The original puzzle may be found here.
It’s a while since I’ve had the pleasure of blogging (or indeed solving) a Brummie. This was a fine puzzle with some clever clues, my favourite being GONDOLIER. There are a couple of references that non-UK solvers may struggle with – SCRUMPing for apples (basically stealing them from an apple tree) and DUCKS AND DRAKES (skimming stones across water).
Thanks, Brummie.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ANGELIC |
Independent member’s back in political party? Very good (7)
|
| <=(I (independent) + LEG (“member”), back) in ANC (African National Congress, so “political party”) | ||
| 5 | ROSTRUM |
Stage play after Oedipus Rex leads switched (7)
|
| STRUM (“play”) after <=(O(edipus) R(ex) [leads], switched) | ||
| 9 | TONIC |
Stimulant that’s popular in bed, perversely (5)
|
| <=(IN (“popular”) in COT (“bed”), perversely) | ||
| 10 | COPYRIGHT |
Reproductive control of ape, correct? (9)
|
| COPY (“ape”) + RIGHT (“correct”) | ||
| 11, 12 | QUOTATION MARKS |
They confine ‘sub-atomic particles keeping motion at variance’ (9,5)
|
| QUARKS (“sub-atomic particles”) keeping *(motion at) [anag:variance] | ||
| 12 |
See 11
|
|
| 13 | EVICT |
One’s doing U-turn – court put out (5)
|
| <=I’VE (“one’s”, doing U-turn) + Ct. (court) | ||
| 15 | EPAULETTE |
English version of ‘Up Attlee’ uniform decoration (9)
|
| E (English) + *(up attlee) [anag:version of] | ||
| 18 | SCRAMBLER |
It makes no sense of call from South Carolina windbag (9)
|
| SC (South Carolina) + RAMBLER (“windbag”) | ||
| 19 | DEPOT |
Remove a plant from its container and store? (5)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 21, 23 | DEVIL INCARNATE |
Valentine card I designed for utterly evil type (5,9)
|
| *(valentine card i) [anag:designed] | ||
| 23 |
See 21
|
|
| 25 | ALTIPLANO |
A line on summit, one hidden by – look! – a plateau (9)
|
| A + L (line) on TIP (“summit”) + AN (“one”) hidden by LO (“look”) | ||
| 26 | MAIZE |
Grass one put in labyrinth (5)
|
| I (one) put in MAZE (“labyrinth”) | ||
| 27 | MORDENT |
Musical ornamentation giving increasingly hollow sound (7)
|
| Homophone/pun/aural wordplay [sound] of MORE DENT (“increasingly hollow”) | ||
| 28 | SWARTHY |
Dark-hued cast put round growth (7)
|
| SHY (“cast”) put round WART (“growth”) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ANTIQUE |
Old man, emasculated and quite sad (7)
|
| (m)AN without M (male), so emasculated, and *(quite) [anag:sad] | ||
| 2 | GONDOLIER |
One whose number is up, having rounded Lido recklessly? (9)
|
| GONER (“one whose number is up”) having rounded *(lido) [anag:recklessly] and &lit.
If a Venetian gondolier rounded the Lido recklesssly, his number may have been capsized and drowned, so his number would be up. |
||
| 3 | LYCRA |
Early craft houses (synthetic material) (5)
|
| Hidden in [houses] “earLY CRAft” | ||
| 4 | COCHINEAL |
Insect represented on chalice (9)
|
| *(on chalice) [anag:represented] | ||
| 5 | RIPEN |
Mature stripe not at the centre (5)
|
| (st)RIPE N(ot) [at the centre] | ||
| 6 | SCRUMPLED |
Wrongly take fruit (the Niçoise date) that’s crushed (9)
|
| SCRUMP (“wrongly take fruit”) + LE (“the” in France, so “Niçoise the”) + D (date) | ||
| 7 | ROGER |
OK bloke’s name? (5)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 8 | MATISSE |
Artist lives by sealing lead in china (7)
|
| IS (“lives”) by S(ealing) [lead] in MATE (“china”) | ||
| 14 | TIME-LAPSE |
Extremely tentative about a simple, radical sort of photography (4-5)
|
| [extremely] T(entativ)E about *(a simple) [anag:radical] | ||
| 16 | ATROCIOUS |
A riotous assembly swamps college – ghastly (9)
|
| A + *(riotous) [anag:assembly] swamps C (college) | ||
| 17 | TOPIARIST |
Maybe Pepys’ daughter going after head gardener (9)
|
| (d)IARIST (“maybe Pepys”) with D (daughter) going, after TOP (“head”) | ||
| 18 | SIDEARM |
Shooter’s recommended action for ducks and drakes? (7)
|
| Double definition, the second referring to the position you should put your arm when about to skim stones (play ducks and drakes) | ||
| 20 | THEREBY |
As a consequence of your once imbibing free beer (7)
|
| THY (“your”, once) imbibing *(beer) [anag:free] | ||
| 22 | VOTER |
Former queen hugging toe-curling cross-maker? (5)
|
| VR (Victoria Regina, so “former queen”) hugging *(toe) [anag:curling] | ||
| 23 | INAPT |
Unfit, one needs ‘sleep time’ (5)
|
| I (one) needs NAP (“sleep”) + T (time) | ||
| 24 | RUMBA |
Steps inside Forum ballroom (5)
|
| Hidden in [inside] “foRUM BAllroom” |
Lovely stuff from Brummie! 19A a favourite. 6D I got from the wordplay but hadn’t encountered with that spelling (as opposed to CRUMPLED). It’s in my paper copy of Chambers, though, so no complaints. 2D my last one in, and I needed loonapick’s help to make sense of it because of lacking Venice knowledge on my part. 7d, 8d, 22d, 5a, 13a all tick-worthy in my book.
Thanks Brummie and loonapick.
Usual good stuff from Brummie. My only quibble was GONDOLIER – I don’t quite see that the parsing works. Technically a dnf as I had altOplano for ALTIPLANO – the parsing works just as well and it’s not a word I’m familiar with.
Favourites include COCHINEAL and DEVIL INCARNATE.
Thanks Brummie and loonapick.
Thanks Brummie and loonapick
Lots to like. Finished in the NE, with me needing loonapick’s explanation for the parsing of ROSTRUM.
I had ALTOPLANO too.
QUOTATION MARKS is surely an &lit? The daunting wordplay inside them doesn’t have to be meaningful for the clue to work (though it is).
I enjoyed this, but as commented (cryptically) on the crossword page itself, 26a doesn’t really work. Common error, but labyrinth and maze are not synonyms. Sorry to be pedantic, but for a word puzzle such precision matters.
I don’t think the clue to 2d actually has a definition.
According to some AI somewhere, the mist common synonym for labyrinth is maze…
Well, SCRAMBLER and SCRUMPLED were a strange pair, and although ANTIPLANO and MORDENT were new to me, this yielded nicely. Seemed like several hidden words , three I think, which must be slightly above the norm. Many thanks Brummie and Loonapick…
Thanks Loonapick, a more satisfying solve than the last Brummie, I felt. There seemed to be a few male names hidden, or not so hidden: MARK; TONI; PAUL; VIC; MEL; ROGER; NEAL; NIC… OK, I’m grasping at straws now. Probably just coincidence.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of scrumping (and what’s with the Niçoise date?). So I had SCRAMBLING, unable to parse and perplexed by the similarity to 18a. SWARTHY was new to me, too. Favourite today QUOTATION MARKS.
Great fun, especially the Venetian canal hog, the ‘confined’ and the unnerving Valentine card.
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick
I wanted the “number is up” to mean something different in the wordplay and definition for GONDOLIER. Maybe he just loses his licence in the definition. Held myself up by thinking the ok bloke was Mr. Right.
geoff down under @10 the Niçoise date = the in Nice = le, followed by d=date
Another nice one from Brummie, with plenty of solid and varied clues. My favourite was GONDOLIER – clue as definition, surely? I was another for ALTOPLANO.
MORDENT doesn’t quite work for me: the homophone is MOR for ‘more’ = ‘increasingly’. DENT is just the noun ‘hollow’ – ‘increasingly hollow’ would be MOR(E) DENTED. ‘Musical ornamentation sounding increasingly hollow’ would work better.
Thanks to Brummie and loonapick
Another dnf here due to ALTOPLANO spelling.
Didn’t know about the stone throwing game and failed to parse ROSTRUM.
Other than that, I was faultless this morning!
Thank you, ravenrider@13. I thought it might have been some exotic fruit, something to keep an eye out for on my next trip to the supermarket. Looking back at the blog, I see Loonapick did explain it, so I’ve been wasting everyone’s time. 🙁
Unfortunately, the terms ‘inverted commas’ and ‘quotation marks’ have become synonymous. I suppose we revert to what we learned at school, but for me, double commas indicate actual speech (quotation marks), whereas single commas (inverted commas) indicate emphasis, irony, titles, quotation inside speech etc. Oh well.
‘Valentine Card’ anagram is a good one (see what I did there?).
Thanks Brummie and loonapick.
Ronald@8 you made not have known the word but you’ll certainly know a MORDENT (a musical ‘bite’) when you hear one, the very opening of Bach’s D minor Toccata and Fugue surely the most famous.
Excellent suggestion, Hadrian @18. I couldn’t get your link to work but I know what you mean.
I’d heard of scrumping, but SCRUMPLED with an initial S being an actual word in the dictionary (when we already have crumpled) was a surprise.
I really enjoyed this. GONDOLIER was very amusing. The surface for ROSTRUM was clever (was Brummie perhaps inspired by the current brilliant Electra/Persona at the National Theatre where the lead actresses switch roles?)
But I think my favourite was TOPIARIST which again had a great surface. And it did remind me of that classic by Araucaria, “Topiary – a bough damaged – story of my life! (13)”.
Many thanks Brummie and loonapick.
Thanks for the blog, loonapick – I really needed it today.
ALTIPLANO was a new word for me (as was SCRUMPLED, I suppose, with the S on the front).
I agree with Protase about MORDENT and nametab about Q MARKS.
I was born and brought up in the UK but have never heard of Ducks & Drakes. We just called it Skimming Stones. (I’m now intrigued as to why it’s called D&D…)
TIME LAPSE and GONDOLIER were neat.
[Wellbeck @22
When I were a lad, we played Ducks and Drakes, but we usually called it “dabbies”. I haven’t been able to find a reference of anyone else using that term!]
Incidentally the World Championships was held recently on an isalnd just off the Scottish coast. I haven’t got time to research the name*, but I remember you crossed the “Bridge over the Atlantic” to get there.]
*edit: Easdale Island.]
A good challenge, quite tough in places. I suspected COCHINEAL and once I had the second C I was pretty sure, but why? Obviously, I worked it out but, to me at least, it was one of those anagrams that’s hard to believe at first glance. I went to check the spelling of ANTIPLANO and was surprised by the I in place of the O, which seemed to fit the clue. No complaints though, there’s only one answer.
I liked EPAULETTE, TOPIARIST, QUOTATION MARKS (one for Roz to play with later at her favourite pronic number) and SCRUMPLED.
I was nonplussed by the GONDOLIER, I pictured numbers up on the raised ferro on the bow of a gondola, but it seems that was just my imagination trying to help.
Thanks Brummie and loonapick.
Gondoliers are famous for their singing ability. If one carelessly rowed round Lido (one of the islands of Venice – it gave it’s name to other lidos elsewhere), they may fall in and abruptly end their song (number).
New for me today: the main meaning of ‘ducks and drakes’. Although I’ve skimmed stones many a time, I’ve long thought that the expression ‘playing ducks and drakes’ roughly meant ‘messing around (with)’ – which isn’t far from Chambers other definitions – ‘use recklessly’; ‘squander’; ‘waste’.
Thanks to Brummie for a good puzzle and to loonapick for teaching me something.
I’m presuming that the fodder actually being confined by QUOTATION MARKS (although I take nametab’s point @17) was deliberate and clever I thought. A few new words but fairly clued and I have great memories of scrumping and skimming stones. ROSTRUM, COPYRIGHT and DEVIL INCARNATE were very nice.
Ta Brummie & loonapick.
Andy @25
I’m not sure gondoliers would go round the Lido, as the east side is open sea rather than lagoon. Does anyone know if gondolas are sea-worthy?
I found this quite tricky. Didn’t know SCRUMPLED, and guessed GONDOLIER but couldn’t parse it. Can’t say I like it much having seen the explanation. The remainder was pretty good all the same.
muffin@28 Perhaps that is why they were being reckless 😊
As an ex pom I certainly did my fair share of scrumping in my youth ( and got the bellyaches from eating all those sour apples), but never heard of ducks and drakes for skimming stones
Or the gondolier round the lido, so many thanks to loonapic for the explanations
And brummie of course for the enjoyable puzzle
Andy @30
Indeed!
Andy in Durham@25. Whimsical, but makes more sense to me than any other parsing.
We just skimmed stones. It never needed a game name of its own.
I shouldn’t laugh but the anagram of valentine card is brilliant so I did.
Thanks both.
Found this a tough Brummie.
Big ticks for QUOTATION MARKS and GONDOLIER.
Thanks Brummie and Loonapick
Very good
Hadrian@18…many thanks for extending my musical education!
I agree with gladys @4 re the QMs.
The ALTIPLANO is in the Andes. It features in some of Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey novels.
Very enjoyable. I looked up altoplano to see what exactly it was and saw my error. Nho MORDENT.
Liked GONDOLIER, TOPIARIST and RUMBA for its elegant surface.
I was told that the gondola is the only boat with an asymmetric hull shape.
Thanks Brummie and loonapick.
GONDOLIER was my LOI and also my favorite once I got it.
Thank you Brummie for a challenging puzzle and loonapick for excellent blog
Regarding GONDOLIER, back when I was a child a local park had a boating lake*. The rowboats were numbered and when you’d reached the end of your hire time ,or if you were causing a nuisance or larking about, the attendant would use a megaphone to say, “Come in number X, your time is up!” I read it as something similar/maybe losing your licence…
*It also had a Lido 🙂
Yeah, I’d heard of neither scrumping for apples nor skipping-stones being called ducks and drakes. Both items went in unparsed.
Surprised to not see regular commenter Valentine weighing in on that anagram yet…
Thanks for the blog , I thought this was great and pretty tough cold-solving . I got less than half but when I put in the Downs the grid was very friendly . Each answer over half checked and every first letter . This grid should be used for Monday to help newer solvers . I could name many clues but will pick out GONDOLIER .
QUOTATION MARKS is not &LIt – They confine – is just a straight definition , using sub-hadronic would be slightly better .
MAIZE , the original Labyrinth was certainly a maze so the clue is fine .
Martin@24 , 42 is not pronic , 9 x 6 is the closest you can get .
42 = 6*7 => it is a pronic number according to my understanding of the term
I looked up “pronic”. Wikipedia says it’s the product of two adjacent numbers, so 7 x 6 would seem to fit. Of course, Wikipedia could be wrong or I could be missing the joke?
You do not need to be quite so conventional , base 10 is simply the result of many random mutations in the evolution of tetrapods . Other number bases are superior , see the ultimate question .
Thank you Brummie for an enjoyable puzzle. NE took the longest. 7d ROGER took a long time, surprisingly — only solved when I had all the crossers! One letter short of completion — 13a unparsed EDICT (put out (by court)?) instead of EVICT, a self-kick-worthy mistake
6d SCRUMPLED, I learned SCRUMP from a previous puzzle, but still had to look it up. Also had to look up “Ducks and Drakes” in 18d SIDEARM. beaulieu@2, muffin@3, and others, I would have put ALTO… at 25a ALTIPLANO, but looked it up, too. Along with 4d COCHINEAL, the dictionary got a good workout today
I knew 27a MORDENT (lower neighbour note) from my French Classical organ studies, so didn’t have to look that one up!
Solved 2d GONDOLIER, but couldn’t see the definition. I was wondering if it referred to a musical number in the G&S comic opera
Favourites 19a DEPOT (whimsical wordplay), 17d TOPIARIST (good wordplay, funny surface), 22d VOTER (“cross-maker”)
[Roz@46, Base 12 would have been a much better standard. More divisible]
Thanks loonapick
I put ‘reckless’ in the clue as only such a GONDOLIER would venture on the Lido.
I admit I’m not keen myself on &lit clues but I couldn’t resist this one.
Some years ago in Birmingham (“more miles of canal than Venice”) an enterprising Italian restaurant introduced an authentic Venetian gondola on the city centre canal system for special trips usually combined with a dining experience. They even brought over an actual gondolier to train some of the locals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it didn’t last very long.
New for me: ALTIPLANO; MORDENT (I studied piano but I forgot about these, if I ever learnt them – it seems to be like a grace note); SCRUMP = steal fruit (for 6d).
Favourite: COPYRIGHT.
I could not parse the ‘recommended action for ducks and drakes’ bit of 18d.
Thanks to Brummie for today’s entertainment and the post on here, and to Loonapick for the explanations. For me the SW corner trio were the LOIs, due to my lack of GK… I too had never called it “ducks and drakes”, so needed 225 for the parsing of SIDEARM… I had ALTOPLANO until Mr Google told me otherwise… and finally revealed MORDENT as I couldn’t crack the wordplay for the second half of the word.
Oh the memories this has stirred. In the 50’s in school holidays the entire female members of my family went hop-picking in Kent. As I was quite young and got bored I was sent across the field, climb a wall and get into a vicarage which had a small orchard. Then I scrumped: apples and pears. Drops and on the tree. Never got caught but Mum and Gran made super pies/puddings!! Thanks Brummie for stirring my memories of nearly eighty years ago
Petert@45 – I think it’s on someone else
Another questioning the construction of GONDOLIER – seems to me to be lacking the definition..
6d does not work as Nicoise is the feminine form of the city of Nice.Scrumplad is possibly a word only AI knows.
yonoloco@53 you’re certainly not alone, and this seems to happen a lot for &lit clues. I accept that the definition, when taking the whole clue as the definition, is whimsical and not to everyone’s taste, but I do think it works.
I seem to remember a few years ago there was significant debate about the very _term_ &lit here, and some hesitation to use it at all in blogs, so I’m not surprised to see controversy attached to it.
Whibbo@54 ooh, that’s excellent pedantry! It should indeed be Niçois, to agree with ‘the’, which would presumably take the gender of ‘article’ or ‘mot.’
I had remembered somehow that “ducks and drakes” was a kind of game, and found this, which may be of interest:
Also, pace nametab @17, another use of commas in lieu of the customary doubled marks might be when a quoted speaker is quoting someone else’s words, so in print the single marks are used to delimit what is being quoted.
As such, high praise to Brummie for QUOTATION MARKS, and other delightful clues/answers like COCHINEAL, SWARTHY and SCRAMBLER. ALTIPLANO was a partial miss, not because of an “O” in fourth position, but because I didn’t think that the “LO” in LOOK was sufficient to hide something. SCRUMPLED was a NHO, though I came close-ish. Props to loonapick for some elegant teasing outs.
Lots of fun here. I especially enjoyed “quotation marks.” My impression has been that in the US we use double ones for direct quotes and single ones for quotes within quotes, and the in the UK it’s the opposite, but I may well have it wrong.
mrpenney@41 I slept late, and am just checking in now. I do appreciate the namecheck and also your concern.
Zed622@57 If you put in a link to something about ducks and drakes, it didn’t take. Could you try again? I don’t know why your second paragraph has turned blue.
Thanks Brummie for the puzzle and also for dropping in, always appreciated. And thanks to loonapick for the elucidation.
Have been to the ALTIPLANO, so this fell in nicely. Never heard skimming stones called ‘Ducks and Drakes’ though, so couldn’t parse that. QUOTATION MARKS – I saw them in the clue, but missed the Quarks! Struggled with the need for ‘need’ in 23d – just there to make the surface work?
Valentine @58
Zed has linked to “Ducks and drakes”, though the link is in the wrong place. Click on the blue text.
I was familiar with Ducks and drakes as the term for the skimming stone game. When we played, it was judged on number of bounces.
Barnes-Wallis based his “bouncing bombs” for the Dambusters on the game.
Apologies for the bad link…not sure what happened. 😔 If this time fails, I’ll give up:
ALTIPANO inspired the original Conan Doyle story – The Lost World .
Yes Mig@47 base 12 has advantages but it would mean football fans having to take their shoes off to do simple addition .
Roz@43: I have to agree with gladys@4 that QUOTATION MARKS is an &lit. How else to account for their presence in the surface? Wouldn’t “They confine” make for an exceedingly poor stand-alone definition? (Or maybe I’m missing some tongue-in-cheek element in your post.)
This particular non-UK solver was flummoxed by precisely the two items loonapick cited: I didn’t know about scrumping for apples (nor had I seen the word SCRUMPLED), and I had forgotten what “ducks and drakes” meant (although I’m sure I knew that at one time). I managed to guess the answer to the latter clue; the former required a bit of trolling through the dictionary.
I think Protase @14’s criticism of 27ac (MORDENT) is correct, but that’s a pretty minor flaw in a very enjoyable puzzle.
If the original Labyrinth was not a maze, Theseus would not have needed a ball of thread to escape from it.
nametab @17 I think the distinction between quotation marks and inverted commas, if it ever really existed, was lost a long time ago. James Joyce called quotation marks ‘perverted commas’ and would not use them, preferring his characteristic long dash before direct speech.
Coloradan@63 , for &Lit the WHOLE clue must give the definition and the WHOLE clue must be the wordplay , neither is remotely true for 11 , 12 Ac . Try these .
You might see this used in mixed doubles (3) – an old Azed competition
Ground for sad lout (6,4) – one of my rare clues
Cedric@51…memories for me too with scrumping of apples from the orchards after the day had finished in the hop fields of Kent. Except that this was the Sixties and I had just left school. It was windfalls and on the tree as I knew it…
I have never heard of “pronic” and it’s not in my online Chambers.
jellyroll @69
See here. It seems a rather pointless category to me!
Roz@67: very good.
muffin @70 Too much information! n x (n+1) is enough for me. I have a maths degree but so long ago it probably pre-dates the invention of pronic numbers.
Roz @67
I don’t see the Azed one, but yours is the home ground of KPR?
Well, this was brilliant, especially GONDOLIER, which I parsed as one whose song (number) is often sung standing up.
Thanks for the parsing of ROSTRUM. I didn’t spot strum = play, and also SIDEARM, I’d never heard of the name for the game.
Thanks again all.
Ok, thanks Roz@67. I hadn’t accounted for “They confine” in the WP; maybe that phrase could be included if preons were proved to exist? I do think They confine ‘X’ works as a whole-clue definition. “They confine” as stand-alone defn sure feels shaky.
… so maybe a semi-&lit?
“What is the difference, it may be asked, between a maze and a labyrinth? The answer is, little or none…. Both words have come to signify a complex path of some kind, but when we press for a closer definition we encounter difficulties…. One of the most famous labyrinths, for example, consisted chiefly of a vast and complicated series of rooms and columns.”
–W.H. Matthews, _Mazes & Labyrinths_, 1922
Comment #78
Roz@62: The Lost World was inspired by the tepuys of Venezuela, a completely different geological formation from the Altiplano, fascinating features with their own microecologies, not to mention Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall.
Thanks for a very enjoyable puzzle Brummie and loonapick for the (obvious when you’re told) explanation of “ducks and drakes”.