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Super puzzle. Thank you Brendan.
An alternative take on the “alphabetical”. I found this quite hard, even after I had twigged the theme.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | GRUELLING | Sport in setting hard to endure (9) |
| RU (Rugby Union, sport) inside GELLING (setting) | ||
| 10 | OMEGA | Put back stone in a ring, last in series (5) |
| a reversal (put back) of GEM (stone) in A O (ring) | ||
| 11 | IRISH | Part of memoir I shortened in language using fewer letters (5) |
| found inside (part of) memoIR I SHortened. |
||
| 12 | PHONE BOOK | Means to find unknown numbers without using 14 (5,4) |
| cryptic definition | ||
| 13 | NOTABLY | Without skill, in particular (7) |
| NOT ABLY (without skill) – initially I had NOTABLE, NOT ABLE which seems a perfectly good solution. This caused an hour or more of frustration in the NE corner that I was unable to make work. | ||
| 14 | ALGEBRA | Use it to produce solutions, operating literally crazy lab gear (7) |
| anagram (crazy) of LAB GEAR. I’m guessing that “operating literally” suggests that algebra is a sequence of operations on letters: a + b for example. Also and more likely IMO is that the word originated in an Arabic phrase meaning “setting broken bones”. | ||
| 17 | TO WIT | Namely, how to recover something after breakdown (2,3) |
| TOW IT (how to recover something after breakdown) | ||
| 19 | ART | Skill, in particular (3) |
| found inside pARTicular | ||
| 20 | ORDER | 12, 15 and 24 across all do this, 3 25 (5) |
| PHONE BOOK (12) GLOSSARIES (15) and LIBRARIES (24) all order APHABETIC(3)ALLY(25) | ||
| 21 | SIROCCO | Most of Corsica disrupted by centre of storm that blows across Med (7) |
| anagram (disrupted) of CORSICa (most of) then stOrm (centre of) | ||
| 22 | GAS MAIN | Supplier of fuel while mother shelters in her ruin? (3,4) |
| AS (while) MA (she) inside (shelters in) GIN (mother’s ruin) | ||
| 24 | LIBRARIES | Where people read overlapping signs (9) |
| LIBRA and ARIES (signs) overlapping each other by one letter | ||
| 26 | ROMEO | Like his tragic partner, he can be 3 (5) |
| see 2dn for explanation | ||
| 28 | ATOLL | M’s predecessors left bomb test site (5) |
| A TO L (M’s predecessors) then L (left) – Bikini Atoll for example | ||
| 29 | ELEVENSES | Other son secures flat for timely break (9) |
| ELSE (other) S (son) contains (secures) EVEN (flat) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | UGLI | Fruit very unlike peach, reportedly (4) |
| sounds like (reportedly) “ugly” (so not a peach) | ||
| 2 | JULIET | Like her tragic partner, she can be 3 (6) |
| Both JULIET and ROMEO (her partner in a tragedy) are part of the phonetic alphabet (3). OddOtter interestingly points out that the modern radio alphabets spell this as JULIETT to avoid mispronunciation by French speakers who would natively pronounce this as ZHOO-LEY-AY. | ||
| 3 | ALPHABETIC | Odd chap, albeit like characters in set (10) |
| anagram (odd) of CHAP ALBEIT | ||
| 4 | BIOPSY | Diagnostic aid ordered, in a way, like 23 (6) |
| the letters of BIOPSY are in alphabetical order, like those of ALMOST (23 down) | ||
| 5 | IGNORANT | I admit grasping zero, not knowing ABCs (8) |
| I GRANT (admit) contains (grasping) NO (zero) | ||
| 6 | ZONE | Counterpart of 10 I found in area (4) |
| Z (counterpart of Omega, last letter in alphabet) and ONE (I) | ||
| 7 | DEMOBBED | Bishop, in protest over base, put out of service (8) |
| B (bishop) inside DEMO (protest) with (over, in a down-light) BED (base) | ||
| 8 | MARK | A, B, or C, perhaps, in book (4) |
| marks in exam and book of the Bible | ||
| 13 | NOTES | Determined to upset A, B, C etc (5) |
| SET ON (determined) reversed (to upset) | ||
| 15 | GLOSSARIES | They help explain article run in some magazines (10) |
| A (indefinite article) R (run) inside GLOSSIES (some magazines) | ||
| 16 | AARON | Repeatedly answer right about first person in OT? (5) |
| A A (answer, repeated) R (right) ON (about) – |
||
| 18 | WORDBOOK | Finally found surprising expression in opus that’s akin to dictionary (8) |
| founD (final letter) BOO (expression, to surprise) inside WORK (opus) | ||
| 19 | ATOMIZED | In minimal pieces, include note in middle of gamut (8) |
| MI (note, music) inside A TO ZED (everything, gamut) | ||
| 22 | GOSPEL | In turn, endlessly recite sequence of letters? It’s true (6) |
| GO (turn) then SPELL (recite sequence of letters, missing end letter) | ||
| 23 | ALMOST | Line inserted in book on time, virtually (6) |
| L (line) inside AMOS (Book of Amos, in Old Testament) then T (time) | ||
| 24 | LEAD | It was used when setting clue (4) |
| lead was used by printers for setting type | ||
| 25 | ALLY | Colleague completely unknown in 14 (4) |
| ALL (completely) and Y (an unknown, commonly used symbol in algebra) | ||
| 27 | OUST | Expel outcast, ignoring law’s reversal (4) |
| OUtcaST missing ACT (law) reversed | ||
Thanks PeeDee, I enjoyed this one.
The ‘using fewer letters’ is part of the definition of IRISH – it only had 18 letters historically.
Thanks Peedee – tiny point, the definition in 17 is TO WIT.
In this year when it is easy for some of us to lose track of what day it is, the Guardian puzzle has been a good aid to help us get it straight, but this puzzle made today feel to me like a Monday.
The “fewer letters” that is eluding PeeDee is a reference to the fact that the IRISH alphabet has only 17 letters.
[The Irish alphabet might be short, but others are even shorter. I learned some Samoan back in the day, and it has only 14 letters for native words, plus a glottal-stop. Some other Polynesian languages have fewer. For those who like this sort of thing, I’ll mention that the language uses reduplication for various grammatical reasons, but also for “expressive” words such as colours: mumu, samasama, uliuli, pa’epa’e (r,y,b,w). But then green is lanu mea mata (the colour of unripe things) and blue is the lovely-sounding lanu moana (the colour of the ocean). Well, I thought it was interesting.]
Thanks PeeDee. The theme, if it is a theme, emerged early on but I was slow to apply it. I spent a pleasant time working through it steadily though until I hit a brick wall at my LOI 4d. Like you, (NW corner) I’d confidently entered NOTABLE there and still don’t think that was unreasonable so that didn’t help. It was only when the significance of 23d dawned on me at last that I saw the error of my ways.
Another NOTABLE here for a long time. I think the point about AARON is that he is first in an alphabetical list of Biblical characters.
Cheers Brendan.
Thanks to Brummie and PeeDee. I’m another who opted for Enable rather than ENABLY and never got BIOPSY though I probably would not have made the connection to ALMOST.
Thanks PeeDee. Same grid as Paul’s last week, the wee central clue another gimme. I too was beaten by ‘notable’ and by the 4D/23 link. Thanks to Brendan of course.
Another great themed puzzle. Like the previous Brendan Prize not long ago, this one had the hallmarks of ingenuity and entertainment.
I agree NOTABLY was tricky. The wordplay allows NOTABLE and NOTABLY equally, but I think the definition indicates only NOTABLY.
I got temporarily stuck near the end, with four interconnected entries unfilled in the top right where the clues seemed not to give me quite enough. It was MARK that broke the deadlock, followed by PHONE BOOK and ZONE. BIOPSY was last in, and I didn’t actually solve it – I just filled it in on the definition alone, and a fellow solver later gave me the hint I needed.
PHONE BOOK was a neat clue. The descriptive definition (not cryptic, really) was just enough, the phrase following it diverting attention from actual (useful) numbers to numbers generally or in the abstract.
I particularly liked the pair of clues about ‘skill, 13a and 19a, with their very different wordplays and solutions.
Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.
Theme? I don’t know – personally I found this a bit of a mess. I had high hopes for the phonetical alphabet but that fizzled out. Then we got variants on lexicons. And then we got biblical stuff. Make your mind up – per-lease! Sigh…. None-the-less an enjoyable puzzle, for which my thanks Brendan
14A. I believe ‘operating literally’ refers to the literal translation of Algebra from Arabic which means ‘reunion of broken parts’ i.e. a reference to ‘operating on broken bones’.
[Me @8
Not sure what happened to the last bit of my comment. I meant to type ‘skill, in particular’ at 13a and 19a.]
9A. The definition has to be “hard to endure” i.e. gruelling. Just “endure” would not be gruelling!
I eventually found BIOPSY in a word list, and a Google for “almost biopsy” revealed the connection to 23: there are very few such words in English. But unless you happened to know this little factoid already, I don’t know how you would ever deduce 4d from first principles.
Another NOTABLE here, and I am ashamed of how long it took me to spot PHONE BOOK.
Well, that’s a bit annoying – I seem to have managed all the tricky ones, correcting an initial ‘enable’ when I saw it didn’t work, getting PHONE BOOK (I liked that one, and there was lots to like here – the two skills, the ALMOST and BIOPSY pairing and more) and then fell at a relatively easy fence, failing entirely to see MARK. I’d thought of ‘rank’, but couldn’t see a book connection, and eventually fell back on an unparsed ‘back’ which a bookie might have put in a book and did have A,B and (but not or) C. Obvious in retrospect, and well, these things happen, and I’d had a lot of fun along the way. I thought it was a very ingenious puzzle, Brendan, so thanks for that, and thanks for the blog, PeeDee.
Most enjoyable puzzle from Brendan and not too 9a GRUELLING – just the right level of challenge for me, I thought. I liked the alphabet soup theme! I was embarrassed as a former school teacher that it took me so long to see MARK for 8d, as I must have used up a lot of markbooks in my time. My favourite was definitely the gin in 22a GAS MAIN and I also gave a big tick for 15d GLOSSARIES. Had Dire Straits’ “ROMEO and JULIET” as an earworm all through this puzzle as I saw 26a and 2d quite early in the piece (and then afterwards I played the fabulous duet of Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris – what a great song!!! Alan B@8and 10, I also really liked that quirky repetition of “skill, in particular” in 13a and 19a.
I see now that I also didn’t get the full parsing for BIOPSY in 4d and nor did it see the rationale behind 19d ATOMIZED, so the blog was definitely instructive. In fact I now feel a bit disappointed in myself, as spelling 19d ATOMISED meant this was a technical fail (not an A,B or C, but a D or and E!).
Nevertheless, many thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.
Glad to know that I wasn’t alone in failing to get the NOTABLY/BIOPSY duo. Otherwise a lot of fun even if tricky (sorry, Dr.W @3, it definitely didn’t feel like Monday to me). Like Alan B and JinA, I liked the repetition of “skill, in particular,” as well as “A, B, or C”. Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.
Shafar @10, I took “operating literally” as part of the definition, referring to the fact that algebra operates with literal symbols.
Many thanks, Brendan and PeeDee. I sailed through … inc NOTABLY … but couldn’t parse BIOPSY and failed like KeithS by getting BACK = book in bookmaker sense (AC inside BK) instead of MARK. Knew I was clutching at straws. A strangely fascinating mixture of a puzzle.
Recall this being a quite enjoyable solve… Happy to have gotten (and pretty much parsed) it all. Agree w/Shafar re 9a. Particularly liked LIBRARIES!
One clarification… tho often misspelled (to the point of being accepted), the “official” phonetic alphabet spelling is apparently Juliett, not Juliet, with a “tt” at the end specifically to ensure the “t” sound is vocalized by French speakers. The history and development of the phonetic alphabet (see Wikipedia for overview) is quite fascinating, with huge amounts of testing and adjustment over dozens of languages/accents to ensure the very least amount of confusion or error for the broadest array of speakers. Two of the most commen misprints are Juliet, and Alpha (rather than Alfa… the latter preferred since some languages/speakers don’t equate ph=f).
Thx to our setter, blogger, and commenters for the fun!
I’m another who put in NOTABLE and so failed on BIOPSY. So many words fit _I_P_E it didn’t occur to me I had an error even though I understood that the reference to ALMOST indicated the letters should be ordered. But apart from this, really enjoyed another entertaining Brendan puzzle, now one of my favourite setters. Thanks also to PeeDee for the blog.
My ‘A Grammar of Modern Irish’ (Pól Ó Murchú) says that Irish is written with the Roman alphabet and gives the names of all 26 letters. He adds that eight letters are only used in writing words of foreign origin. The letters with the fada are not regarded as seperate letters (compare our conversation last week about Spanish ñ).
I was most disappointed a couple of years ago no be unable to find a single speaker of Irish to practise on. Not even in a gaeltacht.
Yep, similar, biopsy (eventually!) forced the change from notable to notably. Otherwise, not too gnarly, tho the literally in algebra was a bit sly, and ugli the fruit was a dnk, or a dnremember…think it might’ve turned up before. And of course had no idea about the Irish alphabet (let alone the Samoan, ta for that Dr. Wh!). So, filled the grid but, as per, lots more to learn and enjoy. Thanks all.
Doc W @ 3
i still have my copy of Teach Yourself Samoan, purchased some time in the 1970s. One of my favourite reads. Love words like ‘afatala’ (half a dollar) for a florin.
Liked this puzzle a lot. Was held up by writing in NOTABLE and only realising my mistake when absolutely nothing fitted in 4d except BIOPSY.
ELSE- for other is in my Chambers but I can’t think of a sentence where the two are interchangeable.
Particularly liked ATOMIZED, GOSPEL, ALMOST.
Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.
[Anna, reminds me of Dad, serving in New Guinea, having to learn some pidgin; two-handed crosscut saw: pullim e cum pushim e go akkis]
(Grant – lovely!)
(How do you do square brackets?)
[I’m on a (not madly smart) android phone. I push the bottom left key (which has !#1 on it), then the one directly above (which has 1/2 on it). Then the square brackets appear on the second top row under the 9 and the 0. Hope that helps]
All went in swimmingly, until ZONE where I got fixated on counterpart as the definition. [For the first time in ages I can say I completed an alphabetical crossword]
A dnf for me as I just didn’t see BIOPSY, being another with NOTABLE at 13a. But I did like it and (very rarely for me) I actually thought the theme added something to the fun.
[Anna@25 – aren’t you in Finland? On a UK keyboard it’s the key to the right of P, and the key next right again, for “[” and “]” respectively. If you do a lot of typing in English on a physical keyboard, you can get transparent stickers on Ebay, that you put on the keys. Then you just change the keyboard layout as required using standard Windows methods (Settings -> Language and keyboard). My Russian wife uses a set of Cyrillic stickers for this purpose.]
Thanks Brendan and PeeDee.
Jaydee @9, I took the theme to be ordered series, or possibly alphabets. As with almost all themed crosswords, not every clue or answer is part of the theme – anyone who has tried to fill a grid to set a crossword will know that it is often difficult even without a theme to limit word choices. In this case, I think Brendan has done a lovely job of linking many clues and answers.
A fine puzzle, with an easy way in via the tragic couple, but some tricky bits before completing. I was unable to fully parse a couple, so thanks for the explanations. I agree with the comments correcting minor parsing points such as what is in the definitions.
A nice idea that took a while to almost unravel. I was confident with NOTABLE, which only gave me SIMPLE for 4D (I thought the diagnostic aid might have been MPL [Mathematical Programming Language] and the rest was … dunno). I also thought Brendan had used his LOAF when setting the clue in 24D, so an inglorious failure, although I enjoyed the tussle.
Thanks Brendan for the challenge and PeeDee for deciphering the ALPHABET.
I wrote a comment a few minutes ago and lost my internet connection at the very point of posting and now it’s disappeared.
I won’t repeat in detail how I chimed completely with JinA re NOTABLE, ‘skill in particular’, the spelling of ATOMISE and MARK.
The parsing that held out to the very end was AARON, when for some reason, I suddenly remembered being amused when I consulted Yellow Pages for a roofing company, to find one that called itself Aardvark, in order to be listed first.
Other favourites were the clever LIBRARIES and ELEVENSES (I love that word – like Anna, I’m struggling at the moment to equate ‘other’ with ‘else’ in a sentence but I feel it’s hovering there somewhere and will occur to me sooner or later) but, as I’ve said a number of times before, particularly of Brendan’s puzzles, this one was more than the sum of its parts – a work of art, i thought – and I totally disagree with Jaydee @9.
Many thanks to Brendan, as ever, for a lot of fun.
(Grant @ 26 and beaulieu @ 28
Thanks for your advice. I’m afraid nothing works. I write a lot in Russian (studying the language) and have English, Finnish and Russian keyboards on my computer. But none of them produce square brackets. The physical keyboard is a Finnish one, purchased here in Helsinki.)
[Anna, if all else fails, press Num Lock to enable the numeric key pad, then press and hold the Alt key and type 91 for [ and 93 for ]. NB this doesn’t work using the numeric keys above the letters – it has to be the numeric keypad to the right of a normal keyboard.]
[Anna – in addition to beaulieu’s hint above, I wonder if this may help? It looks as if you press the AltGr key in combination with 8 (for [ ) or 9 (for ] ). ]
Anna, Eileen – “else” and “other” seem to equate in compound words and phrases: otherwise/elsewise, something other/else
Thanks to PeeSee and Brendan.
[beaulieu and essexboy
Thanks. Both of your suggestions work. Great.]
[JinA @15: many thanks for the Dire Straits earworm – it doesn’t take much of an excuse to get me to play that one again (despite its 80s birth date). I searched for Knopfler + Emmylou and thought I’d found it here – lovely version, but where’s Emmylou??? Then I saw the comments section: “Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris – Romeo And Juliet”. Hmmm… I guess Emmylou Harris must be the red-haired fellow playing piano”. Never mind… but you shouldn’t raise my hopes like that 😉 ]
Beautiful crossword, a work of art as Eileen says. But I’m ashamed to say I failed on 22d – blithely assumed GESTEO must be a high-falutin truism. Thanks PeeDee for putting me straight.
[OddOtter @18
Thanks for pointing out Juliett and Alfa – I wasn’t aware of those sensibly chosen spellings to be found in the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (more popularly known as the NATO Phonetic Alphabet). I did know the spelling Whiskey, which I have also just confirmed for myself from the same source.]
It was like solving a crime scene, you had to slowly one by one, letter by letter fill this one in. Unfortunately I too entered NOTABLE, and could only guess that 4down was SIMPLE like 23 a prime number!! Good enough for me!!
[Like essexboy @37, I have just noticed the absence of Emmylou from Mark Knopfler’s live clip of Romeo and Juliet. Many months ago, though, I followed a link, which I’m sure was from JinA, to So Far Away, sung and played by both those artists, and that is one that is hard to get out of one’s head!]
Failed on BIOPSY (despite spotting that the letters of the answer had to be in 3d order – there’s no actual wordplay to help when failing on the defn), LEAD (I had LOAF too, like Robi @30 – and I’d like to hear from Brendan as to why we’re wrong!) and ATOMISED (I nearly always eschew Z-spellings in these words, and with the defn being so obvious I didn’t sort out the parsing – no one but myself to blame there).
DuncT @35 – I’ve only just seen your comment. In the meantime, ‘something other / else’ had occurred to me, so thanks for the confirmation. 😉
sheffield hatter @42 – we crossed, so I missed your comment. I’m entirely with you in eschewing the Z spellings!
Eileen – It didn’t help us much in this situation!
Roméo and Juliet earworm now been taken over by So Far Away earworm. (My auto correct keeps trying to make that into earwax. Bleh.) No complaints – fabulous songs, both. I’m with mostly everyone else on the crossword. Loved it. Had LOAF instead of LEAD. And NOTABLE – so no BIOPSY. Thanks to all. Now on to Paul!
Thanks to all for the help and corrections. I think I have fixed everything.
Anna, I would suggest not worrying too much about the square brackets: if you have something to say that adds to the blog – directly, tangentially or otherwise – then go ahead and write it. Adding square brackets worn’t make it any more or less appropriate.
sheffield_hatter @42 (and others) – I thought of LOAF too. I discounted it because there are too many 4 letter words that would fit a cryptic definition: HEAD, LOAF, MIND, GRID, WITS…
Nice puzzle all round. A dnf for me at 4d owing to 23a, for which IMO, the wordplay gives Notable, but the definition denotes Notably.
Thanks to Peedee & Brendan.
Found a totally different parsing of 24d to mine. I took the “It’s used in setting…” part as meaning the pace in a race.
PeeDee @48. Your logic is impeccable when applied to an empty grid, but in my case I didn’t ‘solve’ and enter LOAF until I had the crossers. Having L_A_ eliminates all of your possibles except LOAF (and of course the ultimately correct LEAD). I agree that LEAD works as a double definition, but if LOAF has come to mind as the solution to an admittedly rather weak cryptic definition, it’s hard to discard it and look again without any good reason to do so.
I didn’t get the bottom left corner, which left me dissatisfied after a lot of effort on the rest. I didn’t (and still don’t) consider ALLY as a definition for colleague in 25d. I had AZED as the answer – a colleague compiler and a ‘zed’ which is a common unknown in algebra. I liked ‘AZED’ so much that I rejected Atoll as the answer for 28a, failing to spot the A to L clue. didn’t know about lead and type-setting. Altogether an ingenious puzzle, let down by ‘colleague’.
[Anna@22: also sisipeni (sixpence). I have the same book – loved the discussion of Tom, Dick and Harry (the Samoan idiom involves 4 fellows, but for emphasis 6!)]
Took me a couple of days but I finally completed it!
Last 4: MARK, PHONE BOOK, ZONE and BIOPSY – even though I’d spotted the alphabetical order clue (I, too had NOTABLE).
Favourites probably ZONE and PHONEBOOK, once the penny finally dropped.
nametab – if you make the definition “in particular” then it defines NOTABLY. If “in” is a link word then the definition is “particular” which gives NOTABLE. Both give sound answers.
Jonjoe @ 52
You may not like colleague = ally, but the equivalence is given both ways in Chambers Thesaurus, so Brendan is, unsurprisingly, on safe ground.
A fascinating variation on the use of a theme. Fun if puzzling. Thanks, Brendan, and thanks to PeeEee for straightening me out as needed.
6d Unusually “one” replaces “I” rather than the other way round.
Like JinA @15, I especially enjoyed mother’s ruin in GAS MAIN.
I had LOAF too, and NOTABLE. I put in ATOMISED because this is a British puzzle and then realized with some surprise that a Z was called for. I eschew that spelling when British spelling is called for and not when I’m just writing as myself.
Thanks to Brendan for a great puzzle and PeeDee for the blog. It was nice to be able to almost finish a Prize, especially after giving up on the week before with four answers filled in, coming here, and seeing everyone talk about how easy it was! (The only thematic one I guessed last time was the number x 5 one, and I wasn’t familiar enough with the theme to be able to figure out what that meant, so I was completely baffled by all the “number” clues which seemed like about half the grid. I hope this is vague enough to avoid running afoul of talking about one puzzle in another’s blog!)
Thoughts from the US:
I didn’t get 4d and 8d and had to use word lists to help with 28d and 29ac. 22d was just me being dense, though if I were going to excuse myself I’d point to “go” not meaning “turn” over here. ELEVENSES is something I’ve heard of–my problem was that I didn’t have the first letter and the crossers were all E and S! (E in the first space is a little more distinctive.) Then I stared at 19d for a long time and thought “oh that must be ATOMISED, wonder how it’s parsed,” stared at it for a while longer, and said “that must be ATOMIZED, but that’s how I spell it!” Excellent clue, though. I was primed to get it because I had been talking about PHONE BOOK with my wife (who has family in NI and Britain) and said “I’d expected PHONE BOOK to be something like A-Zee” and she said “That’s a map, and it’s A-Zed.” I also particularly liked 17ac.
GRUELLING was tough because I spell that with one L, and RU is a sport I only know through these crosswords. Did get it though, and if I’m going to do UK crosswords I must expect UK spelling! Hm… “Turow book spelled in the American style? (3, 1)”
I was another who got “NOTABLE” and then I thought “Hmm, ALMOST is alphabetical, but _I_P_E can’t be, this is probably about some British medical dictionary called Wimple or something that’s alphabetically ordered like 12, 15, and 24.” Oh well. As for 8d, using “book” for book of the Bible makes me a bit cranky because almost any word is the title of some book or another, if not of the Bible; and A, B, C could mean so many things.
On to Paul’s next! (Gulp.)
Here are all the 6-letter words I could find with the alphabetic order property:
abdest, abhors, acinos, acknow, adempt, almost, begins, biopsy, chinos, chintz, decors, demos. Not all everyday words, to be sure.
The winner, though, is the 8-letter aegilops (a kind of grass).
That should be deimos
And dehors (damn autocorrect!)
“Sisipeni” and “hafadola” remind me of Taki Taki, a creolized English-based language spoken in Surinam. That is, Takei Taki is what folks I met in French Guiana (next door to Surinam) told me they were speaking, but I now find that the official name of the language is Sranan. When I asked, for instance, what was the word for “serpent” (I was speaking French at the time, our common language) than answer I got was “sineki.” (Accent on second syllable.) I also couldn’t find out a word for “tree,” only for different kinds of tree. I don’t know if there is a generic word.
Thanks for your thoughts, matt w @58. It was only when reading your post that I realised/realized that ATOMIZED, excellent clue though it is, is a strange transatlantic hybrid. The Z requires the American spelling, but for the wordplay to work you have to put your British/Irish/Commonwealth hat on and say ZED, not ZEE.
(Or then again, perhaps the Z spelling was common in Ireland in Brendan’s formative years?)
Brendan’s generally one of my favourite setters but this crossword just didn’t meet my expectations — I didn’t find the usual multitude of clues that simply stun me with his cleverness. ATOLL and NOTES, however, got ticks on my copy of the puzzle. Thanks to both.
essexboy@63: Now that I think of it, Canadians say “zed” but spell the suffix “-ize,” so it should work perfectly there.
[Speaking of the Z, where is TheZed?]
Valentine: I think it must have been Taki Taki that we were asked to speak a couple of years ago when the annual Women’s World Day of Prayer service focused on Suriname. “Lord, hear our prayer” comes out as “Masr Gadu, arki wi begi” – a lovely bit of 18th century English: harkee, we beg ‘ee.
Just a proposal for parsing biopsy
since the definition is “in a way” like 23
I thought it could be parsed reusing the definition of 23
that PS (=Line, post scriptum is a line in a letter)
inserted in BIO (book)
on time Y (year)?
What do other people think here?
I think this is the only way this definition can be solved independently, which would not be possible based only on alphabetical order
4a.I was another NOTABLE which led to TISSUE (which, if tested, might be a diagnostic aid?) @ 4d and SCORE BOOK (where I thought you might find musical numbers). Can’t say I liked it! I am another who thinks that there might have been a bit more helpful wordplay other than the fact that the letters in both were in alphabetical order.
19d. I’m told that the OED puts Z spellings first and the OUP prefers them.
Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.
mynollo @68. You may be onto something there. I wouldn’t be happy with time=year=Y, but the rest of it seems to work well enough, and maybe “in a way” is justification for the stretch.
sheffield hatter@42 and Eileen@44. I’m with Pino@69. H W Fowler in his Modern English Usage Addresses the subject in rather too much detail to be included here but in essence and in most cases the -ize source is Greek and the practice of changing it to -ise is French. The OED says there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic.
mynollo @68, that’s brilliant and I definitely think you’re on to something. It’s a great second interpretation of the wordplay, with the definition then being Diagnostic aid ordered, i.e. by a doctor.
I tripped up on the NOTABLE problem too, seeing in as a link word, as PeeDee says @55.
Lots else to like here (difficult to use other for else in this sentence, as per Anna @23, but you can see how it’s synonymous). Funnily, there’ve been a lot of [letter] to [letter] wordplay devices lately, with A to L and A to ZED here and E to V (for a vote clue) the other day.
Great fun and educational (e.g. I now know IRISH uses fewer letters in the native words). Thanks Brendan and PeeDee.
[Biggles @71: interesting that according to Crossword Who’s Who Brendan was crossword editor at the Times in the late 90s. In 1992 their Style Guide changed: “-ise, -isation : avoid the z construction in almost all cases. This is volcanic ground, with common usage straining the crust of classical etymology…”
Chief revise editor Richard Dixon, writing in 2004, adds: “One group of words that I think are always wrong if given the -z- either side of the Pond are “analyze”, “electrolyze” and the like. In the Greek, the ending has a sigma, so they should be spelt “analyse”, “electrolyse”, etc. But even words conveying the sense of breaking down should not be the catalysts/catalyzts for broken hearts/heartz or special relationships/zpecial relationzhipz.”]
Great puzzle. Really enjoyed it. @peedee and Shafar @10: Although ALGEBRA derives from an Arabic word meaning ‘reunification’ which was also used in the sense of ‘bone-setting’, its use in mathematics derives from Al-Khwarizmi’s seminal work al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabala, where al-jabr means “reunion of broken parts” (reducing fractions to integers in computation) — one of the two preparatory steps to solving algebraic equations; it is from Arabic jabara “reintegrate, reunite, consolidate.” See etymonline. In the clue, “literally” means ‘using letters’.
Also, 17A is TO WIT; rearrange TOW IT
Hi Shafar, that’s a good idea, but it would involve an indirect anagram (an anagram of something not explicitly present in the clue). That does not seem like Brendan’s style.
Very late thanks to you PeeDee and the various other contributions above which increased my enjoyment post-solve. I thought this was wonderful and another fine example of Brendan weaving a broad theme through clues, wordplay and solutions rather than just using it to generate a list of words to stuff into the grid. Fell into all the same traps as everyone else but faith in the fairness of the clueing got me there in the end although agree that LEAD vs LOAF is pretty much a coin toss.mynollo@68 i like your alternative but if i had to bet would say that it is not what Brendan intended. This one got me very confused as I first thought it meant a way as in a street or road so would have form or A…VE which fitted with Notable – then I twigged that ALMOST is abecedical and had to google for a list of other such words.Thanks Brendan, my favourites this time ATOLL and SIROCCO.
@Essexboy, thanks for that Romeo & Juliet link. Look! Here she is:
https://youtu.be/NHiEffV3Ixw
… and for the encore:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3PHaGgpFH4g
24 Down … I thought this was the lead weight used for pike aka LUCE -( anagram of clue)) fishing
[Peedee@47
Perhaps you haven’t read the Comment Guidelines from Admin (Gaufrid) dated 7 October 2020 (https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/10/07/comment-guidelines/), which include:
“Any comment, or part of a comment, that is not directly relevant to the puzzle under discussion should be enclosed in square brackets – [ ] – so that it can more easily be ignored by those with no interest in off-topic content.”
I imagine Anna wanted to know how to produce square brackets on her keyboard in order to comply with this guideline in her many fascinating digressions into linguistics.
Also @76. Was this a reply to shafar @75? What he suggests there, as I understood it, is not an indirect anagram or any sort of anagram, but exactly the same parsing you have used in explaining the clue, expressed differently. In fact the only “rearrangement” he is proposing is moving the W from the end of the first word to the beginning of the second. Since spacing doesn’t show in a grid this is no rearrangement at all within the grid.]
[Thanks Tony – I hadn’t seen those comment guidelines. Square brackets it is then. Please ignore my earlier comment.]
I see what you mean about shafar’s explanation not being an anagram in the sense of it only be the space character that is rearranged, the rest of the characters are in the same order. Either way of looking at it seems good to me.
[PS – an example of the square brackets being confusing is that you have included on-topic content in your comment @81 inside the off-topic square brackets. The brackets seem to me to make the comments harder to write and follow rather than making them easier. Whatever, I think following the guidelines is important and I will try and use them in future].
[@peedee, you’re right — the remark about shafar’s “rearrangement” was about the parsing of a clue, so shouldn’t have been indicated as off-topic. Probably better like that than the other way round, though.]