Guardian 28,334 – Picaroon

90 comments on “Guardian 28,334 – Picaroon”

1. I thought I wasn’t very well versed in violinists but Andrew has shown I don’t know my fraudsters (9ac and 23dn) which is, I think piously, better. I took far too long over 17ac and did not know 26ac although it is gettable from the wordplay. Clues of the day were 28ac and 29ac (which rather undoes the good impression I made earlier). Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

2. I’m sure I’m not alone in putting BENT for 6d. I didn’t know that meaning of CANAPE, and only found out about the four legged Stradivarius after solving his clue.
   A very enjoyable tour of all the variations on the theme. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

3. Thanks Andrew and Picaroon.

   A delightful solve – unusually for me I got the key phrase straight away, which made life easier.

   I vaguely googled for another meaning of canapé, but didn’t spot anything.

4. Probably my quickest solve in a while but very enjoyable once the easy 12 went in. I knew CANAPÉ was French for sofa but didn’t twig the amusing wordplay. I had Bent for 6ac at first until I got PAWNSHOP, which I liked. Ta Picaroon & Andrew

5. An enjoyable and inventive crossword, many thanks Picaroon. I had never heard of COZEN(S).

   Andrew, I think you’ve missed ‘to’ out of the anagram fodder for 14ac. And MADOFF is ‘made off’ without the E – ie, heartlessly – rather than a homophone. Thank you for your elucidation re Stradivarius.

6. Fun puzzle. Luckily for me,12 down was easily solved so it got me started.

   Liked LASSIE, AHA, EDGE TOOL, MORN, MADOFF.

   New INSETTER, CANAPE = sofa, the horse named Stradivarius, COZENS.

   Thanks, Picaroon & Andrew

7. Gladys@2 – you are not alone. Andrew – I share your reservations regarding a saw being an EDGE TOOL. I am not an expert, but I can tell you that Ray Tabor (who is) says in his Encyclopedia of Green Woodworking “Edge tools…include all of the most important tools for the woodworker, with the exception of the saw”. Still, close enough for crosswordland. Thanks both.

8. Yes, good that 12 gave us an easy start.

   I like horse racing, so knew the four legged Stradivarius. He’s a chestnut and also has four white socks. Frankie Dettori does the steering. So, ROYAL ASCOT was a favourite, along with PAWN SHOP.

   I didn’t know that you could park your bum on a CANAPÉ and the only EDGE TOOL that I know is the thing with the half moon blade that you edge the lawn with.

   Thanks to Picaroon & Andrew

9. I always thought they were edged, rather than edge tools, but that’s probably just ignorance.

10. Stared at the crossers of my last, 17ac, wandered out and got the LRB from the letterbox, forgot all about the cw then came here. Damn, dnf. Hey ho, much enjoyed anyway. Been a while since seeing Lassie I reckon. And took a while to guess canapes can be both sat on and eaten. Probly as well we don’t have a scchua-pic for 29ac (ditto the recent one-piece teddy), or some blood pressures might have risen. Don’t know about groundswell as pertaining to emotion. All good fun, thanks both.

11. Fun. Did not know CANAPE nor that Stradivarius is a horse but no difficulty getting the answers. And, yes, gladys@2 and others, you are not alone with BENT before uncle’s place showed me the error of my ways. Was wondering if we would see Menuhin or other famous fiddlers of the musical variety. Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

12. Was wondering the same, ngaio.. no Oistrakh, Menuhin or Stern, but a horse called Stradivarius.. quirky!

13. Wish I had a rich uncle … had to look up slang for PAWNSHOP .. but as I don’t, it might have to do. Got the fraudsters pretty well though, and most of those strung up thingummys. Loved the switcharoos.

    I don’t remember having so many unknown (to me) words from Picaroon in one croosie, but he loves to play with language, so lots of fun with the TILTS today.

14. gladys @9: I’m with you on having always thought ‘edged’ tools. Live and learn. An edge tool is surely a trimmer or a set of shears? And I also had BENT until, like AlanC @4 and ngaiolaurenson @11, PAWNSHOP disabused me.

    Ticks earned for PONZI, MORN, INFATUATED, GROUNDSWELL and the lovely RECOLLECT. SEXTON naturally appealed to my schoolboy SOH, as did G-STRINGS – yesyes, you’re not alone in that. GIF @10: I’m sure scchua would have found a photo of some catgut to keep everything decent! [and, talking of keeping it decent, thanks Penfold for using a sentence with both bum and moon in it and not taking advantage of the obvious pun potential.]

    Thanks Picaroon and scchua

15. True to my habit, I tackled the clues in order, rather than going straight to 12dn, so entered FLUTE for 21ac but soon saw the error of my ways.

    ngaiolaurenson @11 and grant @12, we did get PAGANINI @1ac – one of my favourites, along with PAWNSHOP, RECOLLECT, ROYAL ASCOT and MORN. Milton’s poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ begins:

    ‘This is the month, and this the happy morn,
    Wherein the Son of Heav’n’s eternal King,
    Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
    Our great redemption from above did bring;’

    A lovely puzzle, which I enjoyed from start to finish. Manythanks to Picaroon andAndrew.

16. Didn’t get the theme even though my FOI was 12d! Oh well – need more coffee.

    [Penfold @8: being the World’s Messiest Eater, I have been known to park a canape or two on my bum at various parties…]

    Thanks to Picaroon & Andrew!

17. Great puzzle – put in COZENS as there’s an obscure composer with that name, and couldn’t parse the loot in EDGE TOOL, but all a lot of fun. Many thanks to P & A.

18. Thanks Andrew, I couldn’t quite parse RECOLLECT as I thought CT meant Captain and tried to fathom why LE was a city. I also noticed CELLO is written upwards in that answer which alludes to the stringy side of the theme but surely a coincidence.
    Given the obscurity of COZENS (I guessed Cosens and googled to be put right) I did wonder if it could have been clued as DOZENS to use the 12 in a different way.
    That wasn’t the only new word/phrase for me (and I fell for 6D at first too) but the difficulty added to the enjoyment when the lightbulbs went on, favourites CANAPE (now that I understand the definition!) and LASSIE, thanks Picaroon.

19. Oh yes of course, Eileen @15, the ‘diabolical’ prodigy of prodigies…sad story really, reminds me a bit of our Helfgott…

20. I presume “canapé” the finger food came from the idea of something small and elegant with something beautiful sitting upon it?

21. Great crossword with truly imaginative use of the theme… I can’t count the number of blind alleys that Picaroon sent me down. Luckily I didn’t fall into the BENT trap, or I might have persevered in trying to fit BOWIE in as the British pop star. The one that wasted most time was having the G, O, and L crossers of GrOundswelL and trying to find another game that I could add on to LOTTO to make GLOTTOsomething.

22. Lovely puzzle.
    Stared at it for 10 minutes and couldn’t fill in a single thing. Then got 12d, mercifully easily, and it all fell into place.
    But I had never heard of an EDGE TOOL. Guessed it from the crossers.
    LOI was ROYAL ASCOT – what a delightful piece of Stradivarius misdirection.
    Thanks to Picaroon and to Andrew

23. Thought this truly rewarded a great deal of effort today. Last two in were BOWS and COZENS. Learned new words and meanings today in PONZI, MADOFF, CANAPE and INSETTERS, plus aforementioned COZENS. Thoroughly enjoyed this challenge.

24. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
    I wouldn’t have enjoyed this if 12d hadn’t been an easy solve – FOI, so a good start. Another BENT here, until I rembered who “uncle” might be.
    CANAPE in that sense unknown to me too; I wondered if it might be a posh term for “carport”, as a ptentious pronunciation of “canopy”!
    Favourite CON ARTIST. I liked gazzh’s suggestion of Picaroon using DOZENS at 17a.

25. [Ang Almond @19: I beleive this is the case but the talk of French loan-words obviously summons Kenneth Williams straight back to mind… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTlmeBBFLXg%5D

26. [https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/we-take-a-look-at-the-etymology-behind-the-word-canape-and-its-french-origins/]

27. Reviewing the solution it looks a better puzzle than it did at the time of my struggle with some of the clues.

    Didn’t know uncle was also a pawnbroker which meant I had to solve it from the men bound which I did eventually. Had dozens for cozens after “cousin” was rejected by check! I was reduced to wild guesses and the first check left CO_SI_ which confused the hell out of me!

    I’d put Cousin into 19a (LASSIE) in error :O)

    Eventually I gave up and moved on …. a future “check all” revealed that CO in 19a was indeed wrong!
    Does anyone else use ‘check this’ and have wrong letters left in place? This is a common occurrence for me.

28. Great fun! I’m really surprised COZENS was unfamiliar to so many. Does nobody read Shakespeare any more? Canapé in this sense was new to me, though. LOI was EDGETOOL because a saw really isn’t in that group.
    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

29. Many congratulations to Picaroon – I enjoyed this puzzle more than any for a long time. A splendid set of variations on a theme.

    Not being very practical I had no quibble with EDGE TOOL, and in any case the ‘perhaps’ in the clue covers any inexactitude.

    COZENS is a word I have come across only once before, in a poem by Edith Sitwell, one of the ones set by William Walton in ‘Façade’. I was fairly sure that it was the solution, but I did have to look it up to check the meaning.

30. I should have checked Chambers for CANAPE as i hadnt heard it in that sense Picaroon is a bit of a polyglot.
    BENT works but clashes with PAWNSHOP-I knew doing the odd Quick puzzle would come on useful.
    Getting 12 straight away was of limited use/Is there a horse called AMATI?
    Great stuff as usual. Thanks Andrew and JB.

31. So good to see a theme which adds to the fun of solving. The SouthWest corner held me up for a while: I tried to make BEADLE work for SEXTON. I liked all the thematic clues.

32. [PostMark @14 It was only half a moon. I just didn’t have the cheek.

    MaidenBartok @ 25 & 26 Merci beaucoup for M. Williams and the origins of CANAPÉ with the padded perch for your postérieur, hopefully sans squished vol-au-vents. Who knew that made pedigree comes from ‘pie de grue’? I’ll remember that next time I have a pint of Crane’s Foot.]

33. MaidenBartok: Wonderful reminder. What a great man he was?

    Top puzzle but another BENT for BOWS, here.

    Anyone know the derivation of G-STRING?

    Many thanks, both.

34. [Penfold @32 and William @33: Je vous en prie.

    Somewhere tucked in the back of my mind is “G STRING” coming from something to do with native Americans “geestring” but it is all fuzzy in there this morning. I’ll have a thunk.

    A little more Kenneth for you – on Tomorrow’s World!!! Oooohh MATRON!!! https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/397487677692686%5D

35. Penfold: ‘pied de grue’ is fascinating. I see it derives from “the arrow head figure in a family tree”. Any idea what this refers to?

36. [Penfold @32: I’m equally hopeless with chopsticks. Once at a large standards meeting in Tokyo where the we were seated in parallel rows, I was given a Bento box for lunch. Somehow I managed to grab a rice roll thing but then accidentally flicked it in the direction of the delegate seated in front of me where it landed and stuck on his jacket just between his shoulder blades…

    As for avoiding that pun subject; shame – I was looking forward to a bit of craic.]

37. Magnificent Cryptic – many thanks Picaroon and Andrew. Loved the theme and (for once) got it right at the start. For some reason thought MADOFF was CAPONE for a while… Was deifinitely in the CANAPE – who knew? faction, but shall not forget it. Many thanks to MaidenBartok for the Kenneth Willaims clip – just lovely. What a great start to the year it has been – at least on the crossword front. [This seen on the O2 Arena Billboard in Brum today “We hoped for a good one, without any tiers!”]

38. William @33: re G-STRING, The Guardian’s own Notes & Queries page supplies several alternatives (https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-20902,00.html) – of which the best surely is that it’s the note it makes when you pluck it.

39. I wondered if 17a was Bowers. D/D I.e fiddlers and SA boers. A group?

40. Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew. All great fun.

    Like Eileen @15 I confidently put in flute at 21ac, but 12dn sorted me out. Held up at the end with bent for 6dn (Gladys @2), so 10ac was my last one in.

41. [MB @36 & Penfold @32: also sorry to be missing out on the craic. I enjoy a good Derry air. …I’ll get my coat…]

42. Another BENT here until the PAWNSHOP put me straight. Also CASSON had for film-star LASSIE initially – in my defence I’d say a CON is closer to a fraud than a LIE
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casson_Ferguson

43. bodycheetah @42: I played with CASSON too and agree with your comparison between CON and LIE. There’s also Lewis Casson, who was in movies in the 1930’s and was married to Dame Sybil Thorndike, and Drew Casson who is a director but who has appeared in his own work.

44. Great puzzle with good use of the theme word. Luckily, I was another who solved that at the beginning.

    I was also convinced that 6D was bent until the PAWN SHOP was solved.

    I particularly liked MORN and G-STRINGS.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

45. PostMark @38: Thanks for that. So, basically, no one knows. Fascinating how these things just become lodged and accepted.

46. Like gladys @2, I was another that had BENT (surely just as good as the right answer), which really messed up my LOI PAWNSHOP. My first pass gave me only ON THE FIDDLE and (from that) PONZI (though G-STRINGS did occur to me, but I could only see the reason for it once I got 12d). So it was slowish work, with the West falling much faster than the East. I played with cousins quite a while until I remembered COZENS. DNK that meaning of CANAPE, so I rejected it a number of times before entering. No interest in horse racing, so missed the connection to the racecourse, which I got on the anagram alone. So, tough going. Thanks, Andrew, for some enlightenment, and Picaroon for the workout.

47. …there was also a John Casson in On The Beach…

48. Same mistake initially as Eileen and Marienkaefer with Flute confidently written in, but it then had to be amended. I see Andrew’s blog has noted that Viola appears in Twelfth Night, but he didn’t mention – nor did anyone else, unless my skim read missed it – what today actually is.

49. NormanJL @48 Yes, I was wondering to myself why I’d thought of FLUTE before VIOLA, who should spring much more readily to mind, even without having got 12dn first. i was halfway through taking down my decorations when the penny dropped!

    I had entered PAWNSHOP already, so didn’t go down the bent road. it doesn’t work, anyway: the wordplay is ‘isn’t straight’, not ‘not straight’.

50. [Or, Penfold @ (about)32, a half of Whore’s Hoof]

51. Oh dear, this will have to go down as a fail, thanks to CANOPY. You can put your car under one, Batman could well be ‘capy’, north is sometimes abbreviated to No in the US. So there. Had to do a mini cheat with COZENS too, a new word to me.

    Which is all very frustrating as this was typical Picaroon cleverness, wearing his learning lightly across some disparate fields.

52. NormanJL @ 48 – good spot, though I am someone who counts 6th January as 12th Night – Epiphany – with the first day of Christmas the day after Christmas Day itself.

53. Oh of course, NormanJL and Eileen..it was Mrs ginf the traditionalist who ensured they came down on the 12th day of, to the tune of A partridge and etc..

54. PS Eileen @49 – it may be because Viola and viola are pronounced differently, so I don’t immediately think of the Shakespearian character as an instrument. Though why viola should be pronounced differently from viol or violin, I do not know.

55. Marienkaefer @54 – but, as I said, I wasn’t thinking of fiddles because I hadn’t got as far as 12dn.

56. Sorry, that last comment of mine didn’t make much sense. What I really meant in the beginning was that I would have expected to think of VIOLA, who’s in a play that I like, before FLUTE, who is in one that I don’t, particularly. I’ll stop now, 😉

57. [Eileen, GinF et al
    I’ve just heard on the radio a man from English Heritage explaining that taking the decorations down on Jan 6th is yet another Victorian introduction to Christmas. The older tradition is to leave them until Candlemas (Feb 2nd – isn’t that Groundhog Day?) It celebrates Jesus being presented in the Temple (Google informs me…)]

58. [PostMark @38: “…of which the best surely is that it’s the note it makes when you pluck it.” Feels more G Sharp than G Natural to me. Better find some ointment.]

59. Trailman, I was thinking CANOPY too, with exactly that reasoning. Is “canopy” (a.k.a. carport) as a place to park an Americanism, maybe?

60. mrpenney @59 / trailman @51
    Compare my thoughts on CANAPE @24!

61. Eileen @49; I’m not sure I understand your objection to ‘bent’ as an answer to 6D. The clue says … and is not (isn’t) straight – that would seem to indicate bent to me (?)

62. Robi @61
    I think the problem is with the verb. “It isn’t straight” is equivalent to “it IS bent”, but just “it bows”.
    Didn’t stop me from putting it, though!

63. I seem to be alone in having, with the aid of PAWNSHOP and BRIDGE, confidently popped in BOWN! I’m still reeling from the discovery that it’s not a word.

    Thanks both for the entertainment. And thanks muffin@57 for the heads-up about Candlemas – that makes much more sense; I’ve just about gotten used, almost reconciled, to the decorations….

64. My wrong answer for the day was STRING instead of BRIDGE for 6a. I pretty much knew it would be wrong by the time I solved G-STRINGS, so no real hold-up. I thought INFATUATED was the best clue with it’s nicely disguised definition. And another who thought the wordplay was clear but didn’t write in CANAPE until the second pass and a quick shufty at Google.
    Good fun. This is the second Picaroon in a row with a riff-on-a-themed-clue structure. Thanks to him and to Andrew.

65. I was with trailman @51 in having CANOPY, so a dnf for me.

    I was OK with the fraudsters (it always struck me how MADOFF’s name was so apposite), but some of the other clues gave me a bit of trouble. ‘Film star’=LASSIE is a bit naughty, as the part of Lassie was played by several different dogs, though the word play was fair enough. COZENS was my last one in – nice to see no complaints about the homophone!

    Stradivarius was a lovely bit of misdirection in a puzzle about fiddles. Many thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

66. Andrew – apologies: I’ve just noticed my post @14 thanked scchua rather than yourself. I’d mentioned him in the post. picking up on a comment from earlier, and had his name on the mind when I typed my thanks.

67. SH @65
    And, as you probably know, all the dogs that played Lassie were male!

68. Thanks to Picaroon for an excellent puzzle and to Andrew for the blog! Like many others I went to 12d first and was able to get it, which was a big help for the rest. Another for BENT; I see Eileen’s point that the wordplay for BENT would work better without the “is”‘s but I feel that sometimes the setters push the envelope on this kind of thing. Anyway since I don’t have confidence in that kind of solve I shamelessly used the check function and BOWS followed directly.

    I will be a bit cranky about VIOLA–the double definitions apply to so many things that it’s hard to be confident of the answer without the crossers–people have mentioned FLUTE and I’d also say that with a different number of letters it could’ve been PUCK (one plays the puck in hockey) or FOOL or perhaps DERBY (who appears in Richard III) or GREEN from Richard II (surely one sometimes plays the green in golf) or… well, some of these are pretty contrived, but double defintions are hard when they’re by example.

    Didn’t know ROYAL ASCOT but it came pretty easily from the wordplay with a few crossers, ditto CANAPE. Got RECOLLECT from the definition and never in a million years would’ve figured out how city was EC. Got PAWNSHOP from crossers and wordplay, and trying to figure out the definition I googled pawnshop and uncle and found an automatically generated page that explained ” As nouns the difference between pawnbroker and uncle is that pawnbroker is a person who makes monetary loans at interest, taking personal property as security – which may be sold if not redeemed while uncle is a brother or brother-in-law of someone’s parent,” which I did not find illuminating.

    A nitpick about 8d, I’ve never seen groundswell used for a surge of emotion, only for a surge of support for some cause. An even nitpickier one is that sexts needn’t be rude–often two people are sexting each other and there’s nothing impolite about it! That’s very nitpicky.

    Having complained for a while I should say again that this was a very good puzzle which I found to be fair overall and all my issues (some of them from lack of appropriate knowledge) were ones I could work around! 24d and 5d and 28ac were especially satisfying.

69. matt w @68 – I enjoyed your contribution. I don’t immediately recognise your name and I’d like to welcome you to the site, so please forgive me if you’ve commented before.

    I didn’t say that ‘the wordplay for BENT would work better without the “is”’. I said that it didn’t work at all with it. Picaroon is always meticulous in his cluing and does not push the envelope quite that far.

    Re your second paragraph: it seems rather perverse to reject a double definition because other solutions with a different number of letters would fit! My mention of my entry of FLUTE was simply an observation: as I said, had I gone to 12dn first, all would have been clear.

    EC (city) crops up pretty frequently in crosswords. It’s the postcode of the City of London.

    RE 8dn GROUNDSWELL: I had to look this one up myself. I found, in Chambers, ‘a gathering movement, as of public or political feeling, which is evident although the cause or leader is not known’ and in Collins ‘a rapidly developing general feeling or opinion’. I’ve been writing this while listening to the Corvid 19 News Conference and have been getting pretty emotional, I’ll tell you!

    I’m too old to take part in sexting, so can’t comment on that but I’m glad you agree with me re MORN, a little gem which is perhaps my top favourite.

    Hope to hear from you again.

70. PS: re MORN, see my comment @15.

71. William @35
    Grue is French for crane, the lifting machine or the bird. Could a crane’s foot be seen to resemble an arrow head figure?

72. BenW @71: Bec-de-grue in French are cranesbills in English also known by their Latin name, geraniums.

    But don’t give a cup-of-builders-and-five-sugars-love to your window boxes…

73. grantinfreo @10 and matt w @68
    Guardian Sport headline as Test cricket cane to Southampton:’Groundswell of emotion as Rose Bowl faces its first Test’
    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/jun/13/rose-bowl-third-test

74. What an enjoyable puzzle! Good for the holiday season. Thank you Picaroon, and thank you Andrew for a pleasant blog.

    I played Viola in college, a role I’d always wanted to play. The same was true of my fellow student who played Feste — he’d always wanted to play that part.

    Eileen, I normally do puzzles in numerical order, but one look at the across lot told me I hadn’t a hope, so I took to the downs and especially 12, since that was the heart of the matter. It was also pretty easy, as others have said.

    ROUNDS is a game? I know “rounders” is supposed to be some inferior form of cricket, but what is rounds?

    Hadn’t herd of EDGE TOOLS, sounded dubious to me.

    On BENT: the clue calls for a verb that is equivalent to “isn’t straight.” “Bent” is an adjective. Not a fit.

75. Valentine @74
    One plays “rounds” of golf – so-called, I suspect, because you end up back where you started (the clubhouse)…

76. Valentine @74. A round of golf, perhaps? I think rounders is an inferior form of baseball rather than cricket.

77. Hi Valentine @74

    I’d love to have seen you as VIOLA. 😉

    RE ROUNDS – a round is a game of golf.

    Glad you agree absolutely re ‘bent’.

78. “Faire le pied de grue” means to hang about, kick one’s heels. There is a George Brassens song in which I think “grue” and hence “faire le pied de grue” mean something ruder.

79. [ I always thought it was called a g-string because a g-string would be less uncomfortable than an e-string, which would cut into the skin even more. If bass players had been as risque as fiddlers, it would have been called an e-string. ]

80. Many thanks, Andrew, for the very fine blog and kind words. You may well be right about edge tools – Oxford and Collins simply define them as any tool with a cutting edge. To be honest, not being too handy myself, I’m no expert on tool taxonomy, so I was happy to accept that definition.

    I’m with Eileen and muffin on BOWS versus BENT: the latter wouldn’t be ‘pushing the envelope’ so much as a dreadfully inaccurate clue! On the other hand, I wish I’d spotted the FLUTE / VIOLA possibility when producing the puzzle – I would certainly have included both answers, with the same clue for each!

    (Actually, and unusually, there’s a bit of a personal tie-in with this puzzle as I’ve been “on the fiddle” myself, not so much in the Madoff / Ponzi financial skulduggery sense, more in the sense of becoming interested in the violin as my daughter’s been learning it.)

    Best wishes to everyone.

81. jellyroll @78: a “grue” in French is also a prostitute. To “faire le pied de grue” means to walk the streets. I’ve spent far too much time watching “Plus belle la vie.”

    [cellomaniac @79: I’ve always worried that one may catch their death of cold with too much air on the G-string.]

82. [ MaidenBartok@81: especially if they picked up some nasty bachteria along the way…

    …and the air might adorn their parlour as a suite-three piece. ]

83. Very late to the party, but thanks Picaroon and Andrew for another great puzzle and blog.

    [jelly roll @78 / MB @81: ‘grue’ is indeed one of a multitude of French expressions for ladies of the night – but as jelly roll says, ‘faire le pied de grue’ can simply mean to hang about waiting, to cool/kick one’s heels. The origins of the latter expression don’t appear to come from the former.

    With Georges Brassens, however, there’s always a sting in the tail. Here is the brilliant ‘La complainte des filles de joie’ :

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwPgs21a8_I

    Brassens is a master of taking everyday expressions and giving them an ironic and poignant twist. He does it repeatedly here – for example with ‘joie’, ‘noce’, ‘septième ciel’ – and the result is all at once a lament, a sympathetic tribute to the ‘filles de joie’, and a biting commentary on ‘ces vaches de bourgeois’.]

84. Eileen @69: Thanks for the welcome! I’ve been commenting sometimes for a couple weeks, but you may not see me very often as I’m always late since I’m in the States’ time zone. Which is why I didn’t get EC–perfectly natural for the puzzle’s intended audience, but caught me out.

    I take your point about the extra “is”es, and the thing I was saying about the double definition is just a matter of my personal taste–the universes of things that can be played and Shakespeare characters are so large that I find it hard to cut down the solution space, as it were.

    [Picaroon–for what it’s worth I’m on the flute as that’s what one of my children is learning!]

    Thanks again Picaroon for the puzzles, and Eileen (and other bloggers) for the explanations that add so much to my enjoyments of them.

85. [matt w @84, Picaroon @80: I’m on the bottle myself and have been since March – nice, clear A3 out of the one I’ve just finished…]

86. Muffin@24
    I’m sure that in your youth you were asked the difference between an awning, a tin of vegetables, and a dead Scotsman.
    An awning is a canopy, a tin of vegetables is a can of peas, and a dead Scotsman canna pee at all.

87. [Pino @86
    Last spring a friend sent us a picture of part of her garden, with a netting structure. She entitled it
    This is the awning of the cage of asparagus……]

88. matt w @84, EC may be obvious to some UK residents, but as a northerner who avoids London whenever possible, it’s something I eventually dredged up from the muddy depths of my memory, probably from attempts at cryptic crosswords in my youth.

89. Muffin@87
    ?

90. Me @ 89
    That ? was posted as a laughing emoji!

Comments are closed.