Guardian 28,808 / Brendan

83 comments on “Guardian 28,808 / Brendan”

1. Failed 13ac & 20d.

   New: scissors = a tactical move in rugby or a wrestling hold.

   I only noticed the theme after completing the puzzle (rock, scissors, paper) but missed seeing the blunts, covers, cuts bits.

   Thanks, both.

2. I see 10a as IT hidden in (SERVANT I)*

3. Enjoyed this and found it easier than yesterday. Did the top half quickly but slowed down for the bottom half. Needed help parsing a few.

   Also not heard of scissors as a tactical move and agree with Auriga @2 re 10a

   Liked COVERS, COUPLET, HANDS OUT, BLUNTS, HOLLYHOCK

   Thanks Brendan and Eileen

4. Parsed 10a as Auriga @2. My earworm was ROCK LOBSTER(man) by the B52s.

5. Auriga @2 – Oops! I omitted the wordplay – will amend now.

6. Long time reader, first time poster. Love you all. I’m so happy to have completed a crossword AND seen the theme and all its component parts. I rarely spot themes, and then I come here and see it explained; I feel I have missed out on some joy. Today, no posts to read?
   I am sure you have just mistakenly omitted to say TRANSITIVE is an anagram of SERVANTS with IT inserted.
   I didn’t parse LASSIE or FIST correctly, and was happy to understand these fully.
   We used to have STONE sharpens SCISSORS in our family but BLUNTS works better.

7. 10a is also a theme word, or rather an anti-theme one. In a transitive relationship, e.g. ‘is larger than’, A relates to B and B relates to C means that A relates to C in the same way, but in rock-paper-scissors, rock beats paper and paper beats scissors, but scissors beats rock, not vice versa.

8. maarvarq – I was just saying to someone the other day that I’m always pleased to discover Brendan’s icing on the cake – only to find I’ve missed the cherry on top!
   Thanks for that.

9. Thanks Eileen. I thought PEACE SIGN referred to the two-fingered V-sign, as first used by hippies etc as a protest against the Vietnam war (“peace, man!”), rather than the CND sy,bol.

10. Well, that was fun – I spotted all the themers except COVERS (when we play the game, PAPER “wraps up” SCISSORS). Also you prepare your hand in SECRET behind your back before the HANDS OUT moment…

    Anyway, favourite today was PASSAGE OF TIME.

11. Oops – PAPER wraps up ROCK, of course.

12. Yesterday I was finding a definition and parsing afterwards. Today was the opposite. For many clues (FIST, SCISSORS, LOBSTERMAN, COUPLET for example) I constructed a solution and then the penny dropped for the definition. I think this makes it a more enjoyable solving experience. A delightful puzzle.

13. A steady start was sped up significantly by noticing the word ‘theme’ in the second comment under puzzle on the G site. I then spotted it and rattled through the theme-y ones but ultimately DNF as the south-west corner defeated me and I had to reveal a few. Was briefly convinced that ‘white not red flower’ indicated YORKSHIRE, which fit a couple of crossers, but only a couple.

    A few I got but couldn’t parse until reading this blog eg NOT AS SUCH I got through def and crossers but TASS is new to me (spent a while trying to crowbar in PA). I thought not indicating foreign for LE MONDE was borderline unfair (and I live in France…). Loved PEACE SIGN.

    Enjoyable puzzle! Thanks both.

14. Spotted the theme quickly, cracked the tough clues and tipped up on two easy ones.
    Put PLANES for 4a (seems dumb now) and I didnt parse FIST
    Thanks Eileen and thanks Brendan fo rubbing my nose ion it!

15. Hi Andrew @9 – as your link says, the V-sign has different meanings according to the context. This from my Wiki link in the preamble: “scissors” (a fist with the index finger and middle finger extended, forming a V). “Scissors” is identical to the two-fingered V sign (also indicating “victory” or “peace”) except that it is pointed horizontally instead of being held.

    Doctor Clear @6 – my reply to you got lost somehow. Welcome to the site – I hope we’ll hear more from you.

16. I think I may need one of you to bash me over the head with a teatray. COVERS, to me are far from uninformative, they usually indicate the title, content and what to expect in terms of genre – and that’s without any critics’ quotes. What am I missing?

    Otherwise thanks to Brendan for a most enjoyable solve, and Eileen for her blog.

17. Brendan does it again! What a lovely, fun puzzle this was – a real joy to solve. Thanks, Brendan, and thanks of course for the blog, Eileen.

    FIST was the one that revealed the theme for me – and what a brilliantly clever clue it was. Took a fair bit of head-scratching but once I twigged, I just had to laugh/groan. From there I was able to deduce the “certain game” to give me HANDS OUT and COVERS, the last two theme words to fall for me.

    Aside from FIST, I also particularly liked BLUNTS, TRANSITIVE, PEACE SIGN, MOPS UP, PASSAGE OF TIME and LE MONDE.

    Rob T @13 – I think Brendan *always* has a theme of some kind.

18. Doofs @16 – Could be a reference to not judging a book by its cover? Not sure. But if it’s not that, I’m missing whatever it is too.

19. Doofs@16 You can’t tell a book by looking at its cover.

20. Simply tore through the top half, wondering – can this be the same fiendish Brendan? – with LITTLE ROCK a place I remember stopping at in a Greyhound Bus in the late Sixties. But then my runaway train (sorry if I’m almost mixing metaphors here) ground to a shuddering halt. Realised that as it was Brendan there had to be some almost miraculously intricate theme within, but as I couldn’t spot it, I’m afraid a rather feeble anticlimax of a DNF from me this morning. Not enough persistence, too many other things on my mind at the moment. Though used to love playing ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, such a simple but clever creation as a game without accessories such as counters or dice or playing cards…

21. CI and OR, each in SS, and side by side (and then the wrestling grip), that’s pretty neat. As was the theme itself, with post-solve thanks (as per) to the g-thread. Liked the peace sign-scissors link, whichever way up or across, and again the cross ref between is in ft and paper wrapping fist qua rock. All fun, ta BnE.

22. The theme completely passed me by so I got FIST from the wordplay but couldn’t work out what the definition was.
    I also had Planes at first for BLUNTS like copmus @14 as removes edge sounded OK and blueprints was close to plans. I just couldn’t work out the extra ‘e’ so not as dumb as you make it sound copmus.I particulary like LIONISE, LETTERS (clever subtraction) and LE MONDE but favourite goes to SCISSORS for taking me back to Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks in ITV’s World of Sport in the 1970s.

23. I agree with Doofs @16 re COVERS. Not uninformative, even though the information may be misleading.

24. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

    Paper can be linked to tissue, FT, Time(s) and Le Monde; and Rock with Little to give State capital.

25. Splendid puzzle and, for once, a theme spotted early enough to make a difference and how delightfully done. Such a simple thing on which to base a puzzle. Lovely.

    Particular favourites included SCISSORS, CUT, FIST, LETTERS, PASSAGE OF TIME and COUPLET.

    I was another who was led straight from the two digits and the homophone of sine to the V-sign. So much so, that I struggled to get away from it and its ruder application. It ended up as LOI once CASH DESKS (where the definition threw me for a while) had gone in.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

26. Unusually for me, I spotted the theme very early. Most of the puzzle flew in, but the SE quadrant took me longer than all the rest put together. Brendan has to be congratulated at constructing a puzzle with all the necessary related words but without having to fill the gaps with hapax legomena.

    Favourites were PASSAGE OF TIME and the neat little FIST. I liked ‘call for better service’. LOI for me was HOLLYHOCK – I was looking for a shrub and thought the ‘flower’ was a river. ‘White’ on its own is often used to indicate ‘wine’ and vice versa (‘red’ is commoner, however). But ‘not red’, though giving a stronger hint, just served to bamboozle me. Duh!

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

27. Missed the theme completely, which left me puzzled about why FIST & HANDS OUT definitions worked. I may have been thinking too much of Cricket and Cards for HANDS OUT. So thank you Eileen for making it clear.

    If I was to quibble, I would like to have seen a reference to the game in the clue for FIST. Because you never even symbolically wrap your fist in paper. It’s either wrapping a rock in paper, or wrapping a fist in a palm.

    But just being a bit picky about a most enjoyable puzzle.

28. I loved every minute of this one! It’s all been said (except for my square brackets), so I just wanted to thank Brendan, Eileen and all contributors. [The favourites I ticked were like a carbon copy of Eileen’s, which made me smile.]

29. Exactly the same reasoning as Gervase@26 wrt HOLLYHOCK. I also reasoned as Andrew@9 did wrt PEACE SIGN, but thanks for the interesting info about the origin of the CND sign, Eileen, and for the blog in general.

    Very enjoyable (in contrast to yesterday’s Vlad). I saw the theme immediately at my second time round at 4am – there are some benefits to insomnia, apparently.

    Thanks Brendan.

30. Wasn’t Brendan’s last theme noughts and crosses? Does this count as a kind of meta theme of games then?

    Anyway, great crossword and blog. I found it much easier than the O&X one.

31. Brendan’s puzzles are invariably a pleasure to solve and this was no exception. I didn’t get the theme (never do), but the clues stood up by themselves. As David Ellison remarked, it was a lot different from yesterday’s, although was it Cervantes who said “las comparaciones son odiosas” ?

32. Brilliantly remembered Nickb @30! Should we look out for more? Will I have forgotten by then?

    Tons to enjoy here and can only agree with all the top clues mentioned already.

    Thanks to Eileen and Brendan.

33. Confession time, I just realised mine was a DNF. Just re-reading Eileen’s blog, I realise that I had FISH at 16a instead of FIST. I don’t actually recall the FIST part of the SCISSORS, PAPER, ROCK game. I thought 16a was a reference to newspapers (PAPERS at 23d) being called “FISHwrappers” – “this symbolically and literally is wrapped in 23d”. So far off track, but I thought I was thinking both literally and symbolically! I think it might have been entered after I saw LE MONDE at 18d when I thought there was going to be a sub-theme of newpapers (The Times having been hinted at in PASSAGE OF TIME at 8d too).
    Despite my epic fail, I thought this was very very clever and memorable puzzle from Brendan.

34. [Re your non-quibble at 22a , Eileen, here we now have I think it’s an unprecedented12 independents and 4 Greens in the House of Reps (=Commons). In the words of one former non-aligned MP, That should keep the bastards honest!]

35. Great spot, Nickb@30: Do come back and remind us all at the next occasion – I’m sure to have forgotten by then!

36. Thank you Brendan and Eileen! I greatly enjoyed the neatness of 25ac and for ‘he who works with pots’, although it does now have me wanting a lobster roll…

37. The last couple of weeks seem to have been a struggle crossword wise with only a handful of completions. This started well but ground to a halt at about the 70% mark. Thoroughly enjoyed it though. Thanks Brendan and Eileen for the excellent blog.

38. I spotted the theme in this excellent crossword quite early on which helped

    Thanks very much to Brendan and Eileen

39. Completely missed the theme till Eileen enlightened me. But I enjoyed the puzzle even sans theme.
    Hostile takeover/coup resonates for many of us in the US.

    Never thought of “scissors” as in wrestling, though I think I’ve heard of it.

    Since I hadn’t made the connection to the game, the clue for FIST made no sense at all. I just put it in because the wordplay worked.

    News to me that Severus was an emperor (though the wordplay worked). The only place I’ve seen the name is in the Harry Potter books.

    Never heard of CASH DESKS. We must have them in the US, but I’m not sure what we call them.

    Brendan and Eileen, ta ever so.

40. This was a fun puzzle and congrats to Brendan for doing such a good job with the theme.

    That said, I think other setters might be criticized for equating MPs with party members, or saying a LET is a call for a better service (it isn’t, it’s a call for another service). Just saying!

    For some reason, NOT AS SUCH always reminds me of the other MP, Monty Python, here, at 3:10.

41. After getting ROCK, PAPER and SCISSORS I was hoping to also find LIZARD and SPOCK – there’s a version that has five hand signs and a whole new set of rules (SPOCK bends SCISSORS, PAPER disproves SPOCK etc)

42. Thanks, Eileen.
    maarvarq @ 7: I had a mathematical reference for 10a but changed the clue because I thought many solvers would not get it, but I commented to our editor that someone on 225 would get it. I didn’t expect to see it as early as 7, though.
    There’s a non-transitive game with three dice, and for those that know what it is, the Mann-Whitney U test is also non-transitive.

43. Thanks again, Brian. Well, it wouldn’t have been me, in a month of Sundays. 😉

44. Thanks for dropping by Brendan – great puzzle as always.

    To reply to Dr WhatsOn @40, I agree that ‘person in party’ = MP is not a strict equivalence (though I was quite comfortable with it) but not, pace Eileen, because some MPs are independents, but because the vast majority of party members are not MPs!

    But regarding ‘better service’, one which avoids a LET is better in that it is permissible by the rules of tennis (even if it falls short and results in a winning return 🙂 )

45. Top half went in pretty quickly (which also meant I spotted the theme early) but I ground to a halt after that.

    LOI was HOLLYHOCK and I was going to moan about it not being a shrub, until the parsing suddenly occurred to me!

    I always thought sup =drink but I suppose that’s not true or else why do we have “supper”?

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

46. Thanks Brendan for another ingenious crossword. Despite understanding FIST as both a reference to the FT and to the ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS game I never connected all the dots because I was not looking for a theme. I had many favourites including SCISSORS, PEACE SIGN, SECRET, LASSIE, NOT AS SUCH, and LE MONDE. Because this is Brendan I could have easily chosen six other clues. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

47. Thanks Eileen (also for CND sign derivation!) and echo your high praise though I was also a PLANES man for a while and still think we have more than the edges of Blueprints in the solution.
    The game is still played by eg my son and his mates (Schere Stein Papier) to decide who goes first in some enterprise – and the wikipedia entry is very interesting, includes the extension noted by BarryR@41 (Mann Whitney also interesting if technical).
    I was very lucky in that an unusually large flowering plant sprouted near us recently and I bothered to look it up – 17a of course – but still last one in.
    NHO a Lobsterman and I wondered if it was therefore a surname but seems not – though 1 in approx 7m Brits has the surname “Lobster” apparently – your mate Rock is presumably one of them, Hovis.
    Lots of great clues and after the OXO learning curve noted by NickB I really enjoyed the “meta” level today, thanks Brendan.

48. Missed the theme as ever (so 16A was a lucky guess with the crossers in place), but thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle. Lots of ‘penny drops’ moment as Eileen said – for me they were SECRETS, NOT AS SUCH, PEACE SIGN and COVERS. Thanks to Eileen for parsing FIST, HOLLYHOCK (I don’t know my shrubs from my flowers), LASSIE, and COUPLET (my LOI). Thanks Brendan.

49. Just defeated by the SE corner.
    Much to like, the theme was excellent.
    LITTLE ROCK was nice and easy and Arkansas reminded me of the “Arkansas Chuggabug” from the “Wacky Racers”, a clear indication of my mental age.
    Thanks both, a few parsings to check.

50. A corker as usual from Brendan. Loved the theme, which sort of helped in that it sent me looking for somewhere to put SCISSORS, though the clue was very solvable anyway.
    All fun and fair. COUPLET probably my favourite for “call for better service”: topical after Wimbledon.
    Thanks to both as always.

51. Re ‘sup’, as mentioned by Ark Lark @45 – it did indeed originally mean to drink, and that meaning still survives, although not so common now.

    The barmaid hauled the beer-handle three times hurriedly. The
    monstrous glass pot was set before him. He lifted it. What a
    weight! A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter.
    Down with it! Swish–gurgle! A long, long sup of beer flowed
    gratefully down his gullet.
    (Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying – ta, wiktionary)

    But the ‘have supper’ meaning has been gaining ground for a long time. There are different versions of ‘To bed, to bed says Sleepy-Head’, but most have the lines ‘Put on the pot/pan, let’s sup before we go’ spoken by Greedy-gut or Greedy Nan, which suggests the consumption of solid food, or at least a solid/liquid mixture.

    [For those here who like etymological titbits: English ‘sup’ is cognate with German ‘saufen’. It’s a nice illustration of how the two languages get closer to each other, in form and in meaning, the further back you go in time – as you would expect, since they have a common ancestor. ‘Sup’ comes from Old English sūpan, ‘saufen’ from Old High German sūfan. Only the p → f shift separates them.

    German ‘saufen’ has also undergone a bit of a semantic shift, not in the “partaking of supper” direction, as in English, but more in the “getting thoroughly plastered” direction:
    In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus – eins, zwei, g’suffa! ]

    Thanks Brendan for another corker; I thought COUPLET was superb. And thanks to Eileen for the blog, and also for the South Pacific earworm. Trouble is, once one song gets its hooks into you, all the rest come flooding back, and pretty soon I was happily rhyming “brother” with “one particular thing that is nothing whatsoever in any way, shape, or form like any other” 🙂

52. Barry R @41 / Gazzh @47 – I was half-wondering about lizard and Spock too. For anyone who hasn’t come across “the variant”, here it is, courtesy of Sheldon (Young Sheldon/Big Bang Theory)

53. The theme was conveniently mentioned by the setter but no time to use it as quickly finished. This should have been in Monday slot I think.

54. The theme helped for once: I was thinking of SCISSORS where it went, but didn’t see a definition for it in the clue. Then I realized that I already had ROCK and PAPER, so…aha, a scissor hold in wrestling.

    Like other commenters above, I found the top half to be easy (shockingly so, given my track record with Brendan puzzles), but slowed down considerably in the teens and twenties.

    I like the irony that LITTLE ROCK is bigger than Boulder. Was wondering how obscure these cities are for UK/Oz solvers though. I guess LR is the hometown of Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (and she sings about it: “How far away, Little Rock, ARK / Princeton, NJ, how far are they / From coconut palms and banyan trees…”), plus it’s a state capital. Boulder is a major college town…but then then you don’t actually have to have heard of that one, I suppose.

55. Thanks essexboy as “saufen” is a nice addition to my vocab – while Google translate simply maps it to “drink” in English, it suggests booze, quaff and guzzle can also map back to it, so I am sure it will come in handy. come to think of it I have come across the related “saufige” at some point.

    Mrpenney I know of Little Rock thanks to Bill Clinton (or think i do), wasn’t it his fiefdom before he went national? Boulder is pretty well known for winter and mountain sports in general I think, though like you say it isn’t required for solution.

56. Mr Essexboy @51 thanks for the quote , just checked it in the book because I was sure Gordon ordered a QUART , still available in pubs then. It was a quart so it would be two and a half pounds ?? Not sure what Orwell is up to here.
    Anyway I still think of sup as drink although it is also used for eating.
    ” See all , hear all , say nowt . Eat all , SUP all, pay nowt ……. ”
    Definitely drinking here.

57. Essexboy@51 I am duly educated – just in time for supper

58. Maybe everybody knows but me, but — why haven’t we seen this week’s Prize blog?

59. Valentine@39 — Check outs

    When I saw Brendan’s name, I almost gave the puzzle a miss, as I usually don’t do well. Decided to give it a go, anyway. At about the 2/3s mark, was totally stumped — you know, when you go back over the same clues over and over and make no headway. This morning, was able to finish most of it, including some parsings that eluded me last night. An early favorite was LITTLE ROCK, and later the beautiful S-CI-S S-OR-S, and my loi – COUPLET. So thank you, Brendan, for the enjoyable challenge.

    And thank you, Eileen, for parsing the ones I couldn’t or parsing them better. (HOLLYHOCKS (a reveal) totally defeated me.)

60. as for: book covers: Maybe we need a new phrase — don’t judge a wine by its label?

61. Valentine, it’s just not labelled “Prize”.
    

62. https://www.fifteensquared.net/2022/07/09/guardian-28799-paul/

63. essexboy — where do supper and soup come into all this philology?

64. [As Gazzh @57 says, I also know of Boulder because of skiing, but I think my first memory of Little Rock is the Little Rock Nine in1957. I was only 11 at the time so my memory is a little vague]

65. Enjoyable, but I failed to see the theme, so FIST and HANDS OUT went in only partially parsed. I also invented a new verb BLANDS (BL and S) for 4a, thinking it might mean to make bland or remove the edge. So no banana for me. I would have thought there ought to be a verb meaning to make bland, but I can’t find anything.
    Thanks for the puzzle and blog, B & E.

66. [Roz @56 – indeed. For anyone puzzled by the quote @51, in which he appears to think a pint is a ‘monstrous glass’, the passage immediately before is:
    ‘A quart of bitter, please!’
    ‘No quart pots here!’ cried the harassed barmaid, measuring pegs of whisky with one eye on the clock.
    ‘Quart pots on the top shelf, Effie!’ shouted the landlord over his shoulder, from the other side of the bar.

    The quart pot is similar to the German Maßkrug, containing, naturally enough, a ‘Maß’ (these days equal to 1 litre) – ‘ubiquitous in Bavarian beer gardens and beer halls, and a staple of the Oktoberfest’ ]

    [Valentine @63 – interesting question! Both supper and soup came into medieval English from Old French, derived from Late Latin suppa (sopped bread). But the odd thing is that Latin speakers seem to have borrowed it from Proto-Germanic *supo, (* = reconstructed word), which found its way independently into English as ‘sop’.

    The sop/soup/supper lines are distinct from the sup/saufen line, but there appears to be speculation that both may be derived from a PIE (Proto-Indo-European) root meaning ‘to pour’.]

67. [Mr Penney @54: you may click on Eileen’s helpful instant earworm link in her blog for 1A. By contrast, my earworm turned out not to be from Rodgers & Hammerstein but from Howard Hawks: in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the buxom Jane Russell & Marilyn Monroe are self-evidently not Two Little Girls From Little Rock and they clearly preferred large rocks to little ones]

68. The two different senses of “sup” would seem to have a different route into English from the same root, with the have supper sense coming via French souper.

69. Sorry comments crossed. Is only one sense TRANSITIVE, though?

70. Late rejoining the party – I’ve been entertaining my granddaughter and boyfriend.

    Hi essexboy @51 – I’ve never had any problem with sup = eat or drink, so thanks for that …

    … and for your final paragraph. I’ve had all the tunes buzzing through my head all day: one of my favourite musicals, which I saw on its release while at university – we had to book weeks in advance – and bought the LP, which I and my flatmate listened to over and over (and I still have). Wonderful lyrics – I particularly treasure the COUPLET that you mention.

    mr penney @54 – did you miss the earworm link that I gave in the blog? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz6pV4uRSc8
    I can never hear LITTLE ROCK without adding Mitzi Gaynor’s ‘ARK’ – one state capital I’d never be caught out on in a quiz. [It’s remarkable how we Brits are expected to know them all. 😉 ]

71. Andrew @67 – I spent so long musing on my comment that I missed yours – my apologies.

72. Similar, but a bit bigger, eb@66, if a quart = 2 (Imperial) pints, I.e., ~ 2×568ml

73. A fun solve: liked the theme although 16a’s clue was a bit of a giveaway!

    I think 1a/9a probably needed more GK than most people have (well, more than I have, at any rate). And 24a was a new word to me – though it makes sense. I suppose Mr Peggotty in David Copperfield may be described as such.

    Someone mentioned Monty Python a bit higher up. Well, as soon as I saw what the theme was, I couldn’t help remembering that other hilarious Monty Python sketch, Ypres 1914. The ‘fisties’ come at around 3:20. “They’re very good scissors!” Enjoy!

74. Re PEACE SIGN – I thought it was the version of V-sign used by Churchill, with the palm facing away from the signer. (Although on one or two occasions he got it wrong!). This would be consistent with the ‘scissors’ gesture in the game.

    Or it may be Mr Spock’s gesture with four fingers in the shape of a V (which is derived from the dukhanen in Jewish worship).

    Whichever, I think the allusion to CND is a red herring here.

75. EB@51 + 66. Maybe – A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter – was a saying in the 30s or perhaps they learnt it at school ?? and he is just showing that Gordon’s mind is rambling.
    In 1984 , Winston talks to the old man in the pub who complains that half a litre is too small and a litre is too large.

76. I was another with PLANES, which I justified by thinking of taking the edge off a plank of wood with a plane, plus an E from the edges of ‘edge’!

    Then I had BOARDS at 20d, thinking that a ‘report’ produced by a board of enquiry could be referred to (by metonymy) as “the board says”. Hmm.

    This left me with a possible NURSERYMAN at 24a, though the obvious FLAVOUR ruled this out. So a resounding dnf for me, but at least I got the theme – or most of it.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

77. [Roz @75 – perceptive as ever! – according to wiki there were two sayings. The US version was “A pint’s a pound, the world around”, but the imperial pint was bigger, hence in Empire/Commonwealth countries, “A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter”. This was not accidental: the new imperial gallon was defined by Parliament in 1824 as ten pounds of distilled water at 62°F. The US gallon (and therefore pint) was based on an older measure.

    I wonder if anyone complained at the time that ‘water’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘quarter’ in non-rhotic accents? But then ‘rhotic’ hadn’t been invented yet 😉 ]

    [Laccaria @74 – I don’t think Eileen meant to imply that the CND sign was the reference intended in the clue. It was just an interesting extra – like the South Pacific link.]

78. [Oops! non-rhotic should be rhotic, obvs]

79. Thanks EB @77 can it be rhotic before it has been invented ? I did not know your two sayings apart from the Orwell usage. I did know the gallon was 10 pounds of water .
    For my sins I like to read old , original scientific papers ( in translation when necessary ). I get to see the full ridiculous range of Imperial science units.

80. What a brilliant puzzle.

    I ground to a halt on the SW so a DNF for me, unfortunately, but no shame in falling to something so well crafted.

81. Embarrassed I did not spot the theme, but that explains why I kept trying to wrap my FISH in paper, thinking there must have been some kind of metaphorical fish wrapped in paper in the bible! Also didn’t get why book covers would be uninformative, but was being too literal. As an English teacher, took TRANSITIVE in its grammatical sense, and PASSAGE OF TIME raised a wry smile as I always find myself exaggeratedly doing this in class when teaching tenses!

82. Don’t know why I started doing this, as I normally only do the Guardian Prize (which this should have been, imo). I did all but four in the bottom right and I had become aware that rock, paper, scissors was being referred to without seeing the full theme, and solved PASSAGE OF TIME without noticing its extra (genius) significance. Then I forgot all about it till about an hour ago, when I found it lurking, unfinished, in a browser tab. Tried to finish it but still couldn’t get those four: 17 & 22ac, 18 & 19dn. Came here and had the theme revealed in its glory and, happily, seeing the answer to 17, HOLLYHOCK (‘not red’ really threw me, even though it might be thought helpful), was able to go back and finish off. Hooray!

    Thank you, Eileen for showing me Brendan’s glory which had been under my nose.

83. Well done, Tony! 🙂

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