Guardian 29,762 – Brockwell

70 comments on “Guardian 29,762 – Brockwell”

1. I can add UPSTART CROW, CROW-BARS and COUNTING CROWS from 26,27 (a great band).
   Nice to see so many of my family members.
   Thanks to Dan and Andrew.

2. Very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Brockwell.
   Great blog. Thanks Andrew.

   RAVEN was my COTD. RICKETIER and BROOKING were other faves.

3. To add to those already mentioned. scare (crow), popinJAY, DAWn, bROOKing.

4. Also Chambers gives MAG as a dialect word for magpie.

5. Found this extremely tricky in places, especially as it took me ages to solve CROW, key to so many others. There also seemed to be a bit of an underlying soccer theme, and many would not have known about Trevor BROOKING with his yellow card waved about him. He wasn’t that type of player, as I remember.
   Needed Andrew for the parsing of NEWSREADER, RAVEN and CONFAB.
   And what exactly happened to yesterday’s FifteenSquared…?

6. Thanks both. Great puzzle, but I thought the reference to golfer Payne Stewart was in doubtful taste, given the bizarre circumstances of his untimely death.

7. Superb puzzle with so many interesting clues including real people. I thought BANANAMAN was top notch, although a stretch for our neighbours probably. Also liked BROOKING and CARRION and all the crow references.

   Ta Brockwell & Andrew.

8. Ignoring the banana can I also make a claim for Crowman from Worzel Gummidge. Oh and Crowfoot(notes).

9. CARRION crow and NUTCRACKER are two other members of the corvid family. Also BANANAMAN had a sidekick, simply known as CROW.

10. Splendid puzzle as per. Took me a while to work out just what 1d was and then plenty of other entries in the grid all made sense. As others have already said, it’s always fun to see a bunch of current references scattered around the clues.

    Roger @6: I did wonder about that reference when I came across it but there is no hint of disrespect in the clue and I am sure I have seen references to others who have passed away more recently than Payne Stewart. Indeed, I was somewhat surprised to see that the incident was 25 years ago.

    Thanks Brockwell and Andrew

11. Found this decidedly dastardly in places. Some superb misdirection – 13d especially – and one or two where I’m still not quite convinced… 23d suggested to me that IA should be above, rather than round, GUAN. And a gaping hole in my GK meant I hadn’t come across Nucifraga, four species of nutcrackers in the crow family, so didn’t fully appreciate the relation between 15d and 1d. Thanks to Brockwell for a strenuous workout, and to Andrew for the expert untangling.

12. Wonderful puzzle – so enjoyable to solve (though I parsed, half-heartedly admittedly, RAVEN incorrectly, relying on ’15’ rather than ‘5’ by assuming that a NUTCRACKER was a mini version of a raven!) That apart, everything fell perfectly and held a connected feel throughout which only enhanced this joyful crossword

    Many thanks to Brockwell

    …and to Andrew (for his correct take on RAVEN!)

13. If we’re going for tenuous references, “Living Too Late” by the Fall (Mark E Smith) begins “Crow’s feet are ingrained on my face”.

    Thanks to Brockwell and Andrew

14. CROW SCARES were a fun feature of my misspent youth 🙂
    Nice to see Mark E Smith but not sure The Fall really did ear-worms – maybe Totally Wired qualifies?

    Top ticks for MAG, STERN & BANANAMAN but I could happily have just given the whole thing one big tick

    Cheers A&B

15. Another very enjoyable offering, pleased to have finished it. Thanks Brockwell and Andrew.

16. Not sure I understand why a couple of comments are about Payne Stewart. Isn’t it just a straightforward reference to mod rocker Rod Stewart?
    RAVEN is a cracking clue. Had to come here to understand the parsing but it is very fair.

17. Clever but mostly beyond me. No idea who this Trevor person was, nor how to parse the revealed answer.

18. Is this part of a series of bird-themed puzzles? I was choughed to finish it as I found it quite tricky.

19. Thanks Brockwell and Andrew

    Brockwell is consistently good as a setter.

    SP @ 16 Payne Stewart appears in 25D.

20. SP@16 – see 25d. (I have no idea why a neutral reference to someone who died >25 years ago could be in poor taste – no-one complains about references to the much more recently-departed Queen Elizabeth).
    A really good and hard crossword. Nearly gave up on the NE corner but glad I persevered. Favourite RAVEN. Like others, hadn’t known NUTCRACKER was a type of CROW.
    Thanks both.

    (I see Simon S beat me to it regarding Payne S)

21. By the time I realised I could post again, all the CROWS had been spotted – a fun theme of which UPSTARTS was my favourite. I didn’t get all of these: I had MONOGRAM for the nho MONOMIAL for some time and revealed RICKETIER which is one of those words that might or might not be in the dictionary but definitely isn’t in common use. The bottom half was mostly complete before the top and I never did parse CROW itself, or identify why ALPHA should be a dog.

    Favourite the superhero – which had to end in MAN or WOMAN, but finding out who it was made me laugh.

22. Great fun! I was slow to get started but managed to make headway.

    ALPHA = top dog: he’s an alpha (male), he’s a top dog; unrelated to literal dogs/packs.

    Faves were AGAMEMNON (AFAICT he was a son of the city of Argos, as well as chief of Mycenae, hence both “Chief” and “of Argos”), MAG, BANANAMAN, BROOKING (clever tie-in), CONFAB, and the lovely RAVEN (got from the checkers, and retroparsed; too clever!).

    I’m not seeing the problem with the Payne Stewart clue. Is it, or the answer NEST, unintentionally allusive in some way?

    RIICKETIER surprised me: no doubt it’s in Chambers, but I’ve never heard of of adjectives or adverbs of three or more syllables taking the ‘er’ form instead of using “more”.

    Thanks both

23. I would have been CHOUGHed to finish this but got stuck in the north-east. Thanks to Brockwell for the challenge and Andrew for the elucidation.

24. Like Gladys @21, I was well and truly overtaken. I, too, liked UPSTARTS, with its reference to one of my favourite programmes. I chuckled at RICKETIER, too -and Judge’s comment @23.

    Many thanks to Brockwell, as ever, for the theme-stuffed puzzle and to Andrew for the blog.

    I’d just like to add that I’ve scheduled a blog of Brockwell’s Special Summer Jumbo puzzle for those who were able to get it (it’s a pity that there was no online version) for 8.00 am tomorrow.

25. I tip my hat to everybody who parsed 13D.

    Wycombe Wanderers is a brilliant spot.

    Much else to like, too many to list and most already mentioned.

26. Like last Friday I was two clues short of completion (I hope I’ve worded that differently enough that I don’t get any replies like one or two I got on that day), but also that was a far, far stronger outcome than I imagined at the outset. I leaned on Word Wizard with a few, too, but this was challenging without feeling like a slog.

    I’ve found this to be an enjoyable week, pitched as it’s been with the difficulty level ramping up at this end of the week, as it regularly ussed to be.

27. Also, while I might be mistaken, I think this is the first Guardian Cryptic I’ve seen where a clue has made reference to Mark E. Smith. I’m all for that.

28. A fun solve, like some others I got a bit stuck in the NE corner. I liked RICKETIER (it’s in Chambers, the ODE and Collins) where the cricket went well with India, the wordplays of FOOTNOTES and DAWN, and the deceptive 15 in RAVEN, where I did spot the parsing, not wishing to CROW. I got POPINJAY fairly early on, which led to the CROW. I didn’t know who Payne Stewart was but that was not necessary to solve the clue.

    This was a bit of a CROWd-pleaser, thanks Brockwell and Andrew.

29. Oh, it’s Friday. This was tough. DNF, I gave up on 10ac, 5d (never heard of him) and 8d. Did not see the theme.

    I couldn’t parse 13d.

    New for me: BANANAMAN, NEPHRON.

30. A very entertaining crossword. Brockwell is now one of my favourite setters, and his puzzles slightly make up for the current absence of Picaroon, of whom he reminds me a bit. Lots of favourites, but particular ticks for SCARES and AGAMEMNON.

    (Eileen @24: I’m not surprised Upstart Crow is one of your favourite programmes. We really like it, and saw the stage show in 2020 just a couple of days before all the theatres closed down.)

    Many thanks Brockwell and Andrew.

31. Nice puzzle, but I think we had discussions some time ago that called into question a couple of the definitions here.

    One was that ravens and crows are both corvids but are not the same as each other.

    The other was that if a usage is constrained to a single idiom, then you should not break it apart and assign meanings to the parts. So “pay the bill” = “foot the bill” but that does not mean pay = foot. The origin of the expression apparently comes from the practice of putting the total at the foot of a list of items, and over time the meaning shifted. We had an extended discussion at one point on how London buses and red buses might refer to the same items, but that does not mean London=red. Chambers says foot the bill = pay the bill, but goes no further, but others do. Just wanted to point out this was an issue here in the past, even if it isn’t with any of the present posters.

32. I could complain that my sphere of GK has very little in common with that of the setter (though I did get Russell) but I could also say that this is the first time I have ever managed all five weekday cryptics, though with a lot of help on this one. So I’ll choose the latter and celebrate.

33. Judge@23 Great minds….. Incidentally, did anyone else search for a Crow-related Nora Ephron film?

34. Petert @33

    Yes.

35. A Raven is not a Crow. Neither is a Jay nor a NutCracker, nor a Magpie.
    They are all Corvids.

36. Ed @35
    We’ve had this discussion before. You are confusing the generic “crow” with specific crows – carrion crows, hooded crows, etc. “Crow” is just the familiar word for “corvid”.

37. Excellent puzzle. My favourite was BANANAMAN.

    (As well as being a marvellous footballer, Trevor BROOKING was also famous for rarely if ever being booked – shown a yellow card – during his long career.)

38. Great stuff which was greatly enjoyed but often taxing. Probably not helped by failing to see how to get CROW so it had to be guessed from clues elsewhere in the grid.

    Trevor BROOKING once did a talk at our school when we were converting to a “sports academy” and he stayed behind for a long time afterwards talking about his England playing days. He was a a very nice man.

    I think my favourite today was BANANAMAN.

39. Well done RabTheCat @32, doesn’t really matter how you get there. Trevor BROOKING was only ever booked once in 634 league and cup appearances.

40. A lovely puzzle with some great surfaces and a few challenges.
    I did not parse CROW or RAVEN, missing the clever separation of 15 in RAVEN.
    BROOKING and BANANAMAN were new to me, both needing UK GK. I guessed them. Similarly, I didn’t make the connection with many of the UK crow related words.
    I liked the ‘couples …. regularly’ device used in CONFAB. I hadn’t seen that before.
    Also liked DAWN, FOOTNOTES, CARRION.
    Thanks to Brockwell and Andrew.

41. Maybe it’s a North America vs UK thing, but no one on this side of the Atlantic would say that they had seen two crows if they had seen a jay and a raven.

42. Interesting to see all of the corvid references pointed out; most completely passed me by, but managed to complete eventually anyway.

    Had to look up a list of famous Trevors!

    Thanks for Brockwell and Andrew.

43. Many thanks to Andrew for an excellent blog and to all you solvers for the nice comments. I’m so pleased that most of you enjoyed the puzzle, as much as I enjoyed writing it. I marvel at these remarkable creatures and occasionally curse them, when they casually unzip my golf bag and steal food from it 🐦‍⬛. B

44. @43 Grecian – tempted to ask what your favourite Fall album is, if that’s not extrapolating too much from a single clue…

45. VinnyD @41
    You may not say that, but you have done, all the same!

    I forgot to thank Brockwell for a very clever puzzle and Andrew for the blog, and explaining RAVEN.

46. [Grecian @43
    You probably know about these, but you may appreciate it anyway!]

47. Clever puzzle. I’d dare say BOOKING may also apply to booking it or running away or cowardly (yellow) along with the yellow card reference?

48. I’m not sure that I’m willing to say that RICKETIER is a word.

    I’ve never heard of Trevor B or yellow cards, or the nutcracker bird or bananaman. I hadn’t heard of the Upstart Crow TV show either, and now I’m jealous of people who get to watch it.

    Lots of fun. Thanks Brockwell, Andrew and muffin for the video link.

49. Very clever. Particularly liked the elegant anagram for NEWSREADERS and the compact wordplay for DAWN and CROW–which took a long time and several of the ones it was referring to! RAVEN was also brilliant once I saw the explanation here, though given DrWhatson’s observation @31 I had thought “well, they were careful to define raven not as crow but as something related”! Perhaps one day we’ll see “My six of diamonds is something black? (6)”

    Speaking of which, I liked FOOTNOTES and was going to say “can’t you say ‘foot the charges’?” and looking for it I found a linguistics article that turns specifically on the idea that you can’t! Another point to DrWhatson@31.

    DNF because of MAG and BROOKING, where neither Trevor nor booking = yellow was familiar.

    Thanks Brockwell and Andrew!

50. Ed@35, muffin@36: indeed I guess it’s like cats. A cat is a domestic cat but it’s also a lion etc. And domestic cat is merely shorthand for a specific breed or cross. There’s not really any specific cat, nor crow, to the layman at least. And muffin@46, that video is fascinating. Loved it. Smart animals!

    Mandarin@37, AlanC@39, Trevor must have been mighty annoyed about that! Just imagine. Would love to see a vid of his reaction…

    HarveyManfrengensen@47, I was expecting that meaning of “yellow” when unravelling the clue, but I must admit that I’ve never heard of the phrase you mention. If it’s a Britishism then it’s one I never came across in my neck of the woods.

51. [Coloradoh!@42, that raises an interesting question: I wonder what each solver’s personal definition of “cheating” is. Word lists? Word finders? Personally, I’m not at all averse to bunging in a vaguely possible word that fits the checkers and hitting the Check button, when I’m running out of steam and am pushed for time (and hence have already given up on a pure solve). Though it drives me nuts that the Guardian app leaves any incidentally correct letters behind when the word is wrong.. I’d much rather it somehow indicated thay the whole word was wrong (flash red or something) and left only the checkers.

    As for word finders based on checkers, I used them in the very early days, but quickly realised that I don’t see the point… might as well just reveal, IMO, in order to continue making progress on crossing clues. It’s highly unlikely that there are going to be two plausible words in the results list that fit, requiring one to use parsing skills to decide between them. Much more likely that there’s going to be only one likely answer that’s obvious when you see it, in which case I just don’t see what reward the word finder effort gives. Though maybe the crow video has the answer – perhaps it’s just fun for some!

    On the other hand, I have no problem looking up an unknown personality or word from the surface; seems a bit silly not to, to me, since the clue won’t be rewarding without that insider knowledge – tho it’s annoying that sometimes the brief info in the search result is enough to give the game away.

    As for word lists such as results for famous Trevors, if I think the answer isn’t the whole solution and there’ll still be some pleasure to be gained from solving the rest of the clue then I’ll do that too.]

52. AP @50
    All of the cats we have had, on first visiting a vet, have been registered as DSH. This stands for “domestic short hair”; AKA, in England at least, as “moggy”!

    The New Caledonian Crows were, I think, the first animals, other than humans, seen to make tools, not just use them. Others have since joined the pantheon.

53. Tough but fair. Thanks both

54. AP@50 – I’m on this side of the pond, probably like you – I think it is an old Americanism – but then I’m old too

55. AP@50, I believe Trevor stormed off in a huff. He was raven mad. Brooking was the anti-Vinnie Jones. Trevor booked once in his career, Jones once booked within 5 seconds of kick-off!
    Good puzzle. I failed to twig MAG or the RAVEN parse. I was going to BRAG about finishing all this week’s puzzles but now I’ll have to eat CROW.
    Happy weekend, one and all, and thanks, Andrew, Brockers/Grecian.

56. I had a bit of a nightmare in the NE, partly because I’d forgotten amateurs was only a tentative (i.e. unparsable) stab at 7D J-C-L so ALPHA was unavailable. Did rolls start in an oven? Was Beethoven’s finale his ninth, or nummer neun to him? A bit desperate, I know. Anyway, I got there in the end. I think a day at The Oval took it out of me. Although it led me more quickly to RICKETIER.

    Bizarre to be offended by the mention of a dead person. My mum’s final week wasn’t ideal, but she still comes up in conversation. It would also be weird to question a word that the setter has used. However, despite the salty comments about RICKETIER (maybe my fave) I don’t think anyone was. It just feels like it after reading a few.

    Thanks Grecian/Brockwell, Andrew and everyone else.

57. Thank you Andrew and Brockwell.

    Like many others my favourite was BANANAMAN, having enjoyed the cartoon as a kid. I guessed it from NAN straightaway, but it took me a long time to figure out the parsing.

    I was quite chuffed with my breakdown of RA-V-EN, V being the shape of an open nutcracker (justified by the theme, I thought). I was happy to come here and see the real parsing.

58. Loved the puzzle—thanks Brockwell! I didn’t think 13D was difficult since I already had the V from VAPID. My favorite was NUTCRACKER—I got a chuckle from that one. Great blog Andrew!

59. Jay @58
    You must be pleased to be included!
    13d wasn’t difficult to solve – it was the parsing that was the problem.

60. Really excellent this one, and the misdirection for RAVEN was superb. Spent ages thinking it has to be that, nothing else fits, only to elicit a fabulous groan when I saw it.

    And 2d truly made my head expand 😃

61. Needed a lot of help to finish this. As is so often the case for me, I didn’t appreciate just how clever this puzzle was until I came to this blog. Lovely to see the reference to Sir Trev. How embarrassed that one referee who booked him must be…!

62. AGAMEMNON was king of Mycenae and also ruled the Argolid, the surrounding area which included the city of Argos ruled by Diomedes. In Book 2 of the Iliad Homer refers to the whole region as Argos. In reality the situation may have been different.

63. WAD was NAAFI slang – a cup of tea and a wad.

64. Petert@33 I do read the comments before commenting but I missed yours – sorry. As for Nora Ephron, apparently a Jay was part of the inspiration for Heartburn!

65. Nobody has mentioned the somewhat symmetrical placement of CRO(w) MAG (agamem)NON in the grid – surely not accidental! As a weak solver, I usually attempt the shorter words first, and with this grid, i always try 19A right away, as it often is theme-related. A well-constructed clue for a short answer is a thing of beauty, and this one was a gem, as were many others duly noted by previous posters.
    Many thanks to Brockwell, and to Andrew for the fine blog. Cheers!

66. Solved about 40%, bludgeoned my way through another 20%, guessed the rest. All in all a great result for me on a Friday!

    My gratitude to both setter and blogger for their painstaking and precise offerings – always!

67. Coming in late this time (but not as a Johnny-come-lately, I hope!) since I put this aside for a couple of days.

    Stuck for a long time on CONFAB, had to partly reveal. And when I put down BRAG I wondered whether the key word at 1d was GAME (‘Brag’ is a card game). But of course it didn’t work for any of the other references.

    RAVEN was another tricky one – certainly I needed CROW and then it took me a while to spot the lift-and-separate (shades of Qaos here!). If only Edgar Allan Poe had got a mention somewhere, I might have got there sooner!

    NEPHRON and BANANAMAN were new to me but well clued. Liked the wp in BANANAMAN.

    But many ‘likes’ – I’ll mention RICKETIER (with the outcome of the ongoing Fifth Test in doubt as I write this, somewhat apposite!); RUSSELL; INNARDS; MAG; CARRION; AGAMEMNON; POPINJAY (needed CROW again for that); UPSTARTS; IGUANA; and others.

    Thanks belatedly to Brockwell and Andrew.

68. Many thanks to Brockwell for the superb puzzle, and to Andrew for blogging. I had to return to this a few times, finally completing it this morning (Sunday). Many of the clues baffled me (how could this possibly be parsable?) but after I solved them I saw they were beautifully crafted and entirely fair.

69. All complete, with the NE holding out the longest. Persistence paid off this time. A lot of clever clues with great surfaces — hard to pick any favourites

    19a Took a while to decide between MAG and MUG. I was pretty sure it wasn’t MIG! 🙂

70. Re Valentine @48. If you are in the UK you can watch Upstart Crow on the BBC Iplayer – and like others I would recommend it. I found the puzzle tough -couldn’t see Mag = time but got it from iMAGe.

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