Guardian 28,426 / Picaroon

124 comments on “Guardian 28,426 / Picaroon”

1. The theme came early with PUTSCH and GERMANISING so this definitely helped towards the end. ANTIFA made me smile as I thought of Norma Major, whether this was intentional or not. I loved ROTTWEILER, FRAULEIN and AUTOBAHN and ECHT was new. Top fare throughout.

   Ta Picaroon & Eileen

2. Anyone else write EN POINTE straight into 1D only for it to come back to haunt them later? (I realise now that it doesn’t fit the wordplay, but it looked so tempting.)

3. Began very slowly, but when I spotted the acrosses were, apart from 13, German words I mede much better progress. Having German as a second language was helpful.
   Congratulations to Picaroon and thanks to Eileen.

4. Saw the theme quite early on but that really didn’t help too much as that was hard going. Only excuse was that I was in a bit of a rush as after 5 months at home, Junior Bartok is returning to uni today and I have a car to pack with loads of . At last – some normality returns…

   However, 16d has to be my favourite although 10a comes in a close second.

   I did have to resort to check a lot more than other puzzles of-late but it is a lovely puzzle.

   Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

5. I found it very hard to get started on this, but once I got going it was quite enjoyable.
   Failed ANTIFA.

   Favourites: ECHT, FRAULEIN, PUTSCH.

   New: JUNKER.

   Guessed but did not parse STRAFE (loi).

6. “made” not “mede”
   Yes, DavidS@2, I slotted EN POINTE in first time round.

7. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
   Goodness, that was hard, and, to be honest, not a lot of fun. At least the obvious theme helped with 2 of my last 3 – STALAG and (favourite) FRAULEIN. (Is it some sort of German day? I notice that BBC4 tonight has Nazi-related programmes on from 9 o’clock up to the early hours.)
   LOI was TRUMAN, where I thought the defintion of just top Democrat” was rather loose for one who has been dead for nearly 50 years, and was last in office nearly 70 years ago.
   MAECENAS was a Google.
   Isn’t ETHNIC an adjective rather than a noun?

8. DavidS @2
   I thought of EN POINTE too but the anagram fodder was not right for it.

9. I didn’t even put the correct EN POINTE – my FOI was ON POINT, then I realised I had to put another letter at the end.

10. DavidS @2: Yes! And that slowed me down for a very, very long time….

11. muffin @7 – thanks, I realise I should have underlined ‘of’: I’ll do it now.

12. muffin @7
    I think the definition part is actually “of people in a group.”

13. Muffin@7 – ethnic is often wrongly used as an adjective, as in “ethnic minority.” We are all ethnic; that is, have ethnicity. The correct usage would be “minority ethnic group (etc)” where minority is the adjective.

14. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

    My first attempted entry, like DavidS @2 was EN POINTE for 1dn until I saw the error of my ways. Thence AUTOBAHN, FEST and FAHRENHEIT and the theme became obvious, even to me – and, for once, it was extremely helpful in completing the puzzle. Oddly, my LOI was GERMANISING.

    Good fun.

15. I’m always amazed how long it takes me to see a theme. I got ECHT and was “oh yeah, it’s from German I think”, while also blithely entering FAHRENHEIT, ROTTWEILER, KAISER, and PUTSCH, but it was only when I saw GERMANISING that I thought “hang on eine Minute.”

16. I’m going to boast here.

    Not only did I spot the theme but I spotted it in time so it could help me. That’s a first!

    What a wonderful crossword. So many favourites: ROTTWEILER and PUTSCH. Thank you Picaroon: it was challenging and rewarding.

    And thank you Eileen for reminding me who MAECENAS was. That was something I knew a long long time ago. Given his influence he should be better remembered.

17. Hard work, not helped by taking a while to spot the theme. I didn’t know ‘Berliner’ as a newspaper format, JUNKER or MAECENAS, the last of which had to go in just hoping the unches were in the right order. Another who felt very pleased to get ‘en pointe’ so quickly until…

    SHEESH was my favourite, a new one for me in crossword-land.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen

18. I did briefly consider EN POINTE, but the mistake I actually made was to have FETE instead of FEST (getting the TE from “tone”, a note). But by the time I had entered AUTOBAHN, FAHRENHEIT, ECHT and PUTSCH I knew there was a German theme – which ruled out FETE and made FRAULEIN and the rest a lot easier as I knew what I was looking for.

    Didn’t know ANTIFA was specifically German, didn’t spot junk=horse (I had a sheltered upbringing) and didn’t know MAECENAS at all: obviously (A MENACE)* + S, but even with all the crossers I had to guess and check, and then Google.

    I also thought TRUMAN was a bit dated, but this was a very enjoyable solve, and I did like the surfaces. Favourites ON TIPTOE and BEHALF.

19. Ich auch, moi aussi. Was trying to shoehorn en pointe on my tippy toes. I also was puzzled about the unindicated German words, 21a being first one in. and thought I had it made when I got 13a in prime position across the middle of the grid. But no, that was only half the story.

20. Just had time to read your link on GERMANISING, Eileen and thanks for that. What a fabulous clue.

21. GERMANISING reminded me of this.

22. I’m tempted to start with “Mein Gott!” That was hard. Not quite as bad as the one German crossword I attempted but, even with words, many of which have become either adopted into English or which are in common use, it’s challenging to be applying the crossword solving code to foreign constructions. Raises – again – my estimation of our contributors for whom English is not a first tongue.

    Like muffin @9, I’m another double sinner with ON POINTE seeming an obvious solution to 1d. And I also followed his lead with Googling MAECENAS but I had worked out what I was meant to be doing!

    Moving to the positive, like yesyes @16, I was delighted to spot a theme and early enough to help with solutions like STRAFE, STALAG and ROTTWEILER. Gervase @14: I shared your odd experience of GERMANISING being LOI which seemed ironic but at least made sense. AUTOBAHN and FRAULEIN are both superb.

    Finally, no-one’s used the &lit description for STUTTERS. It looks like one to me – and, if it’s not, is ‘primarily’ doing double duty indicting both the initial letters and instructing us to put them first?

    Thanks Picaroon & Eileen

23. Wonders will never cease… saw a theme in time to be of some help!

    Often wondered why Herr Fahrenheit came up with such odd numbers as 32 & 212 and this puzzle prompted a quick Google to discover that he started his scale (0degF) not with water ice but with a salt solution of ammonium chloride. This meant that water ice froze at the higher temperature of 32 degrees.

    …I’ll get my coat…

24. PostMark @22 – having been corrected several times, these days I generally leave it to others to describe clues as &lit.

25. [PostMark @22: As I like to provide an appropriate musical accompaniment to everything I do, please find below an incredibly annoying but appropriate ear-worm:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg

    ]

26. Had to look up both ANTIFA and MAECENAS. The latter is presumably the origin of mécénat, the French term for patronage or sponsorship.

27. PostMark @22: I agree that STUTTERS has to be read as an &lit – and a rather good one, I think.

    My excuse for being slow to solve 13ac is that I was looking for something actually Teutonic, but I should have realised that a skilled setter like Picaroon would put the key word for his puzzle centre stage.

28. I thought ‘Well no doubt Bismarck & co looked good on a horse, but… was gibt?” Oh, that junk, of course… getting old! Ages since the last sighting of an echt, neat word. And yes another who blithely bunged in en pointe at first glance. Code for ethic was nicely oblique, had zero idea about the in-house Berliner reference, or about Virgil and Horace’s benefactor (try a letter and check). So, quite a chewy little Teutonic brew, thanks both. Any better for you, Roz?

    [As for racing on the autobahn, I remember hitchhiking, late ’60s, and being stunned by the speeds. Sitting in a Merc, watching the needle climb, 180, 200, 220, 240 and going ‘…er…times about 0.6, sh one t, that’s about 150mph, twice what is ‘fast’ back home. Hey ho]

29. A German test without having to know German (although to be honest O-level probably helped with ECHT).
    It’s been a while since I’ve been on an AUTOBAHN, but my memory is of bumper-to-bumper traffic at 80 mph, so the definition is quite appropriate.
    As for PUTSCH, calling C and H extremes gave me pause. On a scale from absolute zero to stellar plasma, what we call everyday hot and cold are not extreme, in fact they are almost the same. But I get it anyway.
    SHEESH was the standout.

30. [MB @25: Kraftwerk have a lot to answer for! My second blind assumption of the day is that you’d be posting a link to their famous piece (and here it is: I’ve tagged a live version as watching them perform is such an energising experience!). A much more pleasing earworm than your kind recommendation!]

31. Togs @26: yes indeed, and also the German Mäzen, which is their normal word for patron, in the sense of financial backer. Having come across Mäzen did actually help me with the spelling of MAECENAS – if you know that ä can be written ae, and z is often equivalent to c (centre = Zentrum), it gets you most of the way there.

    As you’ll have gathered, this was very much up my Strasse! And 4d rocked my CASBAH.

    Many thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

    [A footnote for those who may not have seen this morning’s additions to yesterday’s Philistine blog – from a friend of our fellow-contributor Rishi, who sadly passed away recently.]

32. An excellent puzzle. The theme certainly helped (for example “emperor” at 23a immediately brought to mind KAISER). I particularly liked 18a ROTTWEILER for the great surface.

    Eileen, your link at 9a takes us to something about the American ANTIFA. Given the theme, perhaps Picaroon had the German one in mind? (Although it seems the US movement is named after the German one.)

    Many thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

33. I too saw the theme quite early for a change with PUTSCH and ECHT and STRAFE, but for all its ingenuity I didn’t get a great deal of pleasure out of this. Several unknowns such as ANTIFA and JUNKER and MAECENAS perhaps the reason. I took French at O Level rather than German, perhaps another disincentive. Some very clever clues here, nevertheless, particularly BEHALF…

34. lord Jim @32 – sorry, i didn’t scroll down far enough to find this . Most of the Google entries were about the American one.

35. Sorry again – the link didn’t work

36. I don’t think I have ever come across ECHT as a borrowed word into English, although it clearly does function as such, maybe more in American English from what I have been able quickly to gather. However, without ‘having’ German (unless Anglo-Saxon counts), I knew it as a German word from this passage in the first section of TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’:

    … we stopped in the colonnade,
    And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
    And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
    ‘Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.’

37. This was a bit schwer for me but I did spot the theme fairly early on, which was a help. I had to come here to find Eileen’s revelation of GERMANISING, doh! I thought the Eager might have had something to do with Chuck Eager, except it’s Chuck Yeager, double doh!

    Yes, another one looking at en pointe at the beginning. I also tried ‘relate’ for 2D, but was disabused by FAHRENHEIT.

    This was a very good puzzle. I particularly liked the FRAULEIN next to the KIS(s)ER, and there were many other good ‘uns. I would normally think of ‘junk’ as any [illegal] narcotic, but I see Chambers gives: A narcotic, esp heroin (slang).

    Thanks to Picaroon for the entertainment and to Eileen for the unravelling.

38. Spooner’s catflap @36 – I never learned German (I’ve sung Brahms’ German Requiem quite a few times, in both German and English, so I know a bit from that) but I’ve met ECHT several times in crosswords.

39. … interesting blue tinge to the end of my comment – unintended! I put an A inside chevrons at the beginning of KISSER, so that must have meant something to the webpage.

40. According to Wikipedia,

    “Maecenas is most famous for his support of young poets, hence his name has become the eponym for a “patron of arts”.  So it does exist as a noun as well as a name in English, though clearly not a very well known one.

41. Who is Does? It’s me, Robi; what’s going on?

42. Lovely crossword, some excellent clues and good fun all round. Of course I can’t omit my quibble that those unfamiliar with Maecenas (e.g. me) have a lot of options to fill the spaces despite catching on to the setter’s ploy. As I said yesterday, I do hate a Google!

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

43. Hi gladys @40 – I didn’t think to look up Maecenas when writing the blog but i see now that Chambers has ‘a rich patron of art or literature. (After a Roman knight who befriended Virgil and Horace)’

    Robi @41 ?

44. … apologies again; I saw Does instead of Robi @39 but it seems to be OK now; addled brain!

45. [Robi @44 No, don’t blame your brain. Yesterday a comment by Roz in General Discussion was temporarily retagged to ‘Pink’, which was then corrected back to ‘Roz’. Something is going awry – maybe Gaufrid has tabs on what and why?]

46. [Thanks Scf @45; I thought I was seeing things!]

47. Muffin@7
    22 April 1945 was when Adolf Hitler first admitted the war was lost.
    In his bunker in Berlin

48. 5A couldn’t be anything other than JUNKER, but ‘junk’ as heroin is not a term I’ve ever come across. MAECENAS was completely unknown to me – no classical education – and my random insertion of the unchecked letters from the obvious anagrist only stood a 1 in 24 chance of being right. (See? I was always OK at maths.) So a DNF for me, but an entertaining half hour. Thanks to setter and blogger.

49. Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

    Since I do these online I got an immediate DNF when I confidently revealed “en pointe” (or whatever) to get my comeuppance at the first hurdle (reminds me of when I came last in that yodelling competition).

    Thereafter a desultory tour and surprised myself by getting to within 3 of the finishing post mainly thanks to the dink JUNKER in combination with ANTIFA, but I should have got JINXED. Much to enjoy for all that with COBRAS getting the gong because it took far too long.

50. Today I learned the etymology of STRAFE, which I hadn’t known before. That’s embarrassing to admit, since German was the principal foreign language I studied in school. For once, that helped in a British crossword–y’all seem to study French so universally that knowledge of French is simply assumed.

    I also didn’t know MAECENAS, but I have nothing to add about that one.

    I agree that “top Democrat” is an odd definition for TRUMAN, but it’s not *that* odd. It’s accurate and fair. Why must it always be “president”? And the clue as written is trickier. It might not cause you to think of, say, Nancy Pelosi (a top Democrat who isn’t President), but it might get you to think D (the “top” of “Democrat,” or maybe just “Democrat,” with “top” doing something else.)

51. mrpenney @50: you and me both. I had no idea the word came from German or, specifically, the context of punishment. Like you, German was my foreign language at school. I’m now only capable of uttering one sentence that I know to be grammatically sound and correctly pronounced and that’s “I haven’t spoken much German since school 40 years ago”. I do my best to leave it there 😉

    A brief contribution to the top Democrat discussion: was anyone else relieved to find it was a six letter word so it couldn’t be BIDEN? Mind you, when it started TRUM.. I had a horrible feeling of deja vu.

52. BigNorm @48: I like your 4 factorial (!). In practice however it would be very unusual to see an A between two Es, between an E and another A, or after an A at the end of a word. So the A pretty much has to go in top spot, which shortens the odds to 1 in 6. Still a bit of a stretch though, I agree.

    [PM @51: ‘Mein Freund hier wird bezahlen‘ can come in handy. 😉 ]

53. [eb @52: I’ve learned to do that one in sign! I can use it in any language or country in the world and probably on Mars once Mr Musk’s suitably terraformed it]

54. Thanks Picaroo and Eileen

    essexboy @ 52: Chambers lists 107 words with *AEA*, though admittedly some are variations from the same root. Still a surprising number, though.

    bigNorm @ 48: presumably you’ve come acoss the word ‘junkie’ for a heroin addict?

55. LOI was 17 down and I didn’t like it, but the rest was superb , thanks Picaroon, and thank you Eileen for the ones I couldn’t parse despite managing to guess them. I only realised that there was a theme after looking at the second comment on the Guardian, after that it all got a lot easier. I too had en pointe, but realised the error fairly quickly.
    And l have no idea when a clue is ‘&lit’. Can someone explain?

56. mrpenney @50 and PostMark @51: I knew the origin of STRAFE from the phrase “Gott strafe England”, which I thought was something the KAISER had said, but it seems was a general German slogan during the First World War (see here). [Perhaps surprisingly the Kaiser did apparently originate the use of “Hun” to apply to Germans. You might have thought it was a term of abuse dreamed up by Germany’s enemies, but in a speech to German troops departing to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 he exhorted them to behave like the Huns. It seems a bit strange that he chose the Huns, who were an Asiatic people, rather than say the Goths or Vandals who were Germans.]

57. Sorry, my link doesn’t seem to work. It was supposed to be the Wikipedia page for “Gott strafe England”.

58. Lord Jim
    I’ve edited your link and it is now functional.

59. [Lord Jim @56: thanks for prompting me to explore the Kaiser/Hun speech which has a section all to itself in his Wikipedia entry. It appears the paragraph referring to the Huns was edited out of the written report of his speech as possibly undiplomatic (!) but it might answer your query regarding why he chose them. It would appear to be admiration for an all conquering and merciless force – that would resonate with the target and region as well. For any interested in the Hun derivation, it ran:

    Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German

    I did find that final phrase vaguely reminiscent of somebody…]

60. So very sorry to hear that Rishi has died. He came across as such an intelligent and interesting man.
    Once Mr SR and I have finished the crossword, our routine is for me to then read out the comments from 15×15 to him.
    Occasionally, I will paraphrase or even skip some eg if a point is being reiterated*, but I don’t think I ever did that with Rishi’s comments. He had a lovely style of writing and was someone whose engaging personality came across in his words.
    We will miss him – RIP, Rishi.

    Thoroughly enjoyed the crossword; many thanks, Picaroon and Eileen.

    *To whom it may concern:
    I never skip your special comments though, dear reader?

61. I found this much the hardest Picaroon for some time, though not without its pleasures. FEST was first in, and I thought that a bit odd; ECHT came next, and I was in full ‘aha!’ mode – without the theme, I might still have been floundering on JUNKER, ROTTWEILER and maybe some others.

    I needed one cheat, and it happened to be on a down clue. Like others, getting the anagram fodder for MAECENAS was no problem, but getting a sensible word was another matter, especially when I had exhausted all the variants ending in MAN. So off to the anagram solver I went. Sorry.

62. Bother.

    The ? was supposed to be a 😉

    (PS Hope it wasn’t inappropriate to comment about Rishi today; we didn’t get around to the crossword yesterday, so only found out the sad news when reading today’s 15×15)

63. [SR @62: the blog in which we learned of Rishi’s passing (I suspect he might have enjoyed the homophone for that!) was this one. Simon S’s comment @ 87. Penfold @96 spotted and linked to a profile of him. Both you and Mr RS might find it interesting.]

64. [PM @63: Many thanks; much appreciated. We certainly will be taking a look at that.]

65. Good fun and resurrected a bit of my college German, though most of the words are known in English too. Good job, Picaroon, and thanks for guiding the tour, Eileen. For once I saw the theme, very rare for me, but for the first time ever it actually helped with some entries! (I see I’m not the only one to say that.)

    Similar experience to yours, Eileen, but with ECHT. I had seen the word used in English sentences, but … KAISER, STALAG and PUTSCH went in as words commonly used in English, I think it was FRAULEIN that tipped me over. I would have put in JUNKER much sooner if I’d thought of the heroin connection, but to me a junker is a worthless car, which seemed a mean thing to say about a horse.

    News to me that a casbah is a fort — I thought it was the market part of a city. I looked it up and found it was called “the native part of a North African city.” Wot? The Empire speaks … Anybody else try to squeeze in EL AL for the flying company?

    Never heard of MAECENAS.

    How cool to clue SHEESH, which I never thought of as a vocabulary entry.

    DavidS@2 I tried to enter ON POINTE, but the E bothered me.

    FEST went in early (Fe + St) but in pale lettering because it didn’t look like a word..Even with the theme — FEST is a component of “Oktoberfest” and perhaps other words, but is it a word on its own?

    Inspired by mrpenney, I looked up the derivation of “strafe,” turns out it’s German for “punish,” apparently given its aircraft meaning by British soldiers. I also found this: “The raptors will sometimes strafe ducks on the water, then focus on any that didn’t fly off, and that duck usually becomes the eagle’s next meal.” Never thought about anybody strafing ducks!

    Thanks again, Picaroon and Eileen.

66. [Valentine @65: Never thought about anybody strafing ducks! Then you might enjoy this!!!]

67. Hi Valentine @65 – the Chambers entry for FEST: ‘n. (usu in combination) a party or gathering or (in writing) a collection, esp for a particular activity, as in songfest ; a concentrated period of indulgence in a particular activity, as in sleaze-fest . (Ger Fest festival)’
    I’ve certainly seen it tacked on to a variety of words.

68. PS – thanks for the smile, PM. 😉

69. I, USAnian, have been doing British crosswords long enough that I immediately think LIE when I see “pork pie”, but I can still be thrown by something like “stone” = ST (it’s all pounds and ounces here, when it isn’t kilos).

    First-rate puzzle nevertheless. I did not get the Berliner reference until Eileen explained. Thanks to her and Picaroon.

70. Now I knew Maecenas , and managed most of them with a bit of checking but I ended up feeling I could be a****d
    Personal taste but I do hate clues of exclamations (17 d )
    Not as annoying as the one in the quick crossword which to my mind failed since two valid spellings fitted the grid aargh arrgh .

71. * couldn’t be a****d

72. Thanks Eileen, JUNKER was a guess based on the aircraft firm being named after some sort of aristo, should have remembered my Deighton! And you can include me with those who nearly fell at the first ballet step, had to google the Roman (thanks for extra info essexboy and togs) and quibbled unqualified Truman and Hot/Cold as extremes.
    Very slow start but Autobahn and Fraulein came early and then twigged what was going on, without which I probably would have given up. Congratulations to anyone without a reasonable German vocab who persevered with this as I thought the parsing was often very hard even if the definitions were write-ins. Which explains why GERMANISING was my last one in, hiding in plain sight (must remember presses as indicator)! (PS well spotted CliveinFrance@47 and now we have two date-significant puzzles in a row. I will look out for St George tomorrow!)
    Favourite, just beating KAISER, was FAHRENHEIT which led me on all sorts of wild goose chases, thanks Picaroon.

73. A mixed bag for me — greatly amused by AUTOBAHN, whose surface as a whole could describe that roadway, STALAG, ON TIPTOE (another great surface), COBRAS, and SHEESH but totally baffled by JUNKER, PUTSCH, and MAECENAS. Thanks Eileen, I couldn’t parse TRUMAN or KAISER even after seeing the answers. Thanks Picaroon.

74. Thanks for the blog. At last a cryptic crossword worthy of the name, more of the same please every day.
    The Berliner was a brilliant format for the Guardian, it was a shame it had to go.

75. Roz @ 74 The Berliner may have been a brilliant format, but it was a major contributor to the G’s financial troubles: as no one else used the format they couldn’t share the presses, so had to bear all the costs themselves.

76. Answers to 5a and 6a are linked. The JUNKER J1 aircraft was the first aircraft developed to specifically STRAFE the enemy troops on the ground with its guns fixed under the wings pointing downwards. This was in 1915, previous aircraft were for air reconnaissance, air combat or dropping grenades. Just a co-incidence.

77. [ SimonS @ 75, yes I know and it was either replace the presses or share with the Mirror, at least the paper keeps going.]

78. Gazzh @72 – or it could be Shakespeare tomorrow. Just saying.

79. [Thank you, Simon S @75. I remember well the Berliner format being introduced, with accompanying fanfares, but I subsequently lost contact with the G’s print edition while living abroad for several years, returning to the UK only in 2018. Therefore, I did not know why it had been abandoned and was intrigued by Roz’s comment.]

80. That’s the first time my attempts to learn Polish have helped with a crossword.( MAECENAS appears quite often in the Polish press.) I am relieved it met the Roz standard as I found this challenging.

81. Thanks, Eileen and PM (now I may have to play some more of those funny videos!)

    Two shocks in one morning — the Guardian changed format to this Berliner thing, and not that it’s changed to something else! To a tabloid — like The Times? (A third shock.) Good thing our Times hasn’t done the same — New York, Los Angeles or any other that I know of.

82. It nearly reached my hard crossword threshold.

83. CliveinFrance@76 – another fine observation, thank you. Eileen@78 good point as that’s a more likely Guardian topic, i reckon.

84. [Roz @82 Well, you know, ‘hardness’ is a matter of the unwritten and unfathomable contract between setter and solver. A setter may consciously aim for a degree of difficulty, but, as we know from these forums, some solvers, by virtue of having a distinct register of GK or by virtue of a kind of intuitive mental assimilation with the methods of certain setters, find it relatively easy to cut through any planned level of difficulty. For me, regarding this crossword, once the pfennig dropped, which it did early on with the easy (as I thought) ECHT, KAISER and PUTSCH in the SE corner, despite not-even-rudimentary German, I found it no more difficult than yesterday’s, which so dismayed you by its ‘easiness’. I write this not to irk those who found it difficult (I hate those ‘a quick solve’ commenters and I frequently struggle where others have not), but merely to suggest that there is not a FAHRENHEIT scale of difficulty.]

85. { I have done the crossword every single day since 1995 and I judge the difficulty purely on the time it takes me. ]

86. Difficulty is a very personal thing. Apart from MAECENAS, I didn’t find this particularly tough. I did learn German at school, but all the words, with the possible exception of ECHT, are also in circulation in the English speaking world. The one I really struggled with this week was Nutmeg: I made such a complete mess of that that I didn’t even come here, and I used to fail regularly with the supposedly “easy” Chifonie.

87. Thanks both,
    Defeated in the end by not seeing my mistake in ‘en pointe’. OED’s first meaning for ‘ethnic’ as a noun is ‘A person who is not Christian or Jewish; a heathen, a pagan. Now archaic.’ But then goes on with meanings that refer the noun or the adjective to any, for want of a better word, ethnic group.

88. [I never did any German, but I didn’t have any problems with the German vocabulary here – I was even familiar with JUNKER as a nobleman! That wasn’t what made it hard for me…

    I find it disturbing being in a country where I don’t know the language, though. We have stayed a couple of times with a friend in Koln (an English-as-foreign-language teacher). On trips out, whenever we crossed the border into France, it was such a relief to be able to know what the road signs meant!]

89. Tyngewick @87
    Are you saying that you could (archaically, perhaps!) refer to a person as “an ethnic”?

90. [gladys @86: I knew the word ECHT because there’s an excellent Belgian beer named Echt Kriekenbier. I liked it so much that I made a point to remember it. One never knows when knowledge will come in handy.]

91. PM@66 “strafing ducks” Thought you must be referring to Steve Bell’s cartoon

    “in lingerie business, at first” I thought this was B in CORAS, but had no idea what coras had to do with lingerie – doh! Nothing like overlooking the obvious

    Thanks Eileen and Picaroon

92. [Dave Ellison @91: nice. True story: a friend earned himself a cartoon in Horse and Hound. A decent cricketer, he was on a rough shoot and hit a pheasant which plummeted directly towards him. Rather like Gerard Hoffnung’s bricklayer, it was at this point he lost his composure and presence of mind and, instead of stepping aside, for some reason he attempted to catch it. And broke both three fingers! The pheasant’s revenge!]

93. [ I forgot to say, AlanC straight in at number one again, must be third week in a row.
    Cum on feel the Noize. Not sure if I have misspelt that correctly ]

94. Well, I’ve just given up with three clues not done. I found this very, very hard – much the hardest for me for several weeks. My German is pretty good- but I don’t think that mattered all that much with this one. All of the German words are familiar to English speakers. My point really is that I feel that the level of difficulty (or not) is very subjective.

95. Well, I’d never heard of either MAECENAS or the French for sponsor: mécénat (thanks Togs @26) or German Mäzen (thanks essexboy @31); I suppose it’s too late to blame my French and German teachers at school, and we didn’t do Classics.

    Otherwise I did find this difficult, but partly because I was unable to fully concentrate on it until I went out to sit in a pub garden (or two) this afternoon. Spotted the theme (!) which helped me to see STALAG – I’d never have got gala as a party otherwise. I usually get on quite well with Picaroon, but this was (for the most part) seriously misleading – I did flirt with EN POINTE, but realised it wouldn’t do; but so many clues could mean almost anything, with potential definitions at both the start and the end, potential anagram fodder almost everywhere, and words like ‘present’ in 5d that could mean here, now, give, gift etc etc – I didn’t get IN until I’d got the rest; and I didn’t get the (in retrospect funny) ‘half-heartedly mouth’ until I’d already written in KAISER. Favourites included the brilliant ‘Berliner version’ at 13a and and the superb &lit STUTTERS.

    Thanks Picaroon for the challenge and the many PDMs, and to Eileen, both for the blog and for engaging btl.

96. [me @88
    On reflection, Belgium rather than France. Same language in that part, though.]

97. [muffin @88. I had exactly the same experience when driving over the Pyrenees from Spain with my teenage daughters in 2003. One of them was doing Spanish at school but was too shy to speak it and the only Spanish I knew was from watching The Magnificent Seven. Reaching France felt like coming home.]

98. I got to this very late as I was travelling today. Like others, biffed in EN POINTE and eventually saw the error of my ways. Lots to enjoy as always with Picaroon; my favourites were ROTTWEILER, FRAULEIN and BEHALF. The theme was unmissable (for once). Many thanks to P and to Eileen.

99. [Totally off topic
    I’ve just spent a fascinating hour at a Guardian Event with Maggie O’Farrell discussing ‘Hamnet’, one of the best books I’ve read in I can’t remember when. (The lack of a comma before ‘discussing’ makes it obvious that I was merely listening!)]
    Just dropped in to see whether there was anything that needed comeback from me.
    PostMark @92 – perhaps you might have provided the link
    sheffield hatter @95 – best place for concentration, I reckon.

100. Very forgetful today, did not mention that 3D does not actually work. The primarily gives S and T but does not put them at the front, so the wordplay gives UTTERSST, almost a brilliant clue.

101. Grrr – I thought I’d mastered it by now!
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOy2GuaP8Mo

102. [So sorry Eileen. Only ever saw the hard copy. Just imagine the combination of traditional game shooter and cricket pads/gloves. And the pheasant looked remarkably like those ducks in the video. 😀 ]

103. [Eileen – Mark’s link ended up on my moniker. Did you meant to recommend the famous echo in the reading room at the British Museum?]

104. Roz @100

     My apologies – I could / should have expressed the wordplay more clearly: ‘with’, I think, indicates that UTTERS follows the initial letters of Stuttering Tongues
     I’m glad you found more enjoyment in today’s puzzle, anyway.

105. The wordplay means utters with S and T , there is absolutely no indication that utters will follow S and T, the primarily has incorrectly been given double duty.

106. Roz @100 – I reckoned that ‘primarily’ was doing double duty.

107. Isn’t it fair game if something is given double duty?

108. drofle it cannot do double duty. It is only written once. It either means we have stammering tongue utters or we have utters with s and t . We cannot have it both ways.

109. Roz @100/105/108: If I went for a walk with you, you could be either on my left or on my right. If I have coffee with biscuits, I could eat the biscuits first, or drink the coffee first (or more likely, attempt a merger of the two!)

110. Let us translate the word play precisely. The clue becomes – utters with s t .

111. ‘Let us translate the word play precisely’. By all means!
     As I said above, UTTERS follows (‘with’) S T- see essexboy @109) – I’m totally failing to see your problem, I’m afraid.

112. essexboy @109 your examples make my point precisely, it could be stutters or uttersst or a mixture, but the whole point of wordplay is to tell us PRECISELY what to do with the letters.

113. My problem is that utters with st does not tell us at all what to enter in the grid.

114. Roz – aren’t cryptic instructions often ambiguous? ‘Wanting’ can mean either you need to add something, or subtract it. ‘Without’ can mean subtract, or ‘place either side’. Isn’t that part of the fun?

115. Roz @113. Aren’t you forgetting the &lit (or extended definition) element of the clue? You’ve been referring to the wordplay and what you say is correct in the absence of a definition. But isn’t the whole clue (except ‘primarily’) the definition?

116. I agree yes but when you have sorted out the ambiguities the wordplay should then tell you exactly what to do with the letters. Utters with st does not tell us to put the st at the front. Look at every other clue here, every letter gets ushered into the correct position. Sleep time now.

117. My last word , the definition and the word play should both give exactly the same thing independently.

118. PostMark and sheffield hatter @102/3

     I’m sorry – my replies to you got lost in comments re STUTTERS. The perils of posting after a couple of glasses of wine and a pleasant diversion, noted above @99!

     My comment @99 was in response to PM’s re Gerard Hoffnung (not the ducks, which I’d already acknowledged) – and I’m afraid I didn’t understand your comment, sh.

119. [Eileen. In yours @92 you intended to attach a link in your response to Mark, but instead you attached it to your reply to what I said about not being able to concentrate until I was in the pub garden. I attempted to make a joke about Hoffnung’s Advice for Tourists, which mentions the British Museum – a good place to concentrate, unless someone is trying the famous echo.]

     The discussion on the clue for STUTTERS was more interesting.

120. Hi Eileen — thanks for the reminder, I can think of slugfest and Festschrift, but I’m still not convinced it’s a word on its own. (Let’s give a fest? Was there a fest about that?)

121. sh @119, thanks for the explanation – don’t know how that happened, sorry.
     Can’t agree with your final comment: I give up – and I’m going to bed now!

     Hi Valentine @120 – I’m sorry, I can only offer you Chambers’ definition, see me earlier @67.

122. Roz @85 & 93: as Noddy screamed ‘We won’t give in’. 🙂

123. Hope I don’t wake anyone up, but I’ve just had a further thought about the clue for STUTTERS: it finishes with a question mark. That can mean a number of things, but in this case I think Picaroon is saying that he has taken a liberty or two. While I’m inclined to agree anyway with drofle, Eileen and essexboy about the clue, I hope Roz might see that a little looseness is forgivable?

124. [I was much amused to realise that I we are all ETHNIC when I saw a section in a supermarket near Disney in Florida that had an ETHNIC section which featured favourite English staples such as Branston pickle.]

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