Guardian Cryptic 29,627 by Brendan

85 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,627 by Brendan”

1. Tigger (4d): “No matter his weight in pounds, shillings and ounces (19d)/He always seems bigger because of his bounces” (A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh). The spring tail is a Disney addition. The original is miles better.
   Saw the dog & cat references early, which led me too to the long down. All the downs except 3 and 16 have them. Lovely use of the theme. Thanks, Brendan and loonapick.

2. Great quote TT @1, adds depth to 19d. Fun puzzle, ta BnL.

3. I agree with TassieTim; I think the theme is focused in the downs and UPCAST is coincidental. I cracked this the other way, getting the long one early on and then realising that all the down clues that followed it had something in common, after which we were away. I think the best of the clues are amongst those downs: ASPARAGUS, TIGGER, AL CAPONE, LAIKA and MUTT are my faves today.

   Thanks Brendan and loonapick

4. I assumed the point was that all of the down answers are related to cats and dogs because ASPARAGUS is the full name of Gus the Theatre Car in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and so also the musical Cats. This led me to search for a justification for AL CAPONE, and I found a book called Love, Chocolate, and a Dog Named Al Capone by Abigail Drake.

   Thanks, Brendan and loonapick.

5. Matthew@4 – if that’s the case, then RAIN CATS AND DOGS makes even more sense.

6. Poor old LAIKA.

7. Correction: Laika died of hyperthermia, excessive heat (the cooling system failed). If she’d survived for some days as planned she was intended to be euthanised by drugged food. See Wikipedia.

8. Not being a cat and dog aficionado, I wasn’t too hopeful about the theme (and didn’t know about GUS or ASPARAGUS being a cat’s name), but there were no obscure breeds, diolch byth. Came to see if there was anything more to 19d than just a CD, but I see that TT@1 has provided another reference for it, so thanks to him. Held up in the SW corner because of the time it took me to see the ‘does’ trick again. Agree that 5 was something of a gimme to help with the completion of the puzzle. Smiled at 14, though perhaps ‘GATE’ for scandal is coming to the end of its useful life now. Thanks to Brendan and loonapick.

9. YesMe@7 – sorry – that was a typo. I knew it was hyperthermia as I’d looked Laika up last week as she appeared in another puzzle and I made the mistake of assuming she was a male dog, so read her story.

10. I also saw “ounces” as wildcats in 19d. And wondered about the spring in TIGGER’s tail, too, thinking: hmph, not in the books, has to be Disney. We got banned from WHSmith in my sixth form school town for quoting Winnie the Pooh in store, (Eeyore’s birthday) as noisy disruptive teenagers, and I can still remember chunks.

    Enjoyable puzzle, thank you to Brendan and loonapick.

11. I thought BERG was nicely hidden and I liked EARL very much and DEERHOUNDS which is possibly an oldie but a goodie. Thanks for the blog and thanks Brendan.

12. The answers went in easily enough and raised several smiles but with Brendan there’s always something extra, then often just a little bit more, so I’m grateful to TassieTim @1 and Matthew @4 (I’d forgotten about ASPARAGUS) for the icing on the cake , plus the cherry on top.

    My favourite clues were RESPIGHI, FOOLHARDIEST, ASPARAGUS and LAIKA.

    Many thanks to Brendan and loonapick for a great start to the day.

13. My top faves: REENCOURAGED, RED SETTERS, LAIKA and MUTT.
    Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

14. Thanks Matthew@4
    I really wanted 3D and 16D to be theme-related – to complete the RAINing – but couldn’t parse them.

    Thanks for clarifying a few things, loonapick, and a big thank you to Brendan for another heap of fun.

15. I gave up on 1ac and 2d.

    Favourites: FOOLHARDIEST, TIGGER, RAIN CATS AND DOGS, TOLLGATE, MUTT.

    I agree with loonapick that 5ac was barely cryptic.

    New for me: the Dawna Tenasserim landscape in Myanmar and Thailand known as the “Land of Cats” for 7d. I think this is more relevant than simply referring to Burmese cats?

    21d: I read an interesting and sad article in the Smithsonian mag online: The Sad, Sad Story of Laika, the Space Dog, and Her One-Way Trip Into Orbit. How cruel we humans are 🙁

16. [Shanne @10, congratulations and kudos for getting banned from WHSmith for being noisy and disruptive. My only claim to fame at that age was fainting in the Preston branch of British Home Stores. I think I led a sheltered life. 😉 ]

17. Very good indeed and provided a welcome diversion from passing a kidney stone 🙁

    Top ticks for EARL, INDIGO, PIT BULLS for the lovely surface, and RAIN … DOGS for this neo-Brechtian classic from Tom Waits

    Cheers B&L

18. Very good indeed and provided a welcome diversion from passing a kidney stone 🙁

    Top ticks for EARL, INDIGO, PIT BULLS for the lovely surface, and RAIN … DOGS for this neo-Brechtian classic from Tom Waits

    Cheers B&L

19. Thanks Brendan and loonapick
    I saw a theme!
    I was baffled by EARL, and I don’t think it really works. I saw the ounces in FELINE, but don’t see how pounds fits – stray dogs are kept in pounds, but not cats, I think.
    Is UPCAST really a word?
    FOI and favourite RESPIGHI.

20. Thanks to Brendan and Loonapick

    Lovely theme which didn’t distract solver nor distort the puzzle. Some excellent clues especially Tollgate.

    I feel it’s a shame when the weakest clue is 1a

21. Loved every minute of this themed puzzle (except for also feeling very sad about LAIKA at 31d, though I was uplifted by the bounciness from TIGGER at 4d once I got that one).
    It’s a clever setter who can get a themed reference into every down clue, thus creating a nicely symmetrical feel, in this case like rain falling. I appreciated being reminded of 3d ASPARAGUS and 16d AL CAPONE’s dog’s name, both of which stretched me a little more. I also thought PEEK at 2d was just a play on PEKINGESE (as loonapick suggests) but google tells me it’s also the name of a Chinese crested canine character in a film called “Cats and Dogs”.
    I also liked the two linked clues which threw in some herbs to the across clues – 17a BRASILIA (basil) and 24a ORIGANUM (oregano?).
    I do hope that the surface for “RED SETTERS” in 8d doesn’t mean Brendan is still kicking himself for the recent ADDIS ABABA error.
    Thanks to Brendan from a happy solver and to loonapick for the explanatory blog.

22. Couldn’t parse EARL, BURMA or loi FELINE, but at least the theme became clear after I had inserted a few, particularly the all inclusive 5d.
    Many thanks Brendan and Loonapick this morning, and yes, as a ten year old I remember feeling very sad about LAIKA…

23. I’m with muffin@19 in thinking that quite a few of these clues were rather loose – I saw that “ounces” are cats but could not see where “pounds” fitted in. Ditto “red setters” went in because of enumeration of the first word, not because it was definitively clued. “rope burn” – I was looking for something cryptic and found nothing. Is “by Disraeli” grammatical here? Usually I love Brendan’s puzzles but here I thought there was too much stretching for the theme and too much reliance on answers being themed to write them in.

    Many thanks loonapick, Brendan and various contributors finding odd links to cats and dogs – but I suspect it’s rather like popular music ensembles in that almost anything will be a pet’s name if you look hard enough.

24. I also agree with Tassie T @1: Disney’s cutesy additions to AA Milne’s original are unforgivable; of course, EVERYBODY knows when Winnie The Pooh speaks he really sounds like Alan Bennett.
    I guessed EARL, wondering if Disraeli had been one and, like Muffin @19, I’m not wild about it.
    The rest was fun, however – and if 3D and 16D do indeed have a feline/canine connection, then the theme’s even more impressive.
    Many thanks to Brendan and loonapick

25. Splendid puzzle. A real delight, with a theme close to most of our hearts and brilliantly indicated at 5 down. Too many gems to pick a single COD, but special likes for FOOLHARDIEST, TOLLGATE, MUTT, RESPIGHI, ASPARAGUS, DEERRHOUNDS and BURMA.
    Now that we don’t see Pasquale/Bradman quite so much since he got involved with the Mephisto and it seems that Picaroon/Buccaneer is devoting time to the Telegraph, it is always a joy to see Brendan’s name on the puzzle.
    By the way, can anyone enlighten me as to quite what James Brydon is doing at the Telegraph? I can’t find any reference other than in the blog of his last Guardian outing on January 30 (“Good to see another (final?) puzzle from the pirate before he goes into setting Purdah in his new job at the Telegraph…..”)
    As a subscriber to Telegraph Puzzles (but not the newspaper, heaven forbid!!!) I can already see a difference in the level of difficulty and clueing as well as an abandonment of trotting out some of the same hackneyed old chestnuts which had become their stock-in-trade.

26. 18 ac. esra?

27. [Welbeck @24; earlier generations (and my own middle-aged children) still regard Norman Shelley from Children’s Hour as the definitive Winnie the Pooh – available on YouTube, in audio only of course. As for the idea that Tigger has a springy tail – words fail me.]

    I’m another one puzzled by ‘pounds’, though I finally saw ‘ounces’.

28. Fun puzzle from Brendan, with a theme obvious even to me – though I didn’t actually use it to solve the puzzle and missed the relevance of some of the downs. And I failed to see the link between FELINE and TIGGER (who doesn’t appear in the book ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’, incidentally – he is not introduced until the sequel ‘The House At Pooh Corner’ 🙂 ).

    Unlike muffin and JoFT I don’t have a problem with the more allusive clues: RED SETTERS seems a perfectly reasonable DD to me, and I spotted EARL from Disraeli’s title and saw the hidden anagram subsequently – ‘included by’ works for me.

    Favourites: RESPIGHI, TIRADE, AL CAPONE (for their construction and polished surfaces) and the Russian doll FOOLHARDIEST.

    Thanks to Brendan and loonapick

29. I don’t understand how you get FELINE from the clue.

30. I thought several of these were rather dodgy, including the not-really-cryptic ROPE BURN, the strange EARL and the cryptic fodder for INDIGO (‘opening statement’ meaning I GO is a considerable stretch).

31. I found this easier than Brendan usually is for me, and an easy theme for once (though I’m not convinced by AL CAPONE as a themer, and had to check that UPCAST was a word).

    I’m not happy with the construction of EARL. As Disraeli is a fairly short word the hidden anagram fodder is easy enough to spot in this case, but how far down this path (somewhere unspecified in this longer word there are n consecutive letters which are an anagram of the answer) would we like setters to go?

    Favourites PIT BULLS and the nested FOOLHARDIEST.

32. poc @30
    The “opening” statement is “IN I GO”.
    Mike France @29
    “Ounce” is a name for certain types of big cat – snow leopards, for example. I’ve not seen “pounds” explained yet, though!

33. Thanks to those who have added comments enriching the theme, although I agree that ROPE BURN and EARL were a bit under par. I’m afraid that I’m in the minority, when it comes to pet-loving, vannucci @25. Likes for RESPIGHI, REENCOURAGED, FOOLHARDIEST, INDIGO and AL CAPONE. TIGGER seemed fine, it doesn’t really matter that the bouncing tail wasn’t in the original books. I agree muffin, that ‘pounds’ is still out there.

    Ta Brendan & loonapick.

34. The “pound” in the USA is the place where strays are taken to be reclaimed by their owners – unclaimed animals are rehomed or euthanized. Originally, it was only for dogs, but now includes cats and other creatures. It isn’t usually used in this sense in the UK, but maybe it is in Ireland, where Brendan is based, so you might expect to find cats in the pound?

35. I missed the theme in the previous Brendan, so was determined to get it here, but luckily it was fairly obvious. Very enjoyable. I always like a -GATE clue (they will never go out of date for me, Tomsdad @8). And I smiled at “my opening statement?” for IN I GO – the question mark indicates that it’s a bit playful.

    But my favourite was the very clever RED SETTERS with the play on “still”, and I’m sure that Julie in Australia is right @21 that Brendan is ruefully telling us that he still feels bad about the mistake in his last puzzle.

    Many thanks Brendan and loonapick.

36. gladys @34: yes on reflection, when Battersea Dogs Home morphed into Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, it effectively became a feline pound as well.

37. gladys @34: That seems a reasonable rationalisation for ‘pound’ (Brendan is certainly Irish, but unless he has repatriated himself he lives in the US – Portland OR, I believe. I presume that is the reason for his pseudonym, after the legend of the Irish Saint Brendan crossing the Atlantic).

38. vannucci @ 25 James Brydon is Deputy Crossword Editor at the Toryrag: as he’s employed by them he isn’t allowed to set elsewhere.

39. If I search for “cat pound near me” , I get a number of suggestions, so it seems to be a thing. Inventive as ever in spite of the couple of weaker clues already mentioned.

40. When I saw “jumbles” in the EARL clue, I couldn’t help my mind wandering, via
    The Jumblies no doubt, to Edward Lear whose surname happens to be an anagram of EARL! I wonder if any others strayed similarly
    As ever with Brendan – wonderful
    And a great blog, loonapick!
    Many thanks, both and all

41. Laika

    ‘First the Dog’ by Zbigniew Herbert. Worth a read.

    Nice puzzle and a good blog. Thanks both.

42. A bit of a stretch for 19d OUNCES can be found in POUNDS (16 oz = 1 Pound) and OUNCES are FELINE.

43. …and then of course there is Walt Disney’s famous 1955 animation Lady and the Tramp where Lady is imPOUNDed with various canine characters, including one called BULL. No FELINEs there that I can recall. Only in other scenes, one in which those of the Siamese breed claw their way down through some curtains I dimly seem to remember…

44. Simon S @38. Many thanks for putting me out of my misery. A crying shame, though………

45. Thanks TassieTim@1. I came for the parsing of FELINE, my LOI. Thanks Brendan for a lot of fun and expanding my knowledge of Pooh. Thanks loonapick for the blog. Sort of relevant, and always worth a listen anyway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfvASyLcKs4&list=PLBzBwYhHpqLIJQwyAJgYwFh4-pl-8zrGt

46. Chambers: pound – “ An enclosure in which to keep stray animals …”

    Presumably pound is there for misdirection value

47. I liked RAIN CATS AND DOGS and the doggy and catty references. I also liked the good anagrams for REENCOURAGED and PIT BULLS, and the wordplays for GREAT DANE and AL CAPONE. If we’re desperate for more themed references, there is CAPO, which apparently is a Basset hound. I think this may just be serendipity though.

    Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

48. Bodycheetah @46
    The pound would need a very high fence to keep cats in!

49. Thanks to loonapick and everyone. I especially enjoy the nostalgia, the gems of information, and the thematic justifications I never thought of. Julie in Australia @ 21: Nice hypothesis. I regret, but don’t agonize over, errors, as long as they are reasonably rare. And I keep an eye on them for signs of cognitive decline.

    Anyone interested in my political positions can now freely access them at georgebriangreer.substack.com

50. Thanks for the blog, very neat set of clues and I could happily ignore any themes. TOLLGATE a very original use of gate, INDIGO very clever with the misleading opening , MUTT is nice for a small word and pretty universal .

51. Got to within 6 of finishing which is a victory for me.
    Very enjoyable, so much easier than Vulcan yesterday.
    Thanks both.

52. [ Anyone who has never seen Mercury it is time that you did . The next 10 days it keeps getting easier to spot , you need a clear sky and a clear Western horizon , over the sea is best . ]

53. [Roz @52
    Apparently it could be possible to see the other seven planets just after dusk for the next 3 or 4 days. See here (I know that Roz won’t follow the link!]

54. [ Thanks Muffin but I only like naked-eye astronomy . We have had four planets for quite a few weeks, we are now losing Saturn but gaining Mercury , just a slim chance of seeing five if the skies are clear . ]

55. [The article does say that all except Neptune would be naked-eye observable if you had perfect vision and conditions. I’m not sure I believe that, though, as Uranus would presumably have been discovered far earlier if it was?]

56. [ I am lucky if I see Uranus once a year , November is the time , new Moon and perfect conditions and knowing exactly where to look . Saturn is getting harder to see each night but Mercury will get easier , in 10 days will be best . ]

57. Thanks Brendan for an excellent crossword. I found this on the gentle side for Brendan but no less imaginative. My favourites were TIRADE, FOOLHARDIEST, PEEK, ASPARAGUS, PIT BULLS (wonderful dogs sometimes subject to heinous abuse), and FELINE (liked ‘pounds and ounces’). Thanks loonapick for the blog.

58. [I make that 8 planets Muffin @53 – see the diagram in your reference]

59. [Dave @58
    I suppose so, if you count Earth too! Pluto has been demoted, so there are only 8 planets around Sol now.]

60. [Sorry, I was editing the last comment, when the edit disappeared – has the entire edit to be done in the 2 minutes? I was also trying to add a link during the ededit, but it seems you can’t do that?

    The diagram in muffin’s reference is not how they are actually positioned – see here for example]

61. Good puzzle, unusually I found it easier to get on Brendan’s wavelength than I did Vulcan’s yesterday. I thought FOOLHARDIEST and ORIGANUM were satisfying to construct, and I liked the “does” trick in DEERHOUNDS once the fine blog pointed it out to me. Favourite was TOLLGATE.
    [My favourite use of the ubiquitous “gate” suffix was the so-called “plebgate” affair – where Andrew Mitchell MP allegedly branded a policeman a “pleb” for correctly challenging him to produce his security credentials at the gated entrance to Downing Street – as the “gate” happened to be apposite for once.]

62. [Dave @60
    I get about 3 1/2 minutes, but there are some things you can’t do in edit mode – bold, italic, and link, for example.]

63. [Mandarin @61: I think that one was also in fact known as Gategate 🙂 ]

64. …and Roz@52, etc ..while we’re on the theme of today’s Cryptic, is Sirius or the DOG star still visible up there in a clear night sky…?

65. Enjoyed this. I knew Disraeli was an EARL because I visited his home at Hughenden (NT) on Saturday, nice timing. Initially I got RESPIGHI and BERG early on so though we might be getting a composer theme but pretty soon realised we were in dog and cat territory.

66. I found this a bit tough. I got hung up on does try being an anagram of destroy, and wasted time working that. I also biffed indigo without seeing the cryptic. However, I did see the Edward Lear sidelight in earl.

67. One of my grandfathers told me a story about Inigo Jones showing the king (Charles I?) around a building he had designed. The point of the story was Jones forgetting himself and going through a door before the king, and being reproofed with, “no, in I go, Jones!” (I’m not sure I fully appreciated the point of the story, being only eight at the time, but it has somehow stuck with me, despite having forgotten much more useful stuff.)

    Clues like 5a are there to catch out people who ignore the surfaces and go straight for items of potential wordplay. Complaining that such clues are not cryptic misses the point, I feel.

68. [ Ronald@64 , Sirius very visible tonight , brightest object after Venus. Follow Orion’s belt down and to the left. Also Leo , quite low in the sky , underneath The Plough . ]

69. Wonderful story, sheffield hatter @67! – many thanks 😉 (It would have been the Banqueting house, I think, qv https://www.hrp.org.uk/banqueting-house/history-and-stories/the-story-of-banqueting-house/#gs.k1itmc )

    Re 5ac – well said!

70. Wasn’t there an intruder into Buck House during the late queen’s reign called Jones, nicknamed “Inigo”?
    Google tells me he was called Michael Fagin – oh well!

71. Roz@68🙂

72. Knowing how to define cryptically has its uses. Someone opined on a rugby blog that it is well known that the Irish team cheats in every aspect of the game. I got round the censor — and readers understood the message — by advising him to depart elsewhere and perform an act usually considered physically impossible. I followed up, again successfully, with more advice to attach a heavy weight to the relevant thing and stretch it till the aforementioned act becomes possible.

73. Brian 🙂

74. [Roz, Muffin, et al: I was able to pick out Uranus from our back garden with the naked eye – but that was back in the 1960s, when there was far less light pollution than nowadays. I followed the planet’s slow movement for several months. No hope of repeating that feat today – at least not from where I live now!

    I’ve been keeping an eye out for Mercury these past few nights but haven’t spotted it yet. Finding a clear western horizon isn’t easy where I live. Maybe I’ll strike lucky come Friday or Saturday if the weather’s clear.]

75. I wasn’t quite on Brendan’s wavelength here: I did complete this puzzle but wasn’t entirely happy with all the clues. I could see that FELINE fitted the crossers and the theme, and I knew the second meaning of ‘ounces’, but I still thought the clue a bit vague. And I wasn’t sure if UPCAST (my loi) was a word. REENCOURAGED (at least without a hyphen) seems a terribly ugly contrived word. And I thought the spelling was OREGANUM – but maybe because I was thinking of the dried herb.

    But I’ll give ticks for TOLLGATE (ha ha!); TIRADE; FOOLHARDIEST (for the intricate wp); RAINING CATS AND DOGS; and MUTT.

    I remember once, in Spanish evening classes, trying to translate RAINING CATS AND DOGS literally (llueve gatos y perros) but the teacher said it wouldn’t make sense to a Hispanic; nearest equivalent is llueve a cántaros (raining buckets). But it was good for a laugh.

    Thanks to Brendan and loonapick.

76. Nice puzzle, wonderful blog, good company there!
    Glad to meet people who feel the same way about Milne, T. S. Eliot and Edward Lear (I was baffled by 18a, but now I like the line: jumbles – The Jumblies – Lear – Dis-RAEL-i – earl)

    Thanks, Brendan and loonapick!

    Thank you, chargehand @41, it is a great poem!

77. Re pounds, I thought Zoos.
    The original pounds were for stray sheep. If the owner didn’t claim them within a week, they became the property of the impounder. There is the remains of one in Felinde Farchog Pembrokeshire.

78. [ Laccaria@75 , March 8th will be the best night for Mercury , almost directly above sunset but still pretty low in the sky so you do need the clear horizon , I am lucky as I can look out to sea . Yes for Uranus we need dark skies which are hard to find these days , only really possible now at opposition which is late November this year and creeping towards December at about 5 days per year . ]

79. Chargehand@ 41 I will try and get someone to print the poem for me today .

80. Thanks Brendan and loonapick.

    I came here mostly to see the answer and parsing for 18a. We seem to be saying an anagram of an undefined set of letters which are part of a word is fine? It feels like a step beyond normal anagram cluing. Maybe the elegance of Disraeli being an Earl gets Brendan a pass I assume?

81. Tigger really made me laugh out loud. As clever, I think, as Araucaria’s “Foreign landlord is prophylactic” (6,6).

82. How does “cap” give “better”?

    Does “tease” to “tt” come from texting slang, or is there some other connection?

    I normally help myself with dictionaries and internet, but even so, still the first substitution is a mystery.

83. Karl, if you get to see this, think “to cap it all”, meaning something is better than the rest.

84. Completed, and caught the theme! Very enjoyable

    Surprised that no one (until Stuart@80) seemed bothered by 18a EARL — a very odd clue. Not sure that it works properly. “His” and “Distraeli — for instance!” both serve as definitions. Not really &lit, so “Disraeli” does double duty. And “jumble is included by Disraeli” as wordplay is imprecise

    REENCOURAGED evoked COUGAR for me

    Brian Greer (Brendan) @72, you’re out of control! 🙂 Really appreciate you dropping in to comment!

85. Karl @82, “tease audibly” gives “Ts” (more than one T) = “TT”

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