The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29357.
Brummie fills the Monday spot in style. He often includes a theme, but nothing stands out for me.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BROUGHT |
Delivered book draft on time (7)
|
| A charade of B (‘book’) plus ROUGH (‘draft’) plus T (‘time’). | ||
| 5 | FIREARM |
It could kill you to let go when on limb! (7)
|
| A charade of FIRE (‘let go’ – dismiss from employment) plus ARM (‘limb’). | ||
| 9 | MAYFAIR |
A fashionable area might – just (7)
|
| A charade of MAY (‘might’) plus FAIR (‘just’). | ||
| 10 | LAMPOON |
Mock light with ring attached (7)
|
| A charade of LAMP (‘light’) plus O (‘ring’) plus ON (‘attached’). | ||
| 11 | IMPEDANCE |
One’s exercise with ball shows restraint (9)
|
| A charade of I’M (‘one’s’ – that is, “one is”) plus PE (physical ‘exercise’) plus DANCE (‘ball’). | ||
| 12 | REFER |
Pass on after last of bone extracted from joint (5)
|
| A subtraction: RE[e]FER (marijuana ‘joint’) minus E (‘last of bonE extracted’). | ||
| 13 | OSCAR |
Rather large vehicle award (5)
|
| A charade of OS (‘rather large’) plus CAR (‘vehicle’). | ||
| 15 | URBAN MYTH |
People may wrongly believe this Burnham ground hosts Sunday cricket finals (5,4)
|
| An envelope (‘hosts’) of YT (‘SundaY crickeT finals’) in URBANMH, an anagram (‘ground’) of ‘Burnham’. | ||
| 17 | SASSENACH |
English impertinence: every individual pinches Frenchman’s bottom! (9)
|
| An envelope (‘pinches’) of N (‘FrenchmaN‘s bottom’) in SASS (‘impertinence’) plus EACH (‘every individual’). | ||
| 19 | TRAIN |
Sequence of Trump’s initial downfall (5)
|
| A charade of T (‘Trump’s initial’) plus RAIN (‘downfall’). | ||
| 22 |
See 3 Down
|
|
| 23 | LEVIATHAN |
It’s a big thing, Latin – have to get translated (9)
|
| An anagram (‘to get translated’) of ‘Latin have’. | ||
| 25 | OCTAGON |
Month before an attempt to acquire new figure (7)
|
| A charade of OCT (‘month’; a crosser is needed to get the right one) plus A GO (‘an attempt’) plus N (‘new’). | ||
| 26 | ON A ROLL |
Enjoying continuing success playing a character on the radio (2,1,4)
|
| Sounds like (‘on the radio’) ON A ROLE (‘playing a character’). | ||
| 27 | TENANCY |
Holding note with Sinatra? (7)
|
| A charade of TE (‘note’ of the sol-fa) plus NANCY (‘Sinatra’). | ||
| 28 | ROMPERS |
Minor habit condensed from personality (7)
|
| A hidden answer (‘condensed’ – which really needs a double-duty ‘from’) in ‘fROM PERSonality’; ‘minor’ as a young person and ‘habit’ as clothing.. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BAMBINO |
Disney character: on reflection, hardly adult (7)
|
| A charade o BAMBI (‘Disnet character’) plus NO, a reversal (‘reflection’) of ‘on’. | ||
| 2 | OLYMPIC |
Male-centred sporting policy associated with certain games (7)
|
| An envelope (-‘centred’) of M (‘male’) in OLYPIC, an anagram (‘sporting’) of ‘policy’. | ||
| 3, 22 | GRAND PIANO |
Haughty, awful pain, old Joanna (5,5)
|
| A charade of GRAND (‘haughty’) plus PIAN, an anagram (‘awful’) of ‘pain’ plus O (‘old’). | ||
| 4 | TARANTULA |
Thanks on capturing weirdly natural, scary creature (9)
|
| An envelope (‘on capturing’) of ARANTUL, an anagram (‘weirdly’) of ‘natural’ in TA (‘thanks’). | ||
| 5, 24 | FALSE ALARM |
Member goes after sham, failed presidential candidate – no need to panic (5,5)
|
| A charade of FALSE (‘sham’) plus AL (Gore, ‘failed presidential candidate’) plus ARM (‘member’). | ||
| 6 | REMBRANDT |
Artist’s Sleep Activity/Mark Twain’s Head (9)
|
| A charade of REM (rapid eye movement, ‘sleep activity’) plus BRAND (‘mark’) plus T (‘Twain’s head’). | ||
| 7 | ALOOFLY |
Ladies, say, in a rush, not in a friendly way (7)
|
| A charade of A LOO (‘ladies, say’) plus FLY (‘in a rush’). | ||
| 8 | MENORAH |
Gold pieces first stuck on – how cute! – candelabrum (7)
|
| A charade of MEN (‘pieces’ – in chess, for example) plus OR (‘gold’) plus AH (‘how cute!’). | ||
| 14 | REED ORGAN |
Study sound with eg mouth instrument (4,5)
|
| A charade of REED, sounding like (‘sound’) READ (‘study’) plus ORGAN (‘eg mouth’). | ||
| 16 | BEHAVIOUR |
Above Uriah’s deviance: not a way to conduct oneself (9)
|
| An anagram (‘deviance’) of ‘above uri[a]h’ minus the A (‘not a’). | ||
| 17 | SUPPORT |
Second drink, Bordeaux? (7)
|
| A charade of SUP (‘drink’) plus PORT (‘Bordeaux’ – not the drink). | ||
| 18 | SPARTAN |
Austere box belt (7)
|
| A charade of SPAR (‘box’) plus TAN (hit hard, ‘belt’). | ||
| 20 | ATHLONE |
The endless invasion of a solitary Irish location (7)
|
| An envelope (‘invasion’) of TH (‘THe endless’) in A LONE (‘a solitary’). | ||
| 21 | NONPLUS |
Puzzle involving puns, only shortened (7)
|
| An anagram (‘involving’) of ‘puns onl[y]’ minus the last letter (‘shortened’). | ||
| 23 | LANKY |
As a beanpole is set to absorb two fertiliser elements (5)
|
| An envelope (‘to absorb’) of NK (chemical symbols for nitrogen and potassium, ‘two fertiliser elements’) in LAY (‘set’). | ||
| 24 |
See 5
|
|
Finished this, thought there were some clunky surfaces, but good on the whole…struggled with ‘rough’ as ‘draft’ and ‘ah’ as ‘cute’. Liked “FIREARM”. 28a got misdirected and didn’t think of habit as clothing. Hadn’t heard of “ATHLONE”, but got it from the structure.
Thank you PeterO for the blog and Brummie for the puzzle
This is my highest ever @. I thought this was good Monday fare. Thank you to Brummie and PeterO for a pleasant way to spend a sleepless night. My favourite was URBAN MYTH. Night night 💤
My favourite was ROMPERS as I didn’t see it hidden until after I got it, I did have all the crossers. I didn’t get as far as decAGON in my months, so I’m glad it was OCT. LOI was MENORAH. I had THEIR AH bit, but was wondering about pieces, M?N, had to write it horizontally to see it. I know about menorah, but it’s not a word that springs to mind
Thanks both
My sole quibble: I didn’t think a mouth was an organ. Otherwise good fun; only the two UK clues (ATHLONE & SASSENACH) needed research.
Thanks Brummie & PeterO.
Thanks Peter O.
Like Pauline in Brum my fav was URBAN MYTH.
Pauline@2 are you a Brummie?
Toyed with DECAGON before OCTAGON had to be it. Favourite was the “minor habit”.
Thanks PeterO for the parsing of my LOI MENORAH – hadn’t a clue.
Thanks Brummie, too
thanks P and M! LOI was MENORAH, at first I toyed with MONARCH then I remember I was Jewish.
26a ON A ROLL – ‘playing a character’ – better parsed separately: ‘playing’ = ON; ‘a’ = A; ‘character’ soundalike ROLE = ROLL
7d ALOOFLY – ‘in a rush’ – better parsed separately: A charade of LOO (‘ladies, say’) in A (‘in a’) plus FLY (‘rush’).
It was quite a long way into reading these clues to get a toehold, then it all came together nicely.
FrankieG – blogging these puzzles is surprisingly time-consuming, I’m not surprised everyone uses their own shorthand, plus if you go back to the earlier blogs and compare, all the recent blogs are positively verbose. We’re volunteers trying to get something out quickly without a style guide or any requirements to follow, at odd times depending on our time zones. I know my next blogs are going to be later because I’m in UK and putting something together in the wee small hours isn’t going to leave me functioning next day.
Thank you to PeterO and Brummie for an entertaining puzzle.
I really scratched my head before getting MENORAH TOO.
[paddym@5 good question. I am a Stokey by birth, studied and then lived in Manchester for 24 years, and have lived in Brum since 2006. My accent is sort of posh northern i.e. the Stoke pronunciation of (say) “book” to rhyme with “ook” was educated out of me by the nuns and is now “buck”. How about you?]
Enjoyable puzzIe but I could not parse 16d, 23d.
New for me: ATHLONE.
Thanks, both.
Shanne@10 – thanks for the insider perspective of being a blogger. I really appreciate all the time and effort that all of you put into your blogs – it has been so helpful and educational for me as a solver.
Okay, I’m off for a walk now before it gets too hot – it reached 29C here yesterday.
Pauline in Brum.@11. Know what you mean about the accents, as a hemispherically-challenged (Antipodean) linguist, but follow the northern ones too, and what the nuns did, to many of us down here as well. Glad I didn’t write with my left hand.
[michelle@12, Aren’t you a Taswegian? It’s been a (relative) heatwave down there lately. Agree with your comment in response to Shanne.
Shanne@10. Thank you for your commitment, and your blogging has been superb. But you are all volunteers and I, for one, am very grateful. Please don’t leave sleep over it. 🙂 ]
I enjoyed the constructions though it felt like a lot of anagrams at first but that’s because I solve in numeric order so encountered 2d, 3d and 4d in a row. BROUGHT was a cracking start to the puzzle, along with OLYMPIC, URBAN MYTH and the misdirect with NANCY Sinatra. Some of the surfaces were rather questionable – MAYFAIR, I’m looking at you in particular.
Thanks Brummie and PeterO
GDU@4: you are going to get yourself in trouble describing ATHLONE as a UK clue! I found that when in Ireland it is very helpful to make it known early that I am an Aussie and not from the UK – especially not English. It’s similar in Scotland: Aussie, not a SASSENACH. Fine puzzle – good Monday fare. Thanks, Brummie and PeterO.
Thanks Brummie for an enjoyable Monday. It goes without saying that I started with the wrong month for 25a and needed the crossers to correct it. Needed the wordfinder for 8d: couldn’t think of anything but MONARCH for that set of crossers, which obviously wasn’t right.
Shanne @10 I assumed FG @8&9 was simply offering an alternative parsing? I’m pretty sure that everyone here values the incredible work the bloggers do for this community.
Trademark solid Brummie puzzle with top ticks for ROMPERS, LANKY & REMBRANDT
Cheers P&B
TassieTim @ 16, I’ll try to be more careful. 😉
I can never remember the difference between UK, British Isles & Great Britain. I hope I haven’t upset anyone.
Postmark @15. Miss direct with Nancy Sinatra? Shame on you. 🙂
And for a blast from the past (without Lee Hazlewood)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbAM2HGGCVY
That’s a fair challenge, pm. I suspect Frank probably sold more records than his first wife but I should not have fallen into the trap of making the assumption.
Geoff down under @19 not understanding why including Ireland in those terms is offensive to the Irish is rather like not understanding the difference between New Zealand and Australia, but far, far worse.
On topic, I liked urban myth and some others for the surfaces, but disliked octagon because both the definition and wordplay were ambiguous. I consider it important that when you have understood both correctly the answer should be beyond doubt.
[Thanks PostMark@21. I didn’t know there was a Nancy Sinatra, mère, first wife, lived to 101, died 2018, after 50 years not remarrying and staying friends apparently. I couldn’t find anywhere that she was a singer. I only know of Nancy Sinatra fille..]
[ paddymelon@14 – it’s true, I am from the Antipodes but I’m a Victorian not a Taswegian (that’s a new word for me 😉 ) aka Tasmanian. I’m originally from Melbourne and I’ve been travelling the past 2+ years, mainly England, Wales, France, Italy. At the moment I am in classic Tuscan countryside – it is very beautiful here and the weather has been quite warm the past week or so. ]
Thanks PeterO and hear hear to what michelle@12 said regarding this community’s gratitude for our wonderful volunteer bloggers, like PeterO and Shanne. I’d find having to solve and come up with full parses under time pressure quite stressful I think.
Thanks also to previous posters for the discussion.
I enjoyed untangling this one and particularly liked the already-praised URBAN MYTH at 15a, as well as ALOOFLY at 7d and MENORAH at 8d. I hadn’t heard of SASSENACH at 17a so had to work that out from the crossers and wordplay, but it’s a lovely word!
Thanks very much to Brummie (and Pauline in Brum@11 for explaining her moniker).
GDU @4: I parsed 14d as a mouth organ is an example of a musical organ, not that a mouth is an organ. Which I agree, I don’t think it is, though I am no anatomist.
I like the policy of varying the Monday setters a bit, and I enjoyed this. BROUGHT was good, with “delivered” misleadingly suggesting a homophone. FIREARM was great with a clever surface.
Which Burnham is intended in URBAN MYTH? Is it Burnham-on-Sea, at the mouth of the famous River Parrett (see recent Maskarade)?
JinA @25, 17a is indeed a lovely word. I believe the origin is Latin – in the fifth century the Romans advised the British they they were leaving, and warned them to look out for the “Saxones”, which became SASSENACHs.
I agree with FrankieG’s suggestions @8 and 9 re ON A ROLL and ALOOFLY. (Shanne @10: surely part of the interest of this site is comparing how we interpret clues, and like Bodycheetah @18 I don’t think this in any way implies criticism of the bloggers.)
Many thanks Brummie and PeterO.
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.” Good level for a Monday, with some slightly odd surfaces which probably helped make the clue easier. As Brummie intended, I spent a long time thinking of Frank instead of Nancy. SASSENACH was my favourite. Thanks Brummie and PeterO.
Mouth organ. I asked google the question earlier today and I thought it may have been resolved by now, but I found several sites which said much the same thing:
The main organs that make up your digestive system are the organs known as your gastrointestinal tract. They are: your mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine and anus.
paddymelon@29
REED ORGAN
mouth
GDU sees it as a gap! 🙂
Lord Jim@27
I don’t think this in any way implies criticism of the bloggers
Agree with you. We all have enormous appreciation for our bloggers who
offer so much voluntary service.
Good Monday crossword, I thought, even though a dnf – I impatiently revealed ROMPERS (which I’m sure I’d have got eventually) and MENORAH (which I’m not so certain about).
No problem with mouth=ORGAN; slightly surprised to see GRAND PIANO defined by Joanna, which I’d have expected to mean more a badly-tuned upright piano as found in some pubs etc.
SASSENACH was originally a derogatory term used by Gaelic speakers to refer to non-Gaelic-speaking lowland Scots and English; now it tends to be used by any Scot to refer specifically to the English. ‘Teuchter’ is a word used by lowland Scots to refer to Highlanders in a similar mildly derogatory fashion.
Thanks PeterO and Brummie.
Nothing to add here, pleasant fare for a Monday. Thanks both.
Thanks Brummie and PeterO
FOI was GRAVITY @5a. Well it would, wouldn’t it? Oh well…
Thanks due to Brummie and PeterO today, and to setters and bloggers in general. Hope you all know you’re appreciated!
Fun puzzle with a motley collection of vocabulary and some entertaining constructions.
My favourites were BROUGHT, URBAN MYTH, TENANCY and ROMPERS.
I agree with FrankieG’s parsings @ 8,9.
Although SASSENACH is used by Scots as a term of disparagement, ‘Sassanach’ is standard Gaelic for ‘English’, just as the corresponding Welsh word is ‘Saesneg’. The obvious question is why Saxon and not Anglian? Most surviving Old English texts are written in the West Saxon dialect, but modern English is derived largely from the Mercian dialect, which was Anglian – so ‘English’ is an appropriate name for the language, despite its transformation by Old Norse and Norman French. Perhaps the Celtic words date from the period when Wessex was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Incidentally, the name of Germany in Finnish is Saksa 🙂
Thanks to S&B
Lord Jim@27. URBAN MYTH. Burnham. Very presumptuous of me to comment from downunder, but that clue tickled me because I guessed that the Burnham G/ground was not a cricket ground, and I have almost no idea about soccer/football or their grounds, Brilliant clue with the Sunday cricket finals.
Is this the Burnham? Burnham F.C. is a non-League football club based in Burnham in Buckinghamshire, near Slough.
31#
Couldn’t agree more re Joanna
Gervase has beaten me to the Celtic information, so he saves me from writing it all again.
Sassenach is quite well know here in Finland, as it is heard a lot in a British television programme, the English name of which I can’t remember, but it’s called Matkantekijä (the ‘Journey maker’) here.
Thanks also for mentioning Saksa for Germany.
As it’s my 70th birthday today, you must indulge me if I bore you with the information that countries and languages are very often the same word in Finnish. Saksa (with a capital) is Germany; saksa is German language. Englanti ja englanti, Ranska ja ranska, Espanja ja espanja ….
Sorry, I’m going out now.
I have to admit that my first answer in was FAIRY TALE for 15a. It had the YT, and I was guessing there was a famous-in-England Burnham FAIR, though I wasn’t quite sure where the ALE came from. TARANTULA disabused me of that one!
PS Surely a piano is a Goanna.
Surely it has to be this Burnham 🙂
“Oh golly, oh gosh, come and lie on the couch
With a nice bit of posh
From Burnham-on-Crouch”
Ian Dury & the Blockheads Billericay Dickie
Gaelic speaker; can confirm that Sassenach (or rather, Sasannach, in the current spelling) isn’t derogatory but just the ordinary term for a person from England, or Sasainn. A slightly pejorative term for English-speakers, including other Scots, is Luchd na Beurla. And there’s also na Goill, or Lowlanders, or a general term for strangers/foreigners. Diana Gaboldon has a lot wrong.
Happy birthday Anna!
[Gervase @35 and Anna @38: Educational and entertaining as always. Germany is a particularly fascinating country as the Finns name it after the Saxons, we name it after the Germani, the French after the Alemani and the Italians (“Tedesco”) via a route shared with the German’s own name, Deutschland (also with common roots to Dutch). So it seems everyone who had some sort of interaction with the mixture of tribes based in the area chose to name the country after a different grouping. More modern interactions pick up the German’s own name, hence the Japanese “doitsu” for an approximate pronunciation of “Deutsch”.]
Good start to the week.
I liked the surfaces for URBAN MYTH and OLYMPIC, the wordplay to give BEHAVIOUR, and my LOI, the well-hidden ROMPERS. I’ve only seen this as referring to children’s clothing but here in the ODE is a description referring to adults: a one-piece outer garment for adults, typically worn as overalls or as sports clothing: cashmere bodysuits and alpaca-jersey rompers. Anyone else come across this?
Thanks Brummie and PeterO, and Happy Birthday to Anna @38.
Thank you Bodycheetah and Robi
And Jack of Few Trades @ 43, excellent comment. (It’s deguo with rising tone on the de, in Chinese, if I remember correctly)
I am going out now, invited to a restaurant (!!!). I never go to restaurants.
Anna @38, I know nothing about Finnish but the cryptic in the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) on March 29 had a number of answers which were Danish words which were also English words. The Danish words were solutions to the clue and had to be translated to English before entry to the grid. The words “Danish” and “Google Translate” were (normal) answers in the grid. For example there was Rotter (Danish) entered as Rats (English), Smoking (Danish) entered as Tuxedo (English) and Bro (Danish) entered as Bridge (English), the last of which I knew from the TV series starring the marvellous Sofia Helin as Saga Noren.
I’m sure linguists would be able to pick holes in it, but I thought it was a novel idea for a crossword and I can’t remember seeing anything like it before.
Anna, penblwyn hapus 🥳🥳
23d Minor point – think definition should be ‘as a beanpole is’
Maybe it’s an age thing, but anyone who remembers searching for Radio Luxembourg on an old “wireless” will no doubt have seen Athlone (and Hilversum) on the tuning dial, perhaps not knowing it was in Ireland.
Is the OS in OSCAR (13a) – ‘rather large’ – OS as in ‘outsized’?
Very enjoyable, with some amusing misdirections (my fave two: I spent a fair while messing about with synonyms for “frank” before remembering his daughter, and tried really hard for ages to work two Fs into 7D before “loo” dawned on me!)
ROMPERS as a “minor habit” made me grin, as did REFER.
I echo Shanne, Michelle, Julie and others regarding the bloggers: you guys and your brilliantly lucid explanations are what make this site so wonderful!!
Thank you PeterO for yet another cracking blog,
thank you Brummie for a fun start to the week
– and Happy Birthday Anna!
Scraggs @ 50, yes. I’ve remarked more than once in the past that I’ve disagreed with OS being clued as “huge”. So I’m pleased to see a more restrained “rather large” used here. Huge sizes, here at least, are 3XL to 6XL, say.
GDU@50 – thank you.
[JofT @43: Its interesting how many different exonyms there are for ‘German’ – as well as those you list, the Russian word is ‘nemetskiy’, with cognate words in the other Slavic languages and even the completely unrelated Hungarian. And it’s ‘vokiškas’ in Lithuanian]
Happy Birthday Anna!
Another massive thank you to the bloggers from me. Without your explanations for some of the parsing I would have given up trying to do cryptic crosswords!
If it”s about pre-Christian ritual and travelling back in time, Anna @38, it sounds like Outlander (and I do hope they finish filming it). And happy sepdecade.
GDU @52: size isn’t everything, but I learned the other day that Ehren Painter, a tighthead prop who plays for Exeter, wears a 7XL shirt. Some might call this a medium sized tent!
Thanks to Brummie and PeterO for a pleasant night and morning.
Some childhood summers circa 70 years ago were spent on my grandfather’s farm at Brideswell, and I was sometimes taken by my uncles to a certain watering hole in Athlone. Where painted on the wall on was:
‘Athlone lies at Ireland’s centre,
‘Tis a fact that is well-known,
And in the centre of that centre,
Lies The Castle Bar, Athlone.’
Also famous for the viral post-WW2 urban myth that Hitler had been seen in Athlone on a bicycle. That detail was the clincher, of course.
Funny what sticks!
Thanks setter and blogger – and totally agree with those expressing appreciation of our tireless bloggers above.
Today I learned that Joanna is Cockney rhyming slang for GRAND PIANO, which I don’t see having been spelled out by anyone yet (I admittedly skimmed some of the earlier comments). But that answer could not have been anything else, so in it went. I also hadn’t heard of the Irish place name (my LOI) but I assembled it per the very clear instructions given.
[I did this puzzle beside a pool in Florida. We’re on a poorly timed vacation, as Chicago happens to be experiencing unseasonably warm weather that we’re missing; it’s only a few degrees short of poolside weather there right now too. Also note that this vacation only partly explains my absence from these pages of late–when I have nothing to add, I say nothing, and for the past couple weeks I’ve come here to find that it has all already been said.]
We have both a piano roll and a John McCormack recording of “That Tumbledown Shack in Athlone.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJn5T2p92c
(McCormack was born there.)
mrpenney @60; joanna is cockney rhyming slang for piano; so all types can be envisaged.
Similar to you mrpenney@60, I enjoy reading the comments but everything I could say has already been said.
Thanks S&B
Thanks everyone for your birthday wishes.
(Just got back home).
Thanks for the blog, good Monday puzzle, very friendly grid with each first letter checked.
Happy Birthday Anna, base 16 is far more natural for calculating your age so you are only 46.
Very satisfying solve. Athlone and Sassenach were both new to me (I had to Google them up to convince myself), as was the Joanna bit. We Americans learn new Cockney rhyming slang every day! Also, I very confidently wrote in DECAGON before figuring out I was off the mark!
Thanks, Brummie and PeterO.
Enjoyed the solve. Enjoyed the blog. Particularly enjoyed the languages etc comments.
Hopefully we can keep post#70 free for a while to enable Anna to celebrate properly.
I hope that this week is an exception to the rule (if there be such a rule) that Monday’s puzzles are gentler than the rest of the week. I thought this was quite difficult. I thought I was stuck multiple times, but it slowly and satisfyingly yielded.
There were two jorums for me: sassenach and Athlone. I wasn’t crazy about the indicator for 28ac (ROMPERS), but I loved the misleading definition. I have a vague memory of having heard of a joanna being a piano, but it certainly didn’t come to mind quickly.
Enjoyed that. Thanks to Scraggs @50 and GDU @52 for the extra info re OS – didn’t know that crossword abbreviation before, couldn’t make sense of the parsing for Oscar without the comments. Over/outsized.
Thanks Brummie and Peter O
Came to this extremely late today, but thought it was the perfect example of what a good Monday Guardian Cryptic challenge should be in every way. Last one in MENORAH. And I’ve just managed to get my twopennyworth in before midnight strikes and I turn back into a pumpkin…
Anna@38 – Matkantekijä = Outlander – 🎂 – Zorionak zuri!
Bodycheetah@40 – If you hadn’t posted it, I would’ve. 😉
Far too late for anyone to read this, but ROMPERS always brings Winston Churchill to mind
Sassenach does not mean English, it means lowlander. I am Scottish and a sassenach.
Thank you setter and blogger. I love reading fifteen squared to find out from the bloggy how I arrived at solutions and to be reminded that at 82 I still have plenty to learn. 11 was new word for me.
Also impedance doesn’t mean restraint