Guardian Cryptic 28,646 by Brummie

107 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,646 by Brummie”

1. Loved the “source of rainbows” in 20, 1.

   “The Lion and the Unicorn” is another Orwell book.

2. My last 2 were LAWN and WHALE both of which I think are pretty weak.

   Otherwise very enjoyable

3. I could have sworn I saw a Shakespearean theme in here, but my Shakespeare is too weak to work out which one it was and a brief Google has come up with nothing.

   I very much enjoyed the puzzle though – one of Brummie’s best for a while, I reckon. EVE was suitably groan-worthy, TROUT FARM was fun, and UNICORN was a great way to disguise a hidden word (to the extent where I painstakingly typed U-N-I-C-O-R-N into the anagram solver and then realised it wasn’t actually a subtractive anagram!)

4. In 19d, the graduate is MB (Bachelor of Medicine).

5. I did look for a theme, but missed it. I saw MUSSOLINI and his SPATS, and OPPRESSION, and LION and UNICORN, but wasn’t convinced.

   Thanks Brummie and loonapick

6. I was thrown a bit by LION and wondered whether “person of note” referred to someone on a UK currency note which I wasn’t aware of.
   Favourite was PERSECUTOR.

7. Another Orwell essay (book?) is INSIDE the WHALE.

8. I messed up the SE corner as I had ALSO for 29d. That was Al (gore) with SO as ‘good to go’ with ALSO as ‘once more’. I should have been suspicious of this stretchy parse! ANEW is much better. So sadly I never saw WHALE so definitely DNF. But I enjoyed finding the theme but was disappointed that reckless googling of Orwell did not help me finish.
   Thanks Brummie i enjoyed this. Especially APRON and UNDO which foxed me for too long up in the NW.
   Thanks loonapick for comments and explanations.

9. Anyone else have TAPS instead of DAYS? I think it works for ‘times’ – Lexico has taps US (treated as singular or plural) A bugle call for lights to be put out in army quarters.

   I guess it falls down on the number of wheels on a trap v wagon. Also Orwell didn’t write BURMESE TAPS.

   Apart from that I enjoyed this very much, thanks B & L (though before spotting Orwell, and with the juxtaposition of LION and LOINS, I half-wondered about a Carry on Emmannuelle (sic) theme)

10. Hovis @4: if the setting had been switched from NW USA to NW England, we could have had an MBA in a headless Settle!

    Tim C@6: I believe a lion is also used to denote someone on social media with a large following.

    Two real standout clues for me today: UNICORN and TROUT FARM. Both absolutely top notch.

    INSIDE The WHALE is another Orwell title.

    Thanks Brummie and loonapick

11. Sorry Tim C@7: your second post wasn’t there when I started typing that.

12. Thanks Brummie and loonapick
    No theme, of course, but I still found it quite a quick solve. I too liked TROUT FARM.
    At an early stage I thought 19d would be MOBILISE, but I couldn’t see the graduate.
    A couple of oddities – why construct a complicted subtractive anagram for UNICORN when it is just hidden? (In a similar fashion to Boffo above, I wrote out TUNIC OR NIGHTIE, struck out TIGHT and found UNICORN staring at me, with the IE at the end still, of course.)
    8d “comes off” doesn’t imply removing the letter from inside to me.

13. Let down by my spelling once again. I couldn’t decide between ‘persecuter’ and ‘persecutor’ and chose the wrong one. Now that I type it out, it is quite obvious, but it didn’t seem to be in the grid. Odd.

14. Thanks to both. Oceania was one of the three states in ‘1984’

15. btw loonapick, the “homophone” (?) in 6d is with PERCY rather than PERSEY.

16. No wukkers PostMark@11. I’ve done that myself plenty of times.

17. Finished this early hours and only got the theme when ANIMAL went in last. Earlier, I thought it might be feline with BURMESE CAT(ALONIA) and LION and then there were LAWN and LOIN(S) cloth. I liked TROUT FARM, INSIDE and CATALONIA and good spot madman @14 re OCEANIA(N). Excellent challenge.

    Ta Brummie & loonapick

18. Tricky stuff, with the short ones being the trickiest: failed on DAYS and ANEW. Never saw the pro-in-an wordplay for APRON, as the whole thing works as a rather gruesome extended def for a surgeon’s or butcher’s apron. Missed the theme until I was told there was one, though I know all the ones mentioned so far.
    Not sure that “B movie opening and closing” is quite fair to indicate B E.
    Smiled at Percy-cuter and the source of rainbows, though I wasted lots of time trying to force R instead of T into the anagram, as no doubt I was meant to.

19. LION is a now rather old fashioned term for what these days would be called an A list celebrity: Dickens talks about society hostesses who invite “lions” to their fashionable parties.

20. Thanks to those who have commented. I have edited the blog to reflect your contributions, both additional themed entries and my two typos/errors.

21. I suppose OPPRESSION as a TACTIC and PERSECUTOR could also fit in with Orwell’s socialist views.

22. I knew there must be a theme but SPATS made me think of George Raft in Some Like it Hot and I couldn’t get it out of my head.

23. Enjoyed this, especially the theme and related words. Funnily enough, only last night I saw the Michael Portillo Great Railway Journeys program in which he interviewed George Orwell’s son at the place in Spain (Huesca) where Orwell was wounded while fighting for the Republicans – shot through the neck and survived!

    To each his or her own, but I liked LAWN (never heard of it as a ‘cloth’) and especially WHALE for the ‘Maybe the right sort’ def.

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick

24. I was a bit dubious about LION but then “lionise” came to mind.
    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

25. First thing I mused about was, is Orwell too left-wing for The Guardian these days 😀

    I decided that I didn’t know. Good theme because we didn’t need to know or notice it to solve the puzzle, and I didn’t see too many clunks in it. I wondered if the second apostrophe was truly needed at 11a, thought the ‘B movie’ needed a hyphen to work properly, and wasn’t sure about the ‘entrance’ really fulfilling its destiny at 7d. And then there was Mr Percy Cuter! Ouch.

    Enjoyed this nonetheless.

26. Exactly as with Kenmac@2, my last two in were LAWN and WHALE. Didn’t like the explanation for LAWN at all. Also thought that DAYS was rather a fiddly clue to unravel. I suppose completely missing the theme, as I usually do, meant that this didn’t have the wow factor for me. But realise now that I was rather missing out this morning. I suppose TROUT FARM diverted my focus from the two separate bits of ANIMAL and FARM, which perhaps would have got me onto the theme. However, it amused me to see LION and LOINS interlocking. The number of times in the past I’ve seen certain primary school children’s version of the King of the Beasts written down as LOIN…

27. Theme seemed to sail over many solvers heads (“fairly easy today” etc) when it featured one of the most important writers of the last century.
    6, 14 and 21 seemed to capture his most frightening work which is on a par with North Korea
    Loved the AGNEW clue
    Excellent puzzle/ Respect and Chapeau, Brum

28. Confused as to how ‘Percy’ is a homophone for the first two syllables of ‘persecutor’.

    The second syllables are respectively EE and UH.

29. I liked the misdirection in the clue for Lawn! Dressmakers of a certain age ( like me) will be familiar with this fine cloth.
    And essexboy@9 yes we used to call the Closing ceremony in the Brownies” Taps”
    “ Where we have been no-one shall find, For not a trace we leave behind, Only the people we’ve helped today, Will know that a Brownie has passed their way”

30. Steve69 @28
    I didn’t like it either, but some people do lazily pronounce it “percycute”.

31. Confused as to how ‘Percy’ is not a homophone for the first two syllables of ‘persecutor’.

    Tricky and enjoyable puzzle, I thought.
    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick today.

32. muffin@ 30: for the “lazy” among us who have never heard it pronounced any other way, what is the correct way to say PERSECUTOR, please?

33. Fun puzzle, with a trace of Brummie’s alter ego, Cyclops, creeping I. Here and there.

    I agree that the homophone clue for PERSECUTE was groan-inducing, in a Christmas cracker joke sort of way, but at least it didn’t fall into the rhotacism trap.

    Smiles for the definitions of TROUT FARM, WHALE and INSIDE.

    Of course I failed to notice the theme. copmus @26: I can’t speak for all of us theme-blind posters, but in my case it is because I forget a clue as soon as I solve it and move on to the next one, and I rarely take the trouble to look for a theme even when I have completed the puzzle. But I agree with your valuation of Orwell 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

34. muffin@30 and gladys@32 I wasn’t happy with the Percy homophone either, but Chambers gives the same pronunciation for the second syllable as for mercy. So I guess it’s ok. :-/

35. So you win gladys 😀

36. I’ve never heard anyone say ‘percy-cute’! 😀

37. My last two in were the same as for kenmac@2, but I thought the clues were fine. The only one I didn’t parse was 18 across. Thanks Brummie and loonapick. (Saul or soul in your blog for 13 down, loonapick?)

38. Thanks for the blog, to my shame I did miss the theme but it did not help that the words were often split between across and down clues. It only goes to show the value of this blog and all the comments.
    Great puzzle even without the theme, did not know ESCHEAT but the clue was clear, UNICORN, AMBIENCE and WHALE were my favourites.
    LION = famous person in Chambers.

39. gladys et al
    PERS EH CUTE

40. No shame in missing a theme, Roz@38. I unsurprisingly missed Orwell completely. Started off thinking the theme was protective clothing what with APRON, SPATS, a tunic lurking in a clue somewhere. Then I thought maybe it was just generally things fabric when I saw LAWN. I’m much happier with that sort of theme, than more specialised knowledge.

41. I am not very happy with ESCHEAT being defined as “confiscate”. When property escheats to the state, I suppose you could say that the state confiscates it, but it is the property that escheats; the state does not escheat the property.

42. My own pronunciation of PERSECUTE has a short i rather than a schwa as the middle vowel, which is a trifle closer to Brunmie’s homophone.

43. Crossbar@40 I usually miss themes without a care but when it is someone I have read over and over I should have got it.
    VinnyD@41 I did look up ESCHEAT because I did not know it. Chambers first definition as a verb – to confiscate.

44. PERSECUTOR did have a question mark so a degree of latitude is surely called for? Perhaps we should ditch the convention of calling them homophones?
    I’m ashamed to admit the first Shelley I thought of was Hywel Bennett in this

    Also enjoyed AGNEW which reminded me of Gil Scott-Heron’s lyric “if Nixon knew, Agnew” 🙂

45. What’s not to love with UNICORN as a clue!
    Thanks to Brummie for an enjoyable puzzle and loonapick for the blog.
    I couldn’t pin down the theme which of course is now so obvious.

46. Re Percy-gate

    Several dictionaries, eg Collins, give the American pronunciation of the middle ‘e’ in persecute as /ə/ – a schwa or ‘UH’ as per Steve69 @28.

    However, they give the standard British English pronunciation as /ɪ/ – giving ‘purr-sick-yoot’, as per Gervase (and me).

    So the remaining point of contention is how to say Percy – is it with an EE sound at the end, as in seek, or an /ɪ/, as in sick?

    The answer is both – depending on which variety of English you speak (see ‘Happy tensing’). If you speak ‘old-fashioned RP’ (think Robert Dougall or other BBC newsreaders of 50 years ago), or are in Northern England, some southern US states, or Jamaica, it’s likely to be /ɪ/. Otherwise it’s probably ‘ee’.

    Curiously the boot was on the other foot recently with TIDIED = Thai deed.

    Sorry for a long post, but before I shut up, could I make a plea for us not to impute lack of moral fibre or conscientiousness to those who speak with a different accent? I’m not getting at anyone in particular (honestly, muffin 😉 ). “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth…” etc.

47. bc @44 – my first Shelley was Diane

48. eb @46
    I thought I was unusuaaly restrained in this case, accepting that some people do say “percycute” 🙂

49. MrEssexboy @46 bravo as usual.
    I am firmly in the Percy cute camp.

50. Sorry loonapick, but I don’t think the ‘manicured’ element is necessary in the parsing of 28d. Surely the reference is simply to the ‘blades of grass’ that constitute a lawn rather than the fact that they have been trimmed. Otherwise, many thanks to both blogger and setter for an entertaining workout and especially to the former for detecting the theme.

51. Lazy pronunciation is an interesting idea. I am not sure whether a diphthong is easier or harder to produce than a short vowel. I suppose some sound shifts like p to f happen because of relative ease? [Has Grimm’s Law ever been used as a cryptic device? Penalty to fennel tea, perhaps?]

52. I conjured APRON at the first reading but then realised (cf Gladys@18) I was reading the clue at the surface level so parked it. When later the crossers confirmed that it must be so I could not for the life of me get past the surface reading to come up with a cryptic parsing – what a strange experience and a cringing tea-tray moment when loonapick revealed the oh-so-obvious. Is it just me or was this a brilliant and novel misdirection?

    Thanks both.

53. I was defeated by DAYS; I thought 4 down, requiring the solver to read “B movie” as a single word, was borderline unfair; and I wasn’t familiar with “corrupting influence” as a meaning for ULCER (though given the present government, I shall be remembering that meaning for future use). But overall I thought this was a challenging and enjoyable puzzle. Favourite, perhaps, TROUT FARM for the beautiful misdirection.
    One clue with which I had no problems whatever was PERSECUTOR. The essence of a homophone is “sounds like”, not “sounds absolutely identical to”, and rather as with Spoonerisms, often the more wince-inducingly contrived the “sound-vaguely-like”, the more entertaining. With, IMHO, an additional dimension of entertainment often coming from the philological harrumphing of the “sounds absolutely identical to” brigade. Naming no names.
    Thanks to Brummie for the puzzle, loonapick for the blog, and the SAIT brigade for the harrumphing.

54. Well, I’m apologising to no one for my “lazy” pronunciation, nor for my enjoyment of Percy-cuter, nor for completely missing the theme. 26a seems more Cyclops than Brummie – did the political clues make him forget which hat he was wearing when he wrote this?

    Anyone else have LAME for 28d? LAMES=blades, aka grignette, as used by bakers, and LAMÉ is a fabric… This error had me scratching my head over 31a for ages until I finally caved in and hit the check button.

    Anyway, all very enjoyable. Thanks Brummie and Loonapick.

55. NeilH @53: to which, I can only say – appropriately, I feel – “hear, hear” 😀

56. Re PERSECUTE – sorry for opening a can of worms!

    Just to be clear, I never wished to suggest that how I would pronounce the word was correct or superior – I just had genuinely never heard anyone ever say ‘percy-cute’ before!

    essexboy@46 It’s difficult to make broad statements about how people in ‘Northern England’ might pronounce something. A Lancastrian probably would say Percy with a short ‘i’ on the end, but I’m from Durham and we certainly wouldn’t there!

57. (I remember an article in the Grauni yonks ago that an anagram of Spiro Agnew was Grow a Penis unless Paul managed to use it in one oh his creations)

58. Certainly a brownie has passed my way.

    What IS it about homophones around here?

59. SPATS was new to me, so I had to have a second bash at that (having gone for SPARS to start with). LAWN and WHALE took some time as well, having never heard of the fabric or the whale. I got to LAWN via lawnmower’s blades, but agree with Dafydd @50 that there’s a more straightforward route.

    I grew up in the North-West, and would pronounce PERSECUTE with the schwa, although the homophone doesn’t really bother me and went in easily enough.

    4d just needed a hyphen in B-movie to be fair – but I agree with those who feel that as written it’s not. TROUT FARM and LOINS were very nice, as were the definitions for EVE and APRON. The theme, of course, escaped me.

60. I think the Christmas cracker joke comparison is the best answer to the alleged homophone. I certainly groaned when the penny dropped, which I take as a good sign.

    I’ve read all of the books but still didn’t spot the theme!

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick

61. Thanks loonapick as the theme evaded me despite having read a few of them, and Dafydd@50 for clarification of the blades on the LAWN which I had reached along the same lines as Jim@59 only to grumble that my lawnmower only has two or three blades (I think).
    I agree with muffin@12 that “leaves” or “gets out of” would be clearer than “comes off” for the regal exit, and maybe the complication around UNICORN is because there is another more conventionally indicated hidden word clue running directly down from the initial U?
    Thumbs up for TROUT FARM, clear cluing of new word ESCHEAT, the one-eyed LOINS (although I thought it odd to have LION directly attached) and what I found to be a good challenge, thanks Brummie.

62. Widdersbel@58, yes I too had LAME for LAWN. I thought it a bit weak since it is effectively lots of blades = blade, but I think it stands as a valid solution bit for the crossers. Like various others I thought the true solution was also pretty feeble, but no complaints about WHALE, which I simply failed to see.

    That aside, all very enjoyable. Started out as a write-in, ended up as a DNF.

63. Unless it’s Qaos (or sometimes Brendan) I never look for a theme so that reduces my chances of spotting one. I didn’t see the Orwell connection despite being familiar with his more popular works. Nevertheless I always enjoy a Brummie crossword due to clues like TROUT FARM, REAGENT, and HOMAGE. I couldn’t parse INSIDE at all or PERSECUTER in part; thanks loonapick for filling in the gaps. Thanks Brummie.

64. I thought LAWN was fine , as Dafydd@50 says – Lots of blades ( of grass ) involved in making this.

65. Another here liking UNICORN and TROUT FARM.

    If you heard someone say “Did you hear the opening speech the Percy cuter made in the trial today?” would you understand it without doing a double-take? If so, it’s enough of a homophone to count. Otherwise, it’s not (IMO).

66. Whoops, my example was for prosecuter, but you get the drift. How could I have done that – especially given the argument I was making!

67. Roz@64, thank you! I was thinking about a lot of blades needed to cut a patch of grass into a lawn, and completely missed the other meaning. I can now say I was beaten fair and square by two very good clues, thanks.

68. Oh, and thanks to Dafydd@50 as well, for the original comment which I missed.

69. You are welcome Fiery Jack , it is my suspicious nature, when I read blades I automatically think grass.

70. Where did you get that hat? Where did you get that tile?
    Isn’t it a nobby one, and just the proper style?
    I should like to have one, just the same as that,
    Wherever I go they’d shout “Hello! Where did you get that hat?”
    (Song from the 1880’s, I think.)

    Has anybody ever seen EMBATTLE as a verb without its final D?

    Thanks, Brummie and loonapick, for an evening and a morning’s entertainment.

71. Fiery Jack @62 – thank you, good to know it wasn’t just me!

    (This is one of those ‘problem in solver not in clue’ situations – I completely agree with the parsing suggested by Dafydd @50, and think the clue is fine.)

72. Late to the party but I enjoyed this good crossword, although I missed the theme.

    The usual comments that “I don’t say it like that”. I’m a PERCY CUTER, and it seems to be supported by the dictionaries: Oxford and Collins.

    Thanks Brummie and loonapick.

73. Robi @72 Those two links both say per-suh-cute to these ears!

74. When looking up ex-VPs, I learnt that FDR said the vice presidency “isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss” and Truman, who himself was a VP, said the office was as “useful as a cow’s fifth teat”.

    ESCHEAT was new to me but clearly clued. Curiously, Chambers and SOED hyphenate B-movie, which would have made the clue fairer.

    Thanks Brummie for an enjoyable offering and loonapick.

75. I know the homophone debate has been done to death on these pages and no doubt will be again, but I tend to the view that crosswords are supposed to be fun, that homophones are often some of the most amusing clues, and that if the homophone sounds kind of like the solution then there is no problem, regardless of rhotic or any other accents. If you say PERCY CUTER then any English-speaking person would understand PERSECUTER so in my book it is fine and I won’t bother to look up what Chambers says is the correct pronunciation of PERSECUTER. Some pronounce it with a long e, some with a short and some more like a short i, but I don’t think it affects the validity of the clue and it certainly doesn’t impact the smile I made when I got the answer.

    To me, as an Essex man who married a Yorkshire lass, I find it no different to when my wife asks me if I fancy a coop of tea. I understand her perfectly well, there is only one word it can be, and I am not going to tell her she is saying it wrong. Or at least, not until the swelling has subsided from the last time I did so.

76. me @30
    I apologise for “lazily”.

77. [Roz @ 69: When I see blades I think of swords, when you see blades you think of grass. I wonder if there ever was a clue “blade, blade” with the answer being “sword grass”?]

78. I’m not so sure that 4d isn’t just a mistake. To take BE from first and last letters of “B movie” seems unfair to me. I think “B movie closing cinema presentation to create mood (8)” would have been better.
    I missed the theme, but forgot to look, so my bad.
    Finally, I understand why some people are irritated when homophones sound wrong to them, but I don’t understand why we have to have the same debate over and over again.
    Loved the anecdote, Fiery Jack @75! Hope the eye’s better very soon.
    Thanks, Brum and loonapick.

79. Very good Tony@71 , I think blade=grass is a bit less obvious so likely to be used by the better setters.

80. [Thanks muffin @76 🙂 And I apologise for over-generalising about ‘Northern England’, and also to those Scots who must have winced when I equated ‘purr’ and ‘per-‘, but who haven’t (yet!) taken me to task for it.]

    [pdp11 @74: here’s Tom Lehrer on the importance being VP]

81. Somebody may well have mentioned this but Eric Blair was Assistant Superintendent of Police in Burma in the late 1920’s which may be an incidental reference to 25a. Thanks to B and L. Happy New Year.

82. Fiery Jack @75; thanks for your amusing post, which I hope will ‘silence’ the homophone debate.

    I rather think that B movie was intended to be B-movie, which is the spelling in most dictionaries; then the first and last would make more sense.

83. [It obviously doesn’t settle the argument, but I just took a straw poll around the dinner table. I was the most extreme, in pronouncing it PERS EH CUTE. All the others were PERS (schwa) CUTE. Of course, we all live in the same part of England, though I moved to the north-west from the south-west.
    I think that ArkLark’s “Christmas cracker joke” comparison (was he (?) referring to an earlier post? I couldn’t find it) justifies a multitude of sins 🙂 ]

84. [eb @80 – thanks 😀 ]

85. pdp11@74: The quote about the vice presidency being not worth a bucket of piss is not from FDR but his first vice president, John Nance Garner.

    But besides Agnew, I think the only US vice president who never rose to the top job who’s fair game in a UK crossword is Al Gore. Mayyybe the current holder at any given time as well (and, I mean, Kamala Harris is decidedly unusual enough to be notable). Here’s hoping Mike Pence has already been forgotten over there.

86. Very clever. Didn’t look for theme until solved. Also thought Mussolini Oppressor and Persecutor might be a theme or connected to Orwell.
    Thanks Brummie and loonapick

87. I think we’ve established that it’s perfectly ok to pronounce the same word differently. Why is it not (or at least less) ok to spell it differently? Just wondering.

88. [Me at 85: probably also Aaron Burr at this point, thanks to “Hamilton”]

89. mrpenney@85 , there is also Dan Quayle for various reasons as well as being fairly recent.

90. Crossbar @87, variant spellings are of course used by compilers, especially when they get boxed in, in a corner where not much else will fit. However, the variants are usually to be seen in dictionaries, especially, for the Guardian, in Chambers.

91. Was not on setter’s wavelength. Gave up with about half of the puzzle solved. And I did not see the theme.

    New for me: CLASP = a silver bar on a medal ribbon

    Of the ones I solved, I could not parse 4d, 18ac, 31ac (never heard of a right whale).

    Thanks, both.

92. Robi@90 This doesn’t usually result in a slightly contentious discussion, though. 😀

93. [mrpenney @85 – thanks for the correction; the VP does seem to be a role for a President-in-waiting. Al Gore, of course, did win the Presidency, only to be denied by the SCOTUS 😉 Given Biden’s performance under Obama, I was surprised he made it to the top. Even Obama gently ribbed him. But that’s politics!]

94. [From over here, I have the impression that Al Gore is the best President you never had. I expect to be contradicted!]

95. [Ai þåt krosbar @87 woz pozing a mor radikl kwestʃn. Wai indiid?]

96. [essexboy @95. You’re right. I guess we’d all have to learn the pronunciation symbols. Wouldn’t that be fun. It’s obviously much easier to lay down and enforce rules for writing, rather than speaking. And spelling has been standardised over the centuries. But are speaking and writing so different in principle. I’m not offering an opinion, just musing.)

97. [Gud kwestʃn. Ai wud sujest ðat ðe spoken langwidʒ iz ðe langwidʒ (and indiid woz ðe onli form ov langwidʒ for at liist ðe first 100,000 yiirs), wail ðe ritn langwidʒ iz a wei ov enkoding it – and ål enkoding neseserili rezults in a degrii ov standardaizeiʃn.]

98. mpenney@85 I think the only VP who did rise to the top job in recent history was Bush the Dad in 1988. The last sitting VP before him to do that was Martin van Buren in 1836. (Nixon was elected, but had been out of office as VP during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.)

    I think Mike Pence deserves a memory or two for refusing to go along with Trump’s order to derail the counting of electoral votes. It may be his only decision that I agree with, but it’s an important one.

    pdp11 Al Gore did win the popular vote, but he didn’t win the electoral college. He lost a key state or two by narrow margins, notably Florida by some 500 votes, as we learned when we were finally allowed to know the actual count — that’s what the Supreme Court deplorably stopped, but the result would have been the same if they hadn’t. One more reason to ditch the Electoral College.

    Michelle@91 That meaning of CLASP was new to me too, but consistent with “tie clasp,” which does the same job.

99. [Good way of looking at it, essexboy. Fascinating topic, language.]

100. DrWO @65 – I did indeed do a double take when I read that! Surprised no-one else has commented – probably because you did that yourself so promptly @66. But I though it chimed well with the Christmas cracker joke theme.

101. A bit of a slog for me, but as I had hoped and expected, a tad tougher than Monday and Tuesday. So a smooth progression and no loss of heart. Some very good clues, one or two were a bit meh.

     Everyone I know, without fail, says percy-cute. Excellent clue.

     Thanks Brummie and loonapick

102. Failed on LION & LAWN but pleased to get within 2 though unable to parse one or two. The AGNEW clue was my favourite with TROUT FARM running it close. Missed the theme completely.
     Thanks all

103. [essexboy&crossbar@99etc thank you for this interesting discussion, which among other things reminds me to have another crack at Riddley Walker. All i can say is that living in a part of the world where the generally spoken dialect(s) has no official written form, it makes learning said dialect very difficult for those of us with better visual than aural memories, so for that reason at least I would argue very strongly for the retention of well-defined spelling (though less strongly for prescriptive meaning), if you see what i mean!]

104. The first Shelley I thought of was Mary but I knew she was married to a poet and I eventually remembered his name without looking it up.

105. [Gazzh @103: I sympathise. ‘Spell as you feel like it’ can be defended as an abstract principle, and often works OK for native speakers, but it’s a nightmare for foreigners who are trying to learn the language.

     You’re probably familiar with the historical disagreements over how Swiss German dialects should be written down – do you aim to be phonetically authentic (which essentially means different spellings depending on whether you’re in Bern, Zürich, Zermatt etc), or do you aim for a ‘standard’ Swiss German system which smooths over the regional differences, and at the same time produces a ‘look’ which isn’t too frighteningly alien for those who have grown up with the standard German spellings?

     You probably also noticed that I had the same dilemma @97!]

106. As soon as I saw PERSECUTOR I thought, “Oh no, here come the homophone police”.
     I echo Bodycheetah’s comment @44. If bloggers stopped calling the clues homophones, and instead called them puns or humorous wordplay, we might not get over 100 comments whenever they are used. (Whatever happened to Postmark’s “homeophone” suggestion?)

     I admit that I find it odd that some solvers object to the playful lateral thinking that puns require, when lateral thinking and plays on words are common features of other types of clues in cryptic crosswords.

107. Thanks Valentine @70 for the words to the song whose first line was going round and round in my head. The Orwell theme helped with 8d.

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