A challenging Brummie puzzle.
This one took me a while to solve and almost as long again to parse, as it took me a while to work out DUMBSTRUCK and TRITON in particular.
Brummie normally offers us a theme, but if there’s one in today’s crossword it is not an obvious one (there are a few emtries relating to the sea (TRITON, CRUSTACEAN, HMS BEAGLE) but I don’t think they come together as a theme.
Thanks, Brummie.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SUBMIT | Present of diamonds possibly overwhelming doctor (6) |
| SUIT (“diamonds, possibly”) overwhelming BM (Bachelor of Medicine, so “doctor”) | ||
| 4 | BARDOT | Songwriter’s welcoming party for French star (6) |
| (Lionel) BART (“songwriter”) welcoming DO (“party”) | ||
| 9, 20 | DARK MATTER | It’s not seen as a theoretical universal presence (4,6) |
| Dark matter is invisible. | ||
| 10 | CRUSTACEAN | A nut: with scarce bother, it’s shelled (10) |
| *(a nut scarce) | ||
| 11 | CHERUB | Angelfish skirting East River (6) |
| CHUB (“fish”) skirting E (east) R (river) | ||
| 12 | HUMIDIFY | Increase closeness? Murmur ‘I would, if end of day’ (8) |
| HUM (“murmur”) + I’D (I would) + IF + [end of] (da)Y | ||
| 13 | PROCESSOR | PC element of academic releasing female for college (9) |
| PRO(f>C)ESSOR (“academic” releasing F (female) for C (college)) | ||
| 15, 16, 25 | FALL BACK UPON | Resort to autumn retreat, having finished working (4,4,4) |
| FALL (“autumn”) + BACK (“retreat”) + UP (“having finished”) + ON (“working”) | ||
| 16 | See 15 | |
| 17 | HMS BEAGLE | Evolutionary gambles taken by male to reveal Darwin’s craft (3,6) |
| *(gambles) taken by HE (“male”) | ||
| 21 | OVERHAUL | Lacking capital, sweetheart? Robbery proceeds would make restoration (8) |
| (l)OVER (“sweetheart”, lacking capital) + HAUL (“robbery”) | ||
| 22 | EXTANT | Surviving, once one is protected by explosive (6) |
| EX (“once”) + A (“one”) protected by T.N.T. (“explosive”) | ||
| 24 | DUMBSTRUCK | Speechless Donald Trump’s inside, powerless and adrift without lead from business? (10) |
| (Donald) DUCK with *(trums) inside, without [lead from] B(usiness)
UMSTR is an anagram of Trump’s without P (powerless) |
||
| 25 | See 15 | |
| 26 | CONTRA | Rebel bookkeeping entry? (6) |
| Double definition, the second (I assume) relates to a contra account, which is an account used to gradually reduce the balance of another account. | ||
| 27 | TRITON | Main messenger coming to a fishy end (6) |
| TRITON was a Greek god, the messenger of the sea, who had a dolphin’s tale, so “coming to a fishy end”, although of course a dolphin is not a fish… | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SMASHER | Buster‘s dish (7) |
| Double definition | ||
| 2 | BIKER | Dispute, but not about gang member? (5) |
| BI(c)KER (“dispute”, but not C (about)) | ||
| 3 | INCUBUS | Might you unconsciously be taken by this stylish new reporter on the Guardian? (7) |
| IN (“stylish”) + CUB (“new reporter”) on US (“the Guardian”) | ||
| 5 | ASTHMA | First-class maths problem that does not present a jolly wheeze (6) |
| A (“first class”) + *(maths) | ||
| 6 | DOCUDRAMA | Play for real? (9) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 7 | TEARFUL | Blubbery? Fat? Rule otherwise! (7) |
| *(fat rule) | ||
| 8 | MUSHROOM CLOUD | Rubbish study, perhaps, about flashy aftermath of explosion? (8,5) |
| MUSH (“rubbish”) + ROOM (“study, perhaps”) + C (about) + LOUD (“flashy”) | ||
| 14 | COCK ROBIN | Macho singer‘s key indicator of Mozart work in con brio rendition (4,5) |
| C (“key”) + K (Kochel catalogue, an “indicator of Mozart work”) in *(con brio) | ||
| 16 | BIVOUAC | Temporary camp pen holding very orthodox union activist leaders (7) |
| BIC (“pen”) holding [leaders of] V(ery) O(rthodox) U(nion) A(ctivist) | ||
| 18 | BREAKER | Wave from food producer going round about (7) |
| BAKER (“food producer”) going round RE (“about”) | ||
| 19 | LINCOLN | Old leader‘s sort of green (7) |
| Double definition, the first relating to Abraham Lincoln, the second to Lincoln Green, the colour famously worn by Robin Hood. | ||
| 20 | See 9 | |
| 23 | TAUNT | West Country town not about to have a dig (5) |
| TAUNT(on) (“West Country town”, without ON (“about”)) | ||
*anagram
I read the blog every day but very rarely post, so its great to be first, courtesy of a beach in Goa! I found this quite hard work but everything revealed itself in due course. Favourites for me we’re crustacean and humidity, loi was smasher; it’s a good job in old enough to know who Bardot is. Thanks Brummie and Loonapick.
26 a contra entry is a correction in a ledger and is 1 a bachelor of medicine as there is no indicate for mb to be reversed
Thanks loonapick. Nothing too challenging for me in this one, for a change, so an enjoyable stroll. The bookkeeping term was not familiar, I’m glad to say, but everything else was entertaining, so thanks to Brummie.
Thanks Brummie and loonapick
I liked HUMIDIFY and EXTANT. I didn’t parse DUMBSTRUCK and didn’t know about CONTRA as a book-keeping entry.
A doctor is a Bachelor of Medicine, but this is almost always given as MB. However Wiki tells me that Oxford University awards BM BChir, so Brummie is in the clear.
Toadfather – thanks for pointing out the typo in 1across. As for “contra”, I have been a qualified accountant for nearly 25 years and have never come across contra to be a correcting entry, but I have heard of a contra account, which is also in Chambers. Following, your comment, I did a bit of Googling and can see that a contra entry can be used to reverse or offset an entry, but that is not necessarily a correction, although I imagine that that would be the usual reason to reverse an entry. Every day is a learning day!
I wondered that too Toadfather.
Couldn’t think of a dispute to make BIKER and though TRITON a bit iffy.
Thanks muffin re BM (you answered while I was typing)
Thanks Brummie & loonapick. A fairly gentle solve today only slightly held up by the fact that I thought Darwin’s ship was called THE Beagle until I got the M in the crosser. I’m never sure if HMS should be treated as a three letter word (3) as opposed to (1,1,1)?
LIke Niltac @8 I was held up by 17ac. Such clues are always contentious: 3,6 seems wrong, but 1,1,1,6 makes it too easy.
24ac: trums is not itself an anagram.
Quenbarrow – well spotted – will edit
Methinks Brum has slipped a tad. His last couple were pretty good. This was OK.
Thanks loonapick.
A bit to chew on here. Forgot Lionel the songwriter, dnk the bookkeeping term so biff and lookup, ditto Triton due to ad hoc classics gk, and ditto smasher: colloquial, never heard. Biffed dumbstruck, too lazy to parse, tho obvious, and took ages to think of taunt minus on (UK geog also ad hoc). Didn’t get much of a laugh, tho Mozart – Cock Robin was a fun counterpoint, but no real pain either. Wondered about ex=once..This is my once wife?? Hey ho.
Thanks Brummie and Loonapick.
Thanks, Brummie and Loonapick.
Enjoyed much of this, particularly the misdirection in TEARFUL and CRUSTACEAN.
3 Different Cs: college, key and circa, and yet another doctor to confuse us.
I didn’t know the bookkeeping entry and couldn’t fathom out D Trump; nice clue though.
HMS is a permitted (and generally favoured) variant of H.M.S. so I think it is fine as a 3.
I liked the PC element; thanks Brummie and loonapick.
In 3d I think cub = new reporter ?
I was also held up by writing in The Beagle at first.
Liked Blubbery. Didnt like Triton.
Had to check the meaning of Incubus. Might be taken by one!! Indeed!!
Nice puzzle and not too demanding for a Tuesday.
Thanks to Brummie and Loonapick
I too was put off by BM, and Muffin may well be right that it’s legit, but we’ll probably never know if Brummie intended it that way. Setters do occasionally make slight mistakes, but most don’t fess up, and some it seems don’t even come here.
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick. I knew TRITON but could not parse it, but did not know CONTRA in bookkeeping or Lionel Bart.
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick. I did not find this as easy as some others clearly did. Right hand side went in quite readily (with the exception of a couple in the SE), but the left side took me much longer. I was held up in the SE by getting obsessed with Truro for 23 even though I was pretty sure it was a city. Last ones were Triton, submit and contra (also spent ages toying with contre). Favourites for me were humidify and processor, and thanks again to Brummie and loonapick.
I was pleased to finish this with no real holdups. I particularly liked 13A, with its very clever surface.
Thank you for your parsing, I struggled with DUMBSTRUCK and INCUBUS – I have onlyjust spotted c – loud (about flashy) in 8d. Wikipeadea describes TRITON as a merman with a fish’s tail, who is a messanger of the sea (main) – I think this makes more sense.
BM BCh, as muffin @4 points out, is the Oxford University medical degree – incidentally, in the forecourt of the old Radcliffe Infirmary (now the Department of Philosophy) there is a fountain of TRITON with a ‘fishy tail’, in English heraldry the term ‘dolphin’ can mean a ‘curved fish’ in sculpture etc..
I see that the Medical School was ranked 1st in the world by the 2018 Times Higher Education rankings of Universities for Pre-Clinical, Clinical and Health Studies, a position it has held for the past 7 years.
Thank you Brummie for an enjoyable puzzle and loonapick for the blog.
On the subject of dolphins not being fish, it turns out that it’s the definition of fish that has changed over time. In the nineteenth century it was quite reasonable to call cetaceans fish because a fish was something that swims in the sea. (Or possibly even any sea creature)
Thanks both,
I found this quite hard going having biffed in ‘Truro’ for 23d and ‘the’ instead of hms in 17a.
Why is ‘mush’ ‘rubbish’? Collins online does not have this sense. The main meaning is a thick paste.
Quite challenging for this early in the week, but very enjoyable. Still wondering if we can all be missing some kind of theme…
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick
I enjoyed this mostly, and it’s inventive clues like HUMIDIFY, DUMBSTRUCK and INCUBUS (three of my first half dozen answers) that keep me hooked on these crosswords (when I have time to do them). I prefer to work out clues like that rather than force the answer out first and work out why it is that (like MUSHROOM CLOUD and FALL BACK UPON in tihs puzzle). I had to guess TRITON, and I thought the clue for DOCUDRAMA rather weak in the company of so many other better, more cryptic clues.
Thanks to Brummie, loonapick and other contributors.
feel that monday and tuesday are more like the end of the week so far…or my brain hasn’t kicked in yet. Another one not very happy with Triton – a guess as I knew he was connected with the sea, but knew nothing about tails or tales of his. Fish tails and dolphin tails are not the same, of course, one being vertical, the other horizontal. But then, there is, famously, no such thing as a fish (QI fact as all the things we call fish do not descend from a common ancestor, unlike mammals and birds, so the grouping “fish” is ill-defined).
I wasn’t sold on “fall back upon” – I got the first two words quickly but have only heard it as “fall back on” so struggled with the third for ages which is silly (of me). “Cock Robin” was clever – though I hate things like “key indicator” which could be anything from A to G (or even H if allowing German notation). “docudrama” and “contra” were other weak spots in an otherwise well constructed and interesting set of clues. Thanks Brummie and loonapick for untangling the parsing.
Got all the answers, which is a minor miracle but didn’t parse DUMBSTRUCK or a couple of others. Lots to enjoy but I did not like DOCUDRAMA. I do wonder what Guardian setters are going to do when there is finally a new POTUS; at least he has been good for something. It took an age for the penny to drop re: the dish meaning of SMASHER, as it has rather fallen out of use.
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick and, as ever, everyone else who has contributed.
thezed @27
Good point concerning FALL BACK UPON. I’m sure I’ve never encountered the phrase in that form, although Chambers gives UPON as an alternative to ON in that phrase. Also, I don’t know how BACK can mean ‘retreat,’ or vice versa. These are fine points, perhaps, but I had trouble with that clue – one of my last to fall.
Another thought on 1a. As it seems to be only Oxford awarding a BM to doctors, would “Oxford doctor” have been fairer?
My only error was CRETAN for TRITON. I thought about it for ages then wrote the above in desperation.
muffin @30
‘Oxford doctor’, being so much more specific, would certainly have made it easier to get BM, but it is not necessary to be so specific, and the clue is perfectly fair as I see it.
Alan @32
I take your point, but it wasn’t a difficult clue anyway. “Oxford doctor” would have avoided the reaction “it’s SUIT with MB in it – oh hang on, it’s BM….”
Coming back to my own comment @24, I’ve had a look at Chambers and OED as well as Collins and none of them has a sense of ‘rubbish’ for ‘mush’. OED has 15 senses, none of them being ‘rubbish’.
Loonapick @25, what, only 25 by years an accountant? What did they teach you young fellows? I’ve been an accountant for 45 years but still remember covering contra entries in my H Foulks Lynch correspondence course based on Spicer and Pegler’s ‘Bookkeeping and Accounts’. They have their own special symbol – a small c with a diagonal line through it. They were quite useful when books were maintained in handwriting and crossings out and alterations were strictly forbidden.
Tyngewick – I have never had to write out accounts by hand, other than in my exams more than 25 years ago, but even then, the runes of which you speak are not known to me. Although I passed all of my (public sector) accounting exams at first asking, I used the jug method (fill it up the night before, pour it all out on the page, then it’s no longer there afterwards), and since then have tried to avoid doing any real accounting myself through delegating to my team and sticking to management accounting and business partnering, although I am currently doing neither having chucked my last job a few months ago, since when I have had a go at freelance translating until my next (ahem) “exciting” opportunity comes along.
PS One of my editions of Chambers (9th ed, 2003) has rubbish as one of the definitions of mush.
Brunswick, you weren’t an inmate of Caer Rhun Hall at any time, were you?
Or Tyngewick,even. Damned autocomplete.
Not especially easy but quite enjoyable. BIKER was LOI and parsed after the event. SMASHER was old fashioned when I was a lad and I am extremely aged. I liked COCK ROBIN and TAUNT and,yes,I bunged TRURO in first even though I knew it was a city AND I used to work there!
Thanks Brummie.
We thought maybe 19D would develop into a theme, as today is Lincoln’s birthday!
I enjoyed this, although I also remained hopeful (at least until I ultimately gave up) of finding a theme. I was trying to see if there could be some connection involving BREAKER and SMASHER. [I know this is too tenuous, but just to show the contortions I was making to try to find a theme, I thought of smashing atoms — this would create a possible thematic connection for MUSHROOM CLOUD, FALLout, converting MATTER to energy, the U.S.S. TRITON (a nuclear powered submarine) and U.S.S. Abraham LINCOLN (a nuclear powered aircraft carrier). (And Brigitte BARDOT was frequently referred to in the 1960s, I believe, as a blonde “bombshell”). But my conclusion was that this was a themeless puzzle.] My favorites today included INCUBUS, HMS BEAGLE, PROCESSOR, and DUMBSTRUCK.
Many thanks to Brummie and loonapick and the other commenters.
I gather from the comments that the “dish” meaning of SMASHER refers to a dishy person rather than a food item or piece of china. Someone please let me know if I’m wrong.
I found several of the clues to be on the obscure side. Lincoln green, Lionel Bart, BM, contra were all new to me and even googling to not readily yield answers. I thought TRITON was fine, however, even though I wasn’t able to guess it. I’ve always thought of Triton as having the typical merman fish tail. Even if he’s described as having a dolphin’s tail, in the US, dolphin can mean mahi-mahi. (Barely caught myself after spelling it “tale”).
Thanks to both for making my after lunch coffee more enjoyable.
I wondered about a science theme when I got MUSHROOM CLOUD and DARK MATTER. On the latter clue it seems to me it is a double definition.
The BEAGLE is officaly HMS BEAGLE and we refer to it as “THE” because of the way we use the language. The confusion is ours.
BlueDot @41. I take “dish” to mean a good-looking person – a bit of a smasher.
I wish the bloggers would be even more explicit in their answers rather than letting us guess how one word is meant to mean the same as another.
We come here for help, we don’t come here to be made to feel even more stupid than we are.
David @36,
Indeed I was consigned to Care Ruhn for a period by my employers. A dreadful experience for a grammar school boy who had not had to suffer the rigours of boarding school. I got told off for playing hookey for a day to climb Tryfan.
Loonapick @35, I took up teaching and researching accounting PDQ after qualification, but still find my hard won skills useful sorting out the records of the various small charities I’m involved with. Possibly this has got a bit OT. Do current editions of Chambers omit the ‘rubbish’ meaning for ‘mush’? If they do, that rather supports my point.
Lucy Lastic @43
Sorry you feel that way. I try to find a balance between helping people and not teaching my granny to suck eggs, but will try to be more explicit in future wherever I judge it appropriate.
Tyngewick@24
On top of spaghetti/all covered in cheese./I lost my poor meatball/when somebody sneezed./It rolled off the table/and under a bush./ And then my poor meatbal/ was nothing but mush.
A sort of rubbish?
Cock robin is more famous for being the victim of a crime than for being macho.
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.
Pino@46
‘And then my poor meatball was nothing but a thick paste’. I agree that renders it uneatable, but not all mush is rubbish. For some reason guacamole comes to mind.
The current Chambers has ‘rubbish’ as the fourth definition of mush¹.
Thanks loonapick and Brummie.
DaveMc @40 (if you re-visit) : Hat off for finding that many possible nuclear links. I was looking for astronomy links and only managed 3 at a stretch.
Gonzo@48, thanks. I suppose it’s OK then.
I had “bard” as the songwriter in 4 across. (Never heard of Lionel Bart.) But I *knew* the answer had to be “Bardot”, and figured that “OT” must be some obscure term for “welcoming party” and left it at that.
Could not parse a multitude of the answers although I knew they had to be right. (E.g. 21 across, and the “cloud” part of 8 down.) Thought Triton was fine; from “The World is Too Much With Us” I knew he was some’at to do with the sea (“main”) in Greek mythology and Uncle Google explicitly revealed him to be the messenger of the sea.
In 1 across I just took “BM” to be “MB” reversed and figured that there must be some excuse for the reversal that I couldn’t see!