Bluth appeared for the first time about a month ago and I enjoyed his debut. This one is as good: lots of nice surfaces and apart from one or two I’m not sure about, which is no doubt the result of my own incompetence, sound and efficient clueing.
I don’t think I’m giving anything away by telling you, if you didn’t know already, that Bluth is Dave Gorman. When he appeared last month lots of people pointed it out and he seems to make no secret of the fact: this link takes you to his Twitter material. That was last month; I expect there’s a whole lot more there now. As our editor said then “I’ve been quoting Dave Gorman for years. In 2006 he said “That’s the thing with cryptic crosswords … it’s a little bit of poetry hiding in the corner of your newspaper.” So I’m delighted to be able to welcome him to Poets’ Corner.” The poetic link is absolutely right: a setter is hunting for the right word, just like a poet.
Extraordinary: all the anagrams have indicators before the anagrist. What does this mean?
Definitions in blueviolet, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
You’d think there was a Nina, with all those unches round the outside, but of course I can’t see one.
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | PUGILIST | Boxer dog I advertise for sale (8) |
| pug I list | ||
| 9 | AMAZON | Edges of aluminium razor shaved face of noble warrior (6) |
| a{luminiu}m {r}azo{r} n{oble} | ||
| 10 | UGLY | Snug Lycra’s unattractive (4) |
| Hidden in SnUG LYcra — simply the ‘s indicating the hidden; some might prefer something a bit more substantial | ||
| 11 | HIT THE ROAD | Had consumed one dry sandwich to get going (3,3,4) |
| h(1 TT hero)ad — a hero is a type of sandwich, as I’ve just discovered | ||
| 12 | KIPPER | Captain missing first bit of smoked fish (6) |
| {s}kipper, the s being s{moked} — or possibly the definition is ‘smoked fish’ and it’s skipper missing its first bit, which is perhaps what Bluth intended — but either works fine | ||
| 14 | ORTHODOX | Steer without crashing hot-rod, as is customary (8) |
| *(hot-rod) in ox | ||
| 15 | TEA LEAF | Cockney crook cooked a fat eel (3,4) |
| *(a fat eel) — cockney rhyming slang | ||
| 17 | SCRIBES | Specs, oddly found outside home for writers (7) |
| crib in s{p)e{c}s — crib = home is US informal, according to Collins [but not Chambers, where as Bluth says it is simply ‘a home, esp one’s own’] | ||
| 20 | SABOTAGE | Spoil backing of legato bassoon piece (8) |
| Hidden rev. in lEGATO BASsoon — I’m always slow to get these hidden reverseds | ||
| 22 | MIMOSA | Bucks Fizz destroyed Maoism (6) |
| *(Maoism) — goodness I’m learning things today: Buck’s Fizz and the Mimosa cocktail are apparently very similar | ||
| 23 | FESTOONING | Decorating drunk – so often spilled gin (10) |
| *(so often) *(gin) | ||
| 24 | PUMP | Politician follows back-up question (4) |
| (up)rev. MP | ||
| 25 | BALLAD | Song – it could be used to promote a dance? (6) |
| a ball ad could be used to promote a ball | ||
| 26 | LOO ROLLS | Bums without our Scottish bog paper (3,5) |
| l(oor)olls — lolls = bums, verb, and our, as said in Scotland, is oor | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | QUAGMIRE | Bog paper defines shareholders’ meeting (8) |
| qu(AGM)ire — ‘defines’ the containment indicator (somehow, not sure) — Bluth seems to have a thing about bog paper | ||
| 2 | TINY | Minute can start to yawn (4) |
| tin [can] y{awn} | ||
| 3 | ZITHER | Spot the woman’s instrument (6) |
| zit [spot] her | ||
| 4 | STETSON | Relative takes a bit of tweed for top of pillbox hat (7) |
| stepson with t{weed} instead of p{illbox} | ||
| 5 | PATHETIC | Greek character’s back to front in photo – sorry! (8) |
| (theta)rev. in pic [no, I was wrong: it’s the back letter moved to the front, not a reversal. Sorry. Azed does this quite often and I should have noticed.] | ||
| 6 | PATRIOTISM | Dad staged riot – it’s old fashioned masculine, national pride (10) |
| 7 | MONACO | Is able to rise in low country (6) |
| (can)rev. in moo | ||
| 13 | PILLOW TALK | Dancing polka will lead to terribly intimate conversation (6,4) |
| *(polka will t{erribly}) | ||
| 16 | ANACONDA | Heard an Acting Chancellor had a large snake (8) |
| 18 | ENSEMBLE | Outfit’s three points on detailed logo (8) |
| E, N, S [three points of the compass] emble{m} — detailed = de-tailed | ||
| 19 | VEHICLE | Rebuild the timeless Clive Sinclair C5, for example (7) |
| *({t}he Clive) | ||
| 21 | APEMAN | Perhaps Tarzan wants one to be a passing acquaintance of Simple Simon (6) |
| a p(1)eman — the nursery rhyme ‘Simple Simon met a pieman ….’ and the pieman is wanting one, so missing i or 1 — at least that’s what I think it is: the ‘wants one’ coming at the beginning makes me doubt [no, I was right to doubt: it’s ‘apeman’ = ‘perhaps Tarzan’ and apeman needs (wants) an i to become a pieman, a passing acquaintance of SS.] | ||
| 22 | MAGGOT | Grub bird picked up after dropping pie (6) |
| mag{pie} got — picked up = got, as in understood | ||
| 24 | POOP | Crap, whichever way you look at it (4) |
| a palindrome — whichever way you look at it | ||
Thanks John and Bluth, good fun.
PATRIOTISM – TIS = it’s in an old fashioned way.
ANACONDA – Anna Chancellor is a chancellor who acts, and sounds like Anna conned a…
I parsed 16d as an homophone of ‘Anna’ (actress Anna Chancellor) + ‘conned’ (had) + a
Very enjoyable. I was getting desperate for a J by the end, for the pangram, but no joy. I liked the shaved razor bit. Thanks John and Bluth.
Setter and Emperor’s endless piano(8)
I thought this was a superb crossword. Failed to parse ANACONDA but got the rest. Lots of humour and some clever clues. Didn’t know the HERO sandwich but the parsing was clear.
PUGILIST VEHICLE & QUAGMIRE were amongst my favourites. When I had QUAGMIRE, ZITHER & ORTHODOX, I did wonder if Bluth was attempting a border pangram but that didn’t pan out.
Thanks to Bluth for a better than goodish crossword and to John for the blog.
A really mixed bag for me. Not a puzzle for purists with several unindicated Americanisms plus a couple of dodgy indicators and some padding: ” ‘S ” in 10a, “defines” in 1d, “old” in 6d, “terribly” in 13d.
On the other hand there were nice touches of humour and some excellent clues, e.g.: 8a, 19d and, my favourite, 16d.
Thanks to Bluth and to John.
Don’t understand your references to padding, RD. The “ ‘S “ in 10a serves as the containment indicator and is short for “is” in the surface; “old” in 6d is because “‘tis” is an old expression; “terribly” gives the T in the answer.
Sorry, I missed out “defines” in 1d. If you take “defines” as “fixes the limit of” (as in “this fence defines the boundaries of my property”) then I think it works as an inclusion indicator.
Thanks John and everyone else for the comments. I think @muffyword @1 explains the parsing that John was unsure of, perfectly well and thanks @Hovis @7&8 for clarifying the purpose of what Rabbit Dave seems to think might be padding.
FWIW, Chambers has “Crib – A home, esp one’s own (slang)” so I wouldn’t class it as an Americanism. Ta!
Also… I’m a new setter and I want to improve. @Rabbit Dave – I’m genuinely grateful that you put positive comments as well as the things you’re not keen on. That spoonful of sugar does help. In the same spirit, I’d be interested to know which of the indicators you consider ‘dodgy’?
Thanks Muffyword@1 and others who have pointed out how some clues worked. I knew someone would!
Thanks to Bluth for an enjoyable crossword and also to John for the blog
Sorry, Bluth, I really would like to say something positive but I was ‘turned off’ immediately by the double dose of bog paper, the zit and the crap. Added to that, I’ve never heard of the sandwich and can’t see how the wordplay would lead me to it and I didn’t think apostrophe S worked as an indicator in 10a.
I’ll try again with your next offering, meantime thanks for your efforts and thanks also to John for the review.
@copmus (with apologies to Chris Lancaster)
Wireless comms tech banning superstar Samuel the Setter? (5)
Bluth @10. Thanks very much for popping in – it’s always nice to be able to have a dialogue with a setter. From my side, I am a very keen, very average solver and a renowned pedant (!), but one who has the greatest admiration for anyone who can construct a cryptic crossword of any standard. For me, far and away the most important attribute of a crossword is that it is fun to solve, which is something that, on the evidence so far, your puzzles score highly on.
I am not keen on unindicated Americanisms (and any other inindicated non-British terms) but sometimes what does or doesn’t fall into this category can be a moot point as more and more US expressions make their way across the Atlantic. I would consider “crib”, “hero” and “mimosa” as US terms, but, to take the specific example of “crib” that you mention, Chambers and Collins have different views.
You have asked what I considered as dodgy. These were the things that I listed in my post @6. In more detail:
As correctly pointed out by Hovis I got “terribly” wrong – it’s a necessary part of the wordplay for 13d, not padding. SOrry about that.
I think “old” in 6d is padding simply to make the surface read sensibly. The wordplay is PA + an anagram (“fashioned”) of RIOTITS + M(“masculine”).
As John has also said in his review, ‘S in 10a is not a very rigorous hidden word indicator.
It is perhaps a moot point but, even given Hovis’ explanation above, I personally don’t think “defines” in 1d is an adequate insertion indicator.
Anyway, Bluth, thanks for the entertainment. I’m looking forward to your next one.
@13 Fair enough, Jane. If Bog Paper’s not for you, it’s not for you. However, I always find it odd when people suggest the things they don’t know are somehow unfair (“I’ve never heard of the sandwich and can’t see how the wordplay would lead me to it”). The only people I know who are aware of Henry Beerbohm Tree are crossword solvers and the only reason any of them know it is that they have learned to think of ‘tree’ when they see ‘actor’ in a clue. Likewise, I doubt many non-solvers see ‘sailor’ and think of ‘ab’. These are all things most of us did not know once but came to know through crosswords. I’d like to think we remain open to continuing that journey and never assume that it’s finished.
@15 Rabbit Dave “I think “old” in 6d is padding simply to make the surface read sensibly. The wordplay is PA + an anagram (“fashioned”) of RIOTITS + M(“masculine”).”
But that *isn’t* the wordplay. Your version leaves ‘staged’ unaccounted for. More padding!!! It is – as muffyword and Hovis have pointed out: PA + an anagram (staged) of RIOT + TIS (an old fashioned version of “it’s”) + M (masculine)
Bluth @17. Ah yes! I see now. Too clever for my rabbit brain.
@Bluth – I take your point about crossword-specific references, and largely agree with it, but ‘hero’ is, unless you persuade me otherwise, a very arcane use to most UK solvers that isn’t even supported by the dictionary! I’d baulk at it in a Listener puzzle: to use (and allow) it in a daily cryptic seems bizarre to me
Great that the setter has contributed to the comments. John, you raised a query about 21D [“Perhaps Tarzan wants one to be a passing acquaintance of Simple Simon” (6)]. I thought I’d add my bit as Bluth doesn’t seem to have commented on it. I had a slightly different take on it from you. I thought “wants” should be interpreted more straightforwardly as “needs” rather than “lacks”. This would give us: Perhaps Tarzan [needs] I to make “A P I E M A N”. That said, I wonder if the clue might be a little fairer if there was a question mark at the end, in addition to the “perhaps”, to signal that since “perhaps tarzan” is both the definition and intrinsically involved in the word play, there is a little trickery going on.
Like muffword and others, I had no problem getting the parsing of ANACONDA and PATRIOTISM. But I couldn’t work out the parsing of LOO ROLLS, so thanks John for explaining that. Different strokes and all…
Bluth – excellent work for a new setter. I have no problem with bog rolls, zits etc. The world of crosswords needs variety. Is your name inspired by Arrested Development by any chance?
@16 – a) your parsing of 21D is pretty much it. Apeman needs I to become A Pie Man.
b) yes, re Arrested Development. (Also, in Gaelic I’m led to believe Gorm = Blue and An = The. But Bluth is neater than Bluethe. And I’m eating a frozen banana.
What crypticsue@12 said.
@ Rabbit Dave – re. the use of the word “defines” in 1D. The point is surely that “defines” is used here to mean “mark the limits of”. So it isn’t being used to signal an insertion. It’s being used to signal an enveloping. Not at all problematic. I’m not a regular solver, so I don’t know from personal experience whether it is a well established usage, but your comments seem to suggest it is not. In which case, all the better. Crosswords ought to involve novelty and a degree of (fair) misdirection. And I don’t think this usage of “defines” too obscure either: a crossword clue is hardly going to use the word “defines” to signal a definition, so it’s fair to assume something else is going on with the word.
Bluth @ 21 – excellent. I’ll keep an eye open for related themes in the future.
Are you diminutive my name Bluethe?
David @23. I don’t see your use of “defines” any different from mine but, hopefully, it may bring around other solvers. To me, an envelope does signal an inclusion, i.e. that which it is enveloping.
I’m surprised there have been a few objections to the possessive ‘apostrophe s’ to denote an inclusion. I’ve fallen foul of this construction in the past but it is a crossword standard. I can’t see any objection and seems a lot more solid than, for example, the use of “zero” to denote the letter O.
I’m a little surprised by Jane’s objections but respect everybody’s right to express their opinions. If a setter continually annoys me, I just stop doing their crosswords. The clever way in which “bog paper” is split in the cryptic parsing made this one of my favourites. My opinion is that setters write clues like this to inject humour if that is how they think and editors should step in if they think they’ve overstepped the lines of decency. Given what else appears in a typical newspaper ….
Hovis @25 – I agree, you and I both understand the use of the word “defines” in essentially the same way. I was just attempting to offer an answer to Rabbit Dave’s objection (@15), that “defines” is not an adequate “insertion” indicator, even given your explanation (which he now seems to accept) that it means “marks the limits of”. I wondered if perhaps Rabbit Dave was getting hung upon an apparent inconsistency between “marks the limits of” and “inserts”. If so, the answer is that there is no inconsistency, and there is no problem with the syntax of the clue, because the operation that the word “defines” signals is not that of “inserting” AGM in QUIRE. Rather, “defines” signals that the letters Q U I R E mark the limits of (i.e. must be placed at each end of) AGM to give the solution. Hence, I though it might be more useful to see the operation as one of enveloping, or surrounding, rather than inserting.
Thanks for your very useful comments!
Bluth, @ 24 – I see I’ve been incredibly slow on the uptake. Have just re-read the blurb at the top of this page, and I see that you are indeed “My name’s diminutive Bluethe”! Fair enough. Keep up the good work.
I am with Jane @ 13. My co solver (male) was also less than entertained with the americanisms and quires of loo roll. As a former health professional my objections to mention of basic bodily functions can hardly be ascribed to prudery. I just get bored with puerility. As I have commented previously there is little excuse for overuse of slang given the richness of the English language.The clues we did like suggest that Bluth can achieve a higher degree of elegance.
Enjoyed this a lot. PILLOW TALK was especially good. And I’m all for slang in crosswords, so CRIB and HERO were fine by me. Refreshing in fact.
Thanks to John for the write-up and to Bluth for the puz. Keep ’em coming.
Bluth, you should feel honoured that your crossword has drawn 29 (now 30) comments, which is very rare for the Indie. For my part, I thought it was all fair, clear and clever (if a bit easy for my taste). My only rasied eyebrow was the ‘s indicator for an inclusion, a device I’ve only seen in lesser and less rigorous papers. Keep up the good work.
BTW, I’m American and would never have thought of CRIB as an Americanism for home — quite the contrary.
Bluth@16 A PS. HBT perhaps not the best example you could have used. I met the gentleman whilst attending a secondary school that encouraged wide general knowledge.
@30: thanks Ian. I admit that, like Hovis @25 I’m surprised to see people objecting to the ‘s in 10A as I too considered it to be a standard crossword construction. I don’t really see in what way it is less rigorous as we all use it all the time as a possessive in everyday language. In the wordplay sense it surely means Snug lycra possesses unattractive. And in the surface it’s simply “is”. That seems entirely logical and rigorous to me… but if those who think it less rigorous want to explain why a possessive ‘s shouldn’t mean that, I’m all ears!
On the general point of Americanisms etc… it may surprise people who winced at Hero and Mimosa but the truth is, I simply considered them everyday terms because they’re both things I have ordered and consumed here in Blighty. To my mind, ‘mimosa’ displaced Bucks Fizz some time ago as the name for that particular cocktail. Isn’t that a part of the wonderful peculiarity of words? That someone won’t want to order a Buck’s Fizz because it makes them sound like an 80s yuppie but they do want to order a mimosa because it makes them feel like a sophisticate even though they’re the same thing.
I’m in no way dismissing the comments @19 from Bingybing but I do find it interesting that elsewhere (on Twitter) I have had a comment from one person telling me it’s the first cryptic they’ve ever completed and another from someone telling me that they’re “young” and found it refreshing to see “normal terms” like “hero” and “crib” in there instead of Greek mythology etc.
I’m delighted that the puzzle was approachable for both those people and I find it fascinating that to them, those are just normal terms while to others they’re arcane and feel wrong. (And as I said before, there isn’t a regular solver in the world who doesn’t, without complaint, regularly employ terms that are clearly arcane to non-solvers and none of us think it wrong.)
In any case, I dare say Bingybing that you’ll encounter ‘Hero’ in that sense in another crossword another day and next time you’ll think, “ah yes, that term that I found annoying that time” and still feel a bit put out by it, but who knows, when you’ve met it another four or five times, you might one day just think, “ah… sandwich… I wonder if that’s hero” and fill it in. And at the same time, the next time I’m looking at including it in a crossword, I’ll pause to think about this dialogue and wonder if there’s a fairer-for-all-term that does the job instead. I’m sure we’re all, always travelling a little, one way or the other.
Wow, what a lot of comments. We only got four yesterday. 🙂
Definitely a Goldilocks crossword for me. Got it all without aids but a few delayed me at the end. It took me a while to parse 17ac, and I never did work out how 16dn worked but the answer was obvious once I had some crossing letters.
@Bluth…you are misinterpreting/overinterpreting the comment from bingybing about your use of HERO=sandwich. He simply stated that your usage is not supported by either Chambers or Collins, and he’s right.
A great puzzle. I had a small hiccup at 5D as the Greek letter Theta read backwards does not quite fit into “P(athet)ic”. Is “Tehta” an alternative spelling for the Greek letter? Or does the definition “sorry!” imply that “Theta” is deliberately out of kilter?
Bluth, I didn’t say the ‘s construction was wrong or illogical, just that I raised an eyebrow. Perhaps there is no good reason, but it’s something I’ve only seen in the Evening Standard (when I couldn’t find anything else). Many of the other devices there were maddenlingly loose, so I may just be finding the apostrophe guilty by association. It is true, though, that I’ve never found it in the better crosswords.
By yet another way, I’m not generally a fan of the cheekily smutty or scatological clues that pop up now and then, but in the present times the notion of LOO ROLLS mades my spirit soar! Now if I could only get my hands on somne flour …
Thanks to John and to Bluth/Dave for entering into an interesting debate which throws light on what people want and expect from crosswords. It all adds to life’s rich tapestry. As Oscar May have said, “There’s only one thing worse than being talked about …”
Michael from Oz @ 35
The ‘back to front’ is not a reversal indicator, it is telling you to move the last letter of THETA to the front to give ATHET which is then put into PIC to provide the entry.
baerchen @34: MARS = ‘bar’ is also not in the dictionaries, yet we see it very often (without any discussion).
@Sil. That’s a facile comparison. Mars is a recognised brand name of over 100 years. Hero isn’t. And it’s not in the dictionary. Why do I even need to point such a thing out? Are we in collective brain melt or something?
@36 well, that’s really my point. It seemed to be that you thought the ‘s to be less rigorous which I took to mean… “It doesn’t really work but we’re letting him get away with it” – to which my reply is that the sense is completely logical and rigorous. I’d hope we don’t all solve crosswords only by recognising patterns we’ve seen before…
Bingybing
It is in a reputable dictionary, the ODE:
hero
2. (also hero sandwich) North American another term for hoagie.
hoagie
noun (plural hoagies) chiefly North American a sandwich made of a long roll filled with meat, cheese, and salad.
@34 Hi Baerchen – I completely accept Bingybing’s point that it’s an Americanism and seems arcane to them. I was merely explaining that it didn’t even occur to me that it was anything other than a normal term and sharing the fact that I find it interesting that we can all see the same words so differently. And, like I say, I won’t consider using it in a crossword again without remembering this to-and-fro. All of which is healthy. And, for what it’s worth, it is in Collins: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hero in American English, definition 6. Like I say, I 100% assumed it had travelled further into the British argot than it seems to have done. For now, anyway!
Well I liked this a lot. As a Sinclair nerd I loved 19d. In fact in my home office I have all Sinclair’s computers (not the MK14 – I had one once and had to sell it). I saw a C5 in an auction and was old in no uncertain terms that we didn’t have room for it. I really want one.
Ta to Bluth and John.
Blimey, is this a record number of responses for the Indie? I thoroughly enjoyed it and had heard of the hero sandwich. Thanks Bluth and John.
Thanks, Gaufrid. That makes much sense. Cheers.
Well, this makes a change from the usual paltry number of responses to Indy puzzle blogs. I can only heap more praise. Great fun, full of wit and wow, 19down, more inventive than Sir Clive himself.
As for the objections to hero, I don’t see the problem. You start constructing the clue as per instructions, put the HAD on the outside, insert I and TT and you are left with HERO so you think what? Hero? Sandwich? Google hero sandwich and you get hundreds of recipes so be thankful, you ve learnt something. Thanks all
Tatrasman @45, I had a look in the Fifteensquared archive to figure out if we had such a number of comments for an Indy puzzle.
I stopped in May 2019, so a year ago.
[perhaps, beeryhiker can tell us more (although he’s more focused on The Guardian)]
It turns out to be that a setter, any setter may be lucky to have 15+ comments.
And guess what, the highest number was 33, Independent 10,452 (Bluth’s debut!!).
The only one who came close was Hoskins (IoS 1,555) with 32.
Meanwhile, I totally agree with the last two lines in gsolphotog’s comment @47.
It’s exactly how I experienced solving 11ac.
Just like him I don’t see what the fuss is all about.
Yes I had just the same experience as Sil@48 and gsolphotog@47 with the hero clue: ‘Solved from wordplay’, and at the end of it there is a likelihood that hero = sandwich, which turns out to be correct. That’s what happens all the time with Azed (once a month) and Mephisto (only very occasionally) because the words are often so strange.
Thanks for trying Sil. It is possible to sort the list of Independent puzzles by the number of comments posted (well, at least I can) and this is what I found.
There have been 37 Independent blogs that have received 30 or more comments but only 5 of these have had 40 or more:
9,620 Nimrod 12/8/17 – 53
10,472 Bluth 6/5/20 – 48 (now 50!)
9,549 Beet 22/5/17 – 46
8,498 Donk 9/1/14 – 45
9,694 Filbert – 7/11/17 – 41
Now there’s a challenge …
I’d just like to add that, apart from quoting Dave/Bluth on crosswords being poetry, I often claim that one advantage of crosswords over certain other puzzles is that you can learn lots of new words from them – much of my extensive vocabulary has come from doing crosswords over the years and I’m still learning. I already know the numbers from 1 to 9, so Sudokus aren’t as effective.
Also, the language is a living thing with new words being added all the time and what was once considered slang is now accepted usage. Or do we go back to napron and numpire?
worried no-one will read comment 52. Anyway, loved it. Noticed most of the things commented on but mentally justified them. I liked the second bog being quagmire. I had contrived my own personal homophone for 16a which was nowhere near as good as the true parsing. And i’m now following you on Twitter.
Thanks to John and Bluth
I have certainly seen “‘s” to indicate a containment before but I’m not very keen on it. On the assumption it works both ways and using a couple of other crossword “tricks” 9a e.g. could be rendered:
Madman has razor shaved flower (6)
In 15a “cooked”, and 11a “consumed” the past tense is a little jarring. 11a is also the sort of clue where the enumeration is a bit of a giveaway so I think it’s legitimate to make the definition slightly vaguer:
Had sandwiches made up to their Jack’s instruction? (3,3,4)
“Without” in it’s archaic “on the outside of” meaning is used twice, which is a bit clumsy.
I’m curious as to whether there was once an ellipsis linking 26a and 1d.
Loved 19d
I’m with Eimi re learning new words, either through crosswords or many years of reading anything and everything. Words are fascinating and you can never stop learning something new
As for the hero sandwich, I remember donkeys years ago discovering it in a work of fiction and being intrigued as to whether it was of heroic size or purely to be eaten by heroes 🙂
@54crypticsue, those donkeys must have been amazingly intelligent.
Thanks to Bluth and John. It’s all been said.
Indy 55, Graun 50 – these are unusual times!
By the way, Bluth, what IS the difference between “terms” and “conditions”?