Guardian Cryptic 28,508 by Brummie

95 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,508 by Brummie”

1. A stiff challenge in parts but all clued fairly, with some lovely anagrams and hidden answers, such as LEPROSE, AEGIS and EARDRUM. Nice link between the PROJECTIONIST, who almost suffered MARTYRDOM as a suspected Protestant. Also plenty of theatre/cinema references including Ernest Borgnine’s wonderful Marty. Smiled at OVERLAP, POLEMICAL and BURGLAR. Great fun.

   Ta Brummie & manehi

2. Thanks Brummie and manehi
   Smoother than Brummie often is. Favourite CAPRICCIO.
   I didn’t like 17a. The first definition is a poor attempt at a joke, and the second is very loose indeed.
   27 was very much a “guess, then parse”. MARTY might have been a fine film, but you aren’t going to say “Oscar winner – that’ll be Marty then”, especially as the film was made in 1955!

3. A fair challenge but many helpful longer clues. Particularly liked OVERLAP and BURGLAR.

   Spent too long trying to see how PROJECTIONIST was long in decline, without the obvious coming to mind.

   So thanks to manehi and Brummie.

   (PS what’s going on here today? I’m normally about the 50th to post! Where is everyone?)

4. I found 17a to be a bit iffy, too (muffin@2). And there were a lot of anagrams! But I enjoyed this overall. There did seem to be a bit of a movie/cinema theme thing in there.
   In 1d, I am not sure ‘oh’ is an ‘interjection’; I think it’s an ‘ejaculation’, but that terminology has, understandably, fallen out of use.
   Thanks to today’s blogger and to Brummie.

5. Enjoyable puzzle. I lIked CAPRICCIO, LAGOS, PHARAOHS, MOROCCO, AT BOTTOM, SCOUNDREL, BURGLAR.

   New MARTY (1955 film); TUMBLER = a pivoted piece in a lock that holds the bolt until lifted by a key.

   Like Ark Lark @3, I spent too long trying to see how PROJECTIONIST was long in decline, without the obvious coming to mind.

6. Not as hard as yesterday but I did struggle. The anagrams helped a lot but I had to make use of aids to get a fair number of answers. I did manage to parse most of them once I got them – but not all.

   Favourites: POLEMICAL, BURGLAR, CAPRICCIO, TROUPE

   and like AlanC @ 1 liked the hidden clues

   Thanks Brummie and manehi

7. Nice crossword: can’t find a theme but enjoyed the misdirection. Had fun trying to “mix” ONLINE and SO SPREAD before MASON-DIXON LINE dawned and I realised I’d got the wrong anagrind/fodder, and I also had problems with trying to make PROJECTIONIST more complicated than it was, and shoehorning something about platypuses into EUCALYPTI.

8. There are some suggestions on the Guardian threads that there’s a theme but, unless it is CINEMATOGRAPHY and associated references noted by AlanC @1, I’m not really seeing it.

   Funnily enough muffin@2, I found myself wincing at a few of Brummie’s surfaces today so I’m not sure I see it the same way as you. The clues for WEST POINT, HURRICANE LAMP, COCHLEA, LEPROSE and EARDRUM (Sorry, AlanC) all left me a bit cold, I’m afraid.

   That said, I liked AT BOTTOM, thought AEGIS was excellent and MASON-DIXON LINE in a class of its own. And it provides my eardrum for this morning, Mark Knopfler’s Sailing to Philadelphia. A big recommend to anyone who hasn’t heard it before. And quite impressive to get Mason-Dixon Line seamlessly into a song lyric.

   Thanks Brummie and manehi

   Thanks

9. A relief after yesterday to read smooth surfaces.

   Not used to the construction AT BOTTOM for basically but no doubt others have.

   Bifd in MARTYRDOM for the crossers but not familiar with the film.

   Liked the somewhat disgusting OVERLAP and, unlike muffin, rather admired the quirky PROJECTIONIST.

   Many thanks, both.

10. Thanks to manehi for sorting out MARTYRDOM. I’d never heard of the film (which could link with 9D/17A, but I can’t see a theme otherwise). Delightful penny-drop moments with BURGLAR and the “transformed comic character”. Enjoyed this one.

11. PostMark @8: Thanks so much for the lovely song – seems it’s the only thing we can agree on today!

12. Saw PROJECTIONIST as ‘Mercator’s Occupation’ and then, like others tried to see synonyms for ‘long’ and ‘decline’ as part of the word play. So occupation is doing double duty as part of both definitions. Found the puzzle enjoyable and relatively straightforward overall, so thanks to Brummie and to Manehi for the elucidation.

13. It took me ages to get started but then a number of answers just tumbled in.

    I liked POLEMICAL, SCOUNDREL and PHARAOHS.

    [Many years ago while doing a pre-university temporary job, I became a PROJECTIONIST at a medical conference. Some of the films were fairly explicit and had an 18 certificate. I should have been sacked as I was only 17 at the time. Some doctors got very bad-tempered when the film occasionally got stuck – not my fault, as I remember!]

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

14. PM @8
    I did say “than he often is”. His surfaces can be pretty much meaningless!

15. I thought there might be an actor theme, with CHILD, WEST, MASON DIXON, CAPRI(cio) MORO(cco) (various forenames) alongside CINEMATOGRAPHY, REPERTORY, TROUPE, (AT) BOTTOM and PROJECTIONIST but I may be stretching the POINT.

16. Thanks for the blog , only got 5 across clues to start with bot the downs seemed to be much easier for some reason.
    Is LARA the one who scored 500 once and someone missed a chance to get him out on zero ?
    I would say that projectionists are recently in decline rather than long.
    OM is always amusing, probably the most prestigious honour, only 24 members at any one time, including Prince Charles. Could someone explain the word merit for him ?

17. AlanC @ 15 , very impressive, like your music theme once. I thought of films or ears but could only get two of each.

18. OH for the DAYS when you could go to the CINEMA without having your EARDRUMS ABUSED. Apart from that I can’t see a theme.

    (Just seen AlanC’s suggestion – nice thinking, but I wonder if actors’ names are almost as theme-prone as rock bands? 😉 )

    Liked the fair oh’s, the rogue nurse and the ‘wind-resistant car’ – very nicely misdirected. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

19. Thanks Roz @ 17. My examples did feel slightly forced though.

20. A few tricky ones today and I had to look up a few. Missed 16 completely as not familiar with either the phrase or the character. Thanks Manehi & Brummie.

21. A bit of a mixture of some really nice clues and some that raised the odd eyebrow. I liked POLEMICAL and MASON-DIXON LINE in particular.

    I agree that some of the surfaces verged on the nonsensical. “Issue country’s first sheltered housing local opening” – what?

    In 6, 25 WEST POINT, is “for the making of army officers” meant to be the definition, or is “for” just a link word with the definition being “the making of army officers”? Either way it seems a bit odd.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

22. Thank heaven Paul wasn’t clueing 12a or 16d.

23. Paul @ 20 AT BOTTOM is more commonly said as ” at heart ” I think, but they both mean basically.
    The character Bottom does seem to turn up an awful lot in crosswords.

24. pnin @ 22, that was another paired theme I noticed but I was too polite to mention it.

25. Roz@16: Brian Lara actually got 501. And your recollection is almost right: bowled on 12 but it was adjudged a no ball and dropped on 18. The commentator presciently observed “he’ll probably go on to make a hundred now”

26. PostMark @8: You beat me to it! Mark Knopfler’s wonderful ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’ was on my mind as well. Gorgeous song and a reminder that at-heart, Knopfler always was more folk than pop.

    I’m wondering if today and yesterday was the result of one of the Grauniad’s typos – maybe they mixed-up the ‘Monday’ and ‘Tuesday’ puzzles because this was up-there with usual Monday level (or maybe, as with France, we should call it ‘Monday Plus?).

    Absolutely loved PROJECTIONIST which was my FOI – I was obviously on Brummie’s wavelength today!

    Thanks Brummie and manehi!

27. Thank you MrPostMark @ 25 , I do remember someone telling me about it at the time, in this country , even possibly Birmingham ???

28. Thanks for the lovely song, PM@8. I thought I knew most of Mark KNopfler’s work, but I had never heard it before.

    It provoked me to search for this!

29. [muffin@28: timeless wit but scarily poignant in the light of current attitudes both in the US and wider afield. Lehrer’s songs often make me think of the creations of the Two Ronnies. He’s more intellectual but they have in common the ability to create very clever, very witty, quite cheeky pastiches of well known musical pieces.]

    Roz @27: you will never be allowed to plead ignorance in connection with a future cricketing clue! You are correct – Edgabston. And you probably knew it was 1994 😀

30. Like Gladys@7 I got my fodder and anagrind the wrong way round for 3d until the answer dawned, and I liked Mercator’s occupation but also struggled to make sense of the rest of the clue. I needed manehi’s blog to see the discontentment meaning and it’s now my favourite clue. Thanks to him and Brummie.

31. [ Mr PostMark @ 29 my cricket knowledge is very sketchy but i am good at remembering things. I do remember the boy who insisted on telling me things about cricket, including this. At a push I would have said 93 so close. ]

32. Thanks for the blog manehi, and thanks Brummie – I’m with AlanC @1 in finding this tough but fair. Some splendid surfaces, and as essexboy @18 notes, some lovely misdirection. (MaidenBartok @26 – I’d rate this as tougher than the usual Monday fare from the likes of Vulcan, but that could just be a wavelength thing.)

    Glad to see I’m not the only one who was troubled by 17ac – like others, I assumed the definition to be “Mercator’s occupation” and then struggled to make the rest of the clue work. I decided in the end it must be a double definition, as parsed by manehi, but it’s a bit vague.

    To those who overseas solvers who regularly complain about British cultural references (in a British newspaper!), I hope that you’re satisfied with the inclusion of 6,25 and 3dn today. Luckily I’ve heard of West Point so that one came easily (I wonder how many US solvers are familiar with Sandhurst?) but it took a long while for me to twig 6,25 – mainly because I was looking for a UK-based solution (eg Watford Gap, Hadrian’s Wall, though obviously neither of those fit).

    I’m happy with MARTY – the list of Best Picture Oscar winners currently stands at 93, so that’s fewer to memorise than the elements in the periodic table, if you’re thinking of going on Pointless. Firmly within the realms of general knowledge in my book. And Marty is widely regarded as a genuine classic, so not all that obscure despite its age.

33. widdersbel @32
    My first attempt at 6,25 was to try to justify SANDHURST!

34. muffin @33 – Ha! Vindicated! (I’m not complaining about the inclusion of US cultural references, by the way – it’s all general knowledge and fair game.)

35. So the theme is pairs of words that OVERLAP somehow? At a stretch, as well as the obvious ones, you also have, geometrically, POINT and LINE (also both American).

36. I had a few themed pairs but I was not convinced really. Think AlanC@15 has the beat idea.

37. This basic vectors of puzzle were almost the diametric opposite of yesterdays’ brain-strainer – an attractive grid – the answers flowed in almost by themselves – and it was rapidly completed (a quarter of the time for yesterday). I didn’t find anything to quibble about, but I see that many others did.
    Thanks Brummie, for a fun puzzle.

38. Dr. WhatsOn, would you like to explain further, for those of us too stupid to see even the obvious ones?

39. I’m sure I’ve seen discontenting as burgling before, but anyway it’s pretty cute.
    Roz@16, how long ago were there projectionists running actual film through a projector? I suppose ‘long vs ‘recently’ is subjective.

40. There have been comments from time to time about whether something was too British for non-Brits. I enjoy those, congratulate myself when I get them and shrug when I don’t. But I’m also struck by how much solvers are expected to know about the US. (And not about Australia or Canada.) In particular, every American school child learns about the Mason-Dixon line. I lived just south of it in Maryland for five schoolchild years and was well aware of the differences it made in my community. But it seems a bit specialized for folks from elsewhere, as do West Point or Michael Jordan the basketball star. I’ve never heard of Brian Lara the cricket start, but fair enough, this is a British puzzle.

    In DAYS, “daze” strikes me as one of those verbs that you never see without its D. (“Did that daze you?”)

    Anybody else try to work “long in decline” into the wordplay for PROJECTIONIST instead of part of the definition?

    I never would have parsed PHARAOHS, thanks manehi.

    I’m not sure that an EARDRUM

    SCOUNDREL minus S

41. widdersbel @32 and others.

    I tend to think of MARTY as slightly more famous than some other Best Picture films from that era on account of it being pivotal to the plot of the film Quiz Show (1994) – if I remember rightly, it’s the question they ‘force’ him to get wrong, and he begs them to make it someone else. But maybe that’s just me…

42. Oops, posted by mistake. I wanted to say that I’m not sure than an EARDRUM is a device — doesn’t that mean something made by people?

    “Nurse’s cold” contains only one S, which you need to make SCOUNDREL. So I don’t understand either “not satisfactory at first” in the clue or “minus one of the S letters” in the blog.Val

43. grantinfreo@39, I am really not sure when actual film reels died out , but I would still say it is fairly recent, rather than long ago .

44. NurSe’S cold seems two have S twice .

45. Gladys@38 I was referring to what had already been mentioned, plus COCHLEA/EARDRUM.

46. … but frankly, if I had to put money on it, I’d say it was a big Rorschach test with no intended theme at all.

47. PROJECTIONIST reminded me of that hilarious episode in Swift’s masterpiece.

48. Oops again. Post #40 is mine, but I somehow managed to obliterate my identification, so the other Oops must have been puzzling.

49. Thanks all for explaining that, as I suspected, there was an Oscar-winning film called Marty. I don’t particularly mind clues like 27a where the wordplay and the crossers help you towards the answer even if you don’t have the relevant GK.
    I’m also relaxed about linking Mr Mercator to the cinema, though that may be my age. And there are some delightful clues in here, probably my favourites being ARSENAL and HURRICANE LAMP.
    Ta both.

50. Enjoyable overall with very easy-to-read surfaces — I found this fairly straightforward and solved a good number of clues by definition alone. Muffin @2 summed up much of my experience — “guess then parse.”
    [widderersbel @32: As an overseas solver I never complain about British puzzles being too British — that’s like buying a house next to a fire station and complaining about sirens — I enjoy such “British” references, the slang in particular.]
    [ roz @44: the extra “s” gets removed by “not satisfactory at first.”]
    Thanks to all.

51. wonderstevie @41 – now you mention it, I think Quiz Show must be why I’m familiar with Marty. That’s a brilliant film. (Quiz Show, I mean – I’ve not seen Marty!)

    Tony Santucci @50 – I think you’re in the majority with that view, but you do see some complaints occasionally. Or maybe I’m being over-sensitive.

52. i@40 (or Valentine@42)
    I’ve certainly often been IN a daze, without its D. (I assume you were referring to a D at the end rather than at the beginning, because I suspect none of us has clapped eyes on an AZE.)
    I found this relatively easy in that it was one I could finish between going to bed and going to sleep, which is why I can comment relatively early for once. (I’m in the bottom right of Mijnheer M’s famous projection. He was Dutch, wasn’t he? – I haven’t looked him up to check.)
    Anyway, I liked it. But then I usually disagree with the vast majority of the critics on here and at the G, so maybe my approbation is fairly worthless.

53. Unlike others, I found yesterday much easier. This was a disappointing DNF for me by a considerable distance. I put it down to being confined to bed on account of a dodgy mussel last night, and feeling pretty ropey, with the ‘Aztec two-step’ very much the order of the day (aficionados of the 1970 World Cup will understand).
    When I went through the blog to look at my missing answers much gnashing of teeth, particularly 7d, where I chucked in the towel assuming I was looking for an anagram of some obscure Australian mammal.
    Thanks Brummie and Manehi for the lesson.

54. [ …and thank you, PostMark@8, for the Mark Knopfler/James Taylor song. It was new to me, but I know I’ll be playing it a few times more.]

55. HYD@53: I noticed that the anagram material for 7d contained PLATY… and was disconcerted to find that the rest if the beast didn’t fit.

56. Gladys @55 Yes, I even started to write it until I ran out of letters. I did consider coloring in the two offending black squares.

57. Roz @44 – we’re instructed to lose one S from the mix – “not satisfactory at first”

58. Thank you RK and Tony @ 50, I was actually replying to Valentine @42 who thought there was one S and could not understand the extraction.
    HYD@53 , we are only meant to eat mussels when there is an R in the month.

59. [widdersbel @51: There are regular complaints about too many “Britishisms,” a term I find amusing. The King’s English is British by definition; those of us in the former colonies use our own versions of it, hence any “isms” are ours.]

60. I thought the theme was movies:
    Aegis
    Pharaoh
    Hurricane
    West point
    Scoundrel
    Burglar
    Marty
    Arsenal
    Morocco
    Eucalyptus

61. ilippu @60
    The only one of those I’ve heard of is Marty, in fact, but I do remember Hope and Crosby comparing themslves to Webster’s Dictionary in The road to Morocco…..

62. Widdersbel @32 et al.: I did notice that there was an unusually large amount of US-centric general knowledge here, and I was wondering whether that would get comment. For the record, when I post something noting the Britishisms here, that isn’t meant as a complaint–I know darned well that one expects Britishisms in a British puzzle published in a British newspaper! I just find it worthy of comment, as I’m fascinated by the differences between our brands of language and culture. And yes, I’ve heard of Sandhurst.

    That having been said, it feels like MASON-DIXON LINE should be less fair for you guys than WEST POINT. And while not everyone has heard of Michael Jordan, that clue nicely misdirected me to think of the country.

    For those who haven’t seen it, Marty is indeed a wonderful movie. It comes around on the old-movie channel here (TCM) every so often, so even though it’s twenty years older than I am, I’ve seen it a couple times.

63. Nice gentle solve, but as I’d never come across the MASON DIXON LINE before, had to look that one up and bung it in, as LOI, naturally enough..

64. That was a pleasant (and fairly easy) solve; for once it helped to be an American, what with 6,25 and 3 dn coming in right away! Thanks Brummie and manehi.

65. ilippu @60: well spotted but nho any of those I’m afraid. Do they have something in common (other than that)? Seems like a strange group to choose for a theme.

66. From the list @60 I think Hurricane is about the boxer Ruben Carter, made famous by the Dylan song on Desire.

67. Thanks Roz @66 for the reminder. Not the biggest fan of Dylan, but ‘Hurricane’ is superb.

68. Thanks Brummie & manehi, I enjoyed that.
    It conjured up thematic wisps, a cinematic flavour with martial overtones, some paired words as Dr WhatsOn@35 and others have suggested, possibly along a north-south divide? But it may just all be capricious fantasy, projected shadows in Plato’s Cave.

69. As an American who has been solving, or attempting to solve, Guardian and Times puzzles for over forty years, one of the enriching pleasures to me has been translating the British references. I have I added to my store of knowledge innumerable examples of British spelling, sports, idioms, place names, and history. I too was surprised at the American references in today’s offering. I hope it doesn’t become too common.
    Although I always read this blog, it’s the first time I have posted a comment.
    Jim in DC

70. Valentine @40/42/48: I recognised the distinctive style of “i” straight away, so I wasn’t DAZEd or confused by the oops! 😉

    Like Gert Bycee @52, I’ve been in a daze (noun), but struggled to think of any example of daze as a verb without the past participle ‘d’ on the end. However, Merriam-Webster rides to the rescue with a couple of very recent examples:

    Two assists on two big baskets at a critical moment to daze Indiana.— Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press, 3 Mar. 2021

    The Spartans dialed up three plays of 25-plus yards in the first half to daze the Wolverines’ defense.— Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press, 31 Oct. 2020

    I’m not sure if it’s a sports thing, or if it might be a Michigan speciality – in which case it adds to today’s helping of Americana (perhaps that’s the theme?)

    P.S. Welcome to the forum, Jim in DC!

71. [ HYD@67 , my pleasure, and wait until September for the mussels. ]

72. @65PostMark
    Some are silent films, some horror movies.
    Projectionist, I understand was a restricted/licensed profession during thesilent movie era due to fire hazard.

73. I really enjoyed this one! Easier than yesterday! I parsed projectionist slightly differently. Dunno if I’m correct but it means occupation not used twice and it is an occupation long in decline. Film projectionists are not long in decline I think. I just took it to be an explanation of map projectionists. Eg from wiki, it explains the long decline…

    The best known map projection is the Mercator projection. Despite its important conformal properties, it has been criticized throughout the twentieth century for enlarging area further from the equator.

    Thanks Brummie & manehi

74. What a brilliant suggestion Ross @73, I was not happy with film projectionist being long in decline @16, it is surely fairly recent.
    Is “long in decline ” a mapping term for distortion from a Mercator projection ?
    In astronomy we have declination as term meaning angle from the celestial equator.

75. mrpenney @62: Michael Jordan is very well-known here, possibly mostly through the current obsession in over-priced trainers. According to Bartok Jnr, a pair of ‘Jordans’ are highly desirable. In fact, there was a whole Radio 4 programme devoted to ‘Sneakernomics’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09flcn3

    I’m afraid that when I hear anything about footwear I can’t get the HHGTTG’s ‘Shoe Event Horizon’ out of my mind.

76. Roz @ 66

    The Hurricane Tapes on BBC world service are worth listening to re Ruben Carter ( I listen to the World service when I can’t sleep)

77. I don’t think anyone else in the comments above said about 3dn that it is actually (also) just an anagram of AND SO inside an unchanged MIX ONLINE.
    Therefore, it feels like a missed opportunity to me.
    Or, should I say ‘not a really good anagram’?
    Some of you particularly liked it (PostMark and Lord Jim, to name two), so it’s clearly not too bad.
    However, I am sitting on a fence (another earworm …. 🙂 ?)
    Many thanks to manehi for the blog and Brummie for what seems to be a multi-layered puzzle.

78. Interesting point, Sil, I hadn’t noticed that. But personally it doesn’t bother me – I think an anagram is an anagram if only two letters are changed!

    I was slightly hoping you might appear because I thought you might have a view about the definition in 6, 25 WEST POINT (me @21). But perhaps you think it’s ok?

79. Lord Jim, I didn’t think about that one (mainly because I am not interested in anything to do with armies, soldiers, war etc).
    The construction that led to the answer was clear.
    On second thoughts, I think the definition doesn’t really work for me (with or without ‘for’ – although the option that includes ‘for’ in the definition is probably defensible/justifiable)

80. Roz @74: Probably out of my depth here, but I know you don’t google so I thought I’d do a little research of my own. The phrase ‘long in decline’ in combination with mapping/cartography/distortion/Mercator/projection doesn’t yield any significant results (in fact quite a few of them lead back to this crossword!) so I assume it’s not a recognised technical term.

    However, it strikes me that it could well be Brummie’s idiosyncratic way of describing precisely the phenomenon you refer to. Here’s wiki on the Mercator projection – Scale factor:

    The graph shows the variation of the scale factor with latitude. Some numerical values are listed below.
    at latitude 30° the scale factor is k = sec 30° = 1.15,
    at latitude 45° the scale factor is k = sec 45° = 1.41,
    at latitude 60° the scale factor is k = sec 60° = 2,
    at latitude 80° the scale factor is k = sec 80° = 5.76,
    at latitude 85° the scale factor is k = sec 85° = 11.5

    Since declination from the celestial equator is, as I understand it, equivalent to latitude measured from the earthbound equator, the increase in lengths on the map as the declination grows could well be what Brummie had in mind.

    He then wrote a clue where it could do double duty. With a little setter’s licence, ‘long in decline’ refers to both the distortion resulting from Mercator’s projection, and the disappearance of old-fashioned cinema technology.

    Well, it’s a theory at least.

81. I hope that’s right, essexboy @80. It would convert my least favourite clue into COD!

82. Thanks manehi and Brummie. Quite chewy, but at least I finished, unlike with yesterday’s Paul.
    I think the definition of 6,25 is fine btw – ‘join the forces, it will be the making of you’.
    There’s a film ‘Martin’ that I misremembered as ‘Marty’ – the former is very different but memorable.

83. For what it’s worth, there is a lover in 12 13 ac, smart in 26 27 ac, an arse and a bottom

84. Dave Ellison @83
    And a bit of Sex in row 8. (I wonder if the TT in that row is also significant 🙂 )

85. As I said @79, multi-layered.
    Don’t read too much into it, though.

86. Sorry, @77.

87. Thanks Manehi and Brummie. This all went in so quickly – 30 minutes or so – that I wondered if it was actually meant to have been Monday’s offering, particularly as the grid is so favourable to solvers too. Many clues to admire but I think the clue for ARSENAL has to be my favourite l

88. [ Fiona Anne @ 76 , thank you very much, I will track this down, actually someone will find it for me. ]

89. [ MrEssexboy @80. many thanks for the research, you are quite right, celestial declination could be called latitude. The original idea here is from Ross@73. I do not think the cinema angle applies here, I may be wrong but long in decline is simply not a valid description. ( When did actual FILM projectors stop being used )
    I think the other part of the clue alludes to the effect of the projection – this could all be fanciful of course . )

90. Thanks Sil @79. Obviously what I was getting at was whether the definition is grammatically appropriate. Take the first few clues:
    1a. Define POLEMICAL. “Quarrelsome” – ok.
    10a. Define AEGIS. “Protection” – ok.
    11a. Define CAPRICCIO. “Musical piece” – ok.

    6, 25. Define WEST POINT. “For the making of army officers” – does that work? Surely it needs to be something like “Place for the making of…”, or just “It’s for the making of…”.

91. Lord Jim@90
    The ‘for’ isn’t part of the definition. OED has
    “3. Advancement, success. Now only in to be the making of (colloquial): to be what ensures the success or favourable development of (a person or thing).”

    ” Since I am so soon to be married they are naturally of the opinion that a good match would be the making of my brother!”

92. Hi Gonzo. Yes on reflection I think the version not including “for” is slightly more plausible (contrary to Sil @79, and indeed to manehi who underlined “for” in the blog). It still seems a bit of a stretch to me as a definition, but never mind.

93. Got this done pretty easily for me. Unlike Muffin, Marty does resonate with me as a likely Oscar winner.
    Thanks Brummie and Manehi

94. why does MOO = low?

95. Josh @ 94 , cows Moo which is also called Low, an old term.
    ” The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes ……”

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