Guardian 29,032 / Brendan

109 comments on “Guardian 29,032 / Brendan”

1. My first time here…. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

   Eileen, I think you need down not up in 23a!

   I parsed them all too except 18d.

2. I took 14ac as a triple definition

   Removing
   securing, i.e. clip something on to secure it
   piece of paper

3. You’re right, Crispy @2 – I’ll amend the blog.

4. And, of course, you’re right, too Ian Bradbury @1 – careless transference.

5. A straightforward and interesting puzzle, missed the theme though, as usual

6. When you see Brendan’s name you just know that there’s going to be something interesting going on and this was no exception. All very enjoyable and satisfying.

   Eileen, I’m not sure that ALL-OUT is the opposite of “nothing in” as you suggest – if all is out, there’s nothing in. I saw it as a triple definition: Nothing in / striking description / that’s solid.

   (ANTONYM always reminds me of the classic clue “Friend of Caesar, J? The opposite (7)”.)

   Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

7. What a delight. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

8. Thanks Brendan and Eileen

   In 19, I’m not sure whether ‘16’ refers to the clue or simply someone of age 16. Both seem to work.

9. Lord Jim @6 – that clue is in my little book of classics.

   Yes, you’re right, of course: all out is the same as nothing in – it’s the sort of thing Paul does.

10. Simon S @8 – I take your point but a minor could be any age up to 16. As you say, either seems to work.

11. A classic from Brendan. Quite a few words having meanings which are opposite. No wonder people for whom English is not a first language find it so difficult.

12. Tough puzzle. LHS was easier for me. I did not see the theme.

    I did not parse 9ac, 17ac (guessed it was the answer), 1d, 13d.

    Thanks, both.

13. I kept waiting for “cleave” to appear – not that I’m grumbling. That was an astounding piece of work, Brendan. Oddly enough I took ages to understand what was abridged in 16d as, for me, “earlies” are first potatoes (I just got them in the ground as it happens) – therefore first crop – and for a while was blind to “earliest”. I love Fridays. Heart-lifting stuff. Thanks for the commentary, Eileen.

14. Very clever and most enjoyable. There are others as well: HEAT/COLD + COOL; HEAVEN/Hell. I was given pause on FLAMEPROOF, GIVEN (in)flammable in the clue, but the parsing convinced me it must be. Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

15. BTW; a student from overseas asked me the other day what the difference was between “getting on with someone” and “getting off with someone.” Yes, TimC@11 – spot on.

16. Minor typo in 18d. “e” shouldn’t be in square brackets.

17. Nice one. Nor Brendan at his most difficult, but some entertaining clues here. I agree about the triple defs for ALL-OUT and CLIPPING. 17ac had to be ANTONYM, but I have to admit it took me a while to work out the logic of the clue. Low blood sugar?

    Eileen: you have overdone the pruning for 18dn. You just need to cleave the final letter from EARLIES(t) and the remainder cleaves to Y(ear) 🙂

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

18. I didn’t realise there were so many contranyms in the English language.

    I kept trying to justify “gn” as an abbreviation for the old amount 21 shillings equals 1 guinea, before (d’oh), the top level Internet domain for Guinea turned up in my head. I did see the theme though.

    With the international break over and football getting back to normal SCREENing this weekend, very much liked the “extra time In first half” partial construct.

    Thank you Brendan and Eileen.

19. GN is also the abbreviation for the old sum of money – guinea (or twenty-one shillings) so named, of course, after the area of Africa from the gold was sourced to mint the coins

20. Not to mention the pronunciation TerriBlislow @15, cough, bough, rough, dough, lough……

21. Thanks, Hovis @16 and Gervase @17 – I think I should go back to bed!

22. “from where the gold” !
    And Flea @18 – you were quite right in your first attempts.

23. Tim C @20 – the one that I loved including for my students was ‘hiccough’.

24. That’s a brilliant puzzle, but deeply frustrating in that for the life of me I couldn’t see HEAT. Far from the most complex clue in the crossword, but for some reason my synapses remained frozen.

    I especially admired DYNAMO and MINORCA.

25. Lucky you Eileen for having Brendan to blog today. I concur regarding FLAMEPROOF, flammable or inflammable. Warning signs on children’s clothing etc have had to be amended because of this.

    In research today, google just happened to give Oval Office as an example of a metonym.
    Don’t agree that the extra T in EGO(T)ISTICAL would make much difference, except in common usage.
    For MONARCHY, did anyone else try a combination of INST for month and Y and something else for INSANITY, a kind of state which I’m familiar with?
    Liked SANCTION, YEARLIES and HEAVEN amongst others.

    What we can’t see here, and an added dimension to Brendan’s work, was the positioning on the grid of some of these synonyms and antonyms. Clever.

26. Another flawlessly constructed puzzle from Brendan. I thoroghly enjoyed it.
    My thanks to him and to Eileen.

27. A few years ago, we could have described this as wicked. I held myself up by putting in DOSSER for DYNAMO (doer around two souths, meaning the opposite of an active person) and it seemed to fit in with the theme too.

28. Very enjoyable and I spotted the theme early on, but the clue for SYNONYM isn’t quite right. An anagram of MYSON around NY and YN would produce too many letters.

29. Eileen and TimC, ‘hiccough’ was one of my favourites too. essexboy has commented on that group before. Familiar to some might be the linguist’s /language teacher’s joke … how do you spell ‘fish’? Answer GHOTI. ‘gh’ from cough, ‘o’ from women and ‘ti’ from nation.
    As for contranyms, I don’t know if other languages have those. English is a terrible accidental ‘choice’ for a lingua franca, semantically, phonologically and orthographically. Love Brendan’s sense of fun with language.

30. Exactly Eileen @23 I can still remember as a student in London on the tube listening to a couple of tourists who were talking about going to Lie-sester square.

31. Eileen I think 15 is anag of my son around either YN or NY.

32. poc@28. Surely the point is that one can enter either NY or YN, not both…

33. Ah, wrote the post, phone rang, so crossed with poc @28.

34. poc@28: The point is that the clue works as an anagram of “my son” either around NY or around YN – so either way. But I failed to parse MONARCHY because my brain insisted that month=MON and then couldn’t sort out the rest.

    Good fun, this. ALL-OUT also works both ways: each component is an opposite: all/nothing, out/in; but the whole thing is a synonym.

    I also took GN in MALIGN to be the currency abbreviation.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

35. Sorry for duplication, took too long typing.

36. Another brilliant challenge from my favourite setter, although I missed the theme. I had Laying instead of FACING DOWN, as in laying down the law with determination but realised I had made the apparently common mistake of equating laying down with lying down. I thought DYNAMO was COOL.

    Ta Brendan & Eileen for the excellent blog.

37. Another treat from Brendan

    Many thanks to him and lucky Eileen

38. paddymelon @29 – my English teacher told us that it was George Bernard Shaw who came up with ‘ghoti’ but I’ve just found this https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=81, with an interesting extract from an 1855 letter.

    Tim C @ 30 – I had a similar experience in America, years ago, explaining the pronunciation of my home town. 😉

39. pdm @29, yes that fish ghoti joke is a reel larf.

40. poc@28 SYNO NY M ( MY SON )* combo NY -> forward direction.
    S YN ONYM ( MY SON )* combo [ this time ] YN -> backward direction.

    Either way, another Brendan “doubler”.

41. Phone rang for me also. Crossed with many others !

42. Re 15ac: I have amended the blog to include ‘or’, which, I hope, makes it clearer.

43. A fair smattering of smiles today. My head started to spin when I tried to parse FLAMEPROOF. For 11a I tried very hard to find a three-letter English river starting with “Du” until I realised that “in” was part of the required five-letter river.

    I thought 23a was “laying down” and was working up the courage to admonish Brendan for using “laying” rather than “lying” but I’m relieved to find that I got worked up for nothing! (This is a bugbear of mine. A recent media article described people laying in hospital beds, and I emailed the journalist to ask how often the nurses collected the eggs. The error was fixed within minutes.)

44. AlanC @36: Lay (transitive) v lie (intransitive) is like set/sit – although often confused, the verbs remain distinct in modern English. The contranym ‘cleave’ is a merging of two Old English verbs: cleofan (to split) and clifian (to adhere). They remain distinct in German: klieben and kleben. But why are sticks cleft but hooves cloven?

    TimC et al: ‘hiccough’ is a later spelling based on folk etymology. In fact the word was unrelated to ‘cough’ and was originally ‘hiccup’ – which is again considered the correct spelling.

45. GDU @43: re my comment @36, I feel suitably chastised 🙂

46. Wonderful link, Eileen. The spelling of scissors gave me a real chuckle.

47. [Thank you Eileen for your link@38. Fascinating.
    gif@39. LOL. ]

48. Thanks Eileen, I had the same parsing failure as Gladys@34 on 1d, also spent a while thinking 3d must end in “LS” (not realising that Guinea had its own abbreviation), and the same initial misapprehension as Petert@27 re 22d and agree it is a fine alternative solution! But eventually it all came together and I agree entirely with your overall assessment, so thanks Brendan.

49. I seem to be swimming against the tide here but I just didn’t like this at all. Apart from EGOISTICAL. I thought HEAVEN was woeful

    Each to their own I guess

    Cheers B&E

50. Thanks both.

    Soooo good. I needed help with parsing INDUCEMENT and ALL-OUT for the same reason – I took the BAIT of ‘in’ (so left looking for a river from DU?} and ‘nothing’ (=’o’ so left staring at ALLUT). And I almost fell for ‘month’=MON like gladys@34.

    We are indeed lucky to have such an array of expert and entertaining setters. (And bloggers for that matter.)

51. TimC@30: wait until a French visitor asks you if the underground train goes to Awmbawmmaw, and see if you can direct them to Embankment. A lovely puzzle.

52. AlanC @ 45, I hadn’t read your earlier comment when I entered mine. Good to know I was not alone!

53. I had “laying down” at 23a as in “laying down” the law , being “with determination” and also being prone. Thoughts?
    A very good puzzle.

54. GSM @53 – please see comments 36 and 43.

55. Very clever, highly enjoyable, and mostly a romp.

    Alphalpha@50: I fell for all the same indirections!

56. DINOSAURI is not a plural of DINOSAUR. Perhaps it is a plural of DINOSAURUS, which oddly enough is not a dinosaur but a therapsid; but that is surely not what was meant — there are many extinct creatures that end in -AURUS, and some of them (e.g. brontosaurus, ichthyosaurus) can be found in dictionaries with plural -AURI.

57. Brendan’s usual impressive grid-filling.

    I liked the (well) hiddens VERDICT and DYNAMO, and the misleading ‘extra time’ in EGOISTICAL.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

58. Re: place name pronunciations: here in the US, we have many towns named after places in the UK, some of which retain the original spelling and some of which don’t. Massachsetts has Leominster and Worcester, while in New Hampshire there’s Lempster and in Ohio there’s Wooster.

59. Re the cool/hot thing in 24d, Thin Lizzy of course used it in “The Boys Are Back In Town”:
    Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot

    Eileen @9: does your little book include a note of who originated the “Caesar, J” clue? Araucaria used it in 2012 (25,645) but PeterO in the blog referred to it then as “a real chestnut”.

    [By the way I’ve just put a query on General Discussion about the Chambers Crossword Manual. Any replies appreciated.]

60. Thanks, TonyG – I’m ashamed: I know better than that. Dinosaur(us) was just the first to spring to mind and I didn’t check it. (This has certainly not been one of my better days.)

61. Roof and ceiling – are they identical, similar or possibly OPPOSITE sides of the SAME structure? Maybe I’m overthinking this.

    Maybe one day we’ll see fast and loose in a puzzle like this.

62. Good workout today and (somewhat embarrassingly) I only realised there was a theme when I came on here. Struggled to parse ANTONYM, so thanks to Eileen for clarifying that one, and also for teaching me a new word – autantonym.

63. When you are LYING DOWN you’re usually supine, so ‘prone’ describes the relevant position exactly.

64. I got the theme! A fine grid-fill and a fine puzzle. Thanks Brendan & Eileen.

65. Hi Lord Jim @59 – sorry for the delay: I’ve been having a thorough trawl through the archives, back to the time when we didn’t give the clues in the blog, so it took rather longer.
    In my head, it was an Araucaria clue – and so it turned out to be – but not the one in 25.645. It’s 24,717 (June 2009) ‘9dn: Oppo of Caesar J., or the opposite’. I see that, in PeterO’s blog, I commented, ‘8dn may be a chestnut but it’s one of those that should be brought out from time to time, for the benefit of those who haven’t seen them before.’ I’ve said this on a number of occasions about certain clues and I stand by it!

66. As opposed to Picaroon’s puzzle a couple of days ago, I found myself gradually solving this in an anticlockwise fashion. Didn’t find this quite as taxing for a Brendan workout. Last two in were ANTONYM and YEARLIES. A bit late to the party and haven’t read the contributions above yet, but I expect someone might have already mentioned without spoiling things for latecomers that there’s an identical answer in both today’s Quiptic and Cryptic…

67. Iroquois @58: The Massachusetts towns of Worcester and Gloucester are pronounced like their English counterparts, with two syllables, but Leominster, MA is (I think) pronounced with three, unlike the English ‘lemster’.

68. Thanks Eileen @65.

69. Brilliant!

70. An excellent and original puzzle that cheered me up no end. After SYNONYM, ANTONYM and DEFEAT, it was obvious I was to expect more of this interesting theme. As Eileen said, this one rounded off an impressive sequence this week.

    I too remembered the ANTONYM clue from long ago. I rather liked this latest one too!

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

71. Brendan triumphs again.

    Good to know I am not the only one resisting the misuse of “lay.” A losing battle though, I suspect. It’s virtually standard in American English, which means it will be here too in due course.

72. TonyG@56 & Eileen@60
    wiktionary has:
    ‘dinosaurus – Noun – (plural dinosauri or dinosauruses) – Alternative form of dinosaur’
    also:
    ‘Dinosaurus – Proper noun
    1 (archaic) – A taxonomic genus within the order Dinosauria – the typical genus of the order (now within class Archosauria), now Brithopus in Dinocephalia.
    2 Gresslyosaurus, within the family Teratosauridae.’

73. Thank you, FrankieG!

74. David Sullivan and GDU: When a Nobel Laureate in Literature writes ‘Lay Lady Lay’, you know the battle is going to be lost. On reason for the confusion is that the past tense of ‘lie’ is – ‘lay’. Perhaps we will end up with an all-purpose verb: lay, lay, layed 🙁

75. Great fun today – what a week!
    I too was blinkered by thinking month =mon, and being unable to figure out the presence therefore of “arch” in 1d. I was also sidetracked by the “either way” in 11a, which is not necessary for the construction of clue, but the surface would be nonsense without it.
    My tiny quibble is with 22d. I can’t see “opposite” as indicating part of the letter-string is to be reversed. I’d contend it is iffy in an across clue, and not remotely valid in a down clue. My version would be “Active person on the up in so many directions”. But it’s easy to “improve” someone else’s ideas, less easy to have them.
    So many thanks to Brendan & Eileen.

76. Another brilliant crossword from Brendan. How does he keep on doing these tours de force?

    Re lying down and the misuse of prone by so many people when they clearly mean supine, I wonder whether Brendan had this in mind when including FACING DOWN in the grid? Or would that be too “in your face”…

    I struggled to complete, with 21d holding out for quite a bit. Eventually I needed a comfort breaking, and solved HEAVEN during the course of it, a first for me. (Apologies for over-sharing.)

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

77. Brilliant as others have said. What I really liked was the absence of anagrams (apart from SYNONYM) I know they can be very clever, but it is a relief not to have to work through them, especially the long ones.
    Thanks Brendan, Eileen and all you erudite bloggers!

78. The master does it again — thanks Brendan. As Eileen said, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts but I did tick THESAURI, DEFAME, and HEAVEN as noteworthy. I failed with MALIGN and I couldn’t parse YEARLIES. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

79. We loved everything about that. Top notch even by Brendan’s very high standards. Favourites were EGOISTICAL and ANTONYM. Brilliant all round. Thanks Brendan, and Eileen for the blog.

80. I don’t think that COOL = “fashionable.” I say something’s cool I just mean I like it, whether or not it’s in fashion.

    I did miss CLEAVE, my favorite autantonym.

    I gave stars to LOVE=HATE and DYNAMO for the clever concealment.

    Thanks, Brendan and lucky Eileen.

    Sagittarius@51 You remind me of a time when I was a teenager when somebody with a strong French accent asked me where Charmène Street was. I couldn’t think of such a street, but years later it occurred to me that he probably was looking for the nearby Sherman Street.

    Gervase@67 Leominster MA is pronounced “Lemminster.”

81. Fantastic puzzle, thanks, Brendan. So much to enjoy here – brilliant clues and a wonderfully worked theme. And thanks, Eileen, for the splendid as ever blog.

    Terri Blislow @15 – there’s new-ish Scottish singer-songwriter I’m a big fan of called Hamish Hawk. His song Bakerloo Unbecoming includes the brilliant line: “How can you get off if you never got on?” That always makes me smile.

82. Lots of fun, as always with Brendan.
    I got a little stuck by having Buzz instead of HEAT, which works quite well, until you try to solve 10A. I’m another who plumped for Laying Down. Now thoroughly enlightened by the blog!
    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.
    PS We have a Worcester here in PA, pronounced War Cester in this case.
    Have a nice weekend, all.

83. TerriBlislow @15. Was your answer to the student “a couple of strong drinks”?

84. On seeing the fourth triple definition, I knew this was going to be a good day but it was absolutely breathtaking. Thanks so much, Brendan, for a really astonishing feat of crossword compiling.

85. Managed 11 clues with quite a bit of checking.

    Question time…

    8a – how do you know to omit OFFIC to enable the anagram?

    11a – new one for me, Indus River.

    25a – what does the word “intervening “ mean here?

    1d – how do you know to use the word “round” to solve the clue?

    19d – does “more or less” always mean “around”/ca?

86. Steffen@85
    8a, office finally = e
    25a, the e & f intervene in dame
    1d, ‘ in which to take on’ an alternative to, eg intervene, to place the on appropriately inside m/archy/y
    19d not necessarily always, no, but it does here.

87. 86. Thank you.

    Does everyone on this blog solve the entire crossword?

88. Stunning.
    @phito
    RUSH rushed
    @Eileen
    As a teacher, for your commitment and the grace you share, I send my overdue thanks.

89. Steffen @87. Quite a few today have owned up to missing out on some solutions. It was a tough one. There are days when I don’t comment on here, and a reasonable deduction to make would be that I am still struggling to complete! And sometimes it can take several days.

    But while you’re still learning it makes sense to come here and glean the help you need without continuing to bang your head against the wall. It’s how many people have got started. Those of us of a certain vintage could only buy the following day’s newspaper and wonder…

    One tip I would mention is to look at just a few of the answers and put them in your grid. This will give you a few more crossers and you might get some ideas of words that will fit – if you simply look at all the answers in one go you’ll take less in and you won’t get the solving practice you need.

    Good luck.

90. Late, I know, but I am unconvinced by some of the LIE/LAY comments. The ‘confusion’ is new? “Now I lay me down to sleep/ I ask the Lord my soul to keep” has been around for a while, I think. We lay (not lie) carpets, and sediments (in layers). I’m no expert, but things look more complex than some of the comments here would lead you to believe.

91. And Steffen — good for you for persevering and asking your questions. You’ll learn a lot of the tricks as you go on, and your questioning will speed you up in the process. This is a welcoming community, glad to help a newcomer. And I for one don’t always solve the whole puzzle. I do as much as I can the night before (I’m in the Eastern US, so the puzzle comes out at 7pm my time). The next morning I look at it again and often get a few more, or even all the remaining. If I still have some unsolved I come to the online puzzle and try a few letters in the still-blank ones till I have enough to fill in the rest. If I really have to, I hit “reveal,” but I try to avoid that.

92. Steffen @87 I sometimes ask myself the same question, seems people here are all experts! In my case, I use an iPad which provides a handy “cheat word” option – so I always finish the grid but then it comes down to how many cheats I used.
    Sunday Everyman and Mondays quiptic and cryptic I usually do without cheating. Tues-Fri usually 2-3 cheats. Then I come here, check all the parsings and discover there was a hidden theme which I never noticed.
    Hope this helps!

93. TassieTim @90: In origin, at least, ‘lie’ is an intransitive verb, which cannot have a direct object, and ‘lay’ is a transitive one, which needs an object. So ‘Now I lie down to sleep’ or ‘Now I lay ME down to sleep’ are both ‘correct’.

94. Gervase @93. It is certainly correct, but it could be in part the origin of the misconception, as people perhaps struggle to think of “me” as the object of a verb when it is “I” that is the subject!

95. Steffen@87 There are several good books that will help you learn, of which I would recommend as clearly the best “The Chambers Crossword Manual” by Don Manley (Quixote). Full disclosure, he’s a long-standing personal friend.

96. Always enjoy a Brendan. There always seems to be more than meets the eye on the first go round, and that was very much the case with this beauty.

97. Lovely lovely puzzle – thanks very much, Brendan and Eileen, and sorry to come to the party so late. The blog made for interesting reading nevertheless.

98. Great puzzle and blog (thanks Brendan, Eileen et al). I’m reminded of a hippyish acquaintance back in the 70s who, as he was about to leave, announced: “Well I’ve gotta split so I can get it together”

99. DaveJ@83: That gave me the best laugh. I’ll use that.

100. Thanks to those who pointed out NY ‘or’ YN.

     SinCam@77: I don’t even attempt most anagrams, especially long ones, as I consider them to be a mainly mechanical exercise. I just use an anagram solver.

     Regarding pronunciation: the US town of Waco is named after the indigenous people of the area, named originally Hueco by the Spanish (meaning ‘hole’ or ‘hollow’). The English spelling is a phonetic rendition.

101. Gervase3 @ 93, the matter is complicated by the fact that the object of the verb “lay” can be implied, as in “Are your hens laying?”

102. I’m ridiculously late here but I just wanted to add my praise to Brendan for this brilliant puzzle. I’ve been fascinated by contranyms for years but I never believed it would be possible to base so much of a puzzle on them. Thank you!

103. Not as late as me Harry @79!
     Was really enjoying the auto-antonym theme but then I came to following = F in FLAMEPROOF!
     I despair when I see an instructive word just there to give a letter. Maybe it would be harsh to call it lazy but there are just too many words getting abbreviated to a letter without an indication to do that.
     End of rant … for this time.
     Thanks Brendan and Eileen

104. tim @103. But F for following is such an old established abbreviation, why would you want to suppress it? And to me, a surface yields a solution much more readily if a word leads to its initial letter if indicated (or if it’s an accepted abbreviation) rather than an obscure synonym. It’s definitely not lazy, in my opinion, and it seems totally unnecessary to indicate that it’s the first letter that’s required.

     Sorry for deconstructing your rant!

105. Sheffield Hatter@104, hello again. Well if it is so well established then it may be just me that doesn’t know it. I can’t see why anyone would abbreviate “following” to F. Do people write “following” a lot?

106. Hi Tim@105, Don’t be nervous – we are all learning all the time. I learned f. for following as well as ff. when I was doing citation for assignments/research. It means “and the following page or pages”. I still use it sometimes when I send emails or refer people to sections of articles I want them to read where I will write “and f.” or “and ff.”

107. Sorry to keep coming back, Tim, but the “initially” in that clue is only to tell us to take the “E” from explosion, not the “F” from “Following”, where “f” is a standard abbreviation.

108. Hi Julie and thanks for that example. My nervousness, as Sheffield Hatter will appreciate is about tonight’s football Everton vs Spurs… he is hatter Luton and I’m toffee Everton.

109. I’m the last of three, by some measure, to mention being “late to the party”; not unusual for me – but this last week or so I was enthralled by the unwanted joy of moving home and its machine-gun delivery of naked reminders of physical senescence! Thank goodness for wisdom, experience and – for us childish men – the dissipation of ego!
     And, of course, this was a party! With a wealth of different characters presenting – some entertaining, none boring and the most amusing of old friends popping by…..
     Though I’m referring to the clues, my remarks could equally apply to our friendly community of commenters?!

     I can’t help wondering about something others haven’t noticed…. so maybe it’s just me. Why is ALL-OUT not a triple definition?

     And, Eileen, I think you’re completely right @65 !

     A stonking blog, as ever, and an absolute humdinger of a puzzle. Some great, and relevant(!), comments

     Many belated thanks both and all……

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