Guardian 28,663 – Fed

116 comments on “Guardian 28,663 – Fed”

1. Lots of smart cluing and definitions. I’d say PESTLE AND MORTAR. Dan Levy co-created/wrote Schitt’s Creek, for those wondering.

   22D my pick of a lovely bunch.

   Thanks Fed and Andrew

2. Thanks, Andrew, I also liked this a lot.

   Having repeated PESTLE AND MORTAR AND PESTLE so many times know, blowed if I can remember which one I would normally use.

   I couldn’t analyse TOWNSPEOPLE, having the School fixed in my mind.

   Thanks to Fed

3. Good fun. 21 and 22 especially. Ta both.

4. [There was a time I would distinguish CENTER and CENTRE with no problem. Having spent a lifetime programming, where you have to use the American spelling to get your program to work, I have similar trouble with that pair now]

5. I’m afraid I’m slightly less enthusiastic than our blogger and first few posters. The clueing is clever but I found the surfaces of many clues to be less smooth than I like. So, a technical solve rather than an admiring one on this occasion. I did like TOWNSPEOPLE, the definition if not the surface for EUREKA and the reverse clueing of WASHING UP LIQUID.

   Thanks Fed and Andrew

6. Clever alright, though some of the wordplay created so many possibilities I often found I was solving from the definitions & working back. Thanks Fed & Andrew.

7. I agree with Andrew there were lots of excellent clues. I failed to parse the very clever wordplay for elderberry.

   Unusually for me, I didn’t notice even the quibbliest of quiblets. I would say pestle and mortar is more usual but no doubt there are citations either way. You could perhaps argue that the clue only required a pair of grinders and didn’t specify the order but the solution should be an established phrase.

8. Lots to like: TOWNSPEOPLE (I had a vague idea there was a Harrow Town football club, but on checking I see I’m a bit out of date); EXHIBIT (loved the ‘way out’ jacket); and I agree with Andrew, Jim and Oofy about ANTSY. Thanks F & A.

   [If Roz pops in – glad to see JWST is now happily circling L2 – does that mean you can breathe a bit easier now?]

9. I was looking forward to seeing Fed again and wasn’t disappointed. I thought WASHING UP LIQUID, IN DUE COURSE and ANSTY were super but Harrovians as an example of TOWNSPEOPLE was somewhat bizarre.

   Ta Fed & Andrew

10. Ooops – ANTSY

11. Not sure about this one. There were clues I loved eg 5ac but others that felt sloggish. Like some I thought Harrovians was a very specific example of 8dn and having grown up there I would desribe it more as a suburb than a town!!
    However, my brain cells were stretched so thank you Fed and Andrew, especially for explaining 17ac.

12. I found this mre approachable than I remember the previous Feds being. I even managed to parse all but one – STRATA being the exception – though I have to admit to thinking ‘pumas’ reversed and bunging in SUM UP without even noticing the A had to be changed! Plenty to like. To the already mentioned I’ll add ELDERBERRY, SCHWA, AMPOULE and the SYNTAX/ANTSY pair. LOI? Took me far too long to spot SPOT was a triple definition. Thanks, Fed and Andrew.

13. I agree with Andrew’s introduction

    Thanks to him and Fed

14. And thinking back 50 years, had I heard the term Harrovians I would have assumed it referred to the posh boys up the Hill in their frock coats and straw boaters!!

15. Ingenious puzzle with many clever constructions, but verbose clues (as Paul, T remarks @6) meant that for many it was solve first, parse later – and the parsing took longer than the solving in some cases.

    Like PostMark @5, I found this more of a workout than an entertainment. Nevertheless there are some good clues: WASHING-UP LIQUID, ELDERBERRY, ANTSY stood out for me.

    Thanks to S&B

16. Another good one from Fed / Bluth. My favourites have already been mentioned by others but I particularly enjoyed working out ELDERBERRY and a thumbs-up for the original EUREKA definition.

    Thanks to Fed and Andrew

17. Yes, some very ingenious stuff – I particularly liked STRATA, SNAIL’S PACE, ELDERBERRY, MEMO and PESTLE AND MORTAR (even though I, too, think that one was the wrong way round), ANTSY. Some that I didn’t parse – EXHIBIT, ARROGANCE – Andrew helpfully explains and are indeed brilliant.
    Can’t quite make up my mind about the Harrovians. Do the residents thereof, rather than the people whose parents couldn’t afford Eton, describe themselves in that way?
    NARKIEST is a word which I’d be quite happy never to encounter again.
    It’s fairly easy to understand how GANTRY is supposed to work, but according to Big Dave’s “The Pedant’s Guide to Crosswords – A collection of gripes about errors found in crossword clues” “The word without means outside or beyond, not around or surrounding”. (Though in that case, in crosswordese doesn’t outside = around anyway?)
    Thanks both.

18. I really like the wit and inventiveness of Fed’s puzzles – a lovely bunch of clues, as Jim @1 says – and ANTSY was a brilliant finish.

    It was PESTLE AND MORTAR when I went to school.

    (Re 25ac: for the record, Gary Lineker was famously never booked.)

    Many thanks to Fed for a super puzzle and to Andrew for a blog to match.

19. Like others I found PESTLE AND MORTAR impossible to enter until I had some crossers. That must contradict some Ximenean rule surely?
    I also didn’t get ELDERBERRY until I had all the crossers, despite having bottled 30 litres of the wine a few weeks ago. Once I’d got it I found the wordplay a bit tortuous.
    Favourite has to be ANTSY for the lovely misleading “10 down” (I must have spent at least 2 minutes trying to work out what “IN DUE COURSE” had to do with the wordplay).

20. I agree with most of the comments above. I enjoyed doing it but really needed Andrew for parsing loads of clues I simply wrote in because no other letters fitted the crossers. However I did get the two long ones across first, which was very helpful, only I failed to understand ‘liquid’.
    As a cook I would always say pestle and mortar when grinding my spices.
    Thank you Fed and Andrew.
    [Essexboy, and Roz if she appears, the latest LRB has an excellent article about the new space telescope and some history about the Hubble, which had to be repaired from an extremely long distance! It looks as if this one went pretty near perfectly!]

21. Thanks Andrew, I got in a tangle with ARROGANCE thinking that “recital” was a very cryptic anagram indicator so couldn’t parse it properly. Enjoyed the misdirections, cryptic definitions and general wit on display, nor am I too bothered by the sprinkling of convoluted clues as I get as much pleasure from the gradual unravelling post-entry as the solve eg NARKIEST (even though I couldn’t decide if this meant most irritable or irritating). Special extra thanks to the linguists who have patiently intervened in the many homophone debates with technical justifications or otherwise and without whom I would never have heard of SCHWA, my favourite today, thanks Fed.

22. Like others I found that I was solving from the definition and crosses in more than a few cases and then parsing – or sometimes not. I think this is often the case when the clues are very wordy which quite a few here were (which I find off-putting).

    PESTLE AND MORTAR is how I say it – and still use my Japanese one which has a longer name.

    Thanks Fed and Andrew

23. Jim @1. Thanks for the Dan Levy information. With Lineker appearing later I was fixated on the Tottenham supremo.

24. I’d have said PESTLE AND MORTAR without any hesitation. Google Books Ngram Viewer says I’m living in the 19th century! Graph here.

25. I enjoy Fed’s puzzles. I quite like the mix of what someone called “Lego” clues and ones where you solve first and parse later. Once in a while I am happy to accept a little roughness in the surface for the ingenuity of clueing. As well as others’ favourites, I liked THRESHOLD. It would never occur to me to say MORTAR AND PESTLE. Like others I was successfully misdirected by Harrovians, but I am used to being badly led by Etonians,

26. Another who felt I rather skimmed over the surface of much of this, the definitions supplying many of the answers before I endeavoured to parse the reasons for the construction of the clues. Needed Andrew to parse STRATA, ELDERBERRY and GANTRY. Last in the fiddly SW corner with ANTSY and SCHWA, which I didn’t care for at all. Some very nice clues elsewhere, however. Thanks Fed.

27. Chris in France @24 – Hmm, yes, I did say @18, ‘When I went to school’. ;-0

28. [Pffft. As a newbie, I rely on there being a relatively easy puzzle to start the week. But with just six clues solved yesterday, and none so far today (and the prize puzzle at the weekend), this week looks like wipeout. Which means that, by next week, I’ll have lost all the limited gains I’ve made. It takes time to get back into the right, twisted, frame of mind.
    But that’s not a complaint about the puzzle of course, or the blog, but it’s deeply frustrating.]

29. Eileen @27: Ha ha! 🙂

30. Re PESTLE AND MORTAR, I would always utter them in this order. It feels more natural, because it follows the high vowel before low vowel rule in ablaut reduplication. We say ping- pong, hip hop, knick-knack and not pong-ping, hop hip, knack-knick.

31. [SinCam @20 – thanks for that, I’ll check it out.]

    Chris in France @24 – fascinating graph. Could mortar and pestle’s long run of domination be coming to an end? Support seems to have plateaued. Pestle and mortar, meanwhile, has shot up in the last 10 – 20 years. In 2000 it was being thrashed by about 5:1, but by 2019 it accounted for over 50% of usage. Hats off to Fed for being on-trend.

    Gervase @30 – jot and tittle?

    Podule @28 – the only way is up 😉 Have you tried Everyman?

32. Interesting to read commenters say that they entered answers from the definitions (e.g. ELDERBERRY – TimC @19, NARKIEST – Gazzh @21, GANTRY – Ronald @26) when these were ones I took pleasure in putting together like Lego (cf Petert @25). Of course, my own solving is always a mixture (of varying ratios) between ‘bung and parse’ and ‘Lego’, but it is fascinating how sometimes the one method seems the natural way to solve to me, when it’s the other method for other solvers.

33. Thanks Fed and Andrew
    I tried hard to work ARK into 26a!

34. Lovely puzzle that took my a while to get into but then cracked open nicely. Particularly liked the surface on SYNTAX, and MARTINI and ANTSY were also neat. PESTLE AND MORTAR is how I would say it, and slightly surprised to hear there are people who say it the other way round – evidence from Chris in France @24 notwithstanding!

    Thanks Fed and Andrew.

35. Gervase@30. Hmmmm — but there is no reduplication in PESTLE AND MORTAR so the analogy with ping-pong, etc. applies not at all.

36. I’m a MORTAR AND PESTLE man, myself. It’s the way I was brought up and I’ll not change my ways now. Floating about in my consciousness is a vague remembrance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle — what the hell was that all about???

    I enjoyed this puzzle. The really simple COPPER was an oddity amongst such gnarly clueing, and as others have mentioned the surfaces were rather prolix and convoluted. But I liked it.

37. pserve_p2
    I think the burning pestle ws a rather rude reference 🙂
    As an ex chemistry teacher, I ought to be able to give a definitive answer, but I’ve heard it each way round so often I can’t even decide which way I would say it! I did the clues in order, so it was a bit irritating than the answer couldn’t be entered until crossers were in place.

38. Interesting crossword with some inventive cluing but some surfaces a little strained.

    I would always say PESTLE AND MORTAR, although I acknowledge Chris @24 that this seems to be a minority view. I liked WASHING-UP LIQUID (I usually enjoy reverse clues), EXHIBIT (for the jacket), ARROGANCE (for the clever R raising – although I thought this was an anagram at first) and my favourite, ANTSY (for the 10 Down trick, I’m not sure that I’ve seen that before).

    Thanks Fed for the fun and Andrew for a comprehensive blog.

39. I, 80 years old, say PESTLE AND MORTAR – it is “Laurel and Hardy” the vowel like ‘y’ sound carrying on pleasantly at the end as does the schwa sound of the ‘ar’ at the end of mortar, but perhaps some people pronounce the ‘r’?

    Thank you Fed for a challenging puzzle and Andrew for the helpful blog.

40. Gave up on this puzzle as I was short of time today but I enjoyed reading the blog. I am sure I would not have finished this one.
    Thanks, both.

41. PS I think that makes sense, with ‘mortar’ the vowel sound schwa is produced apparently when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, as they would be at the end of a phrase.

42. I enjoyed this one – my favourites have already been mentioned. I see now I was misdirected when trying to see why 22a ANTSY was right – like TimC@19, I had to come here to realise it didn’t involve 10d IN DUE COURSE at all (I thought X must be some reference to a direction – like X marks the spot! – but couldn’t get that to work). I had to google Lineker to parse 25a GANTRY. I also didn’t understand 8d TOWNSPEOPLE as I wasn’t sure who Harrovians are. Thanks for the brian gym exercise to Fed, and to Andrew for a helpful blog.

43. As regards PESTLE AND MORTAR, the word pair seems to fall in with the nonreversible word pairs bricks and mortar, bread and water, cup and saucer, soap and water, etc.

44. Thanks Fed & Andrew.
    A lot to like, with EXHIBIT probably my favourite.

45. Chris in France @24 has given the link for the American English usage of PESTLE and MORTAR versus mortar and pestle – the British English result favours PESTLE and MORTAR

46. I’m with the pestle and mortar brigade and like others I didn’t like townspeople or schwa. Otherwise enjoyed it.

47. Muffin @ 33 – glad to see I’m not the only one who thought about ARK there!

    I have always said PESTLE AND MORTAR thanks to my old chemistry teacher’s insistence that we “never put water in a pestle and mortar”.

    Sometimes you just click with a puzzle and solver and that was the case for me today. Even the chewier clues were challenges to pick apart instead of the brick walls I sometimes run into as an inexperienced solver. 5a and 17a were particularly fun. More like this please Fed!

48. I’m definitely a PESTLE AND MORTAR. Doing a quick tally of the posts above, P&M is a long way ahead. Something like 13 to 3. 😀

    Like some others above this wasn’t really my cup of tea. Too wordy, and awkward surfaces. Thought 12a hit the SPOT though. Nice and concise. Harrow seemed an odd choice for an example of a town. Can’t please everybody I guess

    Thanks Fed and Andrew

49. Thanks Cookie @45. So, in the UK, it was roughly 2:1 in favour of P & M through most of the 20th century, then a convergence in the 1990s, followed by a rocketing P & M ascent from about 2010. I wonder what happened in 2010? Btw I think Chris’s graph gave the ‘worldwide English’ picture; if you look at the exclusively American English graph, P & M has hardly risen and M & P wins by about 7:1.

50. Thanks Cookie @45; I’ve certainly never heard mortar and pestle used in labs over here.

51. Here’s a nice picture of PESTLE AND MORTAR

52. I’m late to this discussion, so not many responses expected (or required). I’m getting a bit fed up with all the gripes, frankly. Setting a good cryptic crossword is, I am absolutely sure, not an easy challenge at all, and those that do should for the most part be given our gratitude for their hard work. To suggest that if you have to solve it first and then parse it is a failing of the setter’s is just wrong. We get to the answers in many different ways, usually involving mulling all sorts of things in our brains until the penny drops. If you really want to only get it from the wordplay, then move to those much more difficult crosswords (used to be Listener, etc. and sometimes appear here as special challenges) and leave the more accessible but still challenging ones provided each day to those of us who can just enjoy the game of trying to complete and then also knowing why. That’s all it is, in the end. If I get it completed, which I almost always do, and can then figure out the workings of the compiler’s brain, which I also mostly can in the end, then for me these crosswords are at a perfect level. Yes, some are more difficult than others, as they should be, but frankly leave the poor setters alone with your “I could do better than that” opinions unless you genuinely can, and can prove it.

    Rant over. Once again, I really enjoyed this challenge, and working out all the parsings before coming here to see if there was something even more subtle that I was missing. Thank you to the setters and the bloggers, as ever.

53. Pestle and mortar in labs and the kitchen for me. I’ve never heard the reverse pairing.

    Nice puzzle, but as others have observed often the definition gave the answer and the parsing followed.

    I did enjoy the surface of SNAILS PACE and EUREKA. ANTSY was also great.

    Thanks Fed and Andrew

54. Thank you essexboy @49, and apologies to Chris @24, I think the German Morser und Stossel (I cannot write this correctly) may have had an influence in the United States…

55. [Cookie and pserve_p2 passim: There are many paired words with fixed order in English. Other possible ‘rules’ are major before minor, eg big and small, high and low (though these follow the falling vowel rule as well), and accompaniment second, eg pie and mash, egg and chips (pace Shirley Valentine). Although both orders are possible, ‘hat and coat’ seems more euphonious to me (falling vowels).

    Is the vowel rule the reason for the ingrained order ‘knife and fork’? The opposite is usual in Italian: ‘forchetta e coltello’ – which suggests that prosody rather than precedence governs the order]

56. Fed presented a puzzle that was not for me. Although completed it was a lot of effort for very little joy with the parsing of a number of clues taking up a lot of time.
    Thx to Andrew for the blog.

57. Wow, I’m stunned at the number of P&Ms. I bunged in MORTAR AND PESTLE without even thinking it could be the other way around. But then I’ve been living in the States for nearly 50 years so maybe that’s a factor.

58. Petert @25 Thx for your timely remark “Like others I was successfully misdirected by Harrovians, but I am used to being badly led by Etonians,” left me smiling.

59. [Cookie@45 thank you for that interesting link. I don’t know the details of Google’s stats but presumably it involves trawling through all open source news media files and/or digitised books – does this include non-public-domain texts? I wondered why M+P might have grown in popularity, and considered whether a celebrity chef might have used the phrase that way round in his/her tie-in cookbook. but a quick google of floyd, delia etc onwards with the phrase “m+p” produced nothing (all returned quotes referred to p+m) except for G Ramsay who of course had a big career in the US. I reckon the apparent UK M+P growth is just some cross-contamination from the increasing influence of US language in the internet age. There’s a PhD in it for someone!]

60. I’m with Shropshire Lass @56: very clever and ingeniously constructed, but too much like hard work for not enough smiles (though I liked SPOT and the ‘dis-covery’ of THIS). Never did work out ELDERBERRY, or what 10d didn’t have to do with ANTSY.

    I have a newish P&M still in its box, which says pestle and mortar on one side and pilon et mortier on the other.

61. 6 hours later it is definitely pestle and mortar for me

62. Thanks for the blog, positives first, STRATA was clever , SNAILS PACE flows nicely, EXHIBIT is perfect and does not even need a definition,( KIT ) SCH is neat and I only know SCHWA from MrEssexboy , ANTSY was very novel.
    Minor quibbles, the long answers are too easy and give too much away, a few clues have far too many words. No I can not do better but that is not the point, the setter can do better.

    [EB@8 and SimCam@20 thank you for your thoughts, the main terror is over , especially the shield opening. Still have to see if the mirrors work and the instruments and if the temperature falls to 40K . Hubble is actually very close in low Earth orbit and relatively easy to repair, JWST no chance. Our MiddleSprog put something on this thing for me to click on called JWSTtracker , it is really good, been watching it for a month. ]

63. I have suffered many times from my second given name being the normal one I use (my mother’s wish).
    Some people/organisations seem to find this odd – particularly the NHS. My mother argued tha Richard Kenneth sounds better than Kenneth Richard. Does this fit with the P & M discussion above?

64. Not my best effort today, marred by confidently parsing ‘shout’ for what turned out on reveal to be SCHWA. And no, I can’t justify it.

    ‘Harrovians’ is surely just a morsel of misdirection nudging us away from the answer, perhaps towards the image of a transvestite relay? That’s where I was for a while anyway.

    As to PESTLE AND MORTAR I could never remember which was which until a TV chef (quiet in the back) offered the aide-memoire of “mama” and “papa”.

    Thanks to Shed and to Andrew for quite a few parsings.

65. It’s a mortar and pestle. I’ve never heard it the other way around until now. It was lucky I solve short clues first, or I would have put it in the puzzle in the wrong order. Again, though, we’ve found just another a transatlantic language disagreement.

    I have a very nice burgundy one that I bought from a rock shop (yes, they sold pretty much nothing but rocks and things made of rock, mostly for the tourist trade) not far from Mammoth Cave.

    As for the rest of the puzzle, it all went smoothly except the footballer, whom I had to look up. But a lot of these were solve-then-parse, then admire the cleverness. I never did work out the parsing of STRATA, so thanks for that.

66. I seem to be the only one who took the definition of 21d to be ‘a sound’ (I.e. the sound of ‘a’ as it appears in the clue) rather than just ‘sound’.

    I also always say PESTLE AND MORTAR.

67. Thanks Fed. Favourites were SYNTAX (great surface), MARTINI, and SUM UP; I missed GANTRY (did not know Lineker), NARKIEST (new word for me), and SCHWA (familiar word but I forgot that kit=outfit). Even though I say M & P I see nothing wrong with P & M; they both bring to mind the same apparatus. Thanks Andrew for filling in my parsing gaps.

68. I thought this was great – Fed’s best yet, IMO.

    I bunged in Mortar and Pestle because it’s absolutely what it is for me, but was looking out for the reverse because loads of TV chefs use it the wrong way around, and it grates something rotten to me. Which would explain the rise in UK from 2000-odd onwards… The mortar’s the biggest part, it’s the bit you use first when you want to grind stuff, and it’s the stronger sounding word. “Pestle and mortar” is like “tongs and hammer” or “lightning and thunder”. Having the weaker word first lets the whole thing down.

69. Additionally, I think an issue with “pestle and mortar” is that often people say “grind it IN a pestle and mortar” which seems much wronger. At least “grind it in a mortar and pestle” gets the bit you actually grind it in first…

70. Thanks for the blog, Andrew. And for the comments all.

    Regarding ‘pestle and mortar’- I think I would have instinctively said it the other way around, too. Although I also remember being surprised in early adulthood when I discovered which bit was which as I’d spent my time in school chemistry lessons thinking the pestle was the dish and the mortar the grinder. In an effort to work out how accepted this way round was before feeling okay about its place in the grid, I took a look on Amazon to see how they’re described there. If memory serves, the P&M version was far and away the more common.

71. Me@28. Hah! Four clues solved plus EXHIBIT, which I guessed but couldn’t begin to parse.
    It’s obviously pestle and mortar. Can you imagine a comedy duo called Mortar and Pestle? I rest my case.

72. It never occurred to me to say “pestle and mortar.” I’ve said “mortar and pestle” all my life. Chris in France @24 I think mine is Japanese too, ceramic with the inside surface scratched to make a rougher grinding surface.

    26a Anybody else try to work in “Canute”?

    In the US we call WASHING-UP LIQUID “dish detergent,” or I say “dish soap,” saving three syllables for later use.

    JerryG@14 I think most of us were meant to think of posh boys, though frock coats and boater hats were beyond my field of expertise. Crossbar@48 The name of any old town at 8d probably wouldn’t mislead us into thinking of posh schools.

    Eileen@18 (or anybody else) If Gary Lineker had been booked, what would that mean?

    Sincam@20 What’s an LRB when it’s at home?

    Cookie@39 I’m guessing it isn’t Hardy and Laurel because Stan Laurel got star billing as the comedian while Oliver Hardy was the straight man, though I may be overthinking. And @43 your nonreversible pairs all have a one-syllable word before a two-syllable one, unlike the pair under discussion, which I’ve always reversed. And your British English chart @45 seems to be telling us that people, or at least British people, are talking about those paired objects a lot more than they ever have.

    Sorry to be so late, but I had a morning meeting, so got to it afterwards. Delightful puzzle, and fine blog, thanks Fed and Andrew

73. [Any mention of pestles will always remind me of the hilarious scene of Danny Kaye in The Court Jester]

74. If you google “pestle and mortar pub”, you get a number of pubs in the UK, whereas if you google “mortar and pestle pub”, you get a number of bars in the US.

75. Andrew Sceats @66 – I like your parsing of SCHWA as the ‘a’ sound. Makes the clue even better, if that’s what Fed intended.

    Valentine @72 – the LRB is the London Review of Books, and I think this is the interesting article which SinCam mentioned.

    Kenneth Thomas @63 – I agree with your mum. Richard Kenneth definitely better than Kenneth Richard. The i vowel is ‘higher’ than the e vowel, so it follows the Gervase Principle as outlined @30. But even more important for me is the sequence of consonants. I’m not sure why, but there’s something really satisfying about the Cha-ka combination.

76. Andrew Sceats @66: I did briefly toy with the idea of SCHWA being “a sound”, but the a is needed in the wordplay to provide the last letter of the answer.

77. Andrew @76 – oops, yes of course

78. Coming back to the discussion I’m fascinated to discover the P&M’s and M&P’s have been inhabiting parallel universes (or at least kitchens). Strident justifications knocked down as castles of sand (built no doubt with spades and buckets).

79. Do Americans say bricks and mortar or mortar and bricks ?

80. Couto @79
    This is not the first time that you have posted a comment written in this negative manner. Please make your comments constructive or don’t comment at all.

    I suggest you read the Site Policy page. I really don’t want to have to place you under moderation.

81. The mortar comes first otherwise the ingredients will be all over the worktop:)

82. An oddly harsh judgement from Couto @79. Fed/Bluth’s cluing is hugely clever and well crafted, yes if a bit wordy. As a relatively novice setter (which can’t come as a surprise many people) I think he is still trying to craft, and relax into, his particular voice and I’m certainly interested to see how that develops. Not that I imagine he’ll be crushed by a stray remark. Go on yersel’ Fed.

83. Seemed to blow rather hot and cold, this one, but I enjoyed it overall.
    Not sure about STRATA. What is “different” doing in the clue apart from providing a decent surface? Why is there a question mark in the TERRIER clue? It’s not a dbe. I wasn’t happy with the superfluous “have” in 16 (DRILL BIT) either. Just there for the surface again.
    On the other hand, I thought EXHIBIT, EUREKA, IRRADIATE and ANTSY were excellent with fine and amusing surfaces.
    As a practising chemist, I use a PESTLE and MORTAR quite frequently, and I’ve heard it said both ways round. Neither seems obviously preferable to me. Each version seems to dominate for historical reasons in different places. Reminds me of the situtaion with word opposites where one becomes common and the other slides into obscurity (e.g. Insipid vs Sapid) for no obvious reason.
    Thanks, Fed and Andrew.

84. Thanks both.
    OED: without A1: On the outside or outer surface (of a material thing); externally
    – “Now only literary and somewhat archaic.”

85. Roz @80: Americans say bricks and mortar. For example, a business may have a bricks-and-mortar outlet as well as an online store.

86. Gonzo @85
    When I was young, I was always puzzled by the line:

    There is a green hill far way, without a city wall

    Why would a green hill expect to have a city wall?

87. Roz @ 80: Bricks and Mortar feels more like Mortar and Pestle to me. The big important bit is first. “Mortar and bricks” is definitely “pestle and mortar” with the subsidiary bit first.

    With “bricks and mortar” and “mortar and pestle” if you didn’t have the first part you wouldn’t bother with the second. But if you had the first part, but not the second you could improvise with something else. Actually my own pestle (a stone one) has been broken for years – it snapped in half. I still use it, despite it being somewhat awkward. If the mortar had broken I’d have thrown both parts away.

88. philtonelly@84 TERRIER seems to be the obverse of a dbe, (is there a term for that????) as we are required to find an example of a pooch to come up with the answer. It’s still not a straight definition though, so I thought the question mark was fine.

89. Eileen @18: as a football player Lineker may never have found himself in the book, but as a football commentator, he’d be routinely found on the GANTRY

90. Valentine@72 a booking (the ref writes your name in his little book) in football (soccer) is a yellow card, given for foul play either nasty, cynical or otherwise deemed more serious than the run of the mill foul seen every few seconds (it seems). but in itself a misdemeanour rather than a felony, which would earn a red card and a sending off. Two yellows in the same game make a red. Some accumulation of bookings across games in a certain timeframe may also result in further censure. Lineker famously went through his long and distinguished career without getting booked.

91. Petert@ 89, have to respectfully disagree. I think it’s normal practice to have a definition which encompasses the answer without the need for the question mark. When one is included, there ought to be a reason, if it’s only that it makes the surface better. To me it does the opposite here.

92. Salad @83: I suspect Couto is a troll so I wouldn’t take his/her comment as anything worth responding too and neither should Fed. There are a couple of names that pop up very occasionally with almost the same negative comments attached. (I’m not including Van Winkle in that, btw. He’s real and his negative comments do vary slightly 😉 )

93. Thank you Fed, I enjoyed this a lot. 17 and 22 were stand out brilliant.

94. I can’t help thinking that the P&M/M&P discussion is a teacup without a storm.

95. Very enjoyable solve. I too started with MORTAR AND PESTLE, and that threw me off until I got COPPER – reversing the order speeded things up considerably!
    Thanks Fed and Andrew.

96. Thought the style looked familiar. Love his DT Toughie puzzles as Django.
    This was very enjoyable too with his trademark precise wordplay.
    ELDERBERRY & WASHING UP LIQUID my top 2
    Thanks to DG & Andrew.

97. I really enjoyed this. I don’t understand why all the comments grinding on about the order of PESTLE AND MORTAR. Totally gettable from the clearly signposted anagram and the definition ‘pair that grind’ and the crossers helped. It doesn’t matter in which order. Imagine the fuss if PEPPER AND SALT was clued!
    TBH when I first looked at this and had the AND and -O—R I was distracted by thinking of MOLAR (not enough letters) and wondering what other grinding tooth I could put in there.

98. I wrote in mortar and pestle, it’s the only pron I’ve ever heard of used. When I went to enter drill bit I thought wait, what ?
    Public holiday here (Weds) so I had plenty of time. Often with obvious anagram fodder I’d go to an anagram solver if it doesn’t leap out (but not today) so I was happy to solve elderberry.

99. BTW PDM@98, I know plenty of older Aussies who say pepper and salt, my father-in-law for one.

100. [Ah, GreginSyd. I hope I/we haven’t started something. Another hour to go before the new crossie comes up.]

101. Mark N @68 & 69, people would more likely say “grind it with a pestle and mortar”, a mortar is not always necessary, a hollow stone or log, or a piece of bamboo, will do, as used in Africa to grind millet.

102. I say MORTAR and PESTLE so that didn’t help. Didn’t know SCHWA or ANSTY.

     Otherwise just long enough for me.
     Thanks both

103. Cookie @ 102: You clearly haven’t watched that many TV cookery shows (I’ve been clean for the past couple of years, but I used to watch the lot, and “in” is the default, and that’s partly why it irks me so much).

     If folk aren’t using a mortar are they still using a pestle? I’m guessing if you’re using a hollow stone to grind in you’re probably using another smaller stone to grind. That stone is being used as a pestle, perhaps, but it’s absolutely not a pestle…

104. paddymelon@101 i went down that route early on, didn’t have the final R and still had the S to play with, so MOLARS was plausible for the second word. Then SCHWA put me back on track.

105. I’ve always said bricks and pestle. I think Coutu would agree with me.

106. Yeah, Gazzh@105. You’re right. I didn’t have the S at that moment either.
     The SCHWA also helped me with /pes?l/ and /m??t?/ 🙂

107. Cellomaniac@106. LOL.

108. PostMark@93 – my comments do currently have little variation as they are largely restricted to having respect for the site policies and comment guidelines, these comments having negativity only for those who have determined that such respect is misplaced.

109. Oh, the schwa didn’t come out. I think that essexboy has posted how to do that. Wasn’t paying attention.

110. Mark N @104, no, I have never watched a cookery programme, but I have watched many women using large wooden pestles and mortars and small wooden ones for modern kitchens are available.

     Thanks again Fed for the puzzle, I am looking forward to the next one.

111. Thank you for info PostMark @93. Will ignore in future.

112. [pdm @110 – if you drop in again:

     To get a ə, type &#601 followed (without a gap) by a semicolon

     To get the ɔ in /mɔ(r)tə(r)/, type &#596 semicolon

     There’s a useful list of codes for IPA symbols here.

     Incidentally, I wonder if the way our American friends pronounce the Rs in MORTAR has something to do with putting M before P? If I try to say it that way I find M & P rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than P & M.]

113. Definitely ‘mortar and pestle’, from school chemistry right onwards. Never heard anyone refer to ‘pestle and mortar’. The latter seems more cumbersome on the tongue.

114. DNF, ntm SCHWA

115. [pserve_p2 @36 — The Knight of the Burning Pestle is an Elizabethan play. There was a production of it at the Wanamaker theatre attached to the Globe in London a number of years ago. It has a strangely modern feel to it. It starts with a person in the audience jumping up to object to what he sees on stage. He’s then dragged onto the stage and told to do a better job himself if he can. I didn’t know that playwrights in that era were playing games like that.

     When I saw it in London, I’m pretty sure the actor Andrew Scott, who was pretty prominent at the time due to his role in “Sherlock”, among other things, was sitting a few rows away.]

116. Google ngrams may say that “mortar and pestle” has become more common, but google trends (which uses google searches rather than book contents) suggests that the split is between UK and US English, with “pestle and mortar” being more common in the UK: here

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