Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,398 / Philistine

82 comments on “Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,398 / Philistine”

1. Perhaps the best themed puzzle is when your LOI is the theme indicator (Tintin), and not only the LOI but LOLs too! Some lovely well disguised clues too, Website took an age to spot!

2. Enjoyable and fairly easy for a Prize puzzle, but I did not parse 23d TINTIN although I knew he was a fictional reporter. Oh, I see it is a cd? I had not picked up on the theme at all, having never seen or read Tintin.

   Favourites: MAGNETIC, SNOWY MOUNTAINS, CAFETERIA, SMALLS, CACAO BEANS.

   New: Jedward twins.

   Thank you, Philistine and Eileen.

3. As I always find with this setter, this puzzle was both challenging and enjoyable throughout. I didn’t know the Tintin characters, and because TINTIN was my second to last clue solved it was only then that I made the connections, whereupon I looked up the subject to confirm the names.
   My last in was WEBSITE, which, as usual for a ‘reverse hidden’, I was slow to see.
   I very much liked what I think are Philistine’s pet devices, like ‘pawned’ to mean ‘in HOCK’, ‘backstreet’ to mean TS, ‘indeed’ to mean DE…ED and (cheekiest of all) ‘outgoing youth’ to mean YH. I also admired the long anagram ‘anonymous twins’ for SNOWY MOUNTAINS, and I thought the ‘wordplay links’ highlighted by Eileen were delightful.
   Thanks to Philistine and Eileen.

4. So the THOMPSON TWINS jumped out at me and from then on I knew I was looking for 80s bands. CAPTAIN confirmed it… come on SENSIBLE, I know you’re in there… ah OK, maybe not.

   Let’s start again; how did the TWINS get their name? A-ha!! And now I was hunting HADDOCK (brilliant clue, not sure I’d have cracked it without the theme to help). And what a lovely way to finish with 23dn – yes, the gang’s all here.

   Many thanks Philistine and Eileen.

   [Recognition is due to sheffield hatter, who last November correctly predicted the next triple transit of Eileen. The Nobel Committee is aware.]

5. I came back to this puzzle 1/2 an hour ago to see what my comments on it were, and discovered I’d never done it! Luckily it didn’t seem too tough, and I quite enjoyed it. I didn’t know the theme, but figured it had something to do with TINTIN from the form of the clue.

   I’m not a biblical scholar, far from it, but what I understand is that then and there, the SAMARITANs were “bad people”, hence the point of the story. What a difference 2,000 years makes!

6. Thanks to Philistine and Eileen. I made steady progress here. I knew TINTIN as a fictional reporter (that’s the extent of my knowledge) but did not know how to parse it.

7. Thanks to Philistine and Eileen. I made steady progress here. I knew TINTIN as a fictional reporter (that’s the extent of my knowledge) but did not know how to parse it.

8. Thanks Eileen. Another pleasant interlude with about the right mix of the straightforward to get the grid populated for assistance with the more demanding. At first glance I thought it was going to be rather a challenge but looking back on it now there are few clues that are not entirely fair and logical. I’d only question the necessity for the apostrophe and s in 13. I don’t expect I’m the only one to have missed the theme completely. Dr Whatson@6. The parable of the Good Samaritan Luke 10 I think.

9. I really enjoyed this one, although I didn’t realise the theme until I’d finished, then I went back to try and parse the 2 clues that I couldn’t make sense of. That got me “website” and finally I realised the Tintin gang indeed was all here! I appreciate the easier puzzles as it’s always a boost whenever I manage to finish, but I loved the hidden theme too – Tintin was a childhood favourite.

10. The comics were about the place when the kids were young, so I’m sure I read a couple, and I’ve even been to the Herge museum, but no, no bells rang in the thick skull until Tintin himself appeared. [And I have a vague memory of discussion, somewhere, about the PC-ness, or lack thereof, of Herge’s output] Anyway, quite enjoyed the puzzle, thanks P and E.

11. The TINTIN theme helped. I had TWINS, [Professor] CALCULUS and HADDOCK before I started puzzling over 23d, and the name of the reporter jumped out. The parsing is weird, though – is “here with gang” a reference to the theme? That’s all I can see. I quickly then found SNOWY, THOMPSON and CAPTAIN and looked for more: Nestor? General Alcazar? Bianca Castafiore? Rastapopoulos? OK, I agree some of these would have been hard to fit in. So only a mini theme, really. I had real trouble parsing my LOI – WEBSITE – how cleverly hidden was that? Overall, though, not too difficult and rather pleasant. [Dr WhatsOn @5 – my memory is that the Samaritans were a despised people, rather than bad – outgroup prejudice/racism.] Thanks, Philistine and Eileen.

12. [Talking of prejudice, racism and Tintin, there is an excellent biography of Herge/Tintin by Harry Thompson (really), in which he discusses the early books and their racist stereotypes, Herge’s meeting with Chang Chon-Ren when writing/drawing The Blue Lotus and his subsequent change in many ways – artistically and morally. See also the character Chang in Tintin in Tibet.]

13. Great fun. I guessed TINTIN but couldn’t parse it so left it. It was when I was filling in SNOWY MOUNTAINS that I twigged there was actually a TINTIN theme and, having CAPTAIN already, I knew to look for HADDOCK. It’s unusual for me to spot a theme in time for it to help. It was clever the way the theme words were hidden in the answers. It was only right at the end when I understood “here with his gang”.

    Biggles A@8, surely the possessive apostrophe S is necessary to match the possessive “I’m” at the beginning of the charade for IMMUNITY?

    Also, I think the point Whatson is making is that the Samaritan of the parable was notable for his goodness precisely because they were in general not to be expected to offer assistance to an Israelite.

14. Tony@13. Thank you. Yes, I was fixated on the apostrophe indicating the genitive case but now I see that it is the nominative, Philistine is = I am. I still think though the clue would work just as well without the ‘s; I am = Philistine.
    I wasn’t sure about Dr WhatsOn’s point but thought I’d try to elucidate. Now of course the Samaritans is a well regarded charity for the provision of emotional support so 2,000 years has indeed made a difference.

15. Yes, just to be 100% clear, I was not saying there is anything wrong with the clue, the word or the organization. I was commenting on how our wonderful language has managed to do a 180 regarding the meaning of the word, or at least the implication one should draw of the kind of individual it describes.

16. Dr WhatsOn @15 – Yes, I got that, and apologise if my comment implied differently. The distinction I was trying to make was between the ancient Samaritans being seen by Israelites as evil, or as despised (and, no doubt, vice versa). I am not even sure that’s entirely accurate, as it draws on my undoubtedly meagre religious education. The effect would have been the same as far as the parable goes, as Tony Collman points out @13.

17. I seem to almost incapable of spotting hidden themes, but I did get this one – bit only right after I wrote in the last answer and thought “now, what on earth did TINTIN (a fictional reporter, I got that) have to do with a gang”. And I saw I’d written SNOWY, and TWINS, and the rest, and it all made sense. Too late to help, but not too late to appreciate. A lot to enjoy here. And I thought TIN TIN = CANS was very neat, as were the clues for both halves of CAPTAIN HADDOCK.

    (When I saw the grid, I remember hoping there would be a theme, otherwise this was very much a four-quarters puzzle. You could black out just four squares and the whole thing would break into four parts – I find that’s how I tend to measure these things. But there were enough inter-linked clues anyway that I forgot about looking for a theme and just enjoyed the clues.)

18. Lovely crossword as always from Philistine. I realised there was a theme after getting CAPTAIN and HADDOCK (favourite clue), but I don’t know the books all that well and I forgot about Professor CALCULUS. And I still thought I was looking for wordplay for TINTIN rather than a CD.

    The point about the good SAMARITAN was that Jesus told the story to a deeply prejudiced person for whom the idea of a good Samaritan was a contradiction in terms, and thinking of one as a good neighbour was disconcerting – but for us 2000 years later the words fit together as a well known term.

19. I really enjoyed this puzzle and managed to parse them all which is unusual for me. I even got the theme. However since I got it with TINTIN which was my third last clue it wasn’t much use in solving – although it did help me finish parsing CACAO BEANS which was one of my favourite clues.

    Other favourites were SAMARITAN, CHECKMATE, DEMEANED and of course ANGORAS

    Thanks to Philistine and Eileen

20. Thank you for the blog. Enjoyable crossword, think everything has been said . Bit easy for a Saturday, hope we get something tougher delivered today.

21. Many thanks, Eileen and Philistine. Like I suspect many of us, who completed the puzzle but completely missed the theme, I now understand the parsing of the clue for Tintin, appropriately placed last at 23d.

22. I also enjoyed the wordplay between linked clues. SNOWY MOUNTAINS was a favourite along with the Tina Turner bit in CAPTAIN.

    Of course, Tina Turner was The Acid Queen in Tommy, so she would have turned blue litmus paper red.

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

23. But for my LOI 23 I’d have done this one quicker than the (not very) Quiptic two days later.

    I tried and tried to resist checking via the tax-dodging search engine/private superpower/covert mass-surveillance engine, to see if he was a reporter but I eventually crumbled, so I don’t know if I count myself fully victorious. My memories of Tintin are meagre in the extreme, indeed I only recall him as being an adventurer…and more recently becoming known as a racist coloniser. I certainly had no idea as to his gang, so the parsing was out of the window for me.

    In retrospect, because I obviously hadn’t fully parsed 8,16 when filling in the answer, I should have saved myself some time by going back to that clue, figuring out the parts that didn’t need 23 and seeing what’s left – the CANS envelope.

24. As usual on a Saturday much has been said and most of my favourites identified. It was cunning to leave TIN TIN down in the corner – quite a lot of us seem to have stumbled across the theme late in the day as a result. It helped me in that my LOI was CALCULUS due to an inaccurate SMARTS instead of SMALLS at 12a. ‘Mart’ was my market and I convinced myself – due to the existence of ‘smarty pants’ – that maybe SMARTS was a term used for underwear somewhere. (I mean, there’s trolleys, kecks, skivvies, grundies….) It left me looking for an impossible 2d until I discovered the professor was without a home. Delightfully incorporated mini theme.

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

25. I had this finished last week bar the main character and one quick look this morning gave me the tea tray moment. essexboy @ 4: like you, I also thought there might be an 80s music theme but gave up looking after Biggie SMALLS. A fun prize.

    Ta Philistine & Eileen

26. PostMark@24 I thought of SMARTS as well from the wordplay but did not make the underwear connection and did not put it in. Changed my mind when I had the L, but I am not convinced that MALL is a market, quite the opposite in my view.
    [ AlanC I never seem to comment at the same time as you in the week, thank you for your kind words that I read recently ]

27. [My pleasure Roz]

28. Roz @26: I tend to agree. I think of a mall – especially in the US context – as a collection of mainly branded stores in one big development whereas a market is individual traders selling their wares from stalls. But I suspect there is equivalence in dictionaries somewhere.

29. Form once I got the theme, but then wasted time looking for blistering barnacles. I liked the way that Philistine, one of a minority facing discrimination in Israel, clued SAMARITAN, another.

30. BigglesA @14, der! I think between us we’ve explained the apostrophe. Don’t know what made me waffle about possessives. I can only say it was very late and I probably should have been sleeping, not commenting. Can one’s name stand for ‘I am’? Send a bit dubious to me. I think he was right to put in the apostrophe.

    Good point about The Samaritans. For some reason, they never crossed my mind when solving. Probably, though, the reference is to ‘the Good Samaritan’, isn’t it? The same thought about whether (biblical) Samaritans were generally to be thought of as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ crossed my mind at the time, too. (Haven’t read any of the comments which have appeared since your reply at the moment.)

    I also vaguely wondered about how the Philistines got on with the Samaritans. Maybe the point is that people generally didn’t go out of their way to help people of other ethnic/national groups. As far as I recall, Moses slew the Egyptian without looking into the rights and wrongs of the fight he settled (sorry haven’t got a ref for that, but I think it’s in Genesis).

31. Exodus 2:11-22
    Sounds, not send

32. Thanks for the blog. Like others I got the theme late because 23d is hard to parse until you have solved several of the other clues… very clever how the connected names are split or embedded in several solutions and there is only one direct reference to “23”. Overall very enjoyable.

33. The theme was not much help to me as my knowledge of the Tintin strip is limited to when it was serialised in The Eagle, when his dog was I think still called Milou. I would probably have taken more interest had I known at the time that Tintin is the familiar form of my own first name Martin.

34. Mark @24: I had SMARTS too, so CALCULUS was my last one in, and even if I’d taken the trouble of looking for a theme, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have remembered the name of the professor. (If I recall correctly, the “twins” were Thompson and Thomson.)

    I’m surprised at the ongoing debate (Biggles A & Tony Collman) about ‘Philistine’s’ to clue the first two letters of IMMUNITY. I thought this was fairly standard, with the options of I’M (as in this case), I’VE or MY (or even MINE).

    [essexboy @4: I think I’ve blown my chance – I rejected a call from an unknown number the other day. That was probably the Nobel committee!]

35. Togs @ 33. I had a similar problem in that I have a complete collection of Tintins, but in French, where the dog is indeed called Milou. No Calculus, it’s professeur Tournesol, and the Thom[p]sons are Dupont and Dupond. But Haddock is the same as in the translated version.

36. [ PostMark@28- my Chambers 93 does not show any direct reference from market to mall in either direction but it is a bit out of date. I also like markets but cannot stand malls so do not like to see them equated. ]

37. I lived in Brussels for 7 years, half the time in Etterbeek, where Hergé came from; I have a poster of the wonderful ‘Tout Hergé’ exhibition in Welkenraedt in 1991; I dried myself this morning on a Tintin-themed bath towel; I was even dismissed – ‘not you, Captain Haddock’ – by Al Murray, the pub landlord, when he was looking for a victim to go on stage.
    I still managed to miss the theme.
    But a great crossword.

38. I now have an earworm of a stentorian American announcer: “Hergé’s Ad-Ven-Tures of Tin-Tin!”

    Like others, I see, I didn’t cop to the theme until the end. That’s fine: it was a nice extra touch after an enjoyable puzzle. I know themed crosswords aren’t universally popular, but I like them, whether the theme is signalled from the outset or hidden in plain sight.

    Re SMALLS: You could argue that a mall is a marketplace, rather than a market, but that’s a fine distinction.

39. Like ant@1, KeithS@17 and maybe some others, my LOI was TINTIN at 23D. There was then a massive surge of realisation – all those strange clues suddenly making sense. As someone commented the theme revealing itself too late for helping but not too late for appreciation.

    The CACAO BEANS CAN-CAN hint should have helped I guess !

    Anyway excellent fun, many thanks Philistine, and to Eileen’s excellent explanations and to all learned commentators on here!

40. Thanks Philistine for the puzzle and Eileen for the blog! For once I figured out the theme and was able to use it to help, after getting HADDOCK I thought “There must be a CAPTAIN here somewhere.” But I did spend a while trying to figure out some wordplay for TINTIN before I realized it was a theme–the explanation makes so much sense! And I spent a while wondering whether there were two famous nameless peaks in the Snowy Mountains, it never occurred to me that it was an anagram.

    The wordplay for CACAO BEANS was particularly elegant IMO (now that I figured out what “a gong” means). I think getting that is what made me sure of TINTIN.

41. Roz @ 36: the current Chamber Thesaurus app has market > mall, but not mall > market.

42. I missed the theme, in spite of having been a Tintin fan when I was eight. That year I went with my parents on a European vacation. My father had been teaching me French, and the Tintin books were a great discovery — just right for an eight-year-old. (But reading about them now I find that there were political themes that would have passed me right by back then.) I would read them and ask him about words I didn’t know (there were a lot). When I got through one we’d buy another, always a hard choice at that point. I still have them, about half a dozen, probably collector’s items by now. Only years later did I discover that there were English versions with the names mangled. Thom(p)son and Thomson make sense as Dupont and Dupond, but why should professor Sunflower (Tournesol) be professor Calculus? In case we hadn’t guessed he was a boffin? Why can’t Milou just be Milou instead of a name that tells us what color he is, in case we hadn’t noticed? Well, I’m probably just grumping about something from my childhood that’s become something I didn’t approve of.

    Interestingly, we first tried Pif le chien, but it was so slangy it was beyond my father’s French. Tintin is in (apparently) generic French.

    Rant over, and I enjoyed solving the puzzle even without help from the theme.

    Parsing CACAO BEANS was beyond me, thanks Eileen, as well as thanks for a friendly blog. And thanks Philistine as well.

43. Thank you Simon S @41, but I only use my old dictionary, I never look at anything else.

44. Fun crossword. As soon as I put in Haddock I thought of the captain – these words forever linked in my mind by the TV adaptation. It was a bit later I realised I already had Thompson twins and the penny dropped. LOI like others ‘website’ – beautifully hiding in plain sight.

45. TINTIN was the only clue I didn’t solve but it didn’t matter because I was unfamiliar with that comic anyway so again the theme was lost on me. Nonetheless I liked the crossword as I always enjoy Philistine/Goliath. Favourites were CHECKMATE, HADDOCK, MAGNETIC, and DEMEANED. I missed the clever parsing of ANGORAS. Thanks to both.

46. I couldn’t parse “TINTIN” because I didn’t recognise the theme until I got here. What fun I had finding the theme clues!

47. [Roz@43, forsooth, I will none but Mr. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language of 1755, for that it hath none but the very significations of all words of our noble tongue, deduced from their originals. 🙂 (Actually I tend to rely over much on my 1988 Chambers, as those here who have corrected me in the past from more modern editions may attest.)]

48. [ Tony Collman@47, mine is so battered it has lost the hardboard cover but I never use anything else. I do think that Azed occasionally deliberately uses lots of words only in the newer editions when setting a crossword. ]

49. [Huh! And Azed is the one who is supposed to be so obsessed with fairness!]

50. [ I think it is fair enough, he does specify the Chambers he is using. It is just his idea of a little joke ]

51. Thanks Eileen, having solved this in fits and starts I realise I never bothered to work out what was going on with CANS and 23D and that is now clear.
    You might think that getting HADDOCK, SNOWY MOUNTAINS and guessing TINTIN in quick succession (with a big question mark over parsing the last) would have led me straight to the theme but no, that waited until penultimate entry CALCULUS- never mind.
    I thought this was fantastic with a lot of clever but fair tricks. My only query was in what sense the SS is paramilitary rather than just a plain old military army, this held me up quite a while as I was also set on MART being in there somewhere and couldn’t think of any 2-letter paramilitaries. But I know next to nothing of WW2 and how the German army was actually organised.
    Thanks Philistine, my favourite ANGORAS as it’s a device I often struggle with.

52. [PS PostMark in case you pop back, thanks for recommending some Focus the other day, I have found it great to listen to both while working and solving, I think it must be the lack of vocals (at least on the ones I have heard).]

53. [Gazzh@51, the SS was formed some years before the Nazis gained power and was not part of the German military, although later the section known as the Waffen (weapons) SS was.]

54. Thank you Tony Collman.

55. [Gazzh @52: really glad you enjoyed/are enjoying. Vocals do feature occasionally but more as another instrument than to introduce lyrics. La Cathedrale de Strasbourg, for example, incorporates some but quite unusually. And there’s the famous yodel of course! If you continue exploring, you’ll find the band matures well and stuff they’ve performed in more recent times is still good – if slightly less energetic. ]

56. This was indeed a fun puzzle, not very difficult (for a Saturday), and surely one that contained a lot of Philistine’s trademark devices.
    Alan B @3 mentioned them already.
    Like Eileen, I like clues in which names of real people are being used.
    Klingsor (in today’s Independent) had another fine one (built around Tyson Fury).
    But, and there is a but, I only like them when they’re done properly.
    “Harry Kane” for (KANE)* is an example that makes sense.
    However, what Philistine did here (in 4dn), using “turner” as the anagram indicator (a noun placed behind the fodder), is for me totally unacceptable.
    I can see why solvers think it’s fun but there is something like cryptic precision (though I don’t mind the casual looseness).
    Don’t get me wrong, I liked the crossword as a whole (and I also think Philistine’s a very good and original setter) but 4dn is just really bad clueing in my book of crosswords.
    Sorry to perhaps have spoilt the party.
    ps, there are other books of crosswords, too.

57. Sil @56 – I’m glad you did enjoy the puzzle – as a whole – but I’m puzzled by your quibble.

    As I said in the blog, I initially took Turner as a reversal, rather than an anagram indicator but I can see no objection to it as the latter. Is it simply because it comes after the fodder? I read Turner as a noun in apposition – Tina, a / the Turner, which to me is totally acceptable. Presumably you would have accepted ‘Tina turned’ – if it could have fitted the surface?

    [Incidentally, I’m shocked to be reminded that, after my comment on today’s Klingsor puzzle (” I was saying only the other day how I love it when setters use the names of real people in wordplay”) it was in this morning’s blog that I said it! Admittedly, my short-term memory is fading rapidly but, in my defence, I did write today’s blog last Saturday afternoon!]

58. Well, Eileen, then we’ll just disagree.
    Yes, ‘turned’ or ‘turning’ is fine but not ‘turner’ – not for me.
    Accepting something because of it fitting the surface is (again, for me) not what crosswords are about.
    I hesitated to comment on this because I like Philistine and I didn’t want to spoil the party.

59. Sil – as always, I’d like it if we could agree.

    If ‘Tina turned / turning’ is ‘fine’, why can you not accept Tina = Turner (as one who turns)?

60. Cryptic grammar, Eileen.
    It’s actually just rubbish, in my opinion.
    A clue like this wouldn’t stand a chance on Alberich’s website.
    Or ask Eccles.
    No-one seems to be bothered about it today, so I’m clearly the odd one out.

61. I give up – not ‘in’.

62. “A clue like this wouldn’t stand a chance on Alberich’s website.” Yes, that may well be right, Sil. But presumably Philistine wouldn’t submit it anywhere else but the Guardian. I have a lot of respect for your opinions about crossword clues, but I think you’re being too harsh to call this clue rubbish, even though you take some of the edge off by saying that you “like Philistine and didn’t want to spoil the party”.

    I think Eileen’s interpretation of ‘Turner’ as an adjectival noun denoting one who turns looks perfectly acceptable to me.

63. Not to me, so much is clear.
    And I also do not understand how anyone can see this device as ‘perfectly acceptable’.
    That said, it’s only about one clue in an otherwise enjoyable crossword, and there are other things in life that matter a lot more.

64. Turn ‘er?

65. Thanks, Philistine and Eileen! I accidentally saw Eileen’s note about the theme first when I opened the blog to try to figure out where to find the puzzle (I’m new this week so I didn’t know Saturday was on the Prize page nor that the blog is a week later), but that’s fine, it gave me a bit of a way in as I’m learning. I definitely need to work on my anagram indicators as there were a few I totally missed! (I did get Turner, though.) Favorites were HADDOCK, MAGNETIC, EMMA THOMPSON.

66. : )

67. Or better, 🙂

68. When I was a child, my dad took a sabbatical to Berkeley (from Purdue). When we returned to Indiana, the family who had been renting our house left behind (inter alia) a battered copy of “Cigars of the Pharaoh.” That was my entree to Tintin; the local independent bookstore (Von’s, a sterling example of a college-town bookstore, and the best thing West Lafayette offers the world) did the rest. (Not the early racist ones, which are quite hard to find these days.)

    Like almost everyone else, TINTIN went in last, and I knew it had to mean “cans”, which I thought was really clever. I didn’t parse it until about ten minutes later, when I realized it was announcing the theme. And lo, there they all were. If you were looking for wordplay for TINTIN, the “cans” was enough, I’d say.

    Valentine, of course translating is a tricky business, so who knows why the English translators chose the names they did. But Snowy seems like a good name for a dog, so I can’t complain.

69. I probably shouldn’t interfere, but…

    I get Sil’s point. Tina turning = Tina transforming herself, so fine. Tina turned = Tina being transformed, so fine. But turner isn’t a verb, or a participial adjective, so there’s no instruction to the solver to do anything with Tina.

    But… I really like the clue, so I’m going to say that, at a stretch, I can imagine a ‘Tina Turner’ as a device (patented and trademarked, hence capitals), the principal function of which is to display random combinations of the letters comprising the word ’Tina’.

    The solver is thus presented with a CAP adorning this ingenious device, which just happens to be in TAIN mode.

    [I once taught a Tina Turner; she was much more fun than Michael Jackson, who was in the same class.]

70. Like Eileen, I give up too now.

71. I spent so long composing my comment that I missed comments 69 and 70 – which don’t alter my view, so here it is:

    Dear Sil

    I’ve always been hugely impressed by your remarkable command of English, your second language, and your appreciation of cryptic crosswords but I really do think you’ve missed the point in this one. (Thanks to sheffield hatter for your support.) I can’t think how to put it another way.
    In the meantime, like you, I have so many other concerns just now, not just with crosswords.

    katelinnea @65 – good to see you back! Sorry if there was a spoiler in the preamble – I did try to keep it hidden but glad you enjoyed it, anyway, The Saturday puzzle is still blogged a week late here, although it’s not, at the moment, a Prize puzzle – still billed as such on the Guardian website., though.

    Mr Penney @78 – thank you for your anecdote. 😉

    As we’re soon into daylight saving here, I’m signing off now, with thanks to all for a really friendly set of comments on a very enjoyable puzzle.

72. Eileen @71 – Oh, you did fine keeping it hidden, my mouse just happened to graze over the link and I glimpsed the URL. 🙂

73. Eileen, as I said, I give up.
    It’s not about winning or losing.
    The fact that English is not my first language has also nothing to do with it.
    I’ve come to understand cryptic crosswords by keeping my eyes and ears open, and asking questions.
    Nowadays, precision and the right cryptic grammar are for me far more important than eg the surface of a clue.
    It’s there where Philistine’s clue (at 4dn) crossed my borders.
    You think that I really missed the point in this one?
    In the distant past, at this place, I often used to say “We’re all different, aren’t we?”.
    Perhaps, we should leave it there.

74. Head / brick/ wall – I am really going to bed now.

75. As crypticsue often says…

76. Sil, I see what you’re saying and admittedly that didn’t occur to me when solving. Thinking about it now, though, isn’t the letter-group TAIN an entity which turns ‘Tina’ to come into existence and hence, a ‘Tina’ turner?

77. Sil I think your views are valid and would correspond very closely to Ximenes of course. However, Ximenes totally adored Torquemada whose clues were often absolutely outrageous.

78. Was I the only one thinking that the letters RG in row 3 were not a coincidence?! …
    Great puzzle bringing back a few memories.
    Many thanks to Eileen and Philistine.

79. Re. Tina Turner, I had in my mind a tombola …

80. As soon as I saw Tina Turner I thought please let this be an anagram so I for one was delighted. I think the ximenean horse bolted from the guardian stable a long time ago 🙂

81. A day late to the Tina Turner thing. If you think of “turner” as “an act of turning” (you won’t find a dictionary that supports that, but then you won’t find one that supports “banker” or “flower” for river either–we have to be flexible), it seems to work juat fine to me. Just do a turner on Tina and we’re good. Also, my favorite is “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” but I also like “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

82. Mr Penney, if you think of “good idea” as meaning “I don’t think so, somehow”, then good idea!

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