Guardian 29,324 / Brendan

75 comments on “Guardian 29,324 / Brendan”

1. Having noticed some of the others, and remembering that Brendan is fond of that paired anagrams trick, I wonder if there was once going to be an INGRES/REIGNS pair?

2. Always a theme, always an extra dimension with Brendan.
   Congratulations to him and thanks as ever to Eileen.

3. Very enjoyable. For once, even I could not miss the theme, which gave me COLOURISTS even though I could not parse it until coming here. DALI and TREELINE were my favourites for the misdirection in the clues. Many thanks Brendan for the fun and Eileen for the education re ‘lour’.

4. My only question mark was O for Oval, or am I missing something?

5. thanks B and E! theme was woven very neatly throughout — for a change I also noticed the anagram sub-theme. When I manage to crack a Brendan, it makes me feel smart! (of course, the opposite is true as well!)

6. This got done in the small hours when I couldn’t sleep, and was in the Goldilocks zone for me after struggling with some of the week’s earlier puzzles. Hadn’t heard of DERAIN but the wordplay was clear; and the crossers plus the definition allowed me to bung in NEAPOLITAN though it takes Eileen’s brilliance to see how the clue works.
   Thank you to Brendan for a most enjoyable puzzle and to Eileen for the customarily excellent blog.

7. Brendan’s masterly brushstrokes as ever. Though did think this was less difficult than some of his previous displays. Bottom half seemed to take me longer than the top. Missed the juxtaposed anagrams apart from the obvious TRAITS and ARTIST. Loi THE TIMES…

8. Derain was a dnk for both me and my housemate (and she did a bit of art history back in the day). Ingres, otoh, turns up now and again, and the rest was all pretty clear. Smoulder was nice, both surface and def. And deuced always raises a tickle, so fraffly pip pip. All fun, many tas BnE.

9. Well, this couldn’t have been more different to yesterday‘s theme which didn’t require much specialist knowledge. In parts, this felt like a Pont Neuf pub quiz.

   Chacun to their gout I suppose

   Tiny ticks for DEUCED, SMOULDER & EXHIBITING

   Bonus points for the cricket theme 🙂

   Cheers E&B

10. This was quite difficult for me even though the theme is one I am very familiar with.

    I could not parse 15ac, 16d. I also did not parse 18d as I was fixated on it being The Times newspaper.

    Favourite: VERONESE.

    New for me: DEUCED = decidedly.

    I did not notice the pairs of anagrams mentioned by Eileen.

    Thanks, both.

    Bodycheetah @9 – haha, the cricket-themed clues were very helpful for me 🙂

11. Very enjoyable, and a little educational too. I missed all the anagram pairs bar the signposted one. And I ran though everything I thought I knew about Romeo and Juliet except where they lived, all the time saying to myself “star-cross’d” is probably misdirection. MODIGLIANI is my pick for COTD – very entertaining. Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

12. michelle @10 – it is THE TIMES newspaper, known as a ‘daily’.

13. Well hello Dali. This was the gentler side of Brendan, with the straightforward double definition for PAINTERS providing a quick way in. All very clever and enjoyable as always.

    Tim C @4: in LEGATO I don’t think O is supposed to be an abbreviation for Oval, it’s just that the letter O is actually an oval. (Eileen, you’ve left the AT out of your parsing.)

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

14. LJ … groan 🙂

15. Thanks, Lord Jim – fixed now.

    Re ‘Oval’ – that’s the way I took it (although we’re more used to seeing O clued as ’round’ !)

16. Enjoyed the colourful puzzle thoroughly. What a craft! What painters! I am tongue-tied (finger-tied??!!).
    A mini eye theme? IRISES and LASH crossing OVERSEEN. +CATARACT falls in this category.
    A mini cricket theme too? XI, BAD LIGHT, OVERS, LEG…(already pointed out by bodycheetah@9)
    LEGATO: No issues with Oval=O (we have seen egg=O many times and so…)
    Top faves today: DALI, VERONESE, DEUCED and TREELINE.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen!

17. There’s also a hint, perhaps accidental, of an eyes/vision sub-theme, with IRISES, LASH, CATARACT, BAD LIGHT, OVERSEEN.

18. Mrs. B’s the one who’s knowledgeable about the theme, but luckily she’s covered the fridge with magnets, which helped me with several. I must say Eileen, that I love the way your personality shines through your commentaries…

19. I probably should have spotted the anagram pairs, but comments say they are signposted and I still can’t see where.

    I didn’t finish partly because of my ignorance of art. I’ve never heard of Colourists or Dore (with accent), for example. I’d never heard of Fauvists either so needed wikipedia for that one.

    Deuced also beat me, but that was entirely my own fault.

20. Didn’t notice the linked anagrams in the puzzle, so thanks to Eileen for pointing that out, but a pity that DALI featured as an answer and in one of the clues. But given all the rest of Brendan’s expertise on show, I don’t think we can complain too much. A bit of GK required, but nothing too obscure. I thought of PAINTERS immediately, but had to check that I had remembered the sailing term correctly before entering it. I did misspell Modigliani at first which held me up briefly. Liked VERONESE especially for not mentioning the artist. Thanks to Brendan for the variety and to Eileen for the clear exposition.

21. I looked up Fauvists to find DERAIN, because I wanted to know who they were and what the difference was, and realised I knew Matisse from that school. Doré in ERODED drew the most amazing detailed illustrations for Pilgrim’s Progress when I checked. VERONESE is named from Verona, and I quoted the Romeo and Juliet prologue to work it out.

    Fascinating puzzle for the alleyways it took me down. Thank you to Eileen and Brendan.

22. ROSSI, take your pick from Alexander, Luigi, Alberto et al features as a NINA in the 7th down column. Beautifully summed up and illustrated by Eileen. Loved it although some of the bottom clues seemed very generous.

    Ta Brian & Eileen.

23. Blaise@18
    I must say Eileen, that I love the way your personality shines through your commentaries…
    Ditto squared!

24. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    I found this very difficult, despite being familiar with all of the theme artists. I didn’t spot the anagram pairs, so was baffled by the parsing of TRAITS; as I’ve said before, once I have written an answer in, I forget it.
    Favourite the construction for DEUCED.

25. Thanks Brendan for this highly enjoyable & colourful work of art,
    and thanks Eileen for helpful blog, especially in parsing NEAPOLITAN, which together with VERONESE I think are also both Schools of Art.
    For once I saw the theme but failed to spot the extra anagram pairs, despite now seeing that DALI is LAID out in BADLIGHT as well as MODIGLIANI.

26. Such an enjoyable solve. I loved the theme. As Eileen said in her preamble, it was a great opportunity to explore manifold aspects of artists and works of art. I went up a couple of dry gullies, including putting in 3d as “FLATLY”, thinking that 2-D meant 2-dimensional in keeping with the theme of art, with “flatly” as what I thought was a reasonable definition of “Definitely” – “I flatly refused…”. But when the crossers didn’t work it was back to the drawing board (see what I did there?) to come up with DEUCED. A deucedly clever clue! I missed the anagram pairs other than the unmissable 15 TRAITS 16a ARTIST, mainly because I didn’t look past the end of my nose. So I remain very grateful for this forum, where new dimensions (!) to one’s solve are often discovered. [Speaking of which, I clocked the cricket sub-theme, but not the “eyes/vision” one mentioned by Sagittarius@17 – well spotted (!)]
    Many thanks to the wonderful Brendan and the equally wonderful Eileen.

27. Eileen – you’ve omitted the parsing I (one) RISES (mounts) in 22D.

    Another enjoyable puzzle by Brendan, thank you and thanks to Eileen especially for parsing 13D which I just couldn’t see.

28. I’ll have to remain unconvinced about Oval = Round (my Os are not oval Lord Jim @13), despite it possibly being used widely. My problem is not that egg = round, given that eggs come in all shapes and sizes (including spherical/round).
    Off to bed, hoping some inspiration will come while I sleep for this month’s Azed comp.

29. Thanks, Larry @27. I don’t know how that slipped out – fixed now.

    I have to go out now until mid-afternoon and so I shan’t be able to make any more amendments to the blog until then.

30. I spotted the theme, it would be hard not to, but not the rest and I’m a bit dodgy on artists. I had to look up a few as well as COLOURISTS, I thought Matisse was a post- impressionist, it that was never going to fit.
    Why is SNATCH part of the theme? I could only think of nudes and I’m sure it’s not that.
    Thanks Eileen and the coracler.

31. I assumed that O was an abbreviation for “oval”, since I constantly encounter unfamiliar one-letter abbreviations when solving these puzzles, but I agree that it makes much more sense as a simple description of the letter. I’ve never seen Tim C @28’s handwriting, but I think it’s fair to say that the letter O often has an oval shape, so this works perfectly well. In particular, on this web page that I’m looking at now, the Os are surely oval, with the uppercase ones being more obviously so than the lowercase.

    I wondered about the inclusion of “bright” in the clue for 25ac: there are certainly dull reds, and bright other colours. But that’s a terribly minor quibble.

    I thought this puzzle was very ingenious and enjoyable: I’m impressed at Brendan’s ability to work the theme so thoroughly into the clues without making them seem strained. I’m hardly an art connoisseur, but I knew of all of these artists. I did get stuck briefly in the SW and had to look at a list of Fauvists to remind me of Derain, after which the rest yielded.

32. nicbach @30 — I don’t think SNATCH is part of the theme (or if it is, then I don’t understand how either). Eileen included it in her list of ticked clues, but that’s separate from the theme.

33. Ted@31
    DERAIN (as if it’s an instruction to take back the rain!)
    I think that ‘the ‘bright is justified because RED has the max wave length/min frequency allowing for the least scattering among all colours. Roz will definitely explain it better than this.
    wynsum@25
    DALI is LAID out in BADLIGHT as well as MODIGLIANI.
    Good spot! More joy!

34. Concisely clued thematic which gave me little trouble but a lot of fun. I missed the anagram pairs other than the flagged one, forgetting that there’s usually more to a Brendan puzzle than appears at first sight.

    I liked the construction/surfaces for CATARACT, DEUCED, SMOULDER, SNATCH, TREELINE and IRISES, and of course VERONESE (without a hint at Paolo).

    Many thanks to Brendan and Eileen

35. A Masterpiece. Themes and subthemes – but no over-stretches and technically-corrects. I enjoyed solving, enjoyed reading blog, and finally enjoyed reading excellent comments.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

36. Brendan’s usual mastery of themed answers.

    I liked the definitions of RAINED, SNATCH and TREELINE (where I thought the definition was point with can (TIN) over REEL and the section being East [E] Hollywood, doh!), and the wordplays of COLOURISTS, SMOULDER and NEAPOLITAN (and the prayer without an a wasn’t PAE(a)N!).

    Very enjoyable solve, thanks Brendan and Eileen for her spot-on parsing.

37. I’m crediting the second coffee with helping me solve today’s. I was pleased to be able to spot the main artist theme, and the eyes/vision and cricket subthemes. Although, it did make me hope there’s nothing wrong with Brendan’s eyes – with CATARACT and ERODED, IRISES!

    My absolute favourite was DALI. What a superb surface, and so elegant. It really made me smile when I got it. Other favourites were VERONESE and DEUCED. Everything was fairly clued and I was even able to solve when I didn’t know the artist in question (for example DORE in ERODED).

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

38. PS Well done AlanC @22 for spotting ROSSI.

39. Thanks Brendan for taking me down Memory Lane to art A level. I’m very grateful to Eileen for several explanations that had beaten me, and for to everyone who spots all the added layers in a Brendan crossword. Like Muffin, I tend to forget a clue once it’s in.

40. Brendan never ceases to amaze with his multi-layered constructions and cunning theming. I fell short on a bit of GK – DERAIN is new and I didn’t know Van Gogh painted IRISES and had forgotten DORE. THE TIMES, VERONESE, SNATCH and DEUCED were my favourites from a high quality field.

    Thanks Brendan and Lucky Eileen

41. The theme was fine for me, and I was familiar with Derain and Dore, among others (I’m not a fan of Dali, either the art or the man: but each to his own….). That said, I found this a bit of a struggle, with three reveals when my allotted time ran out. But overall, it seemed to me both fair and well constructed. With thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

42. It often happens that my LOI also gets a tick as one of my faves – and today is no exception. I struggled for ages with DEUCED – a charmingly succinct clue but far from obvious (“FENCED”?). Then it clicked. I’m not a tennis-player, but I am an occasional bridge-player, and I recall that some of the more – er – ‘mature’ members of the club call for the ‘Deuce’ rather than the ‘Two’; they are also the people who ask for the ‘Knave’ rather than the ‘Jack’. Old habits die hard!

    Not come across DERAIN – nor indeed did I know what ‘Fauvist’ meant – but the clueing was fair. And I misspelt MODIGLIANI at first, causing crosser woes – but corrected it in the end. Luckily I had heard of almost all the other the artists mentioned here.

    Besides VERONESE there’s a second Shakespearian reference here – re LOUR. The only instance of the word that I – and probably many other people – know of, comes from the opening lines of Richard III:

    “…and all the clouds that lour‘d upon our house…”

    Aside from DEUCED, I’ll give ticks for MIXING, BAD LIGHT, VERONESE, OVERSEEN, CATARACT (alas! I have one, my optician tells me, but it’s not impairing my vision – yet!); EXHIBITING, SELL BY, TREELINE, and LEGATO. But that’s not to say the rest of the clues aren’t just as good.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

43. Thought this would defeat me but a bit of judicious Googling unearthed the artists I didn’t know. Enjoyable but I did spend rather too long on it.
    Thanks both.

44. Even in defeat I found much to like here. Oddly, it was the unthemed clues that undid me, with two unsolved and others unparsed. NHO lour, will keep that in my back pocket for the future.

    Favorite was 10A for the clever lift and separate

45. Terrific stuff. Thanks to Brendan for a great puzzle and Eileen for a (customarily) excellent blog. Parsing 13d was beyond me!

46. Excellent. I am pretty ignorant about art yet I finished it. (Okay, I had to check quite a few with google, but only after working them out). A crossword setter who can comprehensively use a theme and yet construct clues so one can finish it without much knowledge: I think that’s brilliant.
    And thanks to the contributors and to Eileen.

47. I think COLOURISTS is more often applied to the group of Scottish painters that included F C B Cadell and J D Fergusson and S J Peploe. Matisse loved vibrant colours, yes, but so did all the Fauves.
    LOI was THE TIMES. Can’t make out how my mind works – or doesn’t – sometimes!

48. KVa @33 —

    I hate to pull rank, but I’m a physicist myself, and I have to say that I don’t find your reason for connecting “bright” with “red” satisfying. It’s true that red light is the longest wavelength, and that it’s scattered less upon passage through the atmosphere (which is why sunsets are red and the sky is blue). But I don’t think one can reasonably get from there to a conclusion that red is necessarily or generally a bright colour. As a matter of fact, I’d rather put it the opposite way: when you consider individual photons (particles of light), the red ones have the least energy, so arguably red is the least bright colour.

    I think what’s actually going on is just that lots of things are bright red, so the two are easily connected in people’s minds (including Brendan’s). And honestly I’m fine with that (or almost fine, anyway).

49. Ted@48
    DERAIN
    I think your logic (in the last sentence of your post) works better. Brendan may not have expected solvers to think about
    wavelengths of different colours.

    PS: You are a physicist and you said so in a relevant context. No issues at all.

50. I’ve always thought of DEUCED @3ac as a minced oath rather than an intensifier, but I seem to be wrong, though Google gives both meanings.

    Eileen, thanks for parsing NEAPOLITAN, COLOURISTS and TREELINE — I hadn’t a hope with either. [Neapolitan is that three-colored ice cream with sections of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, all three close to tasteless. I never understood as a child why other children had it at their birthday parties. Decades later, I still don’t.]

    Fine puzzle, thanks to Brendan. And delightful blog, lovely to have you along, Eileen.

51. I’m wondering whether ‘brightness’ in a colour is more a matter of biology than physics: the article on Chromostereopsis at Wikipedia throws some light.

52. Great fun, thanks.

53. Thanks Brendan. This seemed difficult at first but gradually I completed the grid with a few nudges here and there. My top picks were DALI, SMOULDER, SELL-BY, IRISES, the sublime NEAPOLITAN, and TRAITS for its sneakly use of ‘following’. Despite TRAITS/ARTIST I never thought to look for anagram pairs. Thanks Eileen as always.
    BTW, O for ‘oval’ is supported by Chambers (anything shaped like the letter ‘O’) and Collins (shaped like ‘O’; circular or oval in shape).

54. [Valentine @50: Yes, the NEAPOLITAN you remember from children’s parties was mostly a tasteless chemical fluff but there are all natural, ‘artisan’, and ‘gourmet’ versions now that are much, much better if ice cream’s your thing.]

55. [Valentin@50 and Tony @54 : for those of us of a certain age, it will always be NEALOPITAN, as malaproped by Ron (Dick Bentley) in ‘Take it from Here’ of childhood radio memory].

    Lovely puzzle, which I breezed through much more quickly than is usual these days. Thanks.

56. Difficult until I realised I have to think up painters’ names and not just words. I agree with most of the favourites mentioned by Tony@53. I also never thought to look for anagram pairs.

    There were also a couple of clues I did not like at all, but I won’t bother with that

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

57. [Re Neapolitan ice cream.]

58. [Alec @51 is certainly right that perceived brightness of colours is a matter of biology as well as (or perhaps rather than) of physics. In physics we sometimes refer to the brightness of something in purely physical terms: we might say that one star is brighter than another if the power we receive from it is greater. But the word “bright” often refers to how it looks, so that the receptivity of the human eye to different wavelengths affects the result. A star that emits mostly ultraviolet light wouldn’t look bright to the human eye, since we don’t see that kind of light. Whether that means it’s “not bright” depends on which meaning of “bright” we’re thinking about at the moment.]

59. [Valentine @50: According to Wikipedia, the three-flavoured ice cream block was invented in the 19th century by the head chef to the Prussian court and dedicated to Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau. The NEAPOLITAN is still apparently called Fürst-Pückler-Eis in Germany]

60. [Alec @51: ‘Bright’ when applied to the perception of colour often doesn’t indicate intensity but refers to ‘saturation’. Bright red (high saturation) vs dull red (low saturation)]

61. Thanks for all your comments, particularly those that uncovered the extra layers!

62. I agree with the positive reviews above. Like others I learned a bit – I knew of Matisse as a Fauvist rather that a Colourist, but it seems the latter term includes the former. Being of Scots breeding, I think, like Alec@47, of the Scottish Colourists. And, with reference to the same clue, the word ‘lour’ reminds me not of Shakespeare (Laccari@42) but of the second verse of Burns’s ‘Scots Wha Hae’:
    Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;/See the front o’ battle lour;/See approach proud Edward’s power -/Chains and slavery!
    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

63. I was surprised that this meaning of “lour” isn’t in Collins. (i soon found it elsewhere.)

64. Hi GDU @63 – I meant to throw this in earlier:
    Collins has lour as an alternative spelling of ‘lower’:
    ‘1 (especially of the sky, weather, etc), to be overcast, dark and menacing;
    2 to scowl or frown
    3 a menacing scowl or appearance’
    I’m quite familiar with ‘lowering clouds’.

65. Eileen @64
    Interesting – I didn’t know “lower” was actually an alternative to “lour” in that sense; I only knew the latter.

66. Hi muffin – the two spellings are in Chambers, too.

67. A good challenge from Brendan. Thanks Eileen for parsing Neapolitan – just could not work it out though confidently put it in. Did no one else notice the Nina in the 13th row? TITS – oh dear I’ll probably be moderated now!

68. Thanks for the excellent crossword and blog and everyone’s extra contributions above. Enjoyed it hugely except for the wasted 5 minutes trying to parse POTATO for 22d, as it has ATOP mounting in it … but then realising I already had the letters I_I_E_.

69. 18d – why is S not included in the reversal of IT’S?

70. Steffen, because (in this instance) “it’s” literally means “it is.” iT is raised in subjects.

    For these puzzles, in general, it’s lateral thinking: you have to think of ALL of the things a word might represent. “It’s” to take the present example, might be it is, it has, or the three letters ITS. You have to consider all three, since the setter hasn’t told you which he has in mind. Of course he hasn’t–if he had, this game would be too easy.

71. Of course, some words can only mean one thing. But also of course, crosswords are literally built around the ones with three, four, eight, or twenty different meanings. That’s the heart of the game, from at least one way of looking at it.

72. You’re right, Eileen @ 64. I didn’t dig deep enough.

73. Great stuff from Brendan. Many highlights, but VERONESE is a classic.

74. My Art History degree helped a lot today but until reading Eileen’s blog I hadn’t grasped just how clever a puzzle this was. So, many thanks to Brendan for this most enjoyable puzzle and to Eileen for adding to the pleasure.

75. Fenced worked for me as decidedly anti (2Down) suggests ‘have an argument about something’.

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