Guardian Cryptic 28,358 by Brummie

85 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,358 by Brummie”

1. Difficult, Pasquale-like challenge. Was almost tempted to give up on the SW corner then sought help from google and my online dictionary, but it was still a DNF for me. Failed SKEP – thought of it but I never imagined that this word exists.
   New for me: canterbury music stand
   Favourites: SPECTRAL, DEADLINE
   New: STYLAR, FLY SOLO, LITEROSE, MONTBRETIA, ACCENTOR (and SKEP)
   Thanks, B+S

2. I completed the left side last night but the other half seemed impenetrable. However, not as bad as I thought this morning but I gave up on SKEP, so a frustrating DNF. l did learn a few new words such as ACCENTOR, MONTBRETIA, CANTERBURY, STYLAR and LITEROSE but gettable as you said manehi. I liked SPECTRAL, ATTRACT, URETHRA and SEXPOT but no theme for me either. Thanks manehi and a very tough Brummie

3. Seems like we had a very similar experience Michelle ?

4. Bother, 3dn does in fact make perfect sense, and it’s no wonder my attempt to parse the Pauline PEEPOT didn’t work. We duly got a dose of Paul with the beautiful misdirectionin 19dn.
   I think LITEROSE is the sort of word it’s good to be introduced to, and the wordplay was clear even if, like me, you didn’t know the word to start with.
   Chambers gives “(poetic) precious metal” as a permissible meaning of ore, and there are also the various Scandinavian coins with adornments to the o which we can’t do on here, so I suppose 7dn works – “Wood and rock off the boat” would I suppose be a less elegant surface.
   Thanks for Brummie for lightening the darkness and to manehi for the explanations.

5. With these weird and wonderful words there’s gotta be a theme. Looks a bit spaced out to me. ACID DROPS. FLY SOLO. (Hans Solo?) APPARENT. PERCEPTION. CLOUDY (good song). No idea.

6. Presumably a Canterbury music stand is where you display your copy of ‘In the Land of Grey and Pink’?

7. The bird, the plant and the beehive were dnks, while stylar and literose were “what the…surely not…well I’ll be..!”. So yes, bit of a slog with a bit of guess and check and a bit of bung and pray. Fly for smart or cunning is one the the many cw-only words. Oh and the canterbury music stand, another nho. Will remember any of them? Probly not. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

8. That makes three of us – though I was lucky with a guess at SKEP. There were several candidates for upward looks and I bunged it is as LOI and pressed Check rather than Google it first. As I say, lucky. Though, to be fair to Brummie, that was the only unknown word with which I struggled; the rest were gettable from the clues with the – normally obligatory – Google afterwards. nho a CANTERBURY in that context but it had to be.

   I’m another tick for SPECTRAL and, like AlanC, also enjoyed SEXPOT and URETHRA, not for the lavatorial topics but the constructions were neat and the definition of the second very witty. I also enjoyed the brevity of SWATCH and the surface for COVERLET. Like NeilH, I’m not a fan of the synonym ore=metal. I’m sure ore is rock/amalgam from which metal is extracted/refined but I know it’s a regular in crosswords and he’s identified a couple of justifications that are near enough.

   [Penfold @6: a lot of earworms to choose from, given the Canterbury sound. Caravan were still performing pre lockdown and can still turn it on. Gong and Soft Machine are particular favourites – though some debate as to whether they are ‘pure’ Canterbury.]

   Thanks Brummie and manehi

9. I got two vowels the wrong way round in 16d.

10. Several clues left me thinking “is there such a word as…” (STYLAR, LITEROSE) though I did know SKEP, and some swashbuckling melodrama or other in the past (“Yield, RECREANT dog!”) reminded me of 26a, though I hadn’t ever bothered to find out what it meant. If there’s a theme, I can’t see it.

11. [PS: The botanical establishment has now reclassified MONTBRETIA as crocosmia, though gardeners and nurserymen continue to recognise the old name. A feral species in parts of Cornwall, turning damp patches orange with garden escapes.]

12. Tricky to finish with lots of new words but clear wordplay. LOI SKEP which dnk and looked strange but there it was in the dictionary. Favs DEADLINE and SPECTRAL. Thanks to Brummie and manehi

13. Thanks Brummie and manehi
    I didn’t know STYLAR, LITEROSE, or CANTERBURY as a music stand, but I did dredge up SKEP from somewhere. It would have been fairer (though easier) if he had included “extinct” in 23a.
    Ores of precious metals can be “native” – that is, the metals are unreactive enough to be found not chemically combined; one of the reasons (with rarity) that they are precious.
    “The land of grey and pink” is the Caravan album I have – I must listen to it again!
    Does anyone else remember Tim Brooke-Taylor playing Lady Constance de COVERLET in “I’m sorry I’ll read that again”?

14. I had peep instead of peek so SPEP was wrong-i was too exhausted from dodging all the other misdirections in this.
    One of Brummie’s better puzzle
    Main theme was an abundance of not so familiar words
    Thanks Brum and manehi

15. “Many times, many many times…”

16. I thought this was a satisfying blend of familiar and obscure words, since the wordplay was quite clear in every case. Like gladys @10, I wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of RECREANT but it couldn’t be anything else and I agree with NeilH @4 re LITEROSE.

    I’ll go along with manehi’s list of favourites – and I smiled at BRASS BAND, too.

    I agree with copmus that this was one of Brummie’s better puzzles, especially as far as the surfaces are concerned. I can’t see a theme, either.

    Thanks to Brummie for an enjoyable puzzle and manehi for a fine blog.

17. I expect I am the only idiot who put in STEEL BAND for 9,2 at first – well, it sort of works! Had to use electronic help for SKEP.

18. gladys@11 I wonder why they had to change the name of Montbretia? Apparently crocosmia means saffron smelling, though I’ve never noticed it. Having spend many an hour trying to stop it invading the wrong bits of the garden, I find it turning up in the crossword. I wondered about peer being one who pees, and then realised for the first time that a seer is one who sees.

19. Didn’t manage to get FLY SOLO and had to guess at the unknown LITEROSE. But SKEP and MONTBRETIA are words I’m familiar with (my father kept bees and was a knowledgeable gardener).

20. I don’t think I’ve ever done a crossword before with four words I didn’t know! Wordplay was fortunately clear.
    Thanks to Brummie for the education and manehi for elucidation.

21. Great fun – a write-in to start, then things got a bit tough. URETHRA alone was worth it! MONTBRETIA was lodged somewhere in my memory; STYLAR clearly correct, but Mr Google didn’t define it as in the clue. Couldn’t parse ACID DROPS clearly. Many thanks to Brummie and manehi.

22. I marvel at the restraint of my fellow solvers, as this crossword made me want to scream. I’ve complained previously about Brummie’s cake-walking, with obscurities included apparently simply to give us the fun of Google-checking. This may be appropriate for the tough Sundays, but is it right for a Guardian weekday? I suggest it isn’t, and seven googles simply sucked the fun out of my efforts. Comments above indicate similar experiences.

    I’m already grumpy enough by nature, and this on top of lockdown doesn’t help!

23. Wow – tough with lots of new words there and a technically a DNF due to needing lots of prompting.

    23a was annoying on many fronts because I tried to form a link between the librettist for Peter Grimes (Montagu Slater) and Britten which, of course, didn’t work.

    But much to love on reading the parsing and this is fabulously-crafted puzzle. The aim of my day now is to try and use the word “SKEP” in one of my interminable Zoom/Teams/Skype/Blackboard/Panopto things which eat my days (and my sense of well-being) at the moment.

    Thanks Brummie for the new vocab and manehi for the blog!

24. [Oofyprosser @22: I see your grumpiness and raise you mine. Curmudgeonliness at dawn, (so-shallie dis-danced of course)?]

25. Oofyprosser @22 and MaidenBartok @24, ACID DROPS, anyone? 🙂

26. As one who much prefers to work upwards from the cryptic definitions rather than isolating the definition part and engaging a thesauric mind, looking up the outcomes of the cryptic construction work and learning that they actually are things is part of the enjoyment for me. Thumbs up for this puzzle.

27. VW @26: not sure if I should be worried by this but I find myself aligning with you again. Not only did I find myself sympathetic to your campaign of yesterday but I’m with you on the post solve confirmation experience.
    Reference works not being readily available, I tend to Google. Frustrating when it doesn’t deliver and I’ve created a neologism of my own but very satisfying, firstly when the search confirms there appears to be the word that’s resulted from the wordplay and then when it produces a definition I can square with the clue. Sadly, like others above, I suspect my lexicon won’t remain permanently expanded.

28. [MaidenBartok @23: if you are struggling to work the Skype conversation around to the subject of bees, another direction might be conservation. “The Succulent Karoo Ecosystem Programme (SKEP) is a long term, multi-stakeholder bioregional conservation and development programme. SKEP began as a bi-national initiative between Namibia and South Africa, with the aim of defining a way to conserve this ecosystem, and to develop conservation as a land-use rather than instead of land-use. The acronym “SKEP” means “to serve” in Afrikaans, the most commonly spoken language in the region.”

    Given your plan, you might be amused to hear we played a similar game at university (I’m sure we weren’t the only ones). One of three students in a tutorial group would be called upon to read their essay aloud: the challenge was to work a given phrase into the essay and then maintain a straight face whilst reading it out. Two that I still recall 40 years on are “…like a herd of charging wildebeest” and “I am a Zillon from the planet Tharg – which, I think, was a Rowan Atkinson quote. The latter was incorporated in a philosophy essay which actually isn’t too difficult at all; it was much harder to work the former into an economics paper!]

29. [muffin@13 Yes. grantinfreo@15, that’s Round The Horn]

30. PM @27: agreed, always nice to discover a JORUM.

    ginf @7: I’d always imagined you as pretty fly (for a white guy)

    ‘Beehive’ is of course what Austin Powers would say if he came from Essex.

    Thanks Brummie for the pain and manehi for the relief.

31. essexboy @30 – glad I’ve won you over to jorums: (I didn’t like to mention them yet again!).

32. ‘Crossword started (bloody Brummie!) — time to have lots of unknown words. I don’t really see the point of having SKEP for S?E? when there is a myriad of potential possibilities that most people would know. I guess it’s a bit like one of the Don’s puzzles where he likes to introduce lots of new words. There were seven unknown words for me, which I tried to piece together.

    I did enjoy the clue for URETHRA.

    Thanks, but no thanks, to Brummie and thanks to manehi for a good blog.

33. [Dave Ellison @29
    I remember one of the few quotes when the title of the programme was actually used:
    “I’ll have you now, you handsome brute.
    I’m sorry, I’ll read that again.
    I’ll have you know, you handsome brute.”]

34. Fortunately found myself on Brummie’s wavelength today, though I did need the dictionary to check the meanings of ACCENTOR, STYLAR, RECREANT, CANTERBURY and LITEROSE. And shades of Paul with the cluing of 19d. Like the clever DD for GROUNDS.

35. …oh and SKEP of course needed another dive into that dictionary. Half a dozen new words added to my vocab today…

36. Sorry to say that the words I did not know, and the extent of googling and checking, made this an unsatisfying solve for me. Could not see a theme at all. Off to listen to the Land of Grey and Pink now with some acid drops. Sorry to be unappreciative Brummie, many thanks to manehi.

37. A SKEP too far for me too. I did like BRASS BAND which was very nice.

    Dave Ellison @29: yes, “Many times, many many times” was Betty Marsden in Round the Horne, particularly in her role as Lady Counterblast. (I wish we could have a Round the Horne theme sometime – I’d like to see a clue for J. Peasmold Gruntfuttock.)

    Many thanks Brummie and manehi.

38. Be careful what you wish for, Lord Jim – but me too. 😉

39. Dave @29, oh yes of course…and on reflection the voice doesn’t sound like T B-T.

    essexboy @30, so the word is really out there.. great clip, ta.

40. Oofyprosser @ 22 & MaidenBartok @ 24

    Start the day with a smile. Get it over with.

41. Petert @ 18 , I don’t know about Montbretia in particular, but sometimes it happens that they realize that a species or genus was identified and named earlier than the time that the name that became familiar was given to it, and The Rules say that that should be the name.

    Along with most of the others mentioned above, ACID DROPS was new to this USAnian, but gettable. One or two new words per puzzle is fine with me, and more if the others are familiar transatlantically, but this was approaching a Ximenes level, not what I look for in a Guardian cryptic.

42. Apropos Gladys@11, Peter@18 and VinnyD@41, I remember telling my mother about all the lovely orange MONTBRETIA I had seen growing wild in the roadside banks in Ireland where I had just visited. She told me that it was now renamed Crocosmia. She was working on the help desk at Kew Gardens at the time, so presumably was up to date with her info then…

43. This was all quite good stuff until Brummie decided to stuff the SW full of words that I have never used, needed to use, knew of, or will use again. A Pasquale trait I have grown to know and love thanks to his (usual) accessibility. But this crossword was a long way short of my desert island test – could it be solved by an average solver without recourse to aid?

    And since SKEP was one of those unknown ones, and even though it showed in a word search, I selected STEM. It’s ‘meets’ backwards without an e, if you meet someone you can be said to look them up, and Google tells me there is a beehive wine glass which has a stem. Total cobblers as an answer but when you’re scrabbling round for an LOI it’s just the sort of straw to clutch at.

44. I forgot to say that even if you haven’t heard of ACCENTOR, you will probably have seen one – our Dunnock (or “Hedge Sparrow”) is an accentor.

45. In 43 above, SE not SW. Oops.

46. Trailman @45: the whole damn S for me! 😉

47. While we are on the subject, reminded of the old adage, the advantages of a second chamber by a Liberal peer. Unless someone has already posted as I am a bit late today!

48. Alan Swale@47: OUCH!

49. I was glad to learn CANTERBURY, STYLAR and LITEROSE (which I will use), but am surprised ACCENTOR was new to so many. The Dunnock, one of Britain’s common songbirds, is an accentor. My only complaint was that RECREANT wasn’t marked as being archaic. [Chambers]

50. Thanks both,
    Needed a wild card search in oed for ‘monbretia’ and ‘skep’ plus a lot of look ups for nho words. Should have got monbretia as I’m also constantly keeping it in check (along with the blooming celandines). But on balance a rewarding challenge.

51. Difficult in parts but doable. 4 new words for me: ACCENTOR, STYLAR, LITEROSE and SKEP. I dredged up CANTERBURY from some remote corner of my mind and I have MONTBRETIA in the garden as will many people even if they just refer to it as that orange stuff. Annoyingly, I couldn’t think of FLY SOLO and I had SNATCH as in ‘a little bit of something’ but I still enjoyed it all and finished midday. Thans Brummie and manehi.

52. Slightly miffed that 9A wasn’t ‘HOUSE BAND’ – house wine being cheap wine, and a ‘band’ being a wedding ring… Ah well. I struggled with a lot of this, but 19D was a delight.

    Thanks manehi and Brummie.

53. I’m in smug mode, having got skep from the definition then worked out the wordplay. I remembered it from the TV series “Victorian Farm”.

54. It seems to me that the clue for STYLAR doesn’t work, because (I now know) the word refers to the style of a flower or to a stylus, not to “having a particular way,” which would be style in the common sense.

    7 ginf I don’t think “fly” is a crossword only word, because I’ve run across it — probablyl in British detective stories of some earlier decade, of which I’ve read stacks. I’m thinking of some crusty old solicitor being referred to as a “fly old boy.”

    23a was clearly going to be one of those long names for a plant I’ve never heard of, and I used “check” to try various letters from Britten here and there till I got it. I don’t think we have it over here, and we definitely don’t have ACCENTORs.

    Julia @51
    There was a young fellow named Hatch
    Who was fond of the music of Bach (pronounced to rhyme with “Hatch”)
    He said “It’s not fussy’
    Like Brahms or Debussy —
    Come, let me play you a snatch!”

    When I read Van Winkle@26 I jumped down to this space to write a reminder of Eileen’s jorum experience and to suggest that we adopt the word. Then I read a bit farther and there she was @31! Thanks for the useful term, Eileen!

    I dredged up RECREANT and SKEP from buried who-knows-whats, but ACCENTOR, MONTBRETIA, CANTERBURY (in the furniture sense), STYLAR and LITEROSE were all never-heard-of. That’s a lot for one puzzle, and I can’t imagine using any of them in conversation.

55. Valentine @64 – Regarding rhymes, I remember (maybe from Verse & Worse):

    Here lies John Bunn
    He was shot by a gun
    His name was not Bunn but Wood
    But Wood would not rhyme with gun, but Bunn would.

56. Valentine @54. Chambers does not distinguish between the regular and the botanical use of the word ‘style’ and as STYLAR means of or relating to a style, I reckon it must be ok with the definition in the clue.

57. Just to explain the references to ‘jorum’ for more recent commenters –

    I find it hard to believe that it was so long ago but here’s the most recent reference I can find in the archive:
    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/02/03/guardian-prize-27417-paul/ – 8 across …

    … and here’s where it started: http://www.fifteensquared.net/2015/07/25/guardian-prize-26627-puck/

    I’ll try not mention it again – for a while. 😉

58. I’ve always wondered what that lovely and abundant orange flower is called and now I know. That’s a positive for today

59. [Eileen @57: thanks for the links. An amusing read. The original Puck puzzle – an alphabetical jigsaw – gave me the chance to encounter a 2015 contribution by poster 1961Blanchflower which I am going to paste in here just so’s folk who haven’t seen it before can admire it:

    “Araucarian beauty, completion delayed … ended finally: great happiness, indeed joy! Keenly let me now offer praise: quality, reachable solutions till ultimate victory won. Ximenean yet zesty.” Chapeau!]

60. Ouch. Finally realised it isn’t STEEL BAND but BRASS BAND! Either I’m not as cheap as Brummie or else I prefer my music to hail from sunnier climes.

    Once I’d made the switch it was relatively easy though I had to look up ACCENTOR and MONTBRETIA and CANTERBURY and SKEP and STYLAR and LITEROSE: all doable from the wordplay but new words to be. I must stay in more.

    And it was worth it for URETHRA. Thank you Brummie

61. That was tough but not overly so. I unashamedly failed at ACCENTOR, MONTBRETIA, and SKEP, words that require specialized knowledge beyond my range. I liked the very clever APPARENT, OBSERVER, and the Paul-esque URETHRA. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

62. [Eileen @57 – there was also the (brimming) jorum of lush, coined and enthusiastically promoted on several occasions by DaveMc and appreciated by JinA here]

63. Tough but fair – all eminently parsable, with one gotcha…Trailman@43 I was another STEMmer! Hey ho.

    Thanks both.

64. essexboy @62 – yes, there were several more in between!

65. Far too many obscure words spoiled this crossword for us. Several I guessed from wordplay, but there’s little satisfaction in seeing that any particular concoction you have made is right.

66. KeithM @65
    I disagree there. As some posters have said earlier, one of the delights of doing crosswords is to construct a word from the wordplay, then find it exists. I much prefer that to guessing a word from the definition, then teasing out a complex parsing.

67. [Having, as promised, listened to The land of grey and pink, I noticed that my CD filing system has Songs and signs next to it. I’ve no memory of ever having listened to it – maybe tomorrow…]

68. Didn’t mind finding some new words as surely that’s part of the whole fascination of language, of which crosswords are a part. But astonished at how many folk have never heard of a SKEP. I’m sure I don’t know it just because I once kept bees as I’m not old enough to have kept them in skeps, but in Nationals – now there’s a niche meaning of a word!

69. KeithM @65 and muffin @66 – I find myself (dis)agreeing with both of you.

    Of course, I love a jorum but also, when the definition leaps out, I find great satisfaction in teasing out a complex parsing.

    It’s rather late but I’d like to recommend today’s debut puzzle in the FT
    https://www.ft.com/content/c9150de0-b02a-4288-810e-da89bc44c409
    I’m sure many here will enjoy it!

70. Come on, Eileen (see what I did there?) – don’t sit on the fence!

71. Of course I did – I’ve been living with that for nearly forty years!

    But I do enjoy both types of clue, especially when there are good examples of both in a puzzle, as today.

72. [Sorry, of course you did, Eileen. I was addressing it to everyone else…]

73. Late to the show today, so not much to add. Lots of jorums, which I enjoyed once most of the crossers were in place. Failed on SKEP; the short unknown words are harder, because the crossers often don’t help as much – too many possibilities for the other letters.

    I am old but not old enough to have used a Canterbury music stand, so that was another TILT.

    Thanks Brummie and manehi, and also the commenters who made for an enjoyable read today.

74. Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

    I enjoyed this, obscure words and all -and why not, if they’re fairly clued?
    I knew skep from Rosemary Suttcliff, in particular “The Lantern Bearers” – a book I constantly return to, even as an adult.

75. [Marienkaefer @74
    I don’t know that one, but Simon and The Eagle of the Ninth are amongst my favourite books – I’ll look out for yours.]

76. [It seems it’s book three of The Eagle of the Ninth; what is book 2?]

77. Thanks Eileen @69 for suggesting today’s FT. A very good first effort by a new setter!

78. Glad you enjoyed it, sh @77. 😉

79. I got most of the way through this, defeated mainly by the plethora of unfamiliar words. I liked the explanation of URETHRA, that had passed me by.
    Many thanks Manehi for the answers.

80. This one was like pulling teeth: RECREANT, STYLAR, ACCENTOR, MONTBRETIA, LITEROSE, CANTERBURY, SKEP… I needed liberal use of the check button. And ores contain metals – they are not the metals themselves (including native metals, which are within the ore). Thanks, manehi – and, I suppose, Brummie.

81. [ Eileen@69 – wow, that is a fantastic crossword by Buccaneer, No. 16,699 in the FT. Thanks for the recommendation.
    I see on the FT 225 blog that the author has acknowledged the revelation of his identity. I do the FTs regularly, so I’m delighted that he is joining their stable of setters. ]

82. Muffin @ 76 – The Silver Branch

83. Further to previous comments, Montbretia is the old name for Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora . It is still very common, perhaps because it is so invasive and has gone wild. There are many other varieties of Crocosmia of which I have ‘Lucifer’.

84. Late to the party, I know, but just to say that I learned the word SKEP only a few days ago whilst reading Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ (sic). Having scanned the comments above, it appears that no one else around here has read it. I heartily commend it: a wonderfully evocative and moving novel about the Shakespeare family.

85. Even later but thanks manehi for the explanations – in fact for all my mutterings en route I think the parsing for all of these was pretty clear in the end, it was just the solutions themselves that were obscure – I knew a couple of them and guessed/fathomed a couple more but don’t think I would have got SKEP or the plant without the comforting presence of the internet (I agree that it thus fails the Trailman Test).
    (Of course without the net I wouldn’t have access to the crossword in the first place so I have no moral concern using it in solving, especially as it helps to “enrich my wordpower” as the old Reader’s Digest used to say.)
    Thanks everyone else for the interesting discussions and links (will do ft later probably) and I am with Eileen in enjoying both routes to a solution, so I was one of the happier ones at the end of this, ACCENTOR and APPARENT were both very good (is the latter a candidate for clearest example of how to interpret a question mark in a clue?) but URETHRA just pips them, thanks Brummie.

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