Guardian No 29,749 by Brummie

49 comments on “Guardian No 29,749 by Brummie”

1. Was very pleased with 1ac – and after cracking it thought for a moment I had spotted a further hidden device employing a cunning anagram of “military” plus a D for Department. Nearly. I did think this Brummie was fairly easy by his standard but revelled in learning the meaning of LORIMER and had a good chuckle at DESCARTES. Thought 2d was a bit weak and then realised E’S in the MID(dle) of WEST and that was where the wit was also hiding. Was misled, as intended, by the surface of 11ac and found myself wondering why “Mister“ should be a specific title for a teacher – then twigged that I had mistaken the definition. Fabulous mastery on display (pun intended). Thanks all around.

2. Outwitted outwitted me. Otherwise, reasonably gentle and good fun.

3. Thanks Brummie and manehi
   Nice puzzle. I was pleased to dredge LORIMER from the memory banks. Favourites the neat CREDITOR (I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before, but the search facility here hasn’t found a Guardian example of it clued this way since 2020 at least), and OUTWIT(h)TED!

4. Found this an extremely smooth, satisfying solve today. Held up at the very last by LORIMER which was an occupation I had not come across before. Only knew the word from the Scottish footballer Peter Lorimer who was and still is, I believe, the youngest person to play for Leeds United. And RATTY didn’t easily come to mind as an adjective to describe a Judas. Enjoyed everything else, however…

5. Thanks manehi. We’ve had so many clues lately where ”my” was rendered by ”cor” and I thought that ”blimey” may be also. Didn’t know LORIMER, and ”lor” is not in my dialect. No hope there.
   Favourite was DESCARTES.

6. Such a pleasant crossword to solve. 🙂

7. Had to use a word-finder for LORIMER. I had no idea that’s what it meant. The rest was neatly clued and gettable, and DESCARTES particularly amusing.

8. Echo Tim C @6. In so few words, the greatest acknowledgment of the solving experience, and credit to the setter.

9. Very enjoyable puzzle. Super blog.
   Thanks Brummie and manehi.

   Top faves: CREDITOR, HERESY, PRUSSIC ACID, OUTWITTED, LANYARD and DACHA.

10. Quite a few less-familiar words today: MAGISTER, LORIMER, POMFRET (what I know as Pontefract cakes, I imagine), and the stage direction SOLUS. But no real trouble in finding them.

11. Very pleasant puzzle. Plenty of ticks, but I think OUT WIT(h) TED raised the biggest smile. Didn’t we have HERESY with a rather similar clue very recently?

    I was a bit dubious about 1a because I thought “military” means to do with the army, not the navy. But I expect there’s dictionary support somewhere for it relating to the armed forces generally.

    Many thanks Brummie and manehi.

12. I’m always struck by the way words that seem commonplace to some are obscure / nho to others. I’m not saying LORIMER is a word I’ve ever used in conversation, but it’s very familiar to me – not sure where from. There was a pub by that name in the town where I grew up, but I don’t think I knew then what it meant. Feels like it’s from a character in a Thomas Hardy novel or something.

13. LORIMER? There must be scores of obscure horse-related words lost to the motor car. Otherwise, this was a bit of a romp.
    Thanks both.

14. Isn’t a harness worker a loriner?

    https://www.loriner.co.uk/

15. New for me: LORIMER; SOLUS; POMFRET = a small black rounded confection of liquorice. I only knew this word as being a type of fish.

    I couldn’t parse 19ac or 14d apart from ED or TED = Edward.

16. Ornette @14
    Google AI tells me that the words are interchangeable, with LORIMER being the older form in English. I hadn’t heard “loriner”!

17. I thought the unusual words were well-clued, so everything fell together quite smoothly. MEANTIME was my LOI, where I thought ‘intended’ must be bride or some such. I liked the wordplays for RETICENT, RAPIDS and MIDWEST. Fancy there being a specific word for harness-worker, where LORIMER or loriner seem to be alternative spellings.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi.

18. Thankfully very well crafted given the awkward N/S split grid. Somehow I knew LORIMER but not LOR instead of lawks, lordy, etc. so LOI.
    I thought ‘automatic’ in 13d suggested a lot of the answer (AUt…TIC).

19. I also thought of COR when I saw blimey, so came up with CORIMER. As I had never heard of that word I tried google and found that it means … a harness worker! (I think it is another variation of the same word). That slightly held me up with the rest of that corner until I cracked ADMIRALTY, proving corimer was wrong.

20. I live near Walsall, a saddle making centre, where loriner is used, both in the trade and in place names, like Loriners Grove. The Walsall Leather Museum has many examples of lorinery. Indeed it predated the leather trade. So I think that is the preferred usage.

21. We’ve had cogito clues for good old Réné before, one quite recently I fancy, but the 27ac one set in the past tense was very cute. Some unknowns — the old Don, the harness maker and the lone actor — but all doable. Enjoyed, ta Brum and manehi.

22. 27. A double definition, I suggest. “He had thoughts, so he was” + “a philosopher”.

23. Most enjoyable.
    I remember a time when I used to say that Brummie’s surfaces sometimes weren’t up to much but that was a while ago – not true today: there’s a fine selection here. CREDITOR is particularly good and I’m surprised that I don’t remember seeing it before.
    Other ticks were for PRUSSIC ACID (I liked the use of ‘Cupid’s arc’), LORIMER (I smiled at ‘my’ not being COR this time – I did know the harness-maker), OUTWITTED and LANYARD.
    Many thanks to Brummie and manehi.

24. Took me a while to find Brummie’s wavelength, after that it was a steady but not too easy solve. A “one cup of coffee” puzzle, let’s say. And a lot of lovely smooth surfaces, which I always admire.

    Like many others, LORIMER was new to me (I was also initially misled by CORIMER, with COR having come up quite recently), and POMFRET as anything other than a fish. ADMIRALTY and RATTY were my LOIs, the latter the kind of groaner I expect from Paul.

25. 21a reminds me of an out-take recording from a well-spoken young lady from the 30s or 40s doing a voice test for reading the news on BBC radio: “The time is twelve o’clock Greenwich. Meantime, here is the news…”

26. Thanks both,
    A most enjoyable puzzle. I thought it was quite easy, but maybe I made the coffee a bit stronger this morning.

27. I only learnt POMFRET this year. I thought it was in The Guardian, but it seems it was Julius in the FT in April. Anyway, that was useful. I agree with Muffin @3 about the CREDITOR anagram. I thought I’d have logged that one before.

    This was my smoothest and quickest solve in a while. A couple of barely cryptic clues in U TURNS and DESCARTES, but plenty of entertainment from the simple to the not very difficult. I liked YOUNGSTER, MIDWEST and ADMIRALTY.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi

28. A very straightforward offering from Brummie. I liked 7d

29. [We had finished the Sudoku and the Suguru, so I had a quick look at the Quick puzzle over lunch (I rarely do, as I find them frustrating.) I noticed this clue:
    Being broadcasted (2,3)
    Why not just “being broadcast”?]

30. An enjoyable turn from Brummie. not the most taxing but plenty to entertain. I started off on the wrong tack with COMMANDOS at 1a (COMMA + ????) but eventually hit on the right sort of butterfly! LORIMER was new to me: only heard of it as a surname, but a reasonable guess. And MAGISTER was another new word but again the wordplay made it clear.

    Likes for MIDWEST, ADMIRALTY (once I got there); CONDEMNED; RETICENT; OUTWITTED; STRAIT (this homophone no-one’s going to carp about!); MEANTIME (used “I’M” in the wp twice but “I’M” not bothered!).

    DESCARTES was terribly easy assuming you have the GK – but I guess you need an easy FOI in a good puzzle anyway.

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

31. Great stuff with a good mix of clue types and difficulty. Bit unsure where the D went from the lord for LORIMER (new to me) so cheers to the blog for explaining about lor.

    LANYARD took an age as I abbreviated Arkansas to AK.

    Liked CONDEMNED and PRUSSIC ACID.

    Cheers Manehi and Brummie

32. [muffin@29 – I’m inclined to agree, but whether you’ve hit[ted] upon a definite solecism is a matter for debate. I looked up in Fowler, and it concludes: “…broadcasted, though dubiously recognized in the OED Supp., may be allowed to die.”]

33. I was torn between corimer and lorimer for 4D, but I had the same memory of a footballer Peter Lorimer as Roland@4 and assumed that his surname was derived from a profession.
    21a was my LOI, I really struggled with it until I noticed I’d typed outwttted for outwitted and the elusive I was available.
    As others have said a lovely crossword with smooth surfaces. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

34. [Once there was a horse who was very smart, and he started learning math. He picked up arithmetic like it was nothing, learned geometry like he was Euclid himself, and cottoned onto algebra fairly quickly. But when they tried to teach him Cartesian coordinates, he said, “I hate this! Stop teaching me math!”, and went back to eating hay. Moral: never put DESCARTES before the horse.]

35. 1a Seems we have a part of speech problem with recent = “not long ago.” My not long ago holiday? He died recent?

    Stationman @ 31 AK is the abbreviation for Alaske, so can’t be for Arkansas. Couldn’t AL be Alaska? No, AL is Alabama.

    “If blood be the price of admiralty, lord God we ha’ paid in full” is from a Kipling poem, set magnificently to music by Peter Bellamy, who set many of Kipling’s poems. I find this sentiment a bit hard to swallow, though — is there any way you can “buy” the right to dominate everybody else?

    At a cocktail party, someone asked Descartes if he wanted a martini. “I think not,” he said, and disappeared.

    Thanks, Brummie and manehi.

36. [Descartes went into a bar and ordered a drink. When he was done, the barman asks, ‘are you stopping for another?’ Descartes pauses, says ‘no, I think not’ and disappears].

    I see that Valentine got there first. Thanks all

37. I got all but ADMIRALTY, RATTY, HERESY and AGREE in about 16 mins. For some strange reason the NW corner was the stumbling block, though not too hard once I revealed 1A.

38. [Similarly to Valentine @35: the Canadian provinces have two-letter abbreviations as well, and they’re coordinated so as not to overlap with the US ones. Alberta is AB because Alabama already took AL; similarly, MB for Manitoba because all the other choices were already in use. By contrast, Nebraska switched from NB to NE to accommodate New Brunswick.]

39. mrpenney@34 James Thurber, I think.
    If you prefer ‘ I think therefore I am’ to ‘ Non sum qualis eram’, you are putting DESCARTES before Horace.

40. I, also, was outwitted by outwitted and “here’s why … ?”

41. Lovely crossword – happy to discover meaning of LORIMER – with apologies to DESCARTES, “I’m pink therefore I’m spam” 🙂

42. Valentine @35. It was not long ago / It was recent. Seems fine to me

43. Fun puzzle, not too taxing. I liked PRUSSIC ACID, OUTWITTED and POMFRET best.
    Is the HAWN with its associated gold (AU from authentic) an intentional Nina? Brummie had one in his last puzzle too. Is this his new schtick, rather than themes?
    Cheers, Brum and manehi.

44. [Phitonelly @43
    When watching Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in, it would have been difficult to predict that Goldie Hawn would have by far the most successful subsequent career!]

45. Very late to this – walking on Dartmoor before getting the cryptic up and running. Was held up for a while with my NARKY rather than RATTY.

46. [Please try to coordinate the Cartesian jokes.

    Here’s one: ‘René, you can have either a turnip or a yam with your dinner. But the turnips aren’t fresh so what, therefore, do you think? René? Hello?’]

    [muffin@44: There was a late episode where that little English lady tried to upstage Hawn and Goldie revealed her claws sharpish, showing that she was no daw.]

47. {Alphalpha @46
    Judy Carne? She didn’t do well after the show finished (understatement!)]

48. Took me a while to get into gear, but was very pleasant in the end. Top scores for ADMIRALTY, DESCARTES.

    Thanks both

49. Kicking myself for missing 12a TATTOO and 14d OUTWITTED, both completely gettable. Otherwise all complete, with pleasure

    Favourite 22a DAMASK

    Agree with gtrimprov@22 that 27a DESCARTES is a DD

    2d MIDWEST, is the “s” in “e’s” doing double duty? It’s really “where es is located”

    18d ONENESS, does ONE really equal “only”?

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