Guardian 27,775 / Nutmeg

59 comments on “Guardian 27,775 / Nutmeg”

1. Had a lovely time with this; liked “turned out” at 20ac for “emptied” (as in turned out pockets).  Thanks setter and blogger for a great start (ish) to the day

2. Re 21 across: AIR BRIDGE can also be “a covered passage by which passengers can go from an airport building to an aircraft”, which is the meaning here.

3. Bit of a tussle indeed. Still looking for the wit though.

4. Thank you Nutmeg and Eileen; a good Friday challenge. I liked WHILE, while I was a bit bemused by AIR BRIDGE. The ground crew are just that, aren’t they ? They don’t go anywhere,

5. This was a very enjoyable solve. Like Eileen, I solved the RHS first, then I moved to the LHS.

   I had many favourites: COSMOPOLITAN, CODIFY, STAGED, SPACEMEN, UNVERSED, REBUT.

   Thank you to Nutmeg and Eileen.

6. I didn’t like it I’m afraid.  Found this a slow and unenjoyable, ‘plodding’ solve.  The only reason I have managed to post this fairly early on is because, living in the Happy Country I have a two-hour start on people in the UK.

   I am always pleased to see foreign words used in puzzles but, honestly, what on earth is the surface of 7 dn supposed to mean?

   I din’t really understand GRASS WIDOWER?  It was my LOI and I only got it by guessing it must be either glass or glass-something.  I understand the explanation above, but I don’t think it’s very elegant.

   To me, burning the midnight oil just means staying up late, not necessarily studying.

   Is a grange a farm?  As opposed to a farmhouse or farm building?

   There were some clues deserving of a tick.  I liked CAMPAIGN, CARTWHEEL, STORYLINE.

   Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

7. Today I wrote my post into Word as soon as I was finished, so I could easily to do a cut and paste when the blog came up.

   This is what I wrote – all before I read your words, Eileen.

   “In the end I had so many ticks that I stopped: I could have ticked each clever clue in this terrific puzzle. Impeccable surfaces and nothing obscure – just devious misdirections and lots of “tea tray” moments.
   It was certainly no pushover for me. My breakthrough after a paltry first pass was the anagram at 10d LIQUID MEASURE.
   I must single out my CsOD: 9a MAFIA (triple tick before I stopped ticking) and the nod to my Irish ancestors in 22d (up!) REBUT/TUBER. LOI was 25a SPACEMEN: I spent a long time looking for hats to fit “bowlers”! [I bet you got it straightaway, quenbarrow.]”

   So my comment about the ticks was just as in your introduction, Eileen. Not that I could ever blog a puzzle: the pressure of a deadline would put me into a real flummox.

   Bouquets to Nutmeg on a great grid and thanks to Eileen for a beaut blog.

8. [We crossed, Anna@6. Sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy this one. Often I agree totally with your posts which are always interesting and well-considered. Different puzzles appeal to different solvers on different days, and as we often say here, Viva la difference! Is the Happy Country a part of Scandinavia? I am concerned about population decline in your part of the world after reading so many “Scandinavian noir” crime novels and binge watching “The Bridge”.]

9. Another fine crossword

10. I’m afraid I’m with Anna @6 on this one (and with pex @3). It was hard work with, I thought, not as much of Nutmeg’s usual humour to make it rewarding.

    I thought 16d was a double definition – prose is not “in verse” and to be unfamiliar with a subject is to be “unversed” in it.

    Thanks anyway to Nutmeg for the challenge, and to Eileen for the blog

11. Starting with empty grid, wondering what any of them are, suggests a larger role for crossers in progressing the beast. After seeing ‘abe’ into position in 11a, the Q led pretty quickly to 10d, and then lots followed.

    FA, as in SFA, is more usually used these days in its direct form (f*** all) than as reference to a sweet girl (per Eileen’s note). Its use in 9a today is perhaps the crudest reference seen in a Graun xword. Contra Eileen, SW corner last to go, 25a giving a wry smile. Ta Eileen and Nutmeg for today’s puzzle and notes.

12. I got about 75% of this (with the aid of my trusty Chambers Crossword Dictionary) and had to reveal the rest.  Quite proud of myself though, as I seem to be improving a bit. I learned from 23 that ‘east’ in an across clue can mean reversed, which is useful to know.

13. For surface of 7d, for Anna@6, reference is to radio stations, tuning in to a particular one.

14. To Julie @8

    Yes, as you say, we all like different things – and that’s all for the best.  Wouldn’t it be a boring world if we all thought the same way about everything!

    Yes, the Happy Country is Finland.  A recent ‘survey’ reckons that people in Finland are the happiest in the world.  You would never believe it from sitting in the tram or the bus in the Helsinki rush-hour 🙂

    The population is not declining but increasing, though I suspect this is due to immigration.  We are always being told how dangerously low the birth-rate is.  There is a large electronic sign outside the department of statistics which tells you the exact population of Finland at any given moment.  You can see it clearly from the metro near Kalasatama station.  It was standing at about 5,7 million the other day.

15. 13a In an expression like ‘golf-widow’, the word widow expresses the idea of being left alone, and the word golf expresses what has taken the partner away. In the clue for grass-widower, the being left alone is expressed, but there is nothing in the clue to say what has taken the wife away. i.e. the word grass is not clued at all.
    1a To codify does not mean ‘put in order’, it means to create a formal set of rules for something.
    The ‘air bridge’ could be the one at Gatwick, that lets people on the ground cross the runway.

16. A long way from the Nutmeg that used to set the Quiptics …

    I think the ‘passage’ use of AIR BRIDGE is not used much here; apparently, the British equivalent of the American jetway or jet bridge.

    It was a tussle but pleasing to finish. I guess the ellipses link the two meanings of material.

    I particularly enjoyed the offensive politician getting his dues, MAFIA, COSMOPOLITAN and SPACEMAN.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

     

17. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    Great fun. It took me several minutes to see how the definition for GRASS WIDOWER worked, then I laughed out loud! Other favourites were STORYLINE and REBUT.

    The only quibble – “pining” is rather loose for DYING. You could say “I’m pining for the fjords”, but not “I’m dying for the fjords”. Conversely “I’m dying for a drink” but not “I’m pining for a drink”. Could anyone give an example where they are more interchangeable?

18. Geoff @15 – the answer to 13ac is a cryptic definition, not a charade: there is no need for GRASS to be clued separately. It seems that GRASS WIDOWER is an extension of ‘grass widow’ – the link I gave in the blog gives possible explanations for the expression.

    muffin @17 – funnily enough, it was ‘… for a drink’ that came to my mind when solving – and I had no problem with it. 😉

19. I am another who found this a plod rather than witty or elegant. Too many clues were post-parsed because of the wide range of possible synonyms. Another who felt “codify” is not properly defined. I wondered if “grange” was an Archers reference? “grass widower” was new to me and a biff – it fitted was all I could manage until I looked the term up. Clever, for sure, but too clever for an unfamiliar phrase? I didn’t like “air bridge” – it’s used by the passengers not the ground crew (who generally work outside the aircraft) and is a single word on Wiki. “pacemen” for bowlers is one we’ve seen before but in 40-odd years of listening to Test Match Special I don’t recall hearing the term used. It’s used in running – Roger Bannister famously had pacemen to help him break the four minute mile barrier at Iffley Road.

    For “corporal” is the material the one used in mass? That seems a better fit for “material” than the other definition, being “of the human body”.

    I enjoyed a few but, whereas sometimes I feel good about being misled and duped, here I just felt I had to grind through possibilities or guess and fit. Sorry but thanks for the useful blog Eileen.

20. Muffin @17 I wondered about “pining” too and satisfied myself that someone who is pining away and eventually dies (of a broken heart) could, i suppose, be said to be dying during the pining period.

    But then again, we are all dying because we are living!

21. To chinoz@13

    Ah, thanks for that.  That hadn’t occurred to me.

22. Only know the bolster meaning of Dutch spouse, its whole point being that it doesn’t go anywhere, unlike the live one. Hey ho, great puzzle anyway, no grumbles at all, lots of smooth surfaces as said above, pretty cruisy for a Friday, tho the bottom half needed a bit of work. Hoped 26ac wasn’t some obscure migratory bird, thankfully not, and slow to get wax/whacks. Fun, thanks both.

23. Like some others I thought this was a really great puzzle, although it took me ages to get going; and then I got stuck but was helped by the two anagrams with QU in them. Favourites were HOWDY (LOI), SPACEMEN and CARTWHEEL. Many thanks to the ever-entertaining Nutmeg, and to Eileen.

24. …FA and its euphemisms always remind me of great uncle Jimmy, very Chapel, who said flackin’ ‘arry and blocky ‘eck.

25. Oh dear. I thought I was getting better at cricket terms, but PACEMEN defeated me. Didn’t know about air bridges, and couldn’t see how GRASS WIDOWER fitted the clue – it still feels like a bit of a stretch.

26. thezed @19; I think the term used in running is usually pacemaker or pacesetter; paceman is in Oxford to refer to a fast bowler.

27. eileen@0  I found the SW the last to go but with the most giggles. HOWDY is brilliant as is SPACEMEN(theres me thinking Quicks seamers spinners etc) took a break and eureka (well via the check button)

    Thanks to both ladies.

    A good Graun week

28. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. I am another who found this tough going, but another who also enjoyed it. After first two passes the only clue I had in was lance corporal. However from there on in my experience was similar to Eileen and others, right hand went in and left hand last to give way. Last two for me were defrayal and grass widower. Lots of nice clues but I particularly liked spacemen, storyline and whacks. Thanks again to Nutmeg and Eileen.

29. I have to agree with those who weren’t totally thrilled with this one, For me maybe the weakest part was the pair of “Put in order”s. CODIFY has already been mentioned, and I would think that PLACED is more “Put” than “Put in order”. It’s always nice to see what appear to be parallel constructions go off at right angles, but this pair was spoiled for me for those reasons.

    I see Eileen went for the polite company version of FA in 9a. Not sure what I would have done if it were me.

    Thanks.

30. Eileen, I think the reversal in CONTINUAL is of UNIT after CO + N.  A tiny point.

    As well as thinking of all the expressions that have DUTCH in them, it might be fun to compare them with those that have FRENCH.

    Last night I had only three words.  This morning a lot more filled in — unlike Eileen, I filled in the left and had large gaps on the right.  Had to use the check button for the last few.

     

     

31. I suppose that I accept more looseness in cluing than most solvers, so I have no objections to anything in today’s offering. I’ll have to add BAILS (which I got) and PACEMEN (which I failed to get) to my list of cricket terms.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

32. Thanks, Valentine @30 – another of those slips between solve and blog. I’ve amended it.

33. I have been struggling to complete the Guardian unaided recently, Monday’s aside, mostly I think because I do it after lunch and find myself nodding off. But today Nutmeg’s clues kept me alert – both challenged and entertained. As a result I whizzed through this and am surprised to find that some found it tedious, lacking wit. As Eileen said, as she often does, too many favourites to name. But the delightful “used to going Dutch” deserves a special mention.

    I am also surprised at some of the quibbles. As someone who has spent a lot of time on planes, a standard element of the pre-takeoff rigmarole is the announcement for ground staff to please leave the plane (via the air bridge, so it can be retracted.) And in 35 years of running marathons, I have never heard pacesetters referred to as pacemen. My current, mixed, running club is named Pacesetters. I don’t know what Test Match Special is, but cricket writers routinely refer to the fast bowlers as pacemen.

    Many thanks to Nutmeg for my most enjoyable crossword for a while and to Eileen for her usual exemplary blog.

34. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. I’m another who struggled to finish with SPACEMEN, AIR BRIDGE, and GRASS WIDOWER.

35. Good challenge. It was bottom left that left me on my arse. Got up in the end.
    Isn’t it CU for Cuba (6dn)

36. Just to add about ‘Dutch’…
    Most ‘Dutch’ phrases are just historical, bigoted, ‘bit foreign’ things: Dutch courage, double Dutch, all Dutch to me, Dutch uncle, Dutch cap, going Dutch &c. But ‘(Old) Dutch’, for wife, is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘Duchess of Fife’, and quite affectionate, I think.
    I struggled but finished and enjoyed this, SPACEMEN a favourite.
    Thanks to both

37. Grant Baynham @36

    “Duchess of Fife” is certainly one postulated explanation for “Dutch”, but it’s by no means the only one. “Dutch plate” for “mate” is another plausible one. They’re both probably wrong! See here.

38. Rewulf @35 – I did look it up here.

39. I enjoy this lady’s crosswords, this one did not disappoint with fine surfaces. COD 7d, FOI MAFIA, LOI 25a.

40. Eileen @38 I’d say everyone would be perfectly content with “E” for Spain and so on, but the use of “C” for Cuba struck me as bit much at the time of solving as, I suppose, it is unlikely many of us would be familiar with it. It wasn’t a difficult guess so the clue was perfectly fair and gettable (the most important criteria) but I wonder how many others just felt a little uneasy even though the mechanism is a very well-rehearsed one? I suppose it’s a bit like asking for a capital city and plumping for Bandar Seri Begawan or Funafuti rather than something more commonplace (like Tashkent…). I was just intrigued by the psychology of this as I found myself grumping at something which was actually totally fair just because it was a little unfamiliar and reflection told me there was nothing wrong with it. Interesting how crosswords can reveal our inner “grump”!

41. thezed @ 40

    C = Cuba crops up in crosswords, at a guess, 3 or 4 times or so a year, so becomes another of those tropes a solver keeps in their etui.

42. Thanks to Eileen and Nutmeg

    I enjoyed this and the following are observations NOT grumps

    On Wednesday Tramp used a 2 stage device: EMPTY STAGE = LG and all hell broke loose (exaggerating a little), but today we have SMALL FISH GUTTED = FY and nary a comment. How quickly devices become the norm!

    When I were a lad CONTINUOUS might mean RECURRENT but CONTINUAL meant NON-STOP, and confusing the two got you a clip round the ear from the English teacher.

    I think thezed@19 has the parsing of CORPORAL, as the cloth used at the Eucharist.

    I liked 20a but HOWDY is an Americanism so perhaps some indication was in order: HOW DEWEY TURNED OUT?

    (and turned out doesn’t mean empty)

    BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL merited at least a ?

    But, as I said, I enjoyed this

     

43. I rather liked this but I certainly didn’t whiz through it. I was another who had the R/H finished first. Slow going but enjoyable.
    Thanks Nutmeg.

44. Dansar @ 42: I turned out the ashpan into the bin?

45. Unusually for a Nutmeg, I did this in a sitting. Some, like Paul’s the other day, seemed initially impenetrable, but once you got them – you knew you’d got them.

    Mucho thanko to Eileen and Nutmeg

46. Did no-one else but us feel concerned by wand being clued as “official staff” in Rwanda 19d ?

47. I’ll take that back; I have just learned that a wand can mean a ceremonial staff.
    It’s good to learn something new !!

48.  

    Hi The long and short of it @47 – I don’t recognise your name, so a warm welcome if you’re a new commenter [and my apologies if your’re not].

    Indeed it is, as some of us say nearly every day.

49. I would have liked more time for this super crossword – I had to leave the SW corner unfinished.
    The phrase GRASS WIDOWER was new to me, but with all the crossers it had to be WIDOWER, and GRASS was a good guess.
    Many thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

50. Simom S @44

    You’re right of course, I was thinking of “pockets turned out”= “inverted”

51. I found this the toughest puzzle I’ve tackled in weeks! Probably a bit too tough to say I enjoyed it whilst doing it but still plenty to appreciate. All bar one of my favourites and queries have been explored thoroughly here. I’m surprised not to see a mention of 10d with LIQUOR in the clue and LIQUID in the solution (unless I’ve missed something). I think my favourite was LANCE CORPORAL because I was convinced it was an anagram of “clean material” – setters seem to be getting more adept at creating anagram fodder with words with letter counts which match and mislead. SW was last to fall for me with Mrs W supplying WHACKS after my brain gave out. Thanks to Nutmeg for making sure I don’t get too cocky and to Eileen for the blog and staying on to join in the conversation.

52. Found this one tricky and struggled early on but eventually got there.  No quibbles apart from the slightly raised eyebrow re the already mentioned CONTINUAL/RECURRENT – nicely clued though as is nutmeg’s norm.  Grass Widower was new and particularly liked STORYLINE for the surface.  Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

53. I always look at the ones that would give me first letters first, so (sorry) I have to say that WHACKS was my FOI!

54. Several enjoyable clues. One question on REBUT – shouldn’t the “for example” be adjacent to “Murphy” (as in “Murphy, for example”) to make the DBE work? I thought the “raised” coming in between the two was a bit off. Would like to hear from the experts.

    Like some others, I had no idea about the annotation for GRASS WIDOWER – got the answer through crossings and the explanation from the blog.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen!

55. FoHaN @52 [and Dansar @42] – if you’re still there…

    It was my intention to write a response to Dansar’s “When I were a lad CONTINUOUS might mean RECURRENT but CONTINUAL meant NON-STOP, and confusing the two got you a clip round the ear from the English teacher” but then I had visitors and didn’t get round to it [and didn’t see FoHaN’s comment until this morning].

    My sympathies to Dansar for the unjust clips around the ear that he might have received: the exact opposite is what I was taught and went on to teach myself. [I always remembered it from the ‘continuous performances’ we had in cinemas in those days.]

    I’m feeling badly let down by my usually agreeable Collins, which gives, for ‘continual’ ‘1. recurring frequently, esp at regular intervals’ [all well and good] but then ‘2. occurring without interruption, continuous in time’!!

    Similarly, Chambers has ‘constantly happening or done; repeated; unceasing; persistent’ – so they’re both really saying that continual and continuous mean the same thing – but they don’t! Yet another example of the impoverishment of our language. In my book, Nutmeg is unquestionably correct in equating recurrent and continual.

    Ram @54 – I see what you mean but I have to say that the clue worked for me and, it seems, for everyone else. 😉

56. I seem to remember the distinction being shown by a sentence such as “England had been continuously invaded and continually inhabited since Roman times”, but I may well have the meanings  confused – being whacked on the head eventually makes one so!

57. Collins online has the following usage note under “continuous”:

    ? USAGE Both continual and continuous can be used to say that something continues without interruption, but only continual can correctly be used to say that something keeps happening repeatedly

58. Dansar @ 50 (should you see this)

    I think you may have omitted a step. To my way of thinking, if you are asked to turn out your pockets, you empty them. Then, to prove they are completely empty, you pull them out/invert them. Maybe just me, though.

59. Happened on this after days ‘n days, found the newer entries.  I learned that the Earl of Fife became the Duke of Fife in 1889, which reminds me that the Earl of Fife was the Thane of Fife through Macbeth’s reign, at the end of which Malcolm made all the thanes earls, or at least he did in the play.  Too bad, thane is a way cooler title.  At least Eileen will read this, probably everybody else has gone away.

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