Guardian 28,898 / Brendan

95 comments on “Guardian 28,898 / Brendan”

1. Another clever puzzle from Brendan with HIDDEN PICTURES going in after I’d spotted THOR, MASH, EMMA and IF in the relevant solutions. I found the bottom half easier than the top. Dnf with BRUSSELS defeating me, although I saw how it parsed after revealing and that it referred to Jeannine Deckers, unknown to me. The theme helped me solve the excellent JO(KES)TER. Loved the FATS WALLER anagram and ITALIC was nice.

   Ta Brendan & Eileen.

2. IT in 12ac and CAL in 14 ac.

3. Theme word in 14ac: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087019/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

4. Thanks, Alan and Robert – I didn’t know IT but should have seen CAL.

5. Thanks Eileen – I had WALL-E in 18ac

6. Thanks Eileen. I think the film in 18a should probably be WALL-E

7. …and ET in 26

8. I thought 18ac was wall-e

9. Thanks to my two fellow bloggers at 5, 6 and 7: I wasn’t happy with the omission of ‘the’ – not like Brendan!

10. … and Tony @8.

11. Dolomite is a film …

12. A very clever grid-fill from Brendan, as is often the case. I didn’t find the theme helpful in determining the answers, although it did confirm a couple of entries.

    Couldn’t parse 8D, having never heard of the film nor Julia Child. Gish also new to me.

    Lots of favourites, but I think FATS WALLER gets the Oscar.

    Thanks Brendan & Eileen.

13. Well-spotted judygs, although it obviously doesn’t fit the theme.

14. Also cute link between the Singing Nun and The Sound of Music a couple of clues below.

15. Thank you Eileen. Agree about the 18A anagram, my FOI, but it didn’t help me one iota for the theme, now explained.

    I only got the second word of 1A very late in the piece, and then realised I had focussed on the across clues, when it was also about the downs. Forget about the pictures, not my area of expertise, but I don’t get either the def or wordplay for 1A.

    I was well and truly got by ‘about 60’ in 8D. Who was this actress with LX in their name? I had an entirely different film for STREEP in 8D (only by trying to google possibilities), where she played Cher’s daughter in Mama Mia, and they were both about the same age.

    I liked BRUSSELS, got the BS straight off and did know the Singing Nun ( but not the movie).
    Here’s today’s earworm, bilingually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g_G5U4Ze9Y

16. I had IT instead of ALI in ITALIC and IT as well in DOLOMITE so I knew something was wrong. Never heard of the film CAL in TACTICALLY so I needed the blog to resolve the last few. I Also missed the reference to Julia Child in STREEP. Haven’t seen the fillum, but the recent TV series with Sarah Lancashire playing Julia I thought was interesting and well played. Guardian review is here.
    No stand out favourites, but I did find this easier than I usually do for Brendan.

17. Not great on movies, but remember McDowell in the controversial If, and Kes from cws, and I actually watched Wall-E once, on a plane. Otoh, had zero idea about the Child chef, so Streep was a shrug [she is terrific tho, on of few non-Brits in the same league as greats like Smith, Dench, Mirren and co]. As for the nun, you couldn’t avoid Domeni-que ni-que on the wireless back then, but I’d forgotten she was Belgi-que. Good fun, lots of memories, thanks BnE.

18. … one of …

19. Some criticisms:
    1. The definition of ‘retail’ used was always obscure and is now obsolete
    2. ‘Cargos’ is so ugly it amounts to a misspelling
    3. 8down is a very poor clue: it’s not cryptic, contains the discredited word ‘actress’, and ‘about 60’ is just lame

20. paddymelon @15
    I didn’t know the film, either, but remembered enjoying the song with my children when they were young – I only just resisted providing the earworm, so thanks for that. 😉

21. Despite knowing very few of the films I found this fun.

22. Especially cunning with the double letters suggesting something else(but only in some acrosses)
    After seeing 1a I started at the bottom and gradually worked my way upwards
    Took a couple of goes with THE FOG as I didnt know it but it was clearly indicated.
    Thanks all

23. I enjoyed this. The theme was interesting but, once found, didn’t help much with later solves. I failed on 8dn as I was looking for a more cryptic element. Thanks B and E.

24. The theme was well flagged but didn’t help me much! Not my specialist subject.

    Can’t say I was madly impressed by 8d

    But I did enjoy HAIRCUTS and EPISODIC

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

25. Tough puzzle. Saw the theme but could only pick out some (not all) of the movies with help from google: Emma, ET, MASH, THOR, ARGO, ALI, KES, HELP, IF, WALL Street?

    Failed 17d BRUSSELS – this one was way over my head.

    Liked DOLOMITE, STREEP, TACTICALLY.

    New: LEMMAS; UP – animated movie (for 10d); singular TOG rather than togs (6d); RETAIL = relate or repeat (a story) in detail; cobblers = nonsense.

    Thanks, both.

26. I’d got all the acrosses except DOLOMITE and all the downs except 1 and 8 and still had no idea what the theme was. HAIRCUTS (ha ha) gave me HIDDEN and a bit of hard staring told me that they must be PICTURES, but there were several I’d never heard of. Likewise my Meryl Streep GK is minimal, where in-depth was needed, and I ended up revealing STREEP in the end. Nor did I know Amelie, or the scene of the Singing Nun.

    I suppose if you can be all togged up for an evening out, there must in theory be a verb to TOG, but I’ve never met it in real life.

27. I didn’t have the film knowledge to get STREEP or BRUSSELS, though, in spite of what Jacob Rees-Mogg might think, BRUSSELS made sense. I don’t see the problem with CARGOS (reminds me of Dan Quayle and potatoes, though).

28. Cor. Now that I have seen the explanations, I understand. Was never going to get the STREEP or BRUSSELS clues, and several of the films had to be guessed at. Sorry, Brendan, I came up short here.

29. Chambers gives the plural of CARGO as CARGOES; but I dare say other dictionaries allow the spelling used here.

30. Bu**er. I was hunting for the other type of “pictures”. So, that’s why it didn’t make any sense.

31. 23ac “They help with proof” is the definition; e.g. Hahn-Banach Lemma helps in the proof of the Hahn-Banach Theorem.
    The Gk plural “lemmata” is sometimes seen.
    Lecturer – “Before the main theorem, we prove two lemmata.”
    Students – “Oh dear, what can lemmata be?”

32. Only filled southern half. Didn’t get the theme but not sure that would have helped.

33. For “tactically” I rather fancied the film based on Moss Hart’s autobiography of the same name, Act One, which doesn’t quite work, so I looked no further. Cal, popular(ish) on its release, did not subsequently enter the lexicon.

34. I realised when getting MASH, IF, EMMA etc in the bottom half that the theme was films but, like some others, it didn’t HELP much for the top half.

    Eileen, like pm @15, I don’t understand the definition in 1A, perhaps you can explain?

    Quite a feat to get all the references in, but too much GK for my liking, eg in the clues for STREEP, GAMEFISH etc.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

35. Defeated today, mainly because of not being very up with the movies. STREEP was one of those clues where once I got it I was really quite irritated that I had wasted so much of my morning trying to crack it. My only possible route was to eventually spot that STREEP is a female actor, that it fitted all the crossers, and then google to see whether she ever played a child in a movie, which I guessed she must have done. Would never have got to it meaning a Child rather than a child by any other route. And I agree with others that the whole clue is just lame, with the solution being to read it in its absolute literal sense.

    Also got defeated by DOLOMITE and BRUSSELS, so found it very tough today but enjoyable apart from the above.

36. Robi @34 and paddymelon @15 – re 1ac:

    I googled HIDDEN PICTURES and found this example https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/hidden-pictures-for-kids-1357609 of such puzzles. The definition I underlined seemed pretty straightforward – in fact, barely cryptic, I thought. I did wonder whether to call it a double definition.

37. I generally enjoy Brendan’s crossies, but this one mainly wasn’t in my area (though DOLOMITE and LEMMA were). Like others have said, the bottom was easier, the top went in gradually until I was left with the two easternmost clues. I got STREEP as Fiery Jack @35 did (and with similar reaction), just as I was about to cheat with a word search. I did use the word search for BRUSSELS, though Anna had said much earlier ‘Ken Russell is a British director’, so I kicked myself when it fell (only after searching ‘Singing Nun’ did that song that GinF @17 references surface in my mind). Too many films I have never heard of. The Fog???? Thanks, Brendan and Eileen (and the posters who have helped dispel some of my filmic ignorance – for now).

38. I got the theme but it didn’t help me! 22a was my favorite. 8d I found entirely unsatisfactory.

    17d might have been easier had I not confused the Singing Nun with the Flying Nun…

39. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    Unluckily my first four across solutions were FATS WALLER, LEMMAS, SMASH HIT, and PINE TREE, so I tried DOUBLE LETTERS for 1,4. However I ran out of letters for the second word…

40. For much of my struggle with this I felt out of my pay grade, apart from a few easy scraps that maybe Brendan threw in to encourage me to keep going – the clues for FATS WALLER, PINE TREE and STRAIN, for instance. Rather hoped LEMMAS, a nho for me, might be another successfully spotted hidden word. Apart from that, couldn’t get the key HIDDEN PICTURES, so left things as a DNF today, though I did try…

41. Sadly this was the first Guardian puzzle I eventually gave up on since taking them up daily during the first lockdown. I got the theme, but film titles (especially more recent ones) are not my thing.

    Actually I managed the whole of the lower half, and it was the top half that did for me as there were several answers I knew to be correct but couldn’t explain, and that’s when this experienced blogger begins to lose heart.

    One point of pedantry re 2dn, WHO is not an example of a DR. The TV character is always ‘The Doctor’.

42. Thanks to Brendan for an entertaining solve and to Eileen et al for identifying the unfamiliar films and film references. I think the explanation of 2D needs the A from the wordplay.
    Gtrimprov@31, agreed, but the wordplay then adds some context to make the whole clue a definition too – sometimes called a semi-&lit, though &lit is also used for this.

43. After finishing, I decided to Google all the substrings of DOLOMITE until I found a picture. It turns out OM is an Indian film, so there are at least two hidden there. I was reminded of the half-serious discussion we had here a while back where it seemed almost any word was the name of a band (and yes, Om is that too).

44. As soon as I saw “The Singing Nun”, my brain started producing “Domini-que, ni-que, ni-que” of its own accord. What an impact it must have had all those years ago!

45. Thanks, TimSee @42 – careless error. I’ll fix it now.

46. Haven’t actually failed to complete a grid for yonks but was defeated by BRUSSELS even after a word search with every other letter. Now I see it, the clue is fine, albeit needing a certain amount of GK.

    Spent the whole morning on this and am now late!

    Thank you, both.

47. The bottom half flew in, but the top half was very tricky, and eventually I gave up with a few to go.
    Unlike most, I’m not a fan of Brendan’s puzzles as I find the cluing very difficult to get my head round.
    Thanks both.

48. Hard today, despite a friendly (to me) theme. The surname of Streep’s character in one of her lesser known films, the name of a scene in a film most will not have heard of and almost no one will have seen, and the name of a French comedic film are probably a bit too obscure to count as GK, and I am not one for web searches during a solve. I was pleased to spot ‘Gish’ and that was stretching the old grey matter quite far enough. Favourite clue was ICONOCLAST. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

49. [Amelie is a lovely, completely sunny, film. Although it’s in French, there isn’t a lot of dialogue.]

50. Like you Eileen, I’m always pleased to see a Brendan puzzle because I know there’s going to be something interesting going on. I think he likes to challenge himself as much as us, and this was the usual impressive feat of setting. This sort of puzzle does sometimes seem to include the odd clue that is not very cryptic, in this case 1a and 8d (though the latter did play on child/Child) but that doesn’t bother me in the scheme of things.

    I think Dr. WhatsOn @43 is probably right about almost anything being the name of a film (as with bands). For example in JOKESTER it could have been OK (a 1970 West German film) rather than KES.

    Collins gives CARGOS as an alternative to cargoes, though it says esp. U.S.

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

51. Dr. WhatsOn@43: Substrings indeed! I stopped searching DOLOMITE for titles after spotting the 1931 Fritz Lang classic M, but there’s also O, a 2001 version of Othello. Wikipedia tells me that D, L, I, and E are also film titles, albeit rather obscure ones. I didn’t find one called T, but I didn’t look very hard.

52. Completed, but only by making a few assumptions. Clever puzzle though, and lots to enjoy. Thanks both.

53. @jackkt 41 On a point of counter-pedantry, the lead actors were always credited as playing Dr Who for the first 20+ years of the programme! There also a handful of moments where the character is referred to as Dr Who on screen, so I think that’s plenty of wriggleroom for a crossword setter to play around in.

    Great stuff as always from Brendan. And fun to stare at something like FATS WALLER waiting for the penny to drop re the hidden film. Thanks to Eileen as well.

54. Still can’t parse 1,4 a. Anyone?

55. Thanks Brendan for another clever crossword. I saw the theme early but it didn’t help me solve any clues. I never got BRUSSELS even though I’m a fan of Ken Russell; I’m just not that well-versed in The Singing Nun (nor do I regret that). My top picks were JOKESTER, TACTICALLY, FATS WALLER (great anagram), AUTHORED, and TOP HAT. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

56. OlegRahl @54: There really isn’t anything to parse per se; there are certain children’s puzzles where one must find all the HIDDEN PICTURES. I guess you could call it a cryptic definition; I think Brendan meant it as an instructive clue for finding the names of films (pictures) that are hidden in the across clues.

57. Like “Where’s Wally”!

58. See here

59. Not a film fan so I struggled with this. But I am a Fats Waller fan so was delighted to spot that one first, and what a lovely anagram! Whenever I’m feeling down I play Fats, and within 2 or 3 bars I’m smiling!

60. OlegRahl @54 (and Eileen@36): I recall from toddler days(?) that there were (I’m going to say) ‘pixelated’ pictures made up of clear ‘pixels’ and others containing a dot – the idea was to fill in those containing a dot to reveal a picture within the frame. Not great fun but I remember setting myself the task of descrying the ‘picture’ without the aid of pencil and that was a small entertainment. In an otherwise un-entertaining world (for toddlers) they were a bit of diversion.

    I enjoyed the ‘Julie and Julia’ film but then I’m a big Julia Child fan.

    ‘A bit of diversion’ seems to be the general consensus on today’s puzzle.

61. Still searching for the cryptic element of 8d. As someone not familiar with this bit of Streepobilia I had no chance.

62. [I’ve seen Julie and Julia. I never saw any of Julia Child’s TV programmes, but apparently she was just as chaotic as Streep portrays her! “Mastering the art of French cooking” was the most important book in my cooking education.]

63. KeithM @44. I was, I think, in 2nd year French and our teacher, ‘Hodge’, thought it might engage and improve us ghastly teenagers if we read the French lyrics. Still etched in my mind, and apologies for not being able to do typographical accents:

    Certain jour un heretique
    Par les ronces le conduit
    Mais notre pere Dominique
    Par sa joie le convertit.

64. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

    For 1, 4a, I went with the fact that the letters to make “pictures” can be found in “certain puzzles”.

65. The reference in 1a could be to Japanese hidden picture puzzles such as hanjie, campixu and tentai show, where you are presented with a grid and clues about which cells need to be shaded to produce a lovely picture. A creative alternative to sudoku.

66. Thanks Brendan. Some churlish comments here today but I enjoyed it. The Fats Waller anagram is brilliant. No complaints about the general knowledge from me – I’ve not seen either the Streep film or The Singing Nun but you don’t need to have seen them to know the answers (I would put them at the level of pub quiz trivia), which makes them fair clues in my book.

    Thanks for the blog, Eileen.

67. [@66
    On a related topic, did anyone here see “Only Connect” last night? One of the what sort of thing comes last in this sequence was:
    Howard’s End
    artichoke heart
    Capital of Belgium
    ?

    Not a challenge for people here, I expect!]

68. Out and about since my last bleating, I am moved to call for a ban on any reference in crosswords to ‘The Singing Nun’ as ‘Dominique-nique-nique’ has to be the earworm of all earworms. (The last time it came around it took me a week to shake it off – so thanks Brendan 😉 .)

    Things did not work out well for the unfortunate Soeur Sourire.

69. [Eileen, if you have the time, Eccles in the Indy is worth a look.]

70. I missed many of the hidden pictures, but I enjoyed this nevertheless. FATS WALLER and WHELPS were my favourites among several very neat clues. First answers to go in were the four ‘central’ ones, and the last two were STREEP and HIDDEN, the latter taking me much longer than PICTURES!

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

71. Well said Alphalpha @68 some things are best forgotten and should never, ever be mentioned , last time MrEssexboy even put a link. I would go as far as to say that this is in the same class as Mull of Kintyre.

72. Oops.

73. Fun puzzle.
    I got most of the films but not CAL or IT. For 26a, I assumed that there must be a French film, ETRE, thereby missing crosswordland’s favourite film! I like the STREEP clue now I get it, but missed it at the time.
    I took 1/4 to refer to 3D hidden images like these.

    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

74. STREEP was my first one in, actually–as it happens, I love that movie. (I admit I did hit “check” right away, and was actually surprised it was right!)

    I love the way that not only do all of the Across answers contain films, all of the Down clues contain film references–or almost all; Brendan could have capitalized the M in Sound of Music to make it a clean sweep (so he probably intended to). Anyway, the rare instance of 100% coverage by a theme.

    I had never heard of the films CAL, IF, or THE FOG. The others are at least familiar, and I’ve seen almost all of them. [UP and WALL-E are both in the category of “animated films that the adults will actually like better than the kids”–like many of Pixar’s more recent films.]

75. [Random STREEP trivia: Meryl Streep played the Witch in the film version of the Sondheim musical “Into the Woods.” Bernadette Peters originated the role (and won a Tony for it, if I recall correctly) on Broadway. Sondheim, who as we all know by now was a cryptic setter as well as a composer, was among the first to point out that STREEP and PETERS are anagrams. So you could write a clue like “Into the Woods” star Peters recast (8).]

76. [mrpenney @74
    “Up” is a great film, and I agree that it’s better for adults than children, but I am of an age to be in floods of tears after about 20 minutes.]

77. Thanks, Eileen and everyone. Useful corrective feedback. I tend to the ultimate setter’s disease, which is familiar = I have heard of it, obscure = I haven’t heard of it. Will try harder to bear this in mind.
    At some point, I will discourse on cryptic definitions, one of my favourite types. For me, to qualify as “cryptic” a clue doesn’t have to involve shuffling letters around. May be a generational thing.

78. Dougv at 51: I thought about 1-letter titles but saw no obvious way to incorporate them. I was aware of M, and also Z and W (about Bush the Lesser). Google “movies with one letter titles” and you will find examples for every letter.

79. AUTHORED also gives us RED.
    I was most definitely not on Brendan’s wavelength yesterday.
    Thanks for the blog Eileen – FATS WALLER also got a high smile rating from me.

80. [Roz: You commented very early on Sleuth’s crossword yesterday. There were 3 subsequent comments that had your name in them.]

81. Just for the sake of argument, imagine if one were mystified by 1a-4a and so decided to work through the remaining across clues to try to find what they have in common. It turned out to be plain sailing. Embedded in each answer was the abbreviation of one of the United States (AL, OK, AR, MI, CA, WA, OR, MA, HI, FL, NE in order) until calamity arrived in the final across clue. No state in WHELPS! Ah well! Back to the drawing board.

    Apart from that I concur with R Evans @19 and Bridge Song @29 and Lord Jim @50: I want to see an “e” in CARGOS (sorry to disagree Peter T @27). Furthermore, the Astaire & Rogers routines (Isn’t This a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain? Dancing Cheek to Cheek and so on…music & lyrics Berlin, choreography Hermes Pan) so outshine the leaden plot, that everybody thinks of TOP HAT as a musical rather than a screwball.

82. Muffin @ 67 – I got the Howard’s End one straight away!

    Brian G @ 77 – Solvers are equally susceptible to that disease, as comments here often show.

83. [Wtddersbel @82
    They didn’t suggest it, but “The first of April” would have been my answer.]

84. I saw Help in the cinema when it first came out but apart from that have only seen bits of ET, Top Hat on television so the theme was well out of my range. Nevertheless I only failed on BRUSSELS. I also spent too long trying to find an artform that was an anagram of “found in certain”.

85. I’.ve missed a lot of comments, because I’ve been out at Stratford to see ‘A Christmas Carol’, with Ade Edmondson as Scrooge – absolutely superb.

    Just to say
    muffin @67- yes, I did!
    Tony @69 – I love Eccles’ puzzles but didn’t have time for today’s – maybe tomorrow.
    Brian @77/8 – thank you for dropping in. Your contributions are always welcome. I look forward to your discourses. 😉

86. Eileen@36 and muffin@57.
    ”Where’s Wally” came to me overnight too.
    As 18A is so prominent in the grid and it was an easier clue to solve, my FOI, I was wondering if it might have been a gateway clue, along with 1A. A pun on the film WALL-E, an in-joke, if you get it?

87. Eileen — you’re missing an A in the parsing of DRAG RACE — it’s A + “film star princess.” (Which I never figured out, thank you for that.) I was also looking for names of famous paintings rather than famous movies, which got me nowhere.

    I’m relieved to see that AUTHORED is not supposed to be the American word for “written,” but is instead a correct reference to Thoreau’s nationality.

    I can’t untangle HAIRCUTS. How do the parts relate?

    Congratulations to all who cracked this one, of which I am not one. And thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

88. Valentine @87: I saw it as a DD — “clips” being HAIRCUTS and “omissions from a hippie musical” being HAIR CUTS.

89. Great puzzle though I didn’t get all the film references at the time, so discovering more when I came here made the blog a real treat to read. I agree with muffin@49 and 62, Alphalpha@60 and mrpenney@74 regarding “Julie and Julia” and “Amelie”, both memorable films I really enjoyed. Brendan is so right in his remark @77 regarding “familiar” and “obscure” knowledge … I can really relate to that. I like the moments of recognition more than the new learnings, but it’s all a lot of fun just the same. Broadening the mind is part and parcel of this terrific hobby. Many thanks to both Brendan and Eileen for the effort you both put into such stimulating puzzles and blogs.

90. [ Thanks Tony @ 80, I had my second booster jab so I have not felt like looking in the blogs much. ]

91. Hi Valentine @87

    Please see comments 42 and 45 – I corrected that error yesterday afternoon!

92. Late thanks Eileen, took until today to polish off with a lucky stab at 8d so thanks for the explanation, also for the Singing Nun link, as well as all those films. For “hidden pictures” I thought about stereograms and that Old Master featuring a skull that is clear only when viewed from the correct angle. Enjoyed the discussion too and nice to see Charlie@53 popping back to remind us of the Dr Who provenance (he put a long correspondence on the same subject to bed a while back). Thanks as ever Brendan/Brian, I agree that a cryptic definition can be a wonderful thing and say again that it is our best hope against AI takeover of the pastime. PS gtrimprov@31 – our lecturers were insistent on plural -s for both lemma and formula and I have never heard your joke, thanks!

93. Well I should say “hi Eileen” as we’ve now met. I did complete puzzle v early when it was set.
    One or two films unknown. Don’t know why a drag race is more frantic then other races.
    Thanks both.

94. Good to meet you at York, Tim.
    I don’t really know anything about drag racing – I just took it on trust!

95. Yuck. Definitely one of my least favourite Brendans of the year. I’m basically middle-aged but a lot of these movie references needed you to know specifics about films from well before my time: I’d never heard of HAIR or The Singing Nun, let alone Gish, THE FOG or “the Brussels scene”; very vaguely recognise Grace Kelly, but was sure that 6D must be “The Fly”. (And so we were wondering if 12A was STALLONE given “rocky ” and the films theme.) Also unconvinced by the definition of 1A4A. Some of those containments like THOR and WALL-E were rather clever, but I’m not keen on hiding a random two- or three-letter film like PI or CAL in an answer; far too many films with short names exist throughout the history of cinema.
    Ah well, I have to appreciate the dedication to a theme, even if the resulting puzzle suffers for it. Thanks as always.

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