I’m sometimes a bit apprehensive when seeing Brummie’s name on a puzzle that I have to blog, but generally they turns out to be easier than they look, and so it was in this case. I got the crucial 14a early on, which led to 20d, and then the various linked answers were pretty much a write-in. Good fun despite that, with some entertaining clues.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | APHAGIA | (A PIG AAH)* Aphagia is an inability to swallow, or “difficulty taking in stuff” | ||||||
| 5. | MIDDLE C | DIM (ill-defined) reversed (“rounded”) + L in DEC[ember]. Joanna is slang for piano, of which Middle C is (approximately) the middle note | ||||||
| 9. | THROB | TH[e] + ROB (I guess “roll over” is slang for “rob”, but can’t see it in Chambers) | ||||||
| 10. | MONT BLANC | N[oon] T[ime] in MOB (Mafia) + CLAN* | ||||||
| 11. | RHEUMATISM | (MUM IS EARTH)* | ||||||
| 12. | VEIN | Homophone of “vain” (useless) | ||||||
| 14. | CIRCULATORY | CRUCIAL* + TORY | ||||||
| 18. | ABOVE MY HEAD | Double definition | ||||||
| 21. | ROOD | Reverse of DOOR (opportunity, as in “opening doors”). Rood and Pole are both old measurements of both length and area, but as far as I can tell they are not the same in either case | ||||||
| 22. | BLOODY MARY | BLOOD (the stuff of the circulatory system) + MAR (wreck) in Y Y | ||||||
| 25. | CAPILLARY | A PILL (small ball) in CARY [Grant] | ||||||
| 26. | VOMIT | O + MI (note, as in do-re-mi) in reverse of TV (set) | ||||||
| 27. | SOLIDUM | (MOULD IS)* “The die of a pedestal”, says Chambers, which doesn’t leave me much the wiser | ||||||
| 28. | STRATUM | TART< in SUM | ||||||
| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | ARTERY | ER (American TY series) in ARTY | ||||||
| 2. | HARVEY | Double definition: the invisible rabbit in the James Stewart film, and the discoverer of the circulation of the blood | ||||||
| 3. | GOBSMACKED | SMACK (heroin) in BE (live), all in GOD | ||||||
| 4. | ADMIT | Double definition – “sing” in the sense of confessing to a crime | ||||||
| 5. | MINT SAUCE | (IN CASE TURN)* | ||||||
| 6. | DEBT | Reverse of BED (found in a [bed]chamber) + T | ||||||
| 7. | LEANED ON | LEAN (sparse) + [incapabl]E + DON (Mafia guy) | ||||||
| 8. | COCKNEYS | COCK (tip, as in turning something up) + YEN< + S | ||||||
| 13. | HARDLY EVER | EV (“English Version [of the bible]”, says Chambers) in HERALDRY* This phrase always reminds me of the repeated exchange in HMS Pinafore: “What, never? – Hardly ever!” | ||||||
| 15. | ROYAL PALM | (MORAL PLAY)* for this tall palm tree | ||||||
| 16. | BARRACKS | BAR (component of music) + RACKS (stands) | ||||||
| 17. | BOSOM PAL | S in BOOM (report, bang) + PAL – China [plate] is cockney rhyming slag for “mate”. Rather weak to clue the “pal” element is this way, I think | ||||||
| 19. | MARMOT | Reverse of TOM [cat] + RAM [male sheep) | ||||||
| 20. | SYSTEM | Reverse of METS (New York baseball team) + YS (“almost the last characters” – Zs would be the last) | ||||||
| 23. | OH YES | O[lympic] H[opefuls] + YES (band) | ||||||
| 24. | CLAD | [cy]CLAD[es] | ||||||
27A Thanks Andrew. We had the same problem as you, but looked up “die” and funnily enough it is a mould used for creating the stem of a pedestal. So perhaps it’s a clever double clue!
Thanks Andrew and Brummie.
My favourite was MINT SAUCE, because of the misdirecting use of “dressing”.
A ROOD is a pole or rod, as well as the more well-known cross.
I have a busy day ahead so I guessed a lot of these and used the check button to speed up finishing. It was still relatively slow progress, but I did not have to resort to cheating.
Thanks Andrew and Brummie. I solved BLOODY MARY before CIRCULATORY and SYSTEM and thought there must be a cocktail theme, which held me up for a while! When the penny dropped I was immediately able to fill in all the themed solutions as I had to teach about William HARVEY, the modification to Galen’s ideas and the discovery by Malpighi of the CAPILLARY, providing the necessary link between ARTERY and VEIN.
Investigation reveals that the SOLIDUM is the die or dado of a pedestal, which looking at a diagram is the middle piece, between the bottom (base) and top (cornice).
For 23 down I first tried OH BOY as my first idea was in One Direction mode, when I should have been remembering YES, a band I went to see many moons ago.
Thanks Andrew. Got CIRCULATORY early, too, but worried about the grammar in all the references to it. Is it a free-standing noun? Failed on 21a and 17d in the time available. But I did like this puzzle, so thanks Brummie.
Thanks very much Brummie and Andrew (and also thanks to Flashling and Gordius yesterday – in all the excitement I unforgivably forgot the most basic and necessary acknowledgement).
Superb puzzle today – challenging but doable throughout with plenty of wit and mis-direction. NE and SW held out longest with BOSOM PAL my last in. Despite the letter count, which ought to have made it a gimme, and despite the “Joanna” reference and the solution crossing with COCKNEYS, MIDDLE C had me scratching my head for a while. MONT BLANC was another favourite.
My only guess was HARDLY EVER – I wasn’t familiar with the EV abbreviation, but the solution could only be one thing.
Re 9ac – Chambers has rob under ‘roll’ as US and NZ(!) slang. So does Collins, adding that the victim is typically drunk or asleep.
‘over’ seems to be for the surface and not inappropriate.
molonglo @4
The links are all to 14 20, circulatory SYSTEM, not just circulatory
Thanks, Andrew.
Nice one from Brummie. I started well, with APHAGIA and MIDDLE C, but slowed down a wee bit until CIRCULATORY popped out and the linked solutions were write-ins. molonglo @4: definition is ‘making the rounds’, which is adjectival.
BOSOM PAL was also my last entry; not the best clue in the puzzle. But plenty of the others were good: I starred 5a, 10a, 25a, 5d in particular.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew. I liked 3d, 28a, 17d.
New words for me were APHAGIA & SOLIDUM.
An enjoyable puzzle, and I would have had completion if I had not committed the cardinal error of failing to check that I had entered all the solutions. I stupidly left out 21a, so a good time did not count. Oh well, that’s life.
Thanks for the blog, Andrew. I can identify with the feelings at the beginning of your preamble but this turned out to be pretty straightforward, as you say, with a rather unusual theme and some rather unusual answers, [eg OH YES, LEANED ON, HARDLY EVER [same here re G and S – it comes in ‘Utopia Ltd’, too, which I was in at University!]
[I wondered if this might be some kind of anniversary year for William Harvey but 435 years doesn’t seem very significant, compared with the anniversary celebrated in puzzles elsewhere – both recommended.]
PS: Thanks, Brummie, for the puzzle – I enjoyed it!
Thanks to Andrew for the blog. You explained where EV came from in 13d – I was left thinking it can only be HARDLY EVER but why?
I was totally baffled by the rabbit in 2d but the other half I knew.
Mostly finished on the train from Barking to Southend, remainder (after twigging MONT BLANC) quickly entered after fish and chip lunch on the prom.
Enjoyed the misdirection of ‘Joanna’s centre’, once I’d failed to find anywhere to put AN. A nice puzzle to return to.
Thanks Andrew and Brummie
Well summarised by Andrew.
I misparsed 20d trying to make sense of the final letters of Us sports team + ys (and where’s the ‘e’)- despite having come across Mets somewhere earlier.
I ticked 5a, 10a, 11a (unlikely anagram), 2d, and 5d.
You can tick things for good or for bad, tupu! I think you mean for good??? I would have ticked 10A only of those, but I did enjoy the theme. No Luther-Kings to be seen!
Can somebody please tell me where I can find rood defined to be the same as pole? I can only find differences e.g. “40 (square) poles = 1 rood”.
PeterC @17. That had me worried for a long time too, but Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rood_%28measurement%29) seems to confirm it
A tad obscure though maybe.
Surely “in case turn” is not an anagram of ‘mint sauce’?
Eileen @11
I was interested by your reference to Utopia Ltd., which I do not know. Looking up the libretto, I see it runs:
All: What never?
Capt.: No, never!
All: What never?
Capt: Hardly ever!
All: Hardly ever run a ship ashore!
Then give three cheers, and three cheers more,
For the tar who never runs his ship ashore;
Then give three cheers, and three cheers more,
For he never runs his ship ashore!
Did Sullivan recycle the tune as well?
> Did Sullivan recycle the tune as well?
Yes he did (as well as Captain Corcoran, the character that sings it). You can see a copy of the Vocal Score here (large file) – the relevant bit is on page 75 of the score (page 79 of the PDF).
@phil b no it isn’t is it. Not got the clue to hand alas. @mitz no problems didn’t even notice!
Thanks, Andrew – just beat me to it!
PhilB @20
In the paper version, it’s IN CASE TUM
PhilB @20,
No, but “in case tum” is.
@Eileen & Mitz,
Ah, that explains it. Serves me right for being too mean to buy the paper.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, and especially liked MINT SAUCE. Working in a hospital the references to post-op, surgery and dressings had me thinking about all sorts of gauze pads and sutures and the like! Great misdirection. On a winner this week as have managed to solve all 3 so far. Have been out of the loop for a while hiking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and its taken me a week or so to get back into the mindset. Thanks for a great puzzle and blog.
phitonelly @18. Thanks very much. What a wonderfully complicated situation!
A very enjoyable puzzle from one of my favourite setters. I thought of VEIN but didn’t enter it until I got ARTERY, and then the gateway clues became easy to solve. Having said that, I had forgotten it was HARVEY who discovered the CIRCULATORY SYSTEM, and that was my LOI after I remembered James Stewart’s invisible rabbit. I took a while to solve APHAGIA because I was convinced, until I realised it was a simple anagram, that HOG was in the middle of the answer.
I completed the puzzle online and the anagram fodder for 5dn is “in case tum”. When an error in the cluing has been corrected there is usually an explanatory note above the puzzle, and there isn’t in this case, so it could be that because of the font used PhilB@20 simply misread the “m” as “rn” and he subconsciously read what he expected to see. I do something similar quite a lot.
Chambers for rood gives “a rod, pole or perch, linear or square, varying locally in value; a quarter of an acre”.
Wiki, correctly I think, says that rood is equivalent to one linear pole or 40 square poles.
Collins gives, separately, one quarter of an acre and 40 square rods. (An acre is an area equivalent to a furlong by a chain, I think.)
I remember being fascinated by this stuff in primary school arithmetic lessons. I could see the connection between rod, pole and perch –
they’re all sticks. But very long sticks. And why 5 1/2 yards, precisely? Happy days.
Rhotician – 5.5 yards is a quarter of a chain (the length of a cricket pitch)and a fortieth of a furlong. And there are still deluded people out there who object to the adoption of metric weights and measures.
Nice crossword today. Thanks to Brummie and to Andrew for the blog.
I do like my cricket pitches to be 22 yards long though. How many metres is that? Well, who cares.
When the Australians went metric, did they shorten their pitches by a few inches to become 20 metres exactly? (And if so, does that account for their performance of late?)
I’ve just looked it up: the ICC now specifies the length as 20.12m, so perhaps the Aussies’ trouble is that they think it’s 20.
I still measure myself in feet and inches and stones and pounds. I think pounds and ounces and pints for food and drink. I prefer Fahrenheit for my body temperature and warm weather, Centigrade for cold. I like miles in the UK and US and I’m OK with kilometres in Europe. (Once, on holiday in Ireland, driving from Rosslare to Dublin, I thought I’d lost my way. It took me a while to realise that they were only half-way through the job of converting the road signs from Imperial.) I much prefer our new decimal currency to the one I grew up with. Time and plane angle have always been a useful duo/decimal hybrid.
I’ve never had much use for the yard. I wonder what unit Gaufrid will use to tell us how far off-topic we are.
Forgot the other measures of drink. I prefer glass, bottle, large, small etc to ml, cl, litre. Can’t think in units of alcohol.
@rhotician.
Very happy to say that today I agree with you 100%.
Very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks, Brummie and Andrew. I like Andrew’s “cockney rhyming slag” at 17 down. Sort of thing you might hear in “The Sweeney”.
After the event I know, but worth pointing out: a contributor called Margana on the Guardian blog spotted a brilliant NINA that as far as I can see has been missed by everyone else: “O ICHOR” running down the centre of the grid.
Accidental, for sure.
Rowly, the chances of ICHOR, “an ethereal fluid flowing in the veins of the gods” randomly coming up like that, in a crossword themed on blood and circulation, and down the central column of the grid at that, are so frighteningly remote as to be to all intents and purposes impossible.
As I’ve just opined in my usual subtle way over @ Pasquale, I don’t agree. But we could always ask Brummie, couldn’t we?
Let’s put him out of our misery.
I can assure you, my finding it was no accident. 😉