Brummie puzzles continue to appear quite thick and fast – but that’s an observation rather than a complaint.
I haven’t detected a theme but, as always with Brummie, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I found the puzzle relatively straightforward, with several charades and anagrams with some innovative indicators. There are several smiles along the way, too – I enjoyed the tornado victim at 5dn, the suffering mother at 8dn and the overweight ex-PM at 24dn. I also had ticks for 11,12 TERRACOTTA ARMY, 15ac YIELDED (for the foregone conclusion), 20,22 RISK ASSESSMENT, 25ac ONION RINGS, 16dn DESDEMONA and 19dn BEER GUT. There’s just one bit of parsing (at 23dn) where I’d like reassurance or an alternative suggestion.
Thanks to Brummie for a fun puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues
Across
1 Flog song collection (4-5)
WHIP-ROUND
WHIP (flog) + ROUND (song)
6 Small branch snapped by male fawn (5)
SMARM
S (small) + ARM (branch) round M (male)
9 Incur irritation of old characters (5)
RUNIC
An anagram (irritation) of INCUR
10 Who might produce a round rod to be attached to small boat (9)
BARTENDER
BAR (rod) + TENDER (small boat)
11, 12 Impressive model soldiers working at crematory art (10,4)
TERRACOTTA ARMY
An anagram (working) of AT CREMATORY ART
14 Jet rejected by rock band’s lead singer as a publicity gesture? (7)
GIMMICK
A reversal (rejected) of MIG (jet) + MICK (Jagger – rock band’s lead singer)
15 Foregone conclusion of Romney that is directed to trap Democrat (7)
YIELDED
[romne]Y + IE (id est – that is) + LED (directed) round D (Democrat) – neat ‘lift and separate’
17 American state engaged in providing backing for Italian food (7)
FUSILLI
US (American) + ILL (Illinois – state) in a reversal (backing) of IF (providing)
19 Press round outside of ‘death’ flower (7)
BLOSSOM
A reversal (round) of MOB (press) round LOSS (death)
20, 22 Lively, leaderless fools getting workers to block street in safety evaluation (4,10)
RISK ASSESSMENT
[b]RISK (lively) minus initial letter – leaderless + ASSES (fools) + MEN (workers) in ST (street)
25 One of the things an expert should know to call a side dish item (5,4)
ONION RING
ONION (one of the things an expert should know – from the expression ‘to know one’s onions’); Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable gives “to be knowledgeable in one’s particular field. The expression is sometimes jokingly said to refer to the lexicographer C.T.Onions, co-editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of books on English but it may actually derive from rhyming slang, with ‘onions’ short for ‘onion rings’, meaning ‘things'” + RING (call)
26 Peer round inside capsized slaver (5)
DROOL
O (round) in a reversal (capsized) of LORD (peer)
27 Addiction treatment cuts out a clock’s sound it’s said (5)
DETOX
Sounds like (it’s said) ‘de-tocks’ (cuts out a clock’s sound)
28 Given one’s input, log can be diverting (9)
ENTERTAIN
ENTER (log) + A (one) in TIN (can)
Down
1 Banger with rust corrosion (5)
WURST
W (with) + an anagram (corrosion) of RUST – this word is in both Collins and Chambers, so I don’t think it needs a ‘foreign’ indicator
2 Sprinkled ‘Amour’ gin topping on strawberry fool (9)
IGNORAMUS
An anagram (sprinkled) of AMOUR GIN + S[trawberry] – another neat lift and separate
3 Pitch a club music style (10)
ROCKABILLY
ROCK (pitch) + A + BILLY (club – both Collins and Chambers give it as a (North American) truncheon – a new one for me )
4 Clear international HQ building in Manhattan? (7)
UNBLOCK
UN BLOCK (HQ building in Manhattan) – I should have included ‘International’ – thanks, SueB @19
5 Tornado victim needs to act before hill rears up – extremely hairy (7)
DOROTHY
DO (act) + a reversal (rears up) of TOR (hill) + H[air]Y
You can watch the tornado here
6 Was a killer left to go in all directions bar north? (4)
SLEW
L (left) in SEW (all directions bar N)
7 Calculating type’s more pathetic when losing head (5)
ADDER
[s]ADDER (more pathetic)
8 Suffering mother keeps bohemian on road (9)
MARTYRDOM
MOM (mother) round ARTY (Bohemian) + RD (road)
13 Engineer is cornered? Think again (10)
RECONSIDER
An anagram (engineer) of IS CORNERED
14 Take a liking to bling and aim to put yourself first? (2,3,4)
GO FOR GOLD
GO FOR (take a liking to) + GOLD (bling)
16 Tragic character of devil-embracing, deviant Sade (9)
DESDEMONA
An anagram (deviant) of SADE round DEMON (devil)
18 Popular tip: take a breath! (7)
INSPIRE
IN (popular) + SPIRE (tip)
19 Pot, drink and Cologne’s good (4,3)
BEER GUT
BEER (drink) + GUT (German (Cologne’s) for ‘good’
21 Pop star’s prompt (5)
SWIFT
Double definition – Taylor Swift’s just everywhere these days
23 ‘Claw of Time’: single ELO initially released (5)
TALON
T (time) + ALON[e] (single, minus e (initial letter of ELO) – I think
24 Ex-PM: ‘Time to go, having gained ten stone’ (4)
ONYX
[t]ONY (Blair ex-PM) minus t – time + X (ten)
Another super offering from Brummie with lots of fun along the way. I liked TERRACOTTA ARMY, GIMMICK, BLOSSOM, RISK ASSESSMENT, DESDEMONA, DETOX, ONYX and BEER GUT but there were many ticks. I can’t see a theme although the deviant Sade made me think of WHIP ROUND. There is also a Nina of REME (Royal Mechanical & Electrical Engineers) dissecting ARMY. I parsed 23d as you did Eileen.
GIMMICK gave me this earworm from Jet to get your feet tapping.
https://youtu.be/tuK6n2Lkza0?si=ncLQanfwZDUaXfs1
Ta Brummie & Eileen.
I really enjoyed this, with lots to like. I wasn’t sure about TALON either, it was my last in.
Thank you to Eileen and Brummie.
Excellent as ever with Brummie. US solvers will be helped out by the fact that Brummies (like me) call their mothers ‘Mom’. As a little boy, I could never understand why birthday cards had the word as Mum.
A great quirky crossword. Several stand outs already mentioned above.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen
I agree with your parsing of TALON, Eileen, and with your overall assessment of the puzzle. MARTYRDOM and RECONSIDER were my top two with TERRACOTTA AARMY – almost a CAD – completing the podium. My only ‘meh’ moments were the two nounal anagrinds in RUNIC and WURST: it’s a personal thing but I’d prefer to see ‘irritation of fodder’/’fodder in (a state of) irritation’ if the noun’s going to be used, rather than just ‘fodder irritation’.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen
There’s also a Nina of TAILS in column 10, but it seems to be a coincidence. Can’t see a theme.
I liked the little SLEW.
Taylor Swift eh? Never heard of him.
I failed to solve 25ac and 14d apart from GO FOR ???D.
23d I also parsed it as T + ALON{e}.
Favourites: TERRACOTTA ARMY, ONYX, BEER GUT, DROOL.
Thanks, both.
DOROTHY was a great aha moment. It’s always a pleasure when you only get the definition after the wordplay. DROOL was another.
Thanks very much to Brummie and Eileen.
I went well in the RHS but it took longer until the LHS YIELDED (15a).
Very ENTERTAIN-ing (28a) I thought.
Some faves already mentioned in dispatches but I did really like the best of the WURST (1d) a lot. Sorry PostMark@5 if the latter is not your cup of tea in terms of the clue type.
[That’s all I could think of for TALON at 23d as well Eileen.]
For me this had an ideal range of devices in clever clues without being too chewy. I particularly liked some of the shorter ones like ONYX, SLEW and TALON which now I think about it all have a substitute-with-omission device (that’s probably not the right term). I also liked the silenced clock homophone in DETOX. Didn’t quite get the parsing for rockabilly or martyrdom but they were clear from the crossers.
Thank you Brummie and Eileen
Lovely puzzle and blog. Detox made me smile the most but lots to enjoy here. Thank you B and E.
I thought of the lead singer as Hucknell rather than Jagger, but any will do, of course. Agree with you, Eileen, about the parsing of TALON, with ELO part of a rock/pop collection with the aforementioned singer and Taylor SWIFT. But that didn’t develop into a theme, nor did the ROUND, BARTENDER and BEER-GUT lead to one. I add my name to those who enjoyed this puzzle. Annoyingly, I had a mental picture of the Chinese warriors when I read the clue for 11,12, but it took a few crossers before I arrived at the answer, but I did think it was a wonderful clue. I didn’t know a BILLY was a kind of truncheon either, but the answer was obvious. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.
Very entertaining puzzle. I thought the tornado victim was great, but my biggest tick has to go to DROOL for the brilliantly misleading surface about the slave ship.
I think the only time I’ve heard of a billy club (apart from in crosswords) is in the early Bob Dylan song “Man on the Street”:
Well, the policeman come and he looked around
“Get up, old man, or I’m a-takin’ you down”
He jabbed him once with his billy club
And the old man then rolled off the kerb
Many thanks Brummie and Eileen.
Thank you Eileen. I enjoyed this overall but with a couple of remaining queries.
ONION RING. I get the rhyming slang but I wondered how long onion rings have been a ”thing” in the UK..
Found this which is also interesting:
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/know-your-onions.html
TERRACOTTA ARMY. I thought there might be more to impressive model. Something to do with how these were made? Or the uses that terracotta was put to in terms of decoration?
ONYX ok, but ex-PM Tony?
Liked WURST for the surface, but I’d hardly call it a ”banger” ie a common sausage. Loved the story , banger with rust corrosion, the other meaning of banger, an old car.
ROCKABILLY . Down here billy is also a tin can you put over an open fire to boil tea, or a bong for smoking marijuana.
Favs were DESDEMONA, YIELDED, WHIP-ROUND, and BEER GUT
I had to get 14a out backwards, but thought that Mick was Fleetwood as in Fleetwood Mac, but of course he wasn’t their lead singer. Mr Jagger didn’t even occur to me.
paddymelon @16
I first ate onion rings here in a Berni Inn in the ’70s.
I liked the ‘old banger’, too – and meant to comment. (Brummie is not exactly renowned for his surfaces but there were some good ones here.)
We also have billy cans – but I don’t know about your second definition. 😉
I thought UN might be international HQ in 4 down. Many thanks for the puzzle and blog.
PS I knew we’d had BILLY club before, and I think it must have been more than once. The only instance I can find offhand is also Brummie, in January 2020 (28,041):
1960s’ play and film, featuring American club with revolving bar (5,4)
You commented on that puzzle Eileen, so it’s not entirely a new one for you 🙂
You’re right, SueB @19: I should have included ‘International’ – will amend the blog now.
Lots of water under lots of bridges, Jim. 😉
Well I had only risk assessment after a first scan of acrosses, so was thinking not straightforward. But it’s amazing what a single crosser will do … e.g., just the D of Dorothy made whip round a write-in next time through. And so it wove, pretty smooth. Thanks Brum and thanks Eileen (Eccles too, you’re a busy girl 😉 ).
grantinfreo @23 – I said I (unfortunately) didn’t have time to actually solve the Eccles!
No problems with parsing TALON as you Eileen.
Am I the only one with a question mark against “devil-embracing, deviant Sade” in DESDEMONA or is the comma significant?
Billy for bong is new to me too, pdm @16, but then yoof is another country these days!
Oh yes i forgot, so you did, Eileen.
Worryingly slow start to what turned out to be an enjoyable solve. Three goodies in a row from the Graunid so expect a regression to the norm tomorrow.
Thanks both.
Tim C@25. I also had difficulties embracing the clue for DESDEMONA. It seems counter-grammatical. I think it’s ignore all punctuation, the hyphen and the comma. and the capitalisation. Devil, embracing (is) deviant slave.
It could simply be devil embraced by deviant slave. Why not?
I particularly liked the clever misdirection for the anagram fodder for the little ones, WURST and RUNIC. Which although they were almost my last ones in, made me smile. So now it’s first names only that we need to conjure up to solve these devilish clues as in Tony (Blair) to get ONYX and Mick (Jagger or Hucknell or whoever) to get GIMMICK. Must move with the times though. Lots to like today, I’m warming more and more to Brummie’s style…
Tim C @25 and paddymelon @29 – I’m struggling to see your problem with 16dn.
I don’t think it’s unusual to separate two or more adjectives qualifying the same thing by a comma, is it?
“It could simply be devil embraced by deviant slave. Why not?” – that’s exactly how I saw it (with ‘Sade’ rather than ‘slave’ 😉 )
Anyone else fall into the same trap as me for RISK ASSESSMENT. I had the S and seriously suspected the R of RISK. Into my head popped “Lively? Aha, FRISKY! Without the leading F!! The rest was clear…” And then wasted untold minutes of my life trying to work out which bit or the wordplay told me to remove the final Y…
Fun puzzle, not too taxing, with some nice constructions and definitions, though some of the surfaces are pretty random.
DROOL, DOROTHY and MARTYRDOM were my favourites today.
Tim C @25: The comma is for the surface – the standard orthography for separating a string of adjectives. It isn’t relevant to the construction.
The immense popularity of Ms SWIFT is one of the greatest mysteries of our age 🙂
Thanks to Brummie and Eileen
blaise @32: Same here!
me too, Blaise@32.
I had STING instead of SWIFT for 21 down which held me up for a while. Still can’t see what’s wrong with it. Wrong era, perhaps?
Blaise @32 – add me to the list!
[A few years ago we stayed in one of the main hotels in Stratford where all the rooms were named after Shakespearean characters. Ours was DESDEMONA, which I think possibly made my wife feel a bit nervous. As far as I know they didn’t have a King Duncan guest bedroom.]
Yes pdm @29, Eileen @31 and Gervase @33, it’s most likely my poor understanding, but I read it as devil (demon) is embracing deviant (anag) “sade” whereas it’s (sade*) embracing demon. I know Azed does this a fair bit (sometimes without the comma) but it’s always a bit of a hiccup for me. Too long a day maybe.
I must have been on the right wavelength, this one went in relatively quickly. I enjoyed all the gentle misdirections…
15a YIELDED – The Guardian and Observer style guide: F: ‘
forgo – go without; past tense forwent, past participle forgone
forego – go before; forego, past tense forewent, past participle foregone (as in “foregone conclusion”)’
But of course Chambers allows forgo to conjugate like forego. I know which I’d go for.
Tim C @39 – thanks for clarifying. I think I understand: you were mistaking the hyphen in devil-embracing for a dash? Too much punctuation, I think! 😉
Thanks both. I had a big tick for WHIP ROUND – such economy. ‘Slaver’ in 26a DROOL reminded me (once again) of this.
pm@16: I never knew what a billy-bong was until now. That song now makes some sense. 😉
This is the first non-Vulcan Mondays “proper” Guardian cryptic I’ve finished! Not entirely as a result of my growing cryptic understanding, there were a few I guessed from crossers/assumed defs… And that’s why I ended up here to clear a few up… But I’ll take it.
MARTYRDOM a favourite if not for the fact it reconfirms “mom” as a legitimate term for mother. Like Dave F @3, I was always baffled by that, and for cards with fonts that were malleable, I’d complete the top of the “U” to get there.
Thanks Brummie and of course Eileen. Might just be getting the hang of this……
Alphalpha@43…almost as perplexed as I used to get about the origin of ex Leicester City soccer manager Claudio Ranieri’s mantra “Dilly Ding Dilly Dong” a few years ago…
After feeling somewhat bruised by last week, I am pleased to say all three this week are in my comfort zone. Many thanks to Eileen for the blog and to Brummie for a real treat. My favourites were TERRACOTTA ARMY, DOROTHY and MARTYRDOM.
I haven’t seen the Terracotta Army in China but had the good fortune to see an exhibition featuring some of them in Liverpool. Quite extraordinary. Link below 😎.
https://youtu.be/12e80PcFi1M?si=Urr8zRX1KrkUZMKn
Alphalpha@43. bill y/bong. LOL.I’ll never think of Waltzing Matilda the same way again.
Frankie @41. Plus, in neither of the defs does “foregone” equate to YIELDED.
5D – I just watched the Twisters movie thats out today so felt good 🙂
Thanks Brummie and Eileen
With Brummie more than most other setters I find myself checking my answers because I’m not convinced they’re right. There were several of these here, plus the completely unparsed BLOSSOM and the missing N in TALON.
TERRACOTTA ARMY was an excellent spot!
teapot@36: another STING here. And I failed to parse BLOSSOM, or see why foregone=YIELDED, though I expect it’s in some dictionary somewhere.
Blaise@32: I was worse. I derived RISK from “frisky”, and never even wondered where the ‘y’ went!
“Well-being hour” in the office this morning which meant being told to do whatever we wanted so I found a local shop and sat down with coffee, cake and the crossword having tested out the piano I saw hiding in the corner once I found my table! This combined with being on Brummie’s wavelength has resulted in a completed grid before lunch and unusually early comment. Lots of ticks and smiles – Dorothy, gimmick, detox, onyx to name but four. Lots went in and then parsed (risk assessment, terracotta army) but missed irritation as anagram indicator for runic. Sensed a slightly Germanic theme but only in places. Can’t wait for next well-being hour next month! Thank you Brummie and Eileen.
“Well-being hour” sounds like a great idea, Pianoman! 😉
Ex PM as “(T)ony” seems a bit overfamiliar!
If a millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch one ship, how expert are you if you know one onion? And how many should a true expert know?
Eileen, the “one” in ENTERTAIN needs to be A or you’d have ENTERTIIN.
iN16D, the hyphen is the key. The deviant SADE is devil-embracing, is embracing a devil.
Really enjoyed this puzzle, thanks Brummie and Eileen.
As doable as it was enjoyable: yesterday’s was a struggle and I wasn’t able to finish without several reveals, so this was a welcome contrast.
Thanks, Valentine @56 – amended now. I thought I’d got away with no typos today. 🙁
Isn’t someone who knows their onions a cromyologist? 🙂
This completely baffled me on a first pass, all I got was a couple of obvious anagrams. After that it slowly fell into place, to my surprise and relief, with the SW the last to yield. That’s pretty much ideal for a crossword, isn’t it?
Eileen, not sure why you are doubting yourself on 23D. It seemed to me one of the most straightforward constructions. But then again, I often struggle with the ones others find easy, and vice versa.
Anyway, I enjoyed this greatly. Thank you Eileen and Brummie.
For a DOROTHY-and-hurricane related tidbit: if you start your CD copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon at the moment when the MGM lion roars the second time in The Wizard of Oz, all sorts of odd coincidences happen. Notably, the tornado coincides with the song The Great Gig In the Sky. (“Money” starts at the exact moment the movie switches to color.) I do not know what drunk or high college kid discovered this, but it was making the rounds when I was in college. I can’t claim credit.
Separately, when I see Sade, these days I normally think of the jazz singer (or her band), not the sadistic Marquis, so that clue seemed a bit…odd at first.
I had not heard the expression “whip-round,” which appears to be British, so that was my last one in. Meanwhile, I’ve trained myself that “mother” is mum rather than mom in these things, so being an American actually didn’t help with that one! (Yes, I do in fact use mom, not mum, like almost all Americans.)
Anyway, thanks to Eileen for the clear and lively blog.
Perfidious Albion @44 – congrats! It’s a great feeling, isn’t it 🙂
mrpenney@61: I never even thought of the Marquis… Amazing what we pass over as a normality in the surfaces.
Like jeceris and gladys, I can’t see my way to equating FOREGO (or FORGO, for that matter) and YIELD.
I didn’t know the verb SMARM, although the adjective SMARMY is familiar. I would have thought SMARM was a noun, but the dictionaries say it can be a verb, so that’s just my ignorance rearing its head as usual.
[Alphalpha
If you look back to the Vlad, you will see that I answered your question on hippos and dippers.]
jeceris, gladys, Ted: I rationalised YIELDED/for(e)gone as both having the connotation of ‘given up’, but I agree that it is difficult to find a sentence in which the two words are interchangeable.
I have only come across the verb SMARM in the expression ‘smarm one’s way into…’
Blaise @32 I thought of brisk for lively, I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle although it took some head scratching and memory stretching. I didn’t know smarm was a word, only smarmy which Uriah Heap was. My favourite was Dorothy and last one in was Onyx.
Yet another wonderful puzzle that pitched up at just my ‘strength’. It’s been a fun week so far and I won’t begrudge the expert solvers a few toughies to end the week. The Slaver really threw me quite wonderfully as my GK is non-existent in that area, bar Colston the swimming statue in Bristol. Totally agree with your TALON Eileen…I’d got T, A, LO and already having the N as a crosser left it at that (as I often do).
Went back and looked long and hard for a theme, but apart from the boozy items inc DETOX, nothing leapt out. Thought there might have been a Euro 2024 link with the booze, the WURST, maybe even ENTERTAIN, MARTYRDOM and GO FOR GOLD etc but it’s very tenuous.
Thanks Brummie and well blogged Eileen.
paddymelon @16,
Ex-PM Tony? That’d be Abbott, right? 😉 .
Bit late to this but, from the Jerry Herman musical “Mack & Mabel” (a reference to the Keystone Cops, I assume):
🎶Ev’ry time a cop falls down my spirits soar
I’m in heaven when a flat foot hits the floor
Billy clubs and nightsticks make me feel
Happy as a new-born pup
‘Cause ev’ry time a cop falls down
My heart leaps up🎶
(muffin@65: Thanks I had spotted that but the timing was such that I decided that any acknowledgment of your kindness would go unseen – pleased to acknowledge now. (And how very strange that they both can do that…))
[Alphalpha
Pleased that you saw it.]
Alphalpha @63: I linked the deviant Sade to WHIP-ROUND in my comment @1 but I guess I wasn’t
explicit enough, so to speak 😉
Very enjoyable and not too tricky.
Eileen, thanks for confirming TALON, I saw it that way too.
teapot @36 – yes, I had STING, and then (Grace) SLICK, both of which seemed to work for me.
Suboptimal hospitality-sector names (LordJim @38):-
And I don’t think I’ll be hunting for a Bistro Titus Andronicus, either, next time I go to see something in Stratford.
Oops – hit Post Comment before saying: Many Thanks to Brummie and Eileen. Much appreciated, as always.
For TALON I had T+A(eLO)N with AN for single, disregarding that there was no inclusion indicator.
Another frisky here! Didn’t quite work. Where’s the missing Y?
I bunged in RISK ASSESSMENT anyway and came here for enlightenment.
It’s amazing how often you can get the right answer with incorrect reasoning.