Guardian 28,442 / Brummie

109 comments on “Guardian 28,442 / Brummie”

1. You summed it up well Eileen. I struggled to get started, then had a splurge but failed 1dn and 25 ac. I had slyness for the latter as ‘a cold calm way.’ Thanks to you and Brummie as ever.

2. Oh, and I didn’t spot the pubs!

3. I enjoyed this but found it quite tough and got quite a few from the crosses and description but then managed to parse them all except KEYS (which I had to reveal) and ANDES

   I thought some of the clues had lovely surfaces: DISMAYED, NARCISSUS, MERCILESS, CASTLE, GLOAMING (a lovely word) RAPT.

   ELEPHANT and HIGHBOY made me smile

   Didn’t spot the theme.

   Thanks Brummie and Eileen

4. Thanks to both. If there is not a pub called the MERCILESS BAGPIPER, there should be.

   ELEPHANT & CASTLE and ROYAL OAK cropped up in conversation below last Wednesday’s cryptic in which ANGEL had been clued as ‘old Islington pub’. This made me wonder if all the pubs here were London pubs (there is an ANCHOR & HOPE, rather than vice-versa, in SE London), and of course the COACH & HORSES enjoys a notable reputation. But would Brummie be so Londoncentric?

   Also just to note that two beverages which could be ordered in pubs, VSOP and MALT, are nearly placed in diagonally opposite lights at 9 and 22 across.

5. I suppose Elephant and Castle was formerly a London pub as opposed to a tube station/district but there is one on Lyon(or was ) selling real ale.
   I wonder if there is a Kosher Horses in the Marais area
   Sorry about that
   Yes I thought that Brum had polished his surfaces and rather enjoyed this pub crawl
   Thanks Brum and Eileen

6. I sometimes find Brummie really not my cup of tea and late last night when I saw the setter, almost didn’t bother. But most of it fell into place fairly quickly before sleep, and finished off the last few this morning. Like Eileen says, it was clever, witty, smooth… though like @1JerryG I didn’t notice the pubs (even though I thought about someone’s recent comment on this site regarding 6 tube stations named after pubs when I got ROYAL OAK). Oh well!

   Thanks to Brummie & Eileen.

7. Yes, chewy stuff but all gettable. I liked RAPTOR, ILLNESS and HOME MOVIE (hadn’t heard of ‘homie’); took forever to see the ELEPHANT in the room! Also hadn’t heard of a HIGHBOY. Missed the theme of course, although now it’s been pointed out it’s obvious! Many thanks to Eileen, and to Brummie.

8. Spooner’s catflap @4 – Very good (MERCILESS BAGPIPER)!

9. Not on my wavelength I’m afraid, though fair for the most part. However I’ve only come across HOMIE as US slang and so couldn’t parse 10a, never heard of a HIGHBOY (rather than the equivalent tallboy) and question the description of a 7000km long mountain range as a “spot”.

10. Bit of a struggle for me this morning – I rarely get on Brummie’s wavelength and this morning he and I were not only in a different part of the spectrum but we’d not agreed on the sideband to use either…

    Note to self; got for th 9a before attempting Brummie’s next.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen!

11. Thanks Eileen, although I can’t believe I didn’t spot the pubs (too busy struggling over the 4-letter words in the NE, perhaps) . Isn’t ignored part of the ELEPHANT definition?

12. Spooner’s catflap@4: should NEARLY in your last line not read NEATLY? The symmetry is indeed clever, in line with everything else. As is the MERCILESS BAGPIPER idea – than you.

13. sorry, THANK you

14. Much to enjoy, especially MERCILESS, and the usual thanks to setter and blogger. But to come back to an oft-debated question- is there a generally-accepted convention about the letter indicator for abbreviations like VSOP? I instinctively feel it should be (1,1,1,1), and I don’t think anyone would criticise if that were how it appeared. It obviously isn’t a 4 letter word, and I don’t think anyone would ever use it other than by spelling out the letters individually – it hasn’t morphed from an abbreviation into an independent word, as RADAR has. So is its enumeration a personal preference of the setter, or the Guardian crossword editor, or following some Ximenes-decreed rule from decades back? Genuinely curious.

15. Felt as though I was feeding of scraps to begin with. Reading through 1d and 9ac, I thought – I’ll never get these. And I was right ultimately as VSOP and KEYS were the last two in. But there were certainly some cleverly disguised solutions along the way. I don’t think I’ve ever used the term BAGPIPER, and perhaps I simply didn’t get the theme for admiring pub signs as I’ve headed inside for a pint has of course not been part of the recent itinerary. But come Monday…
    All in all a satisfying solve in the end. Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

16. blaise @11 – thanks, of course it is: I don’t know how I missed that when I previewed the blog – fixed now.

17. 11d MERCILESS was very good and amusing.

    There were several definitions by example which were either not indicated as such (“bays” for HORSES), or the indicator (question mark) was at the other end of the clue from the definition (“Rocker” for CHAIR and “A cold” for ILLNESS) which doesn’t quite work for me.

    (Eileen, you’ve got RAPTOR rather than RAPT as the answer to 15a.)

    Thanks both.

18. Sagittarius @14 – I understand your query about VSOP, but if it was clued as (1,1,1,1) you would have four non-existent words instead of one!

19. Thanks, Lord Jim @17 – amended now.

20. Why do we have a number of letterS – 3/4/5 and so on for abbreviations? VSOP is 1,1,1,1. All setters do the same, but it’s plain wrong.

21. Found this almost like two puzzles – one of which I was on Brummie’s wavelength, and one of which I simply wasn’t. All my fault, I’m sure – add me to the list of people who popped in “GRAY” without thinking about it and then ended up snookered. As nobody has commented on it I assume GIDE is pretty well known – without wanting to insult anyone’s age, is this one of those generational things again?

22. As it was my FOI, I can’t say the enumeration was a problem, but like Sagittarius@14, I just wondered.
    A fun crossword from Brummie and the usual meticulous blog from Eileen.

23. quenbarrow@12. Yes, ‘neatly’ of course: r for t is one of the many recurrent and exasperating miscues that has crept into my typing as I have got older. I was on my way out and didn’t proofread before posting.

24. This was difficult for me. Was tempted to give up after solving 10 clues.

    New: ROYAK OAK – a sprig of oak worn on 29 May to commemorate the restoration of Charles II (1660), who hid in an oak tree after the battle of Worcester (1651).

    Did not understand the money bit in 17d. Had thought gaming was sufficient for playing.

    Failed 1d – KEYS.

    Did not see the theme.

    Thanks both.

25. Thanks Brummie and Eileen
    DNF for me – I revealed VSOP and KEYS. No theme, of course!
    The clue for ELEPHANT rang a bell – this is Anto in the Quiptic on April 1st:
    Reposition the panel, revealing frequently overlooked room feature (8)
    Favourite RAPT.

26. Copmus@5 There is still a pub called ‘Elephant & Castle’ in the area.

    Eileen – I assumed that GLOAMING was an auld Scots word (Harry Lauder came to mind). This gave me GRAY at 17ac causing me to have to reveal 18d. That’s Alasdair of that ilk.

27. There are some excellent clues here requiring serious brain-twisting. I enjoyed it, though I failed on 1d (bunged in an unparsed ‘news’ for ‘ABC’) and 25ac (‘a cold’ for ‘illness’ is too loose IMHO). All good fun, though, and thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

28. I, too, have my doubts about VSOP — I am not convinced that such an acronym (which has not, like ‘radar’, been assimilated in to the language as a word) should appear in a proper crossword grid. The dilemma regarding ‘(1,1,1,1)’ versus ‘(4)’ is a clear indication that something is amiss with the solution. I couldn’t parse HOME MOVIE, either. But otherwise I concur entirely with Eileen’s summary of this jolly good puzzle.

29. I also put G-RAY, and that led to the slightly ridiculous ADAYS instead of ANDES (spot = AD) with the vague justification that ‘high’ could refer to daytime, as in ‘high noon.’

30. Oh, and I never spot the theme – even one as obvious as this one. Wonder why…?

31. Feliks @26 – Collins gives GLOAMING as Scots / poetic, Chambers as ‘poetic, apparently from a short-vowelled derivative of OE glomung, from glom, twilight’.
    I knew it, as a child, from listening to Harry Lauder.

32. The suggested pub-name of THE MERCILESS BAGPIPER was of course tongue in cheek, but then a few years ago I’d have said the same thing about the idea of calling a pub THE SLUG AND LETTUCE, let alone a whole chain of the things. It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal comment reported a few years ago in the Guinness Book of Records when someone set a record for duration bagpipe playing. A neighbour is supposed to have murmured resignedly Thank guidness there’s nae smell…
    I have one serious beef about this puzzle and that concerns the grid. It effectively cuts off separate sub-puzzles in the NW and SE corners, and has four 7 letter words with only three checked letters apiece. I don’t agree with everything Ximenes wrote, but when he argued that a word with a majority of unchecked letters was unfair on the solver I think he was absolutely right.

33. I started quite well but then ground to a halt before finishing most of this. Like muffin @25, I eventually revealed the VSOP/KEYS duo, although I was thinking of words with don in them, doh!

    Every time we have an acrostic abbreviation, we have the same discussion. In Collins we have VSOP and V.S.O.P. in American English. In Wiki, it’s VSOP with an alternative of V.S.O.P. If the abbreviation was only seen in dictionaries as V.S.O.P., I would agree with 1,1,1,1. However, the preferred form is VSOP, so I think (4) is fine, especially as the Guardian Style Guide says to leave out the ‘full points’ in abbreviations … nuff said!

    A good puzzle, although I agree with NeilH @32 that the grid was fairly unfriendly. I liked MERCILESS.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

34. What MB@10 said. I (we) found this very tough – the hardest in ages in fact. Like muffin@26 I revealed KEYS and VSOP – along with ILLNESS (I was trying to take ST of the end) and HOPE – obvious but I’d lost interest by then. I did see the theme – maybe I’d have got on better if I’d been in one with a pint in hand. I liked ANDES. Anyway tomorrow is another day so thanks to Brummie for the puzzle and to Eileen for putting an end to my torture.

35. A few years ago I traced for a near neighbour her direct descent from one of the five Boscobel estate workers, the Penderel brothers, who risked their lives to save the fleeing future King Charles II in 1653 after the Battle of Worcester. The original Boscobel or Royal Oak as it became known is no longer there, in fact the whole oak forest is gone, and just a rather sorry looking tree that apparently came from the original one.
    A nearby Royal Oak pub to us became renamed The Lazy Otter as it is situated beside a river. But I hope there are still plenty of Royal Oak pub signs being dusted down before those hostelries reopen next week…

36. …Battle of Worcester of course 1651, not 1653…

37. A dnf for me, having revealed ILLNESS, VSOP and KEYS. Favourite was ELEPHANT. I thought a few clues were a little dodgy, especially the unflagged definition by example of HORSES and the idea of the ANDES as a “spot”; I see from above that I’m not alone in these opinions. Personally I have no problem with abbreviations such as VSOP being enumerated as (4) rather than (1,1,1,1): firstly because if I wrote it down I wouldn’t use the dots; secondly because the latter enumeration would make the clue very much less challenging. I neither looked for nor spotted the theme.
    S’s c@4: while I’m sure all the themed pub names can indeed be found in London, they exist elsewhere too – the only one that might seem doubtful is E&C, but there are several of them scattered around England. (I’m not sure if the full list could be found in any of the other home nations.)
    Thanks Eileen and Brummie.

38. I think part of today’s “degree of difficulty” stems from several uses of the “think of a word then mutilate it” device, something that has previously aroused commentators’ ire here. There were RAPT, ILLNESS, KEYS, NULL, LUSH and maybe others. It’s quite fair, imo, but certainly seems to slow the solving.

39. [Elephant & Castle is the 178th most popular pub name in the UK, according to this list on Pubs Galore with 25 instances of pubs with that name that are still open (or, at least, likely to reopen on 17 May). Hope & Anchor has 34 (with five more called Anchor & Hope), Malt Shovel 40, Coach & Horses 125, Cross Keys 153 and Royal Oak (the third most popular after Red Lion and Crown) with 426. No Merciless Bagpiper recorded as yet, perhaps fortunately.]

40. On the 1,1,1,1 debate, where does this leave abbreviations that are pronounced either in-full or in-part? For example:

    VTOL stands for ‘Vertical Take-off and Landing’ so really should be 1,2,1 but is alway pronounced ‘Vee toll’ which would be 1,3.

    Likewise VSAT stands for ‘very-small-aperture terminal’ as used in a satellite ground station and is always pronounced ‘Vee sat’. But the ‘sat’ isn’t short for satellite so should THAT be 1,1,1,1 or 1,3?

41. MaidenBartok @40 – Pass! 😉

    I’m proud to report that I’ve just discovered that there is at least one pub with each of the names featured in the puzzle here in Leicestershire. I hope they’ll all be open next week!

42. MB @40; see my comment @33; IMHO, VTOL and VSAT would both be (4) unless in dictionaries points/full stops are added.

43. I didn’t get the theme, but I’m not kicking myself. Even though the pub names in question do look vaguely familiar once Eileen points them out, they didn’t jump out at me. They ranged for me from Elephant and Castle both as tube stop and presumed pub to Malt Shovel??? huhhh? what the blinkinflop is that? Google kept giving me more pubs until I finally found it’s something used in lautering. Okay, I give up.

    Thanks for parsing ANDES, Eileen — I didn’t think of “windy” as an adjective, just as a component of the answer.

    I’m surprised UK solvers are expected to have heard of the Greyhound bus line and not even given a US designation. Same for HOMIE, come to think of it.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

44. Always good to see comments reflecting my own thoughts, particularly WhiteKing @34.

    No problem with the enumeration of VSOP though, that’s how its done.

    Got the theme though and would probably have enjoyed this more if I had been in one such establishment.

45. Valentine @43
    Greyhound buses have featured in popular culture. For instance:
    “Kathy”, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
    “Michigan seems like a dream to me now”
    It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
    I’ve gone to look for America
    (Paul Simon – I admit that when I first heard it, I wondered why they were riding a dog!)
    Also “It happened one night” (Clarke Gable/Claudette Colbert), which I expect a lot of people have seen.

46. Just a quibble on the parsing for 9 across
    VSOP is Very Superior Old Pale, never Special, brandy and indicates a minimum age of 4 years, VS is Very Special indicates a minimum age of 2 years whIlst XO , Extra Old, indicates a minimum of 6 years. Agree brandies can be 20 years old but this does not affect their designation as VS, VSOP, or XO
    Port wine is graded according to types, tawny, white, ruby and aging techniques, Vintage, LBV but never VSOP.

47. Strange how hard it is to remember the name of an Opposition leader, who, though very clever, failed to make much impact on a PM some thought was a bit of a charlatan. One minor quibble – a high “spot” for a massive range of mountains doesn’t seem quite right.

48. Cliveinfrance @46 – confession:

    “Very Special (or Superior) Old Pale – used to indicate that a brandy or port is between 20 and 25 years old” is the entry in my Collins – verbatim.

49. A minor snippet, Eileen, on the distinction between highboy and tallboy. I always understood my father’s tall narrow chest of about a dozen drawers to be a tallboy. But I’ve learned today that it is correctly a HIGHBOY. The tallboy is a wardrobe top above a chest of drawers and there’s also a lowboy to complete the set – think of an occasional table with a drawer or two underneath. The distinctions have, as ever, become eroded with time. Oh, and the BOY is a corruption of the French bois or wood.

    And, whilst on a wood theme, as one living close to Worcester, it was nice to see the ROYAL OAK reference. I suspect 400 of sheffield hatter’s 426 pubs of that name are scattered around our county! Certainly there’s a similar number who claim the King spent the night which implies a rather leisurely flight from the battlefield.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen as ever.

50. [me @45 Clark Gable, of course, not Clarke]

51. PostMark @49 – I’m no dictionary apologist but both Collins and Chambers give, for HIGHBOY, simply ‘a tallboy’.

52. Eileen @51: no apologies sought or required. I was happy with the equation between the two but research fine tuned it.

53. Sorry, I omitted ‘US and Canada’ / ‘North American’, respectively, after HIGHBOY.

54. Thanks, PostMark – we crossed.

55. Valentine @43: Greyhound has been owned by British bus company FirstGroup for many years.

    [I once took a Greyhound bus in Australia from Monkey Mia/Shark Bay to Perth, WA. It took over 12 and during the journey they showed the film “Speed” followed by “The Castle” – the first utterly inappropriate for a bus journey, the second utterly inappropriate for a family audience…]

56. PostMark@49 So, etymologically speaking, an oboe and a highboy are the same thing??

57. [Oboes evolved from hautboys]

58. Petert @56: you had me scratching my head for a moment there but the penny has dropped. I see what you mean – delightful. Though I haven’t seen an etymology for highboy, only for the second half of the word with the high seemingly taken as given.

59. When I had to reveal THE HAGUE, and NARCISSUS, I knew I was in trouble. Too difficult in places for me but loved MERCILESS. Tough grid, tough luck.

    Ta Eileen & Brummie

60. Postmark@49 I’m sure those Worcs landlords would want to entice the punters in again on 17th May to their ubiquitous Royal Oaks with stories about thisbetheplace where Prince Charles spent the night precariously hidden in the leaf canopy, hiding from the Parliamentarian soldiers. But the actual oak was definitely in the grounds of Boscobel House in Staffordshire. A mere 10 miles from Wolverhampton. Maybe nearer to Brummie’s preferred watering holes…

61. A bit of a slog for me as Brummie usually is but it was not without its joy with clues like the now familiar ELEPHANT, RAPT, and ANCHOR. Thanks to both.

62. An enjoyable puzzle, matching Brummie’s usual standard.
    This talk of pubs and COACH remind me of the cartoon in which Andy Capp is on a coach trip, with the driver announcing sights of interest.
    Driver: We are now passing one of the oldest pubs in the country.
    Andy: WHY?

63. Eileen@48
    Thanks for your clarification, my Collins is in the UK and I am in France awaiting the end of quarantine before returning.
    Collins New English Dictionary 1997 edition does not refer to any age, but still mentions port, (very special (or superior) old pale, used of brandy or port)
    Collins online now has
    very superior (or special) old pale: used to indicate that the youngest brandy in a blend is at least four years old
    Reference source Collins English Dictionary.
    My source was Martell quoting the official BNIC definition from 1983 approved by the French government, which only uses special in VS category.
    Looks like the use of VSOP in port is no longer allowed. The only VSOP Port that I can find is a brand from Martinique which is actually a Rhum

64. Not at all on the setter’s wavelength today. I agree with comments above that clueing VSOP as (4) is as good as cheating: I might just about tolerate such enumeration for an acronym, but definitely not for an unpronounceable abbreviation. I struggled (well, actually, I failed) with the various clues requiring decapitation of words and I totally missed the theme (which is not at all unusual). So, overall, a bit of a wash-out for me. I did breeze through The Times puzzle though, so not a complete dead loss.

65. Cliveinfrance – my Collins is rather old: I won it as a Guardian Prize and I’m loth to discard it. 🙂

66. Ronald @60: we have/we had an oak tree; ergo we probably had a king. Good enough argument in these sometimes authenticity-lite days 😀

67. Thanks to those who commented on my query and apologies to those who feel they have been round these tracks many times. I have no inherent problem with a generally-accepted convention that VSOP should be clued as a 4 letter word; there are plenty of other conventions in crossword land and solvers just have to pick them up. My question was more about whether such a general convention existed, or if it was particular to this setter or this newspaper. I think I am convinced by Robi@33 that the convention appears to be that an abbreviation that is listed in a dictionary without full stops after the letters – and in Chambers that means all abbreviations – can be treated as a word. On that basis a pH value is 2,5, RSSPCC is a 6 letter word, but HP Sauce is probably 1,1,5, and A A Milne is certainly 1,1,5.

    To drofle@18 – if it were clued 1,1,1,1 that wouldn’t be 4 non-existent words, but 4 perfectly respectably extant letters.
    beaulieu@37 – I don’t see that the enumeration letters should be affected by whether it makes the clue easier or harder, which would be a matter of opinion any way.

    Many thanks again to all who provided thoughts.

68. [Re oboe/hautbois/hautboy, this is from Purcell’s “Sound the trumpet”, from “Come ye sons of art”:
    Sound the trumpet, sound the trumpet, sound the trumpet!
    Sound, sound, sound the trumpet till around
    You make the list’ning shores rebound.
    On the sprightly hautboy play
    All the instruments of joy
    That skillful numbers can employ,
    To celebrate the glories of this day.

69. Tony Santucci @51 – I used to find Brummie “a bit of a slog” but have recently found myself a bit closer to his or her wavelength. Though that doesn’t imply that I was able to finish. VSOP was beyond my reach – the nearest I could get was ATOP, but only because I couldn’t solve KEYS either.

    There was a theme? (Mine @39 might imply that I got it, but I posted that link with little time to spare before hurrying to meet friends at a pub.)

    I was struck by the wordplay in 8a: ‘lout overturned’ – my recollection is that the word YOB was created from a reversal of BOY , and this clue reverses the reversal, but I may be wrong.

70. [Sagittarius @67: “My question was more about whether such a general convention existed, or if it was particular to this setter or this newspaper. ”

    I cannot answer for other newspapers, but it is certainly not peculiar to this setter. The most recent time this Bunfight of the Pedantries (as Tom Wolfe did not call it) occurred was, I think, on 23rd March, in a puzzle set by Tramp, in which, as part of an ABBA-theme, Tramp enumerated ‘SOS’ as (3) rather than (1,1,1). It was blogged by loonapick of this parish, who registered an objection to the (3) enumeration. I “have been round these tracks many times,” and being by nature rather libertarian in such matters, I really cannot see the point. Sorry]

71. Time was limited this morning as this was my first day back at the office since last September, so I ended up revealing THE HAGUE, BLEEPER and MERCILESS, the latter a fine clue that deserved better. I share DrWhatsOn’s dislike of think of a word and mangle it clues, with ILLNESS being a prime example, while NULL didn’t even hint at what the first letter of the unknown word should be swapped for.

    As nobody else seems to have responded to Ben+T@21, I will admit to having studied a couple of works by GIDE for my French A level in about 1969. Didn’t enjoy them and have read no others, and I believe his reputation has suffered since then.

    Favourite the ELEPHANT in the room.

72. I saw a theme, but unfortunately it registered as “London tube stations” with me. I even got KEYS by connecting it to CROSS, despite the actual station being Crossharbour on the DLR. I missed the COACH and HORSES pair.
    Fun puzzle with ILLNESS being last in and partially cheated. RAPT was cleverly done.
    Thanks, Brummie and Eileen.

73. [gladys @71
    I’ve read (in translation) The vatican cellars, which I didn’t like at all, and The counterfeiters, which I liked a bit better up to the rather unsatisfactory ending.]

74. I’m inclined to agree with Sagittarius@67 about the enumeration of VSOP, and acknowledge the recollection of Spooner’s catflap with regard to SOS. However, the latter is not only a well-known distress call but also the title and refrain of a song by one of the most famous pop bands ever, and therefore slightly easier for the solver.

    My enjoyment of spirits encompasses MALT but VSOP doesn’t quite so much trip off my tongue. Isn’t this the sort of thing that should be sorted out by the editor? Is there not a policy about clues/solutions like this where enumeration is either potentially unfair or a giveaway?

75. [malt is, of course, what malt whisk(e)y is made from, rather than the spirit itself, though I suppose the term “single malt” is much used.]

76. I made a good start this morning, getting WETLAND straight away, and was looking forward to rattling through this one… but then I ran aground and really struggled, and then I’ve been too busy for the rest of the day to get any further with it, so gave up with more than half the grid unfilled. I was definitely not on Brummie’s wavelength today at all. Shame, because looking at the solutions, I think there are a lot of good clues in there. And thanks, Eileen, for the erudite explanations.

    I initially had GRAY but was wary of writing it in – it didn’t feel right. I admit I had to look up three-letter names of fish, but IDE seemed a lot more likely. (gladys @71 – I read La Porte Etroite for A-level in about 1990 and enjoyed it, and I’ve read a few more Gide novels since then and enjoyed those too. I think you’re right that he’s very much out of fashion now though.)

    Like others, I was unsure about the enumeration of VSOP but I think the clue is very fair (and pretty neat), so it should have been gettable. I’m not complaining.

77. widdersbel @76. “…should have been gettable” maybe. But plenty of experienced solvers here didn’t get it. So “very fair (and pretty neat)” seems pretty generous on your part.

78. Widdersbel @76: Re GIDE, whilst he is, as has been pointed out, fairly passe, the problem Brummie faced was filling in G-D-. I can understand a reluctance to give up on GLOAMING; maybe the solution might have been to find an alternative to ANDES. But, once you’ve got G-D-, of the 7 words that came up when I plugged it into a grid filler, GODS is the only one likely to be in common usage. Mind you, quite a lot you could do with GODS…

79. widdersbel @76 (cont.) …and in fact I’m not sure why you have commented along those lines at all. I spent a lot of time attempting to solve the Guardian crossword when I was working, but very often I was “too busy for the rest of the day to get any further with it, so gave up with more than half the grid unfilled”, and consequently didn’t often comment here until I retired. Perhaps I was too reticent.

    I’m not saying that failing to complete the grid disqualifies anyone from commenting, just that telling us that a clue is “pretty neat” when you haven’t solved it yourself is “pretty” presumptive. (Apologies if VSOP was one of the solutions you got before looking up “three-letter names of fish”.)

    For what it’s worth, I got GIDE “pretty” quickly, but I was a little worried about writing it in because there are, as you now know, a lot of fish out there in crossword land! Hope to see you again soon – my bark is worse than my bite.

80. [Mark @78. “…quite a lot you could do with GODS…” TRUTH? WOUNDS? AVE US?]

81. [SH @80
    High point of theatre?]

82. [muffin: Nice one! Re yours @75, I think MALT is pretty much a metonym for “single malt whisk(e)y”, isn’t it? It’s in Chambers anyway!]

83. [SH 82
    Yes, I admitted as much, I think. It still offends my pedantic soul, though!]

84. sheffield hatter – Yeah, maybe, but I prefer to err on the side of generosity. It’s the enumeration rather than the wordplay that seems to have caught most people out.

    PostMark – Indeed. I didn’t mean to give the impression that I was criticising Brummie’s choice. It comes down to the old question of general knowledge vs esoterica, but I don’t think GIDE is too obscure, even if unfashionable – again, I prefer to err on the side of generosity.

85. sheffield hatter – just seen your follow-up comment @79… no, I didn’t get VSOP, but both VS=’opposed to’ and OP=’work’ are pretty hackneyed crossword tropes, which is why I think it should have been eminently gettable, despite the quibble over the enumeration. My immediate reaction on seeing the solution was to kick myself. Then I read all the comments here…

    I’ve never been reticent about commenting on internet forums. This may be considered a shortcoming, but I don’t mind putting my opinions out there – and I don’t object to my opinions being challenged either, so feel free to tell me I’m wrong any time you like! (As an aside, I used to be a regular commenter here, many years ago, but fell out of the habit of doing crosswords regularly. Now I’m trying to get back into them, and I’m very glad to see fifteensquared still going strong.)

86. [PostMark @78: As I was late on the musical link, I’m going to try harder today.

    Obvioulsy The Gloaming:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w7cjXAtpJ4 ]

87. [MB @86
    I didn’t mention it earlier, but I do have 3 albums by The Gloaming (are there more?) I find them curiously hypnotic.]

88. 10a: HOMEY is the normal spelling in North America, not HOMIE.
    13a: No chance for non-Brits here unless historians.
    18a: Awful clue for non-Brits on many counts.
    20a: Totally disagree that it is double-definition.
    Thanks for the puzzle and annotations.

89. Les @88
    I sympathise with your problems with the Brits ( and I don’t think I’ve seen HOMIE either), but I totally disagree with you that 20a isn’t a double definition; a cross is a type of punch thrown by a boxer, and a cross is how a teacher indicates that an answer is wrong…

90. [muffin @87: There are three studio albums and one live, all on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label.]

91. [Thanks MB – I may try to track the other one down.]

92. [muffin @81 & sh @80: I list you that way around because Gods in the theatrical sense was, whilst not the first connection to come to mind, actually the strongest. Perhaps because of formative years spent there in the old Birmingham Town Hall which was a wonderful concert venue. Mind you, the new Symphony Hall does us proud.

    Totally irrelevant snippet but we found it interesting at the time. A hazard of sitting in the gods there was the possibility of noise intrusion from the flocks of starlings returning to roost in the roof of the aforementioned Town Hall. Birmingham was one of the cities wherein the early development of radar showed concentric rings expanding around major cities in the morning and then contracting or ‘zeroing in’ again in the evening. And the answer turned out to be vast populations of starlings leaving to feed in the surrounding countryside before returning at nightfall!]

93. widdersbel @84/85. I appreciate generosity towards setters as much as anyone, but if the enumeration is catching a lot of people out, how is the clue “fair”? Shouldn’t the editor step in and say, even if there is no policy on this matter, that some things are hors de concourse? RSVP, SOS, USSR, RADAR (maybe a different category, as others have mentioned), but where do you draw the line? If VSOP is OK, what about VDQS (vin délimité de qualité supérieure, to save anyone looking it up)?

    And when it comes to wordplay: yes, I looked at V or VS, but when the word clearly ends in OP we’re not left with much – when it’s a four-letter word. (ATOP was as near as I could get, as I mentioned @69.) In other words, there’s interplay between enumeration and wordplay.

    I don’t mind saying that I’m beat, but I want to be beat fair and square. When I saw Eileen’s blog I thought, well, ok, yeah, but on further thought I felt a bit let down. Feel free to kick yourself, but I’m not prepared to go through that sort of contortion to let the setter & editor off on this occasion. (Of course, if I’d spotted the theme and realised that KEYS were required to go with CROSS, I’d have been singing Brummie’s praises. 😉 )

94. [PM @92
    Our friend in Köln took us to their concert hall to hear a (free) rehearsal. The hall is at the west side of the bridge with all the love-locks on it (unless they’ve now been deemed a hazard), but a layer down. Police were stationed at the top to prevent people walking across the ceiling while the rehearsal was in progress!]

95. Les @88. I’m sure I’ve seem HOMIE but not HOMEY, but I could be deluding myself.

    muffin @89. Totally agree: a CROSS is ‘that (which) shows something’s wrong’.

    Mark @92. Thanks for the “irrelevant snippet” about starlings. Is there a song by Half Man Half Biscuit?

    widdersbel – sorry for being so challenging and possibly seeming hostile. I like it when setters mislead us – what else are we here for? – but when I find an element of the clue unfair I tend to get riled when someone says it’s “very fair”. Clearly VSOP was “gettable”, but I’m a long way short of being convinced that the clue was “pretty neat”.

96. Re VSOP: I still think clueing it as one 4-letter ‘word’ is right, rather than 1,1,1,1. Yes, it’s tricky, but on the other hand I felt pleased when I got it.

97. By ‘neat’ I mean two things: one, the surface reads well; two, it’s concise (wordy clues are a personal bugbear). I think both apply here, but I’m happy to be challenged on this or anything else – not taken as hostility, and sorry to have riled you!

98. Lord Jim @17 & Beaulieu @37. Sorry to be a bit late responding, but your comment re “unflagged definition by example of HORSES” doesn’t seem to have been dealt with. I’ve probably read more about racehorses than most on this forum, and it is not unusual for bay to be used not just as a description of a horse’s coat but also to substitute for the word horse itself. An example is in the old song Camptown Races: “somebody bet on the bay”. Ok, it could be objected that this is shorthand for bay horse, but it is also used in reports of races, in bloodstock accounts and captions on paintings and photos, in phrases like “Sheikh Mohammed’s bay” (and not where the context is to distinguish from the same owner’s grey or chestnut horse, but simply to avoid writing the word horse repetitively), so I would say that an indication of definition by example is not required in this instance.

99. As usual, I found Brummie’s puzzle difficult, but I appreciated the quality of his clues.

    Re VSOP: Robi@33 suggests a workable rule for enumerating such clues. Could we resolve the issue by asking (a) Hugh to issue a rule for Guardian crosswords, or (b) Gaufrid to issue a rule for solvers who comment on fifteensquared? Then, as long as the setter follows that rule, no further discussion is needed.

    Re British pub names, my favourite pubs in Ottawa and Vancouver were both called the Elephant and Castle (sadly no longer there), and Ottawa has a chain of Royal Oak pubs scattered throughout the city. No Merciless Bagpiper, regrettably.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen for the equally entertaining puzzle and blog.

100. [Les @88: Yes, as non-Brits we sometimes have a handicap but these are British crosswords. We are guests at this party and I refuse to complain about clues being too British. I don’t want to be that person who buys a house next to the fire station and then gripes about the sirens.]

101. [ Tony, as a Canuck I couldn’t agree more. I look on it as an opportunity to learn more about many things British. For example, I discovered Cockney rhyming slang through these crosswords and while they continue to add to the difficulty of solving, I think they’re a hoot so I say keep them coming. ]

102. Difficult and obscure if one isn’t English.

103. sheffield hatter @98: so in Camptown Races, “somebody bet on the bay” just means “somebody bet on the horse”? Well I suppose that was the logical bet if there was only one horse in the race…

104. Gladys @71 et al – thanks for the discussion on Gide. It’s always vexing to come across a name that was clearly well-known at one point but that you’ve never come across – I’m never sure if I’ve somehow missed a huge cultural figure somewhere along the line. Given my own French never really got much beyond the level of “la plume de ma tante” I feel like I can let myself off in this instance!

105. Ok, I agree with those taking me to task for ‘complaints’ about the Britishness of some of the clues. These are, after all, puzzles by British newspapers specifically for British readers. I’m sure some of my puzzles in my books are unfair to non-North-Americans. I guess some of my griping is a hold-over from trying to solve puzzles in Guardian and Times puzzle books where the only solution given is a completely filled in grid. The books do not include anything like the wonderful annotations found here. My own books, besides full annotations of the solutions, include KEYED-ANSWER-LOOKUP, a helpful tool I came up with, which allows you to find the answer to a single clue without compromising the whole puzzle. Each book has a dozen or so pages of answers ordered in such a way as to ensure that no two answers in the same puzzle appear close to one another. The user creates a key from a code specific to the puzzle and the number, down or across of the clue. Then, using that key, you find the answer. I wish all puzzle books used this scheme. So far, only one other author, that I know of, has added this facility to his puzzle books. I hold no patent on it, and freely offer help to any setter who would like to use it. For reference, see Can-Am Cryptic Crosswords on Amazon.

106. Please don’t water down the Briticisms.

107. My brother lives in Bay Horse House (in the Lune Valley), once a pub. That ties in two of the themes above…….. I like to comment from time to time, though I always read the posts, about 3 weeks behindhand.

108. Good to hear from you, robinistanbul.

     I have pleasant memories of walks in the Lune Valley.

109. Thanks to you, the ineffable Eileen, for your friendly comment – so late in the day! Chapeau

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