Guardian Cryptic 28,520 by Brummie

96 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,520 by Brummie”

1. SLEEPING BEAUTY pricks her finger on a SPINDLE.

   [Before ending up HAPPY.EVER.AFTER in Greenbrier, Arkansas.]

   Thanks Brummie and loonapick

2. Thanks to both: seems peculiar to have ‘dicky’ = peculiar? I equate it with ‘faulty’ and briefly toyed with idea it was an anagrind … but soon gave up on that!

3. 22 don’t really see ever as on record

4. Toadfather @3: Me neither so I’m awaiting comment from others.

   Penfold @1: good spot re SPINDLE.

   Plenty to enjoy with the clues for PLATYPUS, GODMOTHER, SLEEPING, ENDING and the aforementioned SPINDLE all earning ticks. Favourites were UNMOURNED for the lovely cd and the sublime SETT.

   Least favourite is the oft occurring PSST: fourteen words, brackets, two punctuation marks and capitalisation to clue four letters! And I’m hoping someone might have insight into the ‘skampili’ appearing in 1d. It appears to be a Greek surname – an architect and a YouTuber both appear in a search – but nothing else occurs and I don’t get the surface.

   Thanks Brummie and loonapick

5. SMEAR=cover? Just not on Brummie’s wavelength today.

6. In some versions of Sleeping Beauty, the King and Queen invite four fairies to be Godmothers to the Princess. Two wish good things for the baby, the third curses her “she will prick her finger on a spindle and die” and the fourth flies in late and uses her power to change the curse “not die, but sleep 100years until she is awakened by true love’s kiss” Disney (1959) originally called the good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merriweather, and the evil one bore the traditional name “Carabosse”. Later Disney called her Maleficent.

7. gladys @5: that was another semi-quibble. I suppose if you smear mud or paint or suntan lotion over something, you cover it. I think the word ‘over’ is required to achieve equivalence so it raised a quizzical eyebrow.

8. I had a HAPPY ENDING as well although not for me as I failed on PECULIAR . Toadfather @3: I presumed that to remain on record was for EVER. Spotted the theme midway and that helped with EVER. My favourite was SPACE BAR.

   Ta Brummie & loonapick

9. I struggled with this. EVER = on record? DNK spile and SETT. Could not parse DRIVEWAY and SPINDLE. Did not see the theme. But these are my inadequacies. What a clever crossword! Thanks Brummie and loonapick

10. Had to reveal 22a. Am in agreement with @3 Toadfather and @4 Postmark. Can anybody clear the fog in my brain?

11. A number of cross postings. Apologies.

12. Like gladys @5 I queried SMEAR = cover, but thought there were some great clues, including FIELDER and ETCH. Many thanks to B & l.

13. “This is the best crossword ever/on record”. Not necessarily my opinion, but I did spot the theme early on, though somewhat confused myself by thinking HAPPY was on of the Seven Dwarfs.

14. UNMOURNED is one of the saddest clues I think I’ve ever seen.

15. EVER = ON RECORD is at least in Chambers – can’t say the same for DICKY = PECULIAR
    As ever I find Brummie to be irritatingly loose at times with definitions eg SHIFT TAB also shows no character when pressed
    I’m not normally a fan of CDs but I liked TOBACCO for the surface and FIELDER because, well, cricket

16. I had SHIFT KEY for 17 down which I was perfectly happy with until things started not to fit. I think BEAUTY was favourite for neatness and simplicity.

17. PostMark@4
    re skampili – let Google (translate) be your friend !

18. Thanks Brummie & loonapick

    PostMark @ 4: ‘skampili’ is Greek for (a) smack.

19. When people are feeling a bit dicky (sick) they may say I’m feeling a bit peculiar. That’s how I read it anyway.

20. Like others, I didn’t see the theme until the end but I enjoyed the solve, on the whole.

    I had the same thoughts as AlanC @14 about 10ac. It reminded me of a Vulcan clue I blogged earlier in the year: ‘With words of acceptance, married, later so alone (7)’.

    Favourites today were the clever KISS, PLATYPUS and SPACE BAR.

    Thanks to Brummie and to loonapick.

21. Thanks Brummie and loonapick
    I got very little enjoyment from this – far too many queries. A DNF with EVER missing, and like others, I’m struggling to see the equivalence with record. Another questioning SMEAR for cover; I had SMOKE (surely a soke is a stream or “burn”?) until I remembered PECULIAR.
    Other quibbles: “top off” for missing first letter? SEEPING – losing blood? No indication of slang for snout. MENDING is fixing something that’s broken, whereas you can improve something that’s not broken. I wouldn’t equate ETCH with “carve” – the latter implies physically cutting into the medium; etching is usually done chemically, or by laser.
    No theme, of course.
    The non PC BEAUTY was my favourite too.

22. Trevorl @17 & Simon S @18: thanks for making sense of that. Surprised that wasn’t offered up in the search but there you go.

23. Did anyone else have FLOG for 22ac (f from first + log)? [ I’m a bit PSST off with 9ac, too. It’s left me with Billy J Kramer in my head, and that’s not a good thing] Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

24. With a pop song from The Beatles’ first LP, covered in 1963 by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas (‘Listen, Do You Want to Know a Secret’), then Vincent Price , not to mention salt=sailor and snout=tobacco no doubt widdersbel of this parish will be along shortly to complain on behalf of solvers not yet drawing their pension about outdated popular cultural/terminological references.

25. [AlanC@14. Yes, a bit like UNSAVED not long ago]

26. I too failed on EVER. After revealing, I liked ‘on record’ but thought hack for sever was no good. Hack needs an off if it is to amount to severing, otherwise they are unrelated.
    Otherwise, many nice clues, SAILORLY, MID-LENGTH, BEAUTY favourites.
    I see for AFTER the blog has the split between definitions after ‘more’, when it should be before; AFT-ER, more behind.
    Thanks Brummie, Loonapick

27. Unusually, I saw the theme, not that it helped me. Like others, I found many of the definitions tenuous.
    Thanks as ever to setter and blogger.

28. Slowed myself down by putting SPACE KEY, and I wasn’t sure about ever = on record but i think Andrew@13’s explanation sorts that out nicely.

    On a different note this was the antithesis to the brevity of yesterday. I now find myself having enjoyed Brendan’s more than I did at the time, as today’s verbosity was at times a little jarring.

    It’s probably just that I’m feeling a bit dicky this week, but I’m now determined not to moan for the rest of the week.

29. I was not on Brummie’s wavelength and solved only three on my first pass. Needed some help with new words (for me) such as SETT = a granite paving block; SNOUT = tobacco; SPILE = spile (for 24ac).

    Favourite: FIELDER (loi).

    Thanks, both.

    * I totally missed looking for a theme.

    I was fine with 21ac – I thought of it in a sports sense: fastest time ever/on record (eg for sprinting).

30. Muffin@21. I don’t think this is in a non-PC sense. “That shot was a peach!” could as easily be: “It was a beauty!”

    Stumped by EVER, but on revealing it had no difficult with its use as “on record”, thinking as per Michelle@29.

31. Thanks for the blog, missed the theme as usual so thanks for the enlightenment.
    Once again Porridge comes to my rescue for TOBACCO.
    SAilORLY is a bit of a stretch but sometimes only one word will fit and the clue was very fair, and it is in Chambers.
    SPACE BAR is one of the two keys I know so quite happy there.

32. SAILORLY was a new one for me: it’s obvious what it means, but I’m surprised to find it exists.

33. I enjoyed this and got the theme (from GODMOTHER) in time for it to help with a few. My favourite was AFTER, very neat. (I agree with James @26: the two definitions are “trying to get” and “more behind”, not “trying to get more” and “behind” as the blog has it.)

    I was wondering if there were going to be comments about “Shows no character when depressed” as a definition for SPACE BAR. Would it be ok for example to define Usain Bolt as “Runs fast”?

    Many thanks Brummie and loonapick.

34. Lord Jim @ 33: I don’t know whether you are being disingenuous, but, no, it would obviously not “be ok for example to define Usain Bolt as “Runs fast”, the reason being that there would be no secondary and potentially misdirecting narrative that could be carried by the surface. The surface of Brummie’s clue, on the other hand, alludes to the fact that individuals suffering from depression can become very introverted and uncommunicative, ceasing thereby to express fully their ‘character’.

35. I agree
    with AlanC
    @14
    Missed the theme. Again.
    I liked FIELDER. I have a fondness for cricketing clues.
    Thanks, Brummie and all.

36. Curious puzzle with clues (for me at least) of widely differing degrees of difficulty.

    Of course I failed to spot the theme, which might have helped with EVER – my LOI after having to resort to ‘reveal’. I didn’t understand this, but clearly the ‘best on record/best ever’ explanation must be the right one. Although, to be pedantic, I would claim that these expressions aren’t equivalent: ‘best ever’ is an absolute, ‘best on record’ allows for the possibility of something unrecorded which might be even better!

    SAILORLY raised a smile – I agree with Roz @31 that it was probably the only word that would fit ( it would have been more likely in a Boatman puzzle). The same applies to PSST, which pops up surprisingly frequently. The first challenge for the setter is simply filling the grid. Especially in a themed puzzle, where as many related words as possible have to be shoehorned in, it is not unusual to get painted into a corner.

    Thanks to S&B

37. Spooner’s catflap @34: I obviously didn’t make myself clear. I was positing “Runs fast” as the definition part of a clue rather than an entire clue for Usain Bolt. For example, “Mad ablutions – runs fast (5, 4)”. Would this be acceptable? (Apart from the surface not making much sense.) That is, can a verb phrase (“runs fast”) be a definition for an answer which is a noun? As is the case in the clue for SPACE BAR.

38. Got almost all of this last night in bed. But I had SPACE KEY, which messed up 25a, and I couldn’t get TOBACCO until I checked. I still didn’t get its definition till I came here.

    loonapick, did you mean “a small wooden leg” for “spile”? Long John Silver is back from a recent Anto cryptic.

    13a WA for Washington — the two-letter state abbreviations are always written in all caps.

    SETT was new to me, as was the parish meaning of PECULIAR.

    Spile seemed dimly familiar but wrongly so, I found. I haven’t met itas a wooden peg (or leg), but I have i a Kipling poem, The Land, in which generations of bossy invaders need the land-wide advice of generations of elderly Saxon-descended peasants named Hobden. (Even though the Saxons were bossy invaders themselves in their day.) I’m not sure now what “spile” actually means, but it’s got to be something you do to manage land given to flooding. The link is here, and I recommend the poem: https://www.bartleby.com/364/342.html

    Thank you, Brummie for the puzzle and loonapick for some needed helpful hints.

39. 22, whilst simple to parse, does not, to me refer to record any way up. Thesaurus , Chambers etc, no where to be seen. As 18th century german philosophers, well. Just reinforces my cynicism about setters utilising technology in assisting with the gaps????

40. Valentine @38
    When you get a keg of beer, there’s a large bung on the bottom of one side that you hammer the tap through. The spile hole is a small hole on the top of the keg. You have to remove the spile so that air can get in, or else nothing would be able to come out when you open the tap (calamity!)

41. Hegel is well known for being out consumed by David Hume.
    Chambers 93 – EVER = ON RECORD

42. The spile hole avoids the Torrecellian vacuum, do not get to use that very often.

43. Penfold@1 – I meant to highlight SPINDLE as it is essential to the story.

    muffin@21 – I agree re “top off” – it’s fine in a down clue, but not in an across clue.

    James@26 – you may be right with “after” but my parsing also works, even if yours may be better.\

    Valentine @38 – thanks for spotting the typo (leg/peg) and pointing out the state abbreviation should be WA (typical Americans doing things illogically)

    Chris Allen @39 – Hegel is a well-known philosopher and therefore, to my mind at least, fair game and makes a change from NEVER, SEVER etc.

44. Sorry for being dim, Lord Jim @37. I see your point now. I personally am OK with it, but I can see the possible objection.

45. No theme… big surprise… but some excellent clues spoilt by others which don’t quite work (already mentioned often enough above).

    Loved FIELDER, don’t know why, and held up by blundering in with SHIFT KEY which works just as well as SPACE BAR.

    Many thanks, both.

46. Nicely brought to a synthesis Loonapick

47. Painterly … artspeak; sailorly…?

48. Mostly what muffin @21 says.

49. Sett … not badgers’ then…

50. ginf: …guess not, but it’s the only one I’m familiar with.

51. I think it might be a northern usage. Round here, when tarmac is removed from many town streets for resurfacing, you can often see the original setts that were used to surface the roads.

52. Penfold@1
    re: Greenbriar AR, even in today’s Trump political climate you probably need to be about 30 miles further north for your inference.

53. SETTS are a bit like cobbles but a bit posher , cobblestone are usually larger and typically more rounded.
    A cobbled street is more often actually setts.

54. Yes, Roz. The cobbled streets I knew from my youth in Devon – in Clovelly, for example – were of rounded beach pebbles. I was always baffled how vehicles could easily traverse cobbled streets until I came north, and saw the flattened setts that they called “cobbles”.

55. Like loonapick says this had a Monday feel to it. I spotted the theme after I got SPINDLE (although DNK spile- looked it up) and hence realised 22a must be EVER. Could not see “on record” at all, but grateful to contributors for the explanation and if Chambers has it, that’s good enough for me.

    Won’t dwell on reference to Vincent Price too much! How many other Prices could have been used instead?

    Favourite today was GODMOTHER

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick

56. Just not on the right wavelength at-all today!

    Thanks Brummie and loonapick!

57. Muffin @ 54 maybe cobbles were used for paths for walking and setts had to be used when vehicles became more common.

58. Thanks, loonapick and Brummie. Couple of raised eyebrows but mostly entertaining.

    PostMark @4 – quite a contrast to yesterday’s Brendan, eh?

    Spooner’s catflap @24 – meh.

    James @26 – Good spot. I originally parsed it the same way as loonapick, but I reckon you’ve hit on Brummie’s true intention here. Otherwise both “more” and the question mark are strictly redundant.

    William @50 – SETT is the correct name for what people commonly call “cobbles”, the principle difference being that cobblestones keep their natural round shape, while setts have been fashioned into uniform square blocks.

59. (I’m so slow typing today that Roz @53 got in with her explanation before me)

60. There was no chance for me to get the theme because I had an unparsed “bleeding” for 18a instead of SLEEPING. I also missed FIELDER (cricket’s not in my GK), EVER, and SETT. Still I liked this crossword due to clues like the amusing PSST, BEAUTY, FURROW, and ETCH. Thanks Brummie, and loonapick for the much needed blog.

61. Cobbles are used to provide traction for horses

62. 7a seems very familiar. Has it recently appeared elsewhere?

63. FIELDER was in an FT puzzle last week, the clue did mention SLIP but not sure of the details.

64. Went cross-eyed staring at E-E- for 22ac before my optician’s appointment this afternoon, EVER never crossed my mind for a moment. Took a while to figure out FIELDER and SAILORY too, as I’d spelled SPINDLE with the E and the L the wrong way round. SLEEPING also took some time. Some very chewy bits today, I thought…

65. Not dim at all, SC @44, it’s me not explaining myself well. I did like the clue, but just had a niggle about the grammar being wrong. But it doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone else, so maybe it’s just me.

66. This is a first for me: I actually enjoyed the cryptic definitions! All three were of the highest quality, as they didn’t look like cryptic definitions, but once the penny dropped it was clear that was all they could be.

67. Thank you, muffin@40 and Roz@42 for the spile hole. If anybody’s interested in more about bungs, google “fifteensquared” and “beetlebung” for the bit about the grove of beetlebung trees in Chilmark Mass on Martha’s Vineyard.

    What happened in Greenbrier AR?

68. Lord Jim @65 (and previous): “…can a verb phrase be a definition for an answer which is a noun?” In the clue for SPACE BAR the definition omits the word ‘this’ for the sake of the surface, i.e. to make it read like it is referring to a person with depression. It’s up to the solver to spot what’s going on, and the PDM consists of realising that the setter means “(the answer to this clue) shows no character, etc”.

    In your example @37 “Mad ablutions – runs fast (5, 4)” (which is rather good, I think, with just a hint of diarrhoea!), the insertion of “he” to make the definition a noun phrase rather than a verb phrase would rob the clue of any power to mislead that it might have had. But the clues as they stand – yours and Brummie’s – are perfectly fair in my opinion.

69. Roz @42
    I’m not sure a barrel is tall enough to generate a Torricellian vacuum. It’s only 65cm at its tallest, when lying down for tapping.

70. [Valentine @67 The What3words location system places ‘happy.ever.after’ in a small house, just off U.S. Highway 65 in Greenbrier AR. I assume that the people who live there are very contented.]

71. me @69
    Wouldn’t it have to be at least 10 metres tall?

72. …or slightly less, as beer is a bit denser than water (I would hope!)

73. DNF for me–I had some of the same quibbles as others, and some trouble with the DDs as well as tobacco.

    I read 18ac as partial reverse definition (not sure what the term is)–the clue is “unconscious,” and “after dropping off” L “front of ledge” from SLEEPING you get SEEPING.

    Thanks Brummie and loonapick!

74. Poor effort today, Brummie is on the long list of setters I struggle with. Most frustrating is filling half the grid in double quick time and then knowing that however much I stare, go away and come back, I won’t solve another clue.
    Thanks both.

75. [loonapick @43: “typical Americans doing things illogically” — thanks for insulting hundreds of millions of people! At least we once had the sense to revolt against British colonialism and oppression.]

76. Failed on EVER and PECULIAR. The definitions were a bit peculiar, to me at least, and I don’t think I would have got them ever. And it is perfectly possible to SMEAR jam on a kitchen worktop without covering it, but once I had the crossers it couldn’t be anything else.

    And welcome to Pedant’s Corner, but although I got SPACE BAR almost straight away, it has only just occured to me that unlike, say, the shift key, a space bar very much does show a character when depressed. A space is a character, it has an ASCII code, and there is a visible difference between spacebar and space bar. So on further reflection I am not sure that works too well either.

    Just clocked up my 18th month of working on a project for the worst client in the history of the world, so I am possibly feeling a little grumpy today. Those quibbles aside, I did actually enjoy this one.

77. Tony Santucci – my comment was tongue in cheek – if “hundreds of millions” of Americans are reading my blog, I humbly apologise

78. Good point, Fiery Jack – space is 32 in the Ascii code.

79. Loonapick — no problem — these are “sensitive” times and I occasionally get pulled into the mire.

80. Fiery Jack @76. I’m sure others thought of this, as I did myself, while solving the clue, but whether or not there is an Ascii code, no character ‘shows’ (i.e. can be seen) when we depress a SPACE BAR. 🙂

81. Well, you can see the cursor move so something has gone in. But like I say, I only thought of this about 6 hours after solving the clue so it is probably fine.

82. Muffin @ 69. It may not be a torricellian vacuum but the ale certainly will not flow if the spile peg is sealing the bung! I’d just unscientifically refer to it as an airlock. Either way we’d both go thirsty.

83. 9.?????? Really????

84. Thanks both. Just dropped in to see the reaction to Vincent=Price – much more restrained than I expected.

    muffin@72: not that it matters much, but my understanding is that beer should have roughly the same density as water for it to be palatable. The dissolved solids in the beer are offset by the much less dense alcohol. But that’s to open another can…. now there’s an idea.

85. Could I just put ever that 22 across has the most implausible definition I’ve on record seen.

86. Very late as I kept on looking at an unsolved 22a at odd moments throughout the day, hoping in vain that inspiration would strike. It never did, but sh put me out of my misery over on General Discussion – which although it was momentarily annoying I’m now grateful for, as I don’t think I would EVER have got it either.

    A footnote on ‘skampili’ – this is a link to the (modern, obviously) Greek version of Wiktionary. It gives two meanings: the first is ‘a slap on the cheek with the palm of the hand’; the second is ‘a type of card game with two players or pairs of players’.

    Interestingly (to me, at any rate), the etymology seems to relate to the card game – it comes from the French Brusquembille. Which still leaves me wondering how it came to mean a slap in the face.

    Anyway, tomorrow is here already, so thanks Brummie and loonapick, and Καλημέρα Imogen.

87. I sympathise MrEssexboy@86 , EVER was a bit nasty , I went through all the 5 letter hacks I could think of and got to SEVER but then realised I had seen this use of EVER before, probably Azed.
    Muffin a Torricellian vacuum can occur when any liquid is enclosed in a container not open at the top but open at the bottom. It is not just the traditional mercury or water barometer. The height you quote is a MAXIMUM for water ( or beer ) but there is no MINIMUM height.

88. Roz @87
    A Torricellian vacuum forms when air pressure is not able to support a column of liquid, so there’s a minimum height of liquid, not a maximum. This corresponds to about 10m of water (or 98cm of mercury). It’s why lift pumps (pulled from the top) don’t work over more than 10m, and force pumps (pushed from the bottom) must be used instead.

89. First post from me … I’ve been doing the Guardian crossword online for a bit and enjoy coming here for comments and help with parsing. I seem to be more on Paul’s wavelength than Brummie’s, though! SPILE was new to me but must be related to SPAIL, a Scots word for a splinter. As children, we used both SPAIL and SKELF for a splinter in your finger, often requiring mum to dig it out with a needle. Interestingly, SKELF seems to have the same etymology as SHELF.

90. Muffin sorry to be pedantic but first of all it is 76cm of mercury at normal atmospheric pressure. Secondly the pressure can support any height below this as well, this is simply the maximum height it can support. In a closed vessel opening a tap at the bottom will release a small amount of liquid due to capillary action , the vacuum forms at the top and the pressure stops further release. What you are thinking of is a column in a trough containing the liquid which is a different situation.

91. A belated welcome to AlisonT

92. Roz @90
    Yes, 76cm – misremembered.
    I’m thinking of a Torricellian barometer, which seems appropriate for a Torricellian vacuum!

93. Traditionally it is a Torricellian barometer , about 1m thin glass tube full of mercury, invert it over a trough to get roughly 76cm supported , we are not allowed to do this anymore.
    The vacuum is more generally the space above any liquid in a closed container.

94. I was in the same place as HoofItYouDonkey @74 — really enjoyed the two thirds, thought some of the clues really clever… then ground to a halt around the clues surrounding MID-LENGTH because I couldn’t get that (simple now I see it). Also felt grumpy at ‘losing blood’ being SEEPING, which I would never have worked out for myself. Thanks anyway to Brummie for the challenge.

95. I’d agree that “technically” a space is a character (ASCII code 32) but… you gotta say that “Shows no character when depressed” is a pretty sweet clue, surely we have to give the setter some leeway if they can find a neat double definition like that!

96. Some clever clues eg Space Bar. Didn’t see them or EVER but I wasn’t really at it this time.
    Thanks both

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