It’s lovely to get a chance to write a post about a Brendan crossword – he’s one of my favourite setters, and he only appears about once a month in the Guardian. This was a pretty quick solve for me, but an enjoyable one and as usual Brendan’s clues have a certain simple elegance and wit that really appeals to me.
This puzzle has a nice John Le Carré theme. You can find TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY in the grid, and Le Carré is directly referenced in the clue for ON THE SQUARE. You can also find George SMILEY in the grid. I’m sure you’ll let me know of any other references I’ve missed in the comments!
Across
9. Shopkeepers badly need marts (9)
TRADESMEN
(NEED MARTS)*
Definition: “Shopkeepers”
10, 23. Even pieces of John Le Carré translated straightforwardly (2,3,6)
ON THE SQUARE
[j]O[h]N = “Even pieces of John” + THE SQUARE = “Le Carré translated” (“Le Carré” is literally “the square” in French)
Definition: “straightforwardly”. This clue is a nice pair with ON THE SLY, and the mention of Le Carré hints at the theme.
11. What actor needs — impressive vehicle, we hear (5)
ROLES
ROLES sounds like “rolls” (short for “Rolls Royce” or an “impressive vehicle”)
Definition: “What actor needs”
12. Wagner’s work showing long involvement with Rhine (9)
LOHENGRIN
(LONG RHINE)* – nice surface reading here, since the Rhine features prominently in Wagner’s ring cycle
Definition: “Wagner’s work”
13. Kansas girl crashed hot rod before the Fourth of July (7)
DOROTHY
(HOT ROD)* + [jul]Y
Definition: “Kansas girl” (referring to Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
14. Senior briefly embracing another in private (7)
SOLDIER
SR = “Senior briefly” around OLDIE = “another [senior]”
Definition: “private” – this seems like an unindicated definition-by-example to me, which would be fixed with a question mark at the end
17. Contracted very bad kind of fever not easily discerned (5)
VAGUE
V = “Contracted very” + AGUE = “bad kind of fever”br>
Definition: “not easily discerned”
19. See letters centrally placed in crossword — cryptic, maybe (3)
SPY
[cros]S[word] [cry]P[tic] [ma]Y[be] = “letters centrally placed in crossword — cryptic, maybe”. A lovely clue, given that the position of this answer is centrally in the crossword.
Definition: “See”
20. Dickensian villain giving female a drink (5)
FAGIN
F = “female” + A GIN = “a drink”
Definition: “Dickensian villain”
21. Fails in theatre, medical device holding operation back (5,2)
DRIES UP
DRIP = “medical device” around USE = “operation” reversed
Definition: “Fails in theatre” – “drying up” would be forgetting your lines
22. Revolutionary joining moderate movement — heavens above (7)
TROTSKY
TROT = “moderate movement” + SKY = “heavens above”
Definition: “Revolutionary”
24. Indication that storm’s abating, so relaxes (5,4)
WINDS DOWN
If the “WIND’S DOWN” then the storm might be abating
Definition: “relaxes”
26. Suddenly emerge from kind of junction after neat reversing (5)
ERUPT
T = “kind of junction” after PURE = “neat” reversed
Definition: “Suddenly emerge”
28. Part for actor I send up (5)
RISEN
Hidden in [acto]R I SEN[d]
Definition: “up”
29. Change of rate less risky for financial administrator (9)
TREASURER
(RATE)* + SURER = “less risky”
Definition: “financial administrator”
Down
1, 24. Crude and despicable types upset son in film (4,4)
STAR WARS
RAW = “Crude” + RATS = “despicable types” reversed + S = “son”
Definition: “film” – the whole clue could be seen as summary of the film, too! (Given some context from Episode V.)
2. Adapt for British star in The Comedians, say (6)
TAILOR
I’m guessing a bit here – is the “British star in The Comedians” Tim Brooke-Taylor, and did he appear in something called, “The Commedians”? I can’t find a reference to that if so, but it seems plausible.
Definition: “Adapt”
3. Semiprecious stone I and others collected for wealthy elite (3-7)
JET-SETTERS
JET = “Semiprecious stone” + SETTERS = “I and others”
Definition: “wealthy elite”
4. Representation of happiness I myself endlessly revised (6)
SMILEY
(I MYSEL)*
Definition: “Representation of happiness” referring to the emoticon
5. Honestly reformed, in secret (2,3,3)
ON THE SLY
(HONESTLY)*
Definition: “in secret”, a nice pair with ON THE SQUARE
6. Don’t stop thug (4)
GOON
GO ON = “Don’t stop”
Definition: “thug”
7. Something round prison, initially, that’s inspirational (8)
STIRRING
RING = “Something round” with STIR = “prison” before (“initially”)
Definition: “inspirational”
8. Meagre list (4)
LEAN
Double definition
13. Eg Hockney, or French artist (5)
DAVID
Double definition: David Hockney and Jacques-Louis David
15. Comfortable existence provided before enemy turned up in form of rent (4,2,4)
LIFE OF EASE
IF = “provided” + FOE = “enemy” reversed (“turned up”) in LEASE = “form of rent”
Definition: “Comfortable existence”
16. Lustful extremes of ribaldry (5)
RANDY
R AND Y are the “extremes of RibaldrY”
Definition: “Lustful”
18. Around pub, reckon to get this? (8)
GUINNESS
INN = “pub” in GUESS = “reckon”
Definition: “this?” in the context of the whole clue (semi-&lit)
19. Keeps ahead in games (8)
SUPPORTS
UP = “ahead” (as in “they’re 2 goals up”) in SPORTS = “games”
Definition: “Keeps”
22. Fiddle or violin clerk finally deposited in bank (6)
TINKER
[violi]N [cler]K = “violin clerk finally” in TIER = “bank”
Definition: “Fiddle”
25. Provide information regularly in espionage (4)
SING
Alternate letters in [e]S[p]I[o]N[a]G[e]
Definition: “Provide information” (as in an police informant)
27. Beginner with spell in Hamlet, ironically, not petty role (4)
TIRO
This took a while to understand, but I think Brendan is cleverly indicating which of two spellings of TIRO/TYRO is the right one – it’s TIRO, hidden in “[Hamle]T IRO[nically]” not the spelling hidden in “[pet]TY RO[le]”
Definition: “Beginner”
Solved this quickly and entirely missed the references. But now you mention it, Alec GUINNESS is in there, while DAVID is Le Carre’s real forename.
I think 2d refers to Elizabeth Taylor in the 1967 film The Comedians.
Alec GUINNESS was in it too.
I thought it more an Alec GUINNESS theme, with FAGIN, DAVID LEAN, and he starred in TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY as George SMILEY, and in STAR WARS, and he died 20 years ago this week.
I took the theme to be Alec Guinness, rather than Le Carre, since he did so much work with DAVID LEAN, played the role of FAGIN, and STAR WARS of course, and he starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in The Comedians.
We crossed, Ant!
Thanks to Brendan and mhl. I got through much more quickly than expected though I was delayed in finishing because I first put in gem rather that jet for 3 down. I did figure out the reference to Elizabeth Taylor but, as usual, I missed the theme.
…also 6 Down, I had HOON, meaning to hoon around, perhaps not stopping, and meaning thug too, annoyingly worked as well.
Brendan always has been one of my favourite setters; judging by the large number of ticks I made on my copy of his prize crossword, he remains so. The surfaces are always smooth and I always seem to have fun with the wordplay — SPY, ERUPT, STAR WARS, SMILEY, GOON, RANDY, and GUINNESS all sparkled. Thanks Mhl for the write-up.
Thanks mhl. Put me down as another who missed the theme, or most of it. Simple elegance is the right description and my only reservation is that it was over rather too quickly.
A bit on the easy side for a Prize, but none the worse for that. I also missed the theme, as I usually do, but that didn’t spoil the enjoyment either. Among a good many sparkling clues, I thought ON THE SQUARE was especially brilliant. I managed to parse everything except DRIES UP, so thanks to mhl for that, and thanks to Brendan, who never fails to please.
Yes, me too, theme-blind, and this one’s pretty glaring as well, though even had I thought to look I wouldn’t have known the Tailor connection. Pretty gentle for a Brendan I thought. Thanks both.
Finished quite quickly, by my standards, galvanised somewhat by last week’s suggestion that this was going to be on the easy side. Which it was, but still far from being just a set of write-ins. I did, of course, miss the theme, whichever it was, although I liked the clues for GUINNESS and the one based on Le Carre – even though ON THE SQUARE wasn’t a familiar phrase. I did think the ‘tailor’ reference would be Elizabeth Taylor, but, unusually, didn’t bother to check. Thanks Brendan and mhl.
A very good if somewhat easy crossword. I hadn’t fuly parsed TIRO, and I’m sure mhl is right, which now makes it my favourite, alongside ON THE SQUARE and the nicely simple RANDY.
Thanks Brendan and mhl.
Got the whole way through thinking the theme was Le Carre, only to realise that it’s actually Guinness! I thought Tradesmen was a nod to Tinker Tailor Soldier perhaps?
Yes I thought this a bit easier and quicker than usual (and I say that with humility and hopefully a lack of hubris), but it was still very enjoyable. (I dream that one day when we can travel overseas again, I’ll be on the Tube and solve a cryptic between St Pancras and Kings Cross* as some others here seem to do.)
I spotted TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (SPY at 19a in the centre and tipped me off, as did the clue for 10a,23d containing its author’s name) but didn’t see the links that others saw (well done! Phi@1, Lord Jim@2nd 3, Ant@4, Iroquois@5). Themes aside, I loved the clue for GUINNESS (18d) and also enjoyed solving 20a FAGIN, 22a TROTSKY and 6d GOON. All good fun, so thanks to Brendan and mhl.
[P.S. I actually don’t remember, from my one brief trip to London, how far apart those stations are.]
About as easy as they get, though we were warned about this last Saturday by rodshaw, who told us he had finished it in 20 mins before getting round to blogging last week’s puzzle. But an enjoyable one, nonetheless. Having identified SMILEY quickly, and with le Carré in a clue, like JohnS@15 (and mhl) I started thinking the writer was the theme, but ended up agreeing with Ant@4 and Iroquois@5&6 that it all revolved around Alec Guinness.
I found TINKER, SOLDIER and SPY, so knew I had to look for TAILOR, but oddly that was my LOI, though not a hard one, of course.
FAGIN was one of GUINNESS’s first rôles under DAVID LEAN’s direction. There is an interesting section about how far their work together went, in Guinness’s Wikipedia entry.
I liked DOROTHY, with its all-American surface, and wondered if there was a Guinness reference there as well. I cannot find one, but does anybody know better?
Julie in Oz@16 – London is open again – I went there by train this week, first time in six months – not very crowded. But I realise travelling for you is not yet possible. King’s Cross & St Pancras are just a 100 meter walk apart – to try doing the puzzle on the Circle Line clockwise between Paddington and Victoria is more realistic.
Thanks mol and Brendan.
mhl, not mol (blame my spell-checker).
sjshart @17: There’s a possible DOROTHY connection, in that Guinness played opposite Dorothy Tutin (as King Charles and his wife) in ‘Cromwell’. Not that I knew that before googling! Like mhl I had assumed the theme was all about Le Carré.
Looking at it again now, I see that he was nominated for an Oscar for Best SUPPORTing Actor for his ROLE in STAR WARS (much to his embarrassment, I think).
Regarding the difficulty level, if I say this would have worked well in the Monday slot that’s not meant as a criticism – and it would have provided TIROs with the extra frisson of identifying a theme (or not 😉 ).
Thanks Brendan and mhl.
A straightforward but very enjoyable puzzle with an interesting theme, some of which I actually saw. I just got a bit stuck on TAILOR at the end, not knowing The Comedians.
Thanks to Brendan and mhl.
As a result of further googling, I now appreciate the clue for TIRO at 27d – one of Guinness’s very first roles was in a John Gielgud production of Hamlet.
…and the clue for TROTSKY is perhaps a nod to Doctor Zhivago. The more I look at the clues through the Guinness prism, the more I appreciate how clever they are.
I’m pleased that there aren’t the complaints I expected to see about this being too easy.
As DaveinNCarolina says, none the worse for it. Enjoyable and a good theme.
Wow, I thought I’d done well to solve this super-fast (my standards) with everything parsed (so I thought) and spotting the theme.
Then I come on here and realise the Le Carre/Tinker Tailor… was only the half of it.
And I walked into the wrong side of the TYRO/TIRO trap. Problem with knowing an obscurish word like TYRO is you don’t really want to get involved with alternate spellings.
But looking at it again it is clue of some genius especially with the Sir Alec G and Hamlet link mentioned by Essexboy @21.
Thanks Brendan for a brilliant, if humbling solve and to mhl for explaining and to all learned commentators on here!
Thanks for a great blog, mhl – glad you had such a nice puzzle: Brendan’s always been one of my favourites, too.
I’ve nothing to add to the plaudits – just to say that the puzzle was further proof, of any were needed, that a puzzle doesn’t need to be difficult to be absorbing and enjoyable. I just loved the way the more obvious theme gradually revealed layer on layer of further delights.
Huge thanks to Brendan for a beautifully crafted and enjoyable puzzle.
As I said last week, when rodshaw says 10 minutes I multiply it by 6 for myself but on this occasion I got to within 2 in his 20 minutes. They were 2d and 19d. 2d because I couldn’t parse it and it is obscure, though I too flirted with TB-T. 19d because I originally put in an unparsed ELY at 19a because “see” is always ELY in crosswords and what’s more I had the Y.
Thanks to Brendan and mhl
Very entertaining and enjoyably themed.
No criticism of this puzzle but the cluing of LOHENGRIN as “Wagner’s work” does make this week’s Quiptic seem even more strangely pitched, expecting newcomers to identify FIDELIO from the very loose definition “Work of art”.
Thanks Brendan and mhl
My comments @2 and 3 were made just before I went to bed last night, hence their brevity. Just to expand a little: I thought this was a lovely example of the sort of “multiple links” puzzle that Brendan often produces. 2d was a brilliant instance, both forming part of the TINKER TAILOR sequence and referencing another Alec GUINNESS performance.
On difficulty, I entirely agree with Eileen @25. I certainly didn’t find this too easy, just at a pleasant level. The policy on the prize puzzle does seem to have changed – years ago it would normally be the hardest of the week, and I would often start it on Saturday, do some more on Sunday, and (if I was lucky) finish it over breakfast on Monday. In more recent times the prize is usually not as hard as some of the weekday puzzles.
Many thanks Brendan and mhl.
I come to this late on Saturday morning and, no doubt to the relief of others, find I have little to add! Certainly less of a battle than the three that preceded it, but, as Eileen says @25, “a puzzle doesn’t need to be difficult to be absorbing and enjoyable.” I agree with JohnS @15 that TRADESMEN may well be a reference to the Smiley stories. I’m sure the word is used to refer to Circus operatives but can’t easily find a reference. Way more obscurely, I understand the opening music in Hitler: The Last 10 Days, starring Alec Guinness, is from LOHENGRIN but suspect that might not have been in Brendan’s mind.
Thanks to both Brendan and mhl (especially for explaining TIRO, the subtleties of which completely passed me by.)
This was a very pleasant solve – more accessible than the DNF (for me) of the week before. Plenty of nice clues – I can highlight JET-SETTERS, TROTSKY, GOON and (especially) ON THE SQUARE and my LOI GUINNESS. Missed the theme(s) completely. Thanks, Brendan and mhl.
A thought that occurred during the solve: we’ve had some criticism on here regarding ‘product placement’ when a brand name appears in clue or solution. Greggs and Teachers both raised the issue in recent puzzles. Whilst GUINNESS, as the man, is clearly the theme of the puzzle, the clue that produces his name is clearly referencing the drink. So far, I’m delighted to see no complaints about advertising.
And a relevant anecdote: a family Zoom quiz during lockdown got slightly heated when the answer to the question “What comes after Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?” turned out to be ‘Rich Man’! I was on slightly dodgy ground, having wrongly guessed ‘Smiley’s People’ (I think it was ‘The Honourable Schoolboy’), but you can imagine my chagrin. Especially when the quizmaster asserted that “the quizmaster is always right” and moved on to the next question!
What Eileen said @25.
I particularly liked the John Le Carré clue. Nice surfaces to all the clues. The only clue I didn’t much like was for DAVID, which seemed more like a Quick crossword one.
Thanks Brendan and mhl.
I liked this puzzle and like others thought the theme was Le Carre being a devotee of his books. I missed the GUINNESS theme entirely.
I thought ON THE SQUARE was a reference to freemasonry?
Thanks Brendan and mhl
Hmm, I thought the theme was Le Carre and the inclusion of GUINNESS and SMILEY seemed to confirm it. I didn’t look any further and so I didn’t find anything else.So what sIze thought was a quick solve,er,wasn’t!
Enjoyed it though.
Thanks Brendan.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out Guinness links of which I was unaware.
I highly recommend Le Carre’s speech in accepting the Olof Palme prize for 2019 at: http://www.palmefonden.se/2019-david-cornwell-john-le-carre/
Brendan @35: Wow! does that mean all the Alec Guinness connections (apart from Smiley) were just coincidence?? That would be seriously spooky – almost on a par with the Telegraph D-Day crossword.
[Brendan @35 – thank you so much for that. I wept as I listened to it and then, having copied and pasted and printed it, before filing it away, I wept again as I read it. I could write a lengthy comment but this is not the place to do so. I just wanted to acknowledge your link. Thank you again.]
To several people, thanks for comments along the lines of “easy, but enjoyable”. As a solver, my preference is for such puzzles. And the placing of the puzzle on a Saturday is the editor’s decision — I prefer not to have to wait a week for the pleasure of reading comments.
Essexboy at 36. To be clear, most of the Guinness links were deliberate, but the 225ers came up with several more.
Eileen at 37. Thanks, yes it is a moving speech indeed. Cornwell is an important political commentator.
Enjoyed this very much. Even more so having come here and learnt about the theme I’d completely missed. Thanks to all those who revealed it in all its glory. I also am perfectly happy with an easier puzzle with such elegant cluing.
So many good clues, but I especially liked:
5ac HONESTLY — great anagram, although Brendan surely can’t be the first to have spotted it?
19ac SPY – beautiful
1, 24 STAR WARS Great story-telling clue
I did think “for” in 28ac was cryptically a bit dodgy: the answer is really part of the hiding words, isn’t it?
27dn I didn’t work out what the “not petty role” was doing till I revisited just before coming here. Nice touch.
In 14d, I think a private is a plain ‘soldier’, as opposed to an ‘officer’, commissioned, or non-commissioned, so not necessarily a dbe.
Is there an extraneous “br>” in the parsing of 17ac, a typo?
Julie@16, you can’t take the tube between those two mainline stations because, being just across the road from one another, they share a single tube stop.
Mark@31
You need a new quizmaster. Le Carre’s title is modelled on the traditional stone-counting rhyme, “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggerman, thief”, so “rich man” does come after the “sailor” of that sequence, but not after the “spy” in LeCarre’s.
I am very late to this having realised, thanks to 225, that I missed a Brendan while away and hurried to do it this morning – nothing to add but my thanks to mhl, Brendan/Brian himself and everyone else above for drawing out so many links to the theme which I completely failed to spot, although this time I will be big-headed and blame it on the solving speed rather than my usual blindness to such things.