Guardian Cryptic 28,432 by Brummie

72 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,432 by Brummie”

1. I found the top half very straightforward (once I’d remembered how to spell MORDRED) abd the lower half more challenging. Lots and lots of great clues: JOAN OF ARC, CHRISTMAS, STUCCO.

   Many thanks Brummie and manehi

2. There are certainly a lot of names dotted around the grid.
   ALICE,GRACE, JOAN,RENE,LES,CORA,ROSE,JACK,JANE, CHRIS, RIO and erm .. DI.
   Don’t know if there is any other link between them.

3. Found this a steady solve this morning. Liked FINERY with that great woman Elizabeth Gurney wrapping herself round the clue…

4. Thanks Brummie and Manehi

   I thought the small theme was two-word phrases which include girls’ names (seeing Joan as Jean d’Arc).

   And in 5D I saw ‘internal’ as the embed indicator, as otherwise there isn’t one.

5. In 5D, surely ‘internal’ is just the insertion indicator rather than defining the kind of examination. So ‘examination’ is just, as it so often is, ORAL.

6. Thanks Brummie and manehi
   Yes, not too difficult. Favourites CHRISTMAS and MORALISER.
   Not too keen on CARJACKS, as “car” means the same in wordplay and defintion (unless you go out of the way to use car as a railway car, say).
   “Masks” is a very left-field anagram indicator in 28a.

7. Thanks for the blog. This was fun and not too tricky, with 10a the last one in. Really must remember the “present time” pun as it comes up quite a lot. With 5d I see ORAL as meaning simply “examination”, and “internal” meaning it’s inside MISER.

8. I found this pretty straightforward, especially the NW quadrant which I managed to crack faster than I could write in the solutions.

   Favourite was CIGARETTE. This chemist considers ‘oily liquid’ to be an ODDISH definition for STYRENE!

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

9. Didn’t know masked and accommodation as anagram indicators. Are they quite rare or am I just forgetting having seen them before? Thanks all.

10. Well I got there in the end but with a bit too much use of the check button. Like yesyes @1 I found the top half easier especially after I guessed MORDRED (which I liked).

    Quite a few just popped into my head like JOAN OF ARC, CALAMITY JANE but I couldn’t see how to parse to former once I had guessed what the answer must be. Needed help parsing a few others as well.

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi

11. I found this relatively straightforward and had a sense of déjà vu with several clues, Christmas and cigarette and styrene, for example.

    I agree with muffin @6 about the liberal use of masks as an anagram indicator. Also accommodation I thought was pushing it, though the clue itself seems quite topical.

12. Fun, as manehi says. Didn’t clock the Doris Day connection with CALAMITY JANE; enjoyed CHRISTMAS, CARJACKS (unlike muffin @6), and the COR ANGLAIS anagram. As for a theme: the best I can do is to say that there are lots ‘C’s in the puzzle!

13. Good, pleasant crossword.

    I liked LESOTHO, DISTRESS (possibly done before), PRECARIOUS and CARJACKS (muffin @6, I took the coach to mean a railway car, otherwise I’m not sure of the equivalence). Accommodation was a bit unusual for an anagrind, but in the sense of adaptation it seems OK.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

14. Lots of girls’ names, but a couple of Guardian commenters are dropping dark hints about a further theme. No idea what that might be.

15. Andy @2. Other names include MAC, LISE, CAL, and STU, and there’s even a Paraguayan LGBT activist called YREN.

16. Deja vu: PRECARIOUS came readily to mind because ten minutes earlier I had entered it in the Quick. STYRENE was a new one, and I wondered about “oral” as an internal examination: thanks for explaining that one. Favourites CHRISTMAS, FINERY, ALICE SPRINGS, CALAMITY JANE and the aforesaid PRECARIOUS.

17. Favourites: MORDRED, ALICE SPRINGS, PRECARIOUS, CARJACKS, CHRISTMAS (loi).
    At first, I did not parse JO/AN OF ARC apart from anagram of foracan*. Oh, somebody called Jo Brand? Thanks, google! Never heard of this woman.

    NEW: STYRENE.

18. Andy@2 (and now Blaise @ 15)

    If Di is allowed there’s also Fi and Mo, both of which appear twice giving Fifi and Momo!

19. I concur with the general sentiments about level of difficulty. Certainly a lot easier than it appeared at first sight. Very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

20. Earworm was old Nat… Who can cling to A ramblin’ rose… bit saccharine, but Top 40 at the time. Meanwhile, 10ac was clever, if a bit ugh; 14ac nice and local, though the locals might baulk at the def; while Joan of Arc was a biff, (sorry Jo Brand, I do like your humour, come back to QI). Liked the ref to Elizabeth Fry… prison reform among other policies if my high school history memories are true… humanists we always need. And liked the cat tiger e becoming the deadly gasper. So, no great brain-wrestle but plenty of stimulus and quite fun, ta both.

21. Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

    I’m on a (bad) roll and gave up on this about half-way through. Not too displeased with myself as those revealed were generally beyond me: ALICE SPRINGS (a hair band? who knew?), CARJACKS, CLIMACTIC (=critical?), STYRENE (won’t be working that into a conversation: “speaking of oily liquids….”) and ignorance of the lady Fry didn’t help with FINERY; but there were others I should have got.

    [The imperative for chirping is drawn (manehi) from that the wiki link for CALAMITY JANE is missing.]

22. On my phone for once so I’ll keep this brief. (Cue huge sighs of relief from the Fifteensquared community). Spoiled for choice with ear worms today: Black Sabbath in the Indy and RAMBLING ROSE inspires me with both Ramble On by Led Zep and the slightly longer Ramble On Rose by the Grateful Dead. Three of my all time faves.

    I’ll be intrigued to see if someone else spots a deeper theme. I enjoyed all four of the two parters incorporating female names -CALAMITY JANE, ALICE SPRINGS, AMAZING GRACE and the aforementioned RAMBLING ROSE – and wondered if that was it, whether JOAN OF ARC played a part and then whether the others identified by others above also feature. Who knows?

    Thanks Brummie and manehi

23. muffin @6. I’m not sure what you mean by “car” means the same in wordplay and definition. The word ‘car’ does not appear in the clue, so is not part of the word play. The definition is ‘takes transport’, and ‘coach’ to indicate CAR is no more of a stretch than ‘game’ to indicate JACKS. Good clue, in my opinion. As were many others in this more-accessible-than-Pasquale-or-Puck offering from Brummie. I raised an eyebrow the regulation quarter inch at the anagrinds ‘masked’ and ‘accommodating’, and ‘it’s instrumental’ to define COR ANGLAIS, but after the blatant inaccuracy of Pasquale’s ‘like Derby’ and Puck’s ‘that’s right’ these were very welcome innovations. As was ‘of reorganised’=FO – such a refreshing change to have an anagram rather than reversal of a two-letter word!

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

24. SH @23
    I see what you mean, but “coach” to give “car” is much more restricted (and thus closer to being the same) than “game” to give “jacks”.

25. Alphalpha @21: a hair band? who knew? I do sympathise, after suffering some obscurities from the two previous setters, but I think these were quite common at one time. It was certainly quite easy for me, as the first girl I had a crush on at school wore an Alice band! It originates from the illustrations in Lewis Carroll’s books, of course.

    I seem to remember learning about Elizabeth Fry at school too, as I am pretty sure I knew about her before she made an appearance on £5 notes between 2002 and 2017.

26. muffin @24. Poor Brummie! I can imagine him throwing his pencils in the air in despair if that is a legitimate complaint. The surface has ‘coach’ in the sense of trainer, so requires a modicum of lateral thinking to get to CAR. (It’s certainly nothing like as bad as ‘PL’ being used to clue PL yesterday. Oops, forgot to say “spoiler alert”!)

27. Found that hard going but may have something to do with seeing friends last night and consuming vast quantities of Malbec…

    Thanks Brummie and manehi!

28. I particularly enjoyed the mini (two entry) theme of SPRING, with CHRISTMAS cunningly included as a diversion. 😉

29. SH @26
    “Coach” as “trainer” simply never ocurred to me!

30. Isn’t there an extra “to lead” in the 23a CLIMACTIC clue? Or am I missing something?

31. Like others, I had the top half full last night and the bottom half empty. Filled in most of the latter over coffee but needed the check button a bit for the last few.

    I thought “jacks” was the American name for the game whose British name I can’t remember.

    I’ve heard of both my compatriots Calamity Jane and Doris Day, but had no idea that a musical connected them.

    sh’s link takes me to a site with a picture of a withdrawn 5-pound note where I can’t see Elizabeth Fry, and an offer to give me 4.6 pounds for my Elizabeth Fry note. Why can’t I just take it down the pub and get 5 pounds’ worth of pints?

32. I too found “accommodation” and “masks” a hell of a stretch as anagrinds. I have no idea how either word could suggest rearrangement in any way. Got them both once it couldn’t be anything else, but it starts to feel like if there is any word which you cannot fit into the wordplay then that is an anagrind.

    More amusingly, I got ALICE SPRINGS by getting Alice from the band Alice In Chains. I did think hmmm that’s a bit obscure, and prefer the hairband explanation. This does though back up the recent research that any crossword has one or more bands in it somewhere!

33. Adriana @30
    The “to lead” means that the C comes before the TIC. Without it, “about” would look like an inclsution indicator.

    [Another earworm – Doris Day singing in Calamity Jane (which I’m surprised that several posters are unfamiliar with)]

34. Valentine @30
    “Jacks” is sometimes called “fivestones”, but I think the former is commoner, even over here.

35. One thing I’ve often wondered is why setters sometimes put words in quotation marks. In this instance 21,26. Why ‘Martyr’ and not just Martyr? And indeed, why not just martyr?

36. I thought this was a great puzzle. Nothing too contorted, contrived or obscure.

37. DiBosco @35
    In this case, Brummie wants us to think that it’s a brand name.

38. Valentine@31
    Five-stones.

39. [muffin @33 Thanks for the link to Doris singing Secret Love. Clearly a response to sheffield hatter’s schoolboy confessions @25.

    Alice bands used to be worn by girls, but these days I seem to see them most often adorning the tousled locks of footballers. I believe Beckham was an early adoptor.]

    Thanks Brummie and manehi

40. Muffin@34 types more quickly than I do!
    [When I was a boy there was a distinction between five-stones, played with cubes of wood or some kind of stony material and jacks, played with 3-D crosses like (wheelbraces or cartesian co-ordinates.)]

41. [Me @39 ‘early adopter’ even.]

42. [Valentine @31. Apologies for that link. I agree that an offer of £4.60 for a fiver is a rip off, and I’m surprised that Google features such sites. Here’s a better and more official one. “Why can’t I just take it down the pub and get 5 pounds’ worth of pints?” Because it’s been withdrawn from circulation. You can take it to your own bank, who will normally accept or exchange it, or send it to the Bank of England.]

43. Solved without too many alarms. Kept seeing girls’ names going in without thinking too much about it, though as others may have done, briefly looked for Doris Day connections following CALAMITY JANE.

    Most straightforward of the week, thank goodness.

44. Re ‘accommodation’ as an anagrind, it can *just about* be accepted: you can make an accommodation for someone, ie you adjust things to suit. But it’s a fair stretch.

    While Grateful Dead’s Ramble On Rose is good, I’d sooner have MC5’s Ramblin’ Rose.

45. Nice puzzle, thanks. However I find the use of old in 19 down out of place and threw me. It made me recall a comment somebody made on an earlier crossword this week re whether it was fair to use GK someone under an given age would not have come across (which to be fair is a bug bear of mine, among other things). I assume the setter is oblivious to the fact that EPs in vinyl, download, CD and even cassette form are quite wide spread, and have been for some time, many bands are releasing EPs across the range of formats. To me it was a bit like clueing chair as old furniture – it is true there are lots of old ones I suppose.

46. Valentine@31: don’t know where you live, but I may move there. Where I live ‘five pounds worth of pints’ would be less than a pint.

47. There are at least a couple of homophonic names too: Dinah (DINER) and Irene (part of STYRENE

48. A bit of googling reveals that Ronnie Wood has twin girls Gracie Jane and Alice Rose but that can’t be the theme can it?

49. HungrySimon @ 45

    In relative terms, EPs & LPs are an old format.

50. The theme appears to be characters, and other things featured in the Marvel Comic Database
    Mordred, Alice Springs, Joan of Arc, (Father)Christmas, Amazing Grace, Jane, Calamity, Officer, Rose (and maybe others) are all characters in Marvel Earth 616 series
    Lesotho blankets are in Black Panther marvel movie.
    I have this source before in a Guardian crossword.

51. Forgot to thank Brummie and manehi for excellent crossword and blog.
    Is Brummie a comic fan?

52. Me@50
    I have “seen” this source before in aGuardian crossword, Officer Ryan another Earth-616 character appeared a few months ago.

53. Thanks for the blog. Some elegant clues today but far too easy overall.
    The English in 5ac is a bit loose as the letter E appears twice in ordered.
    The anagram for of is a bit of overkill.

54. Just because ‘accommodation’ happens to be a synonym of ‘adaptation’ does not make it an anagram indicator. You don’t get to be an anagrind simply by association with a synonym (in certain contexts) of one that is. Far from being a ‘welcome innovation’ it’s ludicrous and needed an editor to have the gumption to say so.

55. Accommodation means adjustment, especially but not exclusively in an optical sense.

56. Steven Pinker described nouns as words doing nouny things so maybe anagrinds are increasingly just words doing anagrindy things? I’m also mulling over the idea of categorical equivalence to justify words that aren’t direct synonyms but may belong to a common set
    Brilliant crossword btw – absolutely loved it – especially CHRISTMAS & LESOTHO
    Slow start for similar reasons to MaidenBartok albeit gin induced in my case
    Cheers all

57. Roz @53. The anagram for of is a bit of overkill. It may look like that if you get FOCAL straight away from the definition, but it held me up for a while because it could mean an anagram of ‘state’, or even something involving the middle letters of ‘reorganised’, so when I finally cottoned on I appreciated it as a bit of misdirection. (Agree with you about the looseness of the E in 5ac though.)

58. Cliveinfrance @50: looks like congrats are in order. I tried a selection of the girl’s names in Google and it only lead me to a random obituary page. Looks as if I should have chosen a wider range of entrants. Chapeau for the spot and thanks for sharing. Not often that this community gets to this stage in the day without identifying the theme so someone needed to step up to the plate.

59. Thanks for the theme Cliveinfrance @50, pleased to say I would never have guessed that. I had the exact same thought as you Sourdough @46. I agree with Roz that this was relatively easy for Brummie but cice clues along the way such as CARJACKS, CALAMITY JANE and PRECARIOUS

    Ta Brummie & manehi

60. Sheffield Hatter @ 57. Relating to the centre was a bit of a giveaway with F_C_L . I am not claiming OF is wrong as an anagram just a bit weak.

61. AlanC @59 I did like CARJACKS, used to play Jacks a while ago. PRECARIOUS had me thinking of Grace Darling for a bit.

62. Carjack is another but Superman, X Men, Captain Marvel and Spiderwoman are the better known characters, a life wasted on reading comics and watching sci fi

63. A lovely puzzle which started slowly but nicely revealed itself. Liked the girls names in the longer solutions. No real quibbles from me. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

64. muffin@34 I think I was confusing myself with your “jackstraws,” which is our “pick-up sticks.”

    SH@42 Will the bank give me five whole pounds for it?

    Sourdough @46 I’ve never had a fiver to take down the pub, so I’m showing my ignorance. I’ve no idea what a pint costs in a pub — or over here in a bar either, come to think of it. But you’re welcome to move to Hartford CT, we can use more crossworders. (I don’t know a single cryptophile, as a matter of fact.)

    I also appreciate the visual symmetry of Rose, Jane, Allice and Grace.

    Thanks once again, Brummie and manehi.

65. [Valentine @64. British bank notes all include a promise to pay, so you will get full value from the bank. Those that have been withdrawn from circulation just can’t be used in retail situations (like pubs).

    In Sheffield you can still get a pint of beer for around £3.]

66. A pretty good case can be made for 16d being VANjacks. A van is equally transport that can be taken, and could be more likely as the contents might be more attractive than a car’s. If you get to car via say the dining car of a train, you can equally well get to van via the guard’s van on the same train. Admittedly the van was originally a short vehicle on the rear of a freight train, but became common usage for the coach in which the guard had an office.

67. Cliveinfrance @50: congrats.

    Fiery Jack @32: Your last sentence seems to have gone unnoticed. Well I say brilliant observation 🙂

    Most enjoyable xword of the week for me. Thanks Brummie

68. Simon S @49. 78s and shellacs are old, LP is a term that typically refers to vinyl format although vinyl is now current and I would not describe it as old relative or otherwise. I guess in crossword world it just about goes but still seems superfluous. EPs I think are the newest vinyl format and is a widely used term for other formats e.g. CD albums, CD EPs and CD singles but not CD LPs. Otherwise we can use old in that relative sense to describe virtually anything, and on that basis chairs seem like an old format to me. In summary I still feel like disagreeing today, but tomorrow is another day.

69. Hungry Simon @ 68

    EPs I think are the newest vinyl format

    They’ve been around for a good 60 years.

    More recent vinyls formats (only about 40 years or so old) would include the 12” single, the 45rpm LP, direct-cut vinyl discs (although direct cutting was the original recording format) and half-speed mastering.

    Chairs are indeed an old seating format. Bean bags are younger.

70. Great crossword but how odd to have CHRISTMAS here and YULETIDE in the quick on the same day. On coach/car, UK trains have coaches whilst American trains have cars. I assumed that was the link. Thank you both!

71. sheffieldhatter@65
    My local Wetherspoons is shut but at pre-lockdown prices there were several real beers
    at £2.50 or less. There are 6 in Sheffield with gardens that are open.

72. We are always quite slow in solving the puzzles, so apologise for joining the discussion late. As for the theme, did anyone else notice that connection in 14A and 13D: Dicky Wells? There are quite a few musical clues.

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