Guardian Cryptic 29,309 by Brummie

88 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,309 by Brummie”

1. Perfect level for a Monday. 5d is neat. Thanks both.

2. Phew! BONSAI was LOI with all the crossers. Hats off to anyone who worked that one out from the clue alone. Thanks for the parse of GASSY – I was trying to use good = G at the beginning and struggling to find the AS – ‘gas’ for good time is not a synonym that came to mind. KNIGHTHOOD my favourite today. Some suggestion of a theme on the G’s own page – but only the same three BANNISTER-LINKed words are mentioned.

   Thanks Brummie and manehi

3. I have to give kudos for STAGE RIGHT just for the definition.

4. Many thanks to both – distracted and still puzzled by the American spelling of womaniser in 7d

5. Thanks Brummie and manehi
   Nice puzzle, with lots of amusing clues. I particularly liked 14, 22, and 25.

6. Angus @4: as was someone on the G site by the Z appearing in galvanizer in 14a

7. Thanks Brummie and manehi!
   Loved GASSY, BONSAI (liked the way it is explained in the blog as well) and COMPETITOR.

   LYONNAISE
   Is there a part of speech mismatch?

8. I hinted on the G thread that I thought LINKS was the key to BANNISTER, KNIGHTHOOD, ATHLETICS, COMPETITOR, and maybe STRENGTH, along with MANN and ABOLITIONIST. Therefore not really a theme as such. Also noticed the last three letters of OINK mirrored the first three in KNIGHTHOOD, which was a sort of link. Not too tricky and enjoyable as ever.

   Ta Brummie & manehi.

9. Enjoyable puzzle.

   Favourites: SETTLES, YORKIST, KNIGHTHOOD (for its amusing clue), BONSAI, STAGE RIGHT.

   New for me: OSCILLOSCOPE; COCO PALM, CILL = sill (for 18ac)

   Thanks, both.

10. Very enjoyable, thank you Brummie. I couldn’t work out why “it” was a cocktail ingredient. I need to get out more. I couldn’t be bothered looking through the thirty or so Bannisters that Wikipedia presented me with, but he’s bound to have been there somewhere. Never before seen “sill” spelt as “cill”, but sure enough, it’s in the dictionary.

    Thank you for the blog, manehi.

11. GDU
    Do you solve Everyman?
    This clue appeared in 4032
    One who went at 15mph at | start of seaside rails (10)
    This clue reminded me that BANNISTERs and Banisters mean the same (a stair-rail with its supports).

12. Pretty much a write in although that didn’t detract from some neat formations – Settles, Stage right, Lyonnaise. Shame about the double beds/sleeps.

13. I suppose one could tenuously LINK the three consecutive down clues, COCO PALM, ACANTHUS and BONSAI.

14. Very enjoyable, with some lovely mental pictures, pleasing surfaces and neat misdirections.
    Several were guess-first, parse-second – which isn’t a complaint as the unravelling was good fun.
    KNIGHTHOOD, YORKIST & ADVENT also made me grin.
    Manehi, bonsai plants require enormous amounts of patience! Watering them (a light spray being best), trimming teeny dead bits, scooping up fallen leaves, turning the pots ever-so gently – honestly, I’ve dated people who were less demanding!
    Thank you for explaining OSCILLOSCOPE: I’d never seen cill spelled that way before, and doing so with an S was getting me nowhere.
    And thank you very much, Brummie, for an entertaining start to my week

15. Stage right was a very neat clue.

    All round was perfect Monday fare. No stretches, nor NHOs, and nothing to complain about.

    Thanks Setter and Blogger

16. It’s a girl my lord
    In a flatbed Ford … just riffing, sorry 😉
    Yep, nice Monday puzzle, thanks Brum and manehi. Are bonsais fast or slow-growing … I was just thinking re size, but …?

17. Wellbeck@14: not sure if I’ve misunderstood you, but my comments on patience were meant more as a possible ‘cryptic’/misleading reading of the surface, that would *not* lead the solver to the answer BONSAI

18. Very satisfying puzzle. I think that the spelling ‘sill’ has become more prevalent over the years – particularly in relation to car parts – while ‘cill’ was more common for window cills when I was a youngster many moons ago.

19. LYONNNAISE
    me@7 contd…
    my question: Is LYONNAISE used as a noun?

20. An enjoyable puzzle to start the week.

    A fine bunch of anagrams: 11ac STAGE RIGHT (great misdirection – ‘audience’s’), 14ac ABOLITIONIST, 25ac ATHLETICS, 5dn SYNTHETIC, 8dn STRENGTH and 15dn LYONNAISE.

    I enjoyed working out OSCILLOSCOPE: Wellbeck @14 – I remember years ago we initially thought that CILLs on a builder’s quote was a spelling mistake and it stuck in my mind, so ‘builder’s ledge’ was a giveaway.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

21. Some really nice charades. IT was fresh in my mind as I’d recently been pondering why so many Italian vermouth names have seven letters; Campari, Martini, Cinzano and of course the king of cocktails: the Negroni. I think I need to get out more too

    Cheers B&M

22. Manehi @ 17: ah, right – we must have been at cross-purposes!
    Eileen @ 20: when I had fitted carpets laid in my first flat, the carpet man brought a carpenter with him to slice a little from the bottom of various doors, because, as he put it, “there isn’t enough wossname”. I’ve called the gap between door and floor a wossname ever since.

23. Non, c’est un adjectif/une adjective … la sauce lyonnaise …

24. All done and dusted, with parsing. Definitely slower solve than the Quiptic.

    I didn’t have a problem with the cill spelling, but I have seen both.

    Thank you to manehi and Brummie.

25. Wellbeck @22 – thanks for that. 😉

26. STAGE RIGHT made me smile, and KNIGHTHOOD was very good. Biffed OSCILLOSCOPE but couldn’t parse it, never having seen CILL.

27. Smashing stuff from Brummie on a Monday morning.

    The STRENGTH anagram made me wonder; would strengths be the longest word with only 1 vowel?

    Hmmm….

28. Thought L used for both Line and Link in my earlier solved clues a bit Lazy, but generally thoroughly enjoyed this. Took ages to get MANN, and the SW corner was the last to yield. So would COCO be Coco The Clown, whom I remember walking past my seat in his size 28 boots at Bertram Mills circus absolutely yonks ago when I was wee…?

29. Chewy for a Monday, gentle for a Brummie. I was a bit concerned about MANN, but thankfully t’was indeed he.

    STAGE RIGHT was lovely.

    Thanks manehi and Brummie.

30. A couple of LYONNAISE clues from the archives:
    Smell’s back, is anyone cooking with onions?(9)
    Poor snail one Yankee cooked with onions (9)
    These defs seem better than today’s ‘French way of cooking’ (a nounal phrase).

31. Like Postmark @2 BONSAI was my last one in, and only because of the crossers, despite having spent more of my adult life in Japan than any other country. Favourite was STAGE RIGHT for the well-hidden definition. Thanks Manehi for parsing MANN and YORKIST, the homophone totally eluded me. Excellent blog, and thanks Brummie for a good challenge; I’m putting this in the ‘not an old-style Monday under the new editor’ category.

32. I had Ernest GANN for 12a. Not good on author’s names, so just googled some possibilities until I found an author.

33. GIF @16

    

34. Admin @33: that is either showing off your technical skills or you’ve given yourself special admin privileges 😀 Nice image to pick, though.

35. The Monday one between the fortnightly Vulcan; enjoyable.

    I liked the wordplays of SETTLES and OSCILLOSCOPE (with the two OSs I got very confused until I looked CILL up in the dictionaries). The definition for ATHLETICS was fun and I also enjoyed the homophone for YORKIST. LYONNAISE was a good anagram, although the adjective/noun discrepancy does not seem to have been resolved, and BONSAI was a good cd IMHO.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

36. I enjoyed 6D/24D for the surface and the clever construction. Just me?

37. Thanks Brummie and manehi.
    Very enjoyable with neat anagrams, especially 11a & 14a.

38. Thanks Brummie for a fun crossword. Apparently there are also several authors called Cann, and google showed there was an English one so that was good enough for me. Thanks manehi for parsing 18a, and explaining why “it” can be a cocktail ingredient. Don’t know why, but 11a stuck out as my favourite. For 27a I thought there could have been a more elegant way to get to “see” than “notice”.

39. @34 showing off, really.

    Actually, I always wondered if I could do it and “FLATBED” gave me just the opportunity I needed. And don’t worry, it won’t happen often.

40. Very nice. Had never seen CILL, but it looked plausible. I built an OSCILLOSCOPE from scratch once, but it never worked properly – needed an oscilloscope to debug it!

41. 😉

42. I thought this was fun and not too taxing. That said, I think I spent more time on MANN than the rest of the puzzle put together. Ah well, got there in the end. With thanks to Brummie and manehi.

43. Admin @33, so many thanks. What a gorgeous à propos shot!

44. That’s more like it! Very reasonable from Brummie. I had to reveal a few (UK GK mostly) but only needed to come here to understand the parsings of 2, 13, 15, 18, so feel like I’m making some progress , with some setters.

45. … i.e., such a fine sight to see …

46. Good puzzle, marginally more taxing than the Quiptic, which is as it should be, but well judged for a Monday.

    Some lovely surfaces and great anagrams here. My favourites were the intricate COMPETITOR (though I prefer gin and French), the cheeky YORKIST, the epigrammatic BONSAI (LOI) and the beautiful STAGE RIGHT.

    Thomas MANN won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, so is a more deserving solution than other possible candidates.

    The part of speech discrepancy for LYONNAISE was a minor blemish – the adjective applied to French dishes commonly means ‘with onions’, as in the clue examples given by KVa @30.

    Thanks to S&B

47. My goodness, it took me soooo so long to solve TWIN BEDS and SETTLES … only to wonder why they were so hard, once I’d seen the light!
    I’m another who loved the amusing STAGE RIGHT. I also loved BONSAI (I did need all the crossers to get it) – very funny!
    Great crossword. Great blog. Thank you.

48. It had never occurred to me that the wossname had a name. Now I’ve looked it up — it’s floor clearance. I think I prefer wossname.

    Admin@39 I hope it happens more. You’re clearly both having and adding to the fun.

    Thanks to Admin (kenmac?), to Brummie for the challenge and manhehi for the help when I needed it.

49. William@27 do you mean one vowel only once ? Or we can have chronotron , maybe strengthless if it exists.

50. Thanks for the blog, really good Monday puzzle , neat and tidy clues.
    MrPostMark@2 remember life for T Rex.
    AlanC you like your LINKS and not just for golf. Did you spot the subtle link to KPR in the Saturday Prize puzzle ?

51. I remember coco the clown giving a road safety lesson before Saturday morning pictures at the Granada cinema on Wandsworth Road South London in the early 60s. He could make his hair flap like a bird’s wings. We wanted him off so we could watch Woody Woodpecker.

52. nuntius @42, yes I agree, that’s the best defence of Mann being the answer. But (Kate) Cann and (Ernest) Gann seem indisputably correct options, because they match the definition, parse and fit (and while they don’t have Nobel prizes, they at least made it big enough to get Wikipedia pages). And not being from around here, and Ca being the Una of states, I just assumed Cann was probably a household name in other people’s households. Would be better if the clue didn’t allow for the ambiguity.

53. ESpecially liked 2d ANNEAL – it’s a double reverse lift-and-separate – degree of difficulty 4.2 – and it’s got my name in.
    epop@51 – If you zoom in on his largest badge in this picture, you can read ‘ABC MINOR No. 1 COCO‘ and the ABC logo. My local ABC was in Mile End.
    Thanks B&m

54. Sorry, I tried to edit that comment but it didn’t seem to work. My reply was to Gervase @46

55. I agree about Anneal FrankieG @ 53, or should I say Ann, Anne, Neal, or Al?

56. I think the setter fills the grid and then writes clues, the clue for MANN works fine and maybe the setter does not notice alternatives. It does not happen often . I agree with Swiss Sreve @52 that here it is ambiguous.
    A Nobel award is not always a good discriminator, even for a real Nobel , never mind these minor awards.

57. For 23d GASSY there’s this: ‘I was born in a cross-fire hurricane
    And I howled at my ma’ in the driving rain
    But it’s all right now, in fact, it’s a GAS
    But it’s all right, I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash
    It’s a GAS, GAS, GAS‘ – it’s by an obscure ’60s beat combo, quite entertaining, I think.

58. [Roz @50: I completed about half on Saturday and haven’t returned to it yet. I’ll keep a beady out].

59. “Cill” seems to the standard spelling on canals.

60. Roz@49, e would be both the shortest one-vowel word and also one of the longest – senselessness.

    I add my vote for 11a STAGE RIGHT as the clue of the day or week. Another favourite was 2d ANNEAL, for hiding the capital F at the beginning of the clue.

    I haven’t done the Quiptic yet, so I cannot judge the appropriateness of this puzzle for the Monday Cryptic slot. 😉

    Thanks, Brummie, manehi and Kenmac for the puzzle, parse, and picture.

61. Cellomaniac@60 , good suggestion , perhaps there are many longer ones with a single repeated vowel . E is also a very weak clue for senselessness.

    [AlanC – my lips are tightly clasped, all will be revealed on Saturday ( perhaps not quite all ) ]

62. That was an entertaining cryptic. I solved some with the cross letters and then came here for the parsing (COMPETITOR being a notable example). BONSAI was the LOI, but I really enjoyed ANNEAL. It felt very satisfying to solve.

    FrankieG@57 – GAS for a fun or a good time is something you hear a lot in Ireland. For funny situations “That’s gas” or a you could be a “gas man/woman”.

    Thanks Brummie & manehi

63. [ Roz@56, you are so right about the Nobels. D Thomas doesn’t have one, but Bob D does. Go figure. ]

64. Admin@33 – If you zoom in, you can see an Eagle (hope it’s Joe Walsh) on the Winslow CILL. But Is it a GIF or a JPG? 😉

65. I can’t believe that anyone who looked at the Wikipaedia entries for Kate Cann, Ernest Gann and Thomas Mann would find it hard to decide which author was meant for 12A; in fact the most plausible confusion might be with Thomas’s brother Heinrich, who was also a noted novelist. I agree that Nobel prizes for literature are not conclusive evidence, but Thomas Mann would be in most serious lists of the 10 most important 20th century novelists – Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain , Buddenbrooks put him up there with Joyce, Kafka, Hemingway, and Borges. It’s like googling pop groups and deciding that the Beagles are a likelier answer than the Beatles.

66. Lots of likes for STAGE RIGHT I see – not being an actor myself (that’s more my son’s department) I had to think for a while as to whether “Exit stage right” means leave the stage on the right as seen by an actor facing the audience, i.e. on the left as seen by an audience member facing the stage.

    If I were ever to tread the boards I would assuredly get it wrong the first time, and mess up the whole performance … 🙁

    I liked the poetic clue for BONSAI – why is it I’m so poor at devising CDs?!

    OINK made me laugh – I keep on thinking of the old joke “What’s the best treatment for Swine Flu?”*

    MANN was the only author I’d heard of that fitted “-ANN” so the ambiguity escaped me. But I agree it’s not the best of clues.

    As a small child I used to clamour to be taken to see Bertram Mills Circus, so I remember COCO for sure. Those were the days! Of course I was too young to understand the animal exploitation angle.

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

    *Answer: OINKMENT!

67. I’m surprised there aren’t any votes for Anton Pann, David Vann or Liz Wann 🙂

68. A very nice start to the week, pitched at just the right level.
    Stay safe and travel safely

69. Crisply clued throughout, with some nice definitions. STAGE RIGHT the favourite.

70. Enjoyable.

    I agree with Eileen’s favorites @20, having a fondness for a good anagram myself. MANN gets my vote.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi

71. William@27 .. from Wikipedia: “Strengths is the longest word in the English language containing only one vowel letter. Euouae, a medieval musical term, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels.” For the latter, the shortening of scriptural texts to their vowels is an interesting thing: “Euouae (/ju?.?u?.i?/; sometimes spelled Evovae)[1] is an abbreviation used as a musical mnemonic in Latin psalters and other liturgical books of the Roman Rite. It stands for the syllables of the Latin words saeculorum Amen, taken from the Gloria Patri, a Christian doxology that concludes with the phrase in saecula saeculorum. Amen. The mnemonic is used in the notation of the variable melodic endings (differentiae) of psalm tones in Gregorian chant.”

72. … though you’d have to think of ‘rhythms’ as equaling and maybe winning coz it only has a half vowel.

73. [Cellomaniac @63: a recurring theme of this space is the seemingly universal automatic disdain for Mr Zimmerman. Am I the only one here who admires his work?]

    Meanwhile, back at the puzzle: I could see no reason why “fantastic” was repeated as an anagram indicator, in both 25A and 8D. Also “with” was used to assemble the fodder three times, in 25A, 5D and 15D, which seems rather repetitive for a single sitting.

74. AT @ 73: no, you’re not!

75. Sagittarius@65: I agree…There was an excellent German drama called The Manns which was shown on Channel 4 (I think) a few years back about the life of Thomas and of his children. It was in German with English subtitles. I wish they would repeat it. You can buy the DVD but there are no subtitles with that, and my German is not up to it.

76. Nuntius@75: if you are interested in the Manns, ‘The Magician’ by Colm Toibin gives a novelist’s imaginative picture of them, and it’s in English.

77. I too liked the definition for 11a but to me SIGHT wasn’t jumbled enough for a satisfactory anagram.”Unusually great insight” perhaps?

78. [ Andrew@73, he couldn’t sing in tune if his life depended on it; however, he did write nice songs. He got his Nobel through aggressive lobbying on his behalf. If you consider songwriters from his era for literature / poetry awards, I would argue that Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell were more worthy. But I would agree that there’s nothing wrong with being a fan of Dylan’s songs. That was a great time for folk/rock song lyrics. ]

79. Lechien@62 – Indeed you do hear GAS ‘a lot in Ireland’ – Green’s Dictionary of Slang has ‘
    GAS n.1 [fig. uses of SE gas] … 3. (orig. !rish) as a positive descriptor. (a) (also gass) a very enjoyable, pleasant situation or experience.’ …

80. … starting with two quotes from Joyce: Dubliners(1914) and Ulysses(1922) then …

81. … “1939 [Ire] ‘Flann O’Brien’” – Myles na gCopaleen – “At Swim-Two-Birds 261: I never had such gas since I was a chiseller.” …

82. … “1990 [Ire] R. Doyle Snapper 94: It was a feckin’ gas.” – No mention of The Stones, but there is: …

83. …”2015 [??] ‘Elvis Costello’ ” – Declan MacManus – “Unfaithful Music 645: Everyone played and sang what was needed. […] It was an immediate gas“.

84. I had trouble yesterday posting @79-83 as a single comment, so I’ve split it up, to see where the problem lay. Yes, you’ve guessed it.
    @82 wouldn’t go through until I’d censored the F-word, even though I was merely citing great literature by a great author. Is this a new thing?

85. A Google Advanced Search returns 10 results, the latest in 2021 – but the link has been censored and doesn’t work.

86. I actually effed up the link @85, but when I do it properly, my comment is refused. Anyway, this is the latest occurrence of the F-word:
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2021/09/10/guardian-cryptic-28547-by-tramp/#comment-502292 – I demand equal rights with Gert Bycee@65.

87. And finally, for @81 chiseller, we need Jonathon Green again:
    ‘chiseller n. – also chiselur, chisler, chisseler, chissler – [var. on dial. childer, a child] – (Irish) – a child.’ There’s lots of Green, White & Gold !rish tricolours there.

88. I didn’t get around to looking at this until Tuesday afternoon. For 12a, ‘News’ quite clearly signals NN, so we’re looking for the name of an ‘author’ in the form _ _ NN with the first letters coming from the abbreviation for an American state. Why is there any need to use Google? I just wrote in MANN and moved on.

    Well done to Pino@77 for improving the clue at 11a.

    FrankieG@79ff – you’ve had a busy morning, haven’t you. 🙂

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

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