Guardian Cryptic 28361 Crucible

122 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28361 Crucible”

1. Loved this. Smooth clueing everywhere.

   With the first three across clues involving wild fowl, EGRET and grebe, was convinced we were into ducks and waders, but as scchua says, it was a bit wider than that..

   Some beautiful smooth surfaces to be enjoyed with IVORY & BLUEBOTTLE sharing ‘Best in Show’, for me.

   Raised one eyebrow a millimetre over the somewhat loose Dubliner for Sean but that’s not even a quiblet.

   Nice misdirect over the plural ANTELOPE

   First class, Crucible, many thanks, nice weekend, all.

2. I really enjoyed the theme, with some fabulous clueing along the way. LOI was BRIDLEWAYS which I stared at for ages but was happy when I finally TWIG(GED). Lots of ticks with the clever APSPIDISTRA, HEDGEROW and THE NATURAL WORLD (great spot Crucible). Laughed at SLEEPY and the image for ROOT CROP.

   New word HAHA. A Lovely finish to the week. Ta Crucible & scchua

3. …meant to add had to look up Arius the heretic.

4. An above average puzzle to tackle whilst watching the cricket. MANX CAT and SLEEPY were chuckleworthy favourites and I enjoyed the reminder of LITTLE OWL winning the 1981 Cheltenham Gold Cup.

   Thanks to Crucible and scchua.

5. Thanks Scchua for explanation of Arian in 17d. I liked the sly ref to paperless reading via Kindle in 21d. Favourite by far was 3d.

6. I really enjoyed “THE NATURAL WORLD” theme (insects/birds/plants/animals), so many thanks to Crucible. Thank you also to scchua for the illustrated blog: the explanations helped me to understand the full parse for clues like 13a IVORY (only solved from the definition and crossers) and 5d BRIDLEWAYS (only worked out from the crossers). Lots of ticks: 23a MANX CAT, 25a LITTLE OWL, 4d TWIG, 14d BLUEBOTTLE (as for Willim@1) and 20d ACORNS. 14a BEE ORCHID was unfamiliar.

7. After the rather unsatisfactory hour spent in the company of Anto yesterday, this one hit the sweet spot for me. Must have been a bit SLEEPY though as I needed scchua to remind me of the dwarfish reference.
   Thanks Crucible for a most enjoyable solve and to scchua for the enlightening moment!

8. Sorry William! for typo, and crossed with 4 and 5.

9. Thoroughly enjoyable (in contrast with yesterday, I have to say). The theme was fairly obvious, which assisted me somewhat in working out unfamiliar horticultural terms. LITTLE OWL and BRIDLEWAYS provoked a grin!

   Thanks to Crucible and scchua.

10. That was a relief, after Anto’s puzzle yesterday! I thought I might have lost my touch. LOI was SLEEPY, after much head-scratching, and ANAEROBES was tricky. Not so sure that good = superb in 12a, but all in all very enjoyable. Many thanks to Crucible and scchua.

11. Apologies if I’m being particularly dim, but how does HA-HA equate to ‘ditch’?

12. What a lovely crossword to end the week! As someone who is allergic to most things “outdoors” I am not au-fait with many of the terms but surprised myself at how easy this was without having the GK – all down to the superb cluing and clear (and amusing) surfaces.

    ROOT CROP got me thinking back about differences in English like what she is spoke. The term “Swede” seems to be very English – I was totally flummoxed by RUTABAGA on moving to the US and then found that whilst that is know in Canada, TURNIP seems to suffice. So, with my all-things-horticultural ignorance (I can just about follow GQT…) what IS the difference between Swede, Rutabaga, Neep, Turnip or anything else?

    Don’t worry, I’m not going to BEET myslef up over it, but I will get my coat.

    Thanks to Crucible and scchua!

13. me @ 11
    Sorry, just looked it up – never heard of this before

14. How delightful that A RATHER DULL TOWN can be transformed into THE NATURAL WORLD!

    For IVORY, my parsing was IVY (growth that climbs) ‘walling’ OR (yellow).

    Only one moan: you can just as easily have a vertical drop as a vertical ascent.

    Thanks Crucible and scchua.

15. Sheer delight from start to finish.

    So many super clues, for their construction (SUNFLOWER, ICEBERG,IVORY, BEE ORCHID, BRIDLEWAYS) and /or surface (DOGWOOD, MANX CAT, ACORNS) – these are only examples.

    Then there’s the excellent anagram in THE NATURAL WORLD and the well-hidden ASPIDISTRA along with the delightful definition of SLEEPY.

    I enjoyed 8dn STUD for the memory: I was at University in Bristol when the Queen inaugurated STD by calling the Lord Provost of Edinburgh from there and I was delighted to find this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfH0Xr1rIcY
    Do have a look – and listen!

    Many thanks to Crucible for a lovely start to the day and scchua for the blog.

16. Mostly fun, a few smiles, a couple of quiblets, or maybe just questions.

    When I saw “TV documentary” I immediately thought of David Attenborough, but couldn’t make 3,7,5 fit any of his offerings. His “Natural World” doesn’t have a “The”; this could maybe have been remedied by starting the clue with “The”. Not a big problem, though, since presence or absence of articles tends to be a bit loose in G. puzzles.

    SLEEPY from “Small miner” was very cute, but vertical no more means upside-down than horizontal means back-to-front, I thought. I’m only half convinced by the explanation in the blog, since by that logic vertical could mean going straight down too, surely? Again, not a big deal.

17. I find Crucible one of the hardest setters with whom to mentally align. I can’t explain it and am not complaining: I don’t find I flow from one clue/solution to the next and build momentum. Rather each one requires starting from scratch and worrying away at it. But, looking back over them all, it’s hard to see why.

    The theme was nice and fairly unobtrusive and provided a delightful anagram across the middle. I liked the sandwiches and walls in DOGWOOD and IVORY. The definition of SLEEPY was a lol and BLUEBOTTLE resonated after recent mentions of the Goons. Interesting to encounter another two letter combo that doesn’t contain a vowel; not particularly outlandish today but that’s been at least three this week. Also nice to add ANTELOPE to the gnu that snuck in a few days ago.

    I think it was bodycheetah who posted “one day I’m going to see ‘lock’ and it’s not going to mean ‘hair'”. I’m inclined to say the same about boss and stud. They appear together so often.

    Thanks Crucible and scchua

18. I think 13 would be “or” walled, ie contained by, “ivy” (plant that climbs). Thanks to Crucible and sschua.

19. Ooh, I thought SLEEPY was a bit devious, and last one in after a lot of head scratching, so snap on that Drofle@10. Clever clue when it clicked for me eventually. Nice to be brought out and about today into THE NATURAL WORLD, reminding us that it’s still out there, waiting…

20. PS: I parsed IVORY as essexboy @14 did – we crossed.

21. Most of this went in OK, but I was left with three for which I had all the crossers but I couldn’t fathom: drofle’s ANAEROBES and SLEEPY (it was the only word I could think of that fitted, but it took forever to see how it worked), plus ANTELOPE. All quite reasonable when the penny dropped, though. I am sure I have seen almost identical clues for 1d and 11a not too long ago. Liked BROOCH (a trip to Orkney a few years ago helped here), BRIDLEWAYS and KNOLL. The 16a anagram is pretty amazing. Thanks to Crucible and scchua.

22. You’re right, essexboy. I was too hasty with the parsing. Blog corrected.

23. That was enjoyable, after a struggle with Imogen and Anto the last two days.
    I’m not entirely comfortable with the notion of a Manx cat being docked – I think the “?” in the clue of 23ac is working overtime.
    “Strand” in 16ac seems superfluous, but I am with Essexboy @14 – the transformation of A RATHER DULL TOWN into THE NATURAL WORLD is wonderful.
    Thanks to Crucible and sschua

24. Quite a hard slog for me, but managed to see the theme for once.
    Favourites: ROOT CROP, MOTH, MANX CAT, DR DOLITTLE.
    New: broch = tower; STD = subscriber trunk dialling; BEE ORCHID (and wow, what a clever plant that is); anaerobes (loi).
    Did not parse IVORY, was baffled but supposed that SLEEPY = small as in a sleepy/small town (did not parse the PEELS reversal / guessed all of SLEEPY apart from the Y bit).
    Thanks, Crucible + scchua

25. Very enjoyable. 14d BLUEBOTTLE was my favourite, really clever and neat.

    After yesterday’s discussion about descriptive definitions, it was interesting to see “It flies” as the definition for LITTLE OWL at 25a (rather than say “flier”). This seems fine to me and illustrates how a definition does not have to be a synonym.

    (15d reminded me of the Round the Horne spoof of Dr Dolittle in which Kenneth Horne played “Dr Dosweet BA”.)

    Many thanks Crucible and scchua.

26. Steveb@11 my grandfather was a gardener at Elvaston Castle and met my grandmother there, she being a comely housemaid. Many years later we discovered – to great family hilarity – that my mother had been conceived out of wedlock during that time. We decided the momentous event probably happened in the haha as it was, by design, discreetly hidden from the big house. As a child I thought this is why it was called a haha. Naturally this was a FOI for me. I shall avoid speculating on whether my grandad could say the same.

27. MaidenBartok: there are, I think, two actual root vegetables here: the smaller being white fleshed with a pink and white skin (turnip) and the larger being a hybrid between a turnip and a cabbage, whose root is yellow fleshed with brown skin (rutabaga). Things get complicated because different countries call them by different names, or confusingly, each other’s names or both by the same name. Neeps is Scottish and may or may not mean either vegetable, or root vegetables in general (Google it and get confused!). Swede is British English for what Americans call rutabaga (but Canadians apparently don’t…) And so on.

28. [MaidenBartok @12 You should get yourself a vegetable patch. It stops those turnip cravings.]

29. [Penfold @28: Wow – a decent joke; that’s a turnip for the books…]

30. Loved SLEEPY but my favourite was BRIDLEWAYS. Thanks Crucible!

    And thank you also to scchua for parsing ANAEROBES for me.

    Happy weekend everyone!

31. I saw that 25a was an anagram of TT OIL WELL, spotted the usual crossword bird the TIT, didn’t look closely enough at the rest and confidently entered WILLOW TIT instead of LITTLE OWL. Oops.

    A delicious anagram in 16a as the theme for a lovely crossword with answers I often know something about, for a change. Thank you Crucible. I did wonder whether “docked in Douglas” was accurate, since Manx cats are naturally tailless and don’t need to be docked.

32. What Eileen @15 said.

33. Like many others I really enjoyed this puzzle and completed it much more quickly than Wednesday’s of (specially) Thursday’s. For once I seemed to be on the setter’s wavelength.

    So many of the clues made me smile. Loved EGRET (so clever and there is often a little egret where we walk the dogs). BROOCH reminded me about the brochs and crannogs we had to draw in primary school.

    Also loved BLUEBOTTLE, KNOLL, BEE ORCHID, ROOT CROP, LITTLE OWL

    Best puzzle of the week

    Thanks to Crucible and scchua

34. Thanks Crucible and scchua
    I found this difficult but satisfying to finish. Favourites were BEE ORCHID, HOOF ROT, and AGRARIAN. I also liked the construction of BRIDLEWAYS, but I’m not so sure I liked the clue!
    Two quibbles: I agree with essexboy and DrWhatsOn that “vertical” doesn’t imply a reversal; and with NeilH that MANX CATS haven’t been docked – they are borm that way.

35. Thanks to essexboy, DrWhatsOn and muffin, SLEEPY seems to be vertically challenged.

36. EGRET was a welcome reminder of times gone by when travel was a thing. On a boat trip in the Dominican Republic we were deeply disappointed by the absence of the advertised herons. Fortunately, spirits were raised by a rousing rendition of the Walker Brother’s classic: “I know you’re leavin’, it’s too long overdue …”

37. Penfold @35
    …but no shorter than average, surely?

38. Two birds and no Pierre? Appalling. 🙂

    Found this a smooth and enjoyable solve throughout. ‘Small miner’ led me down some entertaining roads of misdirection. Thanks to Crucible and scchua

39. Heigh-ho

40. The main point of contention between Mrs B (of Yorkshire origin) and myself (of Lancashire origin) is which are swedes and which are turnips.

41. Wasn’t crazy about “vertical” as a reversal indicator in a down clue. All down entries are vertical, no? Would “horizontal” indicate a reversal in an across clue? But that was my only quibble, and I am a quibbler. Thanks, scchua and Crucible.

42. Thanks Crucible and scchua.

    I normally find Crucible daunting, but not this time. A great collection of elegant clues, and witty misdirections – I particularly enjoyed 23ac. Brilliant anagram at 16ac.

43. gladys@27: when I lived in Edinburgh in the 70’s, neeps invariably meant turnip. Haggis and neeps was the traditional fare on Burns Night. My supervisor (an Englishman) spent a few days in hospital and reported, with a rather bemused expression, “they gave me pizza and neeps!”.

    I enjoyed this rather more than usual with Crucible, though I didn’t know BEE ORCHID and would recognise BRIDLE PATHS rather than -WAYS.

44. I was enjoying this one so much that I didn’t even notice the infelicitous ‘vertical’. The theme was not so narrow as to allow rampant biffing, and it worked well, I thought. The surfaces were smooth, the range of vocab interesting , the wordplay very fair and precise, the GK requirement nicely calibrated, and some witty and humorous touches — this ticked all the boxes for me.

    Many thanks to setter and blogger.

45. Much more amenable than I usually find Crucible. Enjoyed .

    As always (but seldom said) much appreciated puzzle & blog

46. Delightful crossword, a pleasure to solve.

    I quite liked the clue for MANX CAT, despite the quibbles. If you think of docked meaning shortened it kind of makes sense.

    Most amusing was the definition for SLEEPY. As has been pointed out, the transformation of a rather dull town into THE NATURAL WORLD was clever.

    Thanks to Eileen @15 for the enjoyable clip, to Crucible for the solving pleasure and to scchua for the good, pictorial blog.

47. steveb@13 HA-HA has appeared many time in the Guardian Xword, sometimes as wall, sometimes as ditch. The latest mention was Philistine March 10 2018 and the earliest Enigmatist in 2010, which Eileen will remember blogging.

48. …. and for the punners on here, I suppose the average turnip is measured by the RMS

49. Once I had got most of 12A I was disappointed that the answer was not Dagwood and took along time to admit to myself it wasn’t – feels like an opportunity lost with a bit of tweaking to the clue. Otherwise really fair and enjoyable throughout.

50. I wondered about sleepy until remembering that it is the name of a dwarf rhododendron (yakushimanum) – and also iceberg is a rose

51. I enjoyed this especially the long anagram giving the theme. A tiny point in the parsing of 5d: it should be BRAYS to include the S. I needed help parsing 19a and 18d so thanks for that to scchua and also to Crucible

52. What a lovely crossword! Enjoyed this immensely for the elegant clues and pleasing theme. I couldn’t parse ANAEROBES so thank you scchua for that.

    Viz once had a strip with a character called ‘Dr Poolittle’ – “he talks to the animals… about constipation”, and I can never think about Dr Dolittle without thinking of it – and now, probably, neither can you, so I can only apologise for that 😀

    Many thanks scchua and Crucible.

53. Thanks Julia. Blog corrected.

54. [Pedro @48: :D]

55. or even 😀

56. [Pedro @48 Root mean square? I thought that was used to calculate the England captain’s batting average (which has just gone up sgain).

    Originally a feature of formal French gardens of the early eighteenth century, the ha-ha was introduced to England in the 1720s. Native Americans then developed a smaller version, the mini-haha.]

57. [Penfold @56: in mischievous mode again, I see!

    Anyway, how can root mean square? It doesn’t parse. Nip it in the bud.]

58. Technically a LITTLE OWL doesn’t hoot, bit who cares

59. [petert @58 If the owl doesn’t give a hoot, why should we?]

60. [PostMark @57: With awful puns around I was waiting for you to turnip and join in.

    Suppose swede better get on and root them out. No good beeting about the bush, is there? Just need to parsnip it in the bud.]

61. [Me @60: Doh – missed the “parse” “nip” in 57!!! Bit thick today…]

62. [Penfold @59: I think we need some control here – it’s turning into a free-for-owl.]

63. Gladys@31 – you are not alone, annoying.

    Good puzzle. Gave up on hoof rot – got the hoot and rot but didn’t make the cut – LOI on reveal, oh well.

    Ta for the blog.

64. -Penfold @59 I set them up, you knock them down

65. Re the rutabaga (MaidenBartok and others): it’s strange how many vegetables have different names when you cross the Atlantic. My favorite example is zucchini/courgette, since both words mean (in Italian and French respectively) “little squash.” I propose a transatlantic pact to start calling them “squashies.”

    I like the word aubergine better than “eggplant,” since most eggplant you find these days looks nothing like an egg.?

66. [The owl references prompt recollection of some nice wordplay from the niche but very amusing TV series What We Do In The Shadows. A family of vampires attempting to blend into normal life in modern day New York attend what they mistakenly understand to be a Superb Owl party given by their average/typical American neighbours. Hilarity ensues.]

67. [mypenney @65: Herbs (‘erbs?) are the one that gets me. Coriander is cilantro and Mr Musk has just fired another Arugula into space?

    PostMark @66: Did that program(me) make you owl with laughter…?]

68. [ mrpenney@65: spring onions/scallions and cilantro/coriander also come to mind.
    Currently reading a recipe in French and trying to remember what cannelle is.]

69. Found this hard but persisted, though Mrs T had to check IVORY and ANAEROBES for me. Clocked the theme early on, which didn’t lead directly to answers but did give me confidence that a number of solutions would be plant or animal kingdom.

    All egrets are herons but not all herons are egrets, I think.

70. On SLEEPY – if “peels” (and all written words) can be regarded to be in the horizontal then it becomes SLEEP in a down clue when raised to the vertical – nothing to do with back-to-front or upside down etc.
    Parsnip, turnip, neeps – is there an etymological root in play here? Anna would tell us but….
    A three-funeral week in this life, so haven’t risen to the struggle with some of the offerings, but today’s was a real cheer-up call so thanks to Crucible (each clue caused a possibly audible click in the cerebellum) and to sschua for the illuminating (as always) and illuminated (as always) blog.

71. Stunning work, Crucible.
    If anyone is thinking “it’s a shame that 7d didn’t fit the theme”, you might like to ponder why the leg bone is called a “fibula”.
    Thanks scchua.

72. Cinnamon (reply to gladys)

73. Alphalpha @70: ingenious, but –

    (a) why should it be raised to the vertical;
    (b) where is your centre of rotation?

    On nips and neeps, you’re quite right – turnip and neep both go back to Middle English nepe, and parsnip started out as a pure French import (pasnaie) then got corrupted under the influence of the perfidious nepe.

74. essexboy@73: I’m thinking of those alphabetical cubes that were about when I was a child (and possibly when Adam was a boy) or perhaps Scrabble tiles?

75. essexboy @73: My son hated carrots but loved parsnips when he was small so we referred to carrots as “orange parsnips” and all was well.

    I believe that in France parsnips are almost exclusively used as cattle feed and it is only us weird Rosbifs who eat the things.

76. [Penfold @56: Duly noted 🙂 ]

77. MB and Gladys: To confuse things further, we do use the word coriander! Here, coriander is the seeds (thus used as a spice, not an herb), while cilantro is the leaves. My guess is that most of the uses we put that herb to are Mexican-derived dishes, so we use the Spanish name. (American English absorbs Spanish in large quantities, for obvious reasons.) Meanwhile, the seeds usually pop up in flavors from the Mediterranean or farther east.

    Our H-less pronunciation of “herb” is, as I understand it, part of our larger pattern of Frenchifying the pronunciafion of French-derived words. See also garage (garAHJ) and valet (valLAY).

78. Thanks both,
    Confidence restored after yesterday.
    [bodycheetah@38 was that a case of ’10acs I’ve had a few’, or ‘No 10acs, we will have no 10acs’.]

79. Alphalpha @74 – sadly, I never had the cubes; but with Scrabble tiles, aren’t the words that ‘drop’ still ‘vertical’?

    MB @75 – indeed! (see here)
    (I rather like the French gentleman at #3, who explains “on le donne aux cochons”, but then concedes “Je pense qu’il est temps que ce légume retrouve ses lettres de noblesse en France… 🙂 ” )

80. [mrpenney @77: I refuse to “garAHJ” due to the existence of the Nigel – there is no way I wish to lend any air of panache to his name. He rhymes with cabbage…

    I hear that Tom Jones used to be a Welsh valLAY…]

81. steveb @11 Perhaps a fuller description of HA-HA is needed. It’s a landscaping feature of country houses, where a vertical drop of about ten feet at the far edge of a formal garden is constructed, thus making the garden stock-proof without the need for a fence, which might spoil the view. I have also heard that estate staff were instructed to use the ditch as a thoroughfare so that the aristocracy’s view was not further spoiled by the common people in their eyeline. TimW @26 has suggested a totally different purpose for the ha-ha that has minded me to keep a weather eye for comely maidens when I’m next walking along one. Not until post-lockdown though, I fear.

82. The Little Owl never hoots and egrets and herons are different birds within the same family. I suppose we all have our pet subjects. I am blissfully unmoved when the mathematicians and scientists on this site get agitated, but I do like my birds to be right!
    That said – I did enjoy the crossword very much, and the blog was super. So thanks to both.

83. essexboy @79: Arise Sir Napp. What concerns me is that a “navette” is the small shuttle-bus that takes you from the car-park to the terminal at airports such as Nice Cote d’Azure and I’ve probabtly been asking for directions to the turnip (“navet”) all these years…

    There are, of course, plenty of turnip references in Blackadder but I think I’ll let others seek those out because it could all go a bit “Paul” quite quickly and I don’t want to lower the tone.

    Très bon weekend à toutes et tous !

84. [PostMark @66: I loved that episode. Even after the party the vampires are none the wiser (except Colin Robinson who actually isn’t a real vampire), and Nadja says something like “The Superb Owl party was lovely, even though the owl didn’t appear”.]

85. trisincharante: I may have been guilty of contributing to your agitation by not distinguishing correctly between species. But je n’egret heron! … and will collect my coat on the way out…

86. Eileen @15. Thanks for the link. Priceless!

87. PM ?

88. So feeling foolish now. That was meant to be P M and a laughing face. How do I do that please someone?

89. I loved the anagram of A RATHER DULL TOWN to THE NATURAL WORLD. “Strand” seems superfluous. Is it a term in the field of TV production?

    Welcome to the antelopes — try not to get HOOF ROT, chaps.

    I’m with Michelle @24 for everything she said about SLEEPY. The Disney connection totally escaped me — and I can name all the dwarves!

    mrpenney @65 and MB @67 Those transatlantics tend to give French names to what we name in Italian or Spanish, given who came here.

    On the turnip front, have a look at “Rutabaga Stories” by Carl Sandburg, a collection of fanciful rural-ish tales. I loved them as a child. On neeps/nips Once in Portugal I ordered “sopa de nabos” in a little corner restaurant because I didn’t know what it was. It was delicious and turned out to be (when I got back to the boat and the books) turnip soup.

    Thoroughly enjoyed this, with the favorite being the magnificent anagram at 16a.

90. [Wasn’t it just last week that we had a photo of the lovely Julie Christie? Obviously she was Lara in Dr Zhivago, as in the book by Boris Pasternak. Well Pasternak means parsnip in Russian (also in Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish).

    Somewhere, my love there will be songs to sing…]

91. [Penfold @90: Goodness – I didn’t know that. One of the most famous Jewish ethnomusicologists was Velvel Pasternak (as far as I can tell no relation to Boris)… This site (actually the people on it) is astonishing – the amount you learn each day!]

92. Thanks Crucible. I had to reveal a few and I couldn’t parse SLEEPY or ROOT CROP but overall I liked this crossword a lot. I thought KINDLE was brilliant, I liked AGRARIAN (I remember my heretics well from Catholic school), and TWIG had a simplicity that was satisfying. Thanks scchua for the blog. [MaidenBartok @75: Parsnips are common in American farmers’ markets — they’re often part of a roasted root vegetable mix or they’re boiled with potatoes and mashed together with butter or olive oil.]

93. While Cr is in Chambers as an abbreviation for Councillor (see 18D), as a former one for many years I never saw that used. It was always either “Cllr” or “Coun”.

94. [The original Halloween Jack O’Lanterns, in the days before the festival was exported and Americanized, would have been carved from swedes or mangel-wurzels. The much softer pumpkin is a definite improvement.
    
    ]

95. trishincharente @88

    Here’s the complete list of emoticons. I’ve never used ‘eek’, ‘shock’, or ‘mad’, but I resolve to do so at the next opportunity.

96. After getting up several hours before dawn to watch the cricket from India on Channel 4, I was somewhat DOPEY. I went out during the tea break at 8:45 to buy my Guardian and attempted the crossword while watching Koe Root make his century.

    Given my SLEEPY condition it was not surprising that I didn’t solve 3d and two others. I put off writing a post here until I’d managed to overcome the temptation to be SNIFFY about the use of ‘vertical’ to indicate the reversal of PEELS. (Not sniffy, SNEEZY. Doh.)

    I’m a little BASHFUL about admitting that one of my other two fails was BLUEBOTTLE, but I’m more than HAPPY to mention that I was working on PAT rather than SEAN for the Dubliner so failed on the outer letters of ROBE in 19a (ATAPROBES?).

    I was pleased to have got DOC DOLITTLE, but I can’t tell you how GRUMPY I became on reading the lavish praise for Crucible’s clues on this blog. Heigh (as someone else has mentioned) Ho. Or possibly HA-HA!

97. Koe Root? Oops. Still DOPEY obv. Sorry Joe.

98. Hi sheffield hatter- well you weren’t too late to join the root party! – thanks for the story. 😉

99. Thank you essexboy 😀

100. 😮

101. I’m not naming names, but today I think reading the comments was as much fun as doing the crossword.

102. gladys@94 Not only are pumpkins softer than mangel-wurzels, they’re already hollow, all you have to do is scoop out the seeds to make room for the candle.

103. essexboy@79: I feel there is a point of nice distinction in play which is getting through my filtration system. All “down” words in Scrabble – and crossies – are of course vertical. But it is possible to get from the horizontal to the vertical while maintaining literal contiguity (oh dear…) by two means, one of which would involve a reversal. When I think of it – the convention of reading “down” solutions from the top is purely that: a convention. It would be interesting (or would it?) to have a crossword where the “down” clues were actually “up” – so reading from the bottom. A really good puzzle would be one where conventions of left to right and top to bottom were randomly ignored so that, say, crossers of _E_L_ could be clued to give either SLEEP or PEELS.
     Cross-pollinate that with my suggestion (it’s a long time ago now – pre-lockdown when lords and ladies were concerned that too few were being indoctrinated in the arcane arts of crosophilia; things have changed) of a grid containing all the crossers and you’ve got a nice pencil-chewer.
     But setters manage to entertain sufficiently within current confines, so maybe not.

104. I tried to visualise rotating a horizontal word either clockwise or anticlockwise, Alphalpha. Clockwise, the letters would be face down; anticlockwise they would be on their backs, wouldn’t they?

105. Granted, the last two letters of KINDLE are indeed LEFT minus the Financial Times. They are also L (for left) + E (for digital or paperless). So this answer can be parsed twice.

     Since the title of Attenborough’s TV documentary is “Natural World” it is asking “strand” to do some heavy lifting to make it justify the insertion of a preceding THE, especially since “strand” is a TV term of art meaning “series” thereby implying that no extra work is required from it.

106. [Valentine @102 and gladys @94: I give you the ultimate Wurzels tribute band, the Mangled Wurzels http://www.mangledwurzels.co.uk/ ]

107. Really enjoying this blog again. It seems to have returned to a better place. Thanks to all contributors.

108. Hi trishincharente

     Hurrah! – and glad you enjoyed the link (and can now do emojis 😉 )

109. I had SAFFLOWER for 9a, reading “a French” as “AF”….

110. Alphalpha @103/muffin @104

     I’m getting a bit cross-eyed trying to visualise the turning of a word in 3D space about all possible axes of rotation!

     One possibility – if you can imagine the words BEE ORCHID skewered on a roasting spit (which goes left to right and coincides with the central horizontal stroke of the H) – results in all the letters being flipped upside down by a 180° turn, while a 90° turn either way would give — —-·-

     Another involves an axis going up-down along the left-hand side of the B – this would mean a 90° turn results in I, while a 180° turn flips all the letters so that they land backwards on top of the IVORY.

     But I think the one Alphalpha has in mind is the axis that goes from the eyeball of the solver perpendicularly through the printed page. If you further imagine that each letter is suspended (a bit like the passenger capsules on the London Eye) then a 90° turn could indeed mean that

     P E E L S

     becomes

     S
     L
     E
     E
     P

     But – and it’s a big but – only if the word is rotated anticlockwise. If, say, the axis passes through S, and the word is given a 90° clockwise turn, you still end up with

     P
     E
     E
     L
     S

     (I think?)

111. [essexboy @110
     Now I’ve definitely gone bog-eyed!]

112. essexboy @110. I want to know what’s happening to my eyeball while you’re rotating all these letters around an imaginary line. It feels uncomfortable. A bit like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, when his eyelids are peeled back.

     Or as BLUEBOTTLE would have said, “I don’t like this game.”

113. Lots to like here, but, since I’m late to the party, it’s mostly been said.

     I do feel a bit grumpy (another “small miner”) about “Dubliner” cluing Sean at 19a. I’m familiar with, though not at all fond of, the crossword convention that all Ians are Scottish, and I suppose “Irishman” for Sean would do at a pinch. But Dubliner seems a step too far: there are Seans all over the world, and most of them have never crossed the Ha’penny Bridge. Would any setter use “Londoner” to clue “JOHN”?

114. Fun crossword and fun comments, thanks to all.
     Just to follow up on scchua’s comment in the blog that most answers are associated with the natural world. In fact every answer is. Quite impressive!
     Including BROOCH and SLEEPY (both plants), IVORY (wood) and KINDLE (brood of kittens).

115. essexboy et al@110-2: Exactly. ‘night.

116. Miche@113: Agree. Mick or Paddy would have caused a stir. But you got it, I got it no offence offered I think so none taken. I thought it must be Shaw…
     phil@114: Tour de force of a theme-spot. Chapeau.

117. Dr. WhatsOn@101 and trishincharente@107, I echo your comments. This was an excellent crossword and blog (thanks Crucible and scchua), but the comments made my day. It’s good to be back to enjoying the sheer fun of this game and of each other. Thanks all.

118. cellomaniac @117 – I have a somewhat dissenting view. There are many of us who don’t particularly appreciate the recent commandeering of the Guardian blog page as a social club for a limited number of people seemingly to do anything other than discuss the intricacies of the day’s crossword. If you were to check back to blogs before the pandemic, you will be struck by the number of people who no longer contribute and might wonder whether they have been alienated by the disrespect that is being shown to the Site Policies and Comment Guidelines.

119. Just in case anyone is still around, did nobody have what seems to me like a perfectly acceptable DART for 23d?

120. Paul the other one@: (Great moniker). Get -ART but not the D- ? Nobody else mentioned the possibility.

121. Paul the other one & Alphalpha. DART is contained within ‘seconD ARTicle’, but ‘abridged’ doesn’t really work as a containment indicator. Nice idea, though.

122. On 19a, I briefly considered that Crucible had had a brainfade, and it was MICKROBES – MICK’S around ROBE! The definition is a very slight stretch, as “tiny bodies” isn’t a defining characteristic of ANAEROBES; it’s that they don’t need oxygen to live. However all anaerobes I know of are, in fact, very small – they are Bacteria or Archaea.

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