Guardian Cryptic 28,628 by Brummie

67 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,628 by Brummie”

1. Michael FLANDERS and Donald SWANN, manehi, and their review, ‘AT THE DROP OF A HAT’.

2. But can anyone see any further Flanders & Swann references? I am fairly familiar with their work, and I can’t.

3. For me it was LHS first and then RHS. LHS straightforward apart from FIANCHETTO which was a rare definition coupled with a rather convoluted wordplay, not the best of combinations. I only knew CAROM because it appeared in the recent Azed 2582 (the last competition).
   Favourites were MAKE ENDS MEET for the word picture that it elicited and DRY RUN.

4. Like manehi I found this a bit of a curate’s egg, but not a geographical one (north vs. south) but more that there were quite a lot of Mondayish clues mixed with some tricky ones. I liked SCRIMSHAW and FIANCHETTO (which could have been tricky for non-chess-players). Missed the theme of course. Thanks to B & m.

5. Admirable self-restraint to set a Flanders and Swann themed crossword with no antelopes! I liked NAKED LADY and ABRUPT. Once upon a time I could do the Quiptic but really struggled with Brummie. This week it’s the other way round.

6. SE corner went in last. The bishop’s diagonal defeated me but google eventually gave it. Did not like 16d (horrid word). But the North half went well, as did most of the East. Liked 11a , 5d, 15d, and 4d in particular. Thanks to Brummie and Manehi.

7. I can’t see any more FLANDERS and SWANN references either, though was expecting to find some.

   Yes, difficult in parts with KNAP, FIANCHETTO and NAKED LADY for ‘Meadow saffron’ all new. My favourite was SCRIMSHAW.

   Thanks to Brummie and manehi

8. Definitely needed some obscure knowledge today. DNK Carom, Fianchetto or Scrimshaw. I’ve heard of Flanders and Swann but it didn’t really help. Tough Tuesday. Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

9. Sorry I meant SW was last. Never good at map reading, famously led a group of teenagers along the boundary of a National Park!

10. That’s disappointing, gladys @2 & Wordplodder &7. I had hoped that those more familiar with their oeuvre than I am would have been able to chase down other references. A rather half-hearted theme if there are none…

11. Some esteemed fellow-commenters here have been known to express their dislike of words like ‘attendee’, where the EE ending doesn’t follow the ‘object of the verb’ rule. Today we have ARRESTEE which does follow the rule – but as SinCam says it’s still an ugly word!

    Lots to like here – I thought SLINKY and the F-LANDERS were great (and the surfaces made sense – well, just about).

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

12. Wondered why I couldn’t get HIAWATHA to work for 24a.

13. Most of this went in fairly easily, but quite a lot of GK needed for words like KNAP, SCRIMSHAW and CAROM (which I knew) and FIANCHETTO (which I’ve never met and couldn’t parse either). And to be pedantic, the plant’s name is the plural “naked ladies” – fun clue though.

14. I found this easier than yesterday’s.
    Did anybody get “Swann” without online help? Even on Wikipedia’s entry for Proust, it was only mentioned in the hyperlink for a reference. The (apparently) very mild theme may have helped some a little.

15. Hovis @12: I had the same for a while. Same obscure words as others have mentioned but mostly fair, except FIANCHETTO as Tim C @3 notes. I have no knowledge of FLANDERS and SWANN, although I have heard them mentioned in these blogs before. That will be my homework today.

    Ta Brummie & manehi

16. Having once lived there, I wouldn’t have thought of Chesterfield as being in the East Midlands, but I suppose as it is in Derbyshire it must be.

17. I didn’t know CAROM (which nevertheless leapt out) or FIANCHETTO (which certainly didn’t) and HEADACHE lived up to its name, but otherwise this didn’t give me a lot of trouble.

    CHESTERFIELD, with its Sheffield postcode, doesn’t seem properly East Midland, but Derbyshire is so categorised.

    I’m sure that the vernacular name of Colchicum autumnale (aka meadow saffron, but definitely not to be taken internally) is usually plural: NAKED LADIES.

    I didn’t look for a theme, so congratulations to those that did. Interestingly, SWANN is a nom de plume that the cruciverbalist Don seems never to have used.

    Thanks to S&B

18. ravenrider and gladys: Our comments have crossed. Sorry I’m such a slow compositor:)

19. Never heard of FIANCHETTO.but guessed it having all the crossers and the anagram fodder. I assumed from the definition that it was an ecclesiastical term (having never played chess above the most basic level), so there’s a TILT. Liked NAKED LADY, so-called because the leaves appear in spring, then die away, before the pink flowers come up from the bare ground in autumn; plus SCRIMSHAW, and also KNAP, which I spent a while on thinking “is that a word”?” before remembering those TV shows where people demonstrate ancient skills, including flint-knapping.
    While ARRESTEE was completely fair and valid, like SinCam@6 I think it’s an ugly word. IMO a perfect clue has an answer that’s neither obscure nor ugly, but I fully accept that not every clue can be perfect! And of course different folk have different ideas about what is obscure or ugly.
    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

20. Thanks Brummie and manehi
    I tried HIAWATHA too, Hovis. I also tried KERB at 18a – it nearly works, but I would probably have complained if it had been the solution!

21. Couple of clunky parsings today I thought, though all fair. I did like MAKE ENDS MEET and AT THE DROP OF A HAT, even if the enumeration made the latter a write-in.

    Didn’t know FIANCHETTO (LOI) and assumed it was an opera I’d never heard of with a bishop as main character. With all the crossers in it could hardly have been anything else, and I was pleased that Chambers confirmed the word even if I was wrong about the def.

    Never noticed the themette buts that’s nothing new.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

22. Hello beaulieu @19.
    Straight from the OED:
    obscure
    A. adj.
    1.
    a. I’ve never heard of it

23. ravenrider@14
    Yes, it leapt out at me but only because I had to plough my way through ‘du cote de chez Swann’ (sorry, no accents) at university. But also having the three crossers made it simple.

24. Thanks Brummie and manehi, I found this to be a happy mix of the straightforward and knotty.
    As per usual, I only saw F&S on completion, then looked for more than 5d, perhaps ‘the gasman’ or ‘the sloth’.
    But I like the way the 2 DROPs appear to indicate the cascading H in the grid, like a SLINKY?

25. Too mondayish for my liking. Over too quickly I’m afraid. Having said that, I totally missed the Flanders and Swann mini theme

26. Well, I’ll put this down as another learning experience! Despite some early encouragement with some of the more straightforward clues, I gave up in frustration fairly quickly. KNAP, SCRIMSHAW, CAROM, FIANCHETTO as a chess move and NAKED LADY as meadow saffron all completely new to me, and – not that it matters for the clues – I had never heard of Flanders and Swann (although when I Google them I realise they look familiar).

    We go again tomorrow. Thanks regardless, Brummie and manehi.

27. Maybe I’m in my second childhood, but a good introduction to Flanders and Swann is The Gasman Cometh in legovision

28. Good crossword with lots to like.

    DNK Proust’s SWANN, and of course didn’t see the theme. Surely there’s more there hidden away somewhere? Unlike a lot of posters above, I got stuck on the NE corner. I DNK CAROM either, although it sounds vaguely familiar. One of the first crosswords that I compiled had a chess theme with FIANCHETTO included, it’s just such a lovely word.

    I particularly liked MAKE ENDS MEET and FLANDERS.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

29. LovableJim @26 – I felt the same! Didn’t know KNAP, SCRIMSHAW, CAROM, FIANCHETTO or NAKED LADY either.

    I’d heard of Flanders and Swann (vaguely) but I thought they were ‘Underneath The Arches’ but Google tells me I’ve mixed them up with another duo.

30. ravenrider @14 – I am almost ashamed to admit that I got Swann from Monty Python’s “All-England summarising Proust competition”

    I enjoyed this, fairly straightforward with just enough obscurity (“FIANCHETTO” and the various names of Meadow Saffron) to add spice and learning.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi

31. [SinCam @ 6 et al: on my local buses standing passengers are referred to, quite nonsensically, as “standees”! Thankfully no reference to “sittees”]

32. ravenrider@14 I did get SWANN because I know that the first volume of A la recherche du temps perdus/Remembrance of Things Past is Du cote de chez Swann/Swann’s Way, though I haven’t read any of them. (Sorry, no accents.)

33. Thanks Brummie and manehi. I thought this was lots of fun – I quite liked the mix of easy and chewier clues. Being the highly literate fellow I am, nothing here was new to me, though I had to dig deep in the reserves for a couple. The only Proust I’ve ever read was the passage we had to translate in one of my uni finals, but I remembered SWANN even though that was over 25 years ago.

    My bodged parsing of ARRESTEE was AR + EE containing REST, but your take makes much more sense, manehi. HIAWATHA was also my first thought for 24a.

    Robi @28 – agreed, FIANCHETTO is a lovely word, and more than makes up for ARRESTEE

    The other thing that struck me about this is what a strange expression AT THE DROP OF A HAT is. Never really thought about it before. Google tells me dropping a hat used to be the signal to start a horse race.

    I’m sure *someone* has done a more comprehensive Flanders & Swann themed puzzle before but I can’t remember who it was. Maybe Boatman?

34. Having played county chess 50 years ago when I was still at school, been given a copy of Swann’s Way by an old girlfriend as an undergrad (I got to the end pf page 1, but only just), living in a town where most of the old buildings are faced with knapped flint, and which used to have a Napoleonic naval prison, and having been introduced to F&S’s reviews in primary school years, all the terms that seem obscure to some could have been designed into the puzzle just for me. For the first time ever, a Brummie was almost a write-in. It can’t last…

35. Would those advocating HIAWATHA for 24a care to explain why? I’m afraid I can’t see it at all.

36. I don’t know what it is with me and themes. My dad was a big Flanders and Swann fan, and I bought him ‘At the Drop of a Hat’ one Christmas, but still didn’t see it today. Like others, I found this easy to get going and tough to finish. KNAP in particular seemed almost worthy of Azed, needing an obscure definition in the wordplay to get me to an obscure solution. Where, obviously, obscure = unknown to me!

    Like Hovis @12 and others I also biffed HIAWATHA so a dnf today. Very nice crossword though, and all very good fun.

37. Gladys@35 I can’t see it at all either except it fits all the crossers. So I shouldn’t have left it in there really.

38. I was another who bunged in Hiawatha without much thought. For a while I thought perhaps there was a bit of a DOWNBEAT theme, with some of my first in – CRISIS, ALARMIST, AFFECTED – but of course the existence of both FLANDERS and SWANN had to indicate that that was Brummie’s intent. I agree that quite a few of the down clues some solvers might have found rather obscure…

39. [Not too keen on the word ARRESTEE myself, but I’d like to ask the UK (or OZ) crowd here about a semantically related word, suspect. The TV news people here in the US equate it with culprit, as in “There was a shooting in the park today and the suspect escaped”, which to me seems bonkers since there is no suspect yet. There is no identified individual that they need to be careful of not slandering. Has that usage escaped to other shores? Are we likely to see it in crosswords?]

40. Gladys@35 maybe iconic rebel and dreadful rhyming slang for bother????

41. gladys @35 – It was simply the first thing that came to mind from the crossing letters (it was my LOI), but I couldn’t make any sense of that being the answer from the clue, so I didn’t write it in. Before I’d got as far as having any checking letters, I had briefly wondered if ‘iconic rebel’ might be leading us to ____DEAN but no solution suggested itself.

42. 16d is not ugly or horrid in civil law.
    An Arrestee is a Scottish law term being the person in whose hands is the property attached by Arrestment, being the attachment of property in satisfaction of a debt, say a ship or an aircraft.

    Arrestee, as a person arrested, is a US term

    Thanks to Brummie and Manehi

43. All straightforward except for the chess move, of which I have never heard. AT THE DROP OF A HAT went in fairy early on and immediately put me in mind of Flanders and Swann, but I didn’t even twig that they’d both shown up until I saw the comments here. Can’t see any other references to them or their work in the puzzle. Thanks to our blogger and setter.

44. Gladys@35, exactly for the reasons given by Widdersbel@41…four crossers in place, and my eye taken by “iconic rebel”, which of course has little or no connection to Hiawatha at all. I was simply in too much of a rush today, and already I feel a HEADACHE coming on…

45. 5dn was a very early write-in for me, from the enumeration, so my first hint at 24ac was the initial H. My first thought was HEREWARD, but other crossers rapidly disabused me!

46. Maybe just coincidence, but in AT THE DROP OF A HAT is: ‘The Great New Motorway’, Topical song, originally for the London show but adopted for any city with unfinished building projects e. g. “The Great New Gardiner EXPRESSWAY” when in Toronto, 1961. There was also ‘DOWN BElow’, and SNOW in ‘A Song of the Weather’.

47. Fiery Jack @36-37 – are you a Fall fan?

48. … and apparently in Donald Swann’s opera based on C. S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra, there is a green NAKED LADY.

49. And in the Slow Train is CHESTER-le-street and OpenSHAW. Are these all coincidences, do you think?

50. I’ve never read Proust but I remembered the film Swann In Love starring Jeremy Irons. I recall (perhaps wrongly) that it was an attempt to film the whole ‘temps perdu thing’ that was truncated through lack of funds. Anyway, I sat through it in the miserable cold of a 1984/5 winter in a draughty, flat-floored Bluecoat Chambers room occupied by the Merseyside Film Institute, with the first ever flowering of sciatica , then undiagnosed, tormenting me.
    Never forgotten.

51. For some reason I did not find this as clever, witty, or as satisfying as Brummie usually is.I did enjoy clues like DOWNBEAT and THOU but most of it went in with a shrug. I failed at FIANCHETTO not knowing enough about chess to guess it correctly. Thanks to both.

52. I think I’m the only one who bunged in Shanghaied into 12 as not a fate that’s rectified, although no idea about the bishop, and felt very smug. Then spent ages trying to fit in something for 13,24and25. Joys of crosswords.

53. [Steve69 @47, why yes, how did you guess? I used to be Distant Relation, as in the Container Drivers line ‘F. Jack’s a distant relation’, which just amused me because I could never work out what the hell it was, until the world reached the internet age and I saw it printed somewhere. And then thought good God, how was I ever going to fathom that? But somehow my userid got removed or lost somehow, except that the site remembered me enough to not let me recreate it. So I went for the less subtle version instead.]

54. Thanks for the blog, did not know KNAP but I do know NAP from snooker so it was easy to get.
    Chess and snooker instead of football and cricket for once, FIANCHETTO such a lovely word and a favoured move when I used to play. SCRIMSHAW was another favourite.
    Brummie missed out today not actually using HIAWATHA , there is a nice mechanics problem based on the poem.

55. Tough but rewarding puzzle with lots of clever wordplay and a number of favourites including 1a CRISIS and 3d SCRIMSHAW.
    Thanks to Brummie and manehi for his blog.

56. Did anyone solve 4d as SPEEDO? It fits fairly well. DEEPS for blue (ocean) reversed, plus O for duck. Wearing them is pretty figure-hugging.
    Thanks to Brummie and Manehi

57. Goujeers @34
    All those coincidences leading you to the obscure answers must have made you feel like you were starring in a remake of “Slumdog Millionaire”!
    It’s lovely and so satisfying when things fall out like that.

    Very enjoyable crossword and helpful blog, thanks both.
    Mr SR spotted the theme (I didn’t even hear the “Whoosh” as it went over my head, despite being a fan of F&S).
    As he is also a keen chess player, Mr SR has something of a smug air now.
    (Me? Jealous? )

58. As a Coventrian, of course I am proud of our horsebacked NAKED LADY, but I’d never heard of the flower. I didn’t twig FLANDERS and SWANN until completion, probably because AT THE DROP OF A HAT was a very early write-in. FIANCHETTO (moving the bishop to Knight 2) and SCRIMSHAW (learned in Moby Dick, and with a minor role in Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Man In The High Castle’) are beautiful words.
    As to 4d, I got there via the back door – SKY was obvious and I thought of LIN/NIL from ‘eau-de-nil’, a colour very close to duck egg blue (the colour of the Infinite, according to Terry Pratchett’s Death, although to my male eyes they’re both on the green side).

59. Late to the show – I only just finished and found it tough. CAROM and FIANCHETTO were new but gettable. Some nice clues that have been already mentioned.

    There is an obscure Indian game called carrom and after reading the Wikipedia entry, I think the name came from CAROM (the other meaning: ricochet).

    I was happy to see Proust in a crossword: there can’t be that many opportunities to reference his book. From memory, Proust disliked Moncrieff’s rendering (from Shakespeare) of the title as “Remembrance of Things Past” (he ignored Proust) but new versions opt for the more literal “In Search of Lost Time”. When I saw SWANN, I assumed Brummie thought that solvers might have tried the first volume (Swann’s Way) before giving up!

    I read the Enright translation (seven volumes/six books) and they’re not as difficult to read as their reputations suggest once you get used to parsing long sentences, which occasionally span a page. [I’ve noticed two broad groups of Proust readers: the first don’t mention it because it smacks of bookish one-upmanship; the second do recommend Proust because they just want people to read the masterpiece, knowing most won’t. Only one person ever took up my recommendation.]

60. Late and just thanks to setter and blogger for the entertainment (SLINKY I could not parse).

    But one answer reminded me of a drummer friend who informed me that playing the blues was easy, you just had to emphasise the DOWNBEAT.

    Brigster@50: Your reminiscence seems very apposite. Poor you.

61. Ah man! I thought at first that this was the second Brummie in a row that I could complete unaided and that he and I were truly simpatico, but alas, that NE corner tripped me up and flung me face down on the pavement, not unfairly though. KNAP was completely unknown to me but I should have gotten the others.

62. Grimes Graves, just up the road from us, is where they knew a thing or two about flint KNAPping 4,000 years ago. And I think nearby Brandon at one point in its history became the biggest producer of KNAPped gun flints…

63. Quite enjoyable. I needed some online help for various new words and GK such as: CHESTERFIELD town, SCRIMSHAW, CAROM (billiards term), KNAP, FIANCHETTO.
    Knew of Lady Godiva, but NAKED LADY = meadow saffron is new to me.

    Favourites: make ends meet, HERALD, ABRUPT, SLINKY.

    New KNAP = break small piece off.

    Thanks, both.

64. A carom is a cannon in British English or Billiards.
    Most builders own a knapping hammer, it’s square ended and quite heavy.
    Swann is the only Proust character I have heard of.
    Fianchetto was completely new to me.

65. Thanks to Ronald@62 and others for extra background on KNAP, a nice new word to collect. I still think the clue was fair although only if you have heard of NAP I suppose.

66. Wasn’t too quick with this and struggled with a few. Didn’t get ARRESTEE or like it and further didn’t like ARR component.
    Nevertheless thanks both

67. Newbie slowly venturing out of quiptic. Alas, got only 16 out of 27. Fair showing for me.

Comments are closed.