Guardian 26,008 / Brendan

62 comments on “Guardian 26,008 / Brendan”

1. Thanks Eileen
   I can help you with 3dn:

   STAND (partnership {in cricket}) IN GIN (where it’s {Italian vermouth} often requested)

2. Many thanks, Gaufrid! [I had vowed not to be taken in by that ‘it’ again but I was caught out yet again. 🙁 ]

   I think that’s probably my favourite clue now.

3. Hi, Eileen, thanks for the blog.

   I’m no card-player but I read it as stand in gin (rummy).

   I loved 5d – ‘On the fly’ was more than familiar – it does mean to improvise but it’s also theatrical slang for what an actor has to do when they’ve forgotten their words – so there was a lovely double sense of stage.

4. LOL

   I should have waited. Presumed there were partnerships in Gin rummy. Doesn’t It need a cap if it’s ItalianVermouth? (I really don’t care).

   I had crown at 20 which seemed to work in a Shakespearian sense. Card terminology comes in handy it seems.

5. Hi aztobesed – I was too late to reply to your first comment before your second appeared. I was going to say, ‘I think I prefer Gaufrid’s interpretation [but then I’d expect to prefer that kind of gin. ;-)]’

   Thanks for the extra bit re ON THE FLY.

6. Thanks to Eileen for the blog.

   On 25 I saw theatricaL OTHello but failed to see the second one so was puzzled by ‘more than once’ 🙁

7. Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

   Immaculate blog as always to a very fun puzzle. The theme was one of those that gradually unravelled. (“Does he mean… No, hang on, that doesn’t fit together… Well, I should have seen that before… But, but, what…? Oh, I see!”)

   Not hard for the most part, but I too struggled to parse 3 (I also went with “stepping in” at first which gave me trouble with 11 until I saw that STEIN must be right). REQUIESCAT was completely new to me.

8. Thanks, Eileen and Brendan.

   I have of late started the crossword without looking at the setter’s name, to see if I could divine who it is. This is the first time I have succeeded, even before I read a clue – the density of the words and a glance to see there were several cross referenced clues were enough!

   I got delayed twice: putting ON THE WAY for 5d stymied 14a; and I misspelled REQUIESCAT.

   Enjoyable, however.

9. Thanks Brendan and Eileen for a most enjoyable puzzle and blog. An intriguing mixture of the easy and the more awkward, among which I loved the use of ‘in pace’. So those years of being an altar boy were worth it after all!

10. Thanks, Eileen. What a fun puzzle! You’ve highlighted all the good bits so nothing more to say except..

    azto @4, capitalisation seems to be one of the few “rules” adhered to in the Guardian but, curiously, Chambers spells it “gin and it.”

11. Thanks Eileen and Brendan

    Very enjoyable with a nicely worked theme.

    Re 3d I got as far as seeing the ‘and it’ and then checked ‘stand’ when of course the final penny dropped.

    I got ‘soldier’ but failed to parse it so special thanks for that. I thought it must be an insert of ‘i’ in ‘solder’ as a sort of go-between but than what of the play?

    I ticked 14a, 4d, 7d, 8d, 15d, 22d.

12. Thanks, Eileen

    Highly entertaining puzzle from Brendan, as usual.

    Not his most difficult, certainly – I got 24a quite early, having a few crossing letters plus OMANI and ROMANIA, which helped a lot

    I also failed to parse 3d, so thanks to Gaufrid and others for this. A great clue, but my favourites are still DEALER and REQUIESCAT, for their ingenious definitions.

    Reversal clues are often ambiguous (and get a lot of complaints here). In 13d, Brendan shows how to resolve the ambiguity: the word ‘in’ ensures that the clue can only be taken one way.

13. A lovely puzzle from one of my favourite setters.

    Many thanks to Brendan, and to Eileen.

14. NeilW @ 10

    That was exactly my thinking when I said I didn’t care (mind would have been a better word). If I read a sentence in a novel that said “I offered her a gin and it”, I would be comfortable than seeing “gin and It.”

    Trickier when it comes to crosswords though. Was Clara Bow the it girl or the It Girl? Does It matter? I noticed recently that Arachne was mounting an offensive on case-sensitivity in clues. I think it depends how good the gag is.

15. I read 3d rather too literally, based on experience of doctor’s surgery,

16. Re initial capital letters, the ‘rule’ is that proper nouns must always retain their upper case initial but that common nouns can be spelt with an initial capital for the purpose of misdirection. This has always struck me as completely arbitrary. Personally, I don’t mind what setters do with their upper and lower cases (or their punctuation and word boundaries, indeed :)).

17. Super puzzle which slowly yielded.

    Thanks Eileen; I would never have parsed SOLDIER in a month of Sundays [and we’ve only just got to midweek ;)]

    Great surfaces – I particularly liked MARRIAGE, REQUIESCAT and CENTRE.

18. I’d have stared at 7d for ages but for you, Eileen. Super puzzle, super blog. Thankyou, both.

19. A DEALER is the man in the middle between a manufacturer and a consumer. The OED also has ‘gin and it’.

20. Gervase and azto, yes, I completely agree – the only “rule” I want is that, when I’ve solved a clue, I’m sure I’ve got the right answer. The more misdirection, the more satisfaction when I finally get there.

21. What a brilliant puzzle! My favourites were ON THE FLY, MARRIAGE, REQUIESCAT and LOTH, but the whole was satisfying to solve. Middle of the week middleman crossword! Many thanks and congratulations to Brendan and Eileen.

22. No pronblems for me in this gerat puzzle, with clever theme a nd fair clues right through!

    No LOHENGRIN is not ffor me ‘&lit’ becuase of the ‘def plus clue’ structure, it would need to be ‘bits add up to a definition’ for that to be the right way to undersdtanbd.

    I liked 25 the best for it’s ‘double-hiding’!!

    Rowly.

23. Hmmm. Given that most people never learn Latin nowadays, it seems we have an unrepresentative demographic here. I’m not sure how the rest of us are supposed to get 15 except with an anagram solver.

    29 was a gadget job too.

    So that leaves me baffled, dear blogger. How come you knew those, which mere mortals might regard as obscure, but didn’t know “on the fly”, which I would have thought everyone and their uncle knows!

24. A splendid Brendan with a clever theme to brighten up a Wednesday morning. I am extremely fortunate to be able to enjoying blogging two of Mr Greer’s puzzles in another publication each month and so am practised in the art of looking for his doubly hidden words such as in 25d today, not to mention his multiple anagrams eg in 24d.

    Thanks to Brendan for a great crossword which allowed me to start with the day with a big smile and to lucky Eileen for the explanations.

25. Many thanks for the blog today Eileen – I failed to parse 3d but was sure it was correct from the def. RESQUIESCAT was my favourite for the “in pace” misdirection. Another fine crossword from Brendan.

    Derek Lazenby @23 – it’s curious the different places we pick up bits of info. I wouldn’t say I didn’t know the phrase ON THE FLY but it was my last in, so clearly not on the tip of my tongue. TARTAREAN was new to me but I thought the word play quite clear. As for REQUIESCAT, well I never studied Latin at school and only know a stock few phrases (etc, ie …). However, I have played the Assassin’s Creed series of computer games. In ACII every time the hero Ezio kills a main character a little cut scene plays where he closes his victim’s eyes and says … “REQUIESCAT IN PACE”.

26. Derek @23

    I think the variations in solvers’ areas of knowledge is demonstrated on this site every day and I’ve known for a long time that yours are different from mine.

    I’m sure I’ve let slip in the past that I was fortunate enough to have learned Latin [in a state school – I’m that old!] and enjoyed it enough to go on to do a degree in it. This meant that REQUIESCAT and TARTAREAN presented no problems.

    However, I have been known to have to resort to an anagram solver to supply an answer that would be a write-in for many others.

    I can’t explain why I didn’t know ON THE FLY [I think I would say ‘on the hoof’, which I’ve just looked up and was surprised to see is not in Chambers with the ‘impromptu’ meaning – but it is in Collins!]

27. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    Late to it today, so it has all been said, but I would like to echo my appreciation of MARRIAGE and REQUIESCAT (for the “doh” moment on realising what “leads in pace” referred to!)

28. Thanks Brendan and Eileen,

    What fun. In looking for the theme, I thought we were going to get Wagner, German, As You Like It,etc.

    Favourite clue was REQUIESCAT (Leads in pace – excellent)!!

    Got ON THE FLY from the vehicle and thanks,azt @3 for the theatrical meaning.

    Look forward to the next one.

    Giovanna xx

29. re me @27 – I mean “echo others’ appreciation” of course.

30. Lovely puzzle from Brendan – different style from his normal offerings.

    Thanks for the blog Eileen but also thanks to Gaufrid and Aztobezed for the parsing of 3d. I won’t pick between the two being happy with either but try as I may I couldn’t see one myself.

    Re 12a – things have come to a pretty pass when bloggers can’t talk about &littishness without some self-appointed expert jumping down their throats. I have no idea what Rowly is on about but his conclusion is correct.

    My reading is that it’s not the full Monty on account of the wordplay not using up the whole clue – nonetheless it still has that great quality that the def can be extended into the whole clue on account of Wagner’s Das Rheingold etc – so yes – it’s &littish but no its not an &lit. A great clue – almost worthy of Gordius! 🙂

    Fave clue? Now that I understand it prolly 3d – on either reading – also 12a. Beyond that I liked the way the theme worked.

31. I always enjoy Brendan’s puzzles and this was no exception. I liked 26a, 9a, 7d, 24d, 5d, 29a and my favourite was 10a OMANI.

    New words for me were REQUIESCAT, MORAG, GOAT MOTH, TARTAREAN.

    I solved but could not parse 20a (don’t know much about bridge obviously), 3d, 13a.

    Thanks for the blog, Eileen.

32. 7d – Carriage to Marriage – C to M in the alphabet is 10 steps (well nearly)

    Thanks, Eileen & Brendan (that one)

33. Different strokes for different folks … I got and understood STANDING IN almost straightaway. But then again it’s got cricket in it. Long-abandoned RC upbringing got me REQUIESCAT – brilliant clue.

    I was struggling to see what Brendan was on about right till the end – as it should be, says I.

    Thanks to Brendan (that one) and to Eileen (the only one).

34. Having more or less negotiated most of the fun of this puzzle (like others, couldn’t parse 3d) I failed to appreciate that 19ac is indeed the middle man. Very nice indeed!

35. Thanks Eileen and Brendan. Great stuff – very varied clueing.

36. I had the same experiences/difficulties as others. Parsing of ‘standing-in’ defeated me, and I had to resort to the dictionary for ‘Requiescat’, so I don’t count it as a completion success, but it was an enjoyment success, which is more important.
    And I always enjoy Eileen’s contributions, so ‘thank you’.

37. REQUIESCAT is a nice bit of misdirection (the pace/ race connection), but it is an anagram that’s not just a foreign word, but part of a foreign phrase. So that’s very naughty, really, but I still loved this exceptional puzzle. Super stuff that revitalises one’s occasionally flagging faith in Da Air Gun.

    Thanks brilliant Brendan, and Eileen for a similarly stylish blog.

38. I thought REQUIESCAT was a wonderful clue. It was very clear that it was an anagram, so it was just a matter of somehow working out what was going on. I think that classical references are absolutely OK, as the English language is so rooted in the classics.

39. Lovely crossword. Somehow apt that the very last solution for me should be GUY – right in the middle, and the shortest word, even though I had the ‘G’ for ages. Penultimate was 5d – even though I too know the expression from stage work, but I obsessed about 3-letter words beginning with ‘F’, and then only considered vowels as the likely next letter.
    Brendan always a cut above; really liked 7a, 12a & 4d.
    Many thanks Eileen.

40. The usual high standard from my namesake.

    Not a lot to say as I’d only be repeating what’s been said.

    Bizarrely my last in was 24A which didn’t make things easy. After 15 mins I was preparing my “This was a bit easy for a Brendan….” post. However an hour later when I’d finished I decided I’d perhaps been a bit hasty in my judgement.

    PaulB @ 37

    REQUIESCAT may be a foreign word but it is in the SOED as the title of the prayer. (The phrase is not) Surely all words can be part of a phrase? (There’s a challenge 🙂 )

    Thanks to Eileen and Brendan

41. Yes okay, you’re right there. Mea culpa … as it were.

42. Gervase @16 et al

    The “rule” as I understand it is that you’re not allowed to use capitalisation to misdirect except at the beginning of a clue. ‘Bush’ at the start can fairly suggest either Dubya or a shrub, elsewhere it must be ‘Bush’ and ‘bush’ respectively. I think it’s a good “rule”.

    In the context of the martini ‘it’ and ‘It’ are equally valid abbreviations, and I suspect the former is more usual. Why they both mean sweet vermouth is a mystery to me.

43. @rho – The rule, as you call it, is only a rule according to Ximenes and those who choose to follow him. I think you have accurately described his rant on that subject except that at the end he adds:

    “But with a noun I think more latitude is justifiable.”

    a rider which applies more often than not but which many rule junkies choose to ignore.

    In general many papers (including the leading one – The Guardian) thankfully seem to ignore the whole idea and allow arbitrary capitalisation (as well as word splitting and combining) as part of the game.

    Different games – different rulebooks.

    In the case of capitalisation there is a logical argument for that, which is that the answer is going to be nothing more than a series of upper-case letters, so the time at which you switch from what is in the surface to all upper-case is just a matter of order of evaluation, which, by Afrit’s injunction , is at the setter’s discretion.

44. @JollySwagman – Azto @4 asks “doesn’t It need a cap?” He doesn’t care/mind so why bring it up? Trying to excuse his failure to parse the clue correctly?

    NeilW and Gervase agree that they don’t like this “rule” but fail to describe it accurately and seem to overlook that it doesn’t apply to Brendan’s excellent 3dn.

    You say “In general(?) many papers…thankfully(?) seem to…allow arbitrary capitalisation.” I don’t think so. But perhaps you can supply a few recent examples.

    Your final para makes no sense to me. Prolly my poor command of language and logic.
    Are “Ximines…rant” and “rule junkies” some form of ad hominem fallacy?

45. @rho

    Please don’t bring other people into it and invite me to put words into their mouths. I was replying purely to your own comment where you ran the usual ximmie trick of inferring that ximrules are universally accepted rules, which they manifestly are not.

    You ask for examples. Here is one where the “rule” was followed:

    Indy 8277 Crosophile:
    5d Revolutionary sprays of water drops in a pair of Boots? (8)
    for CHEMIST (CHE MIST)

    As you can see this is stretching a point too far. That capital B in Boots spoils the surface reading and gives away the answer too easily. Is it really necessary? The solver’s already got his favourite revolutionary in mind, so it turns a nice clue into a dead giveaway. Better to have taken advantage of the exception given in the Sacred Text:

    “But with a noun I think more latitude is justifiable.”

    to rescue an otherwise fine clue.

    Here’s one where the “rule” is not followed:

    Times 25,438
    18a Fishbones rejected (3)
    for COD (rev of doc)

    bones is not slang for doctor in any dictionary of mine – that’s “sawbones”. Bones for doctor is derived from that but it’s a nickname (eg Bones McKoy in StarTrek) and so normally capitalised. And there’s a wordsplit too.

    However – that doesn’t mean that The Times is suddenly going non-xim.

    They may well be availing themselves of the exception mentioned above.

    It was unusual for the Great Man to include in the Sacred Text such a word as latitude – a fuzzy boundary sort of word which strikes terror into the hearts of rules junkies – and I know you really know what that last term is meant to mean.

    The reason I occasionally refer to the Sacred Text as an intemperate rant is the inclusion by its author of words such as “hate”, “lazy” and “sloppy” to describe his fellow professionals and their work – rather extraordinary for one who set relatively so few blocked puzzles in UK national papers. I say author – obviously Custos – a leading Guardian setter of his day, actually wrote more pages of the book than Ximenes but it was X who wrote the contentious stuff about cluemanship – pretending that what he was presenting was universally applicable – rather than the arbitrary preferences of one person.

46. @JS – You provide no examples of “arbitrary capitalisation”.

    There are no chemists called boots and we don’t wear Boots. Boots may be bought, I think, in Boots.

    ‘bone’ in the on-line Collins has 8. plural an informal nickname for doctor

    Never having read the “Sacred Text” you disparage I don’t use xim-prefixed non-words. I use “rule”, in quotes, to mean a standard of clueing that some setters impose on themselves.

    And, by the way, ‘infer’ does not mean the same as ‘imply’.

47. Chambers is the same as Collins on ‘bone’.
    And Brendan’s standards are quite rigorous.
    And none of this is relevant to 3d.

48. rhotician @42

    Re: Gin & It/it. Vermouth(s) were originally produced in Italy – Turin mostly – and a Gin & Vermouth became known as a Gin & Italian. The “It” is simply a shorthand for “Italian.”

49. PGreen (nice colour!) @48

    Thanks for that reminder as I think I once knew that but it’s obviously joined the vast quantity of knowledge that my ancient brain is “archiving”

    Now I look it up in the SOED and find

    it ?t ? noun. colloq. Also It. m20.
    Italian vermouth. Only in gin and it.

    Which confirms the earlier capitalization comments.

    P.S. You obviously do have lots of “dosh” JS as you can afford a copy of the Sacred Text. (The Art of …..). Wish I could so I could read it and be even more annoying than I already am 🙂

    Interesting comments about Custos writing most of it. Where is that from?

50. Yes,yes it is short for Italian vermouth but why sweet. It seems that the Italians invented the sweet stuff and the French the dry. Martini and Noilly became respective brand leaders. Martini & Rossi started making dry as well and what may have been usually known as Gin and French became the martini cocktail; not that there’s no such thing as a sweet martini, but dry seems to be the default. It now seems that equal measures of sweet and dry make the “perfect” martini but the tradition remains that the most manly dry martini need only be made in the vicinity of the bottle of vermouth.
    Personally I prefer G&T. Roll on 12 o’clock.

51. Well you have been up all night!! You sederve it!

52. Isn’t “sweet vermouth” assumed to be red? Sweet white vermouth is referred to as “bianco” (to distinguish it from the red variety), isn’t it?

53. @B(NTO)

    I wasn’t aware that they fetched very much. Sometimes you just have to hammer away at eBay, Amazon or your favourite S/H book website to find one at a good price. There’ll always be some shyster trying to screw you for a huge amount on the basis that it’s a first edition but AFAIK there was only ever one hardback print-run.

    I dunno what I paid for mine but it wasn’t much. I’ve got the original hardback with the flyleaf in good order and the price sticker shows that it was originally priced at GPB1.25 (so that’s after decimal day which was in 1971) but over that is W H Smith 20p – ie their remainder bin – which is where I got one as a student around 1971 prolly, thinking it might help me as a solver – which it didn’t.

    It helps to show how little interest there was in it at the time it was first published. Later it was re-issued in paperback and there must be more interest now than there was at that time – sparked no doubt partly by modern internet ximtrolling and maybe also by other writers’ referring to it.

    It’s unindexed and a ghastly read.

    Actually I was wrong about Custos – halfway through the book it changes from being mainly a rant about clues the guy doesn’t like to being a sort of stream of consciousness how-I-write-a-puzzle text – firstly an Everyman (ie easy Observer blocked puzzle – that’s where Custos comes in) then a Ximenes (Observer barred-grid puzzle full of Latin) which he modestly (sic) describes as being a more difficult task – presumably at that point it goes back to X being the main writer.

    The flysheet blurb begins “The author of this book, who is the leading authority on crosswords in this country…”; by whose reckoning we are not told but a piece of marketing which has fooled a lot of people in subsequent years.

    @rho

    “And, by the way, ‘infer’ does not mean the same as ‘imply’.”

    Collins 3 tr to hint or imply

    although I was using it in its more tradional sense – the one accepted by rule junkies – or at least those rule junkies who know what they’re on about:

    Collins 2 tr to have or lead to as a necessary or logical consequence; indicate

    To the endless disappointment of pedants of a certain ilk the two words do have considerable overlap.

54. @JS

    My original comment inferred nothing. You thought it implied something. So you inferred something.
    And your inference was false.

55. LION + KING
    MARRIAGE + BROKER
    DONOR + SUMER (!)

    any more?

56. oh and
    MEAT + LOTH

57. Hi Eileen – we only got around to solving this one today. Thanks for the blog and also to Gaufrid as we couldn’t work out 3d either. What would we do without him – he helped us out on Thursday with our blog as well!

    Thanks Brendan – this one was made trickier than usual as it took us ages to get the gateway clue!

58. For those unconvinced by Slugbrain’s ultra-intense trollitics, let’s just pause for a while: waft away his pong, take in the fresh air, breathe deeply down, and relax. Then we’ll see that good cluemanship is always already there. It wasn’t X’s fault that Torquemada chose to be so abstruse. The whole discourse just needed a tidy (by no means a comprehensive one), and that’s what it got.

    But silly Jolly Tolly Trolly just thinks he’s on to a good thing, and can hit a nerve with his bombastic, clumsy ‘critique’ of a really great little book: but people just don’t care! Instead they see through the Blattant Beast’s thin camouflage, and hope, as we all do, that one day he’ll go away.

    The Chambers Jolly Tolly Trolly Swag-Manual is published August 1st at £12.50.

59. malP @ 55 and 56

    MORAG AGES ?

60. BTW – there’s a lot more to Custos than the Everyman, as I’m sure all old hands will know – I add this just in case I left the wrong impression with those that don’t go back that far. He was one of the leading setters of his day – in the fair-play style as the Americans still call it.

    For a while the Saturday G, the apotheosis for any setter, alternated mainly between Custos and Araucaria – very much an indication of the G’s broad church approach under John Perkin, which continues to this day under HS.

    Actually he was a classics master at Chorlton Grammar – I knew a guy who worked with him. He was known to knick off early to Old Trafford if he had a free lesson last thing and there was cricket on.

61. If this special anecdote doesn’t appear in the Jolly Tolly Trolly Swag-Manual, I’ll be wanting to know why.

    What a guru.

62. Oops – “knick off” should off course be “nick off” – Freudian slip – well almost.

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