Guardian 28,613 / Brendan

96 comments on “Guardian 28,613 / Brendan”

1. Lovely puzzle! Hadn’t picked up on the subtlety of the theme beyond simply lots of ‘key’ reference. Very neat! I also hope someone can give a good explanation of 27ac – surely it can’t just be so literal…

   Thanks Brendan and Eileen!

2. Great fun but missed the theme! Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

3. Canada lies just north of New York and Washington states, not the cities. I think that’s all there is to it. If so not the best clue in an otherwise excellent crossword.
   Thanks Eileen and Brendan

4. A minor typo in 1A: Q(uanti)TY. And I noticed that TERRET is indeed reversible, as it works both ways. However, with my AZERTY keyboard, like most people of Paris, I didn’t get the full subtlety of the theme…

5. DuncT @3 Yes, that was my best explanation too… It’s cryptic only in the sense that you think of state as in the 50 states and NY/Washington as in the cities, so it’s misleading… But assumed I must be missing something…

6. I can’t see anything more than that WA and NY are two of the (many) states bordering CANADA to the north. Then again, I may be missing something, as I did with the keyboard pattern until pointed out.
   Thanks, Eileen and Brendan.

7. …although I did notice that the only vowel in all the southerly across clues was A.

8. Thanks, blaise @4 – I’ll correct it now.

9. Brilliant. I too missed the device though kike LJ I could see there was something going on. I had the same favourites as Eileen, especially AJAX. I was fooled into looking for a Z to make the pangram. I think CANADA is literally just north of the Amaerican States.

10. More Brendan brilliance – top favourite ROOKERY. Didn’t know TERRET or ORRERY but clear from the cluing. I realised there was something clever going on with all those As in the bottom half, then a lovely PDM. Many thanks to him and Eileen.

11. So I missed the As! Many thanks, blaise and essexboy.

12. Completely missed the cleverness of only using top letters in the top half and bottom letters in the bottom. As an occasional amateur setter, I am lost in admiration for someone who can pull that off.
    Didn’t know TERRET or EMILIA, but the very strong wordplay meant that that didn’t matter.
    27a is quite subtle, I think, because we instinctively think of Washington DC the city and New York the city, and it actually refers to Washington the state. Yes, perhaps as DuncT @3 suggests it’s not the strongest clue, but it will happily do; and there really are some excellent ones to accompany it. Possibly the favourite the very elegant AJAX.
    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

13. Eileen @11 – you didn’t miss them, you just described the device more comprehensively! A is the only vowel not in the top row of the (English) keyboard, so As it had to be. I’d have thought that made for a more challenging grid-fill in the bottom half, but the fact he managed to do it all without obscurities, while in the top half he needed TERRET and ORRERY, suggests the opposite.

14. I don’t think you did miss the As Eileen – it’s the only vowel available in the bottom two rows of the keyboard.

15. I once heard that “typewriter” is the longest word using just the top row of a ‘typewriter’. Don’t know if this is just an urban myth.

16. Hovis, proprietory is one letter longer than typewriter, but I don’t know if there’s a longer one.

    Loved people of Paris!

    Thanks Eileen and Brendan

17. essexboy @13 and DuncT @14 – you’re very kind but I think you’ve shown that I did miss something which is very obvious!

18. Petert @9 and Blah @16 – AJAX was my top favourite, too.

19. Just thought of an even longer one proprietress although I imagine it’s use is deprecated now.

    If I’d known you were blogging I think I would have predicted that Eileen :-).

20. Brilliant, and hugely enjoyable! Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

21. Found this very tricky at times, with Brendan up to his usual misdirections, but particularly liked ROOKERY once I seen through the trickery. Simply couldn’t have CANADA, as I didn’t think that was as meticulous as his other clueing, and somehow the solution had to be something else I hadn’t yet come up with. Strictly a DNF therefore, and I thought quite a wide general knowledge was required too this morning to solve everything. But nevertheless, an excellent challenge.

22. Lovely subtle trick. I remember reading an interview, possibly coinciding with a period a few years ago when there were very few Brendan puzzles, in which he said it was becoming ever harder to come up with new themes, all the low-hanging fruit having been picked; yet now they’re coming thick and fast.
    Here’s an oddity:
    9a In Rio, time for something very amusing
    has two separate linkwords.

23. Brilliant crossword – and I noticed the QWWERTYUIOP in the top half and the As in the bottom half

    Thanks to Brendan for the fun and Lucky Eileen for the blog

24. Meant to say, I liked the clue for CANADA, needed all the crossers.
    Blah, that has esses in it

25. …and having used my very basic French to solve QUIVERY at 1d, I of course bunged in a U as the obvious next letter after the Q for 1ac and spent ages gazing aimlessly at that before the penny dropped re QWERTY…

26. James @22
    Cdst elaborate on 9a pls?

27. Nice one. Like (a few!) others I realised that there was something typographical here but failed (ie couldn’t be bothered) to see the full cleverness.

    The only word I didn’t know was TERRET, but that was so clearly clued that it caused no problem – a transparent clue for an unusual word is the mark of a considerate setter 🙂

    LOI for me was CANADA – I was thinking ‘state’ as in the 50 of the US. Clearly WA and NY are states adjacent to Canada and not the homonymous cities. So not such a weak clue, I think.

    Many thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

28. Thank you Eileen for explaining QWERTY (me too Ronald@25! I also had Albany for Canada until crossers intervened, thinking it might be an obscure state somewhere) and, with blaise and essexboy, alerting me to the clever letter distribution – I thought something odd was going on with all the Ys at the top but couldn’t spot what, I will blame it on my transposed Z and Y rather than the hangover dulling my wits. Interesting (to me) that we are helped towards Obama as a former president but not for the more distant Callaghan. Really enjoyed this, learned some things too as usual, thank you Brendan.

29. Despite only seeing a vague keyboard theme, I really enjoyed this. The number of lovely penny drop moments I had as the clever definitions resolved themselves made it a treat. Just one quibblet (apart from the CANADA one many have alluded to): Roald Dahl is more than just a children’s author – I wouldn’t have wanted to read the stories in Switch Bitch to my kids! In the parsing of QWERTY, I had partners = we, which also works, I think. Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

30. Is there more to POTTY TRAINING than meets the eye? Presumably aiming would come after having been trained

31. Jim Callaghan is the only person to have held all four great offices of state – Home and Foreign Secretary, Chancellor and Prime Minister. He is famous (?) for introducing Capital Gains Tax in 1965 as an anti avoidance measure. The Inland Revenue had been lobbying for such a tax since the 1930s but had to wait for an ex-Revenue man to occupy No. 11 to get its way – Jim worked for the Revenue in the 1930s before becoming a union official.

32. Eileen: in 10a you have PRO (one) which should be (for) I think. x

33. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    I thought there was going to be a theme of keys, but I forgot to look for more.
    Wouldn’t 22a read bettr without the comma?
    Favourite ROOKERY.
    bodycheetah @30
    Training as in aiming a rifle?

34. I was mightily impressed with the cleverness of the grid-filling and the play with the keyboard arrangement — QWERTY was my FOI. But then massively disappointed when coming here to find out how the — surely devious — wordplay for CANADA works, only to find that it is simply a rather lame, plain definition. Some commenters salvage some wit from the clue by asserting that Brendan was cleverly misleading us with the idea of the cities of Washington and New York, but since the clue begins with the word ‘State’ then one surely has the states immediately in mind. And I think ‘dhal’ is the curried lentils and ‘Dahl’ the author.
    But these minor quibbles aside, it was a very enjoyable and clever puzzle. The surfaces excellent.

35. Yes, very clever setting to achieve the result.

    Like Eileen, I realised that something was going on with keyboards but I failed to spot the actual theme – I should have known with all the As in the bottom half. I DNK some of the GK but the cluing was accurate, so I got there in the end. I liked ROOKERY, CALLAGHAN and ALABAMA. I just bunged in CANADA with a slight shrug, thinking, yes, it’s just north of Washington and New York states. I wasn’t particularly enamoured with reduced amount giving QTY, but QWERTY was a tough one to clue.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

36. Oh… and I was trying really really hard to make PANAMA work for 27a — because of PA=Philadelphia and MA=Massachussets and maybe Mass is north of NY and Philadelphia north of Washington, but then what is ‘NA’????

37. Sorry, I retract that about QTY; of course, it’s an abbreviation, doh!

38. pserve @34
    There are several spellings of the lentil dish. The commonest is probably DAL, but DHAL, DAHL, and even DAAL are seen.

39. muffin@38: well, yes … and there are several spellings of ‘definitely’: definately, definatley are seen.

40. pnin @26
    In place of carnival, time for something very amusing.
    Something very amusing (RIOT) is made from RIO and T. Neither ‘in’ nor ‘for’ contribute to the solution.
    ‘RIO T for RIOT’ is standard, with ‘for’ linking wordplay and definition.
    ‘In RIO T, RIOT’ would also be standard, with ‘in’ linking wordplay and definition (i.e consisting of RIO and T, RIOT)
    Having both is odd.

    @ Blah, Hovis perpetuity is as long as proprietor. They’re the only two 11 letter words offered by crossword-compiler’s anagram function. Pretty-pretty is the only 12 letter word. It might qualify as an entry for this puzzle, as the hyphen is in the top half of the keyboard, but it’s not quite satisfactory as a qwerty word.

41. muffin@38: of course, the issue here is the transliteration of loan-words from languages that do not use the Roman alphabet. Kasbah/casbah, chapatti/ chupati/ chapati/ chappatti /chipati /chiputi/ chappati/ chupatti and so on.

42. Thanks, roughtrade @32 – amended now.

43. CANADA was OK for me. I took it as a play on the word ‘state’. Washington and New York are US states but Canada is a different kind of state – a nation state.

44. muffin @38 I’m fine with training I just wondered if there was something CAD or &litish going on

45. Very clever setting as always from Brendan. Eileen, does the theme not apply just to the across answers? I’m not sure that your blog makes this clear. Apologies if I’ve misread you.

    I agree that “people of Paris” in 25a was brilliant.

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

46. For one who mostly misses the theme (it took me ages to see Qaos’s rather obvious one the other day, but did get it) I did notice that the top half had a large number of T-E-R permutations, possibly with intervening letters, and the bottom half had 5 instances of CA. However, I was intent on finding a semantic theme, so left it at that. So close!

    I thought CANADA was rather good, actually. Just a somewhat wordy CD, and it did mislead several people.

47. I loved this so thank you Brendan. I also found several difficult to parse, so thank you Eileen and fellow bloggers (that’s why I come to this site! I was thrilled when I finally found it).
    Favourites Ajax, Casablanca and Casbah. I too stared at Q_E_T_ for ages before finally spotting it. A treat on a dull grey morning here in Cambridge.

48. Jim Callaghan had a flat below mine. I was no. 39 and he was 29.
    We all knew when he was at home, because Special Branch would be on their couch in the foyer.
    Unfortunately , his protection did not extend to his wife who was mugged at Elephant and Castle.

    Soon after he sold the flat which was mid-way between Walworth Rd (Labour HQ at that time) and Parliament, our landlord was Prince Charles (Duchy of Cornwall).

    Well done getting the theme Eileen, and for several others that I guessed but could not justify.
    I wonder if Brendan took longer to write this one than we took to solve it??
    His theme was wasted on me, so thanks for giving him the credit he deserves for his effort.

49. Lord Jim @45 – you’re right, I see. I’m not sure how that happened. In my head, I’d included ‘across’, then somehow carelessly omitted it. My apologies. I’ll amend it now.

50. I never realised the full range of the theme, despite solving Qwerty and Typewrite very early on. As Blaise says, people using Azerty wouldn’t necessarily spot what was going on. I find Azerty awful, but fortunately, living just next door to Switzerland, I’ve always been able to buy IT equipment with the QWERTZ keyboard.

51. Was CANADA playing with cities, states, and countries?

    Step 1. States, not Cities?
    Step 2. Country not State?
    Step 3. Unused, would be North America?

52. Casablanca was premiered in New York on this day in 1942 – thanks due to Petroc Trewlaney on Radio 3 this morning for this snippet.

53. Pserve @34 “Massively disappointed” by a crossword clue? Life with you must be a real 9ac.

54. Thanks Brendan, ‘quite’ brilliant! Thanks too, Eileen, for the pdm. I had noticed a north-south divide in the letter distribution but failed to relate it to the keyboard!
    Loved ROOKERY & AJAX

55. AJAX – what a stunner!!
    Mind you, ALABAMA, POTTY TRAINING, ROOKERY and MADMAN were also rather splendid.
    QWERTY and TYPEWRITE were very early solves for me and – with ENTER a subsequent write-in – like several commenters I spent a while presuming there was a keyboards theme. The real brilliance of the thing sailed right over my head. Admittedly, that’s a common experience for me in the cruciverse…
    Also, like PeterT at 9, I devoted a fair amount of effort trying to squeeze a Z into my final few answers. Hey ho
    Many thanks to the awesome Brendan for a brilliant crossword, and to the ever-reliable Eileen for help parsing CALLAGHAN

56. A brilliant construction, and quite a tricky solve. I spotted the As in the bottom half early, but didn’t see the theme properly until I got my LOI QWERTY, when all became clear (I was familiar with the old quiz chestnut about TYPEWRITER being the longest word that can be typed using only the top row). Apologies for anyone who felt my comment on the Guardian blog gave away too much.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

57. Comments page not blog!

58. Blah @ 16
    “proprietory” isn’t a word

59. Failed 15ac WIRY. And missed the theme!

    Favourites QUIVERY, AJAX, CASABLANCA, CASBAH.

    New words for me: TERRET, DELTAIC. Checked some GK online – James Callaghan, Flashman, Emilia (wife of Iago).

    27ac – not very cryptic?

    Thanks, both.

60. Had “ripe” as the answer to 15ac – from last letter of humour, I as writer and first two letters of penned; a kind of embedded answer with a synonym in the middle. No wonder I couldn’t get rookery for 7d!

61. Jeceris@58, I agree it looks odd, it appears to be alternate spelling of proprietary.

    It comes up on Quinapalus as a valid word, and I found this citation for it.

    James@40 that was daft of me. Quinapalus has pretty-pretty and also teeter-totter, which apparently is US for a see-saw.

    I also found typewritertype which is a font but can’t find it as a single word or hyphenated so I don’t think it counts.

62. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

    I thought perhaps there is a little more going on in addition to what has been discussed. In 1a Within reduced amount, partners are said to provide, I thought this was also referring to the partners in the across rows. So, for example, PROPRIETOR is reduced to give its partner RIOT, TYPEWRITE to give WIRY, and so on

63. NeilH@12 New York is also a state as well as a city, whose full name is actually New York City. A few other cities have the same name as their states — Oklahoma City and Kansas City, which is actually two cities, one in Kansas and one (the larger) across the Mississippi in Missouri. That’s the one people usually mean when they say Kansas City.

    Eileen, I think the definition for ENTER is “key in.”

    The Nile Delta is certainly at its mouth, and delta-shaped, but other deltas ain’t necessarily so — see the Niger and the Mississippi. What they are is a braided area with a lot of branches and islands — or here in crosswordia should I be calling them aits?

    [Blaise@4 I lived outside Paris for most of a year and got adjusted to the French keyboard on a borrowed typewriter. Then we gave it back and went on to Spain, where I bought a cheap typewriter at a junk sale with yet another keyboard, and to this day I don’t know whether the Spanish one is the same as the English, which I could at that point no longer remember.]

    Thanks to Brendan and as ever to Eileen.

64. [Well, of course the Spanish keyboard had accents, as the French does, and upside-down exclamation and question marks, as nobody else’s does!]

65. Brilliantly constructed and fun to solve too.

    Special mentions for TIPSTER, AJAX, CASBAH, ALABAMA and ROOKERY

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

66. Dave Ellison @62 – Hmm…

    Valentine @63 – I did ponder ‘key in’ and decided to leave it to see what others thought.

67. At first I thought this crossword was merely good but after I read Eileen’s blog I realised how clever a construction it is. Favourites included WIRY, MADMAN, and ROOKERY. Lack of GK prevented my solving of FLASHMAN and CALLAGHAN. Thanks to both.

68. pserve_p2@36: Minor correction, the state that’s abbreviated PA is Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is the largest city in it. (From a proud native of Pittsburgh, at the other end of Pennsylvania!) Also Pennsylvania is not quite immediately north of the city of Washington, it is north of Maryland which is north of Washington, DC. Valiant try, though, I tried the check function on “Panama” without having nearly that much parsed!

    Here’s my attempt at a parse. “State” = CA for California; “north” = N; “Washington” = ADA, for Ada Washington, who played “Ada” in the classic horror film “Last House on the Left” (as Flann O’Brien would say, “possibly the one weak spot in the argument”); and then the whole definition is a partial &lit. [To be clear this is a joke.]

    I tried Eileen’s technique of going through clues in order–usually I get one clue anywhere and then try to work off crossers–and after “Topper,” “Proprietor,” and “Typewrite” I realized that there were a lot of top-row only. Then i wondered if there was a children’s author named “Roti,” since that’s an Indian dish that only fits the top row. DAHL I recognized as second row only, then AJAX threw me, and I didn’t pick up that all the bottom half were the last two rows.

    Thanks to Brendan for a typically amazing puzzle and to Eileen for the blog!

    Looking it up, “Typewriter” isn’t technically the longest word that can be made with the top row; it’s “rupturewort” which is an obscurity but one that wouldn’t be out of place in these puzzles, which often stretch my botanical knowledge!

69. I wrote my comment early this morning but had to drive from York to London before I could post. I could see something going on with similar letters on top and bottom across clues and the As but couldn’t quite make the link. Like others I thought surely something else is going on with CANADA and similarly I loved AJAX.
    Brilliant work from both Brendan and Eileen.

70. Yes, a brilliant puzzle. But I have one question that I don’t think has been mentioned – why did Brendan include “reversible” in the TERRET clue, since it’s a palindrome? The surface would seem to be fine without it.
    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen for puzzle and fine blog.

71. Oh sorry, blaise @4, I see you’ve already answered that.

72. For what it’s worth, LAMBADA and ALABAMA in the down clues also follow the pattern

73. Lovely puzzle whose theme I only saw after Eileen pointed it out. AJAX and ROOKERY got ticks. Someone may have mentioned this but a person who bets is a bettor, not a better as in 3d.

74. …and ORRERY in the top half. It was a long drive 🙂

75. Thanks for the blog. probably the easiest week there has ever been in the Guardian. Perhaps we will get a recently discovered Torquemada tomorrow, then again maybe not.

76. buffytvs @73 – I have never seen or heard of that spelling. Chambers gives ‘better: a person who bets (also bettor)’ and Collins ‘better, or esp US bettor: a person who bets’.

77. Yes Roz, much easier than last week but surely you got pleasure out of the contributions?

78. I have enjoyed the blogs AlanC but a whole week with nothing to challenge is just going too far .

79. Isn’t 8 down cleverer than it at first appears as it could also refer to potty as in foolish training of plants in the other sort of nursery?

80. First post here! I had a totally alternate parse/solution to 1d for a while, which seemed clever enough that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t right.

    If you remove (except from) “who” from “is somewhat”, and shake it up, you get “Matisse”, who could just about be a Parisian.

81. Wonderful. AJAX is perfect. I don’t understand how MADMAN = CRAZY – one’s a noun, one’s an adjective. I suppose you could describe something as a “madman plan” or similar?

82. tuliporturnip @81
    I’ve seen “crazy” used as a noun. “The dance floor was full of crazies”, for example.

83. I think Crazy as a noun is fine

84. …no-one has picked up on my suggestion that the clue would be better without the comma.

85. Muffin@84 Sadly no, but I think you are right.

86. Me@85 I’ve just realised I have done one of those paradoxical things, agreeing to the lack of comments or and the contradicting the agreement by commenting.

87. I took the “state” in 27ac just to mean “nation”, which would fit Canada.

88. Thanks Eileen (happy to get you) and everyone. Just back from a trip to Scotland. Finding out and implementing the Covid requirements was harder than almost any cryptic but finally solved successfully.

89. Roz @78. “Nothing to challenge” is a very relative term…

90. I’ve only just come in, so welcome PaulAtNorthGare @80 (but I’m afraid I can’t buy your alternative solve / parsing. 😉 ) and tuliporturnip @81 – I don’t remember seeing your name before but my apologies if it isn’t your first comment.

    Muffin @84 – apologies for not responding to your comment @33. I didn’t think it mattered much whether ‘failing’ was taken as a gerund or a participle – it makes sense either way – so I left it to others to make a comment.

    Many thanks for dropping in, Brendan @88 – it’s always much appreciated. I hope you enjoyed your time in Scotland, Covid requirements and all!

91. I was going to be negative about this puzzle but now that Brendan/Brian has dropped by I’m somewhat unnerved. (But (sshhh) I didn’t like the clue for QWERTY and it kind of spoiled the experience.)

    Thanks to Brendan for an impressive go at entertaining a tough crowd and to Eileen as always.

92. Late to the party today, so just popping in to say thanks Eileen for the blog, and of course to Brendan for the entertainment. Hope Scotland was worth the effort (it usually is).

    PaulatNG @80 – valiant effort but Matisse was not a Parisian!

93. Didn’t spot theme as usual despite the several hints
    TERRET was new for me and EMILIA.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

94. Terrific fun and the blog made for a most enjoyable read. As you are probably the only readers of this very late post, Brendan and Eileen, just wanted to proffer my thanks.

95. Nice to hear from you JiA

96. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

    DNK TERRET but obviously clued. Nor EMILIA as Iago’s missus – again obviously clued. Had to check FLASHMAN as I knew he was a bully but didn’t know where, and EPHESIANS as I didn’t have a religious upbringing, but vaguely aware of the New Testament.

    [Brendan @88 – Hope you enjoyed your visit up here. Sorry you had difficulty finding out about our Covid requirements. ]

Comments are closed.