Guardian Cryptic 29,515 by Brummie

65 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,515 by Brummie”

1. Brummie is great at producing meaningful surfaces that deceive, like MAIGRET which had me trying to parse Taggart. Lots to like in this one.

2. I’m old enough to remember the BBC series with Rupert Davies, so MAIGRET jumped out to me immediately, for which I was very grateful having struggled to get a start initially. Came here to find the parsing of the second part of my LOI FEEBLE, and now kicking myself. There were a lot of plaudits on the Guardian comments and who can disagree? A challenge this morning, but all 18 and with meaningful surfaces. Especially liked LAMBDA, HOBGOBLIN and FLYING BUTTRESS, Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

3. Yes I liked it too, loonapick. Thanks you for sharing your solving experience as the blogger. I agree with you Tim C@1, Brummie writes really good surfaces which often tell little stories or provide a picture one can visualise. An example of the latter is to be found in CITYSCAPE at 1a while 17d CONVICT was one of the latter – with Vera in her funny olive hat and gaberdine coat investigating corruption “in the nick of time”. Amusing and clever. The STEPPING STONES clue at 8,9a and the CLOTTED Cream at 6d both got my vote for incorporating references to two of the best bands of all time! And isn’t HOBGOBLIN (13d) such a lovely word?
   Thanks very much to Brummie for the enjoyment and to loonapick for teasing out a couple of the parses I couldn’t see (like the “FLYING” part of 24,25a FLYING BUTTRESS). (And I wasn’t 100% sure of the parse for 10a FEEBLE either, Tomsdad@2.)

4. “Thank you” not “Thanks you”! And STANDING STONES not STEPPING STONES!!! Poor editing!

5. Liked FEEBLE, LONG-TERM and SOLUBLE among others.

   Thanks Brummie and loonapick!

6. Thanks Brummie and loonapick. I realised it would be a fun struggle with 1a misdirection Setter’s name not being I me etc.

   Lovely crossword – lots of head scratches but all perfectly resolvable

7. I semi-biffed CHILDREN as the second half of the parse beat me. Good workout otherwise.

8. I write as a longtime lurker, and one extremely grateful to all at 15 squared for helping to raise my crossword game from the terrible to the passable ! I am finally moved to comment to point out that 1 across is even cleverer than people here seem to have realised as I am sure the surface references the fact that Aston Villa (who hail from Birmingham) have qualified for the Champion’s League this year for the first time since winning the then European Cup in 1982.

9. Nice, not too hard but satisfying. My favourite was CNUT, for being a simple and concise clue, but which contained a misdirection that held me up for a while; I had -N-T, and ‘King Cole’ had me looking for words ending -NAT – the only one I could think of was ‘gnat’, which unsurprisingly didn’t seem to work at all. Also liked CITYSCAPE and many others.
   Thanks Brummie and loonapick.

10. Urban @8: I’m pleased to say that that added dimension to CITYSCAPE was lost on me.

    A thoroughly enjoyable crossword. No fuss or theme, just clever, deceptive surfaces. What a relief.

    Thanks for unravelling FEEBLE, loonapick, and only just seen “have a crack/try at something”.

11. 15a CHILDREN: the only occurrences of L(ead)D(e)R at oed.com are in the entries for SQ(uadro)N and S(enior).A(ir).C(raftman).

12. Thanks Brummie and loonapick
    I really enjoyed this one – just challenging enough. I didn’t parse the BLE of FEEBLE, as I was trying to remove a first letter from ?BLE.
    Favourite MAIGRET. Also liked CONVICT and SOLUBLE (as an ex chemistry teacher, I was constantly correcting the “soluable” spelling; one year every pupil spelled it liked that – I discovered that their previous teacher did too!)
    RHEUMATIC was a bit weak – couldn’t he have done better?

13. [Tomsdad@2 I also remember that MAIGRET, but I recently became aware of the old French version (with subtitles) with Bruno Cremer as the detective, showing on Talking Pictures TV. Far superior IMO. Thoroughly recommend it if you like that sort of thing.]

14. [‘There was a series with Rowan Atkinson as Maigret, but I found it unwatchable.]

15. [muffin@14, ah well, I quite liked it!🙂]

16. Thanks, loonapick, especially for parsing FEEBLE and CLOTTED.

    And thanks (and welcome) to Urban @8 for the cherry on top, which adds an extra tick for 1ac.
    My other ticks were for CNUT, ANGELIC, CONVICT, SOLUBLE and MAIGRET.

    Brummie’s puzzles quite often have a theme but I haven’t spotted anything today.

    Thanks to Brummie for a fun puzzle.

17. Thanks loonapick, I’ll echo those who struggled to parse FEEBLE, and who praised Brummie’s excellent surfaces. I agree that DOWNHILL was weak: a matter of trying all possible words: eg downward, downturn etc until one worked, not really ideal in a cryptic.

18. What an enjoyable start to a very dark autumnal day. Thanks Brummie and loonapick

19. I liked CITYSCAPE, CLOTTED and MAIGRET. [My Dad always called his assistant filthy Lucas] Another who tried in vain to see how able could mean down under.

20. Gently disagreeing with 17 Bullhassocks. ‘To go downhill’ is to decline, so the other words wouldn’t work in the context of the whole phrase.

21. I managed to fill the grid, but half a dozen unparsed – CITYSCAPE, TOTEM, SOLUBLE, TRILBY, CHILDREN, all evidence of my rather FEEBLE attempts to seek clarity. All rather hopefully biffed in. So many thanks to Loonapick this morning. Thought the not often employed word Enduring appearing twice in separate clues a bit strange, too. Some very nice clues, however, so of course thanks to Brummie as well…

22. Almost word for word what Eileen @16 said, though I did manage to parse CLOTTED.

    Thanks to S&B

23. …and I hadn’t realised that SOLUBLE could mean the same as Solvable. Always thought it was just a term used in Chemistry…

24. How many linked answers do we need for a theme? I am looking (slightly optimistically) at beers: STONES, HOBGOBLIN and (White) SHIELD. A quick Google has just revealed FLYING BUTTRESS. I would look for more, but it’s already making me thirsty, and I’m skint.

25. Thanks for the blog , very good puzzle , lots of neat and clever clues with a lot of variety . CLOTTED my favourite out of many.
    I am grateful that 26Across was not clued using an anagram .

26. [ Original Maigret is currently shown on Talking Pictures TV ]

27. muffin@14: I found the Atkinson Maigret to be very good, but de gustibus etc.

    Wasn’t fond of LDR but bunged it in. Couldn’t parse FEEBLE. CNUT was excellent.

28. [ Sorry Crossbar@13 I see you have put this better ]

29. For CHILDREN I had it as EN just from measure with “Leader’s short” = LDR , the setter warning us that it is not a usual abbreviation .

30. Tough and enjoyable.

    I did not parse 10ac apart from FEE = remuneration.

    I wondered about 21ac and 27ac – they did not seem to be very cryptic.

    Favourite: SOLUBLE.

    Thanks, both.

31. Really clever and enjoyable, though the parsing of FEEBLE eluded me. Brightened up another dull day!

    Thanks Brummie and loonapick

32. TheGreatArturo @24. For what it’s worth (not much) SPEARHEAD is Canadian brewer. But I think there may be almost as many beers as bands, so it may only be a ‘theme’ by accident. Good fun, though.

33. A handful were unparsed, more or less in line with those mentioned above, but that’s ok with me: this was very welcome after yesterday’s rather strange offering.

34. Ya learn summat every day!
    I had always previously used “solvable”, having thought of SOLUBLE only in relation to paracetamols and aspirins – which had me wondering for a bit if my print-out would self-destruct before I’d completed it.
    Like Beaulieu, I fell down the Nat King Cole rabbit-hole, even hunting for a King Gnat….until light dawned.
    DOWNHILL didn’t feel very cryptic,
    RHEUMATIC even less so – but these were more than compensated for by some real gems, best of which were FEEBLE, MAIGRET and the truly splendid CITYSCAPE.
    Many thanks loonapick and Brummie.

35. Another struggler with FEEBLE here. Consulted online dictionary of Aussie (‘down under’) slang for ‘pay’, absolutely no use.

36. Fun stuff from Brummie, plenty of variety and challenge but all fair and SOLUBLE. MAIGRET and CITYSCAPE were probably my favourites.

    Thanks loonapick for confirming LDR and the rest. In the same clue, EN is one of those constructions only known to people involved in printing and crosswords, which has slightly irked me ever since my mum explained it to me when I was starting out in the 70s. She was a journalist so knew these things, but normal people don’t. It’s in my list along with OR/”men” and all those rivers that are also flowers. They are fine once you know them, but I don’t see how a brand new solver would guess them (unless their mum told them).

    I wasn’t certain about RHEUMATIC, but the crossers made it inevitable. I suppose it’s vaguely cryptic with an alluring hint of soft drug indulgence that took me back to a happy time, long before my knees became “puffed”.

    Not being an expert on cathedral construction, I googled to confirm FLYING BUTTRESS, but the clue was fine.

    Thanks both.

37. I agree, this was a fine, fun challenge. Technically a DNF for me, as I had KNUT at 26a. I knew both this and Canute but not the correct version. Of course I could not parse mine!

    Thanks both.

38. I couldn’t see at the time why FLYING was ‘very short’ but just now realised it was as in ‘visit’. Thanks both.

39. I definitely needed to come here for the parsing, and to see if some guesses were actually on target. But otherwise pleased to have finished this one. Thanks!

40. Lovely from Brummie.Lots of misdirection. I seem to remember in the distant past Brummie clued he was a Villa fan. Ta for a necessary blog!

41. Good fun. Favourite was CNUT (I’m being very careful typing that) which was clever, but lots of other ticks.

    TheGreatArturo @24 and Alec @32, the theme is clearly fonts: CITYSCAPE, CUSP, SPEARHEAD, LAMBDA, TOTEM, HOBGOBLIN…

    Many thanks Brummie and loonapick, and Urban @8 for pointing out the extra dimension to 1a.

42. While much of this was very tough for me where others found it straightforward, 10a came easier than apparently it did for many, as did 6d, so I will take comfort in that. Where the L was coming from in 5d eluded me, so thank you loonapick.

    Lots of ticks especially 26a for the surface/misdirection, 1a for the misdirection, and 17a – I quickly suspected that the defn. ended at ‘nick’ but it was still tricky to tease out. Thank you Brummie.

    One quibble: while “cap” indicates an international player, I don’t see how they are interchangeable? A player who _has_ a cap _is_ an international. Am I the only one bothered by that? Does somebody have an example to the contrary?

43. Thanks Lord Jim@41 for elucidating the theme. All those fonts new to me.

44. Lord Jim@41 you are nearly correct, the full theme is Indie bands named after fonts.

45. Just to add my vote of approval for this one. I managed – just – to parse everything too, which is always an encouraging sign. My LOI was CNUT, where I had spent the whole time thinking it had something to do with that other “Old King Cole”… Nat King Cole. Didn’t spot the fonts theme, those were all new to me. Top-notch crossword, thanks to Brummie, Eileen et al.

46. I suspect more beer than fonts – Lamb and Trilby are brewers/beers and there are beers that are Angelic or Derringer and a Totem series. (I’ve been to a few folk festivals this summer/autumn and even if I haven’t drunk any, the programmes tend to chat about the beers on offer).

    Fun puzzle – thank you to loonapick and Brummie.

47. (Um, apologies if it wasn’t clear, but I was trying to be flippant about the fonts theme. In Brummie’s puzzle about a month ago (29,487), several commenters identified such a theme, and he said that no such theme was intended. As he also said (@51) “you can assume almost any word fits a font (or rock band) theme”. All those I mentioned @41 are actually fonts though.)

48. Thanks Brummie and loonapick. Very enjoyable. And thanks to MAC089 @38 for answering what would have been my query about flying.

49. This was one of those for me where it all seemed very hard until it didn’t. It all went in eventually, and was all satisfying.

    In FEEBLE, I was at first wondering if we were being asked, by “remuneration down under,” to come up with some Australian slang for money or dollars. (It feels like the ones I know are all American–bread, dough, scratch, clams, smackeroos, simoleons, bucks, cabbage, lettuce…)

50. [Today’s terrible old joke, which I was reminded of by my last post. What do you get when you put 50 male deer with 50 female pigs? A hundred sows ‘n bucks ($100,000)]

51. Thanks Brummie for a satisfying challenge, with CHILDREN and HOBGOBLIN my favourites. My LOI was CLOTTED; I would never have thought of ‘lot’ and ‘set’ as interchangeable. I recall reading somewhere once that ‘set’ is the English word with the most distinct meanings, so it is not a surprise that ‘lot’ (e.g. as ‘a job lot’) could mean the same as set in some circumstances. Thanks loonapick for an excellent blog.

52. Lord Jim@47: all those you mentioned are also bands (though some are fairly obscure).

53. Just to add my thanks to Brummie for a very fair and enjoyable challenge and to loonapick for explaining the parsing of CHILDREN. It was beyond me. I thought CONVICT and CITYSCAPE were lovely. Thanks also to Lord Jim, Ros and Gladys for making me laugh over the ghost theme 😎

54. I am probably being more than usually dense here, but can anyone enlighten me as to why ‘try’ = ‘crack’?

55. Never mind. I’ve got it now.

56. Andrew Sceats @54: take a crack at it = have a try at it.

57. Sure, but they aren’t synonyms; they’re meanalikes. Take a try at it? Have a crack at it?

    Guardian libertarianism. I say no more.

58. I had TAGGART for 20d.

    I solved CUSP, but nothing else.

59. loonapick is right that “ldr” isn’t in Chambers. That’s seems odd to me as “sqn” = squadron is there and I’ve never seen either abbreviation except together in SqnLdr.
    Fun puzzle, Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

60. Excellent puzzle. Invidious to single clues out, but the clever misdirection in FLYING BUTTRESSES (what the nevertheless ends up going into could be seen as very long hair), the neat clue for England’s most mis-spellable king, and the brilliant cryptic definition (with a marvellously misleading surface) of RHEUMATIC are standouts for me.
    Didn’t quite get the parsing of CHILDREN and thank you loonapick for putting me right.
    Ingenious try, Urban @8; but the parsing of 1a requires the football club to be “City”, even though the successful football club in Brum is indeed the Villa. Let’s just be thankful that in the Manchester Guardian’s crosser the reference isn’t to “Citeh”.
    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick

61. All went in like a dream. Thanks Brummie – You’re a real cutie ✔️

62. Pino@59: ✔️ – I agree, as does oed.com.

63. Lord Jim@47and @41.. 🙂 You’ve made my day.

64. [Lord Jim @41 – how about a font full of beer? That would be a challenge.]

65. [ Roz@26 Original Maigret available in 75 novels and 28 short stories (by Wikipedia’s count). ]

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