Guardian 29,166 – Brummie

84 comments on “Guardian 29,166 – Brummie”

1. Thanks Andrew. As you say a bit tougher than the usual Monday fare, but not impossible. Liked the long anagram, but, like you would normally spell ROOKIE thus.
   Thanks to Brummie for the puzzle.

2. Jolly good fun; no sticky moments or obscurities. The only one I didn’t parse was WRITE-OFF, but I should have. I’d have spelt it ROOKIE, and indeed Collins’ only definition of ROOKY is as an adjective, “abounding in rooks”.

   Thanks Brummie & Andrew.

3. Thanks, Brummie and Andrew!
   Liked HEFT (Weighty light! Should have Mass appeal!),
   WRITE-OFF (Making the right noises!),
   HACKSAW (A spotted metal horse! Cutting edge tech!),
   HAULAGE (On the surface, broken wheels and axles. Hidden beneath is all gold and Brummie’s presence!) and
   FORGETFUL (wanted to say a lot on this…).

4. Andrew!
   After 29166, GUARDIAN occupies the place of BRUMMIE.

5. I thought this was very Mondayish, as evidenced by a pre8am finish. It was enjoyable though. The MSG anagram was an early gridfiller which opened up a large part of the puzzle. I had no idea there was a word for a pocket violin and Kvass was new to me but both 22’s were well clued.
   Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

6. KVa @4 – oops! So it does, or rather did – now fixed.

7. I found this reasonably straightforward, with much to enjoy. I got MATADOR from the word play, but I am not sure I fully understand it. Yes, a madator is involved in the “final act”, as it were, but not just that surely (?). Am I missing something? Quite possibly. With thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

8. I’m never quite on Brummie’s wavelength.
   I only learned about the kit violin quite recently via another crossword, and failed to spot it here – the KVASS/KITSCH pair were my last in. Never seen ROOKY for a newbie spelt that way, but it must be documented somewhere. A couple of nicely hidden answers in UNSCATHED and VEHEMENCE. ACTIN was new to me.

9. Thank you Andrew. Another one here who knew rookie and couldn’t parse ROOKERY.
   NHO KVASS and it seems it may not be all that safe. https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/44/hO5/529/182649.

   What a find in the anagrist for MADISON SQUARE GARDEN! How does Brummie do that?
   Liked the surface for CHERUBIM. Again, how does he do that?
   Failed at first attempt of the hiddens DEWY and UNSCATHED.
   MATADOR was wordy but worth it.

10. COD ANNEAL.

11. The only reason I got KVASS is that I sampled it in Belarus a few years ago. They call it ???? (I wonder whether those characters will be accepted by this site?). It must be an acquired taste that I hadn’t acquired — it tasted like flat beer to me.

12. No, Cyrillic characters are out. 🙁

13. It seems KVASS is known as ‘gira’ in Lithuania (Vilnius in the surface-so was curious).

14. paddymelon@10
    What could be that?

15. Chambers gives ROOKY as an alternative spelling of rookie, though I appreciate there will be some who think that’s a criticism of Chambers rather than a vindication of Brummie.
    Didn’t know kit = pocket violin and didn’t know what KVASS actually was although I recalled having encountered the word; but both KVASS and KITSCH were very clearly clued.
    Like paddymelon @9 I bow in admiration before MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. I’m going to be slightly po-faced and suggest how a compiler might arrive at it – if you feed MSG into the anagram finder on Crossword Compiler, quite early in the vast list of possibilities you get some with masqueraders and masquerading, and you might, out of curiosity, take the ten letters of masquerade out of MSG and see whether anything occurred to you among what was left. That said, it’s a brilliant find even if Brummie might have used a little mechanical help.
    Thanks both.

16. A pleasant challenge. I do like a good hidden, and both UNSCATHED and VEHEMENCE were excellent.

    I don’t think KVASS quite works because of the double duty mentioned. It should logically be “Asks about about…”.

    Thanks Brummie and Andrew.

17. Umm, KVa @14. Don’t know. Not punning or pongling. Just ticked it as my Clue of the Day.

18. Nuntias @ 7 the matador kills the bull!

19. I thought DEWY was a cute, next clue link to Donald’s nephew, but he is spelt DEWEY. Another with the 22s last in but both gettable. It seems that Mondays are introducing more of the ‘heavyweights’ but I’m not complaining as this setter is one of my favourites. NIMBLE was deft.

    Ta Brummie & Andrew.

20. paddymelon@17
    😀

    Lord Jim@16
    KVASS
    Did that mechanically. I noticed the issue only when you pointed it out.

21. Enjoyable although I wasn’t too keen on ROOKY!

22. KVa @20: probably the only time you’ll get a mention in a clue 🙂

23. 😀

24. GDU@2
    Chambers gives rooky as an alternative spelling of rookie.

    PS: I have the Chambers dictionary app as well as the thesaurus app
    now on my mobile. 🙂

25. MSG presented itself to me quite early on, which helped a lot. I was looking at the QU thinking Queen something, no doesn’t fit, when I sort of saw it in the jumled letters.
    I did the quiptic on Friday. along with many others, so this somewhat harder Brummie was welcome The hidden clues were especially good.
    Thanks Both.

26. An enjoyable puzzle for a Monday.

    I agree with gladys and Lord Jim about the niftily hidden 1ac and 13dn and, like AlanC, I grinned as I entered DEWY immediately after SWADDLED.

    I liked the anagrams, too, at 5dn and 14dn (which made me laugh, now that I don’t have to resort to them, following my cataract ops) as well as MDS.

    Thanks to Brummie and to Andrew.

27. I don’t know where MDS came from – I meant MSG, of course.

28. Thanks Brummie and Andrew

    Fwiw the OED also has ROOKY as a variant of ROOKIE.

29. It still doesn’t look right!

30. I liked ANNEAL and CHERUBIM. [Why is this thread like a cheap Chinese meal? It has lots of MSG]

31. Petert@30
    LOL. Good one!

32. Enjoyable puzzle.

    New for me: KVASS, ACTIN.

    Like some others, I would normally spell it as ROOKIE.

    Thanks, both.

33. Petert@30. Because MSG takes my breath away. 🙂

34. I thought of an early theme in the NW corner with ULTRA, ATHLETIC and GARDEN EVENTS but that soon petered out.

35. [Eileen @26… you must be of a certain age like me. Glad to hear the op went well.]
    Nothing of real note here apart from the new KIT and the HACK=horse

36. Re. the MSG anagram: I’m rather less dewy-eyed about Brummie’s astonishing display of skill and craftsmanship, I’m sorry to say. The signalling of the anagrist and the anagrind in the clue was pretty rudimentary — ‘ground’ shouts “anagrind!” and the attention-grabbing abbreviation ‘nr’ for ‘near’ which is sort of necessary and so purely procedural for the surface immediately tells the solver to check that the letter count for ‘nr saigon masqueraded’ matches the enumeration. And then it’s just cranking the mechanical handle, made easier because the part-solution SQUARE cries out from ‘masqueraded’.
    I know it’s considered good form to praise the setters fulsomely here, but I also value the shared analysis and discussion of the clues within the fifteensquared community.
    Oh! and, of course, I get so agitated about Chambersisms like ‘rooky’ for ‘rookie’, because of that dictionary publisher’s mechanical disregard for the subtleties of language use when applied to cryptic crosswords.

37. I laughed when I worked out 25ac SWADDLED, as I first of all took the waddler to be Donald Trump. Nice crossword today – hard enough to be interesting, but easy enough to complete over Monday breakfast.

38. pserve_p2@36. Agree that the anagram for MSG was very clearly/overly signalled by Ground and nr. I too checked the enumeration. But I still liked it. Took me a bit longer because I had crossers that weren’t correct.
    I get agitated by Chambers being the primary reference a) because I don’t have it, and b) I wonder how many do, except crossword setters and solvers. Time to move on and not be so exclusive. How else can we attract new solvers to keep this game alive for us old fogies? (speaking for myself of course).

39. Struggled for a while to get started, so unashamedly looked up the muscle protein ACTIN and put that in first of all, as I had no idea about it might be. Thereafter an enjoyable solve, KVASS a new one, wasn’t quite sure how WRITE OFF worked, but all in all pleasurable enough for a Monday, with some good anagrams. Read 1ac several times before I saw the hidden word, so well done with concealing that from me, Brummie…

40. I’d be sorry to lose Chambers, not least because of the occasional splendidly wry definition.
    Some time, I shall try and compile a puzzle using Eric Partridge’s magnificent Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English which includes, if memory serves, the expression Bugger my old boots! (with the Aussie euphemism Seduce my ancient footwear) defined as “Goodness me!”

41. NeilH@40. Never heard that. “”Root a boot” is commonly said by men in my cohort, born in the 50s. I still can’t umferstand why anyone wouid say that.

42. Good start to the week. I looked for, and didn’t find, a theme.

    I liked the ‘found’ in FORGETFUL and the well-hidden VEHEMENCE. I saw UNSCATHED straight away, which gave ACTIN as a write-in. I got the good anagram for MSG once there were a few crossers, which helped to open up the puzzle.

    Thanks Brummie and Andrew.

43. …well I never, I didn’t see that other cleverly hidden word, VEHEMENCE, just thought there was some kind of anagram in there somewhere…

44. I liked it a lot. Agree with others who have cited favourites above. I’m with paddymelon@38 and had several ticks myself for 18,9,19 MADISON SQUARE GARDENS – obvious to some more clever solvers perhaps but I really enjoyed untangling it. Many thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

45. paddymelon@ 41: Foot fetishist?

46. This engineer enjoyed today’s puzzle, especially the cleverly hidden temper and found. LOI was 6ac, after searching every dictionary available for HUFH. (This engineer should probably get more familiar with the abbreviations used in the units system employed by US, Liberia and Myanmar)

47. I had to look twice at 7d because GET is in the clue as well as the answer. It only delayed the parsing, though.

    Unlike Ronald@39 I solved the clue for ACTIN before looking it up in Chambers – this is a crossword, after all, not a general knowledge quiz!

    The three hidden answers all provided very good penny drop moments. I was also very pleased to have got the long anagram with only the N at the end of what became MADISON to help. Thanks everyone for pointing out how easy it was. 🙂

    Thanks to Brummie and Andrew

48. Nice to see “current” not being “I” for once although the tired old stager CHER was dragged out again.

    A cut above the usual Monday fare

    Cheers A&B

49. No metallurgists on board then?
    Forging and founding are totally different metallurgical processes, as are annealing and tempering. Bit surprising that a Brummie could get these so wrong.

50. Tempering: a heat treatment process in which the quenched metal material or part is heated to a certain temperature. Then keep warming for a certain period of time. Then cooling in a certain way.

    Annealing: Annealing is a metal heat treatment process that slowly heats the metal to a certain temperature. Then keeps it for enough time, and then cools it at an appropriate speed.

    Yup, totally different

51. Very nice Monday puzzle, only spoiled just a bit by the double-duty of asks. I too have never seen rooky, but just assumed it was a variant so in it went.

    The last time I was at MSG was about 15 years ago to take my son to see Eric Clapton. The previous time was 15 years before that to see a Chris Evert – Martina Navratilova exhibition match. I wonder what will be next.

    Thanks B&A

52. Suitably chastised by sheffieldhatter@47, though I do seem to remember, growing up in the Fifties, that there was a general knowledge crossword in the Sunday Express that we used to tackle as a family. Maybe it even still exists, though I haven’t glanced in the pages of that paper for yonks…

53. Thanks to Brummie for an engaging puzzle and to Andrew for the blog.
    A couple of great anagrams, and a couple of wonderful hidden clues. Happy to go with Chambers spelling of ‘Rooky’ @17d
    Tick of the day goes to ‘Madison Square Garden’

54. Chambers Thesaurus has bidirectional equivalence for temper & anneal, and unidirectional for forge > found, so, whether technically correct or not, based on linguistic usage Brummie is in the clear.

55. Good Monday crossword – a bit harder than usual which is no bad thing.Among others, liked MSG, KVASS (though agree the clue isn’t perfect), FORGETFUL (to a metallurgist forge and found may be different, but they can be pretty close synonyms in everyday metaphorical speech).
    IMO the cleverest clues usually don’t use uncommon variant spellings e.g. rooky, but I accept sometimes the setter can find no better alternative. Provided it’s in a ‘respectable’ dictionary (OED, Chambers, Collins …) it’s fair enough. No idea why Chambers should be considered sole arbiter, other than convention.
    Eileen@26 – how did cataract ops improve your hearing so that you no longer need SUBTITLES? ?
    Thanks Brummie and Andrew

56. (the final ? was meant to be a smiley)

57. Thanks for the blog , good to see Brummie on a Monday and I think he did tone it down a bit. Mainly good clues all round and some nice hidden words, only the clue for KVASS needs fixing.

58. beaulieu @55- oh my word, how did it take so long for that to get noticed?
    It’s a bit of a long story – and you wouldn’t believe it, anyway. 😉

59. Knew kvass from somewhere … the Russians, Pushkin maybe …?
    And, re auditory acuity and subtitles … intrigued 😉

60. Thanks Brummie for a good start to the week. I liked the cleverly hidden UNSCATHED and VEHEMENCE but my overall favourite was WRITE-OFF. Thanks Andrew for the blog.
    [Roz @57: I agree that this was a “toned down” Brummie but setters apparently have no say in what day of the week their crosswords run. I recall Brendan getting feedback that his prize puzzle was too easy and he said that he just submits crosswords and the Guardian editor picks the day of the week for them to run.]

61. Heard of neither KITS nor KVASS, which combined with the wonky clue for the latter caused a bit of head-scratching at the end. My favourite, however, was LOI ANNEAL.

    Thanks Brummie & Andrew

62. Eileen @ 58 & beaulieu earlier: that’s no surprise – I can definitely hear better with my glasses on.

    I think it’s because the brain has only one thing to try to unscramble.

63. Thanks, Simon S. 😉

64. Thank you Andrew for parsing of WRITE OFF. I thought it was that someone called Dickie must be a right toff! Admittedly bunged with a shrug.

65. pserve @ 36 – fulsomely doesn’t mean what you think it does. Look it up.
    Always amuses me when politicians talk about offering “fulsome” congratulations to their colleagues.

66. pserve_p2 . I hope you’re OK.

67. Several new words to me in both the clues and the answers, but the wordplay was clear enough to get me there anyway, fast enough that I think this is the first time I’ve solved it before the blog went up—which I needed to parse KITSCH. VEHEMENCE and SUBTITLES were favorites, and I was pleased to see a NYC reference 🙂 “Rooky” didn’t phase me as I just assumed it was the British spelling ! Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

68. Disappointing.
    Idiots like me need a doable puzzle on a Monday. This was like a Vlad prize.
    Come back Vulcan!
    Thanks both.

69. We’ve been watching a fair but of the US Open, so when I saw MSG defined as “major venue,” I started thinking of the venues for the tennis majors–Arthur Ashe Stadium, Court Philippe Chatrier, etc.–but of course none of them fit. Mildly surprised that MSG is well-enough known abroad that no one is complaining that it’s too obscure. Probably our only sporting venue (besides, I imagine, the aforementioned Ashe) with that renown. We know this because when a few months ago a setter wanted to define ROSE BOWL, he didn’t refer to the massive and legendary football stadium near LA, but a much smaller and less storied cricket oval someplace obscure.

    Anyway, I do agree with the quibblers about that anagram. I’ve never seen the abbreviation nr for “near” before, so it looked to me like two random leftover letters from the fodder just stuck in there.

70. MrPenney we know MSG as a music venue. Concert for Bangladesh , The Song Remains The Same, numerous others.

71. Mrpenny just now…size isn’t everything and both Rose Bowls are about equally well known here perhaps. Cricket always a preferred option it seems. MSG was well known for boxing decades ago…maybe still is but boxing not so much a thing now.
    KIT as a violin was new.
    Thanks both

72. My stats tell me a relatively gentle Brummie, taking just over half the average time for the setter. Of course, not a surprise given its the Monday slot. Thanks to Brummie and Andrew

73. [Tim and Roz @70-71: the Garden has probably hosted more basketball games than anything else, followed by ice hockey games. But yes, it still has a full slate of concerts too. Much less boxing than in earlier decades, as high-profile bouts tend to be in Vegas these days (and people care much less about boxing in general). Between all that, the place is almost never dark–apparently they have an average of 350 events a year.]

74. Never heard of KVASS or KIT, but enjoyed solving the crossword, so thanks, Brummie.

75. mr.penny@69: where is this LA place you mentioned, a village near Southampton maybe?

76. Happy days for Mr and Mrs S, having been doing these for a couple of years every evening we’re getting better at it!
    Being an ex GP, actin went in easily. Having studied metallurgy for a year, anneal came out of the woodwork (or should it be metalwork?) And having done lots of crosswords, there were plenty of devices we’d seen before and could work out.
    There are some setters who add another layer of complexity and that’s fair enough as there are other brains doing them who need rather more challenging puzzles to keep the neurons on top form.
    But for today, we were grateful for a straightforward solve, and we always enjoy the blog!

77. nicbach@75
    LA is a seaside resort between Worthing and Bognor Regis, spelt Littlehampton but the “h” is often omitted in speech. Less than 50 miles from Southampton so near enough?

78. 24a – what does PERHAPS mean in the clue?

79. I managed Madison Square Garden. Nothing else today.

80. Steffen @78: “Perhaps” might be a bit of kindness from the setter letting you know that “Frank” will mean something other than honest, open, or a sausage, words that might first come to mind.

81. Steffen @78 Perhaps ANNE is Frank, but she could also be, say, Boleyn or Hathaway.

82. Steffen – just another way of indicating a DBE (definition by example) as a question mark might be….

    [TimC @ 35 – not necessarily; I had mine done in my fifties…..

    jeceris @ 65, pserve @ 36 – not so, jeceris. “Fulsome” means cloying, sycophantic and used correctly by pserve. Hoisted by your own Zoilism?! (Though I echo your complaint concerning its general misuse; almost as irritating as the inexplicable retirement of the verb “affect” in favour of the, usually incorrect, “impact” – with or without “on”!!]

    Great to see Brummie’s name on a Monday – beautifully crafted puzzle, as ever and thanks to Andrew also

83. Had to come back to this, but glad I did. An enjoyable solve.

84. Just started this a day late and after KVASS and KITSCH (kit for small violin) I thought that the references were too obscure for a Monday. My next one in was ROOKERY which seemed to me a mistake in the spelling of rookie, and a quick online search confirmed that either it was a mistake or it was such an obscure spelling that it had no place in a Monday puzzle. I’ll skip to Tuesday’s puzzle and maybe come back to this one later.

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