Guardian 28,229 – Brummie

73 comments on “Guardian 28,229 – Brummie”

1. The blog is invaluable as I missed the theme completely, so many thanks to Andrew. Should have looked more closely. I enjoyed this puzzle nevertheless. Favourites were all down clues: BELFAST (nice link with another favourite, TITANIC at 3d), 7d GARBAGE, 14d HARD TIMES (which we had to study in Year 9 – and much of it stayed with me throughout my teaching career, as I was determined not to be anything like Mr Gradgrind), 18d LUCERNE and 19d VICTORY. Sending much appreciation to Brummie for an enjoyable puzzling experience, and to Andrew for the helpful explanations as well as for pointing out the connections as I said earlier.

2. Dunno about Kismet, but Victory yes..

3. Ditto re Hard Times, JinA…same year even..what was it Gradgrind said, something about little pitchers to be filled..?

4. Thanks Brummie and Andrew

   Pretty straightforward, though I didn’t see the theme. DUTCHMAN was neat.

   DEADLY BLOW doesn’t work for me either, and I don’t see the equivalence of compact and HARD.

5. I saw three ships… and then another, and another… and ended up with a big smile on my face as the whole flotilla emerged out of the fog.

   Thanks Andrew for locating so many of them.  There’s also the ship’s TENDER, used to transport people/supplies to and from shore; and from post-puzzle googling I found the Lucerne which sank in 1873.

   More tenuously, LANCER and APHID are both fictional vessels, from Star Wars and Endless Sky (video game) respectively.

   Even Captain COOK gets a look-in, hiding out in the south-west and going round the bend.

   My only disappointment is I couldn’t find any reference to HMS GARBAGE.

   A lovely taste of sea air, thank you Brummie and Andrew.

6. As others have already said a fairly straightforward solve even, as always, I didn’t see the theme even after spotting the FLYING DUTCHMAN.
   COD for me was TITANIC which raised a smile.
   Enjoyable thanks to Brummie and Andrew

7. A very pleasant puzzle.  I managed to see the theme about three quarters of the way through.  It brought to mind “Hear the sound Willie boy, the Flying Dutchman’s on the reef” from Rockin’ Chair by The Band, who were later IN CAHOOTS.

   essexboy @5: no I don’t think there has been an HMS Garbage, but the Royal Navy has certainly had some rather oddly named ships, including HMS Cockchafer and HMS Carcass.  My father served on the Indefatigable whose name seemed designed to be a tongue-twister for sailors after a few drinks on shore.

   Many thanks Brummie and Andrew.

8. HMS Orange, too

9. As far as I can see FLYING DUTCHMAN, MARY ROSE, TITANIC, BOUNTY, KISMER, LUCERNE, VICTORY are shipwrecks

   Nice puzzle.Thanks Andrew and Brummie

   I liked Hard Times. Rather Gradgrind than Squeers!!

10. Like JinA @1 and gif @3, another Hard Timeser here.  Horse: quadruped etc.

    As well as the KISMET link to Nelson and the VICTORY, I find that HSM Fortune, launched in 1913 and sunk at Jutland in 1916 was briefly renamed HMS Kismet!

    I’d agree with the criticism of DEADLY BLOW: not Brummie’s best but an outlier in what is, otherwise, a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle.  I don’t share muffin’s concern @4 with compact for hard.  A compact surface is generally a hard surface, most definitions include the word solid which is generally hard and they appeared as synonyms in the first thesaurus I consulted so I liked it and it’s a nice smooth surface too!

    I share JinA’s appreciation of several down clues – BELFAST, TITANIC, GARBAGE and VICTORY and would add another with ORANGE.  Of the across clues, DUTCHMAN is clever and I liked the picture conjured up by the surface of ESOTERIC.

    Thanks Brummie as always and Andrew for alerting me to the theme I had inevitably overlooked.  With Flying Dutchman staring me in the face!

11. Shipwreck? Pish!

12. Thanks to Brummie and Andrew – both brilliant.

    I think DEADLY BLOW is a bit more than just a cd. You might say a very strong Martini was deadly, especially if you had several.

13. Myrvin @11: it took me a while – immediate reaction “but they WERE shipwrecks” – before the penny dropped!

14. Myrvin & Mark – hips don’t lie – or maybe they do.

15. Essexboy @5 I think HMS GARBAGE was the flag-carrier for Seaborne Freight otherwise known as the Failing/Grayling Line?

    Superb fare from Brum today – nice quickish solve, a few to muddle over and a theme to totally miss!   FOI was KISMET a simply lovely clue given that the musical is probably most famous for the song “Stranger in Paradise” which comes from the Polovtsian Dances in Borodin’s Prince Igor which The Met is known as putting on a particularly good version of…

    Thanks for the fun, Brum and the log, Andrew!

16. Meh – Brummie, not Brum which was a CBeebies TV programme about a car set in Birmingham…

17. A gentle romp. I particularly liked CHANCE, IN CAHOOTS and LUCERNE having been brought up on Br’er Rabbit stories though presumably Uncle Remus has now been “cancelled”?

    I thought DEADLY BLOW was okay given the attempt at surface misdirection

    Cheers all

18. Didn’t know THE LANCERS, loi, had to look that one up. Great time recently viewing the MARY ROSE and the VICTORY at Portsmouth Historic Naval Yard…

19. Great fun – many thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

20. After Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s which I found difficult, lovely puzzle today. Still had to use the check this button and the dictionaries a little but managed to finish. Liked lots of clues including TENDER MERCIES, GARBAGE, IN CAHOOTS AND LUCERNE.  Even spotted the theme. Couldn’t parse a few so thanks to Andrew. And thanks to Brummie

21. Yet another enjoyable puzzle in a very good week. Perhaps slightly easier than the rest, but none the worse for that. Plenty of clues to relish, including KISMET, THE LANCERS, DUTCHMAN and IN CAHOOTS. Let’s hope that Friday rounds out this memorable week in triumphal manner.

22. I missed the theme yet again, but cobro got it.

    Enjoyed ORANGE and IN CAHOOTS.

    Thanks Andrew and Brummie!

23. Bleak House was my drudgery at ‘O’ Level in Belfast, (Jarndyce v Jarndyce I think)? I usually miss the theme but with TITANIC, VICTORY and ROSE <-> MARY going in early I twigged the ships though not the shipwrecks, Copmus@9. I liked ESOTERIC, CAHOOTS and COMMANDEER. Thanks Andrew for the explanation of hood and bonnet and Brummie for the steady workout.

24. Thanks Brummie and Andrew

    Slightly disappointed that 1D didn’t turn out to be a mate of the Soup Dragon.

25. And sadly, Eric Morecambe had a lifelong battle with the ‘Devil’s Milk’ as the Reverend Ian Paisley used to refer…

26. Probably just me being thick but what purpose does “ironic” serve in the TENDER MERCIES clue?

27. Lovely puzzle to add to the 3 excellent ones already this week.

    Took an age over BELFAST by muddling L for left and L for large.

    Searching for HMS CHANCE, I ‘chanced’ upon this excellent site – well worth a look.

    Many thanks, both.

28. Pork Scotch @26:  I wondered the same but discover that it is usually a phrase used ironically, such as, “I thought I’d have a quiet word with the Head rather than leave it to the PE master’s tender mercies”.  Meaning the PE master won’t be tender at all.

29. Dickens did Victorian education wonderfully. Wackford Squeers was one of his greatest creations.
    The crossword? Missed by a mile, poor today.
    Thanks for the hints.

30. Thanks for the helpful blog.

    DNK The Lancers and biffed in Deadly Brew, so a DNF for me.

31. A fast fun crossword, even though on first pass very few clues cracked. Spotted the theme and even that that they were possibly all shipwrecks, though did not know all the ships. Like muffin@4 and others did not think compact and hard were quite the same. Liked TITANIC and VICTORY among others.
    Thanks to Brummie for the fun and Andrew for the blog

32. Very enjoyable puzzle. My only quibble is that the TITANIC did go down well. That’s its main claim to fame. Sorry if I’ve spoiled the ending of the film for anyone!

     

33. Since when was an aphid a louse?

34. Jens @33, I wondered about this too. A louse is an aphid but some aphids aren’t lice, I thought, but then I’m not an insect specialist.
    Only saw the theme in retrospect, but that’s an advance on only seeing the theme when I came to fifteensquared. Lots of good stuff. ORANGE was LOI since I was for too long convinced the solution started with an F for following but that’s what setters do.

35. And of course the VICTORY of the DUTCHMAN from the House of ORANGE has led to many HARD TIMES in BELFAST. I’ll get my coat…

36. HAS VICTORY is hardly a wreck resplendent as she is in Portsmouth dockyard.

37. Sorry – HMS…

38. Spotting the theme helped me to get FLYING, having already solved DUTCHMAN, and I liked the neat reversal of ROSEMARY==>MARY ROSE. However, I carelessly wrote in TO THE CORE instead of AT, which left me with 1d unsolved. That error aside, this was the closest I’ve got to being on Brummie’s wavelength.

    I wrote in APHID without bothering about its equivalence to a louse, but I see that Chambers has “plant-louse”, so it seems ok. I had no hesitation over compact=hard, having seen a close up of the surface of the pitch at Old Trafford on tele the other day; definitely hard and compact, that one.

    The theme words are ships rather than shipwrecks, surely, only the Mary Rose, Titanic and Hood having sunk, as far as I know; the last named blew up before sinking. (I can remember my father telling me that his housemaster died in this incident.) The Flying Dutchman continues to sail the oceans, doomed to do so forever, apparently.

    Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

39. I made steady progress, though I wouln’t call it quick. I saw the theme just before looking at the blog, so it wasn’t much help. I liked AT THE CORE, CHANCE, IN CAHOOTS and LUCERNE. DEADLY BLOW was certainly a GinF shrug. Thanks for the challenge, Brummie, and the explanations of a few I couldn’t parse, Andrew.

40. Just remembered a bit of trivia about HMS Belfast. Its guns are trained on London Gateway (formerly Scratchwood) service station on the M1.

41. I was amused by the logic in 3d TITANIC.  It is certainly correct, but can any liner be said to go down well (unless maybe you’re a u-boat captain)?

42. The Titanic exhibition is a must see if you ever find yourself in Belfast

43. Job @36 &37: I thought the same but discovered, on looking it up, that there was a previous HMS Victory.  From the BBC report, “Its sinking in 1744, which claimed the lives of 1,100 sailors, is considered the worst single British naval disaster in the English Channel.”  Nelson’s flagship was launched in 1765.  I believe there is a tradition of carrying on the names of some naval vessels after the originals have, in some way, reached their end.  I assume it can’t be done with all of them so wonder how they decide which ones to carry on.  There’s an interesting article on ship naming conventions here but it doesn’t address the issue.  (Given my earlier discovery that HMS Fortune briefly became HMS Kismet, I was intrigued to see that changing a ship’s name is generally seen as bad luck!  Changing Fortune to ‘fate’ seems particularly ironic!)

44. William @28: Thank you for the explanation. Makes sense to me.

45. Dr Whatson @ 21. I was tickled by the TITANIC clue too. It definitely didn’t do down well, for those on board.

46. My father served on HMS Antelope in WW2, But said that the crew always pronounced it an-TEL-o-pee

47. Thanks both.
    This went in smoothly except that my initial stab at 27,9 was ‘hearty blow’, which could prove fatal. ‘Aphid’ caused me to backtrack to the not-much-better ‘deadly’. Has anyone mentioned there were an HMS Lance and an HMS Lancer?

48. Thanks to Andrew for the blog, but I don’t really see how UNOWED equals ‘nothing outstanding’ as opposed to ‘not outstanding’.

49. As usual, the theme completely escaped me — thanks, Andrew.  And thanks, Brummie, for a pleasant time.

    10a If HE LANCERS are male surgeons, then the lancer must be the person, not the implement.

    27,9 Well, I fell for the drink association.  I had DEADLY BREW in last night, then checked this morning.

    Thanks for parsing BELFAST, Andrew, that was beyond me.  Is a lean-to a building?  By definition it isn’t free-standing, which I would think was a necessity.

    What’s with the shipwreck conversation?  The ships aren’t all wrecks, whether or not HMS Victory was.

50. PS, re 5: I’d expect a lean business to be more, rather than less, profitable because of its good control of costs.

51. Enjoyed the theme (rosemary split to make Mary Rose was very neat) but disappointed with deadly blow. I’d written in the first half of the answer but decided against blow because: firstly, ‘a deadly blow’ is not a well worn phrase (at least, according to Collins, I suppose I could have consulted more dictionaries); and secondly, the clue isn’t really cryptic if that’s the answer.

52. My experience was the opposite of Sheffield Hatter’s, in that I got the theme early enough for it to be blindingly obvious, once I had FLYING, that there’d be a “dutchman” somewhere in the thing. And fortunately for me, there weren’t too many potential spots.
    This was huge fun – with TITANIC, VICTORY and KISMET particularly satisfying. Although, with that last one, when I noticed the final letter of 27a was a Y, I spent a good long while trying to get H A R and D into the answer somehow.
    A shardy blow? A thardy blow? Alas, twas not to be…
    Three cheers to Andrew for the blog, and a twenty-one gun salute to Brummie

53. I did better with this one than I usually do with Brummie’s puzzles, although I did have to cheat on 20dn (ORANGE). I’m still not sure I understand the definition. As usual, I missed the theme.

    I’d never heard of THE LANCERS, but I worked it out from the wordplay. I find it quite satisfying when that happens. Incidentally, I agree with Valentine @49 that LANCER is a reference to a person, not an implement: surgeons are those who lance, hence lancers.

    I had the same quibble as barker @48 about “unowed”, and like others I thought that 27ac was weak, but those are minor complaints in a very enjoyable puzzle.

54. NJDWL @46: My father served on HMS Antelope in WW2, But said that the crew always pronounced it an-TEL-o-pee.  Surely, it was pronounced “ELK”?

55. Atlanta Dave @54, you beat me to it 😉

56. Quite happy to finish this over breakfast after making dismal progress last evening over dinner — I particularly enjoyed UNWED, TITANIC, IN CAHOOTS, GARBAGE, and LUCERNE. Thanks Andrew for the blog — I did a lot of partial parsing and never bothered to look for a theme. Thanks Brummie for the fun.

57. Valentine @49. Why does a building have to be free-standing? Surely the only criterion is for it to have been built!

    Tyngewick @50. I thought of lean in the context of Joseph’s dream in the bible about the seven lean years, i.e. unproductive.

    Wellbeck @52. I like the idea of a shardy blow – one that’s strong enough to destroy a pot? And kismet thardy – that would be after Nelson had dental surgery but not yet recovered from the novocaine?

58. Thanks to Andrew and Brummie.    A nice straightforward solve this one, with the odd bit of thought required. I’m not sure where I dug THE LANCERS up from but I had obviously heard it somewhere.  I totally forgot that Brummie usually has a theme, so I neither looked for one nor noticed what was staring me in the face  –  whereas with Qaos I am looking for the theme from FOI onwards and still fail to spot it three times in four even after I have completed the puzzle  !

59. Ironically, given my location, I’ve always found Brummie really tough. Pleased to report that thanks to the fifteensquared community (and the unintended results of lockdown), I was able to complete and parse all of today’s wonderful Crypic. I particularly loved CHANCE, BELFAST and TITANIC. Completely missed the theme though – must do better!

    MaidenBarton@15 – love the HMS GARBAGE pun and share the sentiment.

    Penfold@40 – loved the HMS BELFAST trivia.

    Dickens is indeed full of “tender mercies”

    So many thanks to you all, especially Brummie and Andrew

60. sheffield hatter @57 & Wellbeck @52: surely that’s too much!  The man had already lost an arm and an eye before his fatal wound at Trafalgar.  Visiting dental surgery on him as well is piling Pelion upon Ossa.  Reminds me of Monty Python’s Black Knight.

61. Mark @60

    When Denis Compton used to commentate on cricket on the radio, when a side reached 111, one of the other commentators would always ask him:

    “Why is it called Nelson, Denis”

    “Because Nelson had one eye, one arm, and….”

    “Thank you, Denis!”

     

62. Mark @60. Not only that, but the novocaine is anachronistic.

63. sheffield hatter @57. I thought it was a respectable theory that Kismet, Hardy were indeed Nelson’s last words, but the internet seems to think that’s wrong. I had LETHAL BLOW instead of DEADLY BLOW, which I think is as good as the right answer. as doubts crept in I had to resort to the Check button. I was convinced that 20 down would involve some kind of abbreviation for policeman (peeler). Thanks to Brummie and Andrew

64. [There is a major disagreement about how Nelson was brought back to Britain – brandy or rum? I’m pretty sure that, although it might have been a brandy barrel, it was refilled with rum – after all, brandy was for the officers, rum for the other ranks.

    When alcohol evaporates from a barrel, the navy still calls it “The admiral’s share”…]

65. [muffin @64. There is a pub in Kentish Town called Tapping the Admiral, a name which may or may not cause your stomach to turn over.]

66. Thanks to Andrew and Brummie

    13a I can’t come up with a sentence where “at the core” could replace “central”.

    19d I imagine we are to read “first” as “first name”.

     

67. Probably too late here but in no way, shape or form is an aphid a louse or vice versa. They are both insects but that’s it. They are members of completely different orders. Equating an aphid to a louse is the same as saying a human is a bear because they’re both mammals.

68. I thoroughly enjoyed this. All the more so as I am in the middle of a mythical, blogged, Atlantic voyage aboard the good ship Escapade – an exercise in celestial navigation. I’ve found another naval connection; whilst there was an HMS Aphis, APHID was a class of very peculiar-looking gunboats. Bravo Brummie, and thanks to Andrew and contributors for a very enjoyable blog. Anchors aweigh!

69. Like Petert, I had LETHAL BLOW for a while and MORTAL BLOW also fits without the crossers.

    In 16d, MISTOOK is not just “hidden” there but literally “at heart”, with three letters before and three after the answer.

70. I hate finding a theme as it turns the crossword from being cryptic into a general knowledge quiz

71. I enjoyed this except for DEADLY BLOW and APHID. As Desmodeus said, an aphid is most definitely not a louse, either in scientific or, I’d say, everyday usage. Simply a wrong definition. “Bug” would have been OK.

72. 1.  3d TITANIC.  “…that didn’t go down well.”  Surely, the Titanic went down only too well?

    2.  27,9a.  Poor clue. Why ‘croak’? Might just as well have said ‘that could kill you’.

73. @70 Sugarbutties.   Me, too.  I’m glad not to see a theme and never go looking for one at the end.

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