Guardian 29,071 / Brummie

94 comments on “Guardian 29,071 / Brummie”

1. Hi Eileen. Re 13 down. The first “a” isn’t superfluous, the first “H” is. The solution is an anagram of “a (H)aydn theme”. Thanks for the blog, and to Brummie.

2. Wasn’t sure whether 9a was ’embar’ or ‘enbar’ , fortunately I chose the right one. A tricky puzzle but enjoyable. Like Eileen, I can’t see a theme, but I’m hopeless at spotting them.

3. Tough puzzle which ended up being quite enjoyable. Solved only 8 clues on first and second passes. SW corner was hardest for me.

   New for me: WRASSE; SEED CORN = assets set aside for the generation of profit or other benefit in the future; EMBAR; PLEACH.

   17/15 – why does LAY LOW = top? Oh I see now, never heard that phrase before.

   Favourite: COLANDER; SWEATER.

   Thanks, both.

4. Thanks, Brummie and Eileen!
   SECONDER
   I don’t see any anagram indicator for ‘drones’. Guess ‘motion’ has a dual role! Or someone will
   have a better parsing.
   NAME THE DAY
   a minor correction to be done
   H(hearts neglected) to be removed (from ‘theme’)
   an anagram of (A HAYDN TEME)

5. Thanks both. I noticed that 1 is also an anagram of 5 , 10. Thought that might be a sort of theme, but didn’t see any others like that.

6. Crispy@1
   I took a looong time to type. Sorry.

7. Many thanks crispy @1 – that makes the clue even better than I thought it was. I’ll amend the blog.

8. I enjoyed this one, though I didn’t manage to see how the definition of lay low worked despite getting it from the wordplay early on.
   Just a quiblet: 1d seems to need motion to be read twice for the clue to work properly: ” One who progresses the motion, motion of drones circling London’s financial centre”. Without that, there is no indication that ec is part of the anagram. “… circling around London’s…” would have worked.

9. KVa @6. I suspected someone else would be typing the same thing at the same time. It’s nice to know I wasn’t getting it wrong.

10. Thanks, Eileen and Brummie, enjoyable puzzle as ever.

    The definition for 1d is ‘one who furthers’ – ‘motion’ can be the direct object of the verb to second but is not an implicit part of the definition.

11. *progresses, not furthers, but it amounts to the same thing

12. Crispy@9
    A minor difference between your parsing and mine:
    I feel that the ‘h’ in ‘theme’ should be removed (because the relevant instruction follows ‘theme’).

13. Widdersbel@10
    That makes sense. Thanks.

14. Crispy @1 and KVa @4 – a slight difference of opinion between you re 13dn; I’ve allowed for either in my amendment of the blog. 😉

15. Apologies for the crossing, KVa.

16. Thanks, Eileen, I see what you mean about its being “pretty straightforward” on reading your blog, but it didn’t seem that way to me when solving. For example, deciding what the structure and definition of 28ac took me ages; and (stupidly) getting the word order wrong in 15, 17 didn’t help. But a fairly enjoyable puzzle in the end.

    Thanks also Brummie

17. My first two in were SEAHORSE and WRASSE, so I thought there was going to be a fish theme, but that was it. In fact I had forgotten until reading the blog. I knew PLEACH but it would not come to me until late in the solve, I even looked up hazel hurdles but did not come across it. However, it just popped into my mind after I solved ENCUMBER.
    Not Brummie’s hardest puzzle, but that rather suits me and I will echo Eileen’s pickswith the addition of NAME THE DAY.
    Thanks both

18. I was a bit doubtful about LAY LOW meaning “kill”. “Knock down” or “defeat” maybe, but “kill”? But the online Merriam-Webster has it as the third definition, so ok. (Eileen, “low” should be in upper case rather than “base”.)

    Is there any other essayist in crosswordland than Charles LAMB? But PLEACH was a jorum.

    Many thanks Brummie and Eileen.

19. Kva & crispy, does it matter? Just take an H out. Itook both out to start with but had too few letters so I stuck one back in realising H is short for hearts not heart,

20. Thank you Eileen, and for the link to BRETON. I echo your question about drones circling in SECONDER. No anagram indicator, unless maybe ”motion” is doing double duty? Your comment ”unequivocally” re LYNX made me smile. Does that mean ”univocally” in homophone land 🙂 ?

    Brummie has a great sense of language and humour. PLEACH (NHO) and SPLOTCH in the same crossword. One that comes from Old French/ Latin, and the other one onomatopoeic originally I would imagine.

    I couldn’t see a theme either. I confess to googling today’s date thinking that NAME THE DAY might have been a hint.
    SEAHORSE is an interesting fish. Doesn’t look like one, but the science says it is. I have a dried out one, ie its exoskeleton, that I found at a Sydney beach decades ago and which has remained intact despite some little mishaps.

    I liked the misdirections and fun answers in LIVER SPOTS, WRASSE, SECONDER, EXACT, and SWEATER.

21. Wow 20 comments in 29 minutes, the time it took me to type.

22. nicbach@19
    NAME THE DAY
    To arrive at the solution, it doesn’t matter which ‘h’ is removed.

    ‘Hearts’ may stand for one H or many. In the clue under discussion, ‘hearts’ indicate H (not H’s).
    We can read the clue thus: Anagram of ‘a haydn theme (h romoved)’ //set a date.

23. New to my lexicon EMBAR, WRASSE, SEED CORN & PLEACH. Couldn’t work out why EC was central London. I had “crumble” for 16a and wasted a good deal of time trying to find a silent film character named Crumb. D’oh! With LAY LOW I tend to think of someone on the run keeping out of sight. Why is exact nice?

    Thanks Brummie & Eileen.

24. paddymelon@21
    LOL!

    I observe that an FT or an Indy blog elicits around 15-20 comments (some days even less, some days a few more), whereas a Guardian blog draws around a hundred comments. Looks like a lot many more people solve the Guardian puzzles than those who solve the FT and the Indy puzzles.

25. Like nicbach, I saw something fishy about the puzzle at the beginning, but a cursory scan at the end failed to reveal a theme for me. Not Brummie at his knottiest, IMHO, but an enjoyable solve.

    Favourites were RELEVANT, ABBREVIATE and PLEACH – the last because it’s such a beautiful word (I don’t know where in the memory banks it was lurking, but it did come quite easily, surprisingly). The fodder for NAME THE DAY is clever but I disagree about the surface – Haydn would never have given a piece such a clumsy title, even allowing for a bad translation from the German 🙂

    I didn’t notice the potential difficulty with SECONDER, but I agree that it’s there. ‘Motion’ has to be part of the definition, it seems to me, with ‘circling’ as a slightly iffy anagrind. ‘Swirling’ might have been better? Good construction and surface though.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

26. Thanks, Lord Jim @18 – careless error corrected now.

    Geoff Down Under @23 – ‘nice’ = ‘precise’, as in ‘a nice distinction’.

27. GDU @23: The original meaning of ‘nice’ was ‘exact’, before it degenerated into ‘vaguely pleasant’. It only seems to survive in this sense in the phrase ‘nice distinction’ – which means ‘carefully distinguished’ rather than ‘pleasing’.

28. Eileen @26: 🙂

29. I’ve never known “nice” to mean anything other than “pleasant”. But I’ll take your word for it, Eileen & Gervasse.

30. Thanks, Eileen, for your usual helpful blog and your interactive responses on the forum. Nothing wrong with “straightforward” I say – this was a very satisfying offering from Brummie, so thank you to Brummie for a puzzle which was challenging enough but still a pleasure to unpack. Lots of ticks. My personal favourite (cf. paddymelon@20) was 24a LIVER SPOTS. [I like to think as I look at my hands typing this, that all those signs of ageing (LIVER SPOTS in this case, along with “laugh lines” and “crow’s feet” which I also considered because they fitted the enumeration) are badges of honour for having endured life’s challenges thus far, while hopefully collecting a bit of wisdom and compassion along the way.]

31. SECONDER is also an anagram of CENSORED. I found this quite tough but slowly ground it out. Like Julie @30, my favourite was LIVER SPOTS and great to see SPLOTCH again. PLEACH, WRASSE and BRETON were new.

    Ta Brummie & Eileen.

32. Julie in Australia@30
    Your last sentence reads like a short poem. Well said.

33. I second KVa’s comment about JiA’s comment.

34. Sorry YesMe2 @5: I missed your comment first time around.

35. Hard but fair. Agree with others about words I NHO, and I feel quite proud of those I managed to parse.
    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

36. GDU EC is the postcode for the City of London, Nice in a mathematcal sense compliments a well worked proof.

37. Kudos to those who’ve found the anagrams in SECONDERS, SEED CORN, and CENSORED.
    Another is ”encoders”. Is this a Brummie self-referential theme?

38. Personally found this rather an uneven ride this morning. Bottom half trickier to solve than the top. ODENSE flew in as had spent yesterday there before taking a plane home from Billung airport. The Danes pronounce their city without the D, btw). Didn’t see the hidden PESTLE until nearly the end. Thought COLANDER a tricky clue. Raised eyebrows somewhat over SWEATER, PRETTY UP, EXACT and LAY LOW. A few too many, perhaps. Last one in LIVER SPOTS…thanks Brummie and Eileen.

39. JinA @30/KVa/pdm – I second (or fourth!) that (e)motion.

    Didn’t know PLEACH, but like pdm discovered the Old French/Latin derivation, whence also solar plexus (other plexūs are available). When writing it in I wondered if there might be a link to German flechten (to plait/braid), and indeed, albeit very distantly, there is.

    I’m with those who found this not so straightforward, but certainly enjoyable. Thanks B & E.

40. There is a lovely avenue of pleached trees, limes, I think, at Arley Hall, so I could get PLEACH .

41. I remembered ‘pleach’ from this lovely passage in Much Ado:

    And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
    Where honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,
    Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites,
    Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
    Against that power that bred it:

    When I solved 1d, I assumed ‘circling’ was doing double duty as anagram indicator rather than ‘motion’.

42. Best earworm ever essexboy@39 !!

43. Can I ask for advice please?

    I’ve managed to get 12a, but that’s it.

    I have the starting 2 letters of 20d, but I am struggling after that.

    I also have UP for 2nd word of 21a.

    What kind of clues am I looking for here?

44. Very enjoyable, with my usual grip about unfamiliar fish (WRASSE). PLEACH was new to me, but the construction seemed inevitable and the dictionary confirmed.

45. Steffen, re 20d, you’re looking for a not very common word for parcel (think parcel of land) contained in an abbreviation for school. That’ll give you a mark in the ‘unsightly blemish’ sense.

    21a, you’ve got UP = excited, now before that you need a colloquial word for ‘fairly’, as in ‘fairly straightforward’.

    But tbh I think you’ve picked a tough puzzle for a beginner!

    [pdm, yep, I picked Smokey over Diana because he came first, but I love both 🙂 ]

46. [essexboy @39: The PIE etymon *plek- seems to have given us, as well as PLEACH: plait, pleat, flax and fluke – but not flat]

47. Steffen @43, explanations are above, maybe try going through these to get the hang of what’s required, then try again tomorrow? The Monday Quiptic is also a good starting point.

48. A fun crossword, thank you Brummie, and Eileen for the blog.
    I also looked for a fish theme…
    We were not allowed to use the word ‘nice’ at school (70 years ago admittedly) and I have always tried to avoid it. It has an interesting history.
    The clue for LYNX was good, they are often seen in the forest behind us on the slopes of the Jura mountains.

49. [Like eb and pdm, just love Smokey Robinson]

50. In one of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford novels, a hifalutin lady directs the Inspector to a “pleached walk.” Wexford doesn’t know what it means, and neither did I, but I didn’t look it up. I did have the impression it had something to do with trees.

    Thanks to Brummie for the puzzle and Eileen for the blog and for checking back in as needed.

51. Geoff down under @23 – EC is the postcode for Central London – specifically the City – the West End tends to be W1, and Chelsea is SW1. At one point we counted up I’d lived or worked in a lot of SW codes at one stage.

    I enjoyed this and couldn’t see a theme either.

52. Valentine @50 Pleached and espaliered fruit trees are often grown around kitchen gardens – woven to hold them flat against a wall to make space and expose as much fruit as possible to the warmth of the wall and light – which is where I know them from

53. As Eileen says, straightforward but enjoyable.

    I remember my dad pleached our pear trees growing up. As a budding biologist I had no idea how that worked!

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen

54. I struggled a bit with this but overall an enjoyable solve.

    I liked ABBREVIATE for the fly and SPLOTCH for the (nice) word itself and the parcel. For what it’s worth SECONDER also contains an anagram of ODENSE, and CO(la)NDER is in there too.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

55. It may just be coincidence but there are two NINAs of EAST and AREA, and quite a lot of words containing E and A as EA or E-A and A-E.

56. Robi@: I can also see a BABA, a PAUL and a LETT.

57. Thanks Brummie, I found much to enjoy e.g. SEAHORSE, LIVER SPOTS, SHUN, DEPLORE, ABBREVIATE, and RUINED. I ended up revealing LAY LOW and WRASSE; I did not know that top=kill nor did I know that LAY LOW=kill either. WRASSE was new to me as well. I noticed a number of edibles in the crossword — CORN, LIVER, LAMB as well as fish and fruit in the clues themselves but not enough to create a theme. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

58. I was caught out by a few eg SWEATER which includes on=RE…on being one of those filler words which can just indicate stringing together or sometimes even less.
    EMBAR not a word I remember seeing before.
    Thanks Brummie and Eileen

59. As an occasional hedge-layer (Westmorland stye), pleach, pleaching, pleachers etc are very familiar words.
    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

60. Geoff down under @23 – I was another Crumb-hunter, and also wondered if there was a Crump involved. I’ve just about heard of Tramp, but not the friendliest crossers for the definition! (trample/crumble/crumple all fitted nicely, so it came down to GK only)

61. Geoff@23. “With LAY LOW I tend to think of someone on the run keeping out of sight.” I think this is because of confusion with LIE LOW, probably caused by the almost complete replacement of LIE with LAY in American English, and spread around the world via films and TV series. This is now so prevalent that LAY is now used almost all the time in preference to LIE, even when it’s wrong.

    Normally LAY requires an object, as in lay the table, now I lay me down to sleep or lay my body down under yon tree. Otherwise it is actually the past tense of LIE: I lie down to sleep, but I lay down last night but couldn’t sleep. (Past tense of LAY is LAID, which is also going out of use, it seems to me.)

    I don’t know if this change has occurred because of a confusion between LIE in the sense of lie down and LIE in the sense of being dishonest, and therefore avoiding saying things like “you’re lying on the bed”? But the result now is that LAY is replacing LIE in expressions like lie low, and lie of the land. So much so that I actually had to get up and look at my Chambers to make sure I was right.

    I am. (Though I couldn’t actually find LAY LOW in Chambers!)

62. [sheffield hatter @61: We’ve had this conversation before. Another source of confusion is that the past tense of LIE is LAY (for LAY it is LAID, of course). And as I’ve also said before, ‘Lay Lady Lay’ didn’t stop the Nobel Committee from giving the Lit prize to Mr Zimmerman!]

63. I’ve been out to coffee and lunch – interested to see others’ experience of PLEACH. I should, perhaps, have recalled Sarah’s lovely quotation @18 from ‘Much Ado’ but Hamlet always springs more readily to my mind than my other two A Level Shakespeare plays. (The third was ‘Coriolanus’.)

    ‘Sheffield hatter @61 – I winced when I saw LAY LOW as the answer to 17,15, having spent a not inconsiderable part of my life helping students distinguish between lie/ lay/ laid, and so was glad to see that this use of it was not controversial – although, like you, I couldn’t find it meaning to destroy in either Collins or Chambers but I did find it in online dictionaries.

    I was haunted by the memory of hearing the incorrect ‘Brer Fox laid low’, in the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby and so I looked it up
    https://www.americanfolklore.net/brer-rabbit-and-the-tar-baby/
    only to find, further on in the story,
    ‘Brer Fox grinned an evil grin and lay low in the bushes.’!

64. I was pretty sure I would cross with someone while catching up!

65. Eileen@63. I’m glad to hear it confirmed that Brer Fox was on top of his verbs.

    [Gervase@62. Apologies for instigating yet another Groundhog Day.]

66. [sh @65: No problem, and sorry for repeating what you had already posted. And good luck to Luton Town tonight!]

67. Very much enjoyed this, not too difficult but with some clever clues. Like Eileen, I wasn’t previously aware of PLEACH, which is a word I’m happy to have learned and was very fairly clued. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

68. What is a JORUM? Second time I’ve seen this on this site today

69. RogerBear – please see FAQs https://www.fifteensquared.net/faq/
    I confess to being the blogger in question. 😉

70. GDU@29 I’ve never known “nice” to mean anything other than “pleasant”

    You’ve clearly forgotten the crossword meaning of Nice (French) ):- I waited quite a long time with this before deciding it didn’t fit

71. wasted not waited

72. Thanks, Eileen. I knew all the words today, I think, but I recognize the situation well enough, and it marvelous that you have invented a word for it! As a bonus, I now also know the non-crossword meaning of JORUM.

    My [American] wife has long since retired from teaching writing, but still rails over LIE/LAY. Would it pacify her or enrage her further, I wonder, if I told her that you consider it a lost cause over here?

73. cookie @ 48 et al. Re ‘nice, and its semantic history, I am surprised that no one has cited this passage of dialogue from Northanger Abbey involving Catherine Morland, Henry Tilney and his sister:

    “… But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?”

    “The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”
    …

    “I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”

    “Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.”

    “While, in fact,” cried his sister, “it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind of reading?”

    Regrettably, Catherine marries this patronising barsteward.

74. Anyone who has ever studied law in England will be familiar with NICE meaning ‘precise’.

75. RogerBear @72 – not exactly a lost cause but I’m just grateful to be retired from having to battle with it any more. (I do get exercised over those last two words being written as one. 😉 )

    Many thanks for that, Spooner’s catflap @73 – I don’t know how but Northanger Abbey is one Austen novel I haven’t read. I certainly used to exhort my students to avoid using ‘nice’ but now I sometimes find myself using it, tongue-in -cheek, in blogs.

76. Sorry, I have had other stuff to take care of today and am maybe too late to the feast. But regarding Lie/Lay, 20 years ago or so I was supervising an American PhD candidate, and advised her against the Bob Dylan version, given that ours was a UK university. I think she complied. For those alluding to Mr Zimmerman’s elevation to the Nobel laureate, for years he had been lobbied for by the distinguished literary critic, Christoper Ricks, although why Christopher adopted Mr Z rather than, for example, Joni Mitchell or Paul Simon if he really wanted to promote contemporary song-writers as literary icons always escaped me.

77. Eileen @75. If you want to read it now, I recommend the Wordsworth Classics edition. (insert smiley emoji).

78. Thanks again, Spooner’s catflap. (I do feel suitably embarrassed. 😉 )

79. I was a bit puzzled by LAY LOW. I’ve heard it said that someone was “laid low” with an illness, but that didn’t mean they had died!

80. Well I quite often use “nice” in its perfectly correct (I would argue) modern sense, on here and elsewhere. Though I do remember primary school teachers not liking it, which is understandable in the context of, say, an essay, because it’s so vague. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it in an informal comment.

    Strangely, I also recall teachers disliking the word “get” for some reason I never quite understood. (And I mean “get” in the sense of “acquire” or “become” rather than the Liverpudlian version of “git” 🙂 )

    Me too, Posterntoo @79, but see my comment @18.

81. Posterntoo @79 – I admit I have searched for this definition all day – and failed! – but I’m pretty sure this is what was intended, because of the meaning of ‘top’. I’m really surprised not to have found LAY LOW at all in Collins or Chambers – I’ve just searched again, as I’m very good at missing things but without success. (Thanks, Lord Jim @80/18 for coming in while I was typing and reminding me where I did find it this morning.)

    This is one of those occasions when I wish that the day’s setter were one of those who sometimes drop in to explain their intention – but I don’t remember Brummie ever doing that.

82. [Re ‘nice’: I don’t want to exceed my earworm quota for the day, but…
    “First we gonna do it nice and easy, then we gonna do it nice and rough”
    – Tina Turner, queen of hendiadys]

83. I vaguely remembered Jane Austen having recorded the transition of ‘nice’ to its bland modern meaning, so thanks to S’s c for pointing us in the right direction. And to eb and Anna Mae for reminding us that it is the key component of most genuine English hendiadys.

84. [And final word on the word: if in the blog we describe a clue as ‘nice’, we imply it is well crafted, as well as pleasing, so we are giving at least a nod to the original meaning. And it does strike a midpoint between litotes (not bad at all) and hyperbole (wonderful) 🙂 ]

85. Sheffield hatter @ 61 & Eileen @ 63, yes, I am well aware of the lay/lie distinction and bristle when I see it abused. Upon reading an article in one of our newspapers recently that described people laying in hospital beds, I emailed the journalist to ask how often the nurses collected the eggs. The error was corrected very swiftly.

    Dave Ellison @ 70, yes, I’m aware of that little cryptocruciverbalistic ploy regarding the French Nice. 😉

86. Thanks both,
    OED has ‘destroy, overthrow, kill …’ as one of the senses of ‘lay low’.

87. Postfinal word on the word:
    “ The most important was undoubtedly
    the Penge Bungalow Murders.

    The Penge Bungalow? Well, what did that decide, exactly?

    It decided that Rumpole could win
    a murder alone and without a leader.

    Did it turn on a nice point of law?

    Oh, no, Professor. It turned on a nice drop of blood.”

88. Many thanks, Tyngewick @86 – see me @81. I really couldn’t remember where I found it – could have been either of them. Still really surprised at Collins and Chambers – but I’m going to bed now …

89. [Thanks Gervase@66. Judging by the performance tonight, your good luck wishes must have helped.]

    [Geoff@85. Well done with the eggs!]

    Eileen@88. Will you be laying on your bed?]

90. Dylan and Lay Lady Lay: can you imagine a master wordsmith like Bob singing Lie Lady Lie? If we are to insist on grammatical correctness in song lyrics (not to mention poetry), we’d wreck a whole lot of masterpieces.

91. The Times are Changing
    The Lonely Death of Hattie Carroll
    Entangled in Blue
    A Hard Rain Will Fall

    any advances?

92. Took me all day, but I got there. WRASSE and PLEACH were new to me, but couldn’t be anything else, and LAY LOW took forever but was bullied into submission. Tough but fair.

93. Eileen@88 re LAY LOW:
    https://chambers.co.uk/search/?query=lay+low&title=21st
    It’s there highlighted in green: ‘lay low to overthrow, fell or kill.’
    https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/lay-low
    ‘a. to cause to fall by a blow
    b. to overcome, defeat or destroy’
    Also: ‘Will this wind be so mighty as to lay low the mountains of the earth?’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hJQ18S6aag

94. Thank you for your trouble, FrankieG @93. It seems that my Chambers and Collins (both 12th edition) are out of date.

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