Guardian 26,145 / Brummie

by

A fairly gentle introduction to the New Year from Brummie, with a number of straightforward clues – several of them easy charades – to get / keep you going and a few smiles along the way.

Many thanks, Brummie,  and a Happy New Year to you and everyone else.

Across

1 Offer covered by crude oil drive (6)
LIBIDO
BID [offer] in [covered by] an anagram [crude] of OIL

4 Archaic treatment of shy bats captured in photo (6)
PHYSIC
Anagram [bats] of SHY in PIC [photo]

9 City‘s answer — good god! (4)
AGRA
A [answer] + G [good] + RA [god]

10 Needle skipped with Nail’s boozy song (6,4)
NELLIE DEAN
Anagram [skipped?] of NEEDLE and NAIL

11 Check legionnaires housing barrack (6)
HECKLE
Hidden in cHECK LEgionnaires

12 Changing to more modern, out-of-bed sort of romantic activity? (8)
UPDATING
UP [out of bed] + DATING [romantic activity]

13 Being born in phase of Scorpio’s an outstanding feature (9)
PROBOSCIS
B [born] in an anagram [phase] of SCORPIO

15 Game runner falls back (4)
POOL
Reversal [falls back] of LOOP [runner]

16 A long way from Guy swapping one for another one (4)
MILE
MaLE [guy] with a [one] swapped for I [another one]

17 Carrier bag for which Nigel gets little recognition? (9)
HAVERSACK
HAVERS [actor Nigel] + ACK [acknowledgment – little recognition]

21 Lives away from one’s house with Rex and four flipping good players (8)
VIRTUOSI
Reversal [flipping] of IS [lives] + OUT [away from home] + R [Rex] + IV [four]

22 Articulated bicycle worker/seller (6)
PEDLAR
Sounds like [articulated] pedaller [bicycle worker]

24 Gore, the presenter: “Here’s a classic comedy episode” (5,5)
BLOOD DONOR
BLOOD [Gore] + DONOR [presenter] to give the Tony Hancock classic comedy –  you can watch the whole of it here.

25 Red light area of selective Toronto (4)
VETO
Hidden in selectiVE TOronto

26 Intellectual greats giving stupid person curt response? (6)
TITANS
TIT [stupid person] + ANS – short [curt] answer [response]

27 Songbird‘s prestigious transport (6)
ROLLER
Double definition

Down

1 Stocking Evelyn Waugh’s Back Entrances in large display? (7)
LEGWEAR
Reversal [back] of  EW [Evelyn Waugh’s initials – entrances] in an anagram [display] of LARGE

2 Very gloomy game opponent (5)
BLACK
Double definition, referring to one of the players in a chess game

3 Fools, being put on, depressed things? (7)
DONKEYS
DON [put on] + KEYS [things that are depressed]

5 Hot vent attached to social beehive? (6)
HAIRDO
H [hot] + AIR [vent – as a verb] + DO [social]

6 Dissident revolutionary is outside (9)
SEDITIOUS
Anagram [revolutionary] of IS OUTSIDE

7 Gully, its centre replaced, becomes death-like (7)
CHARNEL
CHA[n]NEL [gully] with its centre replaced – I thought this was rather lazy cluing

8 2 +15’s display of examples of bookish monks’ work? (13)
ILLUMINATIONS
Double definition, referring to BLACKPOOL’s lights

14 Fish rubbish annoying woman (4,5)
BULL TROUT
A simple charade of BULL [rubbish] and TROUT [annoying woman]

16 Dancer’s habit of setting up band brother with Destiny (7)
MAILLOT
Reversal [setting up] of LIAM [Gallagher – band brother] + LOT [destiny]

18 Pears lost to grass (7)
ESPARTO
Anagram [lost] of PEARS + TO

19 Ship‘s circle collared by tosser (7)
COASTER
O [circle] in [collared by] CASTER [tosser]

20 Superb sort of force from an earlier age (6)
GOLDEN
G [sort of force] + OLDEN [from an earlier age]

23 Was raised to be a cheeky type (5)
DEVIL
Reversal [raised] of LIVED [was]

41 comments on “Guardian 26,145 / Brummie”

  1. Happy New Year to you too Eileen. Completed the puzzle reasonably quickly, and mostly with enjoyment, though I was not sure about the anagram indicator for 13a, and I wonder how our overseas contributors will fare with solutions like ‘Blood Donor’ and ‘Nellie Dean’, but they always seem to manage somehow.
    Regards to all.

  2. Thanks Eileen and Brummie

    I found the bottom, and particularly the SW, rather difficult.

    I still don’t understand “loop” as “runner” – could someone please elucidate? I had never heard of BULL TROUT.

    One or two more I thought could have been better. ACK is a very short “acknowledgement” indeed. The definitions for MAILLOT and GOLDEN, though correct (-ish in the case of GOLDEN) are not in common usage either.

    Favourites were LIBIDO and BLOOD DONOR. I also liked “shy bats” for HYS in 4ac.

  4. Hi muffin and George

    I had some of the same doubts and found, in Chambers, under ‘runner’: ‘a ring, loop, etc through which anything slides or runs’.

    Re ‘phase’ in 13ac, I found [in Collins] ‘a variation in the normal form of an animal’ – but I don’t like it as an indicator!

    ACK is the recognised abbreviation for acknowledgment.

    Hi Tim @3

    That was my first thought but I think the ‘s’ would then have to be included in the anagram fodder.

  7. Thanks for the explanations, Eileen. I’ve never seen ACK for “acknowledgement” before!

    P.S. Happy New Year to you too.

  8. In any case, I don’t think Nellie Dean is a boozy song; it’s a romantic ballad even if occasionally (stereotypically?) sung round the Joanna in (London?) boozers…

    But I agree it makes the grammar of the clue a bit clunky.

    Maybe Brummie could clarify!

  9. I didn’t find this gentle – it was slow progress through the hour it took me, which is typical for me for a Brummie. However, when I had solved several of the clues, I didn’t see why they had refused to spring to mind immediately – AGRA, for example.

    Thanks Eileen for the explanations to ROLLER – never heard of it as a songbird.

    I thought B could have used an easier clue to MAILLOT, which is an obscure word.

    Eileen, in response to your comment yesterday about the difficulty of some of the multiplications: at least they are doable, as opposed to some of the word captchas, which are often impossible to read.

  10. Happy New Year, Eileen, and thanks for this and all your blogs through 2013.

    Tim @8; can’t agree I’m afraid. As a youngster I grew up in Nottingham right next door to a pub called The Blackbird (ur yer gooin’ dahn t’Dickie Bud?) and I can assure you that Nellie Dean was a great favourite close to chucking out time when I was trying to sleep!

    Happy New Year everyone!

  11. William @10

    Yebbut, the song itself isn’t ‘boozy’, is it?

    (Just beginning to get a bit concerned about my own pedantry now…)

    I am a rare contributor to these blogs and while I appreciate that all clueing at this level should be precise, I do think some people – and now, patently, me – get too involved in what are, after all, ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ puzzles (cue ripping off of microphone and huffy exit from studio…)

  12. Personally ,I found it difficult, with the anagrams hard to put together.I have never tried a Brummie before, perhaps I should stay away from him. Thanks ,Eileen , for your explanations.

  14. Thanks Eileen and Brummie. Good fun. HNY to all. I think the increasing difficulty of the Captcha must be trying to reduce the number of comments 😉

  15. Bit of a slog for the class dummy.

    OK, a roller is a songbird, fine, but given there are over 4000 species of songbird it isn’t a very helpful definition is it? OK most of them are the wrong number of letters, but it’s a long list to work through to ditch those with the wrong number of letters.

    For the benefit of those not familiar with communication protocols, you might want put NACK into the memory banks too. That’s short for Not Acknowledge.

  17. I am a drummer of course, so for the Captcha thing is quite difficult when it doesn’t involve amounts divisible by four.

    Pip Pyle, when questioned as to how he managed to count the incredibly tricky National Health mixed-meter parts, replied as follows:

    ‘One, one, one, one …’

  18. Happy New year to all. Struggled with this one and didn’t finish. Had never heard of maillot or esparto, so there’s two new words for 2014 already. Better luck for the rest of the year!

  19. Saran @ 18
    You’ll hear a lot about “maillot” next year when the Tour de France is in Yorkshire – the leader wears the “maillot jaune”. (I said earlier that the definition given was the commonest in use.)

  21. Hi Saran

    I hadn’t heard of MAILLOT, either [but had all the crossers – helpfully including the first and last letters – so was able to get it from the wordplay], which is why I gave the Wiki link. muffin, the first definition in both Collins and Chambers is ballet costume – what I’d call a leotard! – but I’m sure you’re right about the more common use.

    [I only knew ESPARTO from having seen mats, baskets, etc made from it in home catalogues.]

  22. Eileen @ 21
    The dance references I found were to legwear. The “first” definitions seemed to be for “all-in-one” swimsuits.

    I may be biased, but I would have thought that the Tour de France usage would have been better known.

  25. I found the RHS much easier than the LHS. Although I didn’t know the ROLLER bird the other half of the clue was helpful enough so I have no quibbles with it. There might be a lot of different types of bird out there but there can’t be too many types of “prestigious transport” that fit the ?O?L?R checkers. The previously unknown BULL TROUT was my LOI after MILE.

    The clue for AGRA was clear enough in retrospect but until I had LEGWEAR at 1dn I had been looking at the clue the wrong way, and I was wondering whether there was a friendly god in one of the many religions called “Lasa” (LA’s + A).

  26. Thanks, Eileen

    Enjoyable start to the year from Brummie.

    I agree with muffin that the MAILLOT Jaune of the Tour de France has made this usage far more common in English. I got ROLLER from the crossers and the transport angle, but the bird definition puzzled me until I looked it up, not because an avian connotation was unfamiliar, but because the more common bird-related usage of the word is for this group of birds, which are Coraciiformes and not Passeriformes (the latter being ‘songbirds’ in a taxonomic sense).

  27. George @ 1: I got NELLIE DEAN through sheer guesswork from the fodder, while with BLOOD DONOR I got the phrase first from the crossers then found its comedic connection via Google. Always thrilled to learn more about the history of British comedy.

    Happy new year, one and all!

  28. Hi dagnabit @27

    “…then found its comedic connection via Google.”

    I do hope you followed the link I gave, to give you more insight into our quirky British humour. 😉

  29. I’m full of admiration for anyone who found this gentle – I gave up after an hour with almost nothing outside the NW corner. Probably just a wavelength thing, but I wasn’t familiar with Nellie Dean, Bull trout, maillot in a dance context, esparto, Hancock’s blood donor – I could go on.

    Happy new year

  30. Hello dagnabit: well done, you proved my point about the resourcefulness of overseas solvers.
    Rather off topic, but I followed a recent link on a crossword blog (I can’t remember if it was here or timesforthetimes) to a YouTube clip of John Fortune and John Bird, which I found very funny and apropos to cultural differences. In view of the sad news today of John Fortune’s death, I have revisited the clip, and can recommend it. If anyone is interested, if they search on YouTube for Bird and Fortune You Say Potato you should find it.

  31. I agree with berryhiker. I managed half but when I looked up the ones I couldn’t get instead of “Oh of course” I just got annoyed. One to miss in future.

  32. Another enjoyable puzzle. Almost a replica of yesterday as this too was on the easy side for Brummie. Also like yesterday all went swiftly until the SW corner where I’d never heard of BULL TROUT or MAILLOT and VIRTUOSI was hovering somewhere between my conscious and subconscious mind but refused to budge!

    Yes indeed ACK is a well known abbreviation for ACKNOWLEDGEMENT especially in the world of data networking. It’s amusing to think that the construction of this relatively tiny commentary on Brummie’s puzzle probably generated thousands of ACK Numbers and ACK Flags all of which most people are blissfully unaware. (You’re not missing a lot 😉 )

    Thanks to Eileen and Brummie

  33. When I got ESPARTO I thought “Long time, no see.” It’s one of my crossword words, learned from solving. I’ll not bore you with a list but I recall watching early reports of the Boxing Day 2004 disaster. They couldn’t start by using a word few would understand so said things like huge wave. I knew it was a TSUNAMI before the broadcasters introduced the word with an explanation of what it meant.

  34. Thanks Brummie and Eileen
    As an overseas solver, found this a lot harder than gentle I’m afraid. Do often struggle with this setter, but do enjoy his puzzles when they finally yield. Last one in was GOLDEN which I initially thought was a triple definition – superb, Golden Age and some sort of force (which I didn’t end up really finding) – was pleased to see a more straightforward parsing of it.
    Needed quite a bit of electronic help to get there with it, but the first of the year got done.
    Happy New Year to all …

  35. Thannks all
    Like the apparent minority above I found this very difficult and must have left at least ten unsolved.
    Was I alone in taking ‘gore’to be ‘Al’ which set me looking for a comedy episode ‘al???’.Sure I knew ‘roller was the vehicle but since the bird reference was unknown I couldn’t write it in.’loop’ also was a mmystery.
    In spite of all that it was a good challenge which produces no coplaints from me.

  36. brucew@aus

    Yes this must have been difficult for an overseas solver.

    Especially ILLUMINATIONS with reference to Blackpool. Blackpool is a Northern seaside resort very popular eons ago with the oppressed workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. It is famous for 2 things

    1) Its “tower” which is very similar to Eiffel’s

    2) Every Winter the 3 mile promenade is decked with lights and illuminated tableaux. (“Blackpool Illuminations”) This is supposed to encourage visitors in the cold season.

    By the way G force is the force of gravity.

    SOED
    7     (Italic g.) The acceleration due to gravity (about 9.81 metre/second2). Also (cap. G), a force resulting from this amount of acceleration; Astronomy the gravitational constant.

  37. This struck me as unusually parochial (Nellie Dean, blood donor, Nigel Havers), but maybe that’s par for the course. Some neat clues, but some suspect ones: I find it annoying when compilers go out of their way to use one of the most abstruse meanings of an uncommon word (maillot) or one which relies on the accident of the wording of a definition in a particular dictionary (loop). But 8dn almost made up for the niggles.

  38. Thanks Brendan@36 for the background to the Blackpool Illuminations – very interesting.

    I think that the new things that these puzzles serve up is excellent learning – I don’t mind having to track this sort of thing down with Google and other references to get there.

    This one did have a lot of local knowledge required though with:
    NELLIE DEAN
    NIGEL HAVERS
    THE BLOOD DONOR episode of Hancock
    BLACKPOOL ILLUMINATIONS
    LIAM GALLAGHER (although the deeds of him and his brother made him more widely known)
    HECKLE – we use barrack to mean the exact opposite over here !!!

    Add in another group of unusual words or meanings as in:
    MAILLOT
    KEY (in the depressor sense)
    BULL TROUT
    PHYSIC
    to make it a reasonably tough challenge for we non-Brits 🙂
    But like I said earlier, a very enjoyable solve nonetheless.

  39. Eileen @ 28: I did follow the link, and thank you very much for including it! Brilliantly written and performed.

    George @ 30: I appreciate the compliment. Sometimes sheer guesswork feels like my primary modus operandi, but the most challenging clues are the ones I end up learning the most from. Thanks also for referencing the John Fortune clip, which I plan to watch soon.

  40. Thanks to all.

    I found this a tough solve, and didn’t get AGRA or LEGWEAR (what a bizarre clue). Left 7 as CHAr/nEL, the clue is ambiguous due to similar clues that work the other way.

    I had about six answers after a lot of time, then used an anagram program to solve ESPARTO (what?) and worked a few more. Was very happy with ORGAN DONOR for a bit (one of the sections of MPFC’s Meaning of Liff), but then crossers scotched that. Hat tip to Eileen for the link to the sketch. Even if I still lived on the sceptered isle could I really be expected to know of a television show that aired when I was 2?

    Liked a few (13, 24 are ticked), hated a few (1, 7, and 16 have wiggly lines), but in the end, another day’s fun.

    When is the captcha going to start including quadratic equations? It would add an extra dimension to the blogs/puzzles!

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