘she is ahead’).  The dictionary of course is the authority and tries to cover all possibilities, but I’m drawing attention to normal usage as I understand it, and it may be how the setter understood it as well.

    Thank you for the blog, Eileen, and thanks to Brummie for an enjoyable puzzle.

22. Thanks to Eileen and Brummie. All fairly straightforward today for a change, finished in under an hour. Totally failed to spot any theme though until I came here – oops !

23. Being a Brummie puzzle I was looking for the theme and found it when CYAN, PRUSSIAN, TEAL and TURQUOISE went in – although I was thinking colour rather than blue specifically. My experience was the reverse of PetHay@2 in that the bottom went in before the top – apart from RECENTRE which was my loi. I thought SILENT was a really neat clue with each word playing its part.
    As this was over quite quickly I went onto Monk in the FT – and I’m still on it!
    Thanks Brummie and Eileen – it’s always salutary to see how dependent we’ve become on the Internet and yet I’m sure we’d find ways round if we lost it.

24. Peter A@20 we crossed or I would have acknowledged we had the same loi.

25. RECENTRE was my LOI too – a popular choice!  I thought it was a made-up word (and in a genuine sense it is), but it is in Chambers in a list at the foot of a page under ‘re-‘.

26. Alan B @21

    Just for the record – Chambers:

    ‘upfront see up front below…

    ….up front at the front; to the forefront; foremost … candidly, openly [up-front or upfront adj]’ – covering all possibilities, as you say. 😉  I really liked the device used in this clue – nice surface, too – which is why I was a bit disappointed when I discovered the variations.

27. I’m sorry, I missed your latest comment while I was researching mine. You obviously have Chambers! 😉

28. I’m another appreciator of the TURQUOISE anagram.

    I’m not quite sure why setters bother with such min-themes. Are they in fact a delight for the solver?

    Yours, curmudgeonly old NHS. And thanks B and E.

29. An enjoyable puzzle – it’s always a good week when I manage to solve two in a row!

    This was very much a game of four quarters for me. I completed the SW almost immediately while the rest of the grid remained impenetrable. The letters I had were enough to gradually tease out the SE, which in turn led to the NE (aside from OVERACTS, my LOIBO) and then the NW to finish. Perhaps as a result of finishing there I didn’t have any inkling of a theme – useful to know that I should look out for one in Brummie’s crosswords in future.

    Favourites today were COWBANE and NOSTRUM, chiefly for being such lovely words. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

30. Thanks Eileen (@26).  So Brummie needn’t have indicated the space, but I’m very glad he did, as it made for a better clue than without it, IMO.

31. It’s the first full day of spring, and we have at least 5 inches of new snow on the ground here, and no letup in the snowfall expected for hours!

    I enjoyed this puzzle from Brummie, but alas, I missed the theme, which now seems so obvious in retrospect.  (Thanks to Laccaria @7 for providing a comprehensive list of the themed answers, including the answers that were not referring to colors.)  I see from reading the comments above that I was not the only one who ended up solving this bottom-up, with BLUES as my LOI.

    Looking back at the puzzle, apart from the theme, I think Brummie deserves praise for providing so many excellent and concise surfaces.  I think TURQUOISE was my favorite.

    Many thanks to Brummie and Eileen and the other commenters.

32. 27a: I remember MAC from a Bonzo Dog number of circa 1970. “Have you got a light, Mac?” – “No, but I have a dark brown overcoat”.

33. Eileen @27

    Yes, the two biggest volumes on that shelf at home are my Chambers and Collins dictionaries.  Sorry the fact that I have the BRB wasn’t revealed in my first comment – it might have saved you a bit of effort.

    [Second attempt – I’ll try another correct answer in the Captcha.]

34. Theme?  There was a theme?  Kicking myself again.

35. A fairly obvious theme but tricky enough in places to make a satisfying challenge.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

36. NHS @28 – each to his/her own, I suppose, but I like hidden themes (‘ghost themes’ in the trade) and have got into the habit of looking out for them.  That doesn’t mean I always spot them!

    What I don’t much care for are themed clues, or innumerable clues which link back to a single keyword.  But again – I appreciate that these appeal to other solvers…

    Anyway, my next submission to Big Dave (in the pipeline) has a mini ghost-theme in it – a very simple one.  Yet it may still evade some who tackle the puzzle.  This is a bit of a spoiler, but no matter.  I’m focusing on this type of puzzle for the time being.

37. Very late posting having had to go out to play golf before Eileen was able to post.

    Nice tight clues from Brummie this morning.  9 ac transported me back to my youth watching the original Batman TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward, when words like Pow! And Wham ! would be superimposed in cartoon bubbles over the fight scenes.

    Didn’t spot the theme but I rarely do unless they smack me in the face.

38. [DaveMc@31: Yes, lots of snow photos on Instagram from my son and daughter-in-law in Brooklyn. The Aussies are despairing of ever seeing Spring! Hope it is the last gasp of winter and you can all warm up soon. My son wants to get back to cycling around his much-loved Prospect Park.]

39. PS The Cruel Sea (see clue for 10a) is a great Aussie band! Just saying (very late in the piece).

40. Not sure if they took their name from the old film…

41. [Eileen, in a funny kind of synchronicity, the people laying the new water mains in our street just cut through our internet cable, and it has taken them an hour to restore it! But at least I didn’t have the pressure of a deadline to meet…]

42. Well, I sort of spotted a theme – something to do with colour’s going on here, I thought – and then promptly rejected the idea. Never mind. 🙂 On the easyish side overall I thought, with 3d my LOI, for reasons that evade me now given how obvious it was. Fun throughout.

43. Hi Julie @41 – I love your local snippets from half way round the world.

    So many pavements around here are uprooted for gas/water/broadband/whatever that I had to walk on the road part of the way when I went out this morning.

    As Whiteking @23 says, ‘it’s always salutary to see how dependent we’ve become on the Internet’ – and I’ve so many times been thankful for having had the foresight, early on, to get Gaufrid’s telephone number – but as for his ‘and yet I’m sure we’d find ways round if we lost it’, what are his suggestions [perish the thought] for 15² ?

44. The Aussie band “The Cruel Sea” took their name from a surf instrumental from the sixties, which derived from an earlier song based on the book (by Nicholas Monsarrat) and film.

45. Julie, just watched some of The Cruel Sea’s videos on Youtube. Why aren’t they well-known at this side of the world? Why didn’t I know them? They have that kind of INXS urgency – although my favourite Aussie band is still Midnight Oil.

    Indeed, The Cruel Sea was for me the 1963 instrumental by The Dakotas (the ones who also backed Billy J Kramer). Didn’t know the book nor the 1953 film based on it – don’t like war.

    As to this puzzle, I liked it very much. Brummie’s surfaces can be a bit clunky but not today.

    That said, I thought that – of all clues – 10ac was somewhat unsatisfactory. The first letter of ‘Sea’ was only used to pluralise ‘ulcer’ (anagram of ‘Cruel’) which was not really necessary as one ‘ulcer’ is also a complaint. Or am I wrong?

    I won’t say too much about UP/FRONT but if Brummie looked at Word Web Pro that comes with Crossword Compiler one can understand why he formulated the clue as he did. Yes, surely a nice (and novel) device.

    Favourites perhaps NOSTRUM (18d) and SILENT (24ac).

    Thanks Eileen & Brummie.

46. Julie in Australia @44 and Sil van den Hoek @45,

    Great fun reading your comments about Aussie bands!  (Even if only incidentally or tangentially related to Brummie’s puzzle!)  Like Sil, I was not familiar with The Cruel Sea, but as I type this, I am listening to the playlist that comes up for them on YouTube — good stuff!  I can’t argue with Midnight Oil as a best-of-the-best selection.  They are much more my cup of tea than, say, AC/DC.  Other top favorite Aussie bands for me would include Crowded House, INXS, The Hoodoo Gurus and The Church.  And, this is a different musical genre altogether, but in recent years I have occasionally gone back to re-explore and re-appreciate music from the ’60s, and there were some really sweet songs from The Seekers that stand out from that decade!

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