Guardian Cryptic 28,699 by Brendan

104 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,699 by Brendan”

1. At 8a the only thing I came up with was reCORDer, although I wasn’t convinced. I thought NORMANDY was very clever. And ELIA.

2. Thank you Ioonapick (and Paul) for suggesting equally plausible parsing for 8d. That was the one thing I was struggling with too! Lovely start to the day

3. So much going on in this tour de force but expect nothing else from this setter. Another sister, GONER IL(L) appears as well. Wonderful puzzle with too many ticks. 8 dn is a mystery but Paul @1 makes a good stab as well as the blogger.

   Ta Brendan & loonapick

4. Excellent puzzle! Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

   If anyone’s wondering as to the whereabouts of King Lear’s other two daughters, I just noticed GONERIL and REGAN hiding out in rows 8 and 10.

5. There are five sets of THREE SISTERS: ANNE, EMILY and CHARLOTTE Bronte, the Muses ERATO, CLIO and EUTERPE, THE GRACES, the FURIES, and LEAR’s daughters CORDELIA (6/8), REGAN (hidden in OREGANO), and GONERIL (hidden in GONER/ILL). This being Brendan, there’s probably more. Phew!

6. And of course all three Brontë sisters are mentioned as well, which I’m sure loonapick is aware of but not specifically mentioned.

7. AlanC @ 7 – actually I missed that – thanks for pointing it out. There was a lot going on and I spent so long trying to parse CORD that I took my eye off the ball a bit.

8. Gladys @5: well done. I knew someone with a broader knowledge would come up with the definitive list of sisters.

9. I also have to wonder if Brendan was at least hinting at CALLIOPE (muse of epic poetry) with ILL and OPEner right next to each other, and POLYHYMNIA (muse of sacred poetry) by combining POLYHEDRONS, HYMENEAL, and ELIA.

10. All very clever, with many female names, including three muses, King LEAR(‘s) three daughters and the Bronte sisters, scattered in various places throughout the grid as pointed out by others above. I wasn’t sure of 8d either but like Paul @1 went unconfidently for reCORDer.

    Hard work but worth it, particularly for seeing all the theme related answers.

    Thanks to Brendan and loonapick

11. But I couldn’t parse CORD at all.

12. I actually spotted the theme but having done Hamlet/Hal V/Merchant of Venice at school, the Lear references passed me by. Lots to enjoy here, not least the very clever 18dn. I admit to failing in the top NE corner but 6dn seems very specialist to me. Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

13. Not part of the solution but I noted JOY would be a happy girl.

    Thanks Brendan and loonapik: I agree with your parsing of CORD (I had noticed CD with an OR in it but didn’t make your connection of them)

14. JerryG@12 ELIA used to be a stock word in Guardian crossword world, but I don’t think it has had an outing recently

15. I went very confidently with reCORDer for 8 down as the wordplay is “half of device for storing data”. Not sure where the indication is for “OR” in the alternative explanation.

    For once I half got the theme part way through and finally worked it all out when finished. A trio of trios. Three muses, three daughters of LEAR, and three Brontes ANNE, EMILY, CHARLOTTE (who are also princesses).

    I originally had Prowl instead of LARGO and Prime Suspect for THREE SISTERS which didn’t help with the crossers, so it was a struggle to finish. My favourite was EMILY because of the wordplay of “omitting pairs” which I don’t think I’ve seen before.

    A fitting tribute to International Women’s Day.

16. Sheer delight – and so, so clever. I was hoping for a recognition of International Women’s Day and there’s no one better than Brendan to provide it.

    The Three Sisters theme has been admirably spelled out above. I particularly enjoyed uncovering Lear’s daughters – the icing on the cake. (Good to see the return of ELIA – for years it was a crossword staple.)

    Of the non-themed answers, I had ticks for HYMENEAL, SIGMA, BRETHREN and the lovely NORMANDY.

    Huge thanks to Brendan for a JOYOUS start to the day and to lucky loonapick for the blog.

17. Dave Ellison and Tim C – sorry for the duplication re ELIA and IWD. 😉

    I meant to say I also enjoyed the clever double use of ANNE.

18. Just realised the reasoning behind C or D, but I think I still prefer reCORDer. You pay your money and take your choice.

19. No worries Eileen. I must have pressed enter a nanosecond before you.
    My other favourite was NORMANDY. Very clever.

20. Brilliant. Many thanks to B & L, and all other contributors for helping to flesh out the details, especially gladys @5 for spelling out the five sets of THREE SISTERS.

    Perhaps we can count 7d as a semi-themer too – some BRETHREN to go with all the sistren.

21. Super puzzle. I parsed 8d the same way as loonapick. I’m sorry to be a pedant, but even though it’s International Women’s Day I have to mention that there were actually four writer siblings in the Bronte family if you include the hapless Branwell who, apart from being male, was not much good as either a writer or an artist.

22. As soon as I took up this crossword, I wondered if Brendan would be marking IWD in some way – and was then so thrilled that he did it so cleverly. As I peeled it back layer by layer, I couldn’t help but be reminded of “Sisterhood is powerful!”, the old catchcry of the “women’s lib” movement of the 60s and 70s, which ushered in what we now know as feminism. My thoughts echo a lot of Eileen’s sentiments @16 – JOYOUS at 4d was my favourite!
    One of my favourite crosswords of all time. A million thanks to Brendan for it. I am in awe of how he fitted in all three sisters from King Lear and the three Brontes. My gratitude to loonapick and other contributors for a very enjoyable blog too.

23. Gradually – and partly – got the theme(s?) as I worked through this, but I missed some of the detail – thank you to the contributors above who have spelled it all out. I did eventually make the IWD connection. I’m another who was thinking reCORDer. Some of this was quite tough, but all worth it in the end. Thanks, Brendan and loonapick.

24. Magnificent, magnificent. Witty, literate, topical, stylish. How long can it have taken to compile, for heaven’s sake? Been doing this xword for decades and can’t think of a better one. Thank you Brendan and Loonpick.

25. Loved this despite not finishing, didn’t spot the anagram at 23d.
    Extra girl’s names include the wonderful Norma and Mandy, and of course Joy, and Grace.
    Thank you Brendan and Loonapick

26. What Eileen said in praise of this excellent themed crossword

    Thanks very much to Brendan and loonapick

27. Joyous – reminded me of the Beverly Sisters….
    Super puzzle and blog. Thank you

28. Apologies – Beverly Sisters. Hangs head in shame.

29. At times I wasn’t sure whether I was coming or going with this, so many interconnected classical and literary themes, and my smattering of knowledge in these areas just about coped. Actually experienced quite a sense of relief to have completed successfully. Almost too intricate and interwoven to be an enjoyable solve, I thought. Though of course Brendan will get his usual plaudits for another tour de force or whatever. INDIA and IONIA seemed rather like last minute fillers of the grid.

30. Did anyone else fail to parse OPENER, thinking it was PEN = writer, ER as alternate (often?) letters of dEaR, and wondering where the O came from.

31. Wow Brendan, loonapick (lucky you as Eileen said), and grace@5 and Steve Blais@9.
    Brendan gave us something for everyone, including people like me not well-educated in mythology and literature.
    My favourites were IDENTITY which was clever, and HYMENEAL, ILL , OREGANO, TRIMESTERS, GONER and EUTERPE which impressed for the word play and made me laugh.

32. snap blaise@30.

33. …perhaps I should blame my slight lack of appreciation for Brendan’s puzzle this morning on noisy workmen next door starting their drilling and banging at an unholy 8 a.m…

34. Re(cord)er could be a data storage device , using half the letters , c-or-d is more likely what the setter intended .

35. [Yes I too thought about Branwell when I solved “the family” clue at 11a, George C@21. Having read “The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte”, and having visited the Black Bull in Haworth, his favourite watering hole, I often think of him when I come across references to that talented but troubled family. It always seems very poignant to me that he later painted himself out of the family portrait he did of his three sisters and himself. But I don’t think Brendan would have deliberately erased him in the clue for 11a – I guess the three sisters are now defined more by the term “The Brontes”, and in my opinion, rightly so. It always strikes me as ironic that Branwell could have done well for himself if he hadn’t been so self-destructive, because he was quite a talented man, and yet his sisters had to hide behind androgynous pseudonyms in the hope that publishers would think they were men and therefore take up the publication of their brilliant books.]

36. [Ronald@29 and later @33: I don’t usually like to say anything about slightly negative posts on this forum, as I respect different perspectives, but I was almost going to post that your @29 comment seemed a bit mean. However I appreciate after reading @33 that you had a disturbed morning and might have been a bit out of sorts. Isn’t it interesting how one’s solve can be so affected by our solving environment? I had just seen my thirteen year old niece’s Instagram photo story when I started on this crossword, in which, to mark IWD, she depicted the significant women in her life, including a photo of me taken with her at her school’s open day. So I was feeling pretty buoyed by that when I tackled this crossword.]

37. Little time available to me this morning – thank goodness I had time earlier for this gorgeous puzzle (and, for those who occasionally try an Indy puzzle, today would be a very good day to dip in there again). Just wanted to add my voice to the praise for construction and setting. A stunning job.

    Steve Blais @9: I’ve scanned the comments quickly and don’t think anyone has responded to your point (apologies if I missed someone). Well spotted – it would be lovely to think that was in Brendan’s mind and, with this setter, it’s certainly possible.

    Thanks both

38. Another Brendan tour de force. I looked in vain for Teddie and Babs to go with Joy of the Beverley sisters.

39. I did PM @37. I did! (@31). Well-spotted by Steve Blais.
    And while we don’t have the grid in front of us here, someone on the Guardian site mentioned the middle line,
    which is GONER ILL IONIA . Made me laugh.

40. As others have said, a tour de force.
    Thanks to Brendan and loonapick.

41. Thanks Brendan and loonapick
    Very clever. Even I saw most of the thematics! Favourites LARGO and NORMANDY.
    I struggled to parse the Russian part of CHARLOTTE as I’ve heard of desserts such as “apple charlotte”, but not the parent one.
    One glaring weakness – EASY was so non-cryptic that I didn’t write it in until I had the crossers.

42. Concur with the “one of my favourite crosswords of all time” comment from Julie @22. Absolutely loved this, even though my GK wasn’t quite good enough to finish the last couple of tiddlers off without electronic help, and I spent the latter stages thinking “even now, I’m still not sure what exactly this theme is”. Thanks to Loonapick for explaining ?

43. BTW, and sorry if it’s really obvious, but I found the “mostly appropriate” part of 1d in reference to Princess Anne’s three siblings quite hilarious.

44. Very clever. And unusually I saw the theme straight away. Probably helped that I’d just been googling something and realized it was IWD. I’m still looking for Olga, Maria and Irina, though. 😉

    Needed help to parse EMILY, ELIA, CORD, OPENER. I shall store away Elia with etui, ecru, Eli etc. (Do all these obscurities start with an e?) And to my shame I didn’t see AFRICA at all. I really wanted it to be auroch – well it was a beast with horns and fitted the crossers. Not on top form today.

    Many thanks Brendan. Brilliant puzzle. And thanks loonapick for the parsing help.

45. Yes, indeed, Julie @43 – and, like Ian @42, I have to concur with your “one of my favourite crosswords of all time”. I often mention my little book of classic clues – and there are some absolute gems in there – but this, as Brendan’s puzzles so often are, is much more than the sum of its parts, a wonderfully intricately-designed tapestry and every bit of it totally up my street!

46. Thanks for the blog and expert parsing. Lovely puzzle as ever from Brendan.
    I convinced myself erroneously that Syria was part of Asia Minor, Syra being a Greek island. Hey ho.

47. An absolute delight! Brilliantly constructed with no rough edges (which often happen with so many themes solutions).

    I parsed CORD as half of recorder too.

    Wonderful crossword – thanks Brendan. And thanks loonapick for the blog

48. Yes, Brendan’s typically masterful grid-fill.

    I got there in the end, checking Muses etc. I had to come here for the (two) parsings of CORD. I think my favoured one is loonapick’s C OR D.
    I’m not sure if I’ve seen ELIA before – I’ve given up searching for it because of the many instances of rELIAble!

    A suitable tribute for IWD, and an impressive puzzle.

    Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

49. Well, I eventually found this by Hectence (in a Quiptic!):
    She‘s a foremost essayist
    AMELIA

50. Seeing Brendan as the setter is always a plus, and this didn’t disappoint, except that, not being particularly difficult, I would have been happier to carry on for longer.

    When LEAR, CORD and ELIA appeared, followed by GONER and ILL, I assumed it was King Lear themed, and went looking for more characters, like a Fool (geddit?). OVERACTED (I’m sure it has been on occasion) seemed to support the theory, though all these Greek references were a bit odd.

    While trying to remember if there was a Duke of NORMANDY in Lear, and wondering what CHARLOTTE and EMILY had to do with the old King, I spotted the third Bronte ANNE, the Princess with 3 brothers (one of whom at least isn’t very appropriate – another well deserved dig at Andrew?).

    Finally the penny dropped with all these sets of THREE SISTERS, classical and otherwise. Even TRIMESTERS sounds a bit three-sistery if you try hard enough. Lear’s other daughter turning up in OREGANO was a chef’s kiss moment what with the duck and orange, and such a smooth surface too.

    The beauty of puzzles like this is the extra dimension of fun in tracking down the theme, over and above solving the puzzle. Well done to Brendan again, and to loonapick the unpicker.

51. Thx to Brendan for an excellent and most enjoyable puzzle, centred on awesome women. So relevant on International Women’s Day, the theme of which is #BreakTheBias. Thx also to loonapic for parsing the ones I couldn’t.

52. Whatever is wrong with me today (and there is always something) I found this a bit beyond my capacities and so less enjoyable than usual with Brendan (long may he prosper) – lots of reveals (IONIA, ELIA, CLIO, AFRICA (there’s that ‘in’ – I was expecting ‘arnica’)).
    That being said it is appropriate to join in with the praise for the construction. I think I’ve said before (and possibly before that again) that I don’t expect a theme in a crossword (were they always a possibility? – I never spotted one in my early cryptic days) and I find that the overlay generates impenetrabilities. But hey ho – onward and upward (or across and down in our case).

    I thought TRIMESTERS was a great spot. Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

53. I began to wonder if there was a third to go with INDIA and AFRICA (which I tried in vain to make out of “in a car”) but I don’t think IONIA fits.
    Favourites NORMANDY and IDENTITY.

54. So I googled the spare ladies names, Norma and Mandy.
    It came up with a children’s book called ‘Mandy the Outsider’ by Norma Jean Lutz. This seemed far too obscure to be themed.
    But then noticed it was Book 22 in the Sisters in Time series.
    Sisters… Hmm.

55. I think Brendan has broken some law of physics. Given the set of sistery entries, as listed by Gladys@5, and charged to fit them in a standard Guardian 15×15 grid, I think ones immediate reaction might be that it can’t be done. What’s more, the chosen themers are natural choices given the theme, not obscurities chosen to allow the fitting-in to happen. Wow!
    .

56. Amidst all the praise in my comment @50, I forgot to mention a couple of favourites: the EURO LOG in 9 across, and ‘exaggerated, in part’ for OVERACTED.

57. Did anyone else think that 1D was a cleverly worked dig at the Duke of York?

58. Paul @ 57 – see comments 43, 45 and 50.

59. To late today to add much to the general encomium. A most enjoyable solve from the sublime grid filler. Echoing Steve B’s comment @9, I did muse as to whether Brendan had tried Polyhymnia instead of POLYHEDRAL when constructing the grid. All I can say in wonderment is that I’m glad he didn’t put in Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera and lumped them together as the FURIES instead 🙂 .

    I didn’t parse CORD, but my vote is for C or D as the correct explanation. Although the alternative is mathematically correct, ‘half’ in conventional crossword speak normally refers to the first or last half of a word, rather than a lump in the middle.

    NORMANDY is a lovely device.

    Many thanks to Brendan and loonapick.

60. I visit this blog but don’t often comment. Thanks loonapick, and everyone else who’s contributed to my enjoyment of this great puzzle.

    But isn’t ‘terms’ doing double duty in 15D? It’s needed for the word play and for the definition. I thought for an &lit the whole clue needed to be used for the word play and for the definition. Here they seem to use 5/8 each. I know you said ‘semi &lt’, loonapick, but does that excuse the overlap?
    Not criticising – just trying to learn : )

61. Katherine@60: Part of me thinks you are right (as in correct). By which I suppose to show that the ‘as’ saves the day by keeping a distance between ‘terms’ and the definition so that ‘terms’ is not doing double duty. But part of me thinks you are right.

62. Lovely crosssword. At first I thought it would be about the Muses, having found three of them, but none of the others looked as if they’d fit in the available spaces. The idea of Sisters as the theme took some time trickling in.

    alphalpha@52 I was expecting arnica too until I noticed that the crossers would make it “anrica.” Was there such a thing? Yes, as a rather obscure acronym, but … Finally I saw that I could include “if” instead of “in” in the anagram fodder, and there was AFRICA.

    Thanks ever so, Brendan and loonapick.

63. [Valentine @62
    Exactly the same process with me for AFRICA!]

64. Late to comment, but just want to add my appreciation. A brilliant puzzle. Brendan just gets better and better .
    Thanks also to loonapick and others for help with parsing 6 and 8 down.

65. How lovely is this crossword 🙂

    It took me most of the day due to work getting in the way and being a relative newbie so also quite slow but what a reward.
    I parsed 8d as re(cord)er but wasn’t convinced and reading here am still on the fence lol

    A fitting tribute to International Woman’s Day

    Thanks Brendan and loonapick

66. As always with Brendan I had many favourites, EMILY, ARRANGE, ERATO, and IDENTITY among them but when I reached the end (with some assistance) I was a bit underwhelmed. It was not until I read the comment by Gladys @5 did I realize the brilliance of this crossword. I guess ignorance is not always bliss. Thanks to both.

67. Thanks loonapick for unravelling a few (I am in the CD camp but have the same question as Katherine@60 re defn of 15d) and gladys and others for further elaborating on the connections and hidden themed items. A bit too much high culture for me to really love this (GK and previous crosswords – Brendan seems to like King Lear! – helped a lot but still had to cheat for some definitions) but appreciate the brilliance after the comments above. Easy to love POLYHEDRON, OVERACTED and NORMANDY though, thanks Brendan.

68. So I find C OR D more satisfying from a wordplay perspective but less so as a definition as I wouldn’t call a CD a device. And that’s the full extent of any quibbles so chapeau Brendan for a most amusing solve. Cheers

69. It’s all been said. I enjoyed this rightly praised offering from the versatile and prodigious Brendan.

    At one point I did wonder if there’d be a nod to one of our resident classicists, Eileen 😉

70. Thanks for the blog, I was vaguely aware of themes while solving but many thanks to Gladys @ 5 for the definitive summary. I actually thought the non-themed clues were much better, POLYHEDRON, NORMANDY and the very clever TRIMESTERS .
    Very minor quibble – a polyhedron in normal 3-D Euclidean space needs a minimum of four faces. More than two-faced is not wrong but it is not the strong condition of more than three faces.

71. Katherine@60. As no one has answered your query yet, I will stick my neck out and say that I don’t think this clue really works – for exactly the reasons you have outlined. I have never before seen a semi &lit, and yes, terms is having to do double duty.

72. Nice one, Brendon
    I knew the essayist must be ELIA but didn’t have 8d, so I was expecting that to be something that moved either the L down or the E up in LEIA. Shakespeare, who he?

73. Roz @70: for a puzzle that clearly managed to lift crosswording to new heights, you’ve come up with a suitably high level quiblet. That really is magnificent. Brendan should hand his head in shame 😀 Actually, three-faced might conceivably have worked, given the number of sisters in threes scattered around the grid!

74. You can always count on Brendan. With the six trios of sisters, counting everyone that the grid and clues brought to mind ( the unstated Muses, Jo’s sisters Mandy’s Ma etc.) I got to 33 women in a crossword that contains 33 clues; more if you don’t want to leave out Di, Grace, Io Vera and Eth.

    Thanks to Loonapick and I was going to say a thousand thanks to Brendan for an absolute classic that’s made my week, but I’d better make it 3,333.

75. Katherine @60 & Trish @71. I’m one of those who thinks there’s nothing wrong with a word (or words) doing double duty. As has been said many times, there are no rules – it’s for the setter to try to provide us with an enjoyable pastime, and we solvers can make of it what we can.

    The main thing for me is to be sure that what I have entered in the grid is definitely correct. In the case of TRIMESTERS, it would be crazy to reject it as the solution because of ‘terms’ doing double duty! And I wouldn’t say it doesn’t work, either. If we can get to the answer and be sure it’s correct, then it works.

    Similarly, I solved 8d without bothering to parse it because it had to be CORD (however Brendan intended it to be derived) to go with ELIA in order to fit the theme. And yes, this does mean that I spotted the theme – just for a change – and even found it useful as well as enjoyable. 🙂

    Many thanks to Brendan, loonapick and commenters.

76. Oh, I forgot Joy, who has been mentioned above, that’s 39.
    I’ll stop and let others add to the total

77. MrPostMark@73 I did like the clue and “two-faced” is the accepted expression and it does work, there are even exotic manifolds where it is more appropriate but best not to think about them.
    I am no good at clues but I wonder if three could have been smuggled into this one.

78. An aside:
    I have read somewhere that Brendan was a student at Cambridge and after today I thought it must have been Trinity. No, Selwyn, but it was there that he started setting.
    Here he is chatting about crosswords and the (often sadly lacking) sociological aspects of teaching mathematics amongst other things:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCtZuLfjH2w

79. Just so Ronald @29 doesn’t feel too lonely, I too found this crossword too tricksy to be a satisfying solve. Clearly successfully playing to this particular gallery, though, as Brendan is of course entitled to do. Can’t please everyone, etc …
    I also fail to see how a crossword featuring largely fictional or mythical female characters (and three sisters, two of whom who can’t claim to be under-regarded) is a fantastic celebration of International Women’s Day. More excellent would have been a theme of contemporary female achievers and aspirers that would have required everyone to trundle the internet to discover their stories.

80. I really enjoyed this Goldilocks crossword last night and themes nice explained above.
    Thanks to Brendan and loonapick

81. Van Winkle@79: A similar thought occurred to me as I read the contributions but perhaps it is (sadly) just that history is (and a very un-original offering here) just ‘his story’ for the most part so that it would be difficult to meet the requirements of your ‘more excellent’ schema (which I agree would be desirable).

    Maybe next year.

82. What a brilliant puzzle! I could not parse CORD or ELIA until seeing loonapick’s explanations.

83. Fabulously clever crossword to celebrate international womens day with references to so many inspiring women both real and mythological. Thank you Brendan

84. Just to be clear. I don’t have any control over the scheduling of my puzzles unless it’s for a particular day. I am happy to have it interpreted in that way, but if I had intended to honour IWD it would have been quite different.
    Thanks to loonapick for accurate dissection and for all the affirming comments (you do realize how much pressure you put on me going forward, right?)

85. I think the cord 8d, is the binder. Similar to rope. Can’t quite see the rest though

86. Alphalpha@81 and Van Winkle@79, I had a similar but different thought about this (magnificent) puzzle as a celebration of UWD.

    When we have a day to recognize a group, we tend to want to idealize the group. In this puzzle, Brendan includes several inspiring women/gods – the Brontes, the three muses, the Graces – but he also includes some not-so-nice ones – Regan and Goneril, and the Furies. (Fortunately, the trebles theme precluded a Thatcher clue.) I took that as a way of saying, “Let’s celebrate women, but recognize that the collective, like any other group, includes people (or gods) of more or less merit, so let’s not idealize the group”.

    After having that thought, my second thought was that Brendan was just looking for groups of three females to acknowledge this day, and wasn’t being particularly philosophical about the nature of celebratory days.

    Thanks, Brendan for this gem of a crossword, and loonapick and all the commenters for a most enjoyable afternoon of fun and thought.

    And thanks, il principe@78 for the Brian Greer link.

    [ Ronald@33, your grumpiness is excused. Here’s hoping they don’t torment you for too long. I live in Ottawa, and we had three weeks of all-night – and day – horn honking, diesel fumes, etc. Our grumpiness was off the charts. ]

87. Great puzzle, but where’s the mention of Davey Arthur?
    Thanks, Brendan and loonapick for the CORD ELIA parse.

88. [ I’m a slow typist, so I missed Brendan’s comment that an IWD crossword would have been different. ]

89. What a tour de force. I certainly failed to spot Lear’s daughters. I did look for Olga, Maria & Irina. I seem to recall Anthony Hopkins playing the brother in a TV production when he was a lad. Can’t remember who plated the sisters

90. Janet Suzman, Eileen Atkins, Michele Dotrice. Wow!

91. [The last Shakespeare play I ever went to was King Lear. As a family we were in London for the weekend. Unusually there were two International Rugby matches in the city that day (Wales were using Wembley while the Cardiff Stadium was being redeveloped), but the family insisted we go to the Old Vic for the matinee. I was so bored by the interval that I left and walked around until it was all over. I couldn’t even find a TV shop to watch the matches through the window! I think there’s a lot of “Emperor’s new clothes” about the bard.]

92. Just to clarify my comment @79, I wasn’t supposing that the crossword had been designed to celebrate IWD (so no slight on Brendan), and that at best the editor had spotted some relevance and scheduled it accordingly. My interest was more in why so many contributors thought it actually was a fabulous celebration of IWD.

93. muffin@91 – at one time I would have agreed with you. My inner London comprehensive school education did not feature the bard but after university, I did an evening class on him. We studied some sonnets and a couple of plays. It seems almost trite to say, and perhaps I’m easily impressed, but I found them very enjoyable and philosophical; perhaps he was the first existentialist. I went on to read more plays on my own and liked them too (I’ve not read most of the history plays). That said, there’s a lot of great literature around in the English language; I include translations from the likes of Tolstoy, Mann, Proust, Garcia Márquez and Murakami (and too many others to mention). And life is too short to spend time on things you don’t enjoy if you’ve given it a go.

94. A few years ago my wife and I visited the Roman amphitheatre in Taormina on March 8th. We had to show our passports to establish our entitlement to the seniors discount. When we were only charged entry for one I thought how clever it was for the person on the desk to have spotted that it was my birthday and allowed me free entry. I was soon disabused by the real beneficiary of their generosity.

95. I hope you’ve had a lovely day, Pino. 😉

96. Worth popping in to concur with nearly everyone today to say what a great crossword this was again, Brendan. Many thanks and well done.

    Cheers for the excellent blog too loonapick

    and happy birthday Pino@94!

97. “gladys
    March 8, 2022 at 1:39 pm
    I began to wonder if there was a third to go with INDIA and AFRICA (which I tried in vain to make out of “in a car”) but I don’t think IONIA fits.
    Favourites NORMANDY and IDENTITY.”

    Guess what I’d been doing!

    I have to admit that I groaned when I saw it was a Brendan puzzle today because they are usually too hard for me, but today, having paused to look up a list of the muses once (and then didn’t even have to refer back to so something retained there), I flew through this puzzle, comparatively speaking. Some take me hours of chipping away. This one is the first Brendan one where I’ve got a good third of the clues on a first read without helper letters and the rest slotted in fairly easily, although I biffed BRETHREN as it fitted and met half the clue. Stumbled on the anagram for 23 for a little bit and stumbled over 8 too.
    Thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m not sure if it’s an easy Brendan one or if I’ve got better. I have been trying to improve.
    Really loved the overlapping themes but it did throw me as I got Anne, then Emily so went looking for a clue for Charlotte and assumed it’d be Brontë themed until I hit the muses, then it finally clicked when I solved 26/13.

    I had assumed it was for IWD as not only are literary sisters celebrated everywhere, it reads JOYOUS IDENTITY down row 7 and that is definitely appropriate for IWD2022 for me.

    Thank you Brendan!

98. This puzzle is a perfect example of why I keep coming back to this stuff. Bravissimo, everyone involved. Plus, I solved it with no hints or research. I’m gradually getting there, I suppose.

99. Eileen @58 thanks. Iirc the blog had uploaded 31 comments when I typed mine, so it’s good to see that others were thinking the same way at the same time!
    Brian @84 it’s always a joy to have the setter join us in the comments sections. Thank you for dropping by.

100. Wow! A well deserved ton of praise for this. Thank you, Brendan.

101. Eileen@95
     I did thank you. Coffee and cake in the afternoon sun and a Zoom call with the grandsons.

102. Perfect! 😉

103. Have just come back to this to read the later comments. Thanks Van Winkle@79 and Cellomaniac@86 for some morale boosting words after my initial bah humbug comments. Tuesday actually got considerably worse, with someone slicing through a water pipe next door with a circular saw, a smoke alarm being flooded and beeping for simply ages, and no water for us for about three hours, as we share their stopcock outside in the street. Can’t imagine the mayhem next door, but at least I had completed Brendan’s puzzle before this further drama ensued. My subsequent comments on here with the Qaos (yes indeed!) puzzle on Wed and Crucible puzzle today hopefully show that things have/I’ve calmed down considerably since Tuesday….

104. Really enjoyed this, although I fell at the final fence in the NE corner. I’d spotted the themes, so I was looking for CORD-ELIA, but it never occurred to me to split her up. GONER-ILL made me chuckle, though. Didn’t spot (O)REGAN(O).

     In addition to all the THREE SISTERS we have here, there’s also a nod to three brothers – W.G., E.M and G.F of THE GRACES were the first threesome of brothers to play Test cricket together.

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