Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,566 /Brummie

72 comments on “Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,566 /Brummie”

1. Thanks Eileen. A satisfying puzzle.
   This blog isn’t showing in the Guardian category at the moment.
   Thanks to Brummie.

2. Ah, now it is.

3. I thought this was fun and clever. The nature of the theme was such that early on, even if you correctly solved a clue, any clue, it was not immediately apparent what should go into the grid, so the first entries required some intuitive guessing. Bravo to Brummie for placing only 2 of the 8 in each quadrant to help this along. Also, each proto-answer and its linked replacement were of the same length, so no mention of enumeration was necessary in the introduction, which worried me at first until I twigged.

4. Thanks Eileen. I had a very similar experience as yours with the 5A pairing found quite soon and 23D last of all, in its parsing : LIGHT literally dawned on Sunday with a Hades! In the relative darkness. ALOPECIA, sure, could be clue of the day but Brummie had the equally brilliant surface for it on 4/7/17 with “Which comes as no shock to those who have it.” Splendid work, Setter.

5. Thanks Eileen. My experience was remarkably like yours. My heart sank initially because I didn’t really understand the instruction but my way in, because I’m not as methodical as you, was by realising that the last letter of 15d did not accommodate BATTERY which was the obvious answer to 27a. I hesitated about BRAE too and LIGHT was also my LOI. Still not sure about NEAREST=MOST MEAN though.

6. To my shame I didn’t read the instructions and was gobsmacked when BATTERY and SHADES wouldn’t fit with the crossers.

7. I got part way through filling the grid before I noticed the special instruction. That did it for me – I gave up. Heart sinks – quite right, Eileen. I already had DRABEST for ‘most mean’. Not my cup of tea, these special instruction thingies.

8. I agree with you Eileen – not as daunting as I first thought and actually a lot of fun. I liked the themed pairs as well as 2d EARWAX. I appreciate the clear blog so thanks to Eileen, and of course to Brummie for the clever setting of a different kind of puzzle.

9. 25a and 23d were my LOIs, despite not getting the parsing for either, and I messed up 5a, somehow missing that it was one of the pairs and like TassieTim@7 putting in DRABEST. I also dithered about BANK/BRAE, and blithely wrote in TUMBREL for 28a and wouldn’t have been impressed if this had been an actual Prize entry. Not too bad a thematic device, but I wouldn’t mind not seeing it again for some time.

10. Very thoughtful and thorough blog as ever, Eileen, so many thanks for that.

    [You mentioned newer solvers and I consider myself, though not a spring chicken, as relatively new. I was primed for the theme having recently tackled a Genius with a similar theme which I enjoyed and would alert any new solvers – especially those whose hearts don’t sink at the thought of special instructions – to give the Genius series a bash, they’re obviously not always a walk in the park but can be extended fun. Our setters do go to great lengths to set them so I feel they’re worth a plug here ? ]

    I thought this was a delightful “special instructions” puzzle and hadn’t actively noticed that the pairs were always the same length as each other which was rather neat. Like JinA@8, my favourite was EARWAX but many ticks along the way for Brummie’s clues and for finding a nice variety of pairings. Many Thanks.

11. SW corner hardest for me.

    I did not parse 4d, 23d.

    I liked: TUMBREL.

    New for me: TAYBERRY, ORMER.

    Thanks, both.

12. Thanks for the blog , what a delight. As mentioned each paired word was the same length so no issues solving the original word with incorrect enumeration. As DrW @3 says, two in each quadrant so very limited crossing for themed entries and also each pair was actually very obviously a pair so no ambiguity really.
    Biggles @ 5 , NEAR is one of those crossword uses only, NEAR=MEAN as in TIGHT or CLOSE or STINGY , I actually spent a while wondering why EAR=LIVE ?? stupid Roslyn.
    I second ( or third ) EARWAX and add DERRINGER.

13. I find crosswords with ‘special instructions’ fall into the same category as eating shellfish when there is not an ‘r’ in the month…dont attempt it.

14. “Special instructions” can work either way for me; sometimes they are just silly and annoying, in which case I tend to give up; but sometimes, as here, they add to the interest of solving. I really enjoyed this.
    Favourites included BRAE, and LAVISH CARE ON for its surface – I can imagine Private Eye’s Gnome-Mart advertising some personal grooming device “End knotted calf-hair misery!”.
    Biggles@5 – I’m sure I’ve come across NEAR=mean with money, in 19th century literature (George Eliot?), but as Roz@12 says it’s now found only in crosswords.
    Thanks Eileen and Brummie.

15. Ouch. Looked at it for half an hour, got one ECRU and then gave up. Think I must have long COVID.

16. Roz and Beaulieu. Thank you both. A little more research with the OED reveals that NEAR can indeed = niggardly, stingy, mean. Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf are quoted, don’t know if they were cruciverbalists.

17. Many thanks, Brummie. Greatly enjoyed. I smiled at the special instructions + found a soft pencil. Stumbled with PURER rather than ORMER for a while, and (very carelessly) RAVISHed rather than LAVISHed. Maybe lack of a complete clue for TUMBREL/TUMBRIL was because it would have extended the wording so much that the neatness of the cryptic definition evaporated? Super puzzle.

18. I was a bit apprehensive when I saw the instructions, but as I worked through I thought Brummie had gone easy on the difficulty of the clues (mostly) to compensate. It was quite interesting trying to solve what might be a paired clue given some of the crossers – trying to match some of the wordplay to the crossers actually worked against you. I took a while at the end to realise what ‘lack of cover’ meant, and couldn’t parse my LOI, which was CLINCHING, mostly because I was thinking of ‘cling’ as the seal, as in cling film, and couldn’t see where the money came in.

    I liked TUMBREL, but was surprised by the spelling, since I always thought it was Tumbril, and I’ve just checked my Penguin Tale of Two Cities and I see Dickens seems to agree with me. (Or perhaps the other way around.) Anyway, fun from Brummie, and thanks too for the blog, Eileen.

19. Initially this appeared to be somewhat impenetrable. I scoured the enumerations assuming the eight clues produced the same word, not the case, so I then decided to just crack on and hope that light would dawn. With all the crossers in for 4D p-w-r, and the only possible word being power I’d found my way in. I then double checked the crossing clues and was confident none of them were special.

    It was from then on a steady solve, with one hitch, I’d entered TRIAL early which held up the NW for a while, and finally I did have to cheat on tumbril as DNK and no way to solve from wordplay.

    Surprisingly accessible overall but definitely requiring a little perseverance.

    Bravo Brummie! And thanks Eileen.

20. Thanks Brummie and Eileen. I find this hugely enjoyable, and the difficulty level was just right for me – hard enough to keep me busy for a couple of hours but all very tractable. Those who gave up at the first sight of special instructions missed a treat.

    My first paired answer in was PROS/CONS – as you say, Eileen, it was very easy to spot the likely candidates because they’re all common paired-word phrases. I initially wrote in BATTERY without thinking it a likely candidate for a swap until I realised ECRU wouldn’t go in, and then the penny dropped. For LIGHT and HAMMER I already had enough crossing letters by the time I got to them to make it obvious. ENTERING was a case of reverse engineering from the grid entry to help parse the wordplay – took me a while to spot BREAKING.

    The ones that gave me most trouble were ERROR and my LOI – DEAREST. In the first instance I just couldn’t see the obvious answer to the clue – hidden in plain sight! And for the latter, it took me a long time to remember NEAR, which as Roz says, is one of those words you only ever see with this meaning in crosswords.

    All hugely satisfying in the end. Top work, Brummie.

    TUMBRIL is a lovely word however you spell it (even if it’s not a lovely thing).

21. Like others my heart sank when I saw *special instructions* but I thought I’d have ago. Got a few in the NW and was sure from crossers that POWER had to be the answer to 4d but couldn’t see how to parse it – then remembered that *lory* was a parrot giving me *glory* and realised how the special clues worked and worked out the other special near it – ERROR.

    Next confidently put *cons* in for 21a then when it didn’t work with AVIONICS realised it was another one special and entered PROS

    Worked my way through steadily (slowly) ticking off the specials and really enjoyed it, getting all but two of the answers in the SE – one of which had to be a special. Finally got it yesterday – HAMMER – which was the only pair that didn’t really work for me – I don’t think of *hammer and sickle* as a pair.

    Lot of fun.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen

22. Oh and couldn’t parse CLINCHING – thanks Eileen

23. Fiona Anne @21: ‘hammer and sickle’ is a pair associated with the solidarity of the proletariat and with Communism, featuring on the flag of the Soviet Union throughout its existence and still prominent on the flag of the Communist Party of China.

24. What Roz said @12. Took me a couple of days to read the instructions (reminded me of reading the question properly in exams, so accepted a virtual slapped wrist). Battery, Cons and Trial had me baffled so thank goodness for the pdm moment. Another DRABIST here. Fabulous challenge from another favourite setter. Has been a great week.

    Ta Brummie & Eileen for the super blog.

25. PostMark @23

    Thanks – After I finally got ORMER my second LOI I realised 19d had to be HAMMER and it had to be my final special – but the only thing I could think of that went with hammer was tongs which couldn’t be the answer as it had the wrong number of letters and couldn’t be parsed. So I put *hammer and * into my search engine and up came *hammer and sickle* which I realised had to be right and I could parse sickle.

    And I recognised the association as you describe – but it didn’t come to me unlike all the others which were, for me, obvious parings.

26. What a lovely puzzle!, with a device not frequently used. Loi 5a, which has only one letter difference between the pair.

    Solvability was aided, in my view, by the pleasingly light grid, i.e. fewer black squares (63 – the lowest found for a 15×15 grid being 59, but that one was long ago). That means good inter-connectivity with only one column or row with fewer than seven white squares, and no pair of half-puzzles linked with one or two connectors, or four mini-puzzles in the four quarters as well as a nice lot of longer solutions (2 each of 12, 11 & 10; 4 of 9). It also has more spaces for us to fill and more clues (30) than average (26-29).
    [No, I do not spend my time counting CWP squares. A look at certain features enables counting in a matter of seconds]

    Thanks to setter and blogger; most enjoyable.

27. What fabulous setting to find pairs of the same length and put them in the grid! I really enjoyed this, slowly counting the pairs as I went along.

    I now can’t remember which pair I got first, but I think I confidently put in ‘nearest’ at the beginning, which made 5D impossible until I got the hang of things. I couldn’t find LAVISH CARE ON in the main dictionaries, but it is obviously in everyday parlance. I did particularly like ALOPECIA and CHLOROFORM (nice having ‘from’ as part of the fodder). Eileen, how would you have parsed ‘bank’ as the answer for 12?

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

28. I thought this was great, and a worthy “prize” puzzle (though there’s no actual prize). I’m not sure if it was a “did not finish” for me, because although I got HAMMER for 19d, I was thinking that its pair was CHISEL, vaguely imagining that CHIS might be some sort of slang for “rough up”.

    [The “Remember me” box doesn’t seem to be working at the moment – is this just me?]

    Many thanks Brummie and Eileen.

29. Finally completed the grid once cheating was enabled via the check button this morning. I’m generally a Brummie fan but found this very hard going, especially in the SW. I was another who dived in without reading the instructions, so couldn’t understand why SHADE wouldn’t fit. Once the penny dropped I mostly enjoyed the ride, although my LOI, HAMMER, was a guess – I had its partner as an unparseable ANVIL. Nevertheless, thanks to Brummie for his ingenuity and to Eileen for the blog.

30. Really loved this crossword last week! Many, many thanks to Brummie and Eileen ?

31. Robi@27. It is the BRAE that Eileen and I parsed so it wasn’t necessary for BANK to be parsed. TAYBERRY put me right.
    25a I couldn’t fully parse this because I didn’t think of “in” = “accepted” though it’s fair enough and I’m not sure that a grand is a lot of money these days, though it was when I first met it in a crossword and somehow these chestnuts never change (SA,IT).
    I refuse to admit that I DNF this just because I had TUMBRIL.
    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.
    Lord Jim @ 28. Remember me worked for me on this occasion for the first time in weeks!

32. Aaaagh! Special Instructions! But in fact it was an absorbing job getting all the pairs sorted out, and I enjoyed it. Like Eileen, it took me a long time to find the pair for LIGHT.

    I usually spell it TUMBRIL, so I did, and I liked the definition, along with those for ALOPECIA, EARWAX and CHLOROFORM. Can’t say I thought LAVISH CARE ON was a well established phrase, but the clue was clear enough.

33. By the way, although the splendidly named TUMBREL/TUMBRIL is so much associated with the reign of terror and Madame La Guillotine, its name in French is the much more prosaic “charrette des condamnés”.

34. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

    I had similar experiences to many but the enjoyment never stopped – this was a puzzle that just kept giving. Pleased to note that Eileen at least had pause for thought at BRAE (LOI)- I’ve been looking at it all week and it only clicked yesterday (but a lovely tea-tray moment: jaws and fists clenched, hopping on one foot…).

    Hosannas all round. It has indeed been a wonderful week.

35. Re 12A – this is the first time that I have seen “underwear” as a clue for “bra”: the most common clue is “supporter”.

    26A was unknown to me, as was 16A even though I suffer from it.

    Re 28A: I only know the “I” version. I must re-read A Tale Of Two Cities.

36. Peter @35 et al

    It has just occurred to me to look at the solution – which gives TUMBRIL. As I said above, it’s a good job this wasn’t really a Prize puzzle.

37. Echo pretty much all the fav comments above. Couple quibbles from me, The clue for SHADE (giving LIGHT to the grid), read to me as if for HADES, which is what I entered until some other crossers put me right.

    My LOI was CLINCHING, which I ‘parsed’ as CHIN[k] (a lot of, meaning shortened, form of chink, a Shakespearian slang term for money) inside CLING ( a kind of synonym for seal). What Eileen has put makes more sense but is (my opinion) a rather weak clue.

    I am a TUMBRIL-iste too, thanks Gladys @33 and KeithS @18 for useful extra info. I think ‘charrete des condamnes’ (sorry no accent) isn’t too prosaic — sounds even more frightening.

    Thanks Brummie for a fun challenge, Eileen for explaining it all, and to all other learned contributors on here for amplifying the fun.

38. I’m one whose heart lifts rather than sinks at the sight of special instructions. In this case the extra complication they added was fairly modest, and I thought this made for an ideal ‘prize’ challenge. (Incidentally, I wonder when if ever the situation will be deemed to have returned to sufficient normality for prizes to be offered again).

    I’m also another TUMBRIL – it didn’t occur to me that another spelling might be possible.

39. Eileen @36 – I like to think that if this had been a prize puzzle they would have accepted either spelling, since there is no way of knowing which version the setter had in mind and both are equally valid solutions.

    OED gives both spellings equal credence (and also lists numerous variants), although TUMBRIL seems to be more common going by the citations.

40. Hi widdersbel @39. I think you’re right re the prize.

41. I found this much harder than Eileen and some commenters did. There were several anagrams which I struggled with: LAVISH CARE ON is not something that trips off the tongue, and TAYBERRY took a while to come too. The even more obvious (BATTERY) also eluded me for a long time. In the end I had ENTERING and CLINCHING but didn’t write them in as I couldn’t see how the clues worked (doh!).

    Brummie is one of those setters that I often seem to struggle with, so I am not blaming the device for my comparative slowness; I thought it was fair but difficult, and its use proportionate and judicious. Thanks to Brummie for the tussle, and to Eileen for the helpful blog.

42. In general, I look forward to special instructions.
    I required internet help for DERRINGER and TUMBRIL.
    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

43. I missed the instructions at first and spent a while staring at the NE corner and thinking “those are obviously ERROR and POWER but I can’t think why.” Then I got BATTERY and CONS (unusually for me I filled those both in blank, usually I work from crossers) and couldn’t think of any words of the form —C—B. Eventually I gave up and found the answer to 16d online, and when I was wondering how I could’ve got the crossers wrong I finally saw the instructions.

    Completely failed to parse 19d because I was looking for ways it could be TONGS or ANVIL. Or I thought maybe there was something that went with CLINCHING.

    A delightful puzzle and the special instructions added to it for me. Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

44. The special instructions were not an issue and besides only 8 words were affected. I’m familiar with cryptics that have a twist from solving the ones in Harper’s magazine as well as the WSJ. That being said I hit a wall in the NE corner and did not finish as a result. Thanks to both.

45. I’m new to fifteensquared and I enjoy the blog (thank you to Eileen and the others) and the solvers’ chat. Like some others, I think special instructions add an additional challenge even though I often then don’t manage to complete them. I was puzzled by 6D “Bachelors hurt inside” – somewhere I have gotten the (possibly wrong) impression that definitions come at the start or end of a clue or on some wonderful occasions are the whole clue. I’m probably wrong (experts, please correct me), but perhaps the definition here is “hurt inside”? As in “my brain aches”, as mine did halfway through this enjoyable puzzle.

46. Yep, a fine puzzle. Nice to see an unusual device used and it was well done and very enjoyable to solve.
    Unfortunately, a DNF for me as I had EARPAD for 2, which is clearly an inferior answer, but does seem to parse (PAD = increase, as in inflate an expense account?). EARWAX never occurred to me, but it makes the definition much more satisfying.
    Thanks, Brum and Eileen.

47. EL @ 45

    Yes the *convention* (there are no rules) is that definitions come first or last, but there can be good reasons for flexing it.

    And Philistine, for one, often has two versions of wordplay with the definition between them.

48. Edward @45 , you are fight that the definition nearly always comes at the start or end of the clue but there are occasional exceptions like this one. I agree with the blog that HURT is the definition , the INSIDE tells us where to look for it.
    WAX I thought of the moon as always, it is going to spoil our lovely dark skies soon.

49. Having failed to solve the crossers, I had PAIN as a possible for 6d as in “aches and pains” – with the same plural hesitation as for “banks and braes”.

50. Excellent puzzle. It reminded me of the sort of Prize puzzles we used to get 20 years ago. Eileen didn’t actually spell out the theme, which was: pairs of words commonly found linked in a phrase by ‘and’ (with the insertion of definite articles in one case).

    LAVISH CARE ON (18ac) isn’t really a dictionary phrase, is it, which made it a little harder to solve, I thought.

    Couldn’t parse 25ac, CLINCHING, as I kept treating the “in” as indicating a containment. Thanks for the parsing, Eileen.

    Didn’t know ORMER (26ac), but the clue was so easy it didn’t matter.

    In 28ac, I noticed the two possible spellings, which is really something to avoid with cd clues. It was a good one, though, so just a shame the contentious vowel wasn’t a check letter. I’m sure that if there had been prizes to win, either spelling would have qualified.

    I’ve only very vaguely heard of the LORY (4dn), so actually got to it by finding a partner for the rather obvious P _ W _ R once I had the crossers.

    The word order in 6dn, ACHE, doesn’t seem quite right. Shouldn’t it be something more like ‘Bachelor’s insides hurt’ or ‘Pain bachelor carries within’?

    I didn’t know ECRU either, and when I had just about three left to go in the bottom left, knowing I needed one more themed entry, I spent some time googling things like ‘ecru and blue’ (which does get a lot of hits, but only as the description of various items, not as a ‘thing’), before the penny dropped on ‘ASSAULT and battery’.

    More like this, please.

51. Edward Lewis @45 and others: I don’t think it’s an arbitrary rule, or even really a convention, that the definition normally comes at the start or end of a clue – it’s just a natural consequence of how cryptic clues work. Most clues consist of a definition and wordplay, which both point you to the required answer. So a clue is normally in the form of: (definition) + (wordplay); or (wordplay) + (definition). So it just follows that the definition will normally be at the start or end.

    Perhaps a more conventional word order for 6d would have been “Hurt inside bachelors” or “Inside bachelors hurt”; but “Bachelors hurt inside” obviously gives a much better surface, and still seems to lead to the answer (though Tony @50 might disagree).

52. Edward Lewis @45 (et al),
    I think the other issue with your parsing is that the containment indicator for the hidden word would then be missing. If the clue had been written “Bachelor’s hurt inside”, the apostrophe would do the job, but it isn’t, unfortunately.

53. Eileen et al: TUMBRIL/TUBREL – my original clue included wordplay to clarify what the required spelling was. However, the Crossword Ed. asked me to edit clues to save two or more lines. This clue was one of the few that allowed such an edit, hence the cryptic def. Had it been a proper Prize, I’d have had to find another way round it.

    I agree with the contributors who are put off by ‘Special Instructions’. It’s a bit of a klaxon warning. I wonder if it would help if that wording were removed and just the instructions themselves shown? A short delay before solvers realise they face an unsual challenge might be enough to put them in a better frame of mind – and with luck decide to give it a go.
    Incidentally, my original ‘special instructions’ gave more info. but had to be cut for space reasons.

54. For Cyclops read Brummie!

55. Eileen et al: TUMBRIL/TUMBREL – my original clue included wordplay to clarify what the required spelling was. However, the Crossword Ed. asked me to edit clues to save two or more lines. This clue was one of the few that allowed such an edit, hence the cryptic def. Had it been a proper Prize, I’d have had to find another way round it.

    I agree with the contributors who are put off by ‘Special Instructions’. It’s a bit of a klaxon warning. I wonder if it would help if that wording were removed and just the instructions themselves shown? A short delay before solvers realise they face an unsual challenge might be enough to put them in a better frame of mind – and with luck decide to give it a go.
    Incidentally, my original ‘special instructions’ gave more info. but had to be cut for space reasons.

56. Brummie/Cyclops/Eddie@53 (&55!)

    Going by some comments, the klaxon wasn’t loud enough. Someone I correspond with about these puzzles, who would normally comment here, also missed the instructions, and after spending a long time trying to work out why he was getting clashes, finally noticed them but didn’t have the stomach to return to the puzzle.

    Leaving out the words ‘Special Instructions’ would have saved one of those lines that got edited out though.

    For the record, I like a Prize puzzle that has an extra twist like this — especially when I manage to solve it!

57. I am curious about these “Special Instructions ” . Just dug out my paper copy and no sign of this phrase.
    It simply starts – Eight clues produce …….. – Just above 1 Across.
    It is crystal clear and impossible to miss. I do not see the problem ??

58. Edward Lewis@45: The “convention” that the definition is usually at the beginning or end is surely just a result of the way the English language (if there is such a thing) works when producing statements: “this is blah de blah de blah” or “blah de blah de blah is that”

    Such rules as there are (come on you Ximenean scholars) are designed to restrict the intrusion of extraneous material (know what I mean?). But it’s the normal subject-predicate-object structure of a sentence in English that leads to the definition migrating to the extremities of the clue – not any actual rule or over-riding convention.

    (Lights touch paper. Stands well back.)

59. Thanks for the insights, Cyclops/Brummie. Very interesting! I work on print publications so quite understand the perennial problem of space.

    I thought the instructions were fine though – perfectly clear and no extra information required.

60. Brummie: no need to apologise for special instructions! As you can see, a lot of us like them, especially for a prize puzzle. (Even when there’s no actual prize.) As I said @28, this was great. Many thanks again.

    Hi Alphalpha @58: I think that’s roughly what I was trying to say @51. It’s not a convention, it’s just the way clues naturally work.

61. Tony Collman@50

    Eileen didn’t actually spell out the theme …

    I did reproduce the “Special Instructions” in my preamble: Eight clues produce one of a pair of commonly linked words. Its partner is the required grid entry , which I hoped was self-explanatory.

    Roz @57

    You’re quite right, of course – this time, the paper version did not include that phrase (as it often does) but I did use inverted commas in the blog.

    This phrase, online, often prefaces an amendment of an error in the puzzle, which always amuses me.

62. PS: Ros, I’ve just looked back and remembered that, because I was blogging, I looked at the online version during the night and it did have “Special Instructions”, which our paper version did not.

    Thank you for your observations on this, Brummie @53/55 – it’s always gratifying when setters drop in. It would be interesting to know your original wordplay for 28ac.

63. Eileen@61, yes, you didn’t do anything wrong; I was just narrowing down the precise nature of the advertised linking (fairly redundantly, really, I suppose, as the nature of the link was implicit in the specified words).

    I did the puzzle online and thought I remembered seeing the words “Special Instructions”. If Roz@57 is saying they didn’t appear in print, then I was wrong to suggest a line could have been saved, since it had apparently already been saved (in print).

64. Thank you Eileen and Tony, I was just puzzled by Brummie saying it would be better to remove the phrase “Special Instructions ” when it was not there anyway. I should have realised he meant the online version.

65. Many thanks to those who kindly took the time to put me right on my question @45. Much appreciated.

66. Thanks Eileen for a comprehensive blog especially your note on BRAE, I know it thanks to an 80s computer game and it never occurred to me that it might have been a candidate for substitution, sometimes ignorance is bliss! I enjoyed this one too (and the varying experiences set out above) and for once was patient enough to go through all the clues and solve a few before grid entry to give me an idea of which might be candidates for special treatment, I think Brummie was very kind in making them all fairly clear partners and the distribution/equal letter count helped too (I was more confident in entering long and multiword solutions). Thanks Brummie, for my money EARWAX just pipped ALOPECIA at the post.

67. PS thanks also Brummie for popping in to lift the bonnet on the process by which a setter’s creation makes it out into the world – I didn’t realise such petty (to my mind) considerations as space would lead to potentially significant late edits. Thinking of most people’s familiarity with TUMBRIL (sp), can you imagine Dickens being asked to cut his opening sentence down to size? It was the clearest of clues, it was the most ambiguous of clues…

68. Gazzh @67. It was the clearest of clues, it was the most ambiguous of clues… Would you like to step up into the TUMBRIL/TUMBREL? It’s only a short ride, you won’t need your coat. 🙂

69. Gazzh and sheffield hatter

    Thanks, both, if you’re still there. 😉

70. I really enjoyed this one. For some reason I couldn’t find the blog until now?
    Surprised by your comment, Eileen, that the grid solutions were same length as the clued answers – I just assumed it quickly.
    Anyway very enjoyable… thanks Brummie and Eileen.

71. What a fascinating discussion? Was right @17 about extended wording needed for full TIMBREL/TUMBREL. Guess cwd editors have to work hard too. No heads should roll!

72. Did anyone else use the Guardian iPad App to try to solve this? In which case there were no special instructions visible and therefore much bemusement as to why some of the answers made absolutely no sense. This is an oversight at the Guardian that really should be remedied. Very clever now I understand the trick, though

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