Guardian Cryptic 28534 Crucible

90 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28534 Crucible”

1. I personally don’t find a balti curry very hot. Is the BALTIC always a cold area?

2. I found this hard in parts. Thank heavens for little word wizards. Thanks for the parsing of reportedly.

3. Hoorah. A lovely puzzle I could do after days of failures.
   Favourite 16d.

4. I think a Balti is also the vessel the food is cooked/served in. Great fun today – even got the theme early on (unusual for me). Thanks so much Crucible and Scchua. I thought almost every clue was masterful (there was the odd write-in – such as halo in 13ac – but many were unexpected constructions, esp the fake Spoonerism).

5. An obvious but clever theme with some new words like ESURIENT and AESTIVAL. Favourites were CHOPPY, WEATHER FORECAST, ATMOSPHERICS and the favourite word for freezing in NI, BALTIC. Very nice puzzle today with AHOY being LOI.

   Ta Crucible & scchua

6. An absolute gem of a puzzle (we were more than due one) – with many clues that both challenged and entertained – including CHOPPY, EL NINO, FROST, AESTIVAL, INGESTION & AHOY (loi).
   Also enjoyed the Spooner diversion and the clever anagram for NACREOUS.
   By no means easy, in fact almost BTH. Absolutely no quibbles.
   Thanks Crucible, for a memorably sunny puzzle in spite of the threatening aura.

7. I failed to parse Reportedly and the NOI in ingestion. I felt ALTeR EGO needed a ? at the end of the clue as I don’t feel an ALTer EGO is necessarily friendly. Curious about others opinions.

   I dredged up ESURIENT from the depths and enjoyed AHOY. Which I first had in as YELL but that’s the wrong set of islands I realised. The fake spoonerism was clever.

   But I’m not complaining. I enjoyed the puzzle throughout and even saw the theme. As an ex-met office person it would have been embarrassing if I’d not noticed it!

   Thanks Crucible and scchua

8. Loved the misdirection in the Spooner clue. Great crossword. Thanks Crucible and scchua

9. An enjoyable mix of encouragingly “easy” clues with some trickier (for me) ones. As my wife’s Polish family are always posting pictures of balmy holidays on the Baltic coast, I, too, find it hard to think of BALTIC as very cold, but I bet it’s in Chambers.

10. Worth the price of admission for the non-spooner spoonerism and the WHITE HORSES earworm 🙂
    NACREOUS is one of those words that I only know from crosswords – is there a neologism for those I wonder?

11. Also I don’t suppose many people eat cold BALTI – well maybe after a big night out – so the hot could be referring to the temperature at which it’s usually served?

12. A breath of fresh air from our setter today. Steady progress, an early spot of the theme and plenty of decent clues. I enjoyed the non-Spoonerism use of Spooner, the surface for NACREOUS, the construction for WEATHER FORECAST (and, as others will know, it’s the second time in a week we’ve encountered that solution), the anagram for ATMOSPHERICS, the succinct AHOY. Apologies for the long list but the NE also gave us three good ‘uns in SOUTH WESTERN, CHOPPY and WIND FARM. Favourite probably GOAL AREA for the delightful surface.

    Thanks Crucible and scchua

13. Excellent puzzle, right in my Goldilocks zone. Like some others, I particularly enjoyed the fake Spoonerism.

    Thanks to Crucible and scchua.

14. A very entertaining puzzle with a nice use of the theme and some very cleverly misleading clues, particularly 16d RESPONSE. A couple of years ago I think there was some discussion on here about possible clues containing the word Spooner but not involving Spoonerisms.

    NACREOUS was excellent with a great surface. Some people (eg Roz) will not like “king” to give R for the anagram fodder (see recent debate on General Discussion) but I think it’s fine. And NACREOUS clouds are beautiful.

    Many thanks Crucible and scchua.

15. ‘An absolute gem of a puzzle’, indeed, from one of my favourite setters.

    My favourite clues were GOAL AREA, ALTER EGO, GALE, ATMOSPHERICS, AESTIVAL, EL NINO, INGESTION and RESPONSE (how I love Spoonerisms that turn out not to be!).

    I had ”round head’ as part of the definition for 13ac.

    ‘To pursue’ seems to have got lost from the clue for 15dn.

    I’m inclined to agree with CanberraGirl re ALTER EGO.

    Huge thanks to Crucible for a most enjoyable puzzle and thanks to scchua for the blog (and bodycheetah for the earworm 😉 )

16. I seem to have contradicted myself re ALTER EGO: I did like the construction and surface, though.

17. Another YELL here, and it took a while to remember GALEn. Thanks for parsing INGESTION. BALTIC= slang for very cold is new to me, but obviously exists, so no problem.
    Loved this one: tough and twisty but fair and fun, with the un-Spoonerism being the star.

18. On the Baltic discussion, online dictionaries seem split between those that stick to definitions relating to the region/sea and those that include ‘very cold’, typically tagged as British informal and even specifically Northern Irish as noted by AlanC@5. Cambridge Online comes up with a nice resolution using a lower case ‘b’ for ‘baltic’ as the adjective denoting cold.

19. Thanks scchua for explaining lots of the wordplay elements eg the Greek doctor. And I don’t think I ever properly knew that the 6 yard box is the goal area!
    I wouldn’t mind a holiday on the German Riviera one day (some nice islands off there I’m told) but certainly know the word as a colloquialism for cold (“It’s bl**dy Baltic in here!”) and have experienced Baltis both spicy and warm.
    Enjoyed many as above especially the ones that took a while to piece together, my favourite is NACREOUS despite a whiff of indirect anagram- to partially echo bodycheetah@11, is there a word for the particular pleasure you get when a word that you only learned by once failing to get it in a crossword then pops back into your head and enables you to solve a tricky clue many months later?
    Thanks Crucible.

20. Esurient feels recent, via xwds not the cheese sketch, but aestival, also via xwds, much less so. 10ac, at first a wtf, was clever. Dnk that nacreous pertained to other than actual pearlshell. Groaned at ingestion, quite droll, and forgot about rely/bank, so 8d was a biff. All good fun, ta both, great pics scchua as per.

21. I rattled though the top half in a very Mondayish manner but the bottom half took rather longer. LOI AESTIVAL – unexpected pair of letters at the start made this tricky (and ‘estival’ is a commoner spelling, I think) but an excellent clue. As was the Spooner misdirection and the anagram for ATMOSPHERICS.

    NACREOUS and ESURIENT are lovely words; the latter reminds me of JS Bach’s beautiful setting of the Magnificat: ‘Esurientes implevit bonis’ (the hungry he has filled with good things).

    Thanks to S&B

22. Agree with Shirl @1: Balti may be spicy but generally not hot like Madras and the other curries.

    BALTIC is OK though. Used around here to describe very cold weather.

23. [TeriBlislow@4 is correct: balti in Urdu means bucket (or some sort of receptacle). As a metaphor (the thing contained for the container) it became used in Birmingham’s Asian restaurant district and spread from there. The area of Baltistan in Pakistan has nothing to do with it. I am posting from Pakistan]

24. Meant to add what grantinfreo says @20 ‘All good fun, ta both, great pics scchua as per.’

25. 18ac Gale[n] reminds me of the persistence of orthodoxy: not til Harvey did ‘heart pumps blood’ become known. Given the heart’s ubiquitous beat, and lots of battles with limb-hacking and severed arteries spurting, didn’t anyone put it together, for like a couple of thousand years?

26. I agree with all the positive stuff people have already said. Some lovely definitions (especially ‘with white horses’ – thanks for the pic scchua, I can almost feel the spray) and misdirection (INGESTION = Downing – brilliant).

    I searched IN VAIN for possible hidden shipping forecast AREAs. Alas no doggers or fishers, but maybe BALTIC counts if we look overseas (complimentary shout-out to Anna).

    Many thanks Crucible and scchua, and bc for the earworm. Here’s another from WEATHER REPORT.

27. When we lived close to the “Balti Triangle” area of Birmingham (north-east of Moseley, Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath) we were often assured that the much-loved balti originated from that very area — a curry dish evolving from the nexus of Indian restaurants there. The word itself is, I think, the name of the steel dish in which the curry is cooked and served.

28. The word esurient bubbled up from somewhere, but I had to look up its meaning. Was it in Python’s cheese shop sketch? Have I known this word but not understood it for 50 years?

29. Very enjoyable – especially liked the unusual “Spooner” clue. Thank you.

30. Oh, gosh! so many devious misdirections today, but as the theme was for once a fairly obvious one, it kept me going through RAIN and shine. Last two in were the interlocking HAILSTONES and NO GAIN. Needed the dictionary to confirm NACREOUS and ESURIENT, but nonetheless an enjoyable if challenging solve…

31. Very nice. Agree with most comments.
    Hope the theme here is not an omen for day 2 at Leeds–must be starting now

32. Hadn’t heard the BALTIC use, meaning cold weather, so thanks everyone for clearing that up. As to balti dishes, maybe my tastebuds are shot after too many hotter curries!

33. Neil @28, re esurient, well remembered here’s the sketch.
    It was also in a Phillistine puzzle last year

34. Thanks Eileen@15. The blog slip-ups rectified.

35. Thanks for the blog and lovely pictures, missed the theme totally, all my favourites mentioned. Lord Jim @14, quite right, I did have to frown at 6D using R for king in an anagram.
    ESURIENT in the FT about two weeks ago.
    Pretty sure AESTIVATE was in recently, maybe Vlad or Philistine ??
    Someone once told me that Balti was invented in Walsall and as noted it is the name of the iron serving dish.

36. This was fun. The theme became apparent from an initial scan of the clues, and was helpful to me in the solves for e.g. ATMOSPHERICS and CIRRUS. AESTIVAL and ESURIENT were just hazily in view at the very periphery of my lexicon: a lovely couple of rarely encountered words.
    Thanks to Crucible and scchua today.

37. Phillistine used ESURIENT in Sep 2020

    Everyman seems very fond of the word using it several times over the years;

    2011 – “Hungry? Tureen is specially prepared (8)”
    2009 – “Hungry? Tureen is prepared (8)”
    2006 – “Hungry? Tureen is prepared (8)”

38. It’s all been said above really.

    I had forgotten how good crucible can be. Thoroughly enjoyed it all.

    Thanks both.

39. Slow to get going on this, but a delightful solve. No problem seeing the weather theme.

    I thought the ‘about’ in 15 was ‘on’, so left me high-and-dry with an unparsed ‘i’.

    Yes, baltic is in Chambers as: ‘4.(also without cap) extremely cold (informal). I particularly liked SOUTH-WESTERN, RESPONSE, REPORTEDLY and CHOPPY.

    Thanks Crucible and scchua.

40. I agree with all the positive comments above. Difficult in parts with lots of clever and witty misdirection (I especially enjoyed Spooner and Downing) and very satisfying to solve.
    Thanks to Crucible and scchua.

41. Forgot to say I missed even this ‘obvious’ theme….

42. Sorry to be a party pooper, but I found several of the surfaces quite bizarre (e.g. 3d, 5d, 19d). NHO baltic as cold, and my son lives in Sweden. I did spot the theme fairly early, which helped. So, overall, I thought this OK but hardly exceptionally good.
    [gif @ 25 – indeed, the circulation of the blood was known in the Islamic world centuries before Harvey (fact learned in an excellent medical museum in Damascus, when we were there in the good old days).]
    Thanks, Crucible and scchua.

43. Many thanks Crucible and scchua. I can only echo what others have said – this was all very clever and inventive, nicely challenging and very satisfying to solve, even if the parsing eluded me on a couple: the false Spoonerism foxed me (tricksy!), and I failed to remember Galen, so was racking my brains for a word starting ALE… meaning doctor, to tack on to G (Greek). Doh! Couldn’t quite fathom INGESTION either.

    I liked the misdirection of the non-thematic use of “hail” in the clue for 2d even though it’s in the solution to 12d.

    ESURIENT is a word I’m sure I’ve come across before but it doesn’t ring any bells. I’m going to look up the Cheese shop sketch on YouTube now for a reminder.

44. TassieTim @42 – as with Brummie yesterday, I can forgive one or two nonsensical surfaces when the puzzle as a whole is so satisfying to solve. You’re right on 3d though. Very strange. 9ac and 11ac conjure up odd mental images too.

45. Just to agree with what’s been said before, particularly the not so common words AESTIVAL, ESURIENT and NACREOUS and ‘Spooner’s’ as an unexpected partial anagram.

    Variations on the same answer turning up twice in the same day in different puzzles, but one unusual synonym for a common word appears here as an answer and elsewhere today as a def. From the blog discussions, seems I’m not the only one who’d never heard of the word in that sense.

    Thanks to Crucible and scchua

46. Combining the cricket with the solving and this time both went very well. There were two overs to go before lunch when the long-sweated-over REPORTEDLY went in.
    I’d heard of ESURIENT but wasn’t sure what it meant so thank you Crucible for extending my vocabulary. Loved the non-Spoonerism. And spotted the theme early on too!

47. Shirl@1 no the Baltic isn’t always cold, I’ve been swimming in it and it is very popular as a holiday destination in the countries that border it. And balti isn’t particularly hot either, I agree.

    Not sure how “baltic” came to mean “cold” in common parlance, unless it is due to confusion with the WW2 arctic convoys, which are sometimes called “baltic convoys” even though they missed the Baltic Sea entirely. Perhaps something to do with the Baltic Fleet? Looking forward to any explanation our erudite community can offer!

    So apart from a VERY minor quibble with 1a, this was a fun solve at just about the right level of difficulty – some new/obscure words perhaps, but all fairly clued. Particularly enjoyed learning AESTIVAL and ESURIENT.

    Thanks Crucible and scchua.

48. TassieTim and widdersbel with 3d I wasn’t sure whether the torrential sleet had lead to death requiring the mirrors to be covered, or the barometer had been so ineffective it had to be covered???

49. [ Tassie Tim@42 you make a good point about Harvey , it is also true that many ideas in physics and mathematics were known to Islamic scholars well before re-discovery in Western Europe and little credit is given for this. It is partly Western bias but also due to simple printing. Islamic scholars had hand-written manuscripts , few copies were made and many were lost in fires, the library at Baghdad being a classic case. The emergence of Western science coincided with the printing press . Even today, the first into print with any new scientific idea has acknowledged priority. ]

50. Never let it be said that Monty Python wasn’t, at least on occasion, educational. I knew the word ESURIENT from the Cheeseshop Sketch, to wit-
    “C: Well, I was, uh, sitting in the public library on Thurmon Street just now, skimming through ‘Rogue Herrys’ by Hugh Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peckish.

    O: Peckish, sir?

    C: Esuriant.

    O: Eh?

    C: ‘Ee I were all ‘ungry-like!”

51. [Gervase@21, you’ve reminded me of my favourite Bach oratorio, “Bring den Hungrichen dein Brot”]

52. Lots of justified praise for Crucible today. This was enjoyable, especially with an above average number of clever misdirections. The Baltic/balti criticisms seem fair but didn’t make the clue too difficult to solve. If I can be appropriately pedantic, a Chartered Accountant is an ACA, or possibly an FCA but not a CA! ( I should know.) Possibly the Scottish institute uses CA but that would require a pretty specific bit of GK!
    Thanks to scchua, as well.

53. … or cantata, been a while, must dig it out…

54. Hello DeepThought @47. I’m one of the few non-erudite members of this erudite community, but quoting the OED can make anyone sound clever. In the OED, the 2017 Draft addition entry for this sense of BALTIC is: British colloquial (originally and chiefly Scottish)…: “bitterly cold, freezing” and the first quotation comes from as recently as 1995, from the Sunday Mail</em (Glasgow). Maybe AlanC @5 can let the OED know of an earlier quote from NI.

55. Jerry G @52; both Chambers and the ODE give: 4.Chartered Accountant (Scotland and Canada)

56. JerryG @52 – yes, the designation for ICAS members is CA. The members of all six UK accounting institutes are now individually chartered, rather than just their institute being so, so there are also CPFAs, ACCAs and CGMAs busy counting beans as chartered accountants. So CA is okay as an example of a chartered accoutant, in the same way that you could use “accounting standard” as an indicator for “IFRS 9”.

57. New to me was BALTIC = cold; I thought of plunking in unparsed ARCTIC, but that didn’t match the rest of the clue at all. Funny enough, balti is not seen in Indian or Pakistani restaurants over here; the fact that the dish originated in Birmingham (thanks for that tidbit) wound explain that.

    I know ESURIENT only from these puzzles. AESTIVAL, on the other hand, I did know: hibernal is, just barely, in my working vocabulary, along with the much more common vernal and autumnal; this once gave me cause to wonder what their summery partner was, so I plunked “vernal autumnal hibernal” into the Google and learned.
    [I’ve never seen the word actually used, although apparently aestivating is the summer counterpart to hibernating, known therefore to biologists. It is unclear, incidentally, why the Romans decided to call Ireland Hibernia, the Land of Winter, despite them surely knowing of colder places.]

58. The Baltic covers a wide geographical area north to south. But even in the north it’s not cold in the summer. Rather sunny, in fact.

59. Some have said here that a crossword doesn’t have to be tough to be enjoyable. This is a case in point, I’d say.

    I’m certainly familiar with BALTIC meaning bitterly cold. I think it might have less to do with the temperature of the Baltic Sea itself than with the fact that, in Britain and Ireland, a wind from the Baltic brings colder weather than the prevailing south-westerlies.

    “There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”
    “I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”
    “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast.” [His Last Bow, AC Doyle]

60. Generally I enjoy Crucible/Redshank but I’m going to join TassieTim @42 in being a skunk at this garden party. Strange words like NACREOUS, AESTIVAL, and ESURIENT leave me feeling “BALTIC, ” another far-fetched answer. I also don’t enjoy overly contrived parsings like CHOPPY. Clues I enjoyed like GOAL AREA and ALTER EGO were too scarce. After stimulating crosswords from Boatman and Brummie I guess I was a bit let down. Thanks scchua for the always excellent blog.

61. I have to come in to praise the alternative “Spooner”… Lord Jim@14 there was a discussion only a couple months ago!

    DNF because of BALTIC (didn’t know “Baltic” as cold *or* the dish) and ALTER EGO (…really should’ve figured out “EGO,” I thought I went through every letter that could go between E and O and tried ROGER ENO for some reason). Also thrown by the spaelling of AESTIVAL.

    Thanks crucible and scchua!

62. Very much enjoyed this weather report, thanks Crucible and scchua!
    I struggled with INGESTION (trying to find number ten rather than no.1!) and fell headlong into the Spooner trap, but generally had a stormy blast.

63. JerryG @52 – I know nothing about accountancy, but the company I work for produces the ICAS members’ magazine, which (as I guess you might already know) is called CA. And I never imagined this knowledge would come in useful for a crossword!

64. Delightful. I started with WEATHER FORECAST, and everything sort of branched out from that central stem.

    By now, everything I experienced or noticed has been mentioned, but I will just repeat that the fake spoonerism was great.

    Thanks Crucible and scchua.

65. Ta for the other seasonal adjectives, mrpenny @57, reminded me of the aria in praise of ‘the older woman’ in Trial by Jury, which we put on at school:
    O’er the season vernal time may case a shade
    Sunshine if eternal makes the roses fade
    Time may do his duty, let the thief alone
    Winter hath a beauty that is all her own.

66. [TassieTim and Roz, I’m no scholar in the area, but I believe the survival of some of the classical Greek writings, too … philosophers etc … is owed to the scholars of Islam. Otoh, while they might have known about the circulation of the blood, did they actually link it to the beating of the heart as Harvey did?]

67. [ grant @ 66 exactly right, many of the classic Greek mathematical texts were “rediscovered” through Italian monks translating Arabic copies of Greek originals. In many ways it led to the scientific revival in Western Europe.]

68. Thanks matt w @61, I think I missed that one. The one I was thinking of was on the blog for Screw 27,410 (January 2018), last few comments. (I wonder if Sil @79 ever found the puzzle he mentioned?)

    A few weeks later in 27,450, Brummie had a fake Spoonerism at 12, 19.

69. Petert @9 : you would lose: my copy of Chambers does not include that sense. The wordplay still works, and the sea still freezes (for now).

70. Sorry, my first link doesn’t seem to work. Trying again.

71. Yes, Lord Jim (and others) Radler’s Spooner puzzle can still be found in Guest Puzzles (page 4) on the Alberich Crosswords website.
    It’s Puzzle 4 by Radler.

    Unlike many I wasn’t that carried away by the indirect anagram clue at 6dn.
    To be clear, I am not against it as long as it gives me unambiguously the building stones for the anagram.
    I am fine with CA (perhaps even AC) but it’s ‘king’ = R which makes it dubious to me because ‘king’ can just as easily be K.

    But a lovely crossword, it all felt a bit like Crucible with his Radian hat on.

72. Very enjoyable, despite a few clumsy surfaces – back of Cornwall? cloak glass? Btw, there is evidence that the circulation of the blood (and perhaps the function of the heart) was known about much earlier in China, around the second century bce. See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/35006734

73. The non-spoonerism was definitely the highlight of this puzzle for me. The only problem, as far as I’m concerned, with spoonerism clues is that the presence of the late reverend’s name generally gives away the nature of the clue. As a result, using Spooner in a misleading way like this is a great public service.

    I also particularly liked the well-concealed definition in 15dn (INGESTION).

74. 2a I’ve heard alcoholics say again and again that nobody’s a former alcoholic, they’re only a “recovering” alcoholic. I think the parsing of GOAL AREA is “about/RE” is to invade “AA.”

    Took me a long time to see that 10a CHOPPY had nothing to do with horses.

    25a ESURIENT always makes me hear “Esurientes implevit bonis” from the Bach Magnificat, which is where I first encountered the word in my college chorus’s performance of the work. Come to think of it, it may also have been my last encounter with it except in crosswords, it’s not a word people use in ordinary conversation. “Feeling a bit esurient, are we?”

    I also tried “yell” for 2d. I knew it was an island off Scotland somewhere — and it sort
    of means “hail.”

    I love the pearly king and I’m dascinated by the tradition it evokes. Some non-UK readers may not yet have come across references to the “pearly kings and queens” tradiiont of London. Here’s wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearly_Kings_and_Queens
    and here’s some more history and lore: https://www.pearlies.org.uk/the-original-pearlies-history.

    My mother had a mental collection of words for foods named for the vessel they’re cooked in, such as our New England word “chowder” from “chaudiere,” brought here by Breton fishermen. She’d have enjoyed adding “balti.”

    The Spooner caper completely eluded me, as did the theme.

    Thanks as ever to Crucible and scchua.

75. Thank you Crucible and Scchua! Great puzzle, and a rare one that I finished and more or less fully parsed. BALTIC was my LOI; I wasn’t sure it could mean cold, but having come up with nothing else sensible to fit the crossers, I inferred the existence of a dish called balti, and google confirmed. Balti may be less common here in the states, or I may just be missing out 🙂
    The theme sailed over my head, which I’d say is further evidence of a great puzzle—nothing felt so stretched or twisted to meet the theme that it seemed like there must be one.

    Only quibbles were that I share CanberraGirl and Eileen’s feelings about ALTER EGO, and re TISSUE I never love the clue of just girl or boy for a name, but that’s mostly aesthetic preference:)

    Particular favorites were CHOPPY, IN VAIN, and AESTIVAL, among many good’uns.

76. matt w @61:

    “Also thrown by the spaelling of AESTIVAL.”

    It comes straight from the Latin “aestas” “summer”. I don’t much like the “estival” spelling, which doesn’t make me think of summer at all.

    This took me a long time, and I had a deal of trouble parsing some of the solutions (a few of which seemed rather contrived) but there were some very clever and tricky clues, so overall a good puzzle.

77. Thanks Crucible and scchua
    I was looking forward to explaining that I found that YELL was in Shetland rather than Orkney, but I see that others got there before me. After that was corrected, it went fairly quickly, and even I saw the theme.

78. [Valentine @74
    ‘Esurient’ in ordinary conversation? As you say, no. It is said by John Cleese once in Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch (when asked if he is feeling peckish), and for the great many people who have seen that sketch that may be the only occasion that they have heard the word used!]

79. Alan B I do remember seeing the sketch, but clearly not well enough. I’ll have to follow the link and watch it again. For me the word is immortianlized in the Bach setting for alto and orchestra also referred to above.

80. Thank you Sil @71, that looks really interesting.

81. Happy with progress today, too many unknown words stumped me.
    Thanks for the hints.

82. Or maybe Bach’s setting of the Magnificat: “Esurientes implevit bonis” – “He hath filled the hungry with good things”

83. Valentine@74: Apologies for the unintended duplication – skimmed through the blog too quickly!

84. I was going to write that this was a crossword set at just the right level, not too easy , not too difficult, until I had just one answer left to fill in. I saw REPORTEDLY fitted but could not parse it. I finally entered it, thinking surely it’s not “ported” inside the reliable “bank” synonym, but I came here to read scchua’s explanations and found it was that. What a shame! Otherwise an enjoyable brain work-out, so thanks, Crucible.

85. Needed some online help for the GK.

    Liked: AESTIVAL, WIND FARM, EL NINO, RAIN, ALTER EGO, RESPONSE, CHOPPY.

    New: Dr ALEX (UK TV celebrity) for 18ac – I have heard of Love Island but I would never watch it as I am not into reality TV shows; COPE = priest’s cloak; HOY, Cornwall; PORTeD = transfer (software) from one system or machine to another for 8d (loi).

    Thanks, both.

86. BALTIC brought me to a standstill immediately, because I recognised it: it was the first across clue in one of the i crosswords earlier this week, in itself a re-run of Independent 9,575 by Eccles. He used ‘Indian dish’ rather than ‘hot dish’, which helped.

87. I suggested on the Guardian blog that ALTER EGO needed a “?” and was told no by one of the regulars, so interesting to see Eileen, Canberra Girl and Loren Ipsum thinking the same way. I appreciate ? usually signifies a punning “whole-thing” clue rather than constructed wordplay, but it also makes sense where the “definition”, as here, is a joke rather than a synonym.

88. michelle @85 – I’m enjoying your alternative parsing of 18ac, not least because it fits with how I interpreted the clue, but scchua is correct to suggest that Crucible was most likely thinking of Galen.

89. Unfortunately the grid was corrupted online by the time I came to look at this one. I found a pdf but after seeing a few of the answers I was lord to create my own grid with paper and pencil.
    On to the next one…. soon.

90. lord?….loth

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