Guardian 28,266 – Philistine

96 comments on “Guardian 28,266 – Philistine”

1. What a delight.

   That it is CHARLOTTE who RACES about in a Chelsea tractor is lovely; and although I’d never heard of SEMILUNAR, the wordplay was clear enough to work it out.

   Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

2. I’ve always assumed that it was frogs, more than toads, that sat on lily pads.

3. Ditto! This was such a pleasure, despite the taking of my name in vain in 1+5ac, (I am a Charlotte, definitely without an SUV!) Thank you Andrew for explaining COME BY and AWRY, both of which had puzzled me. I had MIM + IC for MIMIC, but I am sure you are right that this should be MI+MI+C. And thanks also for the early blog. Many thanks too to Philistine for a lovely start to Friday.

4. Andy @2:

   Indeed.

   Years ago, we had a very large, very amiable, and very very thick ginger tom cat. He noted a frog, as you say, sitting on a lily pad in the middle of the garden pond, and being a sociable soul thought he would go and keep it company.

   After the resounding PLOP! there was total silence for a few seconds while cat considered the situation, followed by a boiling motion in the pond and cat, about half his normal size because fur plastered to his sides, shot out of the water like a Trident missile and disappeared up the garden. He wandered back rather sheepishly at dinner time, having spent the day grooming himself, trusting that we would have forgotten the complete loss of his dignity earlier on.

5. Filled the whole grid (and correctly too!) while my post-dinner cuppa was cooling – I have to thank the long ones, which somehow just came to me.

   I first thought that the clue for 20d DEARTH was wrong because that’s not what you get if you put R in OF DEATH, but if you pair up the “of” with “inside” to make “inside of”, it works.  Andrew called 1a CHELSEA TRACTOR an &lit., which is a bit of a stretch since the “in this” is not part of the wordplay.  &lits are by nature rare; I don’t think we have to force them into existence when they’re not quite there.  Sorry, don’t mean to be a grouch.

6. If I were Mark, I might express unease at the splitting of BEST OWED, while being perfectly happy with SEMI LUNAR.

   Speaking of whom, I do hope he’ll be with us again before long.  (And munromad, and a few other names I haven’t seen for a while.)

   Witty and elegant as usual from Philistine, thanks to him and Andrew.

7. A one oatmeal cappuccino solve but thoroughly enjoyable. GoD for SIC TRANSIT and a chuckle for COME BY when the pfennig dropped. I thought the definition for 10a was a bit loose

8. I don’t think ‘two’ for ‘twice’ in 9ac works very well.

   But an enjoyable solve to start the day.

   Thanks Philistine and Andrew.

9. This is, for me, the quickest Friday solve in ages, if not ever. One pleasing aspect was that I found I was entering a lot of them though seeing the wordplay, and only then the whole solution, much more than normal. In Oz, we always had serviette rings – napkins (aka nappies) being something else altogether. We also have Toorak tractors (Toorak being a very upmarket Melbourne suburb). Lots I liked, but the chapeau has to go to the Ford – I knew I was looking at swapping a B for the D in ‘comedy’, but couldn’t see what was telling me to do it – until a delightful PDM. Also got DEARTH first – my way into TKOD. Lovely, Philistine, and thanks to Andrew.

10. I must be doing too many crosswords: not only has CHELSEA TRACTOR appeared somewhere in recent times but we had DIARRHOEA (!) two days ago in the Indy.  I enjoyed FRUIT SALAD (Andrew – you need to underline the definition) and PAMPERED (which should leave the physicists happy today).  And good to see tresses meaning locks again – bodycheetah will be pleased.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew

11. Chelsea tractor brought a tickle by reminding me of the Saunders skit…mums delivering darlings to school in said gas guzzlers, last one of which is a tank (off-screen screech of brakes, next scene Silent Witness skit, child on slab crushed by caterpillar tracks). Didn’t know about the Klimt Kiss, but I once sent a print of Rodin’s one as a wedding bkessing. Had no idea about the aortic valve’s topology, a tilt. Most enjoyable, thanks P and A.

12. At the risk of bending rules by revisiting with a correction, PAMPERERS of course.

13. Best puzzle of the week for me beating very strong competition from yesterday’s Maize and the previous day’s Io.

14. Thanks Philistine and Andrew -a ‘gentle’ end to the week, as suggested above. Was tempted to put ‘Scrotal Teacher’ for 1 across as it is also an anagram of Charlotte races, but that would have ballsed the whole thing up.

15. Whew, for me, that was tough, but I enjoyed the challenge. I had lots of ticks. I liked the Klimt reference in 22a THE KISS OF DEATH, as I slaved over a jigsaw of “The Kiss” during COVID iso. I was reomded of “Ozimandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley when I saw what was going on with 3d,18a SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI. Just want to mention 22a PERMISSIVE, 25a ABASEMENT, 8d ROAD TEST, 17d HOME PAGE and 23d MOTTO, not yet higlighted, that I really appreciated. Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

    [essexboy@6, I too miss some of our regular contributors who haven’t been seen online for a while.]

16. Lots to like here. My favourites were the bookends of CHELSEA TRACTOR – fooled by the wordplay and I was thinking of the good ol’ boys stock-car racing in Charlotte, NC for ages – and (the very apt for the setter) SEMILUNAR. An honourable mention as well for COME BY. For me, not the easy ride it appears to have been for many people, and I was very happy to finish, with FRUIT SALAD my last in.

    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

17. gsolphotog @13: if you can find the time, Crosophile’s Tuesday Independent was delightful.  Something very interesting going on: you’ll sense it.

18. Lots to love today. I’m curious about MOTTO at 23d. That seemed so neat I guessed it was a bit of a chestnut. Any thoughts from long time bloggers? I’m still at the beginner stage so everything is new to me! I liked ABASEMENT as well.

19. [Another absentee is Cookie, who I came across doing Everyman back numbers. Not to mention setters, eg Arachne…one hopes for the best]

20. Thanks for the Friday fun. Brought to mind Rigsby’s cat and One Man And His Dog.

    [essexboy@6 A good strategy, to MIMIC absent friends, hoping to entice them back to the fold. Let’s hope it’s a circuit breaker rather than a complete lockdown.

    bodycheetah@7 we see what you did there!]

21. What a wonderful crossword. So many joys. Loved the ‘Sic Transit’ and the double MI (took me a while) but CoD has to be 1dn. Thanks Philistine and thanks to bodycheetah for his comment on 10ac.

     

22. [bodycheetah @7 – I found that one dropped quite freely, actually]

    As others have already said, a lovely solve today with several laugh-out-loud moments – 1,5a being a guffaw as I see far too many of those types round here.

    Thanks Philisitine and Andrew!

23. [It’s all getting a bit political – yesterday we had socialists and anarchists – today we’ve got the trots]

24. Waited till I got all the check letters before filling in diarrhoea.

25. Like others I found this an enjoyable but relatively straight forward outing; it’s very rare we finish over the breakfast table. With CHELSEA TRACTOR and MIMIC giving the first word of 3 down as S_C the rest of clue wrote itself in. I needed help with spelling DIARRHOEA – how is anyone supposed to remember that? My favourite was THE KISS OF DEATH. With VIENNA going on early I reckoned it had to include a Klimt, but it took a while to remember the name of the painting. FRUIT SALAD was fun too.

26. For 3/18 I had S-C to start so the answer was kind of obvious but I didnt see the SIC/SICK hom. Great stuff.

    Very nice puzzle  and blog. Thanks. (At least I saw B for D

27. [Given today’s running joke, I hope it’s not a spoiler or bad form to share the aforementioned Indy clue from Eccles on Wednesday: It results in terrible bottom sounds (9)]

28. I thought this was tremendous. Witty and cleverly constructed – everything a puzzle should be. Favourites were the TRACTOR, SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI and COMEDY. Many thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

29. As NeilH said @1, ‘What a delight’.

    Such ingenious and witty cluing, raising many satisfied sighs and smiles. I loved the ‘sick transit’ and so many others but my favourite of all was SEMILUNAR: I could imagine Philistine chuckling to himself as he worked out the clever reference to his day job.

    Like others, I didn’t expect to have to work out the spelling of DIARRHOEA twice in one week.

    Huge thanks to Philistine for a super puzzle to end the week and to Andrew for a super blog.

30. A pleasant solve with some witty surfaces. One minor quibble: Ignorant isn’t strictly synonymous with not clever. Ignorant means lacking knowledge whereas not clever means lacking intelligence. The two often go hand in hand but they aren’t the same.

31. I must have been on the setter’s wavelength today, as the top half was almost a write in. The bottom half was slower but it was akin to a Monday puzzle (and none the worse for that!). Some really good clues.

    Minor quibblet – I’m bored of Spoonerisms. I wish we saw less of them.

    To go with DIARRHOEA we had BUTT…, PAMPER..S (both a stretch I grant you), NAPKIN, RINGS (one answer, two scatological references). Any more?

32. keyser @31 – I’ve heard a 10a refered to as a FRUIT SALAD before…

33. A lovely way to fill in time waiting for a WOF (aka MOT I think in the UK) but over too quickly. My mind went immediately to Klimt for 27,28; never even thought of Rodin. SEMILUNAR took longer than it should have as initial thought was ‘it is a tricuspid valve’ (tho not the tricuspid valve) b4 the pdm. BUt COMEDY my COTD.
    Interesting comments re spelling of DIARRHOEA as these days I usually omit the O, (cf eg fetus), on the understanding that it is an unnecessary carry over from the Greek oe (read something re this many years ago).
    Thanks to Philistine for the fun and Andrew for the blog.

34. Desmodeus: yes I had thst thought too re ignorance and cleverness

35. As this site’s resident curmudgeon, can I suggest that we have no had enough jokes about DIARRHOEA. For most of you it is a rare occurrence, usually attributable to some hilarious escapade. But for the many with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis it is a persistent and debilitating issue. Ridding these illnesses of their stigmas is not helped by these reminders that DIARRHOEA is apparently intrinsically funny.

36. Great crossword. I got 27,28 ac from 20 down, which somehow feels wrong.

37. to ngaiolaurenson @ 33

    I have always thought of DIARRHOEA as based on Greek ‘dia’ and rrhoia’ meaning something like a ‘running through’.  The Greek would have been written with a rho and a rough breathing on it, the convention being to transliterate it as a double RRH.

    German Durchfall is an ‘almost translation’ of the Greek.

    I’m not sure if all this should be in square brackets.  Apologies if it should.  I can’t find them on the keyboard anyway.

38. Enjoyable, ingenious, entertaining and just tough enough to feel like a challenge

    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew

39. Echoing many comments above, but what a lovely piece of work this was, with Philistine putting his surgeon’s mark on this with SEMILUNAR. Loved the anagram for DIARRHOEA. Realised early on with S something C for the first part of 3d, 18ac that this must be something in Latin.

40. Definitely my favourite crossword of the week.  It was clever and amusing with a range of clue types.  My COTD was 1D. With ‘c’ as the last letter of the first word of 3,18 in, sic immediately popped into my head and hence the Latin but confirmed by then parsing.

    9A doesn’t quite work correctly for me as the cryptic grammar requires “…Two Thousand and OneS…”, plural. I thought Philistine was trying to force an allusion to the sci-fi movie here, which is of course is titled entitled “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

     

     

41. Great fun.

    Never come across the mnemonic “Dash in a rush, run home, or else accident?” (Pace Van Winkle)

42. Liked TRAGEDIAN, ROAD TEST, FRUIT SALAD, ABASEMENT, THE KISS OF DEATH (loi).

    New: Chelsea Tractor, SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI (having guessed that the phrase started with ‘sic’, I found it via google) – did not parse it apart from ‘sick transit’; and aortic semilunar valve.

43. A very enjoyable puzzle today – I was hampered for a while on 27,28 because one of the bold lines indicating the word boundaries was misplaced (IPad version only) so I was looking for an answer containing the word “SO”, instead of “OF”. I chortled at DIARRHOEA and loved CHELSEA TRACTOR.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew.

44. I see a couple of references to the meaning of ignorant. Colloquially it always meant rude or stupid when I was a lad. And surely the essence of a great puzzle is to encompass all usages.
    And I have to say that Van Winkle is a wag. Always having a dig at The PC community.

45. [As a teacher I once had a sick note from a parent informing me that her child had been off with “the dire rear, which has run all through he house”.  Since then I’ve always thought that was a better spelling of diarrhoea]

46. I don’t know much about popes or poetry, but I gather that SIC etc is also a poem by Emily Dickinson, TILT.

    I started rather slowly but had no problem with Klimt as a copy of that painting hangs in our lounge. I did particularly like the clues for DIARRHOEA (I stared at the fodder for quite a long time, thinking “can that really make a word?”) and COME BY.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew.

47. [Re musical refs:

    Pentman @40 – at 9a I too had Also sprach Zarathustra running through my head, complete with space baby, and lots of banging on the big bass drum…

    An earworm which has now been displaced, thanks to Robi @46, by Sam Cooke (Don’t know much about…).  What a wonderful world indeed.]

48. Not quite sure whether I loved or hated this puzzle. Other than the (easy) anagrams many clues were solved by guessing the definition and solving as a GK puzzle. I usually dislike multi-word answers, but got lucky with the big one – starting with a three-letter word (S – C) – what the heck is that ! – I dug back deep into my days as a Latin scholar and then the rest was easy. Otherwise, I’ve seen various versions of that clue for TRAGEDIAN previously, but always enjoy it. I’d never heard of a CHELSEA TRACTOR, but presumably they are driven by the new generation of Sloane Street Rangers – sounds like fun – I wonder if they drag-race along Kensington High Street at midnight? LOI was PAMPERERS, and for the record the whole hodgepodge was all over in 35 minutes. On the whole, I think loved rather than hated does it justice.

49. Unlike rodshaw @ 48, I am an Latin ignoramus. I had to cheat (googled Latin phrases). I have said this before, but Philistine is such a lovely setter. He often makes crosswords which are relatively faster to solve (although STGM brought me to a screeching halt this time), but they are not less fun! Perfect for beginners like me.

    Thank you Andrew for the blog.

50. I feel honour-bound to admit that  I thought I recognised SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI  from the the rather fabulous Dark on Netflix but that turned out to be “sic mundus creatus est” . So some of the right words but in the wrong order. Shades of Eric Morecombe and Andre Previn 🙂

51. Never heard of a CHELSEA TRACTOR and wasn’t helped by mistyping a letter in one of the crossing answers, but when I finally worked it out I thought it was a delightful way to describe those mammoth vehicles. I wonder how well it would play in conversation over here.

    Otherwise I think it’s all been said, so I’ll just add my gratitude to Philistine, and to Andrew for explaining where the second I in MIMIC came from (I parsed it as did beobachterin @3, but Andrew surely has it right).

52. to ngaiolaurenson @ 33

    I think it’s nice to have the carry-over from Greek. To keep the connection. Not that I’ve ever studied Greek – though I’d like to.

53. 3,18. Graffiti reported on the wall of New York Metro: “Gloria Munday is sick of Transit”

54. Sorry, A.app is an interloper!

     

55. Postmark, Thank you for the recommendation. I didn’t get a chance to do Tuesday’s Indy but I ll try over the weekend.

56. [rodshaw @48 – I believe it is SLOANE RANGERS the pun being on Lone Ranger at which point I should direct you to the great Quantum Jump’s “Lone Ranger” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hchOYs_d_Bw]

57. I thought I’d seen both SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI and CHELSEA TRACTOR recently, but hesitated to say so because the last time I thought/said that, I accidentally infringed the omerta on a prize pouzzle. But I’ve had another look at last Saturday’s crossword and can’t see anything relevant. Perhaps they were in the Weekend GK crossword? Certainly they were both familiar to me, which helped me to get a good foothold in today’s grid. As others have said, a very pleasant and comparatively rapid solve for me (with apologies to JinA @15 – I know how irritating it can be when you’ve finally solved a toughie only to find everyone else saying what a doddle it was).

    Like petert @36, I solved 20d DEARTH first (from the crossing E and the def), and this led to 27,28 – though I hadn’t got as far as identifying the Vienna artist when my internet connection vanished.

    Andrew – I don’t think anyone has addressed your mini-quibble re HOME PAGE: usually the home page is only part of a website, I’d say. On my browser I have The Guardian.com set up as my Home Page, ie when I open the browser, that is the website that appears automatically.

58. sheffield hatter @57: I don’t know whether you try the Telegraph but I’ve tracked down that CHELSEA TRACTOR was in there on Monday.  It accounts for my deja vu so maybe yours too.

59. Much as I enjoyed the SIC TRANSIT and, once I’d decided the second part wasn’t a toaster, Charlotte’s conveyance, I found myself wondering whether TWOPENNY was still pronounced ‘tuppeny’. Other than by me, of course.

60. [Trailman @59. When I was still working as a betting shop manager we were always short of coppers – people throw them away, give them to beggars or put them in jars – so would go to the local post office to buys bags of ‘tuppences’, which used to amuse the younger members of staff greatly. In the context of the clue, I would say tuppenny ha’penny, rather than just twopenny.]

61. sheffield hatter @60: Whilst I agree on ‘tupp’ in both contexts you mention, funnily enough I still use the phrase ”two penny worth” and wouldn’t naturally abbreviate that to “tuppennyworth”.  ‘Worth’ appears in the clue but that could be coincidence.

62. [Trailman @59 I would still say “I don’t give a tuppenny (insert expletive here). I feel like I am going back in time today with NAPKIN RINGS Latin tags and tuppences]

63. [Thanks sheffield hatter, Postmark and Petert. Good to know I’m not alone. Hatter, my dad was a betting shop manager so maybe it comes with the trade.]

64. I agree with essexboy: this was a very witty and elegant puzzle. MOTTO and MIMIC were a delight, SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI was entertaining (and, as any fule kno, means “Gloria was unwell on Monday’s ferry”), COME BY was incredibly classy and I also enjoyed DIARRHOEA (and that’s not something you hear often!).
    Speaking of physical indignities: I was midway through swallowing a mouthful of tea when I got to Bullhassocks’ comment about 1a & 5a – and spluttered it all down my front.
    Huge thanks to Philistine for the fun, and to Andrew for the blog.

65. A bit late but I must say how much I enjoyed this. [I am a dreadful speller perhaps even dyslexic but the two words I can spell are desiccated and diarrhoea].  Favourites were the aforementioned  DIARRHOEA, COME BY, once the parse penny had dropped and PERMISSIVE, which raised a big smile once I saw the light.  Many thanks Philistine for the perfect end to the crossword week and Andrew for the blog!

66. Thanks Philistine and Andrew

    If this had been set anonymously I wouldn’t have guessed it was a Philistine – by far the easiest of his I’ve done. I loved CHELSEA TRACTOR even though it was an obvious anagram – I can imagine one being driven by a Charlotte.

    As an ex-teacher, can I echo what a couple of earlier commentators have said; IGNORANT is entirely different from “not clever”.

67. [muffin your remark@66 reminds me of the old chestnut about the difference between knowledge and intelligence.  Knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruit, but intelligence is knowing not to include them in a fruit salad]

68. [SPanza @67 Actually we have grown some cherry tomatoes this year that are so sweet that they would be fine in a fruit salad – though I agree that this isn’t typical!]

69. It strikes me – belatedly – that I solved 10ac largely through a process of vowel movements.  With apologies to VW.

70. [Yes, muffin @ 68, nothing should be off limits culinarily except of course that pineapples have absolutely no place in pizza]

71. [Postmark @ 69 in Spanish pronunciation (Valencia/Balencia)  that would equate to 10a!]  I’ll get my coat now!!

72. I assumed the Two thousand and one was MIM and IC was the finale to Music

73. TerryMerv @72

    I think Andrew has it right as two “thousand and ones”. Two thousand and one would be MMI, not MIM.

74. [Postmark @61. ‘Twopenn’orth’ is a different matter. It’s used self-deprecatingly: “If I can just have my twopenn’rth…”, as in “my opinion, worthless as it may be”. Whereas “tuppenny-ha’penny” is derogatory: “You and your tuppenny-ha’penny company/football team/cabinet”.]

75. sh @74: I agree with you on the different usage.  I was coming at it from the pronunciation point as per Trailman’s query.  The ‘two penny’ element is common but I don’t think I’ve ever heard two penny worth, often abbreviated as per your note, pronounced with a ‘tup’.  Not that the world will shift one bit upon its axis if I’m wrong but it’s one of those funny little things.

76. TerryMerv & muffin. I agree with Andrew about the parsing, but the setter has taken liberties in order to include the misleading reference to the film.

    MMI is 2001 (as muffin says), whereas MIM (as in the first three letters of the answer) would be 1999, so for the clue to work we have to forget the way Roman numerals are normally used. ‘Two Thousand and One’ then becomes “Two (Thousand and One)” or, faux algebraically, 2(MI)=MIMI. The idea that “…music finale” could lead to IC is also a non-starter; maybe “…music’s final bars.”

    How about “Copy 1999 final bars of music?” No, Philistine’s idea was better.

77. [Hi SH

    MIM for 1999 is invalid in Roman numerals, as there is a rule that the subtracted number in front must be at least a tenth of the number it is subtracted from. The recurring IC for 99 is also incorrect, though XC for 90 is fine (99 is XCIX, in fact).]

78. [Anna @52 – I agree about keeping the Greek connection – although it might give oeconomists and oeco-warriors a few problems with their spell-checkers 😉 ]

    [I was interested to read Postmark’s contributions to the discussion today.  The moniker reminds me of something or someone… I can’t quite put my finger on it though.]

79. [Thanks muffin. I’d forgotten about that one.]

80. [essexboy – yes, I think you’re right about Postmark. With a username like that, could his real name possibly be Frank?]

81. [sh@80:  There’s a lovely Greek word anagnorisis – I’ve never yet been able to slip it into a post, but I think now might be my opportunity!]

82. Thanks, Philistine for a gem of a puzzle, with all my favourites already mentioned. (And Andrew for explaining SEMILUNAR and the delightful CHELSEA TRACTOR.)

    [ essexboy@78, thanks for your second remark – I hadn’t twigged to it, and I welcome him back, too. ]

    [ I almost spelled it roemark, but decided against it. ]

     

83. [Postmark @17 & 58. Just got back from doing Tuesday’s Crosophile in the Independent – it took me just short of 28 minutes. I never, ever complete the Guardian cryptic in under half an hour. And, no, I don’t ever try the Telegraph, so that wasn’t where I saw one of my deja vus. Thanks for both suggestions, though.]

84. Thanks Philistine for the amusement, Andrew for the blog, and the many posters for the discussion of knowledge vs. intelligence. All in all a stimulating crossword with BESTOWED, COME BY, and AWRY as my favourites.

85. [essexboy @81. Thanks for anagnorisis. I recently watched the 2006 film of Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, in which the opposite happens to the Keanu Reeves character. Very disturbing it was too. Sorry, forgot to say spoiler alert!]

86. [sh @83: I enjoyed the theme. Nicely hidden and not a treatment I’ve encountered before. ]

87. [sh @85:  thanks for the recommendation]

    [PostMark @86:  medial majusculation noted 😉 ]

88. [essexboy @ 81 –  thanks for allowing me some off topic comment.

    I loved the reference to my favourite Greek TRAGEDIAN @5dn

    Aristotle named Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus Rex’ as the perfect tragedy. He didn’t have so many to choose from (!) but I’d still go along with him. I loved teaching it to my students ( superb illustrations of dramatic irony). I took them to a performance in the Leicester Haymarket Theatre in the early ’70s, where the miscast Brian Blessed reacted to the anagnorisis by a quite spectacular backward fall, which for me, I’m afraid, reduced it to pantomime level.

89. I forgot the concluding square bracket] – sorry.

90. [ Rodshaw @48 – your joky (I presume) reference to Sloane Rangers drag racing in Kensington at midnight is actually not far from the truth. There has been a serious problem of antisocial driving in that area by those with enough money to acquire souped-up luxury cars, causing great annoyance by revving their engines, doing skid turns, racing and playing loud music etc. In response, the local council has banned such activities after midnight, apparently with some success. Perhaps not many of the cars would be Chelsea Tractors, but they’re all indications of people with more money than sense (or sensibility). I doubt whether any of them would ever visit 15squared.]

91. [Eileen 88:  many thanks for sharing that, and especially for the Brian Blessed image 🙂 .  Apologies in advance for lowering the cultural level, but I can’t resist posting a link to the song which I believe Tom Lehrer wrote to help Sophocles market Oedipus Rex to a wider audience.]

92. Two references to Klimt , The Kiss and Vienna today as it appeared in Pointless museums roun. Fortunately I’ve seen it in the Belvedere so that helped in both cases. Chelsea Tractor definitely a new one on me and I had to assume the aortic valve was semilunar in shape as I never had a Biology lesson in School. Bology was regarded as a girl’s subject tragically. I remenbered the sic transit gloria bit but had to look up the mundi bit in the back of Chambers. I too enjoyed (?) diarrhoea.

93. [essexboy @91 – many thanks for that. No apologies needed – I loved Tom Lehrer in my student days. 😉 ]

94. [Eileen @ 93

    If Lehrer hadn’t ‘retired’ after saying that satire was dead when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, imagine what a field/day he’d be having now].

95. A lot of 10 in the comments

96. Two jigsaw references for me in this excellent puzzle. Like Julie @15 I had also done Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss during lockdown, and the 3000 piece Sic Gloria Transit Mundi by Renato Casaro was another very enjoyable puzzle. Hoped that Philistine had set a jigsaw theme just for me, but think this was just random chance. Thanks to Andrew for explaining some of the parsing

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