Guardian Cryptic 28,413 by Brummie

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28413.

A very pleasant offering from Brummie, with a theme of children’s games, split in pairs of answers; I see TIDDLY WINKS, JACK STONES, SNAKES and LADDERS, HIDE and SEEK, MUSICAL CHAIRS, and NOUGHTS and CROSSES (CATCH might be added, but I cannot find it a partner).

ACROSS
8 PRIE-DIEU
A basis for prayers (4-4)
Cryptic definition; it is a prayer desk.
9 CATCH
Round bag (5)
Double definition, the first being a canonical song.
10 JACK
Sailor Bill opens two consecutive letters (4)
An envelope (‘opens’) of AC (account, ‘bill’) in J K (‘two consecutive letters’).
11 PRIMA FACIE
At first sight, a campfire’s about to engulf one (5,5)
An envelope (‘to engulf’) of I (‘one’) in PRIMAFACE, an anagram (‘about’) of ‘a campfire’.
12 TIDDLY
Neatly replacing one with daughter, Merry (6)
TIDILY (‘neatly’) with the second I replaced by D (‘replacing one with daughter’).
14 APIARIST
Keeper likely to get a buzz from a new strip to go over international one (8)
A charade of ‘a’ plus PIARIST, an envelope (‘to go over’) of I (‘international’) plus A (‘one’) in PRIST, an anagram (‘new’) of ‘strip’, with a cryptic definition.
15 CROSSES
Put out drugs for trials (7)
A charade of CROSS (‘put out’, annoyed) plus ES (‘drugs’); ‘trial’ in the sense of a bugbear.
17 LADDERS
In the outskirts of Los Angeles, snake passes for fish? (7)
An envelope (‘in’) of ADDER (‘snake’) in LS (‘the outskirts of Los AngeleS‘).
20 IMPETIGO
Infection of one’s darling — getting one shot (8)
A charade of I’M (‘one’s’ – one is) plus PET (‘darling’) plus I (‘one’) plus GO (‘shot’).
22 STONES
Rock group members‘ initially short tempers (6)
A charade of S (‘initially Short’) plus TONES (‘tempers’).
23 THUNBERGIA
Black-eyed Susan, environmental activist and international ace (10)
A charade of THUNBERG (Greta, ‘environmental activist’) plus I (‘international’, second appearance) plus A (‘ace’), for the vine, one of the plants called Black-eyed Susans..
24 HATH
Has old bowler possibly arrived at end of pitch? (4)
A charade of HAT (‘bowler, possibly’) plus H (‘end of pitcH‘).
25 WINKS
Wife is a printer? Shows she’s not being serious (5)
A charade of W (‘wife’) plus INKS (is a printer’).
26 TREADLES
Dodgy dealer goes in back way for sewing machine parts (8)
An envelope (‘goes in’) of READLE, an anagram (‘dodgy’) of ‘dealer’ in TS, a reversal (‘back’) of ST (‘way’). A somewhat old sewing machine part, at least in this part of the world.
DOWN
1 FREAKIER
Stranger from France reorganised IKEA on return (8)
A charade of FR (‘France’) plus EAKI, an anagram (‘reorganised’) of ‘IKEA’ plus ER, a reversal (‘return’) of RE (‘on’). I really wanted the answer to be FREAKINO, a bizarre elementary particle, perhaps the constituent of Dark Matter.
2 SEEK
Aim at spot at centre of token (4)
A charade of SEE (‘spot’) plus K (‘centre of toKen’).
3 BIOPSY
Surgical procedure means life and beginnings of prodigious sex — yes! (6)
A charade of BIO- (‘means life’ – ‘means’ indicates that the reference is to a prefix) plus PSY (‘beginnings of Prodigious Sex – Yes’.
4 MUSICAL
Hair transplant claim involving setters? (7)
An envelope (‘involving’) of US (‘setters’) in MICAL, an anagram (‘transplant’) of ‘claim’. The question mark indicates that ‘Hair’ is an indication by example of a MUSICAL.
5 SCIATICA
Asiatic cooks taking cocaine for painful condition (8)
An envelope (‘taking’) of C (‘cocaine’) in SCIATIA, an anagram (‘cooks’) of ‘asiatic’.
6 STEAM RADIO
Disparaging term for a medium asteroid orbiting round America (5,5)
An envelope (’round’) of AM (‘America’) in STERADIO, an anagram (‘orbiting’?) of ‘asteroid’.
7 CHAIRS
Rockers possibly making church appearances (6)
A charade of CH (‘church’) plus AIRS (‘appearances’).
13 DISCERNING
Astute, missing nothing, considering disorder (10)
An anagram (‘disorder’) of ‘c[o]nsidering’ minus the O (‘missing nothing’).
16 EPILEPSY
Placed in centre pile: ‘Psycho­logical Recurring Attacks‘ (8)
A hidden answer (‘placed in’) in ‘centrE PILE PSYcological’.
18 ROENTGEN
X-ray unit or back specialist hospital department’s information (8)
A charade of RO, a reversal (‘back’) of ‘or’ plus ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat, ‘specialist hospital department’) plus GEN (‘information’).
19 NOUGHTS
2 in 100 Poles have a duty to go inside (7)
An envelope (‘to go inside’) of OUGHT (‘have a duty’) in NS (‘poles’). Indeed, there a two noughts in ‘100’, count ’em.
21 MOHAWK
Native American doctor, one who favours war (6)
A charade of MO (‘doctor’) plus HAWK (‘one who favour`s war’).
22 SNAKES
Treacherous types: racers, perhaps (6)
Double definition (at least, the second is an indication by example, hence the ‘perhaps’).
24 HIDE
Said to be a conflicted character’s mask (4)
Sounds like (‘said’) HYDE (‘a conflicted character’, a reference to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

picture of the completed grid

90 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,413 by Brummie”

  1. Yep very pleasant, therefore quite enjoyable, nothing too diffic.
    Bit of a worry though that prodigious sex leads to biopsy. Cross in the sense of burden or trial took a minute to click. I know the plant from childhood, it was a favourite of my dad’s (an autodidact who liked botanical names, bless him). When I listen to old My Words, I suppose that’s steam radio, yes? Any mohawks featured by footballers over there at the moment? A few of ours sport them… it does look fierce, though that might be a remnant of Saturday matinees. Hey ho, all good fun, thanks Brummie and PeterO.

  3. Nice puzzle; cute theme, not sure I would have got CROSSES without it.

    [And now for something not entirely different.

    The other day several people theorized that any word can be a band. At the time I made a thinly veiled threat to look into this, and I just did, and the results are in. Processing over a little more than 6,000 G. puzzles from the last 20 years, using the same de facto criteria that are used in the blogs for identifying theme words within the grid, it turns out that there are on average 9.7 band names per puzzle. [A fraction less for prize than for daily, which is interesting in its own right, but tells the same story.] Some puzzles had 2-3 times that. It seems the theory is right!]

  4. Oh, one more thing. Has anyone who solves these puzzles on their mobile devices noticed that the app has been considerably speeded up? It used to be the case that if I typed even medium-fast, the app couldn’t keep up and letters would be entered in the wrong spaces. It seems this update coincided with the ability to handle Jumbo puzzles, as of last weekend. Many thanks to the G. web team for this.

  5. Hi Dr. Wh, are you saying you could do Saturday’s jumbo online on your phone? I got the “..interactive online not available” so had to crank up the pc and print it.

    I hadn’t noticed the speed increase but I’ll test it out next solve.

  6. Pleasant crossword with LADDERS, MUSICAL, and CHAIRS being favourites. I never thought to look for a theme so I didn’t see it. THUNBERGIA was new to me, knowing black-eyed Susan only as Rudbeckia. NOUGHTS and IMPETIGO were too clever for me to get but all else fell into place without much of a struggle. Thanks to both.

  7. Thought I’d spotted a medical theme, with BIOPSY, EPILEPSY, IMPETIGO, ROENTGEN, and even STONES. Then SNAKES and LADDERS sent me down the other path.

    CATCH could be paired up with IMPETIGO I suppose — not a game certainly, but an activity common among children.

  9. I enjoyed this. Thanks Brummie. Originally i thought it would be a medical theme and there are quite a few medical words but TIDDLYWINKS was enough to piece my theme blindness and that gave me CROSSes, MUSICAL and LADDERS ! LOI was IMPETIGO.

    I thought STEAM RADIO was a general disparaging term, not just aimed at mediums. So I had an anagram of M with asteroid with just A for America.

    Thanks PeterO for your ever timely blog. I did not know the musical use of CATCH.

  12. [Dr. WhatsOn@3 – nice work. @4 – yes, app much improved and handy to be able to tackle Saturday’s Jumbo on the ‘phone]. Thanks both.

  13. @5 grantinfreo. The android guardian app (not the dedicated puzzle app) worked on my phone (samsung) for the latest jumbo. Although it was pretty hard seeing everything on a small screen. Maybe update app

    Re today’s I found it a bit unsatisfactory – too many stretches and “I suppose it has to be this” and not enough “Aha – that’s it”

  14. CanberraGirl @9: I think the medium is as in broadcast medium rather than a conductor of a seance. Unless I’ve misunderstood you – or you were pulling our legs. There are several possible abbreviations for America – A, Am, US could all have been in the anagram fodder and I wondered if ’round’ was also signalling a O.

    Dr W @3: a remarkable piece of analysis – though leading to the conclusion we all rather suspected. Though is the average number of 9.7 words or names? Does Half Man Half Biscuit = 4 (arguably 3) words or one name?

    How lovely to find THUNBERGIA on Google when I went looking. Greta came to mind but was dismissed pretty quickly and then the most unlikely looking solution presented itself. And there it was. Amongst other ticks, the splendid almost-anagram to get to DISCERNING, a superb lurker in EPILEPSY, JACK made me smile and LADDERS is a fabulous misleading definition. WINKS is cute and it’s a nice theme to have incorporated into the puzzle. This may have been mentioned before but there is actually a place called Tiddleywink! Only 8 houses but it earned an article in the Guardian.

    Thanks Brummie and PeterO

  15. I decided Susan THUNBERGIA must be that girl in the Black-Eyed Peas, so thanks Peter for setting me straight. Also for telling me about the freakino. I just googled ‘freakino dark matter’; the first result was this blog, others included ‘one freakin’ o’clock’ and Chris freakin’ O’Donnell. I also agree with your ‘?’ re orbiting as an anagrind.

    Other than that I found this enjoyably chewy; I liked PRIE-DIEU because it’s a lovely word, and HATH for the picture of the old bowler just about managing to arrive at the end of the pitch.

    Thanks Brummie and PeterO (and PM for Tiddleywink)

  16. [gif @1 Raheem Sterling many well have sported something similar to a MOHAWK, but then he seems to have a different hairstyle every time he plays. His England teammates Harry WINKS and John STONES tend to have more sensible Barnets.]

    I knew THUNBERGIA, but not PRIE-DIEU. Favourite was probably LADDERS.

    [Tonight on STEAM RADIO 1, John Peel has sessions from FREAKIER, The DISCERNING APIARISTS and TIDDLY JACK & the MUSICAL SNAKES.]

    Thanks Brummie and PeterO

  17. Thanks Brummie and PeterO
    I revealed CROSSES and even then didn’t understand it – it’s obvious that I hadn’t seen the theme!

  18. Postmark@14. That makes total sense. Sadly I can’t claim humour, I was fixated on rudeness towards psychic specialists!

  19. I spotted the theme with early entries of TIDDLY and LADDERS although there was obviously something medical going on. I ticked pretty much the same as PostMark, (we had the same yesterday!) and good spot, Penfold, for us footballphiles. I could imagine JACK Grealish sporting one after a heavy night 🙂

    The clue for CHAIRS was very similar to Philistine’s Quiptic yesterday, so that was a write-in. I guessed PRIE-DIEU, with my limited French O-level. This puzzle was superb.

    Ta Brummie & PeterO

  22. jackkt@20 A “fish ladder” or “fish steps” is a device to help fish, such as salmon, negotiate a difficult stretch of water or artificial obstacle (e.g. a dam such as at Pitlochry Power Station).

  24. jackkt @20: not you being dim but Brummie being clever. It’s why LADDERS was one of my top ticks. Like you, I stared at it for a while running through my mental lists of ‘normal’ fish and ‘crossword fish’ before the tea tray dropped.

    CanberraGirl @18: given the lengthy discussion yesterday about Latin plurals, it’s interesting that I knew you were referring to spiritualists insofar as you pluralised it ‘mediums’ rather than ‘media’. I wonder how many other instances there are of one word/two plural forms?

  25. Many thanks to all who responded to my query. It’s something I simply didn’t know so I was never going to spot it. Knowing the way these things often go I expect to come across it again any day soon in another puzzle.

  26. Loved NOUGHTS which was my penultimate followed by CROSSES at which point the theme penny finally dropped 🙂

  27. Great fun. A major and a minor theme. I had heard the words PRIE DIEU as a bit of random popery, but had no idea of the meaning. I also learned what a black-eyed Susan is.
    My thanks to Brummie and Peter O.

  28. [Dr. WhatsOn @4: The app appears to have been last updated about 3 weeks back – if you’re on iOS there was a very rapid jump from 14.4.1 to 14.4.2 a few days ago (24 hours – never seen that before; Apple are normally very good with software quality) and for the day that I had 14.4.1 it was HORRIBLY slow]

    Didn’t notice the theme from start-to-finish and struggled over a few DNKs especially THUNBERGIA because I’m really not the outdoors/gardening type! But most of the rest was a slow penny-drop.

    [Sciatica really is nasty – as a sometime sufferer I managed to agrivate it by awkwardly grabbing my case off the baggage reclaim belt at SFO; I spent the entire week flat on my back on the floor in my hotel including a memorable moment when the cleaner came in and had to step over me…]

    Thanks to Brummie and PeterO.

  29. I spotted the theme just in time for it to help me get 4d MUSICAL. I did think that one was a bit unfair, as the question mark indicating definition-by-example is at the opposite end of the clue to the definition.

    But that’s a minor quibble and this was overall very enjoyable. Favourite was 14a APIARIST for the clever and misleading surface.

    Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

  30. It took me quite a while to remember that LADDERS were passes for fish: given every setter’s fondness for obscure wildlife I was hearing David Attenborough describing the mating habits of the ladder fish, so called from its pattern of regular stripes…

    Liked the clues for HATH and NOUGHTS, but CROSSES made me cross: two examples of the 14th meaning down the list in the same clue. And if you didn’t know PRIE-DIEU (I did) you hadn’t a hope. Likewise that racers were SNAKES (Attenborough again). Who said that there were a lot of well-I-suppose-so answers today? I agree.

  31. [PostMark@14. You reminded me of one of the favourite words I encountered while growing up in Cornwall: kiddlywink. At the time I was told that a kiddlywink was a pub that was only licensed to sell booze for consumption out of doors. (If I remember correctly the Kiddlywink Store at Carnon Downs was basically a corner shop with benches and tables outside.) But the few references I can find online suggest that it was only allowed to sell beer and cider.]

  32. [blaise @31: thank you so much for that. You’ve occasioned the solution to a question I’ve occasionally wondered about over 50 odd years! My parents were both fond of the Lamorna Wink, a small pub in the tiny hamlet of Lamorna, just along the coast from Mousehole where we sometimes camped in a field of a friendly farmer. It always seemed an odd name for a pub – but I’ve never actually got around to looking it up until your comment. And there it is on the first Google entry I see, ‘This unspoilt traditional village pub is an old kiddleywink going back some 400 years…’

    We have one of the very few remaining cider houses here in Worcestershire, licensed to brew and serve only the one drink. Known locally as the Monkey House, ‘the unique Cider House occupies part of a 17th-century thatched, half-timbered building. It has been in the family of landlady Gill Collins for 150 years and is one of four remaining cider-only houses in the country. The main bar is actually outside viz. the front garden! If the weather disappoints, customers drink in the former bakehouse at the side. Service is through a hatch in a stable door on the left of the cottage with the cider casks stillaged behind in a ground floor ‘cellar’. The loos are outside and the ladies’ even has a roof!. The nickname supposedly derives from the tale told by a well-mellowed customer on returning home – he claimed he was covered in cuts and scratches not because of a self-induced collapse into a bramble patch but rather an attack by a tribe of monkeys.‘ ]

  33. Thanks for the useful blog.

    Missed the theme of course, which made crosses a wing and a prayer.

    Why are snakes = racers? I thought (dubiously) skater instead.

  34. Another tough puzzle. Or maybe I am getting dumber lately 🙁

    Saw the game theme towards the end of solving this.

    Favourites: NOUGHTS, FREAKIER, APIARIST, MUSICAL.
    New: THUNBERGIA, STEAM RADIO, IMPETIGO.
    Did not parse LADDERS = passes for fish; CATCH = round; CROSSES = put out drugs.

    Can someone explain to me why LADDERS = passes for fish?

    Thanks, Brummie and Peter.

  35. [PostMark @32. Glad to be of service. Lamorna is one of my favourite places in Cornwall but I’d forgotten the name of the pub.]

  38. The theme excuses a few iffy clues so I’m largely with Matthew@13
    There was a band in Melbourne called The Black Eyed Susans (I thought they were potatoes)
    thanks Peter and Brum

  39. Michelle @34 – “Can someone explain to me why LADDERS = passes for fish?”

    See contributions 20-25 above.

  40. Thank you for the blog, I think that freakino is in your imagination only ! Nice crossword but I missed the theme as usual. Good to see Greta Thunberg and Willem Roentgen in the same crossword.
    Racer snakes were famously in a Planet Earth II episode , hunting marine iguana on one of the Galapagos Islands.

  41. THUNBERGIA – At first I was sure that black-eyed susan was a type of bean but I was thinking of black-eyed peas.

    Also went off trying to think of a fish beginning with L and ending with S but liked LADDERS once I got it. Used to watch salmon going up some very steep falls up in Scotland. And there are ladders by the sides of the weirs in Hertford where we go paddling.

    Other favourites: HIDE, ROENTGEN, TIDDLY, TREADLES.
    Never heard of STEAM RADIO and although PRIE-DIEU sprang into my mind on seeing the first crosser, I had no idea what it meant.

    Got NOUGHTS from the first bit and the crossers but couldn’t parse it.

    Lovely puzzle. Thanks Brummie and PeterO

  42. Because I as usual missed the theme, having struggled to convince myself that both LADDERS and SNAKES were indeed correct – and thanks to Brummie’s devious but clever cluing – I found this a struggle this morning. Though I did like the misdirection of MUSICAL, even if I made no connection then with CHAIRS. I’m beginning to wonder whether “not seeing the wood for the trees” with spotting these themes is something innate like colour blindness or (lack of) spatial awareness…

  44. I am hopeless at picking up themes, and was delighted, on arriving here, to have my attention drawn the children’s games. But I enjoyed the puzzle nonetheless; chuffed to have spotted the “passes for fish” as salmon ladders, and to have biffed ROENTGEN pretty swiftly. My finish was horribly delayed by 22d and S _ A _ E _ : these checkers allow for a lot of words and racers as a species of snake was well beyond my GK, so I was wretchedly trawling the alphabet. Spotting the theme might have helped.
    Thanks to Brummie and PeterO both.

  45. If you saw the relevant episode of Planet Earth II, racer snakes will be indelibly imprinted on your memory. If not, you won’t understand 22d.

  46. Doug431@8: Nice try, but I don’t think you “catch” sciatica any more than you “catch” a fracture… or can someone prove me wrong?

  47. spondylolisthesis @46: Definitely not and some people are more susceptible to it that others where the sciatic nerve runs through rather than around the piriformis muscle (guilty as charged, m’lud).

  48. [PostMark: Going back to your interesting query @24 about one word/two plural forms, I found this which gives quite a few examples, including brothers/brethren, cherubs/cherubim, pennies/pence, indexes/indices (as per yesterday) and staffs/staves.

    Most of us say one fish/two fish, but ‘The plural fishes for fish has a kind of Biblical ring to it, as in the miracle of the loaves and fishes’.

    Meanwhile for those with more profane tastes, ‘Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes’. Sleeping with the fish just doesn’t carry the same menace.

    And then there is the whole do-I-use-the-Latin-plural conundrum (which no doubt divides into many sub-conundra). There’s no difference in meaning between referendums and referenda, but which one is used may possibly tell you something about the speaker. 😉 ]

  50. spondylolisthesis@46 and MaidenBartok@47: SCIATICA ought to have been in my list of medical terms, and I ought to have been clearer!

  51. Doug431, spondylolisthesis and MaidenBartok @50, 46 and 47: but if the nerve catches on something (eg a bony spur) you might have sciatica.

    Spotted the theme which helped with a few. Favs NOUGHTS and DISCERNING. TILT STEAM RADIO and racer is a kind of snake.
    Thanks to Brummie and PeterO

  52. The bottom half was a bit of a challenge today but worth it in the end to find that a Black-eyed Susan is a Thunbergia!!
    Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

  53. Re comments on indexes/indices yesterday and today, in our household the plural of Kleenex was always Kleenices.

  54. [muffin @49: you’ve got me questioning my own usage now! There are certainly plenty more fish in the sea (at least we hope there are), but what would I say if there were just two of them? Hmm. I think I’d still say fish, but I’m wary of what Eric Partridge (‘Usage and Abusage’) called the snob plural, eg “He shot six brace of pheasant”, “Carruthers bagged a dozen tiger last year.”]

  55. [essexboy@54
    “Two fish” certainly isn’t wrong, but I would prefer “two fishes”. It doesn’t work with “sheep”, though! (Two sheepses?)]

  59. Missed the theme, thought it was SCIATICA et al, and I’d entered ‘freakino’ at 1d just as PeterO had wanted to. So a DNF on the then-impossible 15a.

  60. I’m unhappy with THUNBERGIA. I now know (thanks to google) that it’s the “Black-eyed Susan vine,” which has a yellow and black flower that doesn’t look at all, except for its colors, like an actual black-eyed Susan, the Rudbeckia, which looks, except for its colors, like a daisy. Thunbergia is just not a black-eyed Susan, it’s a “black-eyed Susan vine.” Okay, rant over. The real thing is a North American flower, so transatlantics may not know it.

    Dr W, did you find words in various puzzles that happen also to be names of bands? Or bands clued as such? Surely there aren’t nine of those in most puzzles.

    MaidenBartok — what a shame you had to miss your whole week of enjoying my former home town of San Francisco! There’s plenty to enjoy. I hope you had another visit later.

    Thanks for the puzzle, Brummie, I enjoyed it. And thanks for straightening the baffling bits, Peter.

  61. essexboy @48: thanks for digging out the link. Interesting and, of course, you highlighted several words of which I should have thought. Of the examples you give, however, I think only brothers/brethren resembles the mediums/media situation that prompted me in the first place. I would use brothers for relations and brethren for those in a religious order. One commenter on the site you link identifies another: she pluralises more than one insect appendage as antennae whereas more than one radio or TV receptors are antennas. (Maybe staff/staffs/staves too: the latter should be the plural of wooden sticks, the middle the plural of groups of employees)

  64. muffin and essexboy I was thinking that fish were analogous to fruit which can be uncountable – lots of fruit – or countable “There were only two fruits on my fig tree this year” or others where the plural means types of the uncountable thing like bread and breads, but there seem to be counter-examples.

  65. Re: speedup, me@4, MB@28 et al. I use an Android tablet, for which the screen real-estate is fine (could be better, but quite acceptable); I have not tried on a phone and don’t relish the thought. I only noticed the speedup this week – it could indeed have happened a few weeks ago, but when you have trained yourself to enter answers slowly, you might never notice when it becomes unnecessary.

  66. Valentine@60. I (me@3) asked whether an answer term was also a band name, subject to stopword removal, disregarding singular/plural differences, and allowing a match to a part of a compound word (so for example an answer “Beatlemania” would match “The Beatles”). I did not bother to inflect verbs, so an answer “moving” would not match “The Move”. Maybe some minor undercounting because of this.

    Ultimately, this is not about puzzles at all. As a control, I should test a few paragraphs selected daily from the rest of the Guardian, but I’m not writing a paper on this, so probably won’t.

  67. Thanks to Gladys @30 for a soupcon of pity: “…if you didn’t know PRIE-DIEU you hadn’t a hope”. I bunged in FREE WILL at 8a, and thus was also stuck on 4d, so it was only when I saw the first line of PeterO’s blog that I was able to solve MUSICAL.

    I got THUNBERGIA quite early – it’s not something I knew, but the wordplay made it obvious to me and I didn’t even bother checking it. Having an ADDER in the middle of LADDERS was cute, and should have made SNAKES easy, but my theme-blindness made it among my last in. Likewise CROSSES: it was so hard to see the synonym (a penny drop moment when I did!) but would have been obvious if only there had been a theme. Oh. There was a theme? OK, I did see it, but not until I had finished the grid…

    Much sympathy for PeterO that FREAKINO was not correct (I was looking at a reverse of ON too) but great hilarity nonetheless, and worth the entry fee for that moment alone.

  69. Dr. WhatsOn@66 Now some clever setter is going to devise a puzzle whose theme is “no band names”, and stump us all.

  70. When I read 8a, I immediately thought “hassock”, but not two words, and not long enough.

    Valentine @60
    My first thought for Black-eyed Susan was Rudbekia too, but when it didn’t fit, I asked Mrs. muffin what a Black-eyed Susan was, and she straight away said Thunbergia.

  71. [Dr. WhatsOn @66: To be honest, any speed-up is more likely to be due to an Android update than the app itself – I’m pretty sure that the app is written in Java and minor changes typically do not have a major impact. I’ve not see the Android app recently but the web version is completely stand-alone (all the data is in the app if you know where to look including the answers 😉 ) so it isn’t a case of slow network speed… My money says that your tablet has been updated recently but I could be (and very often am) wrong.]

  72. Surely someone should have checked with me beforehand whether I’d ever heard of a prie-dieu and then at least have offered me some wordplay to give me a sporting chance. Never any harm in a quick phone call.

  73. I read that the plural of FISH is FISH, unless you are talking about different species of FISHES.

    I’d never heard of a Kiddlywink pub. It rather makes me wonder what drinks are served to the children at all the Kiddlywink nurseries and pre-schools I found on google ; )

  74. Re bands: today we have SNAKES, NOUGHTS, CROSSES, NOUGHTS AND CROSSES, CATCH, the WINKS, the LADDER, the CHAIRS, MOHAWK and some unknown bunch called the STONES. And I haven’t googled all of them yet.

  76. [Katherine @73
    “Different species of fish” sounds more natural than “different species of fishes”, as does “different species of mammal” rather than “different species of mammals” (though neither is wrong, as such).]

  77. Dr. Whatson@3 and Gladys@74: I take your point about finding bands falling out of the woodwork everywhere. I really wish I hadn’t bothered with Carpathian’s puzzle last Monday. Thanks and lesson learnt.

  78. AlanC @77 , I appreciated your contribution for that puzzle because I nearly always miss the theme doing a crossword.

  79. Thanks Roz, for the first time, as you kindly said, I was No 1. However, there’s always someone a little bit cleverer out there, but in the end it’s all good fun….

  80. AlanC – speaking as someone who has often seen themes which aren’t there, I sympathise – but on that occasion I think it was there, and your discoveries (even the ‘non-canonical’ ones) added to the entertainment.

  81. I never get the chance of number 1 because I have to wait for the newspaper. Sometimes for the Azed but that is a week late.

  82. I’m now wondering whether SCIATICA is in fact a plurality of SCIATICUMs, and if there is an undiscovered THUNBERGIUM in the periodic table.

  83. [mb@71 you may well be right, and we may never know for sure, but for now I’m sticking with the app update rather than tablet subsystem, because (1) the tablet itself has not updated recently, (2) the earlier lack of responsiveness would not have been tolerated in any paid-for apps, and (3) there clearly was a recent app update that handles jumbos now. #3 is just too much of a coincidence, methinks.]

  84. PostMark@32
    You reminded me of a remote alehouse (no spirit licence, though it is haunted) frequented by my wife in her youth. When the licence was up for renewal the Justices asked what facilities were available for ladies and the landlord replied, “I’ve got an acre and a half”. Mostly covered in nettles, according to my wife.

  85. grantinfreo @1, in addition to My Word, there was also Neddy Seegoon’s “highly steamed Goon Show”.

  86. PostMark@32, blaise@35 – in case you’re still around. I’ve just been reading Jonathan Smith’s excellent novel, ‘Summer in February’, about the doings of the artistic community (Munnings, Laura Knight, etc) in the early part of the last century. The WINK at Lamorna features considerably. There’s also been a film.
    It remains a good place for a drink for coastal path walkers.

  87. muffin@76
    Sorry, I didn’t phrase myself clearly @73
    You’d use ‘fish’ if you saw 100 haddock, say.
    According to grammarist.com:
    The plural of fish is usually fish, but fishes has a few uses. In biology, for instance, fishes is used to refer to multiple species of fish. For example, if you say you saw four fish when scuba diving, that means you saw four individual fish, but if you say you saw four fishes, we might infer that you saw an undetermined number of fish of four different species.

    So if you saw 99 haddock and one clown fish, you could say ‘I saw two fish’.
    Not sure which form you use if, like me, you can’t tell fish apart!
    ‘Though I could probably identify a grouping of 99 haddock and 1 shark: ‘I saw some fishes. Then there was one fish.’

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