Mostly straightforward Monday fun – thanks to Brendan.
It being a Brendan puzzle, there is of course a theme, and here all the across answers form familiar two-word phrases. Noticing this early on helped me with some of the later answers.
| Across | ||||||||
| 7 | CONTRACT | Make short counterargument with pamphlet (8) CON (a counterargument) + TRACT (pamphlet) |
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| 9 | BRIDGE | Part of ship that crosses river, often (6) Double definition |
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| 10 | CAPE | Cold primate in sleeveless cloak (4) C + APE |
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| 11 | GOOSEBERRY | Kind of fool whose company isn’t wanted? (10) Double definition |
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| 12 | SIMPLE | In some clues, I’m pleasantly straightforward (6) Hidden in clueS I’M PLEasantly |
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| 14 | INTEREST | Present setter’s anagram to intrigue (8) IN (present) + SETTER* |
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| 15 | MILTON | Poet’s one line in masculine style (6) I (one) L[ine] in M[asculine] TON (style) |
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| 17 | KEYNES | Economist making crucial point inconclusively (6) KEY (crucial) + NES[s] (geographical headland or point) |
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| 20 | INTERIOR | Private put in grave situation backed foreign ruler (8) INTER (bury, put in grave) + reverse of ROI (French king) |
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| 22 | DESIGN | Reluctantly agree about son’s intention (6) S[on] in DEIGN |
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| 23 | ARITHMETIC | Thing reversed in chart I revised as piece of mathematics (10) Reverse of ITEM (thing) in (CHART I)* |
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| 24 | MEAN | Humble soldiers protecting area (4) A[rea] in MEN |
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| 25 | DOUBLE | Stand-in to make score of ten, say (6) To make a score (20) out of ten is to DOUBLE it |
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| 26 | SAUCEPAN | Something used by cooks in USA – pecan nuts (8) (USA PECAN)* |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | VOCALISM | It’s uttered very briefly on weird social media, initially (8) V[ery] + SOCIAL* + M[edia] |
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| 2 | STYE | Eye problem from middle of last year (4) The middle letters of laST YEar |
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| 3 | TANGLE | Seaweed gourmet ultimately put on fish (6) [gourme]T + ANGLE (to fish). Tangle is “coarse seaweed, esp. the edible Laminaria” |
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| 4 | ABSENTEE | Problem pupil stimulated in a communal meeting (8) SENT (stimulated) in A BEE (communal meeting) |
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| 5 | FIREBRANDS | Radicals assuming rising changes image (10) Reverse of IF (assuming) + REBRANDS |
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| 6 | AGORAS | Wide open spaces since found, after a journey over river (6) R[iver] in A GO (journey) + AS (since). Agora is a Greek marketplace, and the root of agoraphobia, fear of open spaces |
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| 8 | TROPIC | Subject embracing monarch in global circle (6) R (king or queen, monarch) in TOPIC |
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| 13 | POLLEN TUBE | What helps reproduce stock, say? Pet bull one redeployed (6,4) (PET BULL ONE)* – Stock is a plant, which a pollen tube would help to reproduce |
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| 16 | OPIUM DEN | Supplier of drug mostly impounded, destroyed (5,3) Anagram of IMPOUNDE[d] |
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| 18 | SIGN AWAY | Relinquish or keep subscribing? (4,4) Double definition |
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| 19 | GRATIS | Free traitor imprisoned by US troops (6) RAT (traitor) in GIS (US soldiers) |
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| 21 | NARROW | New missile limited in scope (6) N + ARROW |
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| 22 | DICTUM | Richard’s pronouncement on corporation, statement of principle (6) Homophone of “Dick” + TUM (stomach, corporation) |
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| 24 | MEET | These days, rarely fit for sports event (4) Double definition – MEET is an old word for fitting (as in “it is meet and righr so to do”) so rarely used in that sense these days |
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Quite difficult and I didn’t notice the theme until after I finished the puzzle when I looked at the btl comments at Guardian.
I couldn’t parse 1d as I assumed that V=very and the SM bit = social media which left me with umparsed OCALI!
New for me: POLLEN TUBE.
Favourite: INTERIOR.
When you lay out the answers like this, the theme is obvious – but I missed it in the grid. I think FIREBRANDS took me as long as all the others combined (though I didn’t see the parsing of MEET). Thanks, Brendan and Andrew.
I can’t see why my comment@1 was deleted so I will try posting it again…
Quite difficult and I didn’t notice the theme until after I finished the puzzle when I looked at the btl comments at Guardian.
I couldn’t parse 1d as I assumed that V=very and the SM bit = social media which left me with an unparsed OCALI!
New for me: POLLEN TUBE.
Favourite: INTERIOR.
Quite difficult and I didn’t notice the theme until after I finished the puzzle when I looked at the btl comments at Guardian.
I couldn’t parse 1d as I assumed that V=very and the SM bit = social media which left me with an unparsed OCALI!
New for me: POLLEN TUBE.
Favourite: INTERIOR.
NOTE: Comments 1 and 3 were me – I see now that the system works quite well. I had mis-typed my email address so the comments were not accepted. I guess an email was sent to that incorrect email address which most likely does not exist!
Thanks Brendan and Andrew
I found this hard for a Monday, particularly the RHS, and I didn’t parse ABSENTEE or the NES part of KEYNES.
Favourite GRATIS.
No theme, of course, but it’s very well executed.
Fairly straightforward. As always I failed to spot the theme, which would have speeded up the solve. I took a bit of time to get on the wavelength.
Quibble: I wouldn’t describe an agora as a wide open space since it would probably have buildings round it, but I suppose agoraphobia justifies the clue.
Favourite: FIREBRANDS
Nho POLLEN TUBE but obvious from the clue.
Mostly straightforward and I only spotted the theme after MILTON KEYNES leapt out and all nicely done with the others. Couldn’t parse MEET so thanks for that plus the extra gen on AGORAS. My favourites were FIREBRANDS, POLLEN TUBE and OPIUM DEN.
Ta Brendan & Andrew.
I got the theme straight away and so got a few solutions directly from that, which sort of feels like cheating.
No quibbles. As usual didn’t look for theme, though in this case I would have seen it if I had looked. Favourites DOUBLE, FIREBRANDS (like TassieTim@2, it took me a while), ARITHMETIC. Also took a while on AGORAS, trying to think of a word meaning something like prairies, steppes etc. But I suppose an agora is a wide open space compared to, say, an alleyway.
Thanks both.
Quite tough for a Monday although for one I did spot the theme, although I didn’t know that Cape Gooseberry is an actual fruit. 5d took almost as much time to solve as the rest. Thanks to B & A.
Thinking of chicken stock I had PULLET BONE initially, before the crossers taught me POLLEN TUBE. And took way too long to realise BRIDGE was as straightforward as it turned out to be.
A few years ago, a strange little yellow fruit appeared in my garden in London, which I discovered was a CAPE GOOSEBERRY. The plant yielded lots of them and they tasted very pleasant with ice cream. I was looking forward to a bumper crop the next year but alas, they never returned.
I had the same trouble parsing VOCALISM as Michelle, and for the same reason.
I agree with Muffin @5 about the difficulty – and I’m another who couldn’t parse MEET.
Spotted MILTON KEYNES only after I’d finished. The other two-word combos all make sense apart from the bottom one: is “double saucepan” some sort of cookery expression?
Thank you Andrew and Brendan.
I solved this one anti clockwise and was thinking what a nice gentle Brendan for a bank holiday. For whatever reason though I found that NE quadrant really hard. slowly worked it out with FIREBRANDS last in.
Spotted MILTON KEYNES but not any of the others.
Liked DOUBLE amongst many others.
Thanks Andrew and Brendan
We found this hard! Lots of help but got there in the end. Still don’t understand tum and corporation (22d). Can anyone help?
Wellbeck @13
A double saucepan (also know as a bain-marie) is a pan within a pan. The outer one just has boiling water. The inner one is used for gently cooking eggs for sauces and custard etc.
MrsSandgrounder “tum” and “corporation” are both terms for a pot belly.
Don’t quite see SIGN AWAY as ‘keep subscribing’, and of course I missed the theme entirely as I never remember to look for one.
Dredged this up from an ancient memory:
The mountain sheep are sweeter/ But the valley sheep are fatter./ We therefore thought it meeter/ To carry off the latter (The War-Song of Dinas Vawr by Thomas Love Peacock)
NHO ‘bee’ as a communal meeting (though I am aware of America’s spelling bee, without ever having understood what the bee is all about, and I’m a fan of the UK Sewing Bee on TV with the same failure to understand the title). NE corner was tough: I missed FIREBRANDS, ABSENTEE and GOOSEBERRY. And, as ever, I didn’t spot the theme, although I did spot MILTON KEYNES. Thanks to setter and blogger: but put me down today as a non-finisher.
Thanks to Brendandrew. (225’s Brangelina?)
Like Beaulieu@9 and Staticman1@14, I liked the clue for DOUBLE.
Also liked Poc@17’s poem, and AlanC@12’s sad little story about the Cape Gooseberries. Perhaps, like Brigadoon, they’ll come back in a hundred years.
A rapid start, then slowing down at bit in the NE corner, with ABSENTEE and FIREBRANDS being my last ones in. FIREBRANDS gets my CotD for its neat construction and surface. SAUCEPAN was also very nifty; now I have “Sospan Bach” as my internal music for the day.
A very obvious theme, which I completely failed to spot… as usual; thanks to Andrew for the “doh!” moment on that.
Very pleasant breakfast fare – thank you Brendan!
We used to call the cape gooseberry plant ‘Chinese lanterns’ when I was young, I think they were only grown for the decorative husks – don’t recall eating them back then! They aren’t frost hardy so if you ate all the fruit AlanC they wouldn’t have self seeded.
Sorry to hijack the blog for a bit of gardening. I won’t do it again.
Thanks for the most enjoyable crossword and blog.
[me@20 : “Sosban Fach”! – I ran out of edit time… the Welsh-language protection SWAT team can stand down now.]
Brendan is a master, and it’s always a joy to see his name atop (or abottom?) a crossword
He has managed to produce a straightforward write-in/Monday type puzzle – and with a ‘theme’ (albeit obvious – though I only looked afterwards)
I imagine that to be able to set at varying levels of difficulty takes an exceptional talent
Many thanks to Brendan and Andrew
Yes, I fell into the Social Media trap on VOCALISM. Knowing Brendan’s fondness for tricks, it seemed likely that CAPE GOOSEBERRY (which I thought was another name for kiwi fruit – or is that a Chinese gooseberry?) was no accident, and so it proved. The only pairing I didn’t recognise was ARITHMETIC MEAN, and the theme helped to get BRIDGE and KEYNES. Not familiar with POLLEN TUBEs, but it had to be that. Of the individual clues, my favourite was SAUCEPAN.
[Cape Gooseberries are in the genus Physalis. They have a subtle but rather attractive flavour. We grow ours in a greenhouse with a frost heater.]
I was held up by entering SIGN OVER which I think I prefer.
[Thanks for the gardening tips people. My garden is much too small for a greenhouse but I might try and grow them indoors]
Muffin@16 Thanks. I have never heard of corporation for pot belly. I’m going to start working it into my everyday conversation!
Difficult for a Monday.
Couldn’t do the top right hand.
Not that anyone really cares
I also found it difficult, getting stuck in the NE corner, where AGORAS and FIREBRANDS held out for a long time. I saw MILTON KEYNES but failed to spot the others. I liked the INTERIOR grave situation, the social media VOCALISM, the OPIUM DEN supplier of drug, and Richard’s DICTUM.
Thanks Brendan (another great grid-fill) and Andrew for explaining it all.
There’s always something going on in a Brendan puzzle but it’s not always easy to see what it is. I spotted several of the across pairs, but not being familiar with CAPE GOOSEBERRY or DOUBLE SAUCEPAN I didn’t realise it was all of them.
A couple of Hamlet quotes spring to mind for the old meaning of MEET:
Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on
Many thanks Brendan and Andrew.
Very chewy in places and a lot of fun. Is there really a theme per se? I see that the setter has done something clever and interesting in the grid with his pairs of words but is just having paired elements cohesive enough to be a theme? I’m not sure. Some new things for me were TUM for corporation, and BEE for communal meeting although I suppose sewing bee or spelling bee are communal things?
Thanks to Brendan for the puzzle, and Andrew for his concise blogging.
Quite tough. I’m used to TON and CORPORATION now, but not MEET. So, it went in unparsed. Like others, FIREBRANDS was the biggest hold up. It’s a good one when you see it. I also liked SIGN AWAY and ABSENTEE.
Thanks Brendan and Andrew
Nice puzzle,
I usually look for a theme when I have to stop to come up for air, but I didn’t so I didn’t!
No, it isn’t exactly a theme, just a bit of extra Brendan cleverness.
Those like me who were brought up with the old Anglican prayer book will be familiar with:
Priest: Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.
People: It is meet and right so to do.
Priest: It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord… etc etc.
The hardest corner for me was the same as everybody else’s. But I did enjoy all four quadrants. STYE is rather a chestnut, though — haven’t we had it recently?
I completely missed the theme until Andrew pointed it out. Then I had to ask Google — where is Cape Gooseberry? Google supplied a photo that set me right. We can’t get gooseberries or currants in the US because cultivating them was federally banned in 1912 because they were host to a plant disease, white pine blister rust, which was very damaging to timber. The ban was lifted in 1966, but the fruits haven’t come back. (My grandmother used to make a delicious raspberry/currant jelly, I don’t know how she got the currants.)
Does “deign” really mean “give reluctantly?” I think of it as meaning “grant from an implied superior position.”
New to me was “tangle” for “seaweed.”
A spelling bee is a contest, not the usual sort of bee/gathering in American rural usage, which is a gathering of people to accomplish a common task. A quilting bee, for example, involved a group of stitchers quilting a (usually pieced) quilt top onto a backing sheet with some soft stuffing. There’s a New England song called “Johnson’s Paring Bee” about a gathering to pare the year’s harvest of apples, which will then be sliced and dried and then cooked over the year into pies. (There’s another New England song with the chorus, “I loathe, abhor, detest, despise/ Abominate dried apple pies.”)
When I read “It is meet and right so to do,” I hear it with the melody we sang in the choir of St Mary the Virgin, the highest Episcopalian church in New York City, that used so much incense it was known as “Smoky Mary.”
Wellbeck@13 and muffin@18 I think the double saucepan in the puzzle is what I’ve always called a double boiler. The upper pan isn’t inside the lower, it fits into it on top. I’ve never heard of a double saucepan, but thought that’s what it had to be.
Speaking of saucepans, Derek refers to probably the only song in existence about one. In Welsh (I have a smattering) “bach” literally means “little,” but is also a term of affection. But it wasn’t until I read about a Welsh musician referring to his favorite composer as “Bach bach” that I realized I pronounce the two words differently — the vowel in the Welsh word is longer and slower. Funny what we absorb without knowing it.
Thanks to Brendan and Andrew.
[Valentine @36
Yes, the upper pan fits into the top of the lower, but it goes far enough inside to be in contact with the boiling water. It isn’t like a steamer. See here for example.
I’ve heard “double boiler” too.]
Me@17: Should be … deemed it meeter … . My memory wasn’t all I thought it was.
Good crossword. Didn’t take me that long but couldn’t fully parse 4d or 24d and never noticed the double word thing.
Ouch! Like Ed@29 (I care Ed!), I was completely shut out of the NE quadrant — just couldn’t get a foothold. As soon as I read the blog preamble, I saw 9a BRIDGE — duh! When stuck, I never (rarely) remember to look for themes or other devices that might help. Seeing 11a GOOSEBERRY I now remember it appeared in a previous crossword — not a term I’m naturally familiar with. 14a I thought of INTEREST but didn’t see “Present” = IN (which I see now). Should have done better! However, the downs, 4d ABSENTEE, 5d FIREBRANDS, and 6d AGORAS are all pretty tricky (especially for a Monday)
Otherwise doable and enjoyable. Thanks both
Valentine@36 I wonder if DEIGN is used ironically/sarcastically to mean “give reluctantly”, as in, say, “It’s good of you to deign to grace us with your presence!”
At first, I was disappointed at a lack of an obvious theme – I realised how wrong I was once I saw MILTON KEYNES. Like many, I found this rather tough, especially the NE; LOI FIREBRANDS. Didn’t know POLLEN TUBE, GOOSEBERRY as an unwanted person or BEE. The theme helped though, with BRIDGE, MEAN and DESIGN. And I did know the old use of MEET. Overall, thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks Brendan and Andrew!
I got the theme and enjoyed doing a medium Brendan on a Monday.
At first, I thought we might be looking for things to do with Keynes (simple interest perhaps) and things to do with Milton but paradise was lost so we weren’t.
Thanks both.
I didn’t get MEET though I should have done, but otherwise I found the SW, NW, and SE quadrants fell into place fairly easily. But I totally failed to spot the across two-word phrases until I went into this website and the penny dropped! I might not have struggled so much with the NE corner if I’d realised it earlier! I got FIREBRANDS last of all.
I did see the two word phrases after I completed the grid but didn’t know that constituted a theme, (Except I’m not familiar with CAPE GOOSEBERRY or DOUBLE SAUCEPAN).
On reflection and from comments above, I can now see how it might have helped part way through.
For example if I noticed CONTRACT BRIDGE and say SIMPLE INTEREST after solving the clues to reveal them, subsequently solving 15a MILTON would have been a hint at KEYNES for 17a.
Thanks very much Brendan and Andrew.
Muffin @16 & Valentine @36: thanks for the info.
I know of the bain marie technique (though when I do it I don’t actually use two saucepans) and hadn’t realised there’s an english term for this procedure. Ya learn something every day…
Missed the theme, as per…
I saw the meet and fit correspondence, but only as verbs as in meet/fit the criteria. I couldn’t then see why that was rare nowadays, so not quite a full parsing.
SIMPLE and SAUCEPAN were my top picks, both excellent.
Ed @29, you are Eeyore and I claim my $5!
Thanks, A&B
Thanks, Andrew. And thanks everyone for lots of things to learn. I’m moving towards “constraint” as a more inclusive term than “theme”.
As to the charge that I enjoy myself far too much tackling constrained challenges, I plead guilty.
Brendan @47: “something going on” is how I like to think of it.
muffin@37 Your picture is what I’d call a double boiler.
Lord Jim @48 – that’s how I always think of it, too – and he makes it look so easy. (Ars est celare artem.)
Brendan @47 – long may you continue enjoy enjoying it! Many thanks to you and Andrew for a real Bank Holiday treat.
We started off by saying Brendan usually has a theme – then couldn’t find it!
Saw MILTON KEYNES after we had finished, then the rest!
Nice challenge for sure.
Agree NE was hard.
Brian @47: constraint it is, then. This one, anyway, was no less enjoyable than a theme. Looking forward to new varieties!
Calling them constraints will also encourage an appreciation of why some of us find these crosswords less entertaining than those of other setters. I do not particularly want a setter to divert themselves from the business of writing entertaining clues by imposing limitations on the grid that is used, the way in which it is filled and the content of the clues. I acknowledge that many others obviously do.
Is it a spoiler to say that TANGLE for seaweed also appeared in the bank holiday crossword? I got it today having had to look it up on Saturday, having never heard of it before then.
Piggybacking off geedubya@54, will there be a blog for Maskerade’s bank holiday special?
GeeDubya@54 it clearly is a spoiler, but perhaps most people have already solved the Special (kudos!)… and fortunately I had already got that clue. I only started the bank holiday one yesterday after I’d already done this one (from which I learnt the word). I happen to have revisited this page today to catch up on the later comments, but like I say, no harm done for me… the only harm is to my ego is from the remaining half of the large puzzle, which has still got me scratching my head. (As it happens I can’t even parse TANGLE there but it seemed very likely to be that; and if it wasn’t for already having met the word yesterday, there would be yet another cuadrant of the Special that would be as-yet unfilled 🙈)
With most of the NE corner empty I suddenly had a thought: with Brendan there’s always a constraint. At that point I had solved KEYNES but forgotten MILTON, as per. But looking at the grid with fresh eyes, 9a had to be BRIDGE and 14a INTEREST. I knew AGORAS but 4d and 5d never arrived.
I’d never have got SENT from ‘stimulated’ if a gun had been put to my head, and ‘changes image’ for REBRANDS is something I would have been still scratching my bonce over until buying today’s Guardian if it weren’t for this site.
Thanks for the “constraint challenge”, Brian/Brendan; and thanks for the “straightforward Monday fun” blog, Andrew. 😄
I struggled with the NE corner, but finally cracked it by lights out. (Mrs. E did the heavy lifting.)
I thought that this was tough for a Monday. (I never looked for or spotted anything in common between solutions.)
Cheers one and all.
NHO Bee as a communal meeting, nor Meet in this sense.
And I really can’t get my head round the surface of 5d. It still feels like a group of unconnected words
Not That Paul, the surface of 5D reads to me like a rather weird headline. I take it to mean something like “The fact that the radicals are assuming that there will be an (up)rising is changing their image”.
Speaking of which, I remember the opposite case from the Guardian at least 50 years ago, a headline which I could not help seeing as a clue: “TUC facing both ways on atom bomb”. And there it is still in my head (which says more about my head than in does about anything else).
Glad I saved this one from Monday! Enjoyed solving it so much, and was sad when it was over! Thanks Brendan and Andrew. Favourites were 7/9a CONTRACT BRIDGE and 15/17a MILTON KEYNES. With gratitude from one happy Australian solver.
Tramor @ 60. Tramor (the big strand) is where I spent an idyllic childhood.
Unlike VanWinkle#53, I get pleasure from joining in with other people’s pleasures, and appreciating Brendan’s obvious pleasure in grid-filling is an example. And given that Brendan is also a master at the business of writing entertaining clues, I don’t see how the way he fills the grid makes his crosswords less entertaining.