Guardian 27,147 / Brendan

48 comments on “Guardian 27,147 / Brendan”

1. all I can see Eileen is BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL and LOVE ACTUALLY but there’s bound to be more. Hugh feeling filmic suddenly.

2. Had to refer to Wikipedia after noticing the films LOVE, ACTUALLY, and (The) BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, both of which starred Bill Nighy, who was also in PAGE EIGHT. His name also appears starting at the B in FABIAN, and zigzagging towards the Y in YEAST.

   Thanks Brendan and Eileen!

3. Thanks Brendan for a lovely puzzle, and Eileen.
   There is Love, Actually and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, but what that amounts to, I could not say.

4. Oh, and he also portrayed DAVY JONES in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

5. Bill Nighy films I think, Marigold Hotel, Love Actually I’m sure there’s lots more but I’m not an expert

6. I found this hard work, particularly the NW corner. WELL-NIGH was particularly tricky. Hadn’t heard of congé in CONGEAL; liked EIGHT, BOTTOM LINE and DIGNITARY; favourite was COYPUS. Many thanks to Brendan and Eileen. Missed theme as always!

7. ah; now I can see a BILL NIGHY NINA (he was in both films I mentioned)

8. Baerchen’s comment above went in while I was thinking about it!

9. Thanks Brendan and Eileen

   Nothing wrong with it, but for some reason I didn’t find it all that engaging. Favourites were EIGHT and ASH.

   [General query – when would IDEM be used instead of IBID. (ibidem)?]

10. I suppose that is the love clash Qaos was referring to yesterday.
    @Copmus – you got the clue almost bang on!

11. I’ve found this, but there might be more. http://imgur.com/gallery/vBsuy

12. Doh – thanks all.

13. I biffed 6D, but I still don’t understand it, even after the explanation above. What is “as one part of speech” adding? And why does “best” mean “only one”?

14. Thanks Eileen,

    In 6d I took “only one” to mean only one part of speech. So best means worst as a verb, not as a noun, adjective, or adverb.

15. I think you’re right, jvh – and that’s the way I originally read it. [I solved the puzzle in the middle of the night, then wrote the blog this morning.]

16. For 13AC I had put in Foreman as I thought that was a better fit to the clue as a Jury has one Foreman?

17. I bet Arachne would have used the 13a clue for a 9-letter word…

18. Can someone help me with 24,13? I know “Davy Jones’s locker” means the bottom of the sea, or death for a sailor, but why “nautical spirit”? Is “Davy Jones” a seaman’s term for rum, or something?

19. leo @18

    Chambers – ‘Davy Jones: a sailor’s familiar name for the [malignant] spirit of the sea, the Devil’.

20. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

    Missed the theme of course. Learnt about CONGE and the ‘winged often one-seed indehiscent fruit’ of the ash tree.

    Lots of good clues; I noted SURFEIT, DIGNITARY & EXOTIC among others.

    Leo @18: ‘the spirit or devil of the sea.’

21. I parsed 26 as an envelope of Not half! of BRExit split by OK.

    Conge new to me. JURYMAN a gem.

    Thanks Eileen for shedding light in a couple of dark corners and Brendan for an elegant puzzle.

22. Thank you Brendan, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, and thank you Eileen for another super blog.

    I did not spot the theme or the Nina, the name BILL NIGHY was new to me, and failed to understand BEST, but I enjoyed the puzzle. My favourite clues were those for for JURYMAN, BROKE, NIMBI, SURFEIT, ASH and I could go on…

23. Wasnt Maharaja a film? But was Bill in it-havent checked.Brendan is always a pleasure. It was with some deliberation that I put S as the middle letter in 19. Didnt suss the key producer but there was an Ash Wednesday film.I’ll have to have the nina explained to me (a bear of little brain)Thanks all.

24. @copmus
    re the Nina, click on the link in Tom’s post @11.
    Also, make sure you read James @11, you little Mystic Meg you!

25. James@10, even

26. 22A Conge is a French word which visitors to France often encounter on shop doors especially in August “Fermee congees annuelle” (apologies for the lack of accents)! I didn’t know it was used in English though.
    Great puzzle – best of this week by far, and of course thanks to Eileen for her usual helpful blog.

27. I just looked up a Bill Nighy filmography, and can add one more, he was in the movie Pride (25). And an ‘almost’ one – he was in Astro Boy (9)

28. Thanks everyone for putting up with my huge admiration for Bill Nighy, above all in “Page Eight”.
    St. Patrick’s Day made for me by the Taoiseach’s passionate comments in front of POTUS about the importance of immigration to the US for Irish people.

29. Glad to see it wasn’t just me baffled by BEST. My well-I-suppose-it-must-be-that LOI.

    Thanks, Brendan (and Eileen)!

30. baerchen@24 thanks for that-the nina is a teeny bit curly for a daily- but very cool.

31. I suffer from theme- and nina-blindness for which (alas) there appears no cure. I found this tricky in places but that only increased the eventual sense of satisafction. A couple of stand out clues 13a and 22d. I take it LAUNCHING COYPUS never made it past the cutting-room floor!

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

32. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen. I did not parse ASH-key or HOTEL and JURYMAN was my LOI. Re NIMBI-NIMBY, my favorite acronym comes from a Robert Heinlein novel: TINSTAAFL (There is no such thing as a free lunch).

33. Thanks to those of you who spotted the theme – I could have stared at the completed grid for ages without seeing that. Never was any good at film questions. Found this at the tougher end of Brendan’s range, but that may be because his themes are usually apparent much earlier and more helpful.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

34. A very elegant puzzle today. I have to offer my full respect to all those who spotted the theme, either in part or in whole – it totally eluded me! Also an excellent blog which enabled me to fully understand the cluing for BEST, ASH and CONGEAL (though I had managed to solve them). My own favourite clues were NIMBI, DIGNITARY, MAHARAJA and ACTUALLY. A nice end to the week before the rigours of Saturday! Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

35. We really enjoyed this one. Some excellent cluing and a theme which we got only after finishing the grid. We spotted the two main films but thanks to the bloggers for the rest. And thanks to Brendan for a super lunchtime head-scratcher.

36. Diplomats, when leaving a post, make the rounds of the diplomatic corps and leave cards marked “ppc” (Pour prendre conge). Or they did when French was the language of diplomacy.

    Sorry, no acute accent on my keyboard.

37. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.
    I found this quite hard..needed parsing for ASH and CONGEAL.
    Liked 13a, 17a and 7d.

    re 7d, I have a minor quibble:
    Raja = King
    Maha Raja = Great King or Emperor
    Yuva Raja = Prince

    The clue would still be good with King (at the least), in stead of Prince…

38. I’ve been staring at the relatively trivial 1d most of the day without reward. My sister, down for a quick visit, walks in and says PAGE. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

    Missed theme (that’s two in a row now) and nina. Found the top a real struggle, and didn’t like ‘leftie’ for FABIAN, but that’s because I’m a romantic old socialist. BEST was my second guess.

39. Liked this a lot. Some very neat clues, of which “ash” & “hotel” were my favourites. Missed the theme completely even though I love Bill Nighy! Thanks to all who pointed it out.

    Thank you Brendan & Eileen.

40. I found this very difficult and,in places, quite annoying. I guessed CONGEAL – I’ve never heard of the CONGE bit-I guessed HOTEL as well despite that being quite well clued. I didn’t get the theme or the Nina. I’ve never seen any of the films and the main two sound ghastly. Not my favorite from this setter!

41. muffin @9: Idem vs. Ibid. or Ibidem. Idem means “the same person” whereas ibidem (abbreviated ibid.) means “at the same place.” So use idem when the author and work are the same as cited immediately before, but the page number is different: idem, page 56. Use ibidem when the reference is exactly the same as the preceding citation …

    copied from Reed College grammar guide

42. Thanks El Ingles. The references I found suggested that IDEM was used more in legal contexts, but didn’t explain why.

43. Thanks Eileen – we weren’t really looking for a theme but if we had, we would probably have missed it!

    We weren’t terribly convinced by BEST at 6d despite having parsed it in a similar way to others..

    Having said that, it was a pleasant puzzle while we were eating this evening.

    Thanks Brendan.

44. Just like to agree with the general tenor of these discussions and so to thank Brendan and Eileen! But especially, as no one else has to thank Brian Greer aka Brendan for dropping in. It is always good to hear from the setters and to realise that they are interested in our comments. My favourite and great clue was 13a!!

45. Yesterday we had Stanley Kubrick, today Bill Nighy.
    Not expecting another film theme and not seeing Brendan clearly flagging up anything, we ‘just’ solved this crossword – and elegant it was.
    Not very difficult, at a level similar to yesterday’s Qaos.
    Which, for us, actually meant two puzzles together taking up an amount of time about equal to Tramp’s challenging effort alone.

    We saw some film titles only at the very end (Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Love Actually) and wondered about Bill Nighy (given 5d).
    Coincidentally, at this very moment the much appreciated actor is on BBC1 in his role as Davy Jones!

    Lovely puzzle with a lightness of touch, so similar to that other master of elegance, Orlando (where are you?).

    “St. Patrick’s Day made for me by the Taoiseach’s passionate comments in front of POTUS about the importance of immigration to the US for Irish people” (Brendan @28).
    Perhaps, the PM of the country in which I was born should do something similar when visiting the UK. Or should I say ‘if visiting the UK’?

    There are no particularly obvious movie stars born on Mar 18.
    (that said, Natasha Richardson would have been 54 tomorrow if she had survived that awful ski accident in Canada)
    So, probably (and hopefully – enough themes for now) we just have a plain Saturday crossword by Paul (I guess).

    Thanks Eileen for the blog.
    Very hard to single out a clue we liked BEST (which was our last one in).

    One more thing, and that is about IDEM and CONGE.
    These two words are quite ‘normal’ in Holland, so I got them straightaway.
    IDEM is used as ‘the same’, often in the expression ‘idem dito’ (indeed, only one t).
    If someone gets his or her conge (with an accent grave on the e [but I don’t know how to do that here]), it means ‘you’re fired’.
    So, it is ‘permission to leave’ in a negative way.

    Many thanks to Brendan (or the one @28) for his enjoyable contribution to St Patrick’s Day.

46. I didn’t have time to do this offering from Brendan yesterday (and would probably have struggled with it), but for those interested in inserting the acute accent, you can do it on a normal keyboard by holding down CTRL and ALT and then pressing E. Like this: é, which will give you the chance to type congé.

47. Thanks KD, I will try to remember that.
    And oops, accent aigu, not accent grave.
    Congé – see I can do it too!

48. In a Victorian novel, the unlucky suitor is given his conge. Today he is just dumped.

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