Guardian 29,393 / Brummie

62 comments on “Guardian 29,393 / Brummie”

1. I didn’t find it easy to get onto Brummie’s wavelength today. First pass revealed three of the four letter clues and nothing else! And then the fourth four letter word. Not a great start. But everything else gradually fell into place with the delightful PEREGRINE FALCON LOI as I spent too long thinking POWER was part of the fodder and ONCE part of the anagrind. I had ticks for POLEMIST, NEPHEW, TESSELLATION, ORDURE, SWEATSHIRT and NONENTITY.

   Eileen, I’m not sure IT’S is being reversed in JETTISON; I think Brummie is using turning as an anagrind.

   Thanks Brummie and Eileen

2. Thanks, PostMark – you’re right, of course: careless error, which I’ll correct now!

3. Gosh – not like me to be Mr Pernickety, Eileen, but the amended parse now appears to read as an anagram of IT’S ON. That might just be how I’m reading the italics. It is only the IT’S that’s being anagrammed; the ON was correctly parsed first time around as ‘about’

4. Thanks Brummie and Eileen
   Several people namechecked – including Lily James, who I had never heard of. Quite pleased to remember PLATH though!
   NEPHEW my favourite.

5. Oh dear – third time lucky, I hope. 🙁

6. Thank you Eileen for your excellent blog. Lucky you to have Brummie on a Monday.
   Was pleased to see a few females get a gong today, Lily James, Iolanthe, Boudicca, and Sylvia Plath, and even PEREGRINE FALCON. I never knew that the falcon is the female, bigger and faster than the male, the tiercel.

   Thanks to Brummie’s cluing, with a modicum of GK I was able to solve this without aids, except for LENT LILY, as the answer was unknown to me. I guessed it had to be a lily, and then I found ‘lent’, and the penny dropped for ”advanced’. Didn’t need to know the actor, fortunately. (Sorry Lily James.)

   Liked STATUESQUE for the mental work out. David who? Saint David? Turkey’s capital? I didn’t think that Ankara or lira would work. Had another look at the indicator “oddly”. No it’s not an alternate letter clue, it’s an anagram!

   My favourite was NONENTITY for the surface/wordplay, and JETTISON for the misdirection, thinking that the craft had to be nautical.

7. Nice steady solve. Brummie’s definitely growing on me. Top ticks for NEPHEW, IRREGULARITY & STATUESQUE

   Never heard of the daff or the actor but got there in the end with some googling to confirm

   Cheers B&E

8. It’s (it’s)* + on. Oh I see PM’s said it 🙂
   Nice mundy jaunt from the Brum.And nice to get a Dock of the Bay reminder, great sound. Thanks BnE.

9. Very tough puzzle. Maybe I was not on the setter’s wavelength.

   Favourites: MOPER, NEPHEW.

   I could not parse 15d.

   New for me: POLEMIST but I guessed it must be a variant of ‘polemicist’; LENT LILY; LATH = a thin flat strip of wood.

   Thanks, both.

   muffin@4 and paddymelon@6 – Lily James was very good in a 2021 BBC TV series of The Pursuit of Love based on the Nancy Mitford novel.

10. It is of course a complete and utter myth that Iron Age chariots had scythes on their wheels. There is not a shred of historical or archaeological evidence to support it, and plenty to contradict it. The clue still gave me a smile though!

11. Thanks Brummie and Eileen!
    Great puzzle! Excellent blog!
    JETTISON (Not again?)
    Def: Abandon
    (The clue could be read as an extended def in my opinion).

12. Andy in Durham @10 don’t spoil that image, I’ve several times wanted to fit SCYTHEs wheelchair wheels to deal with cars parking on pavements and putting me plus wheelchair in the road to get past.

    Chewy, but enjoyable.

    Thank you to Eileen and Brummie.

13. Nice one today. Took a while to complete but entirely satisfying. Good anagrams. Liked STALLONE and IOLANTHE. Thank you Brummie and Eileen.

14. Unexpectedly hard for a Monday, but I’m not complaining. A collection of less clichéd people today: Sly STALLONE, Sylvia Plath, LILY James, OTIS Redding – and POLEMIST was new. It took me ages to sort out the right fodder for SWEATSHIRT and PEREGRINE FALCON, and to stop trying to make Fiesta=car in CARNIVAL (I drive one). I failed to parse IRREGULARITY altogether.

15. [And I liked the way PEREGRINE FALCON fell from the top to the bottom in the middle of the grid. I’ve heard of falcons swooping on their prey, but I now know their dive is called a ‘stoop’, and can be at speeds up to 240mph and 25gs.
    There are probably solvers here who are falconers, or who at least know a lot more than I do, but what I learnt today has been a real eye-opener. 🙂 ]

16. [Shanne@12. Oh, how infuriating! SCYTHEs are the way to go. And if we read about it in the news, we didn’t hear it here. I’m looking for a James Bond-type device to flick out of my walking stick and trip up the electric skateboard and bicycle riders on our footpaths.]

17. Mystified by the Boudicca reference. It seems that the scythe image is a 19th cent. invention.

18. TESSELLATION is an anagram of ‘satellites’ followed by ‘on’.
    “…satellites moving on” would have been a neater construction, I thought.

19. I’m another who’d never heard of Lily James; not that it proved a problem. It wouldn’t have helped, but I can never get used to “actor” as gender neutral. Anyway, a good challenge and lots to enjoy. With thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

20. Nice one. I liked the ambiguity of ‘sort’ in the clue for MOPER and ‘type’ in that for POLEMIST.

    I’ll second PostMark’s choice @1, plus IRREGULARITY – splendid surface for this (unlike a few others 🙂 ).

    Andy in Durham @10: I missed the (erroneous) connection with blades on chariot wheels, so I was a bit puzzled by the reference to the Iceni leader, but it had to be SCYTHE.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

21. I’m with you nuntius @19… I kept trying to fit Sid in there somewhere.

22. Difficult to get started, I thought, but an enjoyable solve.

    Once PEREGRINE FALCON was in, that opened up many other possibilities. I enjoyed the other long anagram for TESSELLATION, the surface for SWEATSHIRT (very topical for the upcoming UK election), and the wordplays of JETTISON and STALLONE. Nuntius@19, just watch the Oscars and BAFTAs for lots of actresses. I expect sooner or later they will change to ‘female actors’, accompanied by male actors.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen (and the ‘scythe’ contributors).

23. [nuntius @19: The gender neutral use of ‘actor’ is Grauniad house style, though not all female thesps object to ‘actress’ and none refuse to accept awards with the feminine tag! It is perhaps the one profession where there is some justification for separate words, since male players usually take male roles and females female ones, at least in naturalistic pieces.

    No such problem in Italian, where feminine forms abound – ‘doctoressa’, ‘professoressa’ etc are standard. And in French, conversely, some feminists complain that words like ‘président’ and ‘capitaine’ are always masculine, irrespective of the sex of the job holder]

24. Me @23: That should have been ‘dottoressa’, of course 🙁

25. The thing about the chariot wheels is a myth – but nearly everyone knows it, so I think it’s a legitimate way of cluing SCYTHE.

    I was baffled a little while ago by actor=TEMPLE. Correct Guardian house style, but the actor in question hasn’t acted since the 1930s and would almost certainly have described herself as an actress.

    Gervase@23: French grammar allows for some sexist jokes, like the one for remembering the gender of certain nouns: all virtues are feminine except for “le silence”.

26. Excellent puzzle. Consistently “chewy”. LOi LATH. SIR GIT< – a clear reference to Jacob Rees-Mogg.
    oed.com dates POLEMIST to 1825, POLEMICIST to 1864. The newcomer eclipsed the old-timer in 1945.

27. 13a & 5d solved.

    No idea for any of the others.

28. LENT LILY is not a term I’d heard of, and the only James actor I could think of was Sid, which didn’t fit. I needed Google for that one.

    FALCON, CARNIVAL, CRUSADER, and even OTIS (from the film) are all cars. I got a little excited almost seeing Tesla and Moped in the answers, but I think I need to calm down and stop seeing things that aren’t there.

29. Gervase @23 re ‘Grauniad house style’ – I’m reminded of a Guardian clue in 2008 (I’ve just looked it up) in my first few months of blogging Guardian puzzles: ‘Diplomat’s wife in the morning gets fish on frock (12)’.

    I agree with gladys @25 re SCYTHE.

30. I took a while to get going, so did the killer sudoku instead. When I returned, suitably refreshed, CRUSADER leapt out of the page, and the ultimate R helped me to get the stooping bird at 5d.

    Last in was TIGRIS, which was really much more obvious than that implies. Favourite was Reggie Perrin’s middle name at 14a.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

31. Enjoyed this one. Thank You to B&E.
    An interesting grid of a bank of Hs. Is this a regular feature of Bank Holiday puzzles ?

32. Liked the puzzle, thought it was pitched just right.

    I said the other day regarding abbreviations that I thought a better criterion than “It’s in Chambers” was “It’s in common use”, so to be consistent with that, commonly-believed facts, such as today’s with SCYTHE, should be acceptable even if they’re not actually true. A qualifier in the clue would be perfect.

    Had to look up LILY James. [Came home to find Sid in our living room once when I was a kid – my father knew him.]

33. That was a struggle but got there in the end.

    I have to kvetch a little about 6D. Not only have I never heard of the flower (is it well known? I have heard of very few flowers!), but also like many others am not familiar with the work of Ms. James. And with all due respect to her, looking at her body of work on IMDb, she has not been in anything I would ever watch. Surely there are “fairer” ways to clue ‘lily’?

34. Thought there were some absolutely stonking clues offered up by Brummie today – TESSELLATION, IOLANTHE, IRREGULARITY, STALLONE and STATUESQUE to name but a few. Held up towards the end by the unknown other name for the daffodil and therefore the last to yield NE quarter.
    And I do rather like the word Peregrination – once did a bit of family history research for a friend and turned up an individual called Peregrine, who subsequently very much lived up to his name as he restlessly moved from place to place.
    One of my favourite walking memories of the Yorkshire Dales was of suddenly spotting Malham TARN in the distance, too…

35. Adding to my post@11
    JETTISON
    If the ‘abandon craft‘ in the clue is taken as the def, then the ‘craft‘ does double duty. It’s not Brummie-like.

    Collins has this entry under JETTISON:
    If you jettison something, for example, an idea or a plan, you deliberately reject it or decide not to use it.
    The Government seems to have jettisoned the plan.

36. I’m really quite surprised that so many commenters have not heard of Lily James – she’s starred in lots of major films and television shows over the last dozen years or so. As to “actor” for both male and female performers, this is indeed the Guardian style, but it often doesn’t extend to the crossword, as in one of my all-time favourite clues:

    Actress was less inclined to sketch Robin and Maurice Gibb, but…? (4,9) (Paul, 27,523)

    Surely the most famous image of Boudicca / Boadicea is her statue by Westminster Bridge in the scythed chariot. No doubt not historically accurate but I don’t think that matters.

    Many thanks Brummie and Eileen.

37. KVa @35

    My sincere apologies for not properly reading your comment @11. JETTISON has well and truly proved my Nemesis today!
    I was so busy hastily correcting and recorrecting the blog before any more commenters could point out the reversal error that I completely failed to notice that I had inexplicably underlined ‘craft’ – quite unintentionally: as you rightly say, that would involve double duty.
    I will now amend the oversight – I just wish I could expunge the entire entry!

38. Enjoyable puzzle but I’d never heard of a Lent Lily?

39. Didn’t know Lily, but I was fondly reminded of Sid James. Thought it was quite tough today.

40. Lord Jim @36

    Did you notice that I’d given a link to the statue?

41. Gervase@23: thanks. It has most definitely gone out of fashion to refer to “actress”: a common term when I were a lad. Oh well, I will just have to remember that “actor” could refer to either gender, and avoids the minefield which is gender fluidity (!)…As to which, Donatello also sculpted a famous David of course, though rather camp in contrast to Michaelangelo’s version.

42. Lord Jim @ 36 That would be Drew Barrymore

43. [Eileen
    Your link to the Boudicca statue says that she was usually referred to as Boadicea in Victorian times. I’m sure she was Boadicea when I was at school, and I’m not that old!]

44. Correct, endwether @42!

    Eileen @40: so you did, sorry! (Though the photo in that link doesn’t actually show the scythes.)

45. Er… is it ok to answer these on here? If not, I’ll hold on Eileen’s. Don’t want to spoil the fun.

46. Lord Jim @44 – I know. I was disappointed!

47. endwether @45 – be my guest. I wasn’t intending to set a puzzle: I thought the answer was obvious. I was just drawing attention to the appalling definition!

48. [So it’s a holiday in Britain too? Huh. Here, it’s Memorial Day, which was originally specifically memorial of the Union soldiers deceased in the Civil War. The original date (May 30, if I recall correctly) was chosen because it was the anniversary of no particular battle. It’s now observed on the final Monday in May.]

    I agree with those who found the puzzle tricky, but I did enjoy it, and I did finish it. I did most of it during a bout of insomnia, abandoning the upper right when I finally started feeling sleepy. Finished that pretty quickly after waking up again. Anyway, maybe it was because my brain wasn’t switched on, but when the first clue I looked at last night was “Name after Salt Lake (4)”, all I could think of was, “um, Utah? Oh, wait–this is a cryptic.”

49. Thanks Brummie. Any thoughts of an ‘easy Monday’ were quickly jettisoned on my first pass through the clues. Nonetheless I managed to solve this but I needed the ‘check button’ a few times to confirm/deny my guessing. My favourites were CRUSADER, NEPHEW, NARY, JETTISON, and TARN. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

50. Definitely felt tougher than the usual Monday fare. Maybe that’s because it’s not a “proper” Monday, being a Bank Holiday across the UK, so we’re expected to have more time to do it…

    But a very enjoyable puzzle and great blogging – thanks!

51. I like Brummie and this was tougher than usual but some really great clues as per Eileen’s selection. I thought 22 down was a superb clue. LOI ‘carnival’ as missed the Roman numeral for 4 while trying to fit something that could hold ordure – and l was pretty sure that wouldn’t be a cardigan! Fortunately, it wasn’t. Thanks very much Eileen and Brummie

52. Reference my admiration (above) for 22 down, l do admire short, snappy, 4 letter clues. My favourite from a few years ago, from Paul l think: Season is seasona

53. Lots to like in this one, but I especially appreciated the misdirection with Lily James (a favourite actor of mine) after having spent a long time scratching my head over Dean, Stewart, Earl Jones, Cagney and others. Also the flower was new to me, as were POLEMIST (as opposed to polemicist) and LATH, so some welcome learning today. Thanks Eileen and Brummie.

54. A triple delight today: An excellent puzzle from Brummie, a superb and informative blog from Eileen (I learn so much from the extras that you add), and a lively and fun set of comments from the solvers. Thanks, all.

    Favourites were 5d PEREGRINE FALCON (great anagram) and 14a IOLANTHE. Eileen, I was especially pleased that you correctly labelled it a comic opera. My father, music director of the Ottawa Savoy Society in the ’80s and ’90s, used to cringe whenever G&S productions were called operettas.

55. cellomaniac @54 – well, I am quite a fan. 😉

56. Found this fair to middling on the difficulty scale. Couldn’t parse “Jettison” at all so thank you to everyone here involved in that…
    Missed “set” as the anagram indicator in 5d
    Solved “Scythe” without understanding the Boudicca connection…
    Know Lily James only because she was in “Baby Driver”.
    Thought 15d was a good clue, very confusing…also re 19d, thought git was merely an unpleasant person, despicable seems a bit strong ..
    Thank you to Brummie and Elaine

57. Paddymelon @ 16

    Your walking stick is that device 🙂
    Please, do use it.

    I found this tough but got there.

    Thanks everyone.

58. Don’t usually do the Monday puzzle but the combination of Brummie and a Bank Holiday made this an irresistible combination. Didn’t manage to finish yesterday but things became clearer this morning particularly in the NE corner. JETTISON remained beyond me however.
    Eileen a delight as ever. Thanks to both her and Brummie for the stimulating workout.

59. mrpenney@48 my first thought was CITY …

60. 25a – TIS is not a reversal of ITS

61. Adam@60 – it was suggested that ‘turning’ meant ‘anagram’, in which case it works.
    It looks like the ‘Monday Convention’ of difficulty has gone for good (apart from Vulcan last week) – I couldn’t manage much of this. I just hope that Everyman stays where it is!

62. Adam Macer @60 – I don’t recognise your name, so welcome to 15squared – and my apologies if I have missed your earlier comments.
    Re 25 ac: please see comments 1-5 and the subsequent prompt editing of the blog on Wednesday morning.

Comments are closed.