Guardian Cryptic 28,322 by Pan

98 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,322 by Pan”

1. Thanks Pan and manehi
   Generally fun, but one or two odditites. “Fruity beer” is an off-centre definition for strawberry – it’s a DBE, so needs a ? 14a looks like a DD but isn’t. A pity that TILL as receptacle for cash appears in the crossing 13d and 26a.
   Favourites FONT and RECOLLECTS.

2. A fairly mild start to the week, though I had to think a bit about the NE corner. I got LINERS before LATITUDE.
   Hate the word RETIREE. (Together with attendee and all the other -ee words which aren’t pp passives).

   Thanks Pan and manehi

   [Almost finished Saturday’s but still haven’t finished Friday’s Paul]

3. Just going to reiterate my observation at the Guardian’s comments section that today’s puzzles are set by Pan + Anto = Panto

4. Hi manehi, you parsing for HONEST has two Ns… I think it’s just O for over.

   Could not parse lattitude so thanks for the explanation!

   muffin @1 I agree obout STRAWBERRY.

   Favourites were DIAMONDS aND CLARINET.

   Thanks to all 🙂

5. One of my fastest ever solves so I am starting the week feeling really upbeat even if I live in Kent.

   12ac was a great little clue and 23db/15dn was a nice anagram.

   Thanks Pan and manehi

6. Font was my last one in, and I really couldn’t see how it worked; my brain was insisting on (type of water)(bath). Excellent misdirection, I suppose.

7. Oh dear me @4…. latitude, about

8. Great puzzle with lovely surfaces. I just couldn’t get FONT, nor parse MINISKIRT. Many thanks to Pan and manehi.

9. Perfect start to a dreary Monday. I liked WELSH RAREBIT, MINISKIRT and ON THE GRAPEVINE. Ta Pan & manehi.

10. Pretty straightforward as expected on a Monday. Like ravenrider@6 and drofle@8, I had difficulty with FONT for some reason. I liked STRAWBERRY and had no problem with it being a dbe: I think the word “version” in the clue indicates that. I still have fond memories of a childhood holiday on Tiree nearly 60 years ago, but I have Anna@2’s reservations about RETIREE and other such “…ee” words, though I’d not go so far as to say I hate them.

    Thanks Pan and manehi.

11. I say, Anna @2, that excludes a lot of really useful words!
    Agree with drofle @8 on the surfaces. LOI was RIGA – nice old city btw.

    My thanks to Pan and manehi.

12. Thanks to Pan and manehi. I enjoyed the puzzle and, like Brojo@4, particularly liked CLARINET at 17d. Is STRAWBERRY beer a thing? [So sorry to hear about the hard lockdowns in the UK and commiserations to those whose Christmas gatherings will be affected.]

13. JinA@12. Thanks for your commiserations and thank goodness for Cryptic crosswords 🙂

14. And Strawberry beer is delicious although I imagine it’s a bit like marmite

15. Re my comment @10, in the old days when workers could be compulsorily retired by employers at a defined age, those who had been forced to stop working could legitimately be called RETIREEs.

16. beaulieu @ 15

    Yes, I suppose so. But those days are long gone, I think?

17. I’m another who had difficulties with FONT – a complete alphabet trawl gave it as the most likely of half a dozen possibilities, but none seemed to parse – thanks, manehi, for setting me straight. I do like the variety of beers in the UK (when I am able to get there…), but fruit “beers” are a step too far – as was a smoked beer I had in Presteigne once – I almost couldn’t finish it. Otherwise a pleasant crossie. Thanks, Pan.

18. Lovely start to an otherwise dreary week with a quick solve. Nothing to complain about mostly becauase I am still struggling with the Saturday special (don’t do Christmas so leaving that word out…).

    My mother always calls WELSH RAREBIT “Welsh Rabbit” – this lead to a pet rabbit we had being called “Squelch” for a while (as in “Squelched Rabbit” – we were simple people in Southend in the early-1980s). Luckily, the joke didn’t last too long as young Mr (or possibly Ms) Squelch was eaten by a fox within about 6 weeks.

    Northern France bars also serve a delicious version – “Le Welch;” beer boiled with cheese and then poured over a piece of bread with ham and a soft-fried egg on top. Yum.

    Thanks to Pan and manehi!

19. I am a beginner so have probably got this wrong but wondered if the Beer related to a translation (English version). Beer is the German suffix for berry, e.g. strawberry is Erdbeer.

20. Having become a regular Guardian solver only over the past couple of weeks I am enjoying them a lot but am having difficulty coming to terms with some of the apparently random one-letter abbreviations. Today we have L = lecturer, and P = priest. Really?

21. [Boffo @3: Oh no they aren’t! Oh yes they are!

    Sieso @19: Names of fruits are fascinating – I’ve often wondered why we don’t have a name for the fruit we call “orange” as they do in (eg) German (Apfelsine). Sure someone will educate me.]

22. Had a fruity beer, not strawberry, the other day…my young bloke dragged me out for a swim and a drink at a new brew-boutique. My maternal grandma made the best strudel, truly gourmet. And, MaidenBartok@18, that Welch sounds inventive (not up to your Grandma’s borscht-a-la-Sobranie, but, then, those grandmas are the stuff of legend). Fun start to the week, thanks both.

23. Good Monday fun. I had to wait for the FONT crossers as SALT & WASH seemed like plausible alternatives. Quality surfaces too. Thanks all

24. Thanks for the blog, manehi.

    A very pleasant puzzle for another gloomy morning, with some neat constructions and lovely surfaces throughout.

    My favourites were WELSH RAREBIT, MINISKIRT, PLAYWRIGHT, LATITUDE and PSALMS.

    I’m with Anna in hating those -ee words, although RETIREE is, I suppose, excusable, because, as beaulieu says @15, ‘retire’ can be used transitively. The most execrable one I’ve come across is ‘standee’ in a notice on a bus stating the number of permitted passengers.

    Many thanks to Pan for another enjoyable puzzle.

25. [jackkt @20: Yes, many appear random but are invariably justified by being in one dictionary or another. P for priest is quite common but L for lecturer I have only come across a couple of times and I don’t know where it would be used in real life.]

    Spot on for a Monday, thanks Pan

26. Sieso @ 19

    It’s Erdbeere and presumably means ‘earth berry’.

    MaidenBartok @ 21

    I have believed that Apfelsine was originally a Chinese apple. Don’t know how true that is. It’s appelsiini in Finnish.

27. Eileen @ 24

    Ugh yes, standee is truly awful.
    And I’m pleased to see you’re a, er, convertee to execrable 🙂

28. Enjoyed this and made good progress till I got to the SW but got there in the end.

    Got RECOLLECTS from the definition and the crosses but did not know collects was a type of prayer.

    Liked LATITUDE, TITILLATED, DIAMONDS.

    Seemed to be quite a few clues where you have to take away a letter which I like.

    Thanks to Pan and manehi

29. A “mortgagee” is not mortgaged! (and “mortgagor” just demonstrates the flexibility of English spelling.) “Standee”, however, is awful. My own bete noir is “overly”.

30. NE corner held me up too for a while, with REPUGNANT and DIAMONDS both employing the similar device of a single letter removed from almonds and remnant. Some fun clues, though…

31. [Anna @26: In Dutch, the colour is “Oranje” and the fruit is “sinasappel” which would mean Chinese apple. There is a a link to English in that we have a “Mandarin” as the colour, fruit and Chinese officials.]

32. RIGA and FONT excellent

33. jackkt@20: [Hi there, jackkt! Are you still shelling out in order to get to do The Times?] Yes, like you, when I switched to doing the Guardian, I found that their frequent use of first letters from any old word you choose rather irritating. The justification is, I think, that pretty much any word finds its first letter given an entry in a Chambers dictionary somewhere! I now just shrug and accept that it’s a stylistic feature of Grauniad puzzles.

34. MaidenBartok @ 31

    Yep. I love the word oranje and have often wondered if the -je is the diminutive suffix, as in beetje, mannetje and so on, or if it is just an attempt at the nj sound.
    Interesting, what you say about mandarin. Thank you. I am going to follow that up.

35. Anna @26 yes you are right its Erdbeere but not when used as an adjective e.g. Erdbeergeschmack. I think that is what I was thinking of.

36. Always thought the cheat in 18a was a welcher, but I see both spellings are used.

37. [MaidenBartok@21: As I understand it in Old English there was no special word for orange at all; the word wasn’t applied to the color until around 1500. The color would have been called “yellow red” or perhaps “saffron yellow,” or rather geuloread or geulorcroc. In Latinate languages and later in English the word was applied first to the fruit and then to the color, and the fruit name comes from Arabic naranj where the n was eventually absorbed into the definite article; somewhat as “lute” comes from turning “al-oud,” the oud, into “a laut” in Old Provencal. This is all from the Wikipedia article, I don’t have any special knowledge.

    @18 also I understand “Welsh rabbit” to be the original and perhaps rather insulting, then being converted to the kinder “rarebit.”]

38. [Today’s earworm for oranje https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nrIPWM1GGE%5D

39. [Matt w @37: Thanks! The Arabic connection is interesting in that the other citrus fruit “Tangerine” simply means something that comes from Tangiers.

    bodycheetah @38: Less Thanks! I am sure anyone of my generation will remember playing “Eye Level” in group music lessons on the recorder. I see your U Toob and raise you this rather well-done version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiCLjUNtA9c (theme from “Van-der-Valk”)]

40. Some good stuff here, many thanks, Pan.

    Particularly admired FONT (LOI) but a bit unclear about STRAWBERRY.

    One trivial quiblet, although SINGLE-MINDED is perfectly obvious cryptic definition, there’s nothing really in the clue to define concentration on one aim only.

41. pserve_p2@33

    Yes I’m still paying for it and worth every penny in my view. Not just for the puzzle of course but the camaraderie at TfTT where I have been contributing for 13 years.

42. Thank you Pan and Manehi.

    A gentle start to the week. I particularly liked the religious referenced clues – 22ac, 20dn and 12dn – my last one in.

    MaidenBartok @ 18 – my battered 1972 Chambers has Welsh rabbit “sometimes written ‘Welsh rarebit’ by wiseacres”.

43. Auriga: re mortgagor-mortgagee: in legal settings -or and -ee are not about receiving an action but receiving a right or duty of some kind. See also lessor/lessee, payor/payee, lienor/lienee. Ugly words, but they’re systematic. Mortgagor is weird because the relationship is backwards to what people expect, since the mortgage is the property interest granted, not the loan it secures. So the mortgagee receives the mortgage–and gives the loan.

    Oh, you want me to comment on the crossword? I liked it.

44. Fiona Anne@28

    I’ve become more aware of the “take a letter away” clues recently – I think the gadget is a Subtractive Anagram – very posh clothes.

    I misled myself at 1ac – assumed that it was an anagram of Landing with L replaced by H (very silly – the clue should then have read “Hydrogen”!)

    Good puzzle – many likes: thanks to Pan, manehl and commenters (do others spend longer on enjoying the comments than on their solve?)

45. Yes, a pleasant puzzle for a miserable Monday. I agree with Muffin @1 in that, for my money, there were too many tills on the SE corner. Thanks to Pan and Manehi.

    [MaidenBartok @18 In 1970, after we’d all completed our World Cup Coin Collection, the next thing to collect from the petrol station were little books of football facts called Esso Squelchers. The idea being that you would Squelch someone in footie debate by having all the facts at your fingertips. You got a blue wallet to collect them in.]

46. 12ac I meant. Lovely misdirection.

47. [Penfold @45: being a radio amateur, the word “squelch” is very common in analogue systems to supress noise. In the 1970s, I collected Smurfs from National petrol stations. “Smurf” and “Squelch” seem like two good words to clue to me….]

    Marienkaefer @42: Hmmm. My 1982 Oxford says “Welsh Rabbit or by pop. etym. Rarebit…” So my mother has been right all these years!

48. [Seiso@19 and others: I confess that I took “beer” in the definition of STRAWBERRY to be an archaic English form of “berry”, but it seems it isn’t – I must have been thinking of the German word. So my opinion of the clue has dropped, since almost anything could be (and in most cases has been) used to flavour beer. The two most disgusting I have tried were peanut butter flavour and coconut cream flavour.]

49. Thanks both,
    Welsh is, according to oed, of uncertain etymology and sometimes considered offensive because of the supposed derivation from the people of the Principality. I’m surprised to see it turn up in a Guardian crossword.

50. Very enjoyable – my dad’s love for 14A certainly helped. FONT was my LOI – I tried SOFT before the penny dropped, rather than ravenrider @6.

    To be very pedantic, ‘those’ is plural, so would suggest REMNANTS (10A).

    Thanks Pan and manehi.

51. @Jim, not sure I agree; you could have ‘the trains are a remnant of the steam age’, or something similar.

52. Jim@50 – I tried to think of a phrase where REMNANT referred to plural, but without success so googled its usage and came across this:

    “President Lincoln in his second electoral campaign (1864), and the Tories in allusion to the Whig remnant who joined C. J.”

    So in this case, the remnant was indeed “those left behind”.

53. Thanks both – I’m more convinced by drofle’s, where I suppose it’s similar to ‘rump’.

54. Easier than the quiptic, who’s surprised? And enjoyable, thanks to Pan and to manehi for the untangling.

    Since when does M = “man”?

    I agree that strawberry beer sounds revolting. Worse even than shandy, the idea of which has long appalled me.

    Anybody else try an anagram of “cop given” for 7d?

    yesyes@5 Why is living in Kent unlikely to make you upbeat?

    Auriga @11 Anna’s not excluding useful words — just say “attender” instead of “attendee.”

    How many of us are old enough to remember miniskirts? (Or to have worn one?) Seems like a near-extinct term in normal speech.

    We used to have Welsh rarebit for supper when I was a child, and we also pronounced it “rabbit.”

55. London buses, I seem to remember, had a sign saying “STANDEES MUST NOT STAND FORWARD OF THIS NOTICE”. Eileen@ 24 The word standees cannot refer to the number of passengers on a bus as many of them would be seated. But if we can have standees why should we not also have sittees?

56. Valentine@54 – I reckon shandy is OK when one is driving and doesn’t want the alcohol content of 100% beer.

    I remember miniskirts, Carnaby Street, gold-top milk, round-pin electric plugs . . . and I’m only 69.

57. Gerardus @55: we do have sittees – or, at least, they have them in Buckingham Palace 😀

    Valentine @54: Kent, in the SE of England, has just been put into our newly-created highest tier of Covid lockdown and, to boot, is host to the motorway to Dover that has been turned into a lorry park as a result of the imminence of Brexit. And it’s raining too! So some reasons not to be upbeat. I just hope yesyes is not awaiting a Christmas delivery of vin rouge from across the Channel.

    Penfold @45: of course the little blue wallet disappeared when we entered the EEC the following year. Maybe we’ll get them back again in 2021?

    Anna and others: I would make a plea on behalf of ‘interviewee’ which is, I think, quite a useful word and better than some of the alternatives.

    I’ve enjoyed the discussion of fruit flavoured beers – even if I don’t enjoy either the concept or the flavours myself. Strangest of all, however, was AlanC @14: I don’t think strawberry beer tastes at all like Marmite 😀 😀 😀

    Thanks Pan and manehi

58. Thanks Pan for the fun. I liked REPUGNANT, MINISKIRT, DIRGE, and DIAMONDS quite a bit. Didn’t catch the dd in FONT — thanks Manehi for parsing. [Now back to the Maskarade prize which may take me until Christmas to complete.]

59. Tyngewick @49 – yes, as you say the origin of ‘welsh’ as a verb is uncertain – but it wouldn’t be unusual for speakers of one language to project unfavourable characteristics onto the speakers of another.

    The one that springs to mind is to take French leave – and the French return the compliment with ‘filer à l’anglaise’.

    Anna @2: would you also object to ‘née’ and ‘parvenu’, and to ‘rescapé(e)’ in French? My own feeling is that the non-p.p. passive -EE works fine in English if it’s a verb of motion (eg escapee) or a verb expressing a change of state (retiree). Using that guideline, sit/stand/lie wouldn’t qualify as they express the state of being ‘sat’ etc. rather than the motion which gets you there.

    Thanks P & m

60. Gerardus @55

    Thanks, that’s the one – but I’d misremembered: I thought it referred to the total number of permitted passengers, viz number upstairs, number downstairs and number of standees. I was wondering why I’d seen it so few times but I haven’t been on a London bus very often and not for about ten years now.

61. An interviewee is being interviewed by an interviewer, which all makes sense. But a standee is not being stood by a stander so that’s a nonsense. An attendee is not attended by an attender as they are both the same thing. An attendant is something else entirely. . . .isn’t English a wonderful language?!!

62. PostMark@57: boom ?

63. I’ve heard ‘Welsh’ used for reneging on a bet and other dubious activities – most offensive. And for the avoidance of doubt, it’s rarebit

64. My boom emoji became a ? But v amusing comment

65. [Markfieldpete @61 …but is a refugee refuged by a refuger?]

66. I do like Mondays! DNF for me though as I had Licsence at 8d – technology equals science then head (the S) leaves position. Clever – but pity I can’t spell

67. I do like Mondays! DNF for me though as I had Licsence at 8d – technology equals science then head (the S) leaves position. Clever – but pity I can’t spell.

68. 18a. Surely to run away without paying is to welch? If welsh can also be used then I suspect that it has crept into acceptability by accident a la chomping when it should be champing at the bit.

69. [AlanC @64: take me as being boomed. A boomee? Seriously, before the fruit beer discussion developed, yours was one of the earlier comments on the topic and the way I read it, it just made me laugh out loud. I do completely agree with you: folk seem to love ’em or hate ’em. They remind me of cough medicine.]

70. Australian here, so maybe I’m out of the loop, but isn’t using “welsh” to mean “run away without paying” just flat-out racism?
    Easy way to check: how would it sound if you substituted, say “Jewish” into the definition?

71. BodsnVimto @68 and others: I’ve also always used and understood the term ‘welch’ to mean reneging on a debt and had never thought it associated with Welsh and am surprised to discover today that either spelling can refer to the dishonesty. I’m not aware of any historical accusation of avoidance of debt being associated with the Welsh (in the way that Scots are historically – and wrongly – accused of meanness) so had simply assumed yet another homophone. This confusion appears to have caused political embarrassment in the not too distant past: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33238925 The article concludes quoting the OED’s comment that the phrase is “sometimes considered offensive in view of the conjectured connection with Welsh people”. ‘Conjectured’ suggests to me they’re not convinced there is a derivative link.

72. In 2015, government minister Lady Williams apologised after inadvertently insulting Welsh members of the House of Lords by using the term “welching”.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33238925

73. Am I getting deja vu, or did we have the discussion about -ee words derived from French past participles before?

74. BodsmVimto @68. OED has both ‘welch’ and ‘welsh’ as arising in the 1800s, earliest citations are in the mid-century for both of them. As an adjective ‘welch’ also meant coming from Wales. As ethnic epithets were/are common for denigrated activities, it’s not unreasonable to suppose ‘welch/welsh’ arose as an ethnic slur, so best avoided.

75. Petert @73 – guilty as charged 😉

    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/10/29/guardian-28277-paul/

    See for example my post @49

76. [Tassie Tim @17: Fruit beers are all over the map— some are dreadful and others are delicious — the Belgian lambics with cherries are among my favourites. No, one wouldn’t drink these with fish and chips — that’s what a pint of bitter is for — they’re more suited as stand alone beverages or served with a plate of fine cheeses.]

77. Sorry about my double post above. On the subject of initial letter abbreviations L for Latitude is inadmissible as there is no way of distinguishing that fro Longitude.

78. [gratinfreo @22: Ah! You remember my babushka! As I was tidying-up I came across one of her old carved wooden boxes, opened it up and the pong of ciggies came straight back to me – a real smell of my childhood…

    I seem to remember that “Le Welch/Welsh” which is typicaly in the Pas de Calais region is so-called because it was thought that the word “welsh” just meant “foreign” in English (and of course much of that part of France was under English control). BBC seems to back me up https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36665190 I’ver certainly eaten a fair-few of these in the gorgeous cafes along the coast. Gawd I miss popping over there at the moment – actually, scrpa that; I miss popping anywhere other than the kitchen, desk or bed!]

79. Tyngewick @74. Fair enough, I stand corrected in my would-be detective endeavours.

80. Pedro (@25?) If it helps my job title is often given as PTHPL – part time hourly paid lecturer.

81. Valentine @ 54

    I remember wearing miniskirts but they went abruptly out of fashion in my teens in favour of the midi skirt – does anyone remember them. One of my favourite ever dresses was a midi dress.

    And while they are no longer called mini skirts there are a lot of them around from time to time.

82. A pleasantly ro(HERE)ad Monday solve. A tad disappointed re TILL twice (in same sense and so close), and seemed a few too many stray connector/filler words for my own taste, but really nothing significant to quibble about. COTD: TURN, for a fine surface w/elegantly simple wplay.

    More used to supercede; amused to learn it’s the deprecated form! (Tho still supported by my spell checker 😮 )

    [ MaidenBartok: Though not specific to oranges, the botanical term for the citrus fruit form is hesperidium, with an amusing mythologic derivation (picture nymphs frolicking in the orange groves); but interesting that it ultimately comes back to “golden apple”, and that “apple” was so often used as a general term for fruits (e.g. love apple) or even vegetables (pomme de terre). ]

    [ Re beer: Have had fruity varieties I found awful… like Kool-Aid mixed w/Michelob. But used subtly, as supporting rather than dominant flavor, I find they can be quite nice. Stateside we have Pyramid Apricot Ale (an early craft/fruit beer, ca 1994), which I quite enjoy; they also made a fine raspberry-wheat (Thomas Kemper Weizenberry), alas no more. Nowadays IPAs are the rage, many too bitter for me… but some have a natural (no added fruit) citrus/grapefruit character that’s quite tasty & refreshing. ]

    [ Sympathies & best wishes to our UK friends now in hyper-lockdown. Sadly I fear more of same likely round the world before all is done. ]

    Tip o’ the hat to setter/blogger/commenters…

83. Anna @26, yes, and Himbeere (raspberry) is “sky berry”.

    It’s good to see that some people liked 12a. I didn’t; it’s a prime example of my least favourite kind of clue, a dd for a four letter word. To add to my discomfort, I thought both definitions were a slight stretch, and the crossers didn’t limit the possibilities much, so it took me a lot of tedious “what if the third letter is ‘l’ then run through the alphabet for the first letter”.

    A good puzzle overall, easy to get well into, but with a couple of periods of being stuck befitting the dominoes fell.

84. *before

85. [Monkey @83: not sure if there is a policy against advertising, but this is kind of relevant, and kind of seasonal…
    https://www.amazon.com/Emily-Erdbeer-Beerige-Weihnachten-allemand/dp/B0004D926Q ]

86. OddOtter @82
    Supersede means “sit in the place of” or “sit over”, from Latin “sedere” – to sit; hence “supercede” is a mistake.

87. [me @86 Don’t feel bad about it, though, OddOtter – it’s a very common mistake. I once corrected my mother – an English teacher – on it!]

88. Tyro @ 77

    L = latitude is fine. The abbreviation for longitude is Lon. or Long.

89. muffin @86: Yes, enjoyed the etymology when investigating my decades-long misconception earlier. Some sites also posit possible confusion w/Latin cedere (“give up, yield”). No excuse for me… know little of Latin, just recall seeing supersede (mis)spelled w/”c” a lot!

90. Hi OddOtter @82 and muffin @86 / 87 (and OddOtter @89since I started typimg)

    As a Latin graduate and teacher, who ended up teaching English Language, among other things, I was tempted (and resisted, since it wasn’t relevant to the puzzle – and I’d already sparked off a discussion some days ago re my childhood misapprehension re the pronunciation of ‘misled’) to comment on SUPERSEDE first thing this morning. I was into adulthood before I realised the correct spelling of this. I had assumed, from analogy with precede (to go before) and recede (to go back), from the Latin cedere, to go, that the spelling was supercede – to go above. I can’t remember (it could have been from crosswords) how I discovered that the Latin root was sedere, leading to SUPERSEDE – (to sit above).

    I checked again this morning and found this: https://blog.simonsays.ai/supersede-a-spelling-conundrum-for-the-ages-8dd653b62b31, which I found interesting – but it was an unchecked letter and not a Prize puzzle, so it matters not, really.

91. Eileen: Thx for that article… a fun read. Your life experience with -cede words mirrors my own. Here the “s” was clear fr/wplay so got the answer… though nearly sprained an eyebrow whilst typing it!

92. And oh yeah… let’s not even get started about “proceed” (nor “procedure”) 😐

93. Is someone that drinks a mixture of beer and lemonade a shandee?

94. “Taffy was a Welshman/Taffy was a thief/ Taffy came to my house/And stole a piece of beef”. Wiki says that the earliest record of the rhyme is from 1780 but the sentiment is much older.It’s easy to think of its being prevalent on the English side of the Marches in the time of Brother Cadfael.

95. Sorry to come late to this, but I assume that standees on a bus are those forced to stand because of a lack of seats, so there is some passive sense to it. Attendees are also often under some sense of obligation or duty: I have been a conference attendee, but never a concert one, although I have attended concerts.

96. DuncT@93 – A late appreciation of your joke.

97. Good puzzle but shame about the two TILLS. Editorial sloppiness, easily avoided.

98. Good puzzle, thanks Pan and manehi.
    I see nothing wrong with the two occurences of TILL in the puzzle, clued differently. This sort of ‘assonance’ happens a lot when compiling a puzzle. Think of it as a bit of a hint.

Comments are closed.