Guardian 28,636 / Brendan

83 comments on “Guardian 28,636 / Brendan”

1. Philosophers and their works (plus)! Much more to my liking, though it took me a while to figure out the theme was MIND. Some nice, unusual touches – PLACE NAME, RODIN, DRESS. NHO GIGUE and, although I had the gig and the final ‘e’, I had to use a dictionary for the missing letter – not a clue what the ‘we left’ was about. Nor did I know MASSENET, though I could construct it before checking. I liked the fact that the fodder for RAISON D’ETRE even includes the apostrophe. Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

2. French in crosswords – my bete noir!

3. 25A Pensees is also the title of Pascal’s major (posthumous) work.

4. Is it worth saying Pensees was written by Pascal? Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

5. I agree with you Eileen, except that I didn’t finish – I revealed pentathlon because it looked impossible and I did not see blight as an anagrind!
   And thank you for parsing several that foxed me – 2d, 16d, 30 and 31a.
   Thank you Brendan for an engrossing well-themed puzzle!

6. I just want to echo (pretty much exactly) TassieTim @1…and to thank Brendan for one of the most enjoyable puzzles I’ve done in a while. (Thanks to Eileen too.)

7. Yep, ditto that Eileen, heaps fun francais and over trop vite. [And speaking of missing accents (should learn to do them but I’m slack), epee reminded me of a much loved teacher who had us saying stuff like Le bebe a tue un elephant avec son epee]. Enjoyed, ta BnE.

8. Like Eileen, I always like Brendan’s puzzles, and enjoyed this one a lot.

   Favourites were the non-thematic PENTATHLON and DRESS.

   PENSEES is the title of a collection of writings by Blaise PASCAL, and not just the French for ‘thoughts’.

   [Tangential Yuletide connection: although the best known opera based on the Cinderella story is Rossini’s Cenerentola, Massenet’s Cendrillon is worth a visit. What’s Christmas without something sugary?]

   Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

9. We’ve had a good run this week: the contemporary and inventive Fen, followed by football stadiums yesterday and, today, the cerebral. All enjoyable.

   Having got MIND and DESCARTES early, I was expecting some reference to “I think, therefore I am” and was pleasantly surprised to see the Latin version. However, if you didn’t know this phrase, there was no wordplay to help you. Then again if you got the philosopher (whose first name is dropped neatly into another clue), you probably knew his most famous saying.

   Lots of favourites but the cheeky RIEN made me smile and I like the way PASCAL was snuck in inconspicuously together with his PENSEES.

   GIGUE was new to me.

   muffin: you got your EPICENTRE 🙂

   Thanks Brendon for the mind-bender and Eileen.

10. Formidable! Many thanks and grands bisous to Brendan and Eileen.
    Bonnes fêtes!

11. Brendan crosswords are always a treat and this one was no exception. Lots of fun, I knew all the French expressions. Hard to pick a favourite from so many great clues, but I did like the way that 10a only revealed itself after I’d written both words on a piece of paper

    Merci Beaucoup to Brendan and Lucky Eileen. Happy Christmas to you both

12. An enjoyable interlude and some fun clues. Particularly liked EPITAPHS and PENTATHLON. I had an alcoholic French master at school many years ago but some of it must have sunk in as I managed to make myself understood in my visits there a few years ago.
    Is “Des Cartes” really “Some Maps”? I thought “des” was more “from” than “some”, but then my teacher may have failed to inculcate that into me in detention for not finishing my French homework. He was more surprised than me that I managed to pass French ‘O’ Level.

13. Hmmm. Eileen’s blog begins with her pleasure at seeing Brendan’s name – and I entirely concur. And yet Saturday’s Prize blog surprised me with a number of dissatisfied posts: “… it may be a double pangram – with every solution ending in a different letter – but I was hoping for something more… ” Which, frankly, seemed a tad harsh. I hope the community will be satisfied that he’s done his bit today – or perhaps it should have been a lipogram too … A thoroughly absorbing puzzle, in my book, which my limited knowledge of French, philosophy and mathematics was just about up to. Amongst plenty of highlights, I’d single out PLACE NAME and PENTATHLON for their definitions, PENSEES which, as Grim and Dim and Phil have pointed out, has an extra layer of meaning and, along with Eileen, RAISON D’ETRE for the sheer brilliance of the anagram and surface.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

14. Thanks to several of you for the extra information on PENSÉES: I should have researched Pascal more conscientiously.

15. And for those who complain about RIEN, tell me you haven’t heard this
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Kvu6Kgp88

16. Thanks Brendan and Eileen! I was defeated having confidently entered ‘Mercator’ for 19d. . .

17. Thoroughly enjoyable. I slowed myself down by trying to shoehorn ‘Mercator’ in at 19d, but discovered the error of my ways and completed eventually.
    Thanks to the setter and, as this will be Eileen’s last blog before Christmas, a special thank you to her and sincere best wishes for the Festive season and 2022.

18. Formidable. (in both the French and English senses). Briefly had MERCATOR for MAPMAKER and was half expecting Pascal’s triangle to appear.

19. DavidWoking and George Clements like lines of latitude and longitude we crossed.

20. My long ago French o level meant this was tougher than it should have been. (Our French teacher had been at the Normandy landings and a guaranteed way of distracting him from the boring lesson was to ask him a question about those days. Nearly always resulted in him drawing a map of the beaches on the blackboard. A bare pass and poor performance today are the end result.)
    This was however clever and enjoyable. Too many favourites to mention. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

21. Knowing that Pascal wrote his Pensees, I both missed the wordplay for that answer, and missed that Eileen’s blog originally had not noted the connection.

22. Thanks for the blog and all the others this year, my French is very poor but the clues were good enough and the phrases familiar enough to get away with it. MrEssexboy will really like this one.
    Agree with the praise for PENTATHLON, also thought GIGUE was a very clever bit of deception.

23. Fantastic puzzle – fortunately my French and Latin were up to it. Like SinCam @5, it had trouble seeing that ‘blight’ was an anagrind, but got it eventually – PENTATHLON and NETTLED were my LOIs. Like Eileen I was sorry when it was all done! Many thanks to B & E.

24. pdp @9 you beat me to it for EPICENTRE, I think Muffin will approve of the definition, we need light-year next.

25. Thanks for the mention at 7, Brendan. This should have been right up my rue but I suspect that being pretty much bilingual slowed me down. Etrange…

26. Thanks, Brendan. For me, a return to an enjoyable crossword after the Saturday’s prize a couple of weeks ago (I spent a lot of time with that one cheating my way through, without a completion).

    I had SAPPHIC and MEGA early on, so with all the mention of philosophers, I thought this was going to be a Greek theme.

    Thanks for the blog, also, Eileen.

27. [Anyone else notice that Auriga @2 got his beast transgendered? Bless!]

28. Lovely puzzle, merci mille fois Brendan and Eileen. Yes Roz @22, this was definitely up my rue (to borrow from blaise).

    Thanks also for the GRAPEVINE earworm – I suspect some may also have an eyeworm 😉

    Tim C @12: du, de la, de l’, and des can all mean ‘of the’, ‘from the’, ‘some’ or ‘any’. When used in the some/any sense they’re known as partitive articles.

    I admit I was a bit confused by the reference to MIND as the theme. Yes, Pascal and Descartes were philosophers (plus), and we had Rodin’s THINKER. But there were lots of things that didn’t really fit with ‘mind’ as a theme – the two EPIs and the EPEE, and the many other French bits and pieces: C’EST LA VIE, RIEN, Tours as the French city, savoir-faire, Paris-Marseille and map-making. Also, if the theme is ‘mind’, why are there no non-French thinkers?

29. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    A DNF for me – I revealed PENSEES. I also confidently entered MERCATOR first.
    My favourite was the neat NON STOP.
    Thanks for the EPICENTRE references – correctly defined for once!

30. [P.S. I forgot to say, if matt w drops in later – have a look at yesterday’s blog, posts 61 onwards, and the 16 Dec Paul blog, @65 onwards, for a discussion prompted by your clue.]

31. Thank you, Brendan – a tour de force – and thank you, Eileen for the blog. Seasons greetings to all, and let’s hope for a happier 2022.

32. That was fun, thanks Brendan. I did French (and Pascal’s PENSEES), as part of my degree many years ago, so probably had an unfair advantage here. I remembered MASSENET but not which way out of Paris Marseille was, so I didn’t parse him.
    Liked RIEN, PLACE NAME, NON STOP, RAISON D’ETRE, C’EST LA VIE.

33. Another mercator solver here….But what a difference a day makes! Literate, stylish, witty the antithesis of yesterday’s lamentable offering: worthy of the master himself. I tremble to think how yesterday’s contributor would have clued 22a 29d 26a.

34. Just a bit of pedantry:
    We didn’t leave the club in 2016 – 52% of the UK voted to leave in 2016.
    The UK actually left in 2020.

35. Thank you Eileen especially for the link to MASSENET, I had to google him but loved the clue. Nearly fell into the Mercator trap and happy to drag out the other GK/FK from somewhere – but can anyone confirm/deny that the French tend to say “C’est comme ca” rather than “C’est la vie” to accompany their famous shrug?
    Delighted for muffin, and PostMark@13 I think one poster on the Brendan Prize blog did sum up that experience in that things like double pangrams are maybe more fun for the setter than the solver.
    Today I was happy to see Brendan doing what he does best to create a puzzle somehow greater than the sum of its many excellent parts. I tried to find the usual hidden extra layer of meaning but could only get as far as NON-STOP SAPPHIC NUDES – thanks Brendan.

36. I’m apprehensive about making any comment that runs against the flow of unbridled praise for Brendan’s chef d’oeuvre, but the Mercator issue really riled me: the clue allows Mercator as a perfectly valid answer, since there is no charade wordplay to uniquely specify the answer that Brendan wanted. I think this is rather slapdash cryptic clueing. Christmas goodwill? … bah humbug!

37. Stared at this for some considerable time before I made my first entry with the fairly straightforward GRAPEVINE. But once I discovered Monsieur DESCARTES lurking at 11ac I was really in my element, and this fairly rattled in. A positive tour de force from Brendan, and even the very last one in, the very cleverly concealed RIEN, elicited a sigh of pleasure…

38. Quite a tough puzzle but I liked the theme. Needed some help from wikipedia for the GK.

    Favourites: GRAPEVINE, PENTATHLON.

    New for me: composer MASSENET.

    Thanks, both.

39. [@34 More pedantry, off topic but fairly important: nowhere near a majority of the UK voted to leave that club. Nearly a quarter didn’t vote and many UK residents (e.g. permanent residents with EU nationalities) weren’t allowed to. I think a lot of the last few years’ problems flowed from this fact.]

40. pserve_p2 @36: Surely this is a crossword, not a series of unconnected cryptic clues. Such a criticism is only really valid if the solution is ambiguous even with all the crossing letters – as does happen occasionally, but not In this case. Objection overruled! (In a friendly spirit 🙂 )

41. I used to think that all cryptic clues should be non-ambiguous independent of their crossers (which to be fair, they usually are) but experience has proved otherwise. The occasional exception like Mercator/Mapmaker is OK (unless you end up on the wrong side of it, in which case it isn’t). C’est la guerre!

42. Herb @ 39 – please don’t rub it in! (My apologies for carelessly saying we left in 2016.)

43. gladys @41: The problem is only really likely to occur with clues that are a single cryptic definition, like the contentious one here. And such clues are non-Ximenean, unless they are also &lit, so the rules for setters in some publications will not permit them.

44. For Mercator I think “often shows” perhaps rules him out.
    Gladys@41, I still think all clues should be independent. I try to solve every clue by itself at my first attempt without looking at the grid for the Down clues.

45. I came here to find out where the nue came from in 31ac. Now I know the answer and I feel depressed. Good crossword though

46. Finished but with a few unparsed – though thanks to Eileen’s excellent blog, I can’t remember which ones since all is clear now!

    I wonder sometimes {Auriga @2) if French is “unfair”, since many people of my generation were taught it as the “obligatory” foreign language at school, only being able to choose German or Spanish later. I understand things may be different these days with Mandarin chosen fairly often as a first foreign language – as an aside, I wonder what Chinese crosswords look like?

    I knew Massenet from Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” – based on a possibly deliberate mishearing of Massenet’s “O Souverain”.

    Good fun, Brendan, and great blog as usual from Eileen.

47. I agree with Roz @44. I put in Mercator before deciding that graphic artist would be a very poor definition, and that his work would surely be his projection, which shows latitude always rather than often. So difficult to justify it as a solution anyway IMHO, and even then the crossers rule it out which in a crossword I think is fine.

48. Eileen — you referred to RODIN as 26dn, but it’s 26ac.

    Since Pascal was a mathematician as well as a philosopher, you could say that he made his contribution as a calculator, so it’s in the definition.

    Enjoyable puzzle, thanks Brendan, and Eileen, thanks for spotting things in the clues that escaped me.

49. Masterful. Took me forever to twig the clever PLACE NAME. Can’t get enough of Brendan and thanks Eileen for your wonderful contributions in 2021.

50. A typically excellent puzzle from Brendan and blog from Eileen!

51. [Roz @24 – I belatedly saw that you mentioned Euler’s formula the other day. It reminded me of a talk I went to by Roger Penrose (long before his Nobel prize) in which he spoke about (some) maths being discovered rather than invented. He likened it to the earthly manifestations of Plato’s ideal forms. The beauty and simplicity of Euler’s identity is a good candidate for the timeless existence of some maths, waiting for us to discover it.

    eb @28 – At one point I thought the theme was going to be philosophers (of the mind). I started thinking, before proceeding, of some famous philosophers that might pop up and it occurred to me that their names are very crossword friendly (Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hume, Russell, …). A setter could even go for a philosopher pangram with Spinoza, Nietzsche and Quine 🙂 ]

52. I’ve enjoyed this year greatly and 225 has helped considerably. Thanks to all the meticulous bloggers, Eileen in particular, and commentators. In response to PostMark’s comment at 13, I cannot resist quoting Charles Babbage: “Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.” On MAPMAKER/MERCATOR, I will admit that my weakness for cryptic definitions sometimes extends to the clue. No setter wants alternative answers, but no setter can always avoid them, and cases which are not disambiguated by crossers are rare (I do remember the pair VICEREGENT/VICEGERENT). I will be with you again soon in the New Year. (Final comment: in my opinion, Ximenes was not Ximenean).

53. Simply brilliant! Thanks B & E

54. Thanks, Valentine @ 48 – blog amended now.

55. Brendan @52: Thanks for dropping by and for the pleasure you have given (most of!) us over the past year. Season’s greetings and I look forward to your reappearance in 2022.

56. I thought this was brilliant, I enjoyed every minute of it.

    While both this and yesterday’s Paul employed themes I knew about, hence enjoyed a lot, there are often not-so-familiar themes so I’m sympathetic with any solvers that fell into that boat today. As long as the answers are gettable by wordplay plus crossers then I think they’re fair. As for GK versus specific knowledge, is being familiar with C’EST LA VIE any different from knowing that TACIT=understood, say? Tough call.

57. [Herb @39, also off topic. What rankled even more was the fact that long-term EU residents with British nationality were not allowed to vote in the referendum either. If anything, they (OK, we) were the people with the most insight into what leaving would mean.]

58. pdg@11: I will try to be brief, as you raise many issues I tussle with. “Is mathematics discovered or invented?” strikes me as one of those false binary choices. All will be clear when the book appears, hopefully in 2022 or 2023.
    My memory of Penrose — I happened to be around one time when he was awarded an honorary doctorate and I went to his talk (fascinating, about how computability (in the technical sense) is inadequate to explain the brain). What I loved was that while many schoolchildren these days would not consider giving a presentation without using Powerpoint, he used two projectors with piles of handwritten acetates which he kept dropping. The question of whether Escher was a mathematician, and his interactions with Polya and Penrose also very interesting.

59. Great stuff. Many thanks, Brendan and Eileen, for this and all your other splendid contributions in 2021. Here’s to a better 2022.

60. To Brian Greer@58. I think you mean pdp11@51, dummy

61. Thanks both,

    As I was solving this I thought, ‘There’ll be trouble at t’fifteen squared. The critics who disliked yesterday’s Paul will hate this.’ FWIW, I enjoyed this one but enjoyed yesterday’s more. I suspect a certain amount of intellectual snobbery to be at work, preferring popular philosophy to football grounds.

62. I’ve been in my element the last two days, with my keen interest in football and my studies in languages, particularly French. But today I sympathise with those solvers without a knowledge of French (and Latin). I must admit I missed the artist Manet in 2 down – just bunged in MASSENET without much thought. A mapmaker would have explained it to me! Thanks, Brendan and Eileen

63. [Brian Greer @58 – In chapter 3 (Mathematics and Reality) of The Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose also tussles with the question and settles (simplifying) for: maths for specific ends as inventions and cites examples for discoveries: “works of man” vs “works of God”, as he puts it. He draws parallels to art and engineering, quoting Borges: “… a famous poet is less of an inventor than a discoverer”. (He covers, all too briefly, computability and the mind in the first chapter.)

    At your lecture, did Penrose say “forgive me” a few times as he dropped his acetates?! At the Penrose talk I went to, he practically said that he prepared for the talk on his way to the venue, referring to some scribbled notes as he spoke without skipping a beat.]

64. Thanks to my high school French much of this went in without much angst but I finally revealed GIGUE and PENSEES, two that never would have dropped. I particularly enjoyed IMAGE, PLACE NAME, DESCARTES, and EPICENTRE. I couldn’t parse DRESS or MASSENET so thanks Eileen for that. Thanks Brendan for another class act.

65. pdp@51 John Barrow discusses this in his book – The World Within the World, he has four interpretations of mathematics , including Platonism.
    He also gives Paul Dirac’s solution to the “Coconut Puzzle ” , now there is someone who really was clever.

66. 2D – the Benedetti clip is from an opera.

67. [Roz @65 – many thanks for the book reference.]

68. Togs @ – Clang! Of course it is. (It’s the only piece of his that I know.) I’ll edit the blog.

69. Brendan @52: as a fellow Irishman, I enjoyed your Babbage quotation. The potato, of course, has all sorts of connotations. Look forward to your next challenge.

70. Unlike auriga@2, J’adore Le Francais dan’s mes mots croises.

    I did far better on this than the quick crossword which defeated me for once.

71. It really bugs me when I’m required to know a considerable amount of French to do an English language crossword.

72. Chapeau Brendan, I really like your style and although I too was Mercatored I got there in the end.
    Thank also to Eileen for another excellent blog.

73. Marvellous fun, thanks Brendan.
    I think I fell into a trap no one else has owned up to. For 26a I confidently entered DEGAS as the clue had an “eg” and a “superficial damaging”. Oh yes, I went the MERCATOR way too but sorted both out eventually. I was surprised to find the whole exercise did not take as long as unravelling the football grounds yesterday. It was just what I needed on one of the longest and hottest days of the year.
    Thanks for the blog Eileen, and all the other ones through the year.

74. Another satisfying themer from Brendan. Loi PENTATHLON, where “blight” as an anagrind foxed me until the end.
    Talking of Penrose and beauty in simplicity and form, it reminded me of this masterpiece by his brother Jonathan over the board.
    Is the appearance of PENROSE as a Nina split into two in the grid intentional then?
    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

75. I loved this puzzle. Thank you Brendan.

76. phitonelly @74: Intriguing – I thought it might be LA VIE that was en ROSE

77. Can I belatedly add to the du / de la / des discussion by mentioning DÈS, also meaning from (a point in time).

78. Many thanks for all the comments – I’ve been in and out during the day – and the amendments and extra information – and especially to Brian / Brendan for dropping in: visits and comments from setters are always welcome and very much appreciated.

    I’m reminded by George @17 (the end of the year has crept up so quickly) that I intended to end my preamble with warmest wishes to all here for a very happy and safe Christmas and a more hopeful new year for all of us.

79. Really fun crossword. Thanks Eileen for the explanation of GIGUE.
    Thanks to Brendan

80. I didn’t finish this but very much enjoyed it nonetheless. Funnily enough the first clue I solved was RODIN which just appeared in my head without my even thinking about it. Unfortunately other clues didn’t come so easily.

81. Thank you TimC at 15 for the link to the marvellous Edit Piaf……

82. Gervase@40 and gladys@41: OK — yes, you’re right in both your points. The “often shows” wouldn’t be apt for Mercator and, on reflection, I agree that an ambiguous answer is only really a sin if all the crossers allow it. At the point of solve, I was full of indignation that Mercator was not the correct solution! Apologies to Brendan, too, of course.

83. Magnifique!

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