Guardian 26,870 / Brendan

54 comments on “Guardian 26,870 / Brendan”

1. Re 11ac: Mm, quicksands are not necessarily to be found on coasts. In ‘Ice Cold in Alex’, Anthony Quayle’s character is rescued from one in the middle of the Sahara.

2. Excellent puzzle and good to see Brendan again, so thanks to him and Eileen.

   In 7A Eileen the A is missing, ie it’s A + { IGO< in TOUR* }.

3. As usual, I failed to spot the theme, which was I could not make sense of 17a.
   An enjoyable solve, with just the right level of difficulty for me.
   Thanks to setter and blogger.

4. I should also say thanks and congratulations to you, Eileen’ for spotting a theme and identifying all the broken chess pieces. I would never have spotted them!

5. Very enjoyable. BANANA SKIN made me smile. And it’s always good to see my favourite crossword antelope the okapi.

6. Thank you, Simon S @2 – corrected now.

   [I shall be going out shortly until late afternoon, so further errata may have to wait until then.]

7. Very clever theme! I never spot them, so no change there. Was held up in SE corner, but got there eventually. Favourites were FOLKSIER, BANANA SKIN and BUTTER UP. Many thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

8. PIECES is at 15a, there is no 16a.

9. A nice surprise indeed – I’m delighted to say that I did spot the broken pieces. Lots to enjoy including a couple of our setter’s trademark ‘lurkers’.

   Thanks to him and lucky Eileen too

10. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    Very enjoyable. I was mostly on Breandan’s wavelength, as it didn’t take very long, though I had to look up ORISSA and ENCAENIA. I missed the theme of course, and thought that BROKEN referred to the black sqauares interrupting the rows and columns.

    A little surprising to have 3 “hiddens”, but they were all nicely concealed.

11. Nice stuff from Brendan this morning but sadly brief.

    Favourites included TRIPLE & COPY.

    Seems a shame he couldn’t have contrived BROKEN PIECES instead of the other way round but a nice theme nonetheless.

    Not generally a fan of the themed puzzle, feeling that it ‘shoehorns’ a setter into some awkward places. I imagine that’s how one ends up with words like ENCAENIA & INCUBI.

    Thank you, Eileen & Brendan.

    Nice week, all.

12. This was at a nice level for me, and very enjoyable. I didn’t know ENCAENIA but I worked it out from the wordplay, then googled it to confirm the meaning. I didn’t fully understand the clue for TRIPLE because I missed the significance of “better”. I was initially puzzled by AUTOGIRO, which I spell with a Y, but a quick check online showed them as alternative spellings. I also missed the theme, as I almost always do unless it is glaringly obvious. Like muffin @10, I took the clue for 17a to be referring to the black squares breaking the rows, though that didn’t really explain the reference to 15a.

    Favourites include BANANA SKIN, DIK-DIK, NIGHT OFF and ENGELS

    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

13. Thanks, Eileen and Brendan, most enjoyable.

    I always look for a Brendan theme and eventually understood it. False starts with (i) DIK-DIK and OKAPIS, suggesting “order” might be a biological classification and there would be 15 such answers; and (ii) ROOK thinking it was something to do with fleecing. The theme then eventually helped solve 21d and 24d.

    Failed on ENGELS

14. Thank you Brendan and Eileen.

    Well done spotting the theme, Eileen – apologies for my terse comment @8, but I thought some people might be confused.

    A most enjoyable solve after the puzzles of the last two days. Favourite clue was DIK-DIK, there were tame ones on an island near our house in Uganda.

15. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

    Luckily I got BISQUE before AUTOGIRO because I would have entered AUTOGYRO which I think is the American spelling, and in Wikipedia, despite it not matching with the parsing.

    I totally missed the theme, So I congratulate Eileen on that effort.

    Interesting to read Eileen’s comment on the evolution of blogging styles. I think Eileen’s blogging style is excellent. Also, her comments (like @6) add a human side to the blog. Keep it up, Eileen.

16. jennyk @12
    I didn’t think 17 referred to 15a; instead I thought it meant the 15 squares in a row or a column being “broken” by the black ones. After all, this is “fifteensquared”!

17. I managed to finish this but completely failed to spot the theme. I must admit to being a bit dim here but I still can’t spot the broken chess pieces. Please can somebody point me in the right direction!

18. Tweeks @ 17

    They are split (broken) between the clues:
    7 & 9A
    25 & 26A
    1 & 21D
    3 & 16D
    5 & 24D
    6 & 18D

    hth

19. tweeks @17
    They are hidden in some pairs of solutions. For instance, 7a and 9a
    autogiRO OKapis

20. I totally failed to see the broken chess pieces theme but I enjoyed this puzzle anyway!

    I also failed to solve 20a and 19d.

    New words for me were AUTOGIRO & ENCAENIA.

    I liked AWNING and GOTH and my favourite was BANANA SKIN.

    Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

21. Just spotted them after all!

22. Thank you!

23. Thank you!

24. Thanks Brendan & Eileen.

    Good setting although I didn’t know ORISSA, DIK-DIK and ENCAENIA; I thought the Don must have come back! Failed to spot the theme like many others, despite playing chess occasionally. I was a bit perplexed about ‘Guns for wars?’ until I realised that piece could be a cannon as well as a firearm.

    I see there is a nod to Eileen in MAJORCAN. Off piste, but where did you go?

25. muffin @16
    Ah … sorry. I did read it as 15a and try to incorporate that into my own parsing, missing the possible significance of the 15×15 grid. Your version was better than mine, even though it also turned out to be missing the real point.

26. In spite of being told about the theme by the clue to 17ac, I also couldn’t see it till Simon@18 told me where to look – I had been trying to make something from the unchecked letters in the rows an columns.

27. The name of Orissa was changed to Odisha in 2011. But I’m sure it’s still Orissa to “some Indians”.

28. Very enjoyable though I did grump a little at encaenia on a weekday…forgiven once the theme was pointed out…as always I missed it 🙁

29. Rather surprised that Pasquale has been beaten to ENCAENIA – I seem to remember that he is an Oxonian, apologies if I’m mistaken. Certainly a new word to me: I needed to check it before entering.

    I enjoyed the misdirection at 7a, presuming the def was ‘whirlwind tour’. All in all a good puzzle, despite ignorance of the theme till I came here, with GOTH probably my favourite.

30. Very enjoyable–it looked like I was going to be completely lost at first, but I quickly enough managed to get rolling. Not having spotted the theme, BROKEN went in unparsed. I also didn’t know the non-soup definition of BISQUE (but I do like a good lobster bisque!), and the ENCAENIA was new to me. (But it couldn’t really have been anything else. For a long time I had ENC???IA filled in; but how many four-letter cities are there that start with C, really? The city of course doesn’t actually have to be French, since EN took care of the “French,” but it was helpful. And ENCORKIA is obviously not a word.)

    I did, however, know AUTOGIRO, thanks to its prominent appearance at the end of “It Happened One Night.” (A magnificent old movie, if you ever get the chance.)

31. Yes, it is great to see Brendan back again, and this was one of his best, and quite tricky in places. The broken pieces definitely helped with ENCAENIA and BISQUE, which were my last two in. The pottery definition of BISQUE was new to me. Favourites were AUTOGIRO, COPY, BANANA SKIN and NIGHT OFF.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

32. I failed to spot the theme. I saw that BROKEN contained pieces – B for bishop, R for rook, K for king and N for knight – and that ‘rows and columns’ might refer to the board. And that’s as far as I got.
    Couldn’t see the wood for the trees, or the trees for the wood.
    Thank you for the blog, Eileen, and for explaining BROKEN and the theme. It’s very clever – much too clever for me!
    And thank you, Brendan, for an excellent crossword.

33. [mrpenney @30
    I don’t remember the autogiro in “It happened one night”. How did it feature? Was it flown by Claudette Colbert’s “husband” (King something or other – he was a flyer, wasn’t he?)]

34. [Muffin @ 33; yes, it was Claudette Colbert’s fiancee, who was going to arrive at the wedding in an autogiro. (The kind of ridiculous grand entrance you expect from annoying rich people, which is I guess the point.) And indeed he arrives that way—but of course, then there’s no wedding, since she runs off with Clark Gable.]

35. [Thanks mrpenney
    Famous for ruining the sales of mens’ vests, when Clark Gable took off his top and showed that he wasn’t wearing one!]

36. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen. Like others I missed the theme and did not know ENCAENIA or ORISSA, but the clues were enough. Very enjoyable.

37. Thank you, Cookie @14 and 8 – my apologies to anyone who was confused. I had it right in the preamble but had mistranscribed the number in the blog itself – corrected now.

    Thanks, Simon S and muffin for explaining the BROKEN PIECES.

    Hi Robi @24 – I resisted mentioning it! We were based in Port de Pollença, where the walking was slightly less strenuous than Port de Soller, where I was 18 months ago – weather, walking, food all great!

38. [Hi Eileen
    I know both well, though Puerto Pollenca from longer ago. It was there I had the experience of sitting in a beach bar, watching 7 ospreys hunting over the bay! Did you go to the albufeira near Alcudia? Last time I saw an amazing variety of birds there. (I’ve just checked on Google maps, which gives it as albufereta, but I think mine was correct.)]

39. Missed the theme but completed the puzzle anyway. BROKEN went in from the definition and there reference to rows and columns I sort of ignored. Black Mark there! I’d never heard of ENCAENIA but arrived at it much like mrpenney.
    Otherwise this was rather nice. I especially liked BANANA SKIN and GOTH.
    Thanks BRENDAN.

40. Hi muffin @38 – no, I’m afraid not.

41. Congratulations to Brendan on the way the theme (based on only one board game, by the way) has been woven into the grid. The theme came to me very late – and I’m glad it did because I needed it to finish off the SE corner (and to understand what 17A was all about).

    Unlike Cookie I found this not as enjoyable as the puzzles on the last two days. I’m not an intuitive solver, and I found it quite hard going in places. The clues’ surfaces were good, but some of the indications allowed too many possibilities for my liking – or were somewhat loose (‘part of Africa’ – Benin, ‘boat’ – SS, ‘hazard on coast’ – QUICKSANDS).

    Four words were new to me, but that was a good thing as it’s nice to learn something and all of them were gettable.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

42. Can one of you people with posh paper dictionaries please explain where autogiro comes from? Several people above noted that autogyro is more usual but failed to follow it up. Basically, autogyro derives from the same root as gyrate, but I can find no word girate from which to derive autogiro. The spell checker here just flagged girate as a mistake. Google won’t even let me search for it, it insists in giving me gyrate. None of the several on-line dictionaries, including the Oxford one, that I use mentions it either. So where does the ‘i’ spelling come from and why?

    Thank you.

43. Derek @ 42
    I thought it might be a US spelling, but it seems to be a trade name – see the second paragraph here:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro

44. Derek @42
    Collins, Chambers and Oxford on-line all have ‘autogiro’ with ‘autogyro’ as an alternative.

45. Derek @42, my COED gives “atogyro” as the alternative spelling for AUTOGIRO.

46. Derek
    PS – Oxford on-line gives the origin as:
    “1920s: from Spanish, from auto– ‘self’ + giro ‘gyration’.”

47. Derek
    PPS – Chambers says: “ORIGIN: Orig trademark; invented by Juan de la Cierva in 1923; Sp, from Gr autos self, and gyros circle” and Collins has “C20: originally a trademark”.

48. Spanish huh? And in all this time no-one has tried to stay in line by creating girate? Wonders will never cease!

    Funny though, that my aeroplane books for kids in the 50s and 60s all said autogyro. You’d think there would be some sort of consistency somewhere.

49. We had a great meal this evening complemented by a lovely puzzle. Spotted the theme …… at the end!

    Thanks Eileen and Brendan.

    Eileen – we need more information on the walking when we see you see you next.

50. Derek@ 48, perhaps this is of interest, autogyro

51. Derek@48, this is perhaps a more coherent reference, autogyro.

52. Thanks to Brendan and Eileen. This was fun even without seeing the chess pieces theme. So glad to come to the blog to glean that extra depth of appreciation. A clever puzzle indeed! And reassuring to know that others missed the theme too!

53. Thanks Brendan and Eileen

    Must have been having a dim patch as I found this pretty tough going – it felt like each clue had to be prised out from a miserly setter’s grasp :). Finally got there with a more than usual reliance on electronic helpers. New words were ENCAENIA, ORISSA and the other meaning of BISQUE. Notwithstanding that, ended up enjoying the solve and it was satisfying to get to the finish.

    Was able to work out BROKEN from the ‘out of order’ definition but couldn’t take it any further – tip the hat to those who did – a very clever type of theme. I also missed the better allusion to the TRIPLE – we don’t have that bet name over here – it’s called a ‘trifecta’

    Finished in the SW corner with ENCAENIA, the well hidden INCUBI and AWNING (so obvious after seeing it … but not so easy beforehand) the last few in.

54. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

    Fairly 22ac with 3 X hidden words at 8, 9 & 25 and ENCAENIA the only new word for me – clearly clued so thanks.

    As usual, I was too dim to spot the theme – so no changes there then.

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