Guardian 27,327 / Enigmatist

98 comments on “Guardian 27,327 / Enigmatist”

1. Thanks Enigmatist and Eileen

   Too self-indulgent (understandable in the circumstances) to be a lot of fun. I’d never heard of BEWDLEY, let alone its festival. I failed on some of the parsings; for example I tried to form EXILE from LIE and X (times), but left a missing E. I tried E_NOSH first for E-CASH.

   Why is COMMON RAIL a “means to inject fluid”?

   Favourites LATERALLY and HALLE. I thought CRYPTICS a very clumsy clue.

2. muffin @1 – Chambers: COMMON RAIL – a type of diesel injection system

3. @1 – Common rail is a system of direct fuel injection for diesel or petrol engines.
   Tough crossword and could not parse 21 or 1 22 dn.
   thanks to both Enigmatist and Eileen

4. I was aware of where John was going to be today which did help with solving the themed clues, which I thought were all very fair but I will add that 1/22 was my last one to parse too.

   Thank you to the people who’ve explained the common rail and to Eileen who has explained the rest of it. I too was confused by the yeast cake/cake yeast.

   I enjoyed the solve very much, thank you Enigmatist – I liked 19d – hope your talk goes down well this afternoon

5. I enjoyed this puzzle very much and I think it’s the easiest/least hard of JH’s I’ve ever seen and I guess that is probably not a bad strategy for the festival.
   Muffin’s comment and those of others on the G site about the puzzle being “self-indulgent” are in my view wholly misplaced.
   I see nothing wrong with someone spreading the cryptic gospel at a literary festival by presenting that day’s themed puzzle in a national daily. It strikes me that if it is good for the pursuit and good for the Graun, then it is good for all of us who like crosswords (especially given that they are still freely available).
   So well done John, and thanks to Eileen.
   Nice weekend, everyone

6. Baerchen@5 hear hear

7. Self indulgent or not, the theme completely passed me by. I’ve never heard of the festival, don’t know where Bewdley is, am unfamiliar with any of its local attractions and was completely lost for most of the puzzle. Did not enjoy this at all but de gustibus non est disputandem.

8. @5. Hear! hear! I am off to the talk and I’m looking forward to it.

9. Lucky you, Chrissie – and well said, baerchen!

10. baerchen et al
    Would you accept that this would be more fun if you were attending the talk (or at least going to the festival)?

11. Thank you Enigmatist for a challenging puzzle and Eileen for a brilliant blog.

    This was very hard for me to parse. I tried E-DOSH first at 11a and was confused by COMMON RAIL.

    The CRYPTICS clue was great!

    I think YEAST CAKE is the deposit left at the bottom of the container after ale, for instance, is brewed – it is sometimes re-used to brew the next lot.

12. PS to 11a, apparently ale yeasts ferment on the top of the brew, while lager yeasts ferment at the bottom, perhaps muffin knows more of the details…

13. Thanks for the YEAST CAKE, Cookie – I didn’t google far enough. 😉

14. @muffin
    Not at all. The answers were all gettable without any research (although I did need to confirm that a COMMON RAIL is part of a diesel injection system) and I’ve never set foot in Bewdley in my life. I therefore think that the puzzle can stand on its own merits.
    I must admit that the use of the expression “self-indulgent” does not sit terribly well with my understanding of the purpose of today’s undertaking. But it’s just my view, which you’re perfectly entitled to rubbish

15. [Cookie @12
    Exactly right. Another difference is that lager yeast (Saccharomyces carlsbergensis after the brewery, AKA S. pastorianus to honour Louis Pasteur) ferments at a much lower temperature than S. cerevisiae, the normal brewers’ yeast, so lager could be made during cold continental winters.]

16. baerchen @14
    Yes, “indulgent towards the attendees” would be better than “self-indulgent”.

    My problem with it was that I had never heard of Bewdley or Wyre Forest, and neither were readily built up from the complex wordplay.

    I’m really surprised at the praise for CRYPTICS. I think it’s an awful clue 🙂

17. @10 Muffin. I will acknowledge that I got two freebies from the SIs but I don’t think that it would have made too much difference to my enjoyment if I had not known about the event. I tackle with pleasure crosswords where I have absolutely no idea what the theme is or even, on occasions, when I cannot work out what the more complicated SIs require me to do!

18. I knew about the event, so some of the clues were a write in.

    I worked in local government for many years, and had just about heard of Wyre Forest – but our overseas colleagues would have had no chance.

    Thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen.

    Sorry I missed the event – talking about crosswords at a beer festival sounds like my ideal pastime.

19. muffin @16, agreed, the clue for CRYPTICS is awful, it had me fooled for ages, then I got it from the cossers, that is why I liked it!

20. Hi dantheman @18 – you could always come to John’s York bash on the 28th [see under Announcements]: not exactly a beer festival but perhaps the next best thing. 😉

21. All very fair and fun I thought. One wrong. I went with Ayre Forest at 1d as I couldn’t parse it.
    Beer festival is a good anagram. Also liked rehab, not that i’ve been.

22. I was aware of John’s appearance at Bewdley thanks to his Twitter feed, so once SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY went in early, I guessed where this was going. Since the area in question is familiar to me, this made it fairly easy to guess the themed solutions first and parse them later – as always with Enigmatist some of the parsings were pretty tricky. Incidentally the special instruction on the website does not appear in the paper version, and in my opinion it was not necessary.

    Thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen

23. Hi beery @22 – that’s odd: the special instruction is in my paper. 😉

24. Hi beery @22, it’s in mine too!
    I enjoyed this puzzle, but couldn’t get DEWY EYED. Thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen 🙂

25. Thanks Enigmatist; very tough, but good setting once you know about the Festival. Hope the talk goes/went well!

    Thanks Eileen for some of the parsings that I failed on. I did particularly like VACANCY.

26. P.S. The Collins definition for YEAST CAKE is: mainly US and Canadian;
    living yeast cells compressed with starch into a cake, for use in baking or brewing.

27. I’m very much in Baerchen and Eileen’s camp: I thought it was a great puzzle even though I’d never heard of Bewdley etc. All the answers were gettable, although I couldn’t parse WYRE FOREST. Favourites were VACANCY, WORCESTERSHIRE, DEWY-EYED and YUCKY. Many thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen.

28. Out of interest, drofle, if you had never heard of WYRE FOREST and you couldn’t parse it, how did you solve it?

29. Thanks, Eileen – and, sorry, but ‘Charlie’ for ‘C’ belongs to an alphabet which has nothing whatsoever to do with phonetics; it’s an alphabet used for establishing with certainty how words are spelled.

    ‘Cryptics’?! – since when did ‘cryptic’ become a noun.

    poc @7 – it’s ‘disputandum’, I think, not ‘disputandem’.

30. I fail to see how DEWY-EYED can possibly be a synonym for fresh, when its normal meaning is lachrymose.

31. (me @28. In case anyone is wondering, I guessed FOREST for the second word, then resorted to a word search for the first.)

32. Eileen @23, cosafina @24 – yes, I can see it now. Just wasn’t looking for it earlier!

33. Nice one, John-lets ave another one.
    Thanks Eileen for parsing of Wyre Forest( I had forest from the crossers then googled that and Worcestershire)Also for EXILE parsing and the UK in YUCKY.
    He’s a bit good innit.

34. Epeolater @29
    I was reminded yesterday, when R / Romeo appeared in Tees’ Indy puzzle and was parsed as being from the phonetic alphabet, that you had queried such a parsing from me a couple of weeks ago. I checked it at the time but didn’t respond to your comment, as it was rather late in the day.

    This morning, I checked C / Charlie, hoping to anticipate any objections. I found this
    http://www.nato.int/cps/fr/natohq/declassified_136216.htm
    along with many others

    Not surprisingly, I haven’t found ‘cryptic’ as a noun in any of my dictionaries but it’s widely used as such on this site and generally in Crosswordland, which is what the clue is about!

    Crossbencher @30 – Chambers: ‘dewy-eyed – [often ironic] fresh, innocent’.

35. This took me quite some time and a lot of googling, mainly because my knowledge of the area is limited to travelling through it on the way to the SW and listening to “The Archers”! That said, I did find much to like, my favourite clue being 24ac – lovely mental picture.

    Thanks to Enigmatist for the challenge and a special mention to Eileen for the blog – didn’t envy you your task this morning!

36. Thanks Enigmatist, Eileen
    Of the few Enigmatist puzzles I’ve solved, I enjoyed this the most. The two unfamiliar ones (Bewdley and Wyre) I got from the word play, so no complaints. Favourites were SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY, REHAB, REV UP, LOWER LIP and CRYPTICS.
    Didn’t manage to parse EXILE, since I had Times as X, and yarn as LIE.

37. [Thanks for the link @34, Eileen. There seems to be a difference of opinion between sites how JULIET should be spelled. The more “official” looking ones have JULIETT.]

38. We loved this! Didn’t know about John at the Bewdley Festival, but still no hindrance to solving, nor having a lovely time solving this puzzle. Thanks Eileen, and thanks John – hope you have a great afternoon!

39. Incidentally WYRE FOREST is not just a local authority and a parliamentary constituency – there is still a substantial forest there and it starts on the outskirts of Bewdley.

40. Eventually managed to complete with a small number of cheats and a much smaller number of parsings. The crossword was well above my pay grade and any criticism would be just sour grapes.

41. ‘Do you do the cryptic?’

42. Thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen. As a non-UK would-be solver, I found this puzzle far out of my comfort zone. Even though I did get BEER FESTIVAL, I had never heard of BEWDLEY, WYRE FOREST (though I did piece out “forest”), and SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY and also struggled with YEAST CAKE, FROWSTY (new to me), and COMMON RAIL.

43. This was hard, too.

44. My experience today entirely chimed with Muffin’s, including the perceived ugliness of 19d. Of course there was much else to appreciate but I don’t buy the argument that a parochially themed crossword will somehow attract new solvers. Using up a slot in what is after all an International paper did to me feel like self-indulgence. That was just the experience I had as I realised what I was faced with today, not a criticism of the experience others had.

45. Having visited the Severn Valley Railway I knew about Bewdley so that was a bit of a head start. I must admit the Wyre Forest passed me by though !

46. I got hardly any of this last night. And those I got I mostly couldn’t parse; it was a very hard set of parsing.

    I though a yeast cake was a cake of yeast, as apparently it is over here.

    Like many responders, not all non-UK (though I am), I’d never heard of Bewdley or its festival, which apparently isn’t a beer festival. (I found on googling “beer festival” that there was one here in Hartford last month, who knew?)

    Like others, I guessed “forest,” but couldn’t think of a way to find a forest called _Y_E, since I hadn’t yet caught on that WORCESTERSHIRE was part of the theme.

    I still don’t know what the 89th minute has to do with rallies, late or otherwise, though I suspect it’s related to some sport or other.

    On the other hand, I’ll buy “fresh” for DEWY-EYED, which doesn’t mean that you’re crying but that you’re young and sparkly-eyed.

    How does Biggles come into it? He’s a setter, I think — is that Shed’s other name in some other paper?

47. I’d put in EDICT instead of EXILE which messed up DEWY EYED of course. Several that I couldn’t parse but Enigmatist is a real demon!

    Agree that YEAST CAKE doesn’t quite cut it. I do a lot of breadmaking and YEAST figures aplenty, but without any word following! And CASHIERER sounds a rather strained agent-noun – although CASHIER as a verb is perfectly familiar.

    What more can one say? Enigmatist is Enigmatist. Thanks to him – and Eileen for a monumental task.

48. Valentine @46: “Biggles” was the pseudonym of a team of four setters who got together to produce a joint effort, some time ago before Araucaria’s death (rather like “Bogus” a few days ago). They all had the first name John: the late Araucaria, Enigmatist, Paul and Shed. You can read about the team here.

49. What a GREAT puzzle!! I am enthusiastically siding with Eileen, Baerchen et al. above who gave this high marks. As a non-UK solver who had never heard of BEWDLEY or its festival, or WYRE FOREST or SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY, I thought the parsing was fair and clear and led me to all of the answers, save one: By the wordplay of 21ac, I determined that the answer had to be either BEWDLEY or BEWELDY, and with a 50/50 choice and the former sounding to me a bit more like a place in the UK where a FESTIVAL might be held, I guessed the former (correctly) — my LOI. I got WYRE FOREST strictly from the wordplay, parsed exactly as Eileen describes in her blog, and although I was certain that the answer was correct I nevertheless Googled it afterwards just top make sure there were hits on it, meaning it is a “thing”. Ditto for SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY. There were many excellent and clever clues today, including VACANCY, HALLE, and WORCESTERSHIRE, but my favorite one (and also FOI, as it so happened) was YUCKY. I was held up on 10ac for awhile — I had the same thought process regarding “times = “X” as muffin @1 — until the mists finally cleared and I saw the (t)EX(t)ILE parsing.
    Many thanks to Enigmatist for a dazzling puzzle, and to Eileen as always for a great blog. I hope the Bewdley Festival (now that I have learned about it) is great fun for all who attend, and a very pleasant weekend to all!

50. Me @49
    Fat fingers! “”… just *to* make sure …”

    Valentine @46
    The 89th minute refers to soccer — the match expires at the end of the 90th minute (plus, typically, a few minutes of “stoppage time” added by the referee at the end to account for playing time lost during the second 45 minute half due to the ball being out of play, injuries on the field, infractions, etc.). So if the side that is down by a goal scores in the 89th minute, that would be a “late rally”.

51. Thanks, FirmlyDirac@49. That’s a dandy page, I’ll hold on to it.

52. I never will understand how people can enjoy Enigmatist puzzles so much when by their own confession they “solve” it by identifying and ignoring much of the cryptic content and filling the grid using definitions and crossers. An expert construction, but it didn’t bring me any pleasure. Belated agreement with muffin@1.

53. Bewdley, its festival and other local attractions were a total mystery to me, so this was a struggle. However got there in the end except for the Forest.

    I don’t mind these themed puzzles, and often what I consider an easy theme others find difficult. Win some, lose some, though this one is, I think, at the very obscure end. But it’s the challenge I like.

    And, by the way, aren’t all crosswords just a self-indulgence anyway – whether solving or setting?

    Many thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen.

54. Special Instructions? Oh, yes, so there are! That might have helped, although I solved BEWDLEY and FESTIVAL from the wordplays. Unfortunately, it’s a DNF for me today. I missed the tricky parsing needed for WYRE and got stuck in the SE on the last few. VACANCY is brilliant. All you have to do is follow the instructions, which I failed to do, having a hard time believing there was a European state long enough! More fool me. Also, I’ve somehow lived this long without ever having learned that meaning of CASHIER. I don’t fell so bad about not knowing the COMMON RAIL mechanical meaning though.
    Good fun. I have no problem with the esoteric theme. Puck once wrote a puzzle based on an Irish festival involving hoisting a goat skywards (I think I recall). I loved that too – Googling to understand the theme was part of the fun.
    Thanks, Eileen and Enigmatist. Hope the talk goes (or went) well.

55. We got there in the end and far from being miffed at the theme being around a festival I’d never heard of I was grateful for having such an interesting and eclectic event brought to my attention.
    That said I can’t say we enjoyed many of the clues – as Mrs W said “some of them are very bitty” and whilst I accept everything is very fair and clear I don’t find this style much fun.
    I didn’t get the parsing for 1d – I was losing interest at this stage. I liked REV UP for its surface and misdirection.
    Thanks to Enigmatist for including enough accessible clues to Make it possible to work out the others and to Eileen for the blog – great job.

56. I enjoyed this very much, and would have done so even if the location had been unfamiliar. But I do know Bewdley, having stayed there – delightful little town with a charming riverside. Enigmatist did well to get in so many local references, but I looked in vain for Bewdley’s most famous son, the prime minister who ended up as Earl Baldwin of Bewdley.
    And to those who don’t know it I recommend a trip on the Severn Valley Railway – in my view the most all-round attractive heritage line in the country (sorry this comment will not be of much use to non-UK readers!).
    As to the solutions, I’d never heard of yeast cake, and was held up by cashierer, not realising that shyer can be spelt with an i.

57. Too rich for my blood. I only completed it with considerable assistance from various aids. I’d never heard of the festival, and don’t know much about the W Midlands so I was up a bit of a gum tree all round.
    Not a favourite.
    Thanks Enigmatist.

58. I forgot to say thank you to Enigmatist for an entertaining if mystifying puzzle and especially to Eileen for a super blog. You make it all so accessible!

59. Never had to Google so much, even after seeing the blog! Torture.

60. I found the time to solve this late in the day (without any reference aids) and am very glad that I did. I knew nothing about the festival or the theme, but that didn’t matter: I knew Bewdley and Wyre Forest, and that helped a bit. I thought it was a cracking puzzle. The only clue I failed to parse was that for WYRE FOREST. I thought CRYPTICS was rather easy, as was COL, but I can’t say that about any of the other clues! There were too many good clues for me to list.

    Many thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen.

61. I thought this was a tremendous puzzle.

    Can’t see anything wrong with CRYPTICS or a so-called parochial theme in a British crossword.

62. Such an enjoyable puzzle and such scrupulously fair clues: was this really set by Enigmatist … or has the “Guardian crossword editor” now even started mixing up setters’ names?!

63. muffin@28: I think it’s fair to say that I had half-heard of WYRE FOREST! It came to my mind once I realised it was definitely FOREST, so I googled it to check that it existed.

64. [Thanks for the answer, drofle]

65. phitonelly @54 – Yes, I remember that one! But I haven’t time to chase it up just now: I’m just off to watch ‘Only connect’, with, apparently, perhaps more of JH’s devilry. 😉

66. As a member of the Severn Valley Railway this was a dream. Tried to find Bridgnorth or Kidderminster but can’t have it all. Having said that the clues were solvable although I admit Wyre Forest was difficult. For those non-anoraks the SVR runs from Kidderminster via Bewdley to Bridgnorth and between Kidder and Bewdley is the Safari Park. All is in the area known as the Wyre Forest which is in the delineation of the West Midlands. Also much is in Worcestershire. I can understand some concerns but the Festival is a long established event-just like Hay.

67. I love a good theme puzzle, even if I miss the theme until I read about it here. Thanks, Cedric @66 (as well as others who commented above) for explaining the many themed clues Enigmatist worked into this puzzle.

    By the way (I’m sure I could look this up online, but it is more fun to ask here): Is Bewdley pronounced “BOO-dley” or “BYOO-dley”?

68. Me @67

    … or (c) neither of the above?

69. As always the trickier puzzles always seem to bring out petty and mean spirited comments. Enigmatist’s puzzles are already all too rare…

70. @67. It’s pronounced Byoodley.

    And ..as a general comment … the talk was great fun. The two friends I was with are now determined to persevere with the cryptics ( n.pl) although I think they’ll be focusing on the quiptics and Rufus rather than Enigmatist for a while.

71. Thanks, Chrissie @70!

72. Thanks, Chrissie – I hoped you would comment. 😉 Glad you enjoyed it.

73. If John Henderson is going to do a talk at, in this case, a festival and asks those attending the bring today’s Guardian puzzle, then you may expect that he tried to compile a crossword that (a) is more accessible than usual, and (b) contains a variety of devices as he probably likes to say something about that.
    We thought, he succeeded.
    The local references are perhaps obscurish for those who weren’t there at 21ac.
    But let’s just accept that.

    What remains is a very good puzzle at – as we expected – the easier end of Enigmatist’s spectrum.
    The ugliness of 18d was amply compensated by the wonders of 13d or 23,4,13ac, while the very similar EXILE and VACANCY did their best to add to the fun.

    We failed on 1,22 although we were on the right track.
    However, unlike in 9ac (‘aged’) we were misdirected by ‘old’.
    And we weren’t sure about the use of ‘those’ in 29ac.
    It seems out of place, doesn’t it?

    All in all, a great end to a good and quite varied crossword week.

    Many thanks to Eileen.
    And to Mr E – hope everything went well today.

74. What Beery Hiker said at post 69. At least we’ve been spared the usual bile from JH’s obsessive detractor this time.

    Excellent puzzle from arguably the best setter in the biz.

75. Tough (for someone as tired as I was) but fair. I don’t recall coming across COMMON RAIL before, but at least WYRE FOREST was vaguely familiar from having met it in a crossword many years ago.

76. Sil, I had decided not to comment on this puzzle. After reading the comments on here it was obvious that some kind of “mysterious aura” had surrounded the puzzle which had befuddled some posters’ minds 😉

    However your comments of a crossword that (a) is more accessible than usual and What remains is a very good puzzle at – as we expected – the easier end of Enigmatist’s spectrum. have forced my post. I can only decide that you are being deliberately obtuse or have also been infected by this strange “aura”.

    If this was a puzzle for which no previous experience with cryptic clues is assumed then of course it was a fiasco.

    I suspect that without the accompanying lecture this kind of thing could put the inexperienced solver of cryptics into such a spin that they might decide never to look at such a thing again.

    I am usually well attuned to John’s puzzles as I still remember the young lad’s first puzzle being published with an accompanying note. (By the way he did try a little too hard to impress in that first offering!) Since then I have enjoyed both our developments as setter and solver respectively.

    This puzzle went along quite smoothly but there were some obvious problems with the clunkiness of the clues for most of the longer answers. Naturally the “Special instructions” led one to attempt 21 and 5 asap. So once “FESTIVAL” was soon followed by “BEWDLEY” (where?) one obviously flicked to Wikipedia to see that John had gleaned almost all his answers from the first two paragraphs of this url. Game over bar the torturous parsing!

    My best regards to all the posters on here and I bid you all a fond farewell and a speedy recovery to all that have been afflicted 😉

77. BNTO, when you say ‘If this was a puzzle for which no previous experience with cryptic clues is assumed then of course it was a fiasco, I am not sure that is the case.
    I really think John tried to create a puzzle that was doable, one that had to be part of his presentation.
    Whether it should have been published as a daily in The Guardian is another matter.
    I knew about the talk and the festival, so yes, I was perhaps in that ‘mysterious aura’.
    Happily so, just for a one-off gig.

    Altogether, despite some reservations, this was a good puzzle, wasn’t it?
    Not sure BNTO, what is actually your problem.
    That aura or the puzzle itself?
    Or the editor (‘s choice), once more?

78. Am I right in thinking the purpose of the setter was to use this puzzle at a festival to attract beginners to cryptic puzzles? If so, I would like to know how well he did.

    There were a few clues towards the easier end of the spectrum but most of the rest were challenging. Not much use for beginners.

79. BNTO @76
    I just wanted to chime in that the the actions you describe in your penultimate paragraph as being what one “naturally” and “obviously” did with this puzzle, were not — are not — universally natural or obvious. I think they are choices, pure and simple. I believe that each contributor to the blog discussions on this website has his or her own personal approach to solving (maybe for all puzzles, maybe on a puzzle-by-puzzle basis), and many contributors have indicated that they have certain “rules” (for example, strict time limits — definitely not my bag!) that they adhere to firmly. Naturally (and let’s go ahead and add “obviously”!), everybody is entitled to their own approach, but I must say that if one resorts to Google and Wikipedia early on in the game, the moment one knows or suspects there is a theme afoot, that is a conscious choice, and one must be aware at that very moment that doing so could turn many of the remaining clues into essentially a “word search” puzzle where the only remaining challenge is to match the word lengths and crossers and then work out the definition and parsing. So, if your Wiki research made this puzzle less enjoyable for you (or “game over”, as you say), then you only have yourself to blame! I’m not saying it was wrong for you to flick to Wikipedia — what’s right or wrong for you is whatever you decide it is — I’m just saying that Enigmatist is not to blame if you spoiled part of the game for yourself by looking up the theme subject matter before you attempted to solve the entire puzzle based on the clues alone, without any online assistance.
    Thanks for your frequent contributions, and best regards to you too!

80. I found this pretty tricky, even though my stag do was on the Severn Valley Railway. I was able to correctly guess a few answers without much clue how to parse them, but I got 8 wrong (or had to reveal). I’ve come a long way in the last 6 months but this one was above my level.

81. The words “no previous knowledge of cryptic crosswords required“, used in the festival’s publicity, referred to the talk itself not to the crossword. Some clues from the crossword were used at the talk to demonstrate how various devices might be employed…..

82. Well I’d never heard of Bewdley Beer Festival either but thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. Lots of clever and witty clues. The theme became apparent as soon as got Severn Valley Railway. Stumped on?y on ‘dewy eyed’

83. [am I the only person dying to know what happens on a stag do on the Severn Valley Railway?]

84. We both enjoyed this puzzle. Sunday on the Severn Valley Railway or at the West Midlands Safari Park were regulars for us when the children were young, which helped.

    Unfortunately the paper was not delivered yesterday morning so we didn’t know about the talk otherwise we would have been there.

    We are with beeryhiker @69.

    Thanks Eileen and Enigmatist.

85. Baerchen @84. Many years ago the Severn Valley Railway was one of the few places you could buy a beer after 14:00 on a Sunday afternoon.

86. Just solved this crossword. Wish I’d known Enigmatist was at Bewdley yesterday. I live close by and would have attended.

87. What does it say about our culture that references to places in the West Midlands are described as “parochial”, while a detailed knowledge of London (such as tube station names) is assumed to be normal? (We’ve lived in both, so have no complaints on either score. And despite living now only 10 miles from Bewdley had never heard of its beer festival but still enjoyed the puzzle.)

88. Oneof2fishes @87 – and others – there seems to be some misunderstanding. It isn’t a beer festival: the entry at 5dn, to which the clue at 21ac refers, is simply FESTIVAL, See here: https://bewdleyfestival.org.uk/

89. Eileen @88 My mistake, sorry. Having, as I said, never heard of the Bewdley festival, I’d assumed without checking that the yeast and beer references were part of the theme.

90. Oneof2fishes – no problem: several people had mentioned the beer festival and I thought it was perhaps time to clear it up. [I bet the Bewdley Festival hasn’t been entirely beer-free, though. 😉 ]

91. Eileen @ 90 and others

    As if happens, there is a Bewdley Beer Festival, but it’s not the same as this festival. It happens around August.

    JH’s puzzle was handed out at the talk, which went down very well, with around 130 attending, one of whom had found about it when he solved the crossword yesterday morning and promptly drove up from Bristol. Its theme was built around JH’s favourite clues by other setters, while demonstrating, and for some introducing, the various types of clue which are used. He then took questions from the floor. All in all a most congenial event.

    Tom Robinson Band in the evening were pretty good too.

92. As someone said on the Guardian website, more Egoist than Enigmatist.
    But if the setter is proud of his day in the sun, however weak, who’s to deny him the pleasure?
    And there’s nothing to fault with the puzzle itself.

93. Eileen — I tried to find the warning in the Everyman blog and couldn’t. Where is it?

94. Hi Valentine

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2017/10/08/everyman-3703/ – see Simon’s comment @3.

95. @David
    It surprises me that the moderators of this thread and those of the Guardian continue to allow you to post your entirely personal bile against this setter with your twin posting identities of “titipap” and “david”. It’s especially bewildering to see you post “as someone has said on the Guardian thread” when everybody knows it’s you.

96. Thanks, Eileen.

    While I was there I did the Everyman puzzle, which I usually don’t. To my own astonishment I knew WICHITA LINEMAN, because a week ago or so I heard an interview with the singer, whoever he was, who recorded it.

97. Well said Baerchen. I spoke too soon at post 74 and I just hope that if JH has a pet rabbit he’s keeping it safe, because I have visions of a certain deranged stalker boiling up the water…

98. Brilliant stuff, as always from the Torquemada of Cryptics. And a mention in dispatches too to Eileen for the parsing of EXILE.

    Incidentally, I’d never heard of Bewdley, let alone its festival, and thought the theme must somehow relate to Wales! But then I never get themes or Ninas. Obviously lack the chromosome…

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