Guardian 27,216 / Brendan

68 comments on “Guardian 27,216 / Brendan”

1. Thanks Brendan and Eileen

   Pleasant and easy enough to fill in, though I didn’t parse PARIS or LEAD. I was mildly irritated by OSLO as it could have easily been SOLO; and rather more by the horrible EUSTON/HOUSTOn “homophone”. NEURALGIA, INSURED and STEIN were write-ins, allowing me to guess the long one, giving me a good start.

   ALICE and LA SCALA were my favourites.

2. Thanks both. Small error in 22a – LA SCALA is an anagram of CALLAS & A

3. Thank you, Shirl – blog amended.

4. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen. There’s another Stein connection in 21a, to her lover Alice B Toklas. The whole puzzle reminded me of the Stein limerick:

   There’s a wonderful family called Stein:
   There’s Gert, and there’s Ep, and there’s Ein.
   Gert’s poems are bunk,
   Ep’s statues are junk,
   And no one can understand Ein.

5. Phew! Feeling pretty pleased with myself for solving that unaided. Mind you, I put PARIS in based only on “Old prince” – didn’t know the “moveable feast” reference. I thought FRANCE was obscure enough without the added ambiguity of using “state” over “country” in the clue, but that’s a minor quibble against a superb puzzle.

   Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

6. Thanks Eileen (and Brendan)

   I really enjoyed this. I think there are quite a few Stein references in the puzzle. She was born in Sacramento, lived in Paris and as well as the “Rose” quote you mention, she is also remembered for “There is no there there” referring to her childhood home in California. “Alice” may also refer to her book “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”. There may well be others. Add in the Hemingway and Nin references and it very much a “Paris in the 20s” puzzle.

7. Curious coincidence that yesterday on Quote … Unquote, 19 15 appeared. I was surprised that no one correctly correctly identified it as 13’s reference to Oakland, Calif. Lots of other 13 references scattered in clues and answers throughout (she and 21 across feature prominently in “A Moveable Feast,” for example).

   Thanks for explaining 21 down, though the homophones don’t work for me.

8. Thank you for another lucid blog Eileen. Like muffin I needed your help to parse PARIS and LEAD, and also RAN INTO. The “no there” etc is ingenious when you get the thrashed synonym. I had a big smile against 19,1 and as usual the homonyms were fine with me. Mrs W dredged PARIS from here memory and Google revealed the Hemingway quote which meant 8d could be confirmed as SOLO not OSLO. it’s nice to see words like BESEECH being given an extended life is crossword land.
   Most enjoyable and probably at the easier end of the spectrum otherwise I wouldn’t have finished so soon. Thank you Brendan and Eileen.

9. Sorry Eileen, but your parsing of 22d is too cryptic for me! How is lea there, and how is d thrashed when there’s no there there?

10. “Leathered” is “thrashed” (sort of). Take out the “there” and you have LEAD remaining.

11. Hi Sauvian scrabbler @9

    Sorry – leathered = thrashed and if we take out ‘there’, we get LEAD.

12. Thanks Brendan, Eileen
    Delightful, as always. I like the foray into a world I know (only) a little about, and that my lack of knowledge didn’t hinder the solve at all.
    Favourite was ‘there is no there there’, and GOLDEN HANDSHAKE which pulled a double-bluff on me, thinking that the relevant retirement was the one I had to avoid and trying to come up with types of nightwear.
    I thought Euston/Houston was funny, if a bit cheeky. Embarrassingly, I googled ‘Euston Texas’. Google knew what I was after, though.

13. I am uncomfortable with 10A. “A Moveable Feast” (which I hadn’t come across) appears to be a memoir about Paris – but isn’t it pushing it to say that the “a moveable feast” actually is Paris?

14. Hi Jason

    If you scroll down in the link I gave, the third quotation is:

    “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

15. Thank you ( and muffin too)!

16. Stein also was an arts PATRON and hung out with Picasso.

17. Thanks, MickinEly, for all the other references. As so often, the puzzle is even better than I thought.

    And thanks, Andrew, for the reminder of the poem – and the other Alice.

18. Coincidentally (?), “Beseech” occurs as a clue in today’s Guardian Quick Crossword.

19. When googling Gertrude Stein to help with the parsing of 24a, I came across another of her books entitled “Paris France”

20. I didn’t get all the Gertrude Stein references, so thanks to Eileen and other clever commentators for the further links and back stories.

    This was enjoyable for me and I had no objections to the homophone or other features.

    I think it was made easier by getting several across clues on the first pass 9a NEURAlGIA, 11a INSURED, 14a SOMNOLENT, 21a ALICE, 21a BESEECH and 25a INSPECTOR. The crossers were handy in solving several down clues reasonably quickly too, although I had trouble with 6d SPONSORS, 7d FRANCE and 18d ANISETTE, among others both down and across.

    The literary references I did get were fun.

    Many thanks to Brendan for a testing but fair and interesting puzzle.

21. Like MickinEly@6, I was looking for a connection to Sacramento, but there isn’t one. Stein was born in what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and never lived in Sacramento (it’s inland, a good hour and a half’s drive from Oakland, where she did live). Too bad–would have been nice to get Oakland in the puzzle somehow to go with 19,15.

22. Great blog-and puzzle-thanks Eileen and @MickinEly for joining the final dots. I was reminded of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” with that haunting Bechet theme music.

23. Iroquois at @9
    I stand corrected about Ms Stein’s birthplace but I see that a number of websites do (incorrectly) give it as Sacramento. Maybe 5 down is a coincidence or perhaps Brendan went to the same wrong sources as I did.

24. I didn’t get all the literary references, although I did work out the basis of the theme, but as usual a treat of a crossword from one of my favourite setters.

    Thanks to Brendan for the fun and Lucky Eileen for the explanations

25. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen. Most of this wasn’t difficult, but I – a philistine – was defeated by some of the literary stuff. I got STEIN easily enough, but not PARIS or the parsing of AROSE.

    [Incidentally – with this being UK election season – mention of “A rose is a rose is a rose” and “There is no there there” sent my mind to “Brexit means Brexit” and “Enough is enough.” Like strong-and-stable Theresa May, I’m very clear that tautology and vacuous statements are perfectly clear and persuasive. (Joke)]

26. 14D contains an anagram of MATCH IS (not just MATCH)

27. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

    Good job it was Eileen doing the blogging; well done! I didn’t really enjoy this as, for me, there was too much GK, but nevertheless a well-crafted puzzle. LEAD was clever, although the parsing escaped me.

    Laughingly awful homophone for Houston; I can’t believe anyone would pronounce it as EUSTON, except perhaps someone from PARIS. Maybe, the clue should have had ‘jokingly’ or some such – it reminds me of some of Paul’s punning homophones.

    I did enjoy THERE IS NO END IN SIGHT and NUTSHELL.

28. Thank you, Malmesbury Road @26 – my apologies for another careless typo, amended now.

29. Well, I did enjoy the 20-21d pairing. I didn’t have a problem with the near-homophone as I’m sure I’ve heard some Americans pronounce Houston as “HYOOSton”, and I’ve wondered for years if they might be etymologically related (probably not….)

    Couldn’t stop thinking of trance states at 7d, but could find no works by Trance. In the end, it was nice to see Anatole France mentioned; he’s probably less popular now than he deserves to be.

    22d was a bit too clever for me, but I did like it after revealing, and I’m not enough of a Hemingway fan to get the reference at 10 so I’m glad I came here.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

30. I’ve never heard Euston called anything other than “yewston”, and mostly Houston as “hooston”.

31. HYOO-ston is the accepted pronunciation of Houston, Texas.and not “some” but probably all Americans pronounce it that way. It is named after Sam Houston, who presumably also pronounced it that way. He served twice as President of Texas, the only state ever to have such a thing, while it was briefly an independent country that had won freedom from Mexico. (Texas is not alone in this. Hawaii was a kingdom, Vermont was an independent nation called the Republic of New Connecticut for 14 years, California was independent for about three weeks.)

    Houston Street in Manhattan, however, is pronounced HOW-ston. It is the street that separates the numbered streets in the grid to the north from the un-numbered ones in the older pre-grid part of the city to the south. It is named after William Houstoun, an eighteenth-century politician.

32. I didn’t know enough about the theme to get the ones where you really, really had to know the relevant bit of GK (PARIS and FRANCE) but I enjoyed the rest, especially THERE THERE and NO END IN SIGHT, and the nifty little BUST. Thank you Brendan and Eileen.

    (I was itching to post the Stein limerick on the Guardian comments, but it was too much of a spoiler, so I’m glad somebody has put it here!)

33. I’ve just checked the original Apollo 13 recordings, and it does sound like “OK, Hyooston, we’ve had a problem here….”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eco_xvkEQlg

34. Trismegistus @29, ALL Americans pronounce Houston “HYOOSton,” but that is not how Euston is pronounced. What I only now see is that Eileen’s excellent parsing is that AUSTEN sounds like Austin, which is in the same state as Houston. I think the reference to a near homophone with Euston is a bit misleading.

35. Couldn’t finish today. The homophone…..isn’t. Why add the cross reference when it’s so dodgy? And PARIS I also got but couldn’t parse and having seen how obscure it is I don’t wonder. Surely if you’re relying on a quote you ought to give the author? Oh well.

36. All very clever as we have come to expect from Brendan. Didn’t know the Hemingway reference or the Stein poem. Quite an entertaining challenge with a lot of generous starters.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

37. Ah, sorry, I see that the dodgy homophone of Euston is essential to the clue. I’m afraid it still doesn’t quite work for me. Maybe Brendan could have worked in “breathlessly” somehow.

    And thank you, Valentine @31, (we crossed earlier) for pointing out the different pronunciation of Houston Street, which probably confuses the vast majority of Americans, who are more familiar with the city in Texas.

38. Thank you Brendan for a great puzzle and Eileen for a super blog.

    Nothing much to add, but it is thought that absinthe drinks were served in the Paris salon, and perhaps haschich fudge – I have The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook to hand…

39. Thanks all
    I do not know why 8d is not solo.
    I wrote it in and wasted much time unavailingly to solve 10ac.

40. Hi Cookie @38

    Absinthe was my first thought for 18dn. Interestingly, STEIN is in there, too. 😉

41. Hi Eileen, and in 21a Brendan has mentioned Alice biting a ‘cake’…

42. See here for the infamous recipe from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.

43. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen. I needed Eileen’s help parsing LEAD, but I did know the various literary references so that I got through fairly quickly and much enjoyed the process. Several years ago a colleague, an expert on Paris in the 1920s, threw a party to honor Gertrude Stein and suggested that guests wear something appropriate. I chose to construct something that showed a button saying “Ouch!” so that I had hoped to see Brendan somehow incorporating TENDER BUTTONS.

44. I thought this was a super puzzle, and my enjoyment of it was enhanced considerably by all the knowledgeable comments on this page that filled me in on things I didn’t know about the setter’s chosen subject.

    It is to Brendan’s credit that I didn’t need to know much about the theme in order to complete this puzzle. In fact the only two answers I didn’t fully understand were 10a PARIS (not knowing the Hemingway reference) and 16a GOLDEN HANDSHAKE (where ready = money).

    When I filled in 13a STEIN I wasn’t sure of it, but the cross-reference to it at 24a AROSE categorically confirmed it.

    I understand the doubts that muffin @1 and RCWhiting @39 had about 8d OSLO, but I thought the reference to ‘this‘ European city was enough to confirm the answer.

    My favourite clues were 6d SPONSORS, 21a ALICE, 22a LA SCALA, 23d BUST and the long one: 19a/1d THERE IS NO END IN SIGHT.

    Huge thanks to Brendan, Eileen, and the commenters who have added to my knowledge.

45. I’m afraid I made heavy weather of this. I know very little about Gertrude Stein and I didn’t know the Hemingway quote,so some of this was groping in the dark. So this took me me quite a long time. Having said that, there was a lot to enjoy in this- GOLDEN HANDSHAKE and LEAD. The latter was brilliant and was my LOI.
    Thanks Brendan.

46. For me, this was a did-not-finish – I cheated on PARIS because I also has SOLO to start with and the literary reference was over my head.
    Clever puzzle. In my experience (I live in PA), Brendan’s homophone of Euston/Houston is very close indeed this side of the Atlantic. It definitely uses the YOO sound and not aspirating H words is very common. e.g (H)ERB rather than HERB.
    GOLDEN HANDSHAKE was brilliant. I also loved the LEAD parsing, all the more so now that other commenters have supplied the Stein connections.

    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

47. Good crossword.

    I finished all but the NE corner very quickly then ground to a halt until I had sorted out 6dn.

    I knew of Anatole France and wrote France in very lightly. Then the remaining answers followed pretty quickly.

48. I don’t know if Brendan’s selection of themes was inspired by the arrival of gay pride month but thanks to him either way. I recognized most of the Gertrude Stein-related clues, my knowledge coming from gay lore rather than from reading any of her works. I was not aware, however, that she and Alice cropped up in ‘A Moveable Feast’. I developed an inexorable hatred of all things Hemingway after being forced to read that godawful ‘Old Man and the Sea’. I still can’t believe that someone made an equally boring film of that mind-numbing slog!

    As far as Sacramento and Oakland, I can see how they’d be easily confused since historically they’ve both been places that people wanted to avoid. Now, however, Oakland has become the hipster capital of California while the thought of visiting poor Sacramento still induces melancholy.

49. Enjoyed the puzzle but also put SOLO instead of OSLO and didn’t know the Paris reference so never got it – and couldn’t believe 7d would be FRANCE.

    Thanks for the blog and the puzzle.

50. I can only say many thanks to all for filling in the gaps. I’m really pleased that most people seem to have enjoyed it.

    Many thanks, again, to Brendan.

51. Where are the “barely cryptic” critics today? 16a (just swap “money” for “ready”), 5d (nine letter word with “o” on the end), 7d (straightforward definition). All would be major crimes against the crossword community if committed by Rufus or Pasquale. Not a plea for Brendan bashing but for fairness for all.

52. My record for missing the theme stands unchallenged.

53. One has to wonder whether there isn’t an ongoing competition amongst Guardian setters to see who can publish the most ridiculous attempt at a homophone. Or maybe “Euston” and “Austen” really are homophones in Brendan’s idiolect, though this bears little resemblance to linguistic reality. Of course, one couldn’t expect the charlatan currently “editing” the Guardian crossword to understand what’s going on here.

    Otherwise, though, this was an excellent puzzle, thoroughly in keeping with Brendan’s high standards. My favourite clue was 23d for the clever way of indicating the ‘s’.

    Thanks to Brendan – and also to Andrew for the limerick @4.

54. Van Winkle @51
    I’m not seeing your objections. Chambers Word Wizard has 320 nine-letter words ending in O, and 7d is a double definition, not a “straightforward definition”.

55. gofirstmate @53
    I’m not defending it, but the homophone is supposed to be EUSTON/HOUSTON. AUSTEN/AUSTIN is just about OK by me.

56. muffin @55: Point taken – though I don’t think that works either.

57. If you mean the EUSTON/HOUSTON one, I totally agree!

58. many thanks Brendan for a superb crossword – i’m realising just how superb after reading all the other comments – I got some but not all of the references.

    I missed PARIS FRANCE, so many thanks Eileen for the enlightenment

    I struggled with LEAD because I stupidly jumped to the conclusion that the double clue reference was 19/1. All I had to do was look at the clue more carefully.

    Lots of fun

59. muffin @54: I think I understand at least partly what Van Winkle @51 is getting at, though I would put the case slightly differently. Boatman and Tramp in particular get away with all sorts of abominations because, for some inexplicable reason, they receive preferential treatment here; Van W evidently thinks Brendan is in that same “most favoured status” category. I disagree with this because IMO Brendan is a vastly superior setter to either of the previous two above-mentioned.

    Just as an aside, I think Bunthorne’s “Thibault’s alternative country (6)” (Guardian Crossword 14,978) is preferable to 7d in today’s but, to be fair, Brendan’s version isn’t bad either.

60. gofirstmate @59

    Mmm – I’m not sure. 320 different words seems enough choice, and he has misunderstood 7d, I think.

    I do agree that Boatman is given more latitude, but his puzzles are delightfully different from everyone else’s. Tramp does stretch the boundaries at times too, but not as much as Boatman, I think.

    I love the Bunthorne clue. He was one of my favourites too, though hardly Ximenean. He came from Burnley (just down the road) too!

61. muffin @60: I think Bunthorne hailed from Middleton, which is closer to Oldham than Burnley.

    I’d also say that, in contrast to Araucaria, Bunthorne was indeed a Ximenean, albeit of the “soft” variety. True, there were clues in which he stretched the framework almost to breaking point but, hey, doesn’t Pasquale also try the occasional borderline experiment?

62. muffin @54 – my quibble about SACRAMENTO (10) was that it was just SACRAMENT (9) with an “o” on the end, with SACRAMENT clued uncryptically as a definition by example. I withdraw my comment about Anatole France, which was due to an ignorant presumption that his pseudonym came from his country, rather than being a contraction of his actual name.
    gofirstmate @59 – I am not so concerned with “most favoured status”, but the dip in the civility of this site when certain setters pop up. I didn’t mention Otterden (RIP).

63. Van Winkle @ 62 [second paragraph]

    Heartily seconded.

    There are setters who push the boundaries, which is great, and challenging in my book. Trouble is, they seem to upset people who think there are ‘rules’ or ‘laws’ which govern how to set crosswords. For example, as I’ve posted before, don’t fixate on homophones, they’re puns, they sound (vaguely) the same, and trigger a chuckle.

    And, to make it worse, our setting ‘experts’ don’t seem to have any published puzzles themselves, which, to me, makes their quibbles more onanistic than somehwat.

64. Van Winkle @62

    I would also like to comment on “the dip in the civility of this site when certain setters pop up”.

    Fortunately such instances are not common, in my opinion, and the general level of discussion and debate on fifteensquared is commendably high for a ‘free forum’. I read all the Guardian blogs, even when I don’t do the crossword, because it is nearly always interesting to read – and civil.

    Of course, I have noticed a “dip in civility” on occasion, and I think it is when there is a combination of certain setters and certain contributors, or certain setters and a certain contributor, or something like that.

65. I agree with Alan B@44 that 8 points to OSLO rather than SOLO, and I got that right. Equally, 21dn is the author, rather than the Texan capital, and I got that wrong for a time, so was held up in that corner.

    An excellent puzzle from one of my favourite setters, whose themes always emerge satisfyingly slowly.

66. Thank you @46 phitonelly – I feel vindicated, but realise the debate about whether Euston/(H)yooston are

    (a) homophones
    (b) near homophones
    (c) close enough homophones
    (d) something else entirely

    could go on forever…. 🙂

67. I think my opiniions on clues indicating homophones or near homophones are well documented on here so I won’t repeat them.

    However I believe that the ongoing debates/disagreements on this and other issues are the result of something else. I refer to our illustrious Ed.

    Hopefully this is not true, but it does appear that for quite a long period now puzzles are being published in an almost random fashion without apparent vetting or checking.

    If we had an editorial policy which clearly vetted how homophones/near homophones could be indicated then regular solvers would become familiar with the crossword “style” on this and other issues. As it is it appears that this policy is now down to the personal whims of each setter.

68. Ian SW3@ 37 The different pronunciation of Houston doesn’t confuse New Yorkers, who can pronounce both that and the city in Texas.

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