Brummie rounds off the week with, for me, a very satisfying puzzle.
I dimly remember a time when I was none too complimentary about Brummie’s surfaces. I haven’t blogged many of his puzzles lately but there’s certainly a fine set here, along with witty and meticulous cluing, ingenious devices, clever anagrams, deft misdirection and neat and considerate placing in the grid of the longer answers, which always goes down well with me. Quite a few smiles along the way, too, to enhance a sunny (not too hot) morning. Altogether, a very pleasant experience.
As so often, I ticked too many clues to list them. I’ll just make special mention of CAN-OPENER, PLATE TECTONICS, TAX-FREE, ALGEBRA, PERUSAL and DISPLAY. Brummie’s puzzle sometimes, but not always, have a theme. I haven’t spotted one this morning – have you?
Many thanks to Brummie for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Writer playing along with EU (7)
ANGELOU
An anagram (playing) 0f ALONG EU – a nice start to the puzzle
5 As corsets are spiked all over (5,2)
LACED UP
Double definition
9 Master goldsmith’s lead file (5)
GRASP
G[oldsmith] + RASP (file)
10 Is cricketer able to provide a handy means of access for consumers? (3-6)
CAN-OPENER
CAN (is able) + OPENER (cricketer) – several setters lately seem to be using this device (also seen in 3dn) – I rather like it
11, 12 You won’t see board members taking part in this criminal bloc’s NHS fiddle (9,5)
BLINDFOLD CHESS
A clever anagram (criminal) of BLOCS NHS FIDDLE, with a clever cryptic definition
13 Ruddy good to get in a depressed state! (5)
AGLOW
G (good) in A LOW (a depressed state)
15 Evening: almost time to collapse (9)
NIGHTFALL
NIGH (almost) + T (time) + FALL (collapse)
18 Department head is getting recognition? Rubbish! (9)
DISCREDIT
D[epartment] + IS, from the clue, + CREDIT (recognition)
19 Right wants a familiar ex-PM judged (5)
RATED
R (right) + A TED (Edward Heath, ex-PM, familiarly)
21, 23 Police state can’t, without a new study of underground movement? (5,9)
PLATE TECTONICS
An anagram (new) of POLICE STATE C[a]NT minus a
25 Top grade rations ordered by advanced health centres (9)
SANATORIA
An anagram (ordered) of A (top grade) RATIONS + A (advanced)
26 Gathering close to Gulf Stream (5)
FRILL
[gul]F + RILL (stream) – gathering as in dressmaking
27 A cross between tense and loose, as, say, kid’s clothing is (3-4)
TAX-FREE
A X (a cross) between T (tense) and FREE (loose) – children’s clothes are exempt from VAT
28 Old king protecting (or regressing) fledgling colony (7)
HERONRY
HENRY (old king – choice of eight) round a reversal (regressing) of OR
Down
1 In which X often appears with a broken leg support (7)
ALGEBRA
A, from the clue, + an anagram (broken) of LEG + BRA (support)
2 Happy soul dancing round Ireland’s top flower (9)
GLADIOLUS
An anagram (dancing) of GLAD (happy) SOUL round I[reland]
3 Was wolf-like lecturer against journalist’s opinion piece? (5)
LOPED
L (lecturer) + OP-ED (journalist’s opinion piece)
4 Like a single draughts piece – 100 now under review (9)
UNCROWNED
An anagram (review) of C (100) + NOW UNDER
5 Scored, though showing signs of age! (5)
LINED
Double definition
6 Test player, international, opens another player’s electrical store (9)
CAPACITOR
CAP (Test player) + I (international) in ACTOR (another player)
7 Poet’s slowish to drop a name (5)
DANTE
[an]DANTE (slowish – musical direction) minus A N (name) – I stared at D?N?E for some moments, trying to justify Donne
8 Country’s introducing a Latin examination (7)
PERUSAL
PERUS (country’s) + A L (Latin)
14 China might be after this line-up – open secret (9)
WORCESTER
A reversal (up, in a down clue) of ROW (line) + an anagram (open?) of SECRET
16 Billionaire accepts new car ‘hard to break in’ (9)
GATECRASH
(Bill) GATES (billionaire) round an anagram (new) of CAR + H (hard)
17 Maybe Titian or Turner’s main form of grinding (9)
ATTRITION
An anagram (maybe) of TITIAN OR T[urner]
18 Pledge from would-be MP – dregs! (7)
DEPOSIT
Double definition
20 One’s place in Doris’s show? (7)
DISPLAY
I’S (one’s) PL (place) in (Doris) DAY
22 Seize one with leader ousted in a new vote (5)
ANNEX
[o]NE in A N (NEW) X (vote)
23 Wrong end of the dish (5)
TORTE
TORT (a civil wrong) + [th]E
24 Tender and even more sickly? (5)
OFFER
Whimsically, more ‘off’ would be more sickly
Lovely puzzle. I was a bit surprised by ‘open’ as the anagrind in WORCESTER, but otherwise nothing to complain about and a huge amount to enjoy without overtaxing the little grey cells. Many thanks to Brummie and to Eileen for the ever-splendid blog.
LACED-UP
I think
spiked=LACED
all over=UP
CAN-OPENER
Maybe reading ‘Is cricketer able to’ as ‘CAN OPENER’
works slightly better.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen
Comment #3
It was I who deleted my own Comment @3.
Thank you, KVa @2 – points taken: since your comments are so near the beginning, I’ll leave the blog as it is.
Very nice puzzle. I got waylaid on a couple: got stuck on DONNE and couldn’t think of DANTE; also, instead of NIGHTFALL I spent time trying to turn an anagram of ALMOST T TO into an evening equivalent of ‘matutinal’, a nice word which had come to mind. Anyway, all good fun. Thanks as ever to Brummie and to Eileen.
Couldn’t get started on this at all and then it started to fall into place. I got PLATE TECTONICS from the crossers and only then realised it was an anagram! Had been convinced that ‘metro’ had to be in there somewhere with ‘met’ coming from ‘police’. Good misdirection. Hadn’t parsed TAX FREE correctly so tx Eileen for that. Liked DANTE very much.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen
I was missing a T for my anagram for ATTRITION – is there a justification for T(urner)?
Favourite HERONRY for the definition.
ATTRITION
I think
Turner’s main –>T
muffin @7 re ATTRITION: I interpreted ‘Turner’s main’ as ‘Turner’s capital’ (as did KVa, I see now).
Thanks both. I wondered what the “main” was doing!
Tough and enjoyable puzzle. It took me a long time to get going but I am glad that I persevered.
It was interesting to learn that In the UK, clothing and footwear for young children are zero-rated for Value Added Tax (for 27ac)
New for me: CAPACITOR, BLINDFOLD CHESS, PLATE TECTONICS, WORCESTER porcelain.
I has the same parsing as KVA@2 for LACED UP. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.
[michelle @11: worth noting that you’ll pretty much only find ‘china’ following WORCESTER if Worcester itself is preceded by ‘Royal’. There is no Worcester China but Royal Worcester has a heritage going back centuries.]
Thanks dod @12 – I agree: please see my comment @4.
Good fun with sufficient head-scratches and plenty of smiles.
I am happy with “open” as an anagrind here if it is taken as the imperative form of the verb “to open” – the clue tells you to “open [up] the word secret” which is at least as good as many an anagrind I’ve seen.
Thanks Eileen and Brummie.
Hi JOFT @15
My ? in the blog was an invitation for suggestions – I’m happy with yours, I think. 😉
I thought NIGHTFALL was a particularly elegant clue amongst several other excellent ones today. I too had Donne in place for a brief while with the D and the N crossers in place before the cluing put me right…
Small quibble. PLATE TECTONICS is not really an underground movement – the whole surface of the Earth is moving as part of the plates. Otherwise, a good crossie. Thanks, Eileen and Brummie.
Lovely crossword with no quibbles. BLINDFOLD CHESS and UNCROWNED were my favourites.
Ta Brummie & Eileen.
A puzzle of two halves for me. The top went in with barely a pause, but the bottom was a bit harder and I had to reveal WORCESTER and HERONRY. Briefly wondered if there was a theme given the references to chess and draughts, but no.
For WORCESTER I wonder if ‘open’ might describe how SECRET has its central letters ‘unfurled’ to the edges as you would open wrapping paper; SEC to CES and RET to TER.
I feel like I’ve been firing on one cylinder for the past two weeks but found this puzzle enjoyable but still a good challenge.
Rich@21
That’s a good explanation. I like it.
This took a while, but it was a good one. TORTE was my last one in and WORCESTER the one before that.
I’ll run with Eileen’s selection of favourites plus BLINDFOLD CHESS.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen.
Very entertaining. Favourite BLINDFOLD CHESS for the great surface and clever definition (“You won’t see board members taking part in this”). Ticks for several others including HERONRY for the misleading use of the brackets. It was nice to see “flower” being an actual flower in GLADIOLUS.
Many thanks Brummie and Eileen.
Lots to like here and nothing to complain about, with BLINDFOLD CHESS my favorite.
The botanical at 2D held me up briefly- I had heard of “gladiola” (via Dame Edna) but the wordplay clearly led to GLADIOLUS, which I learn is the correct name. Another ten years of solving Guardian puzzles and I may have a decent lexicon of plant names.
Fairly straightforward for a Friday, I thought, although the SE corner took a while to unravel. I liked the X in ALGEBRA, the painters’ grinding ATTRITION, the cricketer’s CAN-OPENER, and NIGHTFALL, when it’s almost time to collapse.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen.
The old boy who lived in our Street and who used to cycle back from his allotment with those cut flowers for us in his bicycle basket used to refer to them as “Glads”. I also remember a song from the mid Sixties, possibly by the Dave Clark Five, called “Glad All Over”, with lots of bashing on the drums. Just letting my mind gently drift…
Martin @23 (and Lord Jim and Jacob)
I was surprised to see that somehow BLINDFOLD CHESS (one of my ‘top’ favourites) had slipped out of my list in the preamble but then looked back and saw that it was covered in my comment on the blog.
‘Pruning’ is such a difficult task!
I remember it well, ronald @27 – but I’ll spare everyone the earworm. 😉
Nice one. I especially liked the anagram clues for the two split solutions, beautifully placed in the grid.
Many other good constructions and surfaces, though I feel it is time that ‘support’ = BRA was quietly put down.
Thanks to Brummie and Eileen
OFFER was simply lovely (why haven’t I seen this witty definition before? Or have I forgotten it?) I did enjoy ALGEBRA! And I was also temporarily distracted by John Donne (not for the first time in my life!)
Yes, a jolly enjoyable, and satisfying solve
Many thanks both and all
I must be missing something with BLINDFOLD CHESS – are the pieces known as members in chess?
I liked TAX FREE and the Paulish OFFER
Cheers E&B
Delightful puzzle. For me it was the left side that was hard.
I accidentally revealed HERrONRY. Just as well, I’ve never heard of it.
Thanks, Brummie and Eileen.
Very nice puzzle, but for me somewhat unbelievably easy for a Friday. Parsed most of them easily. Perhaps because there were no arcane words or references? I breezed through it in an hour (or less)! Ran to Donne as did many, filled Dante and scratched my head a bit till I remembered andante! Thanks both.
SANITORIA seems to be an indirect anagram (as one must deduce that the A is “top grade” and then use it as fodder), but that’s okay now?
bodycheetah @31: I agree that you wouldn’t normally call chess pieces “board members”, but equally you wouldn’t normally call a composer a barman. I suppose the pieces are effectively members of the two sides facing each other on a board.
A friendly and fun Friday from Brummie.
As a chess fan I enjoyed BLINDFOLD CHESS even if I have never been able to play it myself beyond a few moves of an opening.
Thanks Brummie and Eileen
pianola@34
SANITORIA
Ideally, that’s not okay. Even now.
Thanks for the blog , some very good clues , especially the double entries and nice to see these filling the same line . Severe Paddington stares for for UNCROWNED and SANATORIA .
Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep still dominating the Guardian charts , Number 1 for 27 weeks now .
Lovely puzzle to start our three-day weekend. (When July 4 falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the nearest weekday is a holiday. June 19 works the same way, but November 11, Dec. 25, and Jan 1 do not. Most employers give the day near Christmas anyway. All our other holidays are defined by law to be Mondays or (for Thanksgiving) Thursday.)
It’s taking me almost as long to type this as it did to do the top half of the puzzle; the bottom half was a little trickier. But that’s proof that a puzzle needn’t be difficult to be enjoyable.
Dismayed to discover that I was the only one to confidently enter DISREGARD for 18ac.
Thank you Brummie for a fine puzzle. LOI, and wrong, was 7d DANTE. I just couldn’t get DONNE out of my mind, even though I couldn’t parse it, and just bunged it in to finish. I also misspelled 25a SANA(I)TORIA (like pianola@34 and KVa@37!), figuring the “Top grade” was AI, and “advanced” somehow meant it was reversed. Okay, dnf
Like Eileen, I had lots of favourites, including 1a ANGELOU (I agree this was a nice start), 11/12 BLINDFOLD CHESS (fun definition), 21/23 PLATE TECTONICS (good surface), 26a FRILL (“Gulf stream”), 28a HERONRY (wonderful word), 2d GLADIOLUS (“flower” actually means a flower!), 8d PERUSAL (“Latin examination”), 24d OFFER (“more sickly”)
27a I didn’t think children’s clothes are TAX-FREE in Canada, but it turns out they are, along with groceries, prescription drugs, books, etc…
Thank you Eileen for the customarily engaging blog
Andrew Sceats @40 an excellent solution. If only it fit the crossers! 🙂
Mig@41
Yes, I was quickly disabused of my confidence.
Andrew@40 , your wordplay is fine and that is usually enough , the definition is slightly off . I disregard football and cricket as unworthy of attention , it is not worth the energy to discredit them and they manage this well enough themselves .
Thanks Brummie. After failing miserably with Guy in the FT this was a breath of fresh air for me. My top picks were NIGHFALL, DISCREDIT, RATED, LINED, and DISPLAY. Thanks Eileen as always.
Thanks, Eileen. I liked this: it’s been a good week. BLINDFOLD CHESS my favourite today.
A couple of incidental smiles along the way. 27a TAX-FREE reminded me of a line by Victoria Wood: “You know I mentioned a very small neighbour of mine – buys children’s clothes and spends the VAT on tequila.”
And every mention of 1a Maya ANGELOU reminds me happily of the fact that she and Jessica Mitford got together to record a cover version of the Bernard Cribbins hit Right, Said Fred.
(Approach with caution) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzQAOCGKM1E
Lovely crossword from a favourite setter.
NIGHTFALL was very funny, as was BLINDFOLD CHESS.
Shouldn’t have, but I needed help with the parsing of DANTE and CAPACITOR.
It isn’t important, which may be why I don’t think anyone has mentioned it, but I think in GLADIOLUS only SOUL is part of the anagram, not GLAD.
Rich@21 – I very much like, as did KVa@22, your explanation of the use of “open” as an anagrind, even if it may not have been what Brummie meant!
I hadn’t twigged, but I now appreciate the point about indirect anagrams made by pianola@34, KVa@37 and Roz@38.
Many years ago, I remember using the word “sanatorium” in a piece of writing. And today I learned that I almost certainly misspelled it – like Mig@41 – as I did with the plural today.
Many thanks to Brummie, Eileen and all contributors.
I’ll end with some sage advice to chess players, courtesy of Captain Zapp Brannigan in Matt Groening’s Futurama:
“In the game of chess, you can never let your adversary see your pieces.”
Re indirect anagrams, indirectly signalling a single letter as part of the anagrist (“Top grade” = A in 25a, and “100” = C in 4d) seems okay to me. We’ve seen setters do it before
Paddington stare rather than outright condemnation then, Mig @47? In fact, I thought the C in 4d was less indirect than the A in 25a – 100 for C needs a step fewer than top grade for A – do others agree?
Mig @47: yes, this is not what Ximenes meant when he coined the term and said “I hate what I call an indirect anagram”. He meant the “think of a synonym for this word and make an anagram of that” sort of clue. The example he gave was “Tough form of monster” for HARDY (anagram of HYDRA).
I also agree with Mig @47. How can you have an anagram, direct or indirect, of a single letter? Much like the sound of one hand clapping. Top grade for A seems perfectly OK to me
If I need to explain there is no point me explaining and my weekly screen minutes are virtually up , reset tomorrow .
There seems to be some dispute over the correct spelling of SANATORIA, though the clue is correct if A=top grade (but I remember getting a 1 in O-level maths all those years ago). Chambers has “sanitarium” as an alternative spelling for just one sanatarium, but doesn’t give the plural the same leeway – perhaps thinking it was otiose. Anyway, this example of a moderately indirect anagram keeps Paddington in employment for another week.
I did most of this on a 40 minute train journey yesterday, despite distractions, and polished off the last few in the SW corner over breakfast this morning. Enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.
I’ve just realised that I was beaten by this, having omitted to return to an incorrect and unparsed DONNE.
Thanks all.
[Miche@45 – what an extraordinary rendition of a classic song! Who’d’ve thunk?! Bless you for that; I expect to be telling others about it – it has to be shared….. 😇]
I’ve never heard of deposit as “Pledge from would-be MP”. Is that a British usage? It certainly isn’t in Australia.
Stib@55 , anyone standing for election pays a deposit of £500 , if they get less than 5% of the vote they lose their deposit . It stops the election having too many frivolous candidates .