Guardian 29,085 / Brummie

98 comments on “Guardian 29,085 / Brummie”

1. Thanks, Brummie and Eileen!

   Liked SHODDY, BENEATH CONTEMPT and ALLERGEN.

2. BELONG
   Eileen! Without including ‘become’ in the definition, is there not a part of speech mismatch?

3. Enjoyed this: Never heard of SILD – fortunately my crossword dictionary had.

   Favourites included: SERAGLIO (my FOI), BENEATH CONTEMPT, FIDDLESTICKS, LIFESAVER (made me smile).

   When I solved FIDDLESTICKS I wondered about “pieces of furniture” being STICKS. Then I remembered the expression “she upped sticks and left” – I had never really wondered what that meant before.

   Thanks Brummie and Eileen

4. Thanks Eileen and Brummie.

   When thinking of which James 2d referred to, I somehow forgot about Sid. Not helped by being unfamiliar with Sild – I’ll add that to my list of fish, and will promptly forget about it. The Carry On films are still shown regularly in the UK, usually on one of the ITV channels.

   Drupe was also a new one for me.

5. Thank you, Eileen, although I was hoping for enlightenment re USABLE, which I find an uncharacteristically clumsy clue in an otherwise fine crossword.

   The crossing SILD and CLOSE RUN resisted to the last. I expect a fair number of the Carry On films are now un-showable through perceived incorrectness.

   Anyone know why a YORKER (cricket) is so called?

6. KVa @2 – yes, but to belong surely means to be already affiliated?

7. RESTRAIN needs a reversal of ARTS, Eileen. I know SILD from having a son living in Sweden. I know ‘keep your hair on’, as Eileen mentions, but not HAIRLESS = infuriated, so it was my LOI. Lots to like here. Thanks, Brummie and Eileen.

8. Thanks, TassieTim – amended now.

9. An enjoyable experience with not too many sticky moments. Didn’t know array/adorn, or sticks/pieces of furniture. I had SOLE for 2d and couldn’t work out who James Soe was. Never heard of a sild. Couldn’t parse DROOP, as I’d never heard of a drupe. And I thought the hem in 1a would be the two outer letters of “ormulu”, not just the last.

   I’ve never heard of that use of HAIRLESS in Australia — and indeed, Collins says it’s British slang. However “Keep your hair on” for “Calm down” is common — perhaps there’s a connection?

   Thanks Brummie & Eileen.

10. Eileen@6-Thanks. Is ‘belong’ ever used in the imperative form (to convey the sense of ‘become affliated’)?

11. Didn’t see you’d already covered HAIRLESS, TassieTim.

12. GDU @ 11 – and so had I. 😉

13. Fairly straightforward- I liked the film anagram. But my favourite was ALLERGEN.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen

14. So you did, Eileen. Humble apologies. I should cultivate the habit of reading previous posts prior to contributing.

15. Hard to get going, SERAGLIO also my FOI, and after a full read through I only had four! But then it slowly progressed at an increasing rate as I realised many clues were much more straightforward than I had thought.
    Many thanks Brummie and Eileen

16. SERAGLIO reminded me of one of my top ten crossword clues of all time: A pound of sultanas? (8).

17. I didn’t like SILD. I though that “James” was far too vague a clue to lead to the answer. How many Jameses are there with a 3-letter first or second name?

18. [Totally off topic, but I’m just rereading one of Edmund Crispin’s detective novels (he’s probably best known for The Moving Toyshop). If there are any other fans out there, did you realise that he also wrote the scores for six of the Carry On films with Sid James? Not to mention four of the Doctor series and The Brides of Fu Manchu.]

19. I also remembered SILD as alternative to sardines but they ceased to appear a while ago, probably because of herring overfishing

20. blaise @16
    It’s worth searching the archive for clues for SERAGLIO – there are a dozen or more. My top favourites are yours and (Rorschach in the Indy 2015) ‘How’s your father’s place in ruins of old Algiers?’ – both in my little book of classic clues.
    Other nice ones were Crucible’s ‘Is Elgar distracted by love in rooms for wags?’ (in a puzzle themed on the last night of the Proms) and Picaroon’s ‘Al Gore is amazing for wives and girlfriends’.

21. Now that I’ve looked up DRUPE, I think I might have looked it up before. I remembered Sid becuse James Soe was not going to work & looked ub SILD and Lo & Behold, it was a young herring,
    I got into my stride in the NE corner, filled about 2/3 of the grid and then ground to a halt, took a break, came back and slowly it started to gel.
    Thank you Brummie and Eileen

22. I bunged in face for 18 but on reflection face=figure doesn’t quite work.
    I find all these obscure fish rather tiresome, but nobody else seems to mind. There are plenty I’ve seen in crosswords and nowhere else, but it’s been a while since I found a new one. I thought perhaps there might be a fish called Jilm, it seems just as likely as Sild.
    Other than that, it all emerged gradually, as I like crosswords to work.

23. Nicbach @21. I also pondered the unknown (to me) James Soe.

    William @5. Like so many cricketing terms, its origins are unknown. Brewer’s suggests it may have been invented by a Yorkshire player.

24. Hi blaise. I have never posted here before but had to respond to your comment as I believe Edmund Crispin to be the finest Green Penguin author of them all!

25. Seems like there are a few hairy things in the grid. Dunno if that means anything.
    Enjoyed this. The fives, A and D and 18A tickled me as well as ALLERGEN.

26. G@17 the singer James Bay? And the BLAY is actually a fish!

    Overall I found this on the meh side of okay. Ticks for SHODDY & YORKER for the cricket reference

    Cheers B&E

27. Enjoyable puzzle but I’m in a pedantic mood, so…
    Are earwig and overhear interchangeable?
    Overhearing can be accidental, but isn’t earwigging a deliberate act of listening?
    Anyone agree?
    Sorry for pedantry!

28. Pork Scotch @27
    I agree – and was expecting comments. 😉

29. Thank you, Eileen @28
    Glad it’s not just me!

30. Can’t quite equate array and adorn, but probly just being dim …

31. I think that’s OK, grant @30.
    Collins: to dress in rich attire; adorn
    Chambers: to dress, adorn or equip (archaic or poetic)
    I think perhaps we’re more used to seeing ‘array’ as a noun -‘in fine array’?

32. Pleasant puzzle.

    SILD is just the usual name for herring in Norwegian and Danish (‘sill’ in Swedish, as anyone who has picked up a jar or two at IKEA might recognise). The name used to be given in the UK to small canned herring, presumably because it sounded more exotic and appetising. I haven’t seen it for a long time.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

33. Chambers: ARRAY To dress, adorn or equip (archaic or poetic)

34. Apologies for the duplicate post – Hampstead Heath is a bit of a black hole for mobile reception

35. Didn’t know that meaning of HAIRLESS so had to check the dictionary. I was misled by the (redundant) ‘being separated’ in 5d, and by the fact that the online Check button is buggy – at first it told me that ‘CON…’ was OK for the *first* three letters, before I filled in BARBARIC.

36. …we’ll array the bride in cloth of gold … ok, I guess …

37. Pork Scratch & Eileen, 27 & 28. Earwigging I’ve certainly heard as overhearing so I suppose you can say ‘you shouldn’t earwig’ or ‘if she knew that she must have earwigged’. Not positive I’ve actually heard it said but seems reasonable the way English tends to work.

38. Enjoyable challenge. NW corner was last to fall.

    Favourites: SHODDY, BELONG.

    New for me: HAIRLESS = very angry; DRUPE fruit; SILD = a small immature herring.

    Thanks, both.

39. Found this trickier than some commenters – maybe just not quite on Brummie’s wavelength today. My brain took some convincing there wasn’t a James Soe to make SOLE, but I must have come across SILD somewhere before, and it eventually dropped. ‘Keep your hair on’ is a well-known phrase as far as I’m concerned!

    Particularly liked Woody Allen’s appearance in ALLERGEN and the spot of discomfort for STYE.

    Thanks Brummie & Eileen.

40. Started rather slowly but then it all came together.

    I liked the woody surrounding for ALLERGEN. HAIRLESS is in Chambers as well as Collins, although it’s slang.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

41. Straightforward enough for a Thursday, but as usual I object to SILD. Obscure fish (and bird) names are my bete noire [sic] but the unique name for the young of a species is even worse. Furthermore, there are plenty of less obscure words that could fit the grid. If it has to be a fishy clue, SOLE would work.

42. poc @35 – The “being separated” in 5D isn’t redundant: it’s to tell you that “understudy” should be parsed separately as “under” and “study”.

    7D was my LOI because I am a statistician and couldn’t think of anything except mathematical arrays.

    For 2D I looked up to see if there was a James Gil or a James Bil as well as whether there was a Jilm fish.

43. I know its in common use now and I may have once known the explanation but how does study = con, please.

44. As ever, three quadrants solved. The last,in this case, the SW corner, was beyond me.
    I thought Sid JAMES was a bit obscure.
    Thanks both.

45. SILD was the missing ingredient in this otherwise satisfying stew. Quite a challenge this week Brummie, but some enjoyable solves including BARBARIC and HAIRLESS.

46. Thanks Eileen, is the hint for 17a missing the word ‘ALGIERS’?

47. This fell into place pleasingly after rather a sluggish start. Another example of flannelled foolishness with YORKER, after yesterday’s lively discussion of its occurrence in the Guardian Cryptic…

48. Thanks both.

    I was beaten by HAIRLESS but the rest of the puzzle gave a deal of entertainment.

    WearyB@43: It’s just an old word for ‘study’ (which I associate with public school from, I think, reading Billy Bunter back in the day).

49. Jacob @41: SILD is a culinary term, not a zoological one, only used in English for small canned herring. I don’t think there is a specific English word for the young of a herring – unlike salmon, which go through the stages of fry, parr and grilse before adulthood!

50. HAIRLESS=infuriated was new to (British) me, but the wordplay is clear. I vaguely remember SILD (in tins) but it hasn’t been around for some time, probably disappearing around the time that overfishing put paid to canned herring as a staple item. Sid James, of course, did many other films beside the Carry Ons, was Tony Hancock’s comedy partner for ages and appeared in TV sitcoms and stage shows: a household name in his time and the owner of a memorably dirty laugh…

    Yes, I associate earwigging with deliberate eavesdropping rather than simple overhearing.

51. HoofItYouDonkey @46 – sorry, I’ve only just seen your comment. Yes, of course it’s an anagram of ALGIERS. I’m not at home at the moment and so I can’t amend it unril I get back to my laptop.

52. blaise@18

    Delightful news to me. My favorite Crispin is the story “It’s Only Us,” about a writer, trying to work from home, besieged by visitors.

53. Re 14a We knew the expression “keep your hair on” but entertained the possibility that Brummie was playing with “in-fur-iating” as in, to remove the fur… But, never mind.
    Never heard of sild – but will ask the son in Denmark. NHO yorker either but am working (slowly) on my cricket vocab.
    Thanks Brummie and Eileen!

54. My foi was 5d BENEATH CONTEMPT – the “helpful indication of a ‘lift and separate’ ” made it too easy and deprived me of a pdm.
    I think it would have been a better clue without the “(being separated)”. Maybe Brummie (or his editor) thought it would be too hard? Shame.
    Agree with KVa@2 about BELONG.
    My loi 14a HAIRLESS was a new one on me – Green’s Dictionary of Slang cites:
    ‘1982 UK P. Barker Union Street “I’m meant to be in bed at nine. Me Mam’ll go hairless.”‘
    For SILD I recommend RIGBY’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE HERRING aka The Herripedia
    https://www.herripedia.com/sardines/
    Thanks Brummie&Eileen

55. WearyB@43 as Alphalpha said, CON is an old word for study or learn-by-heart. It’s a cognate of the scots word ken – to know.

56. Much better offering than yesterday’s.

57. FrankieG @54 – I agree entirely re 5dn: I intially wrote ‘over-helpful’ but then thought it was a quite useful illustation of ‘lift and separate”, which sometimes raises queries here.

58. [Eileen @20: I would not dream of putting this forward for your little book but, by pure coincidence, I just published a puzzle on MyC containing Engineers in oil and gas returning for wifely collection (8)]

59. One of the Chambers definitions for OVERHEAR is “to hear without being meant to hear as an eavesdropper does” and it lists eavesdrop as a synonym for EARWIG so personally I’d give Brummie the benefit of the doubt on this one.

    By the way I’ve heard that if you ask Chat GPT nicely it’ll set you a cryptic formed exclusively from words you already know

60. “Don’t do that! She’ll go hairless.” Heard this regularly as a child living in Manchester, but had forgotten it in the meantime. Enjoyed the memory.
    Thank you Brummie and Eileen for the blog.

61. PM @ 58

    I liked it. Made me smile

62. This one was very British. A complete list of things not in American English here would be so long as to be tedious. Luckily I’ve been doing these for long enough now that almost all of them were familiar from earlier crosswords. But I had no chance whatsoever on SILD, having heard of neither the fish nor the actor.

63. Bodycheetah@59: How will it know what words I know, I am always being suprised by words I know that I have forgotten, or should that be words I knew, I am also constantly learning new words, mostly in Vietnamese at the moment, but also in English, Welsh and French, how could it possibly keep up with my vocabulary?

64. Thanks to Brummie for another lovely grid with lots to enjoy and not too challenging.
    Gladys @50 thanks for the reminder of Sid James’s “memorably dirty laugh…”
    New word – DRUPE (fruit)
    Lots of favourites:
    RESTRAIN
    IMPEDIMENT
    ALLERGEN
    BELONG
    Thanks also to Eileen for the blog.

65. GrantInFreo@30, to add to the examples already given, I knew the usage from the King James version of the Bible: “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

66. How does CLOSE-RUN mean “very little in it”?

    I agree with what seems to be the implied consensus that the definition of HAIRLESS is far-fetched.

    GDU @9 — I had SOLE too. I solve the puzzle in bed and can’t google anything, so I assumed there must have been a famous James Soe I’d never heard of.

    ginf@30 and Eileen#31 I was troubled by array/adorn too. You can adorn/decorate something, but you can’t array it, can you? You array things, perhaps to adorn something else. I think “array” needs a plurality of things as its object, though it could be a singular noun, such as “jewelry” or “silverware.” Bodycheetah@33 Okay, but it’s archaic, not how anybody uses the word now. TimSee@66 Good one. (I’m adding to these notes as I read and refresh the blog.)

    Thanks to Brumie for the puzzle and to Eileen for (as usual) the continued and welcome engagement.

67. Thanks Brummie. Most of this slipped in without much trouble but the NW corner was my undoing. I revealed USABLE which I should have seen and SILD which never would have fallen. [Maybe we’ll see a clue one day that says: Fish slid awkwardly (4)] In any event there was a lot to like including SHODDY, LIFESAVER, and ALLERGEN. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

68. Valentine @66 – usually heard in the expression ‘a close-run thing’, attributed to the Duke of Wellington of the Battle of Waterloo (other versions have ‘near-run thing’); Collins: ‘adj (of a race or contest) only won by a very small amount’.

    Re ‘array’: TimSee ’65 has used the quotation I would have given (although it’s in the passive: if they’re arrayed, someone must have arrayed them).

69. Hi PostMark @58 – nice one! That has been a very useful set of letters, to spawn such a plethora of good, varied clues – several of them including ‘gaol’ or ‘ogle’!
    (To be honest, my little book exists only in my head – and is made of fairly elastic material. 😉 )

70. Could CON for study be an abbreviation of Construe, from the days when much of public school learning consisted of translating Latin and Greek?

71. A nice idea, Mike @70, which had occurred to me in the past.
    Both Collins and Chambers have it as ‘archaic – study carefully, attentively’ – not as an abbreviation.

72. Yep, good example, TimSee @65; in their past-participle-as-adjective form, they are substitutable.

73. Why all the fuss about sild?
    Morrisons are selling John West sild in tomato sauce or sunflower oil. Hardly obscure or no longer available.

74. Rullytully @73: Perhaps most posters shop at Waitrose!

75. Rullytully@73
    I agree, there’s nothing obscure about SILD. I could sympathise, however, with those who weren’t brought up on Carry On films and feel that Sid James should be honourably retired.
    And while on the subject of moaning, as I entered YORKER I could hear from afar the gnashing of teeth of those who hate cricket-related clues…

76. Charles@75: all I know about cricket I learned from crosswords, but I’ve been at this game long enough to recognise the usual suspects and to know that a “delivery” in a clue is likely to lead onto the cricket pitch.

77. Every time CON=study crops up, it provokes the same objections or scepticism that it has done here. At least twice in the past, I have posted this passage from the second episode of Joyce’s Ulysses, in which Stephen Dedalus, teaching a class in Mr Deasy’s school, thinks back to his time spent in Paris, and make no apology for doing so again:

    “… the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds.”

78. I was surprised that L is the abbreviation for latitude, since longitude also begins with an L, but apparently it’s “lon” or “long”. As no one else has mentioned this it must be a gap that exists solely in my general knowledge. In the slot next to where SID should be.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

79. Re. BELONG, KVa@2 and others—I assumed “to become” was the link between the wordplay and the def, like the “from” in 11a.

    Great puzzle, thanks Brummie and Eileen.

80. Rullytully@73 Not just Waitrose, Tesco too

81. gladys@76
    I look forward to the day when the answer to a “delivery” clue is TRIPLETS.

82. Crossword for septogenarians and octogenarians with references from over half a century ago.?

83. I arrived at HAIRLESS by thinking that if you are totally infuriated/exasperated, you tear your hair out, after which you will be …

    I remember sild from food parcels sent to my Swedish mother by her sister in the years after the war.

    Thanks, as always, to setter and blogger.

84. I enjoy watching old black & white films on a channel in the UK called Talking Pictures, where Sid James features in a lot of films. He may be associated with ‘Carry On’ but he was a fine actor throughout his career in both comedic and serious roles. He should never be retired. Nice puzzle by the way but quite easy I thought.

    Ta Brummie & Eileen.

85. Fingal @82, I regretfully acknowledge your definition – but was there nothing that you liked?

    AlanC (and gladys, back @50, while I was out, if you’re still there)
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ‘Carry on’ Film: my main memories were of ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’, which we loved as students – even had the LP and laughed uproariously each time we played it.

86. I assumed everyone knew the redoubtable spin-bowler James Soe, so I happily entered that for 2d SOLE.

    Fingal@82, if you think that history, including cultural history, commenced 50 years ago, you are at risk of missing a great deal of useful information about how we have arrived at where we are today.

    Thanks Brummie for the fun, and. Eileen for the great blog and post-blog comments.

87. Eileen @85, I found lots to like here, but I do see Fingal @82’s point and find Cellomaniac’s counter point @86 a tad dismissive; of course there is cultural history going far back, but, for me, crosswords lack accessibility and have a whiff of the fuddy-duddy when they reference things like Sid James and Mae West. Yes Carry On films are oft repeated but are they really watched by anyone at all under 40? Or even 50?
    I try and coach some of my much younger workmates on the solving of cryptics, but sometimes I just have to shrug and say “there is no way on earth you will have heard of that” with regards to unqualified references to culture from 50, 60, 70 years ago.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

88. DaveJ@87
    Despite being on the the threshold of septuagenarianism myself, I absolutely agree. Popular culture references should be retired when their subjects are no longer part of popular culture.

89. [After the above discussion, it might be interesting to take a look at kenmac’s post today on “The types of people most represented on crosswords”.

    My favourites from a cursory read-through are the early condemnations of crosswords from the Times (“a menace… making devastating inroads on the working hours of every rank of society”) and the New York Times (“a sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letter of which will fit into a prearranged pattern”) !

    Also – just seen the sad news about Big Dave passing away. ]

90. DaveJ and Charles @87&88,

    I’ll try not to be too defensive in my defense of my allegedly indefensible comment @86.

    I may be a septuagenarian, but I do remember my youth (at least some of it). When I was in my 30s and 40s (1978-97), I was very aware of cultural references from 50 years earlier (1928-47), especially with respect to politics, films, literature and music. I did not think that only people 40 years older than me should be expected to know anything about those subjects from that era. My comment, rather than being dismissive, was intended to suggest that today’s younger generation, if it is in fact different than my young generation in that respect, is losing something valuable by its disregard for the cultural history that preceded it.

    Mind you, growing up in the swinging sixties, we were very dismissive of the older generation, but we were very aware of the cultural (and especially political) windmills we were tilting at.

    Aside from that, Fingal@82 and DaveJ’s comments strike me as a bit ageist. I don’t see very many comments objecting to current cultural references that are beyond the ken of us old fogeys. Is there a double standard at play here?

91. I do take your point Cellomaniac, but my answer would be that it is a matter of scale. I have no problem with boxer = Ali, for example, due to his immense impact on history. But Sid James was hardly a multi-Oscar winning icon, like, say, Brando, was he? He is pretty much the definition of “of his time”. To be clued by “James” only seems a stretch. Etta James, James Hunt, James Blunt?
    On your other point, I would suggest that surely current cultural references make clues more accessible -people might not mention Trump or Musk in 50 years time, but they get a hell of a lot of coverage right now!

92. Cellomaniac @90
    Late response here so probably won’t be seen by many but…
    Totally agree with you re the dismissal of anything historical by certain demographics.
    It puts me in mind of the quiz-show-contestant mantra of “before my time”. I can never decide whether I’m more annoyed by them believing the timeframe to be a valid reason for not being aware of something (eg Napoleon, for fudge’s sake!) or the arrogant smirk as they say it, as though younger somehow equals better.

93. Of late we’ve had Dua Lipa, George Ezra and Gangsta Rap in clues. I wouldn’t dream of saying they’re “after my time”.
    But themes based on the golden anniversary of LPs – although great for me – I’m a sexagenarian (only just) – might exclude anyone younger.

94. Cultural references from all eras are fair game as long as they are fairly well known. There’s the rub — general knowledge varies among solvers. Old references like the Bronte sisters, French Impressionists, and classical composers never seem to raise an eyebrow but an occasional nod to a current pop star seems to send some folks into a tizzy.

95. Is there a crossword that fits between a quiptic – which I can usually complete or get 90% through and these ones where I give up after one clue/an empty grid? The difficulty level seems exponentially harder

96. J@95 Everyman in the Observer – or Private Eye’s Cyclops – could be what you’re looking for?

97. [Eileen@69 – final paragraph. What have you done to my dreams? I had looked forward to devouring your little book with pure joy – and to compare it with mine – also non-existent! (mind you, I probably have lists, or mentions, of my own favourites confettied around various drawers and other hidey-holes!) Has you announced that Santa Claus doesn’t exist (or something equally preposterous), I wouldn’t have been as disappointed! It may take some time to assimilate this tragic news….
    Interestingly (or not!) perhaps, in the Desert Island Discs sense, it would be less difficult to pick a supreme favourite than to choose a top eight. For my money (and for John Graham, of course!), it is hard to beat the Bunthorne clue “Amundsen’s forwarding address (4)” . It’s perfect, I find, if not for whetting appetites then for at least bringing a glimpse of cryptic magic to the uninitiated*. I tell folk to wrestle with it in Post Office queues, or when brushing teeth, awaiting a bus or train etc. and, when I eventually reveal answer the pdms are blatant, invariably accompanied by “I should have got that” or, more often, “I would never have got that”! It’s the former who caught the bug!
    But after your astonishing revelation, will anything ever be the same again?!
    ?

    *Arachne’s “Unrelenting nymphomaniac (3,5,3,5)” and “Pretty boy said no to cock (6)” – in the Indy but unsure by whom – are two of (many?) others that work brilliantly for this (depending on sensitivity of audience!)]

98. I’m horrendously late to this so nobody’s likely to see my comment, but the other half and I tend to get round to crosswords days (or weeks) after publication, so have only just tackled this one.

    Always greatly enjoy checking the comments here, and the breadth of discussion, but just have to say – in light of the interesting chat re. outdated (or not) cultural references – that the ‘obscure’ fish of 2dn was a recurring favourite of the comedian Harry Hill, who regularly sang the praises of ‘lovely SILD!’ on his TV show. Surprised to see nobody here mentioning its modest comedic fame…

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