Guardian 29,405 – Yank

93 comments on “Guardian 29,405 – Yank”

1. (no title)? – parsed 16d CAPE HORN as you did, Andrew.

2. ODDS ARE
   SR is also a betting term (stake returned) but I don’t know much about betting.
   CAPE HORN
   Had the same parse as in the blog.

3. Same here with CAPE HORN. I liked REVISED VERSION, STATE ONES CASE, LIES AWAKE and the nicely spotted SAN MARINO. ODDS ARE is ugly.

   Ta Yank & Andrew.

4. Same here with CAPE HORN – liked REVISED VERSION, and the spot for SAN MARINO, equal confusion over ODDS ARE, which isn’t in my Chambers.

   Thank you to Andrew and Yank.

5. I took ODDS ARE to be an odd i.e. unusual way of describing S followed by a phonetic spelling of the letter R. It seems online dictionaries say the name of R is spelt ‘ar’ not ‘are’ so my parsing works even less well than Andrew’s. A couple of other quibbles as mentioned in the blog. Liked LIES AWAKE, SAN MERINO, REVISED VERSION, DAUGHTER..
   Thanks both.

6. A mixture for me, today, in a puzzle I found quite tricky. I agree with AlanC that SAN MARINO is nice, together with STATE ONE’S CASE, and I liked DAUGHTER, TIARA, OCELOT, CASALS and IPANEMA. ODDS ARE is tricky to clue – not sure I liked Yank’s version. ‘Perform bravely’ is not how I think of GRASP THE NETTLE which I associate with the confrontation of an unpleasant rather than a scary task. And I’m not convinced by ‘from the East’ in SINAI which is a down clue.

   Thanks Yank and Andrew

7. Also agree with the parsing of CAPE HORN.
   “ODDS ARE” exercises me due to recent discussion of alternate letter indicators. Chambers Crossword Dictionary has Odd and Oddly as such indicators. I take a probably permissive view that “odd whatever” doesn’t prevent me as a solver from picking the odd letters (therefore it’s ‘fair’) so why is it so frowned upon compared to “oddly whatever”? Is it because odd is an adjective and oddly is an adverb?

8. What’s the significance of the jury in 15d?

   Hadn’t heard of film Argo. Wound/horn was a bit of a stretch. Never heard of Maize Mazes, hence had no idea how to parse 25a. Totally befuddled by IPANEMA … neverheard of Indian Pale Ale. Tail/sex was also unknown. And the clue for ODDS ARE I thought pretty weak.

   Thanks for the blog, Andrew.

9. I thought that “tail” was a crude name for a woman rather than sex.

10. GDU: jury-rigged means makeshift – a naval term, I think.

11. Geoff Down Under @8 – jury-rigging in sailing happens after a problem when you’re trying to use whatever you can to fix the boat enough to get to safety. For example, the mast breaks, so the boom is used to hoist enough of a sail to keep going, or the rudder breaks and you use an oar or paddle. It’s a cobbling together of a solution.

    And crossed with Postmark

12. Very tough puzzle. It would be suitable as a Saturday Prize puzzle.

    I could not parse:
    13ac the tail=sex bit.
    25ac apart from maize – hom of maze. Never heard of Maize Mazes
    7d – ugh, not keen on this clue!
    16d the horn=wound bit

    New for me: Revised Version (of the Bible); ODDS ARE; Hulk Hogan (for 12ac); IPA = beer; the fact that ANTEATERS do not have teeth; the fact that LEGO is a Danish company; Spanish cellist Pablo CASALS (for 21d).

    Thanks, both.

13. Those who’ve never heard of IPA need to open a can and get it down their neck. 🙂

14. Hardest crossword I’ve done in years. It felt like talking to someone who’s speaking a dialect you’re unfamiliar with.

    Was stuck for ages until the leg of lamb went in and opened things up

    Liked 1a and NADIR. ODDS ARE didn’t really work for me either

    Cheers A&Y

15. I found this hard due to the grid fill more than the clues. The crossers are mostly one point Scrabble tiles, so answers were reluctant to jump out.

    Thanks, Yank and Andrew.

16. Well done Andrew! Thank you for your insightful and helpful blog.
    I thought the hiddens were very well hidden. ROAST LEG OF LAMB my favourite, and also because I got it.
    I’m not going to join the chorus of quibbles and queries which have already been aired, except to echo GDU@8. Why jury-rigged in ANTEATERS?

17. I once tried to negotiate a maize maze (it was my LOI) and was just as hornswoggled as I was by 16D, which I guessed from the definition but then spent an inordinate time trying to justify HORN as a verb.

18. Thanks PostMark@10 and Shanne@11 for jury-rigged. But surely it’s a bit OTT. ”rigged” would have sufficed, I’d think.

19. Very mixed bag, some wonderful clueing and some that were beyond me. Had to reveal a few, and have help with others, so not a great way to kick the week off for me personally.

    Really enjoyed 1a/1d, the latter being groan-inducing in a good way. Glad it wasn’t just me with raised eyebrows regarding OODS ARE.

20. 13a ENTAILED – In Green’s Dictionary of Slang you have to scroll down quite a long way to ‘8. sexual intercourse.’

21. Thanks to the sailors for the enlightenment!

22. Read ODDS ARE as odd sare, leaving Sr.
    Wondered if MAIZE might relate to pozol, possibly sounds like puzzle.

23. Found this an absolute breath of fresh air. Thought both the long across clues quite stunning, particularly the biblical one. Wasn’t quite sure how ENTAILED or ODDS ARE worked exactly, but they simply had to be that from all the crossers then in place. Fortunately knew the Beach and also the Cellist. AGENT very cute. More please, Yank…

24. Yes, I was confused by ‘horn’, but Andrew has it correctly. I didn’t mind ODDS ARE – I rather liked it. However, I didn’t really enjoy this – I found the solving experience uncomfortable; I sympathize with Bodycheetah@14’s second sentence

    Thanks to Yank

    and well done, Andrew!

25. Me @19 – OODS? My brain is clearly scrambled this morning.

26. paddymelon@18
    ANTEATERS
    To snag (a/the) boob, the toothless bunch jury-rigged/improvised (the) snare available (rigging the snare? Doesn’t fit in the surface, I guess).
    Now why did the ANTEATERS snag (a/the) boob?
    [I find that jury-rig=improvise in a routine sense, not necessarily nautical]
    ODDS ARE
    Tim C@7
    Agree with you.
    We will get used to odd after it’s used a few times in place of oddly. 🙂

27. Phew…that exercised the old grey matter.

    Thought ARGONAUTS & LIES AWAKE worthy of rosettes, but ODDS ARE not so much.

    Surely this is today’s earworm?

28. ”tail” in ENTAILED I was aware of, and agree with Andrew, ”rather crude”. Would another setter have gotten away with an English equivalent? We’ve had debate about this kind of thing before. Ok, so words are words and fair game in cryptics, but it’s still offensive.

    From dictionary.com: TAIL. The meanings “sexual intercourse” and “female sexual partner” are both vulgar slang. When referring to a person, the term tail is usually used with disparaging intent and perceived as insulting.

29. ODDS ARE
    (me@2 contd…)
    Tho it seems there is no connection between the betting term SR and the clue, I just wanted to share this (just in case someone finds a connection, I can say, ‘told you so’) info found on some betting-related site:

    To better understand how ‘Stake Returned’ works, let’s consider an example:

    You place a £25 bet on a football match with an offer that promises “Money Back if the Game Ends in a Draw.” If the game ends in a draw, the bookmaker returns your £25 stake as a free bet, providing you with another opportunity to bet.

30. William @27: indeed it is, delicious.

31. Thank you William@27 for the ”earworm”. One of the best ever.

32. A real mixed bag, as others have said, with a brilliant start at 1ac REVISED VERSION, followed up with another great anagram spot at 8dn GRASP THE NETTLE. I also admired 27ac STATE ONE’S CASE.

    Other favourites were the well-hidden 26ac ATONEMENT (great surface), 12ac HOOLIGANS, 1dn ROAST LEG OF LAMB, both for the construction, and 18dn ELEGIST and 21dn CASALS – both great surfaces.

    I was not so keen on 13ac ENTAILED, now that it has been explained – I agree with paddymelon@28, 16dn (nho HORN =wound – and what does the surface mean?) nor 7dn ODDS ARE.

    PostMark @6 – I momentarily raised an eyebrow at ‘from the east’ in the clue for 6dn SINAI – but only momentarily: that is how the letters appear in the clue, rather than the answer. I ended up rather liking it.

    Many thanks to Yank and Andrew – and to William for the earworm. 😉

33. Thank you Yank, Andrew and William (amen to that!).
    Very much enjoyed this, with the four long clues providing smooth access to the rest of the grid.
    I liked the allusive VAGRANT, the tidy Romanians, the spotted cat and the bowman.

34. I just could not get on the wavelength of this so gave up and when I came here for enlightenment I found there was no way I could have completed it. And on a Monday, too!
    Ah well, there’s always the quiptic and the quick cryptic!
    Thanks Andrew and Yank (although like Michelle I think this should have been on a Saturday, or Friday at least)

35. Is it generally accepted now that Monday’s Cryptic should be fairly straightforward and that as the weekdays pass it gets steadily more difficult. Or is it a mere notion? The traditional poem Monday’s Child (just looked it up, I was born Fair of Face, apparently) gives definite characteristics for each day, albeit all the way to Sunday. I wonder whether we could invent a similar poem for our Cryptic along the lines of “Monday’s Grid…” or with some other suitable monosyllabic noun…

36. At least sex wasn’t IT for once 🙂

    I’ve been trying to put my finger on why the bible one worked but ODDS ARE seemed iffy. I guess with 1a we have the fodder for the reverse anagram but with 7d we don’t have the equivalent for the subtraction. And then it’s not a real word anyway?

37. @ronald:
    Monday’s grid is fairly breezy,
    Tuesday’s nearly just as easy,
    Wednesday starts to tax the brain,
    While Thursday’s causes quite some pain.
    Friday’s grid is harder yet
    And Saturday, the Prize is set.
    But Sunday is a day of rest,
    And so it’s puzzles shouldn’t test.

    Anyway, I got maybe a third of these before giving in, though most of them I did manage to parse after the fact (easy when you’ve revealed them, eh?) I don’t think any of the terms caught me off guard though. Makes me wonder if Yank is a slightly younger setter with some of the references? No idea

38. Like many I found that to be a bit of a curate’s egg. I got there in the end albeit with ODDS ARE unparsed. Agree with the various quibbles already documented.

    Thank you Yank and Andrew.

39. SamW@37…Ha! Very well done with that composition!

40. Gave up on this, so I am not qualified to make any further comment.

41. For the record, I found this difficult too, so if Yank (aka Fred Piscop) is speaking a different dialect, it isn’t just that it’s American. This took longer than most cryptics I’ve done. A lot to like here, though.

    My main complaint about ODDS ARE is that “sare” isn’t a real word, which reduces the appeal of the device considerably.

    The surface for ATONEMENT calls to mind certain discussions in mostly conservative media about the current president’s mental acuity. (PS: he’s fine; if you don’t vote for him, don’t make that the reason.)

    SamW @37: bravo.

42. Late to the party; I found this enjoyable in parts.

    I liked the reverse clue to give REVISED VERSION, the wordplays of NADIR and LIES AWAKE, the well-hidden ATONEMENT, and the good anagram for GRASP THE NETTLE. I’m no prude but I think TAIL=sex is pretty offensive.

    Thanks Yank and Andrew.

43. I recall “Houston/Euston” from Everyman 3,852 back in 2020.

44. Strange to say, I didn’t find this particularly difficult (yesterday’s Everyman caused me more trouble!), though MAIZE was puzzling – reading the thread I perhaps have come across ‘maize maze’ before, but this may be false memory syndrome 🙂 . ‘Wound’ = HORN is rather a stretch, and ODDS ARE (LOI) didn’t work for me either.

    I did like the peripherals, LIES AWAKE, SALT MINE, IPANEMA, CASALS and AGENT.

    Thanks to William @27 for the bossa nova classic.

    And thanks to S&B

45. I found this puzzle difficult. While I eventually finished it, some clues were quite a struggle and some I couldn’t parse.
    My favourite, REVISED VERSION, was a delight. I also liked GRASP THE NETTLE, STATE ONE’S CASE, CASALS, ELEGIST, NADIR.
    I was unable to parse ROAST LEG OF LAMB (doh!), ODDS ARE, the horn in CAPE HORN. And nho IPA beer.
    Thanks to Andrew for the excellent blog and others for the discussion, William for the ear worm, SamW for the verse and Yank for today’s challenge.

46. I had 16 down as a sort of &lit: wound = blown (of a horn)

47. SamW @37: brilliant! Though slightly tricky puzzles have been known to turn up on Sundays …

48. Likes were ATONEMENT (cleverly hidden) and EUSTON (simply because I’m a Londoner who used to live in Houston). ENTAILED was a jaw-dropping moment; not for me thanks. I don’t understand what ‘jury’ is doing in ANTEATERS, and didn’t think that the definition was at all precise – it could refer to any bird as well as a large number of land and sea creatures. Thanks Yank and thanks Andrew especially for explaining MAGENTA, which I did not know was a colour particularly associated with printers.

49. I’ve read countless times that Monday’s puzzles are supposed to be easiest and that they get progressively harder through the week. Is this set in stone somewhere, or is it just an observation? I haven’t noticed such a correlation myself.

50. Have now realised that ‘jury rigged’ has been explained above. Thanks PostMark@10 and Shanne@11.

51. Paul @48: the ink colors in a standard color printer are magenta, cyan, and yellow. (Not red, blue, and yellow.) Also black, which is not strictly necessary but saves tons of ink and therefore money. Mixing those three colors–the subtraction primary colors–can get any hue you desire.

52. Another bear claw today. Corn mazes are common in the U.S.

53. ODDS ARE is more the start of a statement than a phrase. I didn’t really parse it, thinking ARE=R. I didn’t mind jury-rigged, just a misdirection. I didn’t know Ipanema was on the coast, but that’s fair enough. I also thought tail , or piece of tail, was a sexist and derogatory term for a woman who liked sex: I have never understood this, would these men prefer a world where women disliked it?
    I struggled a bit, but well worth it. It raised some laughs.
    Thanks both.

54. Er, subtractive, not subtraction. Thanks a million, Autocorrect, and sorry I didn’t catch that in time for the edit function.

55. I started typing on 34 comments just look at it now!
    I used to be a dairy farmer so HORNED wasn’t so difficult, but not a word I’d heard, gored would be more usual, but a very rare occurrence.

56. I enjoyed it but, I agree that ODDS ARE is poor.
    Also, as stated by others TAIL is US slang for women i.e. “He was out chasing tail.”

57. Yank is referred to as “Fred Piscop ’70” by his Alma Mater Cornell.
    I’m presuming that’s his matriculation or graduation year, so he must be in his 70s? – so not particularly young (ie even older than I am).

58. Got stuck after lazily putting in IPANIMA (with AM IN for “I agree” )
    Other than that, a fun challenge for a Monday.
    Thanks Yank and Andrew

59. Filled in 8 answers before giving up. Reading the blog I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time on this one.
    Usual moan that Monday is supposed to be easy.

60. FrankieG: graduation year. It’s to be read with an implied “class of” before the numbers. They don’t have alumni magazines in Britain?

    –M. Penney, Princeton ’96.

61. Merriam Webster online defines tail as sex (vulgar slang) but not as a woman. Chambers has at definition 26, sexual intercourse (slang) and 27, a woman (offensive slang). Perhaps the offensiveness of it was not apparent to the American setter, but I can’t see how the editor thought the two concepts were separable.
    Pianist from the east for SINAI is surely fine, pianist being in the clue, as per Eileen @32. Down clue doesn’t mean a clue that goes down, it means a clue for a word that goes down. In Kite’s Saturday puzzle we were asked to accept that DNA-H in the clue could be given by WRITING UP. I don’t think both clues can be right.

62. paul@48 There are lots of creatures without teeth, but hardly any of them are mammals, for whom teeth are an essential part of life., so being toothless is unusual for a mammal. Toothlessness then characerises the order “edentates,” which also includes sloths and armadillos. The only other toothless mammals I can think of are baleen whales.

    On difficulty and weekdays — the Monday one is definitely easier, but after that I think it’s pretty random. I don’t believe there’s any policy of graded difficulty.

    Thanks, Yank and Andrew.

63. I didn’t find this as hard as others seem to have, probably because I managed to get 1ac second which gave me a lot to work from (I almost always focus on clues where I have at least one crossers). Maybe for me being American helped? Granted that can’t have been all, as mrpenney@41 pointed out. Had the same doubts as everyone else about ODDS ARE and CAPE HORN, and couldn’t parse AGENT, but thought all the long ones were very nicely constructed. I rationalized “from the east” as being OK in 6d because the letters do appear from the east in the printed clue–it wouldn’t have worked for something that was defined and then reversed.

    Thanks Yank and Andrew!

    [“TAIL” must also be Canadian; one of my favorite stories by the late master Alice Munro, “Wigtime,” features some business between two schoolgirls and a bus driver involving an obscene song about Christopher Columbus involving the lines “He knew the world was round-o/and tail-o could be found-o.” And as folks have mentioned, it’s quite crude. LOI nevertheless, these puzzles have trained me enough that I too kept trying to work “IT” in.]

64. Re 7d. Ok odds are but can someone explain the significance of the full stop and comma? Totally flummoxed!

65. Cedric @64: They’re there for the surface reading. Sr. is an abbreviation for either Sister (in the nun sense), senior (as opposed to Jr.), or Señor. I know that many British style guides have dropped the period from such abbreviations, but most American ones haven’t. And the comma is just there because you’d naturally put one there.

66. Thanks for the blog, very enjoyable and clever wordplay throughout, a neat Playtex for NADIR , all the long answers flowed nicely and even CASALS for Cellomaniac.

    For the last 30 years the Guardian has not had a policy of getting more difficult as the week progresses. Typically Monday would be the easiest and the Saturday Prize the hardest but the others mixed up. Now we get a medium puzzle nearly every single day so the order does not matter.

67. Thanks Yank. This was a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed clues like NADIR, HOOLIGANS, SALT MINE, ATONEMENT (great hidden clue), STATES ONE CASE, and IPANEMA. I eventually revealed 1a, 1d, and the bizarre ODDS ARE. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

68. It all went in reasonably swiftly and have enjoyed Yank’s previous offerings – always very well clued. Lots to enjoy, particularly 1 down, 18 down, and 25 across. But the use of ‘tail’ in this context is just wrong. Thanks very much Yank and Andrew

69. Thanks Yank and Andrew
    I found this hard and didn’t enjoy it much. Several usages seemed US rather than British; “parcel” for “LOT, for example. It was also very loose in places – “Oscar-winning movie” doesn’t narrow it down much; “wound” for HORN. I could go on.

    [William @27: the story is that Astrud Gilberto only turned up at the recording studio to bring her husband his packed lunch. He greeted her with “you speak English – have a go at singing this”.]

70. MrPenny @60: We certainly have alumni/ae magazines (designed, I assume, to foster a feeling of attachment to and fondness for your alma mater, and to remind you to remember them in your will/annual charity giving, more importantly) but because degree lengths in UK universities vary in length you tend to be grouped by the year you arrive (“matriculation”) rather than the year you finish. In my year group, arriving in 1985, there were people on 3 year courses (the majority of us), 4 years (biochemists, classicists) and 5 years (medics) so we all graduated at different times.

71. A further 👏for SamW@37

72. Hard. Being away from puzzles for two weeks whilst on leave has had a negative impact. Still don’t get SR odds are but never mind. Revealed too many answers but at least managed to parse most of them. Felt harder than a usual Monday, thought that was just me so relieved others felt the same. missed the blog whilst away. Thanks to all.

73. Well this was a bit of a curates egg/standard distribution. Some outsanding clues..bravo, the majority were pleasant and skillful enough and a couple of very dicey ‘meh’ clues, the ODDS and the TAIL for different reasons.
    As for the degree of difficulty, there were three ‘rules’ that seemed to be in play when I started doing these semi-seriously during Covid lock down…Monday was usually an easier number, with frequent grumbles that the Monday Quiptic was more difficult. Friday was always a stiff number, Saturdays’ prize was definitely the hardest and Sunday’s AZED very difficult indeed, with lots of obscure words.
    Tuesday-Thursday were a mixed bunch and sometimes Tuesday was Friday level tough which was hard for those who’d managed to crack the Monday and then failed miserably the very next day.
    Sunday’s Everyman was another pleasant stroll as it was consistent and quite easy to get on the same setters wavelength until recently when I have really struggled to complete it these past few months.
    Thanks Andrew and Yank.
    Minor pedantic quibblette…
    18D…should be *TIES

74. Yes, tail is one of those objectifying terms, like bit of fluff, that are frowned on these days, justly so.

75. There was a maze made of bales of something in an ep of Gilmore Girls (yes yes I know, but wtbleep, I don’t mind a weepy soap), but, re Posterntoo 52, can’t remember if it was called maize, corn or hay.

76. [ … and re frowned-upon behaviour, just heard on the Beeb about the soccer fans gaoled for racial abuse; a world first!]

77. I loved the puzzle. ODDS ARE is a relatively common term in the states meaning most likely. I assume it is derived from the betting odds favoring a particular outcome. The clue that confused me a little was 25A. I know that MAIZE is a homophone of MAZE, but don’t know the relationship between puzzle and corn. I really liked 20D (nice to see something besides ALE or LAGER used for BEER) and 23D. I think the puzzle was very creative and I hope to see more from Yank. BTW, I usually find the prize puzzle to be one of the easier puzzles of the week. It seems like when a puzzle is issued has almost no relation to its’ difficulty. The Everyman puzzle gets murkier by the week, the weekday puzzles are a total crap shoot, and the prize puzzles, as I have said, tend to be on the easy side. The only consistency seems to be with the genius puzzle which remains challenging.

78. Thanks both and almost worth the effort for REVISED VERSION alone.

    We are (you are?) a very forgiving lot (never liking to put one down perhaps) but ODDS ARE is imho a poor clue indeed, requiring as it does a transferred (not playtex but the other one) thingy whereby with the answer in one hand we slide the letters along like one of those old 4×4 (-1) puzzles of long ago to make up the gist of the clue (odd sare) and now treat that as a reverse clue. So the clue is the answer to the clue to the answer. Enough already.

    For those curious about ‘IPA’ it tastes like soluble aspirin but has precisely the opposite effect.

79. Best description I have ever heard of IPA. Not a fan of the taste either—give me a Guinness and I am quite happy.

80. More years ago than I care to admit, I attended a local GP who had a lucrative sideline in performing vasectomies. “To relax you, I’ll give you a shot of intravenous Valium. Like three pints of Charlie Wells, but without the throwing up…”
    Another assessment of Messrs Wells’ product which I heard about the same time was “The only beer that tastes better coming up than going down”. Which, though a fan of Greene King, I thought was a trifle unfair.
    I think there are some brilliant clues here (I thought REVISED VERSION was a lovely start to the morning and ROAST LEG OF LAMB is pretty good, too), some that are a bit meh, one or two which the editor really ought to have rejected (ENTAILED…) and ODDS ARE which I think is a classic case of too-clever-by-half.
    Some would say it’s a bit anagram-heavy, but I don’t mind that when they’re as good as some of the anagrams here certainly are.
    Thanks to Yank and Andrew

81. Further to RobS @ 46. “The distant huntsman winds his horn” occurs in a poem by William Blake. If this is what Yank intended I think it is a bit of a stretch from “wound” to HORN with no indication of what’s going on.
    Alphalpha@78, Jay@79. IPAs differ in taste. I can recommend Marston’s Old Empire 5.7°ABV, available for £1.85 a 500ml bottle at Sainsbury’s.

82. My earworm would have been Pablo Casals’ playing his arrangement of the traditional Catalan “Song of the Birds”, or any of the Bach Suites.

    I too found this difficult, but like others I think it was a wavelength thing rather than a higher than usual degree of difficulty for a Monday.

    Thanks Yank and Andrew.

83. [Ah yes, Cello @82, there’s some Casals playing Bach among the vinyl here, I should dig him out]

84. I meant to add that, in addition to the American GK mentioned in previous comments, 2d contains another two elements that will be more familiar to our US friends. By now I know the abbreviation for most states and the names of quite a few Presidents, though I did draw the line a while back when the theme was Veeps.

85. Message to Sam W @37. (No need for the apostrophe in your final line).
    Your poem is a fantastic composition. Well done.

86. Oddly enough, Houston Street in Manhattan is pronounced “How-ston”… just to catch out tourists, surely?

87. The states has its’ share of strange pronunciations. A friend of mine lives in Versailles, KY and they pronounce it VER SAILS.

88. Thanks Andrew

    Late posting as I thought I’d give it one more go this morning. I don’t blame Yank, but I can only conclude the Editor has given up on ‘easier Mondays’ which is a great shame

89. paddymelon@18:

    The phrase “jerry-rigged” is extremely common in American English, and is exactly the word you’d expect someone to use to describe a snare that someone has ingeniously rigged up. However it is not in Chambers and not in standard use in British English, so the clue instead has to use the British equivalent “jury-rigged”. But… this is rarely used in Britain compared to its American counterpart in America, which makes the clue seem a bit odd to British solvers.

90. Jason and the Argonauts is a typically contrary track on XTC’s “English Settlement” which seekers after enlightenment may find on YouTube.(I have not worked out how to get a link into this form of post.) Better late than

91. “Grasp the nettle”. A phrase I have never heard or used. And I’m fairly sure I’ve never been in a room with someone who has heard or used that phrase.

92. I’d always understood that “Grasp the nettle” is a common mistake and was surprised no-one had picked it. The correct term being “grasp the mettle”. (Mettle = inner core or strength). But on checking, I find that mettle is used in “show your mettle”, while “grasp the nettle” refers to the advice that if you just brush past a stinging nettle you’ll feel a severe sting, but if you bravely grasp the plant firmly, you’ll avoid the pain. (UK readers will be most familiar with this plant, I’ve never found it here in Australia.)

93. REVISED VERSION: How crosswords work in Christopher Nolan films

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