Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,422 / Brendan

72 comments on “Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,422 / Brendan”

1. Thank Eileen. I finished this, not without some difficulty, but without any idea of a theme or any understanding of 13a. I can only console myself now with the thought that I am unlikely to be the only one and express my admiration for Brendan’s ingenuity. How on earth does such a device come to mind and even if it does, how is it accomplished? I needed assistance from Google to check on the Hippocratic oath but find, interestingly enough, that PRIMUM NON NOCERE originates in another of his works.

2. Brendan at his best. WEATHER EYE made me realise I needed to think even more laterally and that helped with PACY (thanks for the explanation Eileen) to finish the CRYPTIC CLUE. IBERIA was typically topical but SEA FISHING is as good as it gets.

   Ta Brendan & Eileen

3. I live close to a tree-lined DEODAR Road beside Wandsworth Park so that was a pleasant guess as well Eileen

4. I enjoyed this a lot, if perhaps not quite as ecstatically as Eileen, and I too particularly enjoyed 5 and 18. Spotted a theme early on but took absurdly long to get 13. Duh! Never heard of a pea-rifle so that’s something learned. Thank you Brendan and thank you Eileen.

5. Never heard of a fiches either so that’s two things ?

6. Fichus

7. Sometimes you’re in the zone, sometimes not, and the latter is usually the case with me when it comes to themes. However this time I was on form and guessed it from just a few acrosses, and it was confirmed when I came to 13a. Very unusual, as I said, and I can’t explain it.

   Regarding “tony”, both Collins and OED indicate it is US. I have been thinking for some time we give Chambers too much credit.

8. Having guessed 13a fairly early, I was able to see the genius of Brendan unfolding as I worked the rest of the crossword. I never did get DEODAR or PACY but I knew the sound of “r” and “c” had to be there. All the cluing was excellent with my favourites being IBERIA, YOU BET, BESTOW, and GLITCH. Thanks Brendan and to Eileen for the great write-up.

9. The tree was the only biff, but I just shrugged about 13ac and lazily went on to watch the footy. Pity, it was a clever device, worthy of more effort. Serve me right … missing out on the fun of the discovery. Had the same mer as Eileen about whether myth was the correct category for seraphim, but hey ho. Enjoyed this Brendan puzzle, despite missing its mainspring. Thanks both.

10. I finished ok but couldn’t see theme. Thanks Brendan and Eileen. Great puzzle.

11. Thanks for the blog and I agree absolutely. A brilliant concept and a valiant effort to pull it off. I recognised the letter sounds very early but did not get 13 ac until last of all, mainly due to thinking of D for 6ac and I did not write the letter sounds down since I could not imagine ti would spell something directly. As for spelling out CRYPTIC CLUE that is just beyond the call of duty.
    The L is slightly weak and the strong I sound in 23ac is unfortunate but I do not mean to critcise , it merely emphasises how difficult it must be to construct a grid like this. Time to give Brendan the Bank Holiday specials with a larger canvas to work with.

12. Was helped by guessing 13ac halfway through solving the across clues.

    New for me: WEATHER EYE (and did not parse it); FICHUS.

    Favourites: UNPOETIC, IBERIA, SEA-FISHING.

    Did not parse REALLY; RELAYS.

    Failed LEINSTER, DEODAR.

13. Forgot to say our Chinese students assure me it is EE Ching with a very strong E sound.

14. I loved this, especially once I saw the device suggested by the penultimate 13 across CRYPTIC CLUE! I admit that I had to use Bradford’s Blue Book for 6a, my LOI – the unfamiliar tree DEODAR. Many thanks to Brendan, a setter who always issues a fine challenge to any old or young person (man or woman) who undertakes this PASTIME (14d), and to Eileen, the best blogger!

15. Roz@11: I thought the strong I sound in 23 was particularly devious and I kept going back to see if I’d missed something even more clevererer..

16. I did twig to what was going on reasonably early, having got a few acrosses on first pass. I had SEE RED, PEA RIFLE and TEAT before I hit 13a, and thought I saw the theme then. A few more acrosses (ELECTION, YOU BET, I CHING) gave me more letters, and I did write them down in order. Then CRYPTIC CLUE leapt out – though the “I” rather than “E” at the end gave me pause for a while. That all helped with the others. Like many above, I found this very impressive. UNPOETIC took a while, especially as I had RACY for 21a (I was a bit puzzled by how pham meant doctor until the PDM). SCHLEP and FICHUS wnt in on wordplay only. Great challenge – thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

17. Not sure where I knew DEODAR from, but I did: it was the PEA RIFLE I’d never heard of. What an enjoyable theme/device to work on, and once sussed it helped a lot. Couldn’t parse WHY NOT, and the 21a/17d combination took forever to come to mind even when I had the first letter of 21a and knew what must be in it: if anything that was a hindrance because I was thinking it must be at the start of the word and spent ages looking for words beginning PS.. Never did parse it properly.

    Favourites in the clues were SEA FISHING, PA’S TIMES and 50% of disease. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

18. [Re yesterday, Jim Steinman, esp re his Meat Loaf songs, was valed on Auntie’s music show today, but it was Tyler doing Total Eclipse that played the show out…]

19. Thanks go mostly to Eileen this morning. I enjoyed the reveal in the blog more than the crossword, and I enjoyed the crossword very much, albeit at such a superficial level, having totally missed Brendan’s genius.
    I puzzled over 13A for ages, trying to relate it to the other across clues, but just couldn’t see it. Yet it was so clearly directed now that Eileen has explained it. That’ll teach me to follow the instructions. What a tour de force!
    Thanks to Brendan and extra thanks to Eileen.

20. Took me a long time and didn’t get the last two, but it was fun. Didn’t get the theme – very clever.

    My favourites were the three (3,3)s: SEE RED, WHY NOT, YOU BET as well as IBERIA and I CHING (recently seen on TV in His Dark Materials)

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

21. I figured out the theme early enough for it to help, and confirm, for example, that PEA RIFLE was probably right even though I’d never heard of it. But I reached a mini crisis, with DEODAR WEATHER EYE and PACY unsolved. Finally twigging RELAYS (cryptic definitions often catch me out) and realising ‘the rule’ allowed the homophones to be at the end of a word saw me home. PACY wast last in – a brilliant clue.
    Thanks Brendan, another wonderful and satisfying crossword and Eileen for the blog.

22. AlanC @ 15, yes of course I see it now, devious misdirection, very clever indeed.

23. My experience mirrored Eileen’s last week -including the ecstatic appreciation of the theme in retrospect. CRYPTIC CLUE actually was my LOI – I didn’t make a lot of sense of it first time I encountered it so happily pottered my way through what seemed like a typically good Brendan puzzle. Even then, the solution jumped out from the crossers rather than the clue. And then a PDM that was probably heard by our Australian and NZ colleagues the other side of the world. Followed by the pleasure, again shared with Eileen, or revisiting the across clues to relish the construction. A tour de force, from C to E, with absolutely no criticisms from me. COTD: the across clues, with second fave being the down.

24. Tut tut. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

25. Lots of delightful penny drops inc. I CHING. DEODAR was my LOI. When (occasionally) spotting a theme early, the drive intensifies: almost a PB to have finished by Monday. Tried to make a complicated case for JOKIER until finally twigging the crisp EDGIER. Great thanks, Brendan.

26. When Brendan’s name appears as the setter you always know there is going to be something interesting going on. On just the Wednesday before this appeared, a few of us on here were remembering with admiration his superb lipogram puzzle of about two years ago (27,734), and this one was another brilliant concept.

    After initially being a bit thrown by thinking that both a D and an R were indicated in DEODAR, I somehow managed to dredge up from my memory the song “Under the Deodar” which makes it clear that the first syllable is pronounced “day”, and after that things went fairly smoothly.

    Apart from the brilliance of the concept, I thought 3d SERAPHIC was great.

    Very many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

27. A very impressive piece of construction from Brendan, and I learned a few things: that scillicet can be abbreviated to ‘sc’; that a DEODAR and a PEA RIFLE are things; and that the fact that I pronounce ‘election’ as ‘e-lection’ makes me some sort of an oddity (at least that was the impression I got from my wife when I mentioned this to her). At any rate, having got PACY, ELECTION, YOU BET and I CHING (but fewer of the earlier across clues) I ended up staring at CEUI (I’m not great on Chinese vowels either) for a while until it all clicked and I had a CLUE. After that, it was mostly a case of working away and admiring Brendan’s skill. The concept was new to me – has it been seen before? It does make the clues interact in quite an interesting way.

    Thanks Brendan, and thanks, Eileen.

28. [I forgot to mention earlier, I was slightly surprised to see a mixed bag of reactions to Brendan’s Prize amongst those who use the Friday G site as an opportunity to comment. Living in a household utterly disinterested in cruciverbalism, I wanted to share my pleasure in the Prize with someone last Saturday so decided on a rare post on the G site and – maybe it was the time I dipped in – was met with comments including ‘boring’, ‘disappointing’ and, several times, ‘got the theme early and it all collapsed as a result’. Each to their own, of course, and there was praise too but I came away slightly deflated!]

29. The pleasure and satisfaction derived from a puzzle such as this one more than make up for the occasional dud. 13a went in about half-way through so it both revealed itself from about half the across clues and assisted in solving the other half.

    In my primary school days we never aspired to pea rifles – they were peashooters, a slightly derogatory term still seen occasionally.

    Appreciative thanks to setter, blogger and contributors

30. Thanks Brendan and Eileen. We found this one a delight. Like others spotted 13a with about two thirds of across clues done which helped with working out others with letter sounds, and eleminating Feather Bed as something a sailor needs! (Some tortuous parsing to justify an initial inclusion) but a DNF on DEODAR. Was there and archaic spelling for Cedar we mused. Having never heard I CHING pronounced similarly stumped to others so very pleased to learn [particularly as a dabbler, wiith marbles not sticks ]. Many favourites but maybe SEA FISHING for the biggest journey from ‘what an earth?’ To ‘oh those sort of schools!’.

31. PS. I was wondering what might be used instead of mythical to clue SERAPHIC? It did misdirect us for a while, although the anagram fell out after a couple of crossers, but what would do instead? Biblical?

32. A highly unusual cryptic theme, very well implemented. I was at least two-thirds of the way through the grid when I solved 13a CRYPTIC CLUE, and because I did not immediately work out what was meant by it I just pressed on to a finish and came back to it. It was a remarkable idea that must have been quite difficult to implement. Naturally, I read through my answers going across and confirmed that everything worked as intended.
    As Eileen rightly said, it was a good quality crossword quite apart from having that unexpected bonus, with plenty of tricks and misdirections to keep me happy.
    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen, and to others for their interesting comments.

33. Much as I adore a Brendan puzzle, I found this very easy. WHY NOT, PEA RIFLE and TEAT all went in at first pass. This raised an eyebrow and led to CRYPTIC CLUE fairly easy, which meant most of the puzzle was complete and the theme knocked over before I’d even looked at the Down clues.

    But it was pretty, and clever, and poetic, and I did enjoy myself. I agree with Eileen that PASTIMES was a little treat.

34. I was on wavelength very quickly with the theme. Having recently read of(and adopted as my own) Eileen’s system of always attacking the clues in order, I soon read the clue for 13a and – having had a couple of the earlier across clues in – I spotted the device. When I’d finished the across clues and identified enough of the phonetically read letters, I got 13a itself and of course many extra bits of info for the rest of the across clues. Favourite was PACY I think for the ingenious subtraction.

    Similar gaps to grant@9 and Julie@14, DEODAR was new (although probably again in crossword land!) to me as was the pronunciation of I-CHING.

    Lovely blog as ever, Eileen. I echo your thoughts, and those of many here, on how well constructed and clever this puzzle was: thanks Brendan. Maybe, as Roz@11 says, it is time to give Brendan a shot at the Bank Holiday slot? The incumbent surely wouldn’t mind a break or a shot at a few daily puzzles to fill the void.

    Happy weekend all.

35. Much like TassieTim @16 I had three across solutions, all with letter sounds, so wrote down the clue numbers and letters as a solving aid. I’d always said EYE CHING (in my head – don’t think I’ve ever spoken it), but a four-letter word ending in I obviously wouldn’t do. Last one in was DEODAR, because (like joleroi @30) I’d misled myself with CEDAR as a possible tree, but the sound is a schwa, not the required R, which ruled it out. Great kudos to Brendan for the brilliant idea, and for the amazing clue for SEA-FISHING.

    Thanks as always to Eileen for the blog. I don’t understand the objection to ‘mythical’ as an adjective referring to seraphim; surely, just like harpies, they are creatures found in myths?

36. Slightly mixed feelings about this one: an ingenious construction, a clever idea and some great clues throughout, but I didn’t like the central clue 13 across, which was more of an instruction to solvers than a standalone challenge in its own right. “Set piece” is a vaguely cryptic definition for a crossword clue if not a cryptic one, but the rest felt quite prosaic compared to the excellent clues surrounding it.

    While I’m being churlish, I felt that omitting 23 across from the fun (despite SIBERIA containing the sounds of both I and B, kind of) was a bit random and departed from the otherwise brilliant concept. Given the arithmetic, I don’t see what else Brendan could have done!

    Thanks as always to Eileen, especially for TONY, which I think I have seen in a past puzzle, which of course still didn’t help this time, and for DEODAR, which I had forgotten to confirm on Google. Thanks to Brendan for the usual fun, particularly using ‘boodle’ to hide LEINSTER.

37. Thanks Brendan & Eileen,
    my only complaint (apart from the quibble over seraphim and myth) was it was over too quickly!

    Unusually for me got the 13A hint and picked up on the theme early enough for it to help.
    Liked PACY and had not seen the device for SEA-FISHING before. LEINSTER is also a clever hidden word.

    From enumeration along I had thought the 13A set-piece would be PENALTY KICK, so the a further hat tip for the splendid mis-direction on the definition for those things we all love : the CRYPTIC CLUE.

    Thanks again to Brendan for the challenge and the fun and to Eileen for explaining it and to all learned commentators on the blog.

38. I see I wrote “Brilliant!” on the top of the puzzle, and others seem to have agreed. Very satisfying to find CRYPTIC CLUE letters in order in the across solutions. I loved the SERAPHIC anagram, SEA-FISHING and the clever PACY. Many thanks to Brendan for this tour de force, and to Eileen for the great blog.

39. Another fine crossword from Brendan and a fine blog from Lucky Eileen. Thanks to both My favourite out of so many I could have chosen was 21a

40. I had only seen I CHING in The Man in the High Castle and just assumed it was EYE until this crossword, you live and learn. Have seen DEODAR a few times, perhaps in Azed mainly , along with REREDOS and LORELEI ( recent ) , must be one of those words that will fit an awkward combination of letters in a grid.

41. Thanks Brendan, brilliant.
    Restored faith in my ability to solve a crossword in a reasonable time without cheating, unlike the previous four Saturdays! Maybe not going senile yet after all. Agree with SH@35. No problem with mythical. Dare I suggest it equals biblical?
    Thanks Eileen, you’re brilliant too.

42. [Re seraphim being mythical, apparently (according to this) they are mentioned only once in the Bible, in Isaiah 6:1-2. The relevant passage records Isaiah’s vision, in which he sees God and his attendant seraphim, and is given a mission to lead the people of Israel away from their own land “…until the Lord has sent everyone away, and the entire land of Israel lies deserted. If even a tenth—a remnant—survive, it will be invaded again and burned. But as a terebinth or oak tree leaves a stump when it is cut down, so Israel’s stump will be a holy seed.” If that is not a myth, I don’t know what it is.]

43. Good fun. Having got the C, Y & P in 13, guessed the answer & this helped solve other clues. Didn’t know deodar, michu or sc but enough in parsing to take an educated guess.

44. As neat as a haiku

45. Re: I CHING, here’s a rule of thumb that may be helpful when trying to pronounce foreign words. English has single-vowel diphthongs, so for example I is pronounced ah-ee (approx.). Very few foreign languages do this (I don’t know any, but had heard Scottish Gaelic might), so go with the odds.

46. Delightful. I got part way — recognized the letter sounds, but not the big prize — that they spelled CRYPTIC CLUE. Yay Brendan!

    KeithS @27 I pronounce “election” as you do, and do does everybody else I know. I’ve never heard “ell-ection.”

    Thanks to Brendan and to Eileen — your delight spilled over into the blog and we all shared it.

47. Well ! I spotted the homophones and competed the puzzle. I failed though to realise that said homophones spelled out 13ac, let alone in chronological order- very clever by Brendan, and very well spotted, Eileen ! In my defence, it was very late at night when I was solving the puzzle, and it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the puzzle in any way. Thanks to Brendan and to Eileen

48. 1961Blanchflower@36: I suspect Brendan was very pleased to have one “reserve” clue that didn’t need to fit into the spelling bee!

49. Excellent. And the first of a trio of lychee references last week, and one of two with the, for me, unusual li spelling

50. Thank you Eileen and agree with all your praise, this was like Bond’s Aston Martin, lots of fun and purring along nicely when suddenly all these amazing hidden features become apparent. (And helped too as I wasn’t sure about DEODAR until I knew it needed the R sound). Learned a few more things too, perhaps most surprisingly that Roz@40 and I both have the same source for our awareness of the I Ching. Can’t choose between PACY and SEA FISHING for my favourite , thanks Brendan.

51. 9a Eileen and DrWhatson@9
    Whenever the origin of Tony= Smart crops up I quote Edmund Clerihew Bentley “Few Romans were as tony as the elegant Petronius” which indicates that it was current in England in the first quarter of the last century, in spite of what Collins and OED may say. I’m sorry that I post too late for most.

52. HI Pino @51 -certainly not too late for me. In fact, I think you have made my day.
    I’ve been unhappy since first thing, after seeing Dr W’s comment @7 (sic) – kicking myself for, for once, not also consulting Collins, as my favourite dictionary. I can’t find TONY in it – but it is very old and dog-eared, as I won it nearly twenty years ago, as a Guardian Prize and I’m very reluctant to part with it.

    Many thanks for your quotation – I’m well aware of Petronius, as Cena Trimalchionis, from his Satyricon, is the very first text I studied at University.

53. Eileen, I have an OED in tree-book form, but not Collins – for that I used this.

54. Thanks for that, Dr WhatsOn. ; -)

55. I thought thus was just brilliant. Many thanks to Brendan for the excellent challenge and to Eilern for her explanations

56. Stunning. I particularly liked 9ac — it had my name in it!

57. Valentine @46 – Thanks for that! I was beginning to feel my education had been sadly lacking.

58. Tony @56 – yes, I saw that. I’d always assumed you’d grabbed that handle based on its reflexive clueing potential.

59. I saw that the across clues contained homophones but missed the fact that they actually spelt out CRYPTIC CLUE. Absolute tour de force by Brendan. Araucaria himself couldn’t have done better.
    One answer I couldn’t parse – 9a. Thanks to Eileen for clarifying that.

60. Eileen@52
    Now I’m waiting for a setter to use another synonym for “smart” so I can quote the other half of the clerihew – “None who dressed snappier/Appeared on the Via Appia.

    Enjoying humour and satire, my set authors were Juvenal and Aristophanes. I’ve no recollection of reading any Petronius but then it’s over 60 years ago.

61. DrWhatson @7
    As you are probably aware Chambers has been the accepted authority for, to my knowledge, at least 60 years. For a long time there would be a notice recommending it and then a note of explanation if a word didn’t appear there. I don’t remember noticing when it stopped.
    I think the thinking was that there should be one source that could be used to check. If your answer wasn’t a proper noun or in Chambers you needed to think again. It would be asking too much to ask solvers to buy more than one dictionary and Chambers got in first. This seems reasonable to me and, though there may be better dictionaries, solvers can’t be expected to change.
    The problem may not exist for those who use online dictionaries but, that said, I used Chambers online for the first time to look up “tony” and it had no suggestions.

62. Nerissa@58, something like that, yes (and delighted that you’ve understood the fuller meaning of my comment).

    Pino@61, could it be that that stopped when they began to offer the Collins as a prize (having presumably been given a better bulk-buy deal than Chambers were prepared to offer)?

63. Tony Collman@62
    You may well be right. It had occurred to me too. If so they might have told us.

64. Beobachterin@55, is “Eilern” a deliberate mistake? Seems appropriate, anyway. She’s learnt me a few things along the way.

65. Chambers as a source probably began with Ximenes in 1939 , he underlined every word he ever used in his own copy. It still continues with Azed every Sunday , he recommends Chambers 14 with every crossword and warns of any solution not found in Chambers.

66. Chambers is undoubtedly the court of last appeal where crosswords are concerned (and there needs to be one), but it is irritating when it is used to justify a spelling or meaning that appears nowhere else.

67. My Chambers gives Tony as an award for meritorious work in the theatre in the USA

    Don’t know if that works for “smart in Washington”

68. Fiona Anne @67 – I couldn’t parse WHY NOT, and thought that TONY was ‘to New York’ and probably referred to a train that ran between NY and Washington!!

69. Fiona Anne @67 The Tony is specifically for Broadway performances. Off-Broadway work gets the Obie.

70. gladys@66, if no dictionary of resort is specified then it might be concluded that it’s the OED, couldn’t it? I remember when Paul clued TATTARRATTAT (admittedly 100% derivable from crossers and indication of its palindromic nature) which can, apparently, be found in no other dictionary (although it does seem to be in some online-only ones, such as Wiktionary).

71. Tony Collman@70
    The current (2nd) edition of the OED is available on Amazon for £902. Its price has always been of this order if inflation is taken into account so it could never be the dictionary of resort for the regular crossword solver at least until its recent availability free online if you have a British Local Authority Public Library card.

72. Pino, fair point. I was just suggesting that if none is specified other than the one that is supposed to have all the words in (OED), then there isn’t one. I wasn’t suggesting that all Guardian solvers ought to go out and buy it. I think any word in Chambers is likely to be acceptable in a Guardian crossword. That’s not the case for all the nationals.

    Btw, if you are a member of a public library in the UK, your can get access to the OED via your library’s subscription.

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