Guardian Cryptic 28,246 by Boatman

91 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,246 by Boatman”

1. Excellent puzzle – very topical!

   19d – I think it’s MI5 (intelligence service) with “view” indicating that MI5 looks like MIS (“view” acting as a sort of visual homonym indicator)

   Really enjoyable with all the lies!  Thanks Boatman & Manehi

2. Thanks Manehi, I had the same parsing as you for 22a. For 19d I had the defn as falsify and ‘view‘ as an indicator that MIS looks like MI5.  I did wonder if ‘first’ in 20a should be ‘firsts’? Overall very enjoyable, thanks Boatman!  54a I noted!

3. Thanks Boatman and manehi

   An easier gridfill than most of Boatman’s, but PURGE and MINDSET went in from definition only. Favourite was CLERIC.

   Not familiar with SHRINKPACK – I think we would call it “shrinkwrap”.

   I was taught at school that tubers were stems rather than roots (as in potatoes), but Wiki tells me that some other plants – sweet potatoes, for instance – form root tubers. I don’t think anyone in Britain had seen a sweet potato when I was at school!

4. I must have been on Boatman’s wavelength. A steady and enjoyable solve. Thank you Manehi for your timely blog so I could see i had not made any inadvertent silly mistakes. No tricky and mysterious words today! I think PORKY was good, gave me a an aha moment. Canthusus @1 I like your idea that MIS ‘looks like’ MI 5. I bet that was Boatmans idea.

5. Pottered through this in a bit of a hmmm mood, probably just me. Didn’t bother properly parsing redub or comply …lazy. Taking the sound of the ‘r’ off perjure to get purge is a bit cute. Someone on the G thread wondered whether there are swineS. Good question. I suppose all the lies are topical, ho hum. Thanks both.

6. Too much French!

7. Thanks manehi, didn’t understand wordplay of CAN-DO nor STOPCOCK though both were clearly defined and simple enough with the crossers, and you have expressed PURGE very clearly which I understood but would have struggled to put into words, and I agree re 22A. I think Canthusus@1 has it right wrt 19D, at least that’s how I thought of it and he/she has expressed it more clearly than I did in my own head. I had ET (movie) + O (finally to) in arriving at ETOILES but of course that’s immaterial.

   I struggled with my first few Boatmans but really enjoyed this, plenty of misdirection with clever use of the theme and setter’s nom-de-plume but always fair (or I would never have got eg SHRINKPACK which is a new word for me). I do find sometimes that his use of link words can add to my confusion but nothing unfair in that really. And if the clues requiring knowledge of French were replaced with ones needing some other language I would probably have failed dismally.

   Favourites were TRUNCHEON and ASTEROIDAL (which had me going round in circles trying to jumble AS ONE and A STAR until all the crossers were there) – thanks Boatman!

8. I parsed MISSTATE as Canthusus @1 and MINDSET as manehi and Jay @2 (only I had ‘Attitudes fixed” as the definition) and PLIES was a bung and shrug as I’d not encountered the ballet term.  A couple of criticisms: the too-often clued palindromic BOOB which is not up to the standard of the rest of the puzzle and, as some here will recall from previous posts, one of my pet hates with the splitting of MASSING into the meaningless ‘Mas’ followed by ‘sing’.  In the past others have justified the split on the grounds that the two words resulting from the split are both valid which doesn’t seem to be the case today.  Finally, MYTH could have been even tighter if Boatman had gone for “Something read in Deuteronomy that’s not true” or similar.

   Lots to like, and nicely themed throughout, including the clever construction of STOPCOCK – I loved the inclusion of Top C, the lovely anagram and perfect definition for ASTEROIDAL, TRUNCHEON (did anyone else bung in ‘bludgeon’ to find it was one letter short?  GYMSLIPS was fun and ‘goyim’ was a clever spot by Boatman and I liked the use of ‘sooth’ in SOOTHING.  LOI is my COTD, mainly because it resisted so long: SHRINKPACK.

   Many thanks to Boatman and manehi

9. I parsed ETOILES as did Gazzh @7. Unusual that it works either way.

10. Mark @8

    I wondered about MAS as a word in its own right too, but one of our commonest ferns, the Male Fern, is Dryopteris felix mas.

11. I did not parse STOPCOCK, TRUNCHEON.

    Liked PORKY, ETOILES.

    New SHRINKPACK.

    I agree with the comments about MI5 and manehi’s parsing of 22a.

    I also wondered about SWINES, but found this in my dictionary:

    (plural same or swines) informal a contemptible or unpleasant person: what an arrogant, unfeeling swine!

    Thanks B+S

12. We enjoyed this, a steady solve. I liked having such an obvious them because usually I do not catch them.

    Cobro parsed MISSTATE as other commenters have, which is better than my parsing, the same way as manehi.

    Favourites were COMPLY and BASED.

    Thanks to manehi for the explanations and thanks to Boatman for the puzzle.

13. Mindset was another hmmm?, and gymslips, a nho, was a shrug, but pour qui had a curly tail.

14. Very nice and quick solve for me this morning – enjoyed that immensely with a laugh-out-loud moment at 10a.

    Couple of niggles – I really did not like splitting 19a, 27d in that way; got it, but felt a bit uncomfortable.  And I’m sure it is SHRINKWRAP not SHRINKPACK.

    However, this didn’t detract from the fun of the chase and I enjoyed this immensely.

    Thank you Boatmand and manehi.

15. I also wondered about MAS as a word on its own and found this:

    mas | m??s |

    noun [mass noun] West Indian

    carnival celebrations: [as modifier] : mas bands.

    ORIGIN abbreviation of masquerade.

16. [michelle @11 “You rotten swine, you!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebottle_(character)%5D

17. [Btw, a propos truth and its absence, vale RBG]

18. Took a bit of work, and I had a few unparsed (PLIES, particularly, which I had in mind for ages, even pre-crossers, but couldn’t see a definition). Shared many of the quibbles given above, but found plenty to like as well. Thanks, manehi, for the parsing assistance (though I also went for ET = film and MI 5), and Boatman for the workout.

19. muffin @10 and michelle @15: nice tries with MAS but really?  Part of the Latin name for a fern or a West Indian adjective?  I s’pose it could also be MA’S as either mother’s or degree holders.  But I remain unconvinced.

    gif @5 and 13: between hmmm-ing, ho-ing and humming you’ll be producing a decent rendition of the Madame Butterfly chorus at this rate.  Humming Chorus

20. MAS is in the Chambers dictionary, defined as a house or farm in the south of France. Or it could simply be the plural of MA as in mother. “Mas and pas” seems to be a valid, if dated, expression for Mums and Dads.

21. An entertaining puzzle with the expected Boatman features: the surface theme; and the dual use of “Boatman”, once to mean I/me and once to mean an actual boatman (17a and 24a).

    I had no problem with the splitting of MASSING – there are various possibilities for the meaning of MAS, the two most obvious being ma’s (mother’s) and MAs, as indeed you point out @19 Mark, so I’m not sure why you remain unconvinced.

    Many thanks Boatman and manehi.

22. Mark, Muffin, Michelle: MAS is plural of MA (mother). Inelegant, but legit

23. Mark @19

    I’ve checked and I got it slightly wrong anyway – it’s filix mas.

    Better to use “scientific” or “binomial” name rather than “Latin” – often they have nothing to do with Latin!

24. Thank you to Boatman and manehi. This one unfolded steadily and I liked teasing out some of the solutions. On coming to the blog, I found I hadn’t solved the solution for 10a properly – I had PARRY where I should have had PORKY (so obvious now, but I thought it was a word play/homophone connected to the French capital PARIS as in Gay Paree! The correct answer was indeed very clever!). So a DNF for me. Despite this, it was fun to have the parry (!) and thrust happening between truth and lies. I had question marks beside the clues 28a CAN-DO, 29a TRUNCHEON and 19d MISSTATE which means I didn’t understand their parsing fully, all is now explained. I also had issues with MAS at 19a and see that I have company. Also like several other posters, I had only heard of SHRINKWRAP but when that didn’t work I had a stab at SHRINKPACK from the crossers for 15d. I did like TALL STORY at 1a and was with manehi as having FIBRE at 13d as a favourite.

    [Thanks to grantinfreo@17 for the apt “vale” for Ruth Bader Ginsberg. What an amazingly strong woman of integrity and inspirational role model- her death is a huge blow to the forces of good in the US at this time in history.]

25. Crossed against several contributors. I guess I can see MA’s as in Ma’s and Pa’s for 19a, but I remain uneasy about that one despite many worthy suggestions.

26. Plenty of support for MAS in the dictionaries; see Chambers, Collins etc.

    Pleasant solve with some good clues; I failed to parse PURGE, but now I see it, I like it. I also particularly enjoyed the clue for GYMSLIPS.

    Thanks Boatman and manehi.

27. A very enjoyable crossword with clever and extensive use of the theme. Boatman’s usual obfuscation of the definition adds to the fun.  I managed to parse them all though “TRUN” in TRUNCHEON only dawned after I entered CHEON.

    I raised an eyebrow at the French homophone “Pour chi”, then “pliés” then “etoiles” but they are accessible from schoolboy French, so no need to be fluent fortunately.  The split of MASSING seems to be contentious since MAS is obscure and makes for a messy clue.

     

28. Re MAS, I agree with the point made by Mark @8, however I thought could be Ma’s as in ‘Me Ma’s gone out’ and mused that it could be the Spanish ‘more’.

    Enjoyed most of the crossword but thought that there were a couple (eg 29a) that you would have to get the definition part first, in order to parse.

     

29. Robi @26

    My Chambers only has the Provencal house that cruciverbophile mentioned, and abbreviation for “masculine” – though I’ve long thought my Chambers is defective. What other suggestions does yours have?

30. [Thanks for the kindness of many on yesterday’s blog. I just added a very late post.]

31. Many thanks to Boatman for a fun puzzle with sadly apposite theme, and to manehi for the blog.

    There is plenty for support for MAS relating to carnival bands etc in the UK, eg:

    https://www.theguardian.com/culture/costume-and-culture/2019/aug/21/mas-fashion-costume-makers-notting-hill-carnival

     

32. Mark @19

    yes, I was clutching at straws for MAS – but I assumed that if it was a West Indian term, it was a word that was commonly known or used in the UK, even if it is not common in my part of the world. As a non-Brit, there are many words that I have never heard before that are used in the UK. I thought that maybe MAS was yet another of those. Just letting you know my POV as a non-Brit 🙂

    MAS = mothers had not occured to me…

33. Jay @2

    I think that the ‘M’ is derived form MASTER as in Master of Arts for example and not the first letter of master , per se, as manehi has parsed it. The first only applies to TRACK to supply the “T”, so first is legitimate.

34. Thanks Boatman and manehi

    I think there’s a slight difference between a shrinkwrap and a shrinkpack. The former completely surrounds its contents top, sides and bottom, while the latter just does enough to hold the contents together – see supermarket multi-packs of baked beans, where the individual cans are visible through gaps in the packaging.

35. 15
    SHRINKPACK
    Quail flock found in tight plastic binding (10)

    SHRINK [from sth]=”Quail” + PACK=”flock”

     

    Thanks for that , I was better informed but none the wiser.  sth?

    Found this so sorted now “quail v.i. to lose courage in difficulty or danger; shrink with fear.”

    https://www.thefreedictionary.com/quail

    Pour quoi to porky?  Very pour if you ask me.

36. RebornBeginner

    “Pour qui” – “pour quoi”  (often one word) is “why”.

37. RB@35

    If you read the blog, you will se that it is “pour qui” for whom, not “pour quoi” for what.

38. Pentman @33

    Thank you! I agree, that makes perfect sense the way you have parsed it

39. Re TRUNCHEON: when I had the T and U – given the theme – I was sure it would turn out to be a word starting with TRUMP. Sadly, not to be.

40. I always wondered  if I could solve one of these by guessing the definitions and ignoring the cryptic part of the clues.  After I bunged in the first few like this, I gave it a try, and came quite close, but finally needed the subtlety of the “full clue” for the last several blanks. My overall observation was that when I want a straight crossword I’ll stick to straight crosswords.

41. Touche, Mark@19, all of them lazy approximations of ‘hey ho’…

42. Found this a strange mixture. Some were quite easy to work out but others I got from the description and/or crosses and then worked out how to parse them. Or not in some cases so thanks to manehi for the explanations.

    I did solve GYMSLIPS from the wordplay which is the first time I have ever worked out a clue containing a cricket allusion. And I solved 21a as others using ET for movie as a starting point. Ever since I first saw this usage I tend to think ET as soon as I see movie in a clue -which is not going to work one day.

    Thanks to Boatman and manehi.

43. I really enjoyed this, with the clever use of the topical theme. As soon as I entered REBUT, I thought this would raise the tuber is not a root debate. I see Wikipedia lists all sorts of tubers, including potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes as root vegetables, while conceding they are not “true” roots. Maybe that’s an extra degree of subtlety to the clue?

    Thanks to Boatman for a great puzzle and to Manehi for the explanations

44. Not as difficult as some by this setter, but still spoiled a bit by so many dodgy definitions, and the punctuation at 1/24 is very unfair

45. PS re SHRINKPACK: many dictionaries define it as the flexible plastic used to shrink-wrap goods.

46. muffin @ 10 MAS short for masquerade (probably) is the cornerstone of Caribbean carnival. it just means a big parade of folk dressed up in costumes!

47. Sorry I see others have commented before me!!  MAS will also be known by participants in the Notting Hill carnival.  So, now very British and very London!!

48. Didn’t think I was going to make much of an impression on this at first, perhaps a bit rusty with first puzzle attempted for a few days, relaxing and holidaying remotely in deepest Suffolk. But in went FACTORY, and bit by bit things unravelled and fell into place. Liked MADE UP, and for all the support and arguments cannot accept MAS SING as split. LOI was COMPLY. Thanks Boatman and Manehi…

49. Aucun problème ici.

    Merci.

50. I agree with you Ronald @ 48.  Even though both words are legitimate splitting MAS and SING is very ugly!

51. Spanza @46/7 & 50: nice to see you back.  I posted yesterday wondering where you’d gone.

    Ronald @48: I think you sum up my feelings about MASSING perfectly – though I do appreciate the contributions from others.  Who would have thought ‘mas’ could have so many meanings after all?  And yet – ugly, ugly, ugly.  Sorry Boatman.  (BTW, I had no problem whatsoever with the splitting of STOPCOCK.)

52. Loved this, as is usual with Boatman’s puzzles, particularly PORKY and TRUNCHEON. Struggled with SHRINKPACK, thinking the meaning was to quail (Stringpick, maybe?) but got there in the end. Many thanks to B & m.

53. muffin @29; I use the online WordWeb Pro version of Chambers, but as someone previously pointed out there is also a good version that can be bought as an app for your mobile. In addition, I think one could say that I met a number of PhDs and MAs at university:

    mas /mas/
    nounA house or farm in the south of France

    ORIGIN: Provençal
    -mas /-m?s/
    combining formDenoting a church festival or feast-day, as in Candlemas, Christmas, Martinmas, etc

    ORIGIN: Ety as for mass2
    mas. or masc.
    abbrevMasculine

    ma /mä/
    noun

    A childish contraction for mamma1

    Mass, Mas /mäs/, Mess or Mes /mes/ (obsolete)
    noun shortened form of masterMas?-John, Mass?-John, Mes?-John or Mess?-John noun (obsolete)

    A contemptuous name for a Scottish parish minister

     

54. Mark @ 51 and yesterday.  Thanks you for the welcome back.  I left because I felt some of the comments a trifle vituperative.  I have lived extensively in the Caribbean – Grenada and Carriacou – so felt i could offer something on the MAS debate, but MAS/ SING  is indeed ugly!!

55. PS, the last two [obsolete], you would find under Mass.

56. Yes, good to see SPanza here again.

    Continuing the Iberian theme – Pedro @28, my mind went to the Spanish más too, and then almost immediately to Portuguese: Mas que nada.  Like Mark and others, I was uncomfortable with the splitting of MASSING, but decided to forgive it because… well, I can forgive most things after a bit of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66.

    Likewise I forgave the PORKY/pour qui homophone.  It’s actually dodgier than Lourdes/lured, which caused quite a stink here a few months back, since afaik there’s no English accent in which porky would sound like a Frenchman saying pour qui.  The ou in French pour rhymes with the ou in coup d’état, not the o in j’adore; and the words pour and port sound entirely different to French ears.

    But then I thought… well, how would you render the French ou sound in English?  And the answer is, you can’t – at least not for Southern English/RP speakers.  So the or in PORKY is probably as close as it gets.

    Many thanks Boatman and manehi.

57. Robi @53

    Thanks. but app? I barely manage “mobile”!

58. … and in Collins:

    1.  Caribbean a carnival
    2. music played for a carnival, or a band playing this

59. … and there are 7 entries in the OED for MAS.

60. This was a joy from the outset, with the first half-dozen clues (and several others) apparently inspired by the political climate on both sides of the Atlantic. Most of it went in without much trouble, but I did have to look up ETOILES and GYMSLIPS, not being a speaker of either French or British. Like others here, I know SHRINKPACK as shrinkwrap, although I see that Collins has the latter either hyphenated or as two words. Faves included PURGE, POST-TRUTH, SPAT, the reverse clue for MADE-UP, the subtractive anagrams for INSIDER and REDUB, and the two trademark Boatman clues. I’ll stop here before I list them all. Thanks to Boatman and manehi.

    P.S. I’ll go against the majority here to offer the opinion that manehi’s parsing of MISSTATE (also mine) was the one that Boatman intended.

61. Julie – have now seen your late post on yesterday’s Brummie and made a brief response

62. My final (I promise) contribution to what I’ve found rather an enjoyable thread exploring ‘mas’ is to note that, if we allow for the ‘s’ acting as either a possessive or a plural, we can widen the field massively!  Just a few examples from many – ma, Ma or MA can also be: a horror movie, a character in The Lion King, a negative space in art and design, a Hungarian art magazine, Hungarian Airlines (IATA symbol), a Vietnamese ethnic group, a goddess and a motorcycle accident.

    And probably to the delight of my fellow pop-picker, Van Winkle, it’s an album by both Anjan Dutt and Rare Earth, the acronym for trip hop band Massive Attack and for Metal Archives, the comprehensive website for all things heavy metal!

63. Again thanks essexboy for your welcome back.  I remember when I was a teacher in Penge 50+ years ago our French teacher having us in stitches in the staffroom by talking of ‘murky buckets’ and silver plate, so I feel Boatman may have been ‘avin a larf’ rather than seriously attempting a(n) homophone!

64. Slightly later than usual greetings to all …

    Canthusus @1 and others – Yes, that’s what “view” is doing in 19 Dn. It always feels like a bit of a cheat to refer to 5s as if they were Ss without acknowledging the fact that they just look similar, though I seem to be happy to refer to “A1” as if it was the same as “AI”, so perhaps I’m not completely consistent here.

    Gazzh @7 and others – Excellent! I do like to see an alternative parsing getting to the right solution.

    Muffin @10, Michelle @15, Cruci @20 among many – Yes to all of those, including at least one that was new to me. I agree that most of the options for MAS are a bit obscure, but that shouldn’t have any bearing on whether the clue can be fairly solved, unless the meanings are so ridiculous that you find yourself thinking that you must be on the wrong track. For instance, I wouldn’t have been happy with this if the only justification was that it was the possessive of MA. Generally, I don’t have a problem with splitting one word into two lights, as long as neither part is an arbitrary jumble of letters – that really does deserve to be a pet hate – but I’m aware that some people don’t like split words at all, unless the split is referenced in the clue.

    Michelle @ 11 – Exactly, and that’s why I had to define SWINES figuratively – I did flirt with the literal definition, but realised that wouldn’t have been the correct plural.

    Pentman @33 – You’ve got it. That was exactly why there was only one first in 20 Ac.

    TassieTim @39 – Hah! That would have been just too much!

    Petert @ 43 – Heh heh. I like the way you’re thinking … A root that isn’t a true root in a puzzle concerned with the root of untruth. No, it didn’t occur to me at the time, but sometimes there’s a layer of meaning in a piece of work that its author is unaware of …

65. And thank you, SPanza @ 63 – sometimes, ‘avin a larf’ feels like the only appropriate response to some of the nonsense out there at the moment.

66. Oh boy, Boatman @ 65, you are so right!!

67. [I think the “mas” in the scientific name for the Male Fern is the “masculine” abbreviation ; Lady Fern is Athyrium filix femina]

68. My ma, yer ma, and all the mas gonna git together and have a pie-bakin’ contest at the hootenanny.

69. Thanks both,
    When graduates of King’s College, Cambridge take part in choral evensong, MAs sing.

70. I was all primed to show off my knowledge that a Mas is a farm in southern France, having once stayed in one, only for Robi @53 to get there first. I had thought French dialect was a bit of a stretch, mind you, even for a puzzle with ÉTOILES and PLIÉS.
    Anagram nightmare corner: I could not see past ‘sinews’ at 23d, until, cf MB @16, Bluebottle came to my rescue.

71. Not too bad in terms of difficulty although I was defeated by SHRINKPACK – never heard of the term (at least here in the US it’s shrinkwrap). That said, I’m probably in the minority of people, but I didn’t enjoy this as much as I usually enjoy Boatman’s fare.  I did not like MISSTATE, the break in MASSING, or ETOILES (is it even kosher to have a completely French word in an English crossword?).

    Oh well, thanks manehi and Boatman…

72. I don’t understand the fuss about MAS as it’s plainly a word.
    And could have been clued on its own

73. The MAS is also needed for the portmanteau political confessional NINA – “I’m a spinsider”, indeed.

74. Ha ha ha – VW @73 – Very good! SPINSIDER definitely should be a thing.

75. I parsed 19a as MASS and ING with the latter as king uncrowded.

76. * uncrowned

77. Like some and unlike others, I had a fine time with this puzzle.  Thank you, Boatman and manehi.

    You can’t substitute all for every — one takes plural, one takes singular.

    Porky isn’t a homophone of “pour qui” in my pronunciation — is it in anybody’s?  The first syllables are “pore” and “poor” respectively.

    Shouldn’t there be some indication that ETOILES is a foreign word?

    i think SWINES works as a plural not for pig but for swinish people — “those two swines will ruin everything.”

    MB @16 I assume the Bluebottle link is a goon connection, but I couldn’t make the link go anywhere.

78. Valentine @77: most (southern) Brits don’t distinguish between pour, pore, poor and paw – all four are pronounced [på].

    So on that basis (ignoring all other accents!) the POR in PORKY would work as a homophone for ‘pour’ in English.   The problem is, it doesn’t work as one for ‘pour’ in French – where it is indeed pronounced in a similar way to the American pour/poor, not pore or paw (see my post @56).

    In a US crossword, a homophone for pour qui could have been indicated much more accurately as ‘poor key’ – but in RP we don’t even have that ‘poor’ sound in our little box of vowels – so in the end I think the clue is excusable on the grounds of the Great RP Vowel Confusion. 😉

79. Graham @75

    The controversy over MASSING is the split into MAS and SING, as there is a convention that all the entries in the grid should be real words (this doesn’t apply to all puzzles!) Some posters needed convincing that MAS is a real word.

80. I’m sure “pour qui” sounded like PORKY when Ted Heath spoke French!

81. I had a couple of slightly different parsings:

    REDUB as “funky” drumbeat minus MA (a master – of arts) minus T (track’s first)

    MISSTATE as MIS (a US military intelligence service in WWII) + STATE, definition “falsify view of”

    I checked ETOILES in Collins and it’s listed as a word in British English.  Not sure in what context it’s used.

    Enjoyable puzzle overall.  More readily solved than many Boatman’s.  I though MADE-UP clued that way was a bit… cheesy!

    Thanks, B&M

     

82. I meant to add that cluing PURGE as a homophone of PERJURE minus R seems a bit dodgy too, as homophones can be spelled any number of ways, as the POUR/PORE/POOR/PAW debate shows.

83. [Valentine @77 Yes it is, but the link was broken due to my inabilty to use technology properly.  Obviously 30+ years in the industry isn’t enough… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebottle_(character)  Try that]

84. I really enjoyed this especially, as many have said, for the sadly apposite theme. Couldn’t parse CAN DO so thank you for that Manehi. I also agree MASSING doesn’t feel right. Loved PORKY, STOPCOCK and PURGE. Many thanks Boatman and Manehi. Sorry to post so late.

85. Muffin @ 79
    Thanks – yep realised I missed the point after posting!

86. “Porky” reminded me of an old “French” knock-knock joke which goes:

    Frappe, frappe

    Qui est la?

    Lost

    Lost Qui?

    Oui

     

    Groans all round.

87. Pauline @84: Especially hard for us in Yankland, where we spell candour as candor!

88. sirtony @86: I loved that!

89. I spotted KGB bottom left. Any others astound the outside?

90. *around

91. I agree with those who thought MAS and SING were poor form when the WP was clearly MASS and SING. Whether or not MAS is a word is irrelevant.

Comments are closed.