Guardian 27,895 / Nutmeg

46 comments on “Guardian 27,895 / Nutmeg”

1. The penny only just dropped about “series 4”, even though I got the answer. Really enjoyed this puzzle; thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

    

2. Thanks both. Good puzzle. I agree with your parsing of 22a

3. Eileen – in 14a I think “booked” is part of the definition, ie meaning in a book.

4. Thanks, Lord Jim – grrr! I saw that when I solved it. I’ll amend it now.

5. Thank you, Eileen, loved it, too.

   I too thought booked to be part of the def in BRIDESHEAD.

   Since scratch is a partial anagram of characters I failed to properly parse 1a.  A clever bit of misdirection, or a coincidence?

   Loved looking up the origin of PHAETON.  Boy, those Greeks must have been on some pretty mind-expanding stuff to come up with those myths.

   Favourites today include GIN AND TONIC for its clever anagram and CYCLED for its misleading series 4.

   Many thanks, Nutmeg, nice weekend, all.

6. Apologies, Eileen, crossing.

7. Eileen – in 5a you need the s out of “is”.

   Thanks to s & b.

8. Yes, most enjoyable, especially BALLPOINT, GIN AND TONIC, BLOBBY and YOGA. Many thanks to N & E.

9. Sorry, that’s 5d.

10. Eileen – thanks to you for blog, and of coyrse to Nutmeg.
    5d – LES in TIMES, is it not?

11. Thanks, both – more carelessness, fixed now.

12. Very enjoyable – thank you Nutmeg – my particular favourites (from a long list of candidates) were 8d and the ‘Mac small’ in 23d

    Thanks also to Eileen

13. Grand start to the day. As ever, thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

14. Didn’t get the booked bit of Brideshead either, or the upwards de-icer (thinking some acronym like CRC or WD40, d’oh). Momentary reflexivity-related ‘?’ re scratch..do you drop out a horse? Liked bairn for mac (which means ‘child of’ too, no?). Loi was blobby which I stared at, but think I was just not wanting to finish. Neat surfaces as ever from the spicewoman, thanks, and to Eileen, also as ever.

15. This is probably way too convoluted to be intended, but another way to interpret “in series 4” in 8d is that riders of a tandem bike are “in series” rather than “in parallel” (think electrical circuits) and 4 refers to 4d RECITED.

    It struck me that on the whole some of the connections were a little more indirect than a typical Nutmeg, making it tougher than many, but still a lot of fun, despite the inelegant “needing” in 11a.

    Thanks.

16. Hi grantinfreo @14 – SCRATCH can also be intransitive: Chambers – to retire from a contest or engagement’.

    An interesting suggestion, Dr. WhatsOn – and I suppose you know that ‘tandem’ is Latin for ‘at length’? That tickled me no end when I learned it at school.

17. Another splendid Nutmeg offering this morning. Particularly liked Gin And Tonic, Bairn too…

18. My favouries were GIN AND TONIC, OUTER SPACE, FIERY.

    I did not understand the reference to series 4/cycle D in 8d CYCLED – but I had worked out with help from google that Daisy was a reference to Daisy Bell bicycle built for two, or the song.

    I needed to google Sizewell (never heard of it), but the clue was very fair after I worked out what Sizewell is.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen – I agree with your parsing of 22a

19. michelle – I see my link to Sizewell didn’t really show up as such!

20. Great fun… Kicked myself over Daisy which was loi.
    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

21. Thank you Nutmeg for a very enjoyable puzzle and Eileen for a most helpful blog.

    I failed to parse CYCLED, but remembered Dad singing this on weekend mornings, and the crossers suggested the word.

22. 1a I was trying to drop out some letters from “characters”, since scratch is in there, but couldn’t make it work.

     

    Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg

23. hello Eileen @ 19

    it was bad working on my part. I meant that when I did the puzzle earlier today, before reading the blog, I needed to google Sizewell.

    I see that your link works fine.

24. Some very good misdirection here and a few went in with a “must be right, now work out why”. Another who got to “family gathering” before “limited company”. For once I thought Nutmeg’s surfaces and cryptic definitions were below her best here, though “offish”, “cycle-d” and “ballpoint” all raised smiles. I tried “from nothing” at first for 1ac (“nothing” = “drop out”) and felt the synonym used here was not much better.

    Thank you Nutmeg for the lovely puzzle, and Eileen for the blog – what, no lunch date today?

25. Sorry, michelle @23 – I realised too late what you meant.

    [TheZed, I’m [supposedly] busy getting ready to go off tomorrow for a few days in the Yorkshire Dales. 😉 ]

26. I don’t know how many times I tried to turn “chicant” and “cuteant” into appropriate Sizewell-related terminology.  The I got the “O” from 22a and all became obvious.

27. Here’s another who enjoyed this. I had parsed cycled as did Dr Whatson@15, forgetting re series a, b, c…..
    Lots of ticks but particularly enjoyed gin and tonic- a favourite drink, and also bairn, for the double meanings around mac- being both a scot, a son(I thought rather than child) of a scot.
    Thanks to Nutmeg, always enjoyable and to Eileen

28. Phil J @26 I went along a very similar (wrong) road, especially once the “T” was in and “ant” guessed.

    Eileen @25 that makes sense. I spent the morning help my son pack up for a trip with a friend to the east coast, coincidentally not far from Sizewell! Enjoy the dales – a place I only discovered through leading Duke of Edinburgh groups there, having always concentrated on the Lake District when up that way. Now when people boast about the “three peaks challenge” I ask them how they found the ascent of Whernside. Cue blank looks…

29. Delightful puzzle.  Thanks as ever to Nutmeg and Eileen.

    I liked ATOM BOMBS.  It reminds me of travel in Portugal many years ago, when we found that ATUM BOM was a brand of canned tuna.  It’s Portuguese for “good tuna”, but it led to many lines like, “Oh, let’s break out another atum bom.”

    Note on 9, 10a: MIT is a university, not a college.

30. Delightful puzzle.  Thanks as ever to Nutmeg and Eileen.

    Note on 9, 10a: MIT is a university, not a college.

    I liked ATOM BOMBS.  It reminds me of travel in Portugal many years ago, when we found that ATUM BOM was a brand of canned tuna.  It’s Portuguese for “good tuna”, but it led to many lines like, “Oh, let’s break out another atum bom.”

     

31. Mate/China is and old saw in crosswords, but surely in rhyming slang the word itself should rhyme, not a synonym? Mate may rhyme with plate, but pal?

32. I can’t see anything wrong with PALM, but as a matter of (possible) interest, “pal” allegedly comes from continental Romany “pral“, “plal“, “phral“, probably from Sanskrit “bhrata” meaning “brother“, so technically you can’t have a female pal.  I’ll get my coat.

33. howared@31

    No – its the missing word that rhymes. Apples & Pears = stairs but the rhyming slang is “apples”.

34. While it is true that colleges and universities are not the same thing, in the US, where MIT is, the two words are often used interchangeably. For example, you hear “Where did you go to college?” all the time and universities are not excluded. So I think it’s fair to let this one go.

35. Another lovely puzzle

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen

36. Dr. Whatson @34 unless you’re at Yale, which emulates the Oxbridge college structure. Asking which college you went to might elicit the (pedantic) reply “Jonathan Edwards”.

    Harvard University is formally called Harvard College IIRC, so you are, of course, absolutely right.

    Max @33 re Howard @31: I think Howard’s point is that “China” can clue “mate” through rhyming slang, but that making it clue “pal” (or “friend”, “chum” etc) is a two-step process, a bit like an indirect anagram. I would argue that certain Cockney rhyming slang terms are commonplace enough to be considered direct synonyms, rather than specific to the thing they rhyme with i.e. “china” simply means “friend”.

37. Yep, know mac means son of, ngaio, was just being a bit gender-neutral/pi/pc.

38. TheZed @36:  Harvard College is the undergraduate portion of Harvard University. (With the eradication a few years ago of the last remnants of Radcliffe, it is the *only* undergraduate portion.)  There’s also Harvard Law School (the chunk of Harvard I attended), Harvard Graduate College, Harvard Divinity School, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, etc. Graduate students of various flavors outnumber undergrads there by an enormous margin, so MOST Harvardians don’t/didn’t attend Harvard College.

    But there are a few universities with “college” in their name that never changed the name when they upgraded to being a university (the distinction here being the right to award graduate degrees).  The obvious example off the top of my head is Boston College (because Boston University is a different–and by most people’s reckoning less prestigious–institution).  This means that BC is neither in Boston (it’s across the city line in Newton) nor a university.  There’s Dartmouth College as well.

    Oh–the puzzle?  I enjoyed it.  But I did it early this morning, hours ago, during a bout of insomnia.  So I’ve kind of already forgotten much of the experience.  I do remember thinking it was interesting that both of the long down entries were cryptic definitions.

39. Er–got that backwards.  Boston College is neither in Boston nor a college.

40. Light and breezy and much enjoyed.  My favorites were GIN AND TONIC (beautifully crafted), FAMILY GATHERING (I got it before LIMITED COMPANY too) and BAIRN.  With the latter, the word order is slightly odd (Mac, small one…, rather than Small Mac…).  I thought it might be to disguise the capitalisation of Mac, but it would seem to be fine either way.

    Is there some significance to the cameo by MISTER BLOBBY, a wider theme I’m missing?

    Nice way to start the weekend off.  Thanks, Nutmeg and Eileen.

41. Thanks to Eileen for making 1a much simpler than I was working on – although without getting SCRATCH out of characters I don’t know whether I would have solved it – the FROM came after I’d decided it was scratch. And I had problems parsing CYCLED as well. I thought it was a bit harder than Nutmeg’s often are and that the surfaces were every bit as good as they usually are. Thanks to both Nutmeg and Eileen.

42. Enjoyed this but didn’t understand SERIES 4 and I didn’t parse YOGA either- it had to be right though. I liked HEAVY METAL MUSIC- and that’s some I never thought I’d say- and BALLPOINT and PALM and one or two more. BRIDESHEAD was LOI and took me ages to see even with all the crossers in.
    Thanks Nutmeg..

43. Very much enjoyed this as we don’t always ‘get’ Nutmeg. CYCLED came very late – inexcusable as we sing the song to our dog of that name. Thank you Nutmeg and Eileen.

44. Thanks to Eileen and Nutmeg

    All good fun but I’m in two minds about 8d.

    I know the song well – well enough to know that no cycling actually takes place.

    This immediately had me thinking that there must be a series of books mirroring “What Katy did”, but with Daisy as the heroine. I can’t find any such stories, so I think that “presumably” must be part of the definition, i.e. we are to assume that the singing suitor is eventually accepted, and the couple tandem off into the sunset.

45. Did anyone else notice that there was an almost identical clue for AT ISSUE in yesterday’s Tees puzzle in the Indie?

46. Thanks Nutmeg for a really enjoyable puzzle with loads of fun in the clues.  My favourites echo many other contributors’ nominees: G&T, BALLPOINT, ATOM BOMB and CYCLED which stood out for me because my lovely Geordie Grandma (sister to a Daisy) used to sing this to us as children and when the penny dropped I really smiled.  Thanks for putting in some considerate crossers too, Nutmeg.

    Thanks as ever for the lovely interactive Blog, Eileen.  Have a great time in the Dales.

Comments are closed.