Guardian Cryptic 27,755 by Brummie

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27755.

I thought that this puzzle contained too many weak clues and wayward surfaces to be very satisfying.

Across
1 ABOARD On the ship of love, in a poet’s embrace (6)
An envelope (‘in …’s embrace’) of O (‘love’) in A BARD (‘a poet’).
5 BESTREWN Elton, holding pants back to front to show spread (8)
An envelope (‘holding’) of STREW, which is TREWS (‘pants’) with its last letter moved to the first (‘back to front’), in BEN (‘Elton‘; not the first name to come to mind).
9 PLATELET Armour section (rented) that’s essential for a clot (8)
A charade of PLATE (‘armour section’) plus LET (‘rented’).
10 CRANNY Old lady gives up a lot of money for carbon fissure (6)
GRANNY (‘old lady’) with G (grand, ‘a lot of money’) replaced by (‘gives up … for’) C (chemical symbol, ‘carbon’).
11   See 22
12 CHESS PIECE Castle Cheese pics doctored? (5,5)
An anagram (‘doctored’) of ‘cheese pics’. The question mark covers the indication by example.
13 BISTRO Just the top of roast covered with gravy browning here? (6)
An envelope (‘covered with’) of R (‘just the top of Roast’) in BISTO (trade name, ‘gravy browning’), with an extended definition.
14 DIRTY LIE That of one who didn’t come clean? (5,3)
Cryptic definition. LIE is so very vaguely indicated.
16 EVANESCE Spacewalking scene change, then fade out (8)
A charade of EVA (extravehicular activity, ‘spacewalking’) plus NESCE, an anagram (‘change’) of ‘scene’.
19 CHILLI Pod‘s cold — not like Norfolk, it’s said (6)
A charade of C (‘cold’) plus HILLI, sounding like (‘it’s said’) HILLY (‘not like Norfolk’).
21 INFRACTION Violation accepted ahead of French battle (10)
A charade of IN (‘accepted’) plus FR (‘French’) plus ACTION (‘battle’).
23   See 22
24 AGEISM Not all frottage is mean form of discrimination (6)
A hidden answer (‘not all’) in ‘frottAGE IS Mean’.
25 LEIBNITZ Garland & Bishop fool the last great mathematician (8)
A charade of LEI (‘garland’, Hawaiian) plus B (‘bishop’, chess) plus NIT (‘fool’) plus Z (‘the last’ letter of the alphabet).
26 ARMHOLES Flaw in insignia, which should not be part of a straitjacket (8)
An envelope (‘in’) of HOLE (‘flaw’) in ARMS (‘insignia’). I would take ARMHOLES to be the shoulder openings, which a straitjacket would have; it seems Brummie is thinking of the cuffs.
27 THEORY Possible explanation from politician, full of gas (6)
An envelope (‘full of’) of HE (chemical symbol, helium ‘gas’) in TORY (‘politician’).
Down
2 BALSAMIC VINEGAR Dressing up seaman having alarming vices when drunk (8,7)
A charade of BA, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of AB (‘seaman’) plus SAMICVINEGAR, an anagram (‘when drunk’) of ‘alarming vices’.
3 ART BRUT In Part B: Rutherford’s primitive form of expression (3,4)
A hidden answer in ‘pART BRUTherford’.
4 DELICIOUS Succulent cryptic clue is: ‘I’d brought round ring’ (9)
An envelope (‘brought round’) of O (‘ring’) in DELICIUS, an anagram (‘cryptic’) of ‘clue is I’d’.
5 BUTT END Save time: break off edge of plank (4,3)
A charade of BUT (‘save’) plus T (‘time’) plus END (‘break off’).
6 SOCKS Hits that come in twos (5)
Double definition – or, rather, definition and allusion – and anyway, after the washing machine eats one, not always in twos.
7 REALITY No dream property would cramp one (7)
An envelope (‘would cramp’) of I (‘one’) in REALTY (‘property’).
8 WIND-CHILL FACTOR Fill in catchword, ‘Wicked!’ — it’ll make you feel more cool (4-5,6)
An anagram (‘wicked’) of ‘fill in catchword’.
15 RECONVICT Repeat sentence about inmate (9)
A charade of RE (‘about’) plus CONVICT (‘inmate’). Rather weak.
17 NORWICH At present partly within affluent city (7)
NOW (‘at present’) plus RICH (‘affluent’) with the W of NOW enveloped in the RICH (‘partly within’).
18 EDIBLES Food involved in Jedi blessing (7)
A hidden answer (‘involved in’) in ‘jEDI BLESsing’.
20 INCENSE How, in USA, change might be presented vocally as anger (7)
Sounds something like (‘vocally’) IN CENTS (‘how, in USA, change might be presented’).
22, 11, 23 CAMELHAIR COAT ‘Choc’, a material involved in making upmarket attire (9,4)
An anagram (‘involved’) of ‘choc a material’. An anagram with a made-up word is not very satisfying.
completed grid

69 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,755 by Brummie”

  1. There’s something about Brummie you folks may find interesting.  His puzzles have the most helpful crossers of all setters here.   This is following the notion that the more unusual the letter (e.g. Z, J) the more helpful it is as a crosser, the more common (e.g. E, T) the less helpful.  I won’t go into details, but you can calculate the helpfulness via entropy, and his numbers are statistically significantly higher than the average.  At the other end of the spectrum is Chifonie, with Pan nipping at his heels.  Nobody else stands out. I don’t imagine this is intentional on any of their parts, but rather a side-effect of their grid-filling methods/software.

    How is this useful?  Probably not much, except if you’re stuck on a Brummie, maybe that crosser is a B or a C.

  2. Dr W @1 “won’t go into details” – but it could be really interesting to have them. Whether here or in the General Discussion section. Hope you can oblige.

  3. I live on the other side of the planet, so I didn’t know Bisto, Ben Elton, or the topography round Norwich.  But I got there in the end, with help from Brummie’s wordplay and statistically more helpful crossers.  I really liked ‘Jedi blessing.’  Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

     

  4. I’m in Australia. Bisto is available in our small-town supermarket.

    Ben Elton has spent over 30 years in WA, and set one of his novels here.

    Married to a lady from Fremantle.

    Surely well known, too, for Black Adder — extensively shown on ABC TV.

    Norwich? Perhaps 19ac, Norfolk?

     

  5. Ditto slipstream@3 re being antipodean, but it just so happens that that particlar Elton met a Freo girl at the Edinburgh Fringe and married her, so he’s a local (plus some of his novels are quite fun, and I’d put money on his being a Grauniad reader). A few dnks all the same, e.g. the gravy maker, the spacewalk acronym, and not sure about the brut, as against naive, art … might have heard it somewhere. Ofherwise not too problematic, tho not a great deal of fizz. Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

  7. Thanks to Brummie and PeterO. I, for one, enjoyed it. Sitting at the top of the Championship, it’s good to get some recogntion. There were some nice ways in, and some to give pause for thought.

  8. Sorry Trovatore @4, you are correct.  19a Norfolk, not Norwich, is the presumably flat area.  Neither of which I know, living in Alaska.  Nor Bisto in markets here.

  9. for 19ac, cf the line in Private Lives by Noel Coward: ‘Very flat, Norfolk’. In fact it has some quite hilly bits, as cyclists soon discover.

  10. Maybe a few too many run-ons today and not so keen on the double chill(i). However, all was fair.
    Look forward to more comments on the hilliness or not of Norfolk/Norwich after Eileen started yesterday’s blog saying that there was nothing controversial! I am sure that Noel Coward will make an appearance.
    Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

  12. I thought this would be a Monday-style doddle to start with, but slowed to a crawl and eventually finished. Unlike PeterO, I thought the cluing was fine. Hadn’t heard of EVA for spacewalking, so couldn’t parse EVANESECE, but otherwise fine. I liked ARMHOLES and BESTREWN. Thanks to B & P.

  13. I found DrWhatson’s@1 comment more interesting than the puzzle which was not one of Brummie’s best in my view. Usually when I feel like this about a puzzle others point out the subtleties I’ve missed so I look forward to being enlightened. I found SOCKS amusing – even more so with PeterO’s washing machine observation. Thanks to him and Brummie.

  14. A fairly straightforward solve.

    Agree that the ‘lie’ part of 14 ac is poorly clued.

    Liked 8 dn once I realised it was an anagram.

    Didn’t know EVA, googled it.

    Mr Google also tells me that Leibni(t)z is usually spelled without the ‘t’ apparently.

    Used to live in Suffolk, a lifetime ago, and often went to Norwich.  Does it still have signs proclaiming ‘A Fine City’.  It certainly was, I loved the market square and the church (Peter Mancroft?).

  15. We, in Norfolk, are used to being told that Norfolk is flat. As queenbarrow points out, cycling proves that it is not, as do the recent coastal cliff collapses. Parts of the fens nearby definitely are flat. I assumed ‘it’s said’ was doing double duty!

  16. I even had Dirty Den for 14ac for a while, imagining the “e” in “one” possibly being interpreted as “East Ender”. Rather far fetched, I realise…

  19. Not convinced about 19a. It relies on us knowing how to pronounce a word that doesn’t exist. Since HILLI is not a real word how does *anyone* know how it is pronounced? Am I being too picky?

  21. I stand corrected. It’s a phrase which has been part of family banter for years. Always spoken with appropriate clipped diction.

  22. Thanks both.
    Like others I thought all the clues were arguably fair but some of them not very elegant. I agree with most of the quibbles mentioned previously. Also at 5d, I would never refer to the BUTT END face of a plank as an ‘edge’, though I suppose technically it is. I hadn’t parsed THEORY, so thanks PeterO for that. My favourite was NORWICH.

  24. I loved your comment about the washing machine eating socks. When we had three teenage sons living in the house we used to dump all the odd socks in a bag, hoping to reunite them with their partners as time passed. After a couple of years I took them out and counted them. To my great surprise and delight, I finally had the answer to the Hitchhikers’ Guide problem of what is the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything… Q: “Why is there always one odd sock?” A:”42!”

  26. Had ‘Dirty Bit’ and ‘Chilly’ so a double dnf, but I agree with the opinion of some others that this was not one of Brummies better efforts. Personal view of course.

  27. I, too, am part of Team Chilly for 19AC. HILLI is not a word. Bravo CrypticCure @19. Now if Norfolk is not particularly chilly. Is it? Thanks to the setter and the blogger for an interesting puzzle!

  29. I quite liked it.

    Like George@26 and others, I had CHILLY for 19a, so really a fail for me.

    LOI was BISTRO 13a; I had not heard of BISTO. I also must admit I had not met EVA (16a EVANESCE) before.

    Favourites were 10a CRANNY and 8d WIND-CHILL FACTOR.

    Thanks to Brummie and PeterO.

  31. Thanks to Brummie and PeterO. A slow but steady solve for me (as it often is with Brummie) with dirty lie last one in with no great conviction. That said still a satisfying challenge for me and I did like armholes, Norwich and Liebnitz. Thanks again to Brummie and PeterO.

  32. A DNF for me today courtesy of 14a. I couldn’t decide if DIRTY should have been followed by LIE, FIB or BIT. The only other one I had a question mark against has already been picked up on the previous posts – armholes in straitjackets. EVA was new to me as was ART BRUT.

    Thanks to Brummie and PeterO

  33. I just happen to have an example to hand of the old British spelling of Leibniz (from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society):

    “A letter of Dr Wallis to Dr Sloan, Secretary to the Royal Society, giving an account of some late passages between him and Myn Heer Leibnitz, of Hannover.   April 12, 1699.

    “Sir, I received lately a letter from Myn Heer Leibnitz, of March 30th, 1699, wherein are some passages relating to mathematicks; of which I shall not at present trouble you with a particular account.”

     

  37. I found this quite difficult to get into but a reasonably satisfying solve, apart from DIRTY LIE, which I didn’t much like and doesn’t seem to be a phrase much seen in major dictionaries. CAMEL HAIR seems to be usually 5,4 or 5-4, rather than 9.

    I can’t see the objection to ‘HILLI’ being a homophone of hilly, it doesn’t need to be a proper word, surely?

    As for socks, one should get these little plastic thingies that hold them together when put in a washing machine and then hung on the line – it makes life easier!

    Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

     

  38. Thanks JohnE & Anna.  There’s clearly some inconsistency about the poor chap’s name but, whatever the spelling, the world still has to be grateful to him for differential & integral calculus.  (Not sure I would have been quite so grateful back in the 60’s when I was wrestling with the subject!)

  39. A bit late to the party today. Parts of this were fun but some of the surfaces were a bit “men” – “Part B: Rutherford”? Like “Alice V” the other day – really stretching the limits I thought. Another who DNF because of “Dirty Lie” and I wrote in “chilly” before realising it did not fit the clue. Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

    Dr. Whatson @1 – re entropy, the first time I came across comments on this was in Claude Shannon (engineer, inventor of a juggling robot and, more famously, the man who invented information and communication theory, giving us Shannon’s Law) who discussed information contained in language in terms of its entropy. In his seminal paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (free link) on page 15 he even briefly detours into the necessary redundancy in a language in order to be able to make crosswords possible. English is well-suited it turns out. He goes into more detail on language, but not on crosswords, in his “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English” (here). I’ve not read a biography recently so do not know if he was a cruciverbalist on top of his other talents, but I’ve always treasured that little detour in one of the most important papers of the 20th century.

  40. Oh and I meant to say I was thrown by 6dn for a while, having “spats” which also come in twos and are the hits e.g. of raindrops. Granny -> cranny sorted me out eventually but I do think my answer is equally valid without that crosser, which was my LOI as a result.

  41. thezed @40:  Webster gives, “spat (n);  to strike with a sound like that of rain falling in large drops”.  So I think your answer is perfectly valid, albeit perhaps not quite as close to the clue as SOCKS.

  42. Bodycheetah @34:  You’ve reminded me – I intended to query the US pronunciation of cents too.  I’ve spent a fair bit of time there and I can’t say I’ve ever heard it.  Is it regional, perhaps?

  43. Bodycheetah @32 and William @42: I think it’s the ‘cents’ that are US, not the pronunciation thereof.  I can see how that might confuse Antipodean solvers though, as the clue could equally have been phrased ‘How, in Australia, change might be presented vocally…’

  44. It was obviously a dirty something or other, but LIE didn’t spring to mind at all. ART BRUT was easy enough to get, but a new term for me.
    On the other hand, 1a is a lovely clue.

  45. Not as tough as it seemed at first, but I must admit that the EVA almost defeated me.

    Thanks to Brummie and PeterO

  46. Dr Whatson @1 — The output of Brummie’s alter ego Cyclops has also been closely analysed of late (the following link is copied from this site’s Cyclops 644 blog):

    https://mark.clow.es/?blog/2019/02/cyclops-crossword

    thezed@39 — The methodology of the paper “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English” is rather too specialised to mean very much to me, but I cannot help smiling at the irony of the entropic side-effects of wonky photocopying on the legibility of some of the text in the PDF file (Dali’s melting clocks come to mind).

  47. Waking up after a good night’s sleep, a bit surprised to see a minor controversy over flatness – reminds me of the assertion that a giant holding the Earth would think it about as smooth as we find a billiard ball.

    To thezed: it’s on page 14 of my copy.

    To quenbarrow: it’ll be in the book.

  48. For me, the INCENSE homophone works; the T in cents isn’t silent, but it isn’t terribly stressed either. So if you’re speaking at a normal pace, “incense” sounds enough like “in cents” to pass.

    I knew Bisto only from other crosswords, and didn’t know Ben Elton, but those words couldn’t be anything else. I remain mystified as to how Britain managed to put an extra L in the perfectly satisfactory New-World word CHILI, but language is weird that way.

  49. Thanks Brummie and PeterO

    I nearly finished before I went out, but had some left in the NE. A DNF on second go, as DIRTY LIE did not occur (and doesn’t seem well-clued).

    Ther have been a lot of comments, so I’m afraid I only skimmed them – sorry if I am repeating points made. I thought that the best description of this was “amateurish” – lots of obvious hiddens and anagrams, poor surfaces, awkward crossers (CHILL/CHILLI for instance.) I’m surprised the editor let “Bisto” through.

    I agree with the comments about Norfolk – I have cycled there, and in most of the county the only flat bits are the surfaces of the Broads. Coward was probably think of the Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire Fens – they are flat!

  50. Thanks both,

    Has nobody said that ‘choc’ is a good word? Much used in my idiolect and in the OED to boot.

    Favourite of the day was 17 for its unfamiliar mechanism.

    The parsing of 27ac is much better than mine: He O and R (for radon although it should be Rn) inside Ty (Cobb).

    Fascinating discussion on entropy. Those of us who are hard of hearing rely on redundancy in language to make any sense of what is going on. (I went for months believing Sid Perks died ‘dogging’ in Australia and was mildly disappointed when I found out he was only out for a run.)

     

  52. Muffin @49 re the flatness of the east – I once met David and Carrie Atchinson-Jones at a campsite. They are the authors of a series of guide books to walking and climbing, and were setting out to produce a complete guide to the hills of Britain in multiple parts. They very proudly told me they had recently returned from East Anglia having identified a 100m high point in Norfolk! (Checking now I see it must’ve been Beacon Hill). My only experience of cycling that area was discovering that Suffolk is not flat towards the end of the Dunwich Dynamo – in spite of one’s fervent hopes after 100 miles through the night…

  54. Thanks, PeterO. I agree with your preamble.

    I didn’t have time to comment before I went out. I’ve looked pretty carefully, I think, and I’m astonished to find no comment on what I thought was the weakest clue of them all – 15dn. A CONVICT is simply, by definition, someone who has been CONVICTED [found guilty] – and doesn’t even actually have to be an inmate [although that is one of Chambers’ definitions].

    Brummie’s puzzles often have a theme, so I was prepared for someone to have found one by the time I got home. I don’t think Norfolk / Norwich really constitute one!

  55. Eileen@54 – if I hadn’t been typing on my mobile I would have commented on 15d. I spent most of my time trying to think of a 6 letter RE word meaning SENTENCE to put around CON with the definition of REPEAT. If it wasn’t such a dismal clue I’d see it as clever piece of misdirection.

  56. mrpenney @ 48 – I agree with you on all counts.  Seeing “chilli” always brings me up short. It looks like a trade name.

    I was a bit irritated with this puzzle because after the first pass, I had completely filled the left side of the puzzle while on the right side, I had managed 3 across clues and no down clues.

  57. Adding to the discussion on 15D, I think the definition is simply incorrect. A sentence follows a conviction, they are not one and the same or simultaneous.

  58. Probably not one of Brummie’s best but I quite enjoyed it nonetheless. I was another CHILLY though. I liked CHESS PIECE -which was FOI- and BESTREWN. I assumed the correct ELTON from the outset.
    Thanks Brummie.
    Ps I’ve never been to Norfolk.

  59. Simon:  indeed.  In this country, for most felonies the conviction and sentencing are typically a month or more apart to give time for the PSIR. And yes, the clue is dreadfully weak–the wordplay and the word itself should never be etymologically related–at least not closely enough that no one finds the relation a surprise.

  60. I thought that that was dirty pig. They don’t come clean either! Failing that, I was thinking dirty bit because of the Black Eyed Peas song!

  61. I enjoyed this, although I too was hopeful of finding a theme , and slightly disappointed when it appeared pretty clear there wasn’t one.   I struggled a bit finishing up in the NE, prior to getting BESTREWN, because I was leaning toward LACES as the possible solution to 6dn (having not yet thought of SOCKS — and, like Tim H @51, I also thought of BUSTS, ha ha), and for 5dn I was trying to see if WITS END could be the answer — on the theory that there might be an idiomatic phrase in the UK (why not, there are so many others!) where an exasperated person might say something like, “I’m at the edge of my plank dealing with that nosy neighbour of mine!”  But I couldn’t find a way to make sense of the rest of the clue to possibly justify that as the answer, and finally I thought of the correct Elton and “trews”, and the mists parted to get 5dn and 6dn as well.

    I wanted to show a little love toward DIRTY LIE, which I believe has garnered not a single appreciative word in the comments above!  The phrase “come clean” means to tell the truth, especially with regard to one who has been deliberately withholding the truth up to that point.  (Perhaps this is a US idiomatic phrase, not common in the UK, Australia, etc.)  [And speaking of the US, they are conducting a televised hearing in Congress right now, as I type this, in which Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former “fixer”, is purporting to come clean.]  So, “that of one who didn’t come clean”, is a clear (to me, at least) definition of a lie.  And not just any lie, but a dirty lie — which gives the humorous element, literally not coming clean.  “Dirty lie” is a common enough phrase (again, at least here in the US) that it appears in song titles and song lyrics.  Bob Dylan recorded a song of that name in 1984 (you can listen to it here) that he apparently decided not to release because it sounded too much like “Stray Cat Strut”.  So … DIRTY LIE in today’s puzzle was A-OK (as cryptic clues go) in my book.

    OTOH, I agree with all those who found RECONVICT to be pretty weak.  And I concur with mrpenney @48 and others that “in cents” and INCENSE are homophones for most here in the USA (including me).   I didn’t mind the spelling of CHILLI.  That’s how they spell it for the hot green peppers sold in all of the Indian markets here.

    Another one nobody (as I type this) has mentioned yet, was BALSAMIC VINEGAR — that was my CotD!  WIND CHILL FACTOR was a close second, and I also liked DELICIOUS and INCENSE.

    Many thanks to Brummie and PeterO and the other commenters.

  62. Me @61 –

    Oops, I meant to say: “DIRTY LIE in today’s puzzle was A-OK (as cryptic *definitions* go) in my book.”

    All of the clues are cryptic in their way.

  63. I enjoyed this … but will insist until I die that a castle is not a chess piece (I assume the setter means a rook?)…given the surface, King or Queen or Bishop would have made ‘as much’ sense, but at least been an actual non-contentious name for a chess piece! 🙂

  65. Google informed me that Leibnitz was a philosopher. But that Leibniz was a mathematician. Put it in anyway .
    Some nice surfaces especially 5ac subtly inferring an Elton John reference, and 2d which resonated.

  66. DaveMc@61
    We in India follow UK English and the phrase ‘come clean’ in the sense you mention is quite common.

  67. Dr. Whatson @1 writes in part:

    “Nobody else stands out. I don’t imagine this is intentional on any of their {specified setters] parts, but rather a side-effect of their grid-filling methods/software.”

    I would be interested to know what software they use! Not the often touted, regularly updated, much advertised, internationally known and widely used software?

  68. @Stuart – agreed, castle would refer to the move and not the piece. Maybe moving cheese pics could take en passant?

  69. Bodycheetah @34: I’d say that the T in CENT is definitely not silent, but in CENTS it is nearly so — close enough for a homophone clue, in my opinion. (Unlike some people, I favor a fair amount of latitude in homophone clues.)

Comments are closed.