Guardian 28,217 / Brendan

92 comments on “Guardian 28,217 / Brendan”

1. Maybe seaward and ward also?  Might be more.. Thanks for the fun and the blog

2. i meant seaward and award of course

3. It is a lovely and very clever puzzle but why does Brendan refer to 1 and 6 as examples of 29a?

4. ROSE and DOSE doesn’t fit in with the rest of them, IMHO.

5. Terriblislow @1 – I did ponder that but think not.

6. gsolphotog @3 – he doesn’t: they rhyme with ‘eye’, as in the blog.

7. Thanks Brendan and Eileen

   A theme for me, for once! KEATS and YEATS were second and third in, so 29 was fourth, though I did think after getting SPRY and SKYE “those aren’t eye rhymes” – thanks for the explanation, Eileen.

   I ticked NAUSEATING, GYRATORY, and AHEM.

   [Quiz question: when Flora Macdonald rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie “over the sea to Skye”, where did they start from? The answer is perhaps surprising!]

8. A banquet for us solvers, a bouquet for Brendan.

   A dreaded sunny day
   So I meet you at the cemetry gates
   Keats and Yeats are on your side.

   Very enjoyable. Thanks Eileen.

9. Moused and used are there as well.

10. A treat to see Brendan again so soon and another smoothly crafted and impeccably clued puzzle from the master!  Having woken early and finished this before the milkman called, I had plenty of time to go back over the clues and re-read and there is barely a superfluous word.  Beautifully done.

    SKYE rankled a little when I solved it.  Is it an &lit?  If so, then it is very good as Eileen says.  If not, then I’m less sure as I can’t see which bit of the clue is the definition.  Must be an &lit.  Until KEATS went in, three blank spaces and a lone E gave me little with which to work.  At first I thought the second two examples of EYE RHYMES weren’t – and then I saw what Brendan had done to throw me with reference to 1 & 6. (7 & 18 are also eye rhymes and I had wondered why he hadn’t alluded to them).

    Pretty much everything else got a tick.  If choosing a few for special mention, they would be SEAWARD which is very smooth; REGRADE (certainly very topical!) with its lovely use of “educational foundation”; AWARD – nice when Guardian doesn’t mean ‘we’ or ‘us’ for once; NAUSEATING with its clever misdirection, STRIP for the witty definition and AHEM which made me smile.  The brilliant RADII is COTD: unlike most of my posts, it’s pithy, clever and doesn’t waste a word!

    Splendid effort, Brendan, and thanks to lucky Eileen for the blog.

11. I really enjoyed this puzzle which played to my enjoyment of literary-themed crosswords. I loved the EYE RHYMES (29a) especially KEATS (10a) and YEATS (11a). Some nice symmetry in finding the other matches. However, like gsolphotog@3, I wondered why 1d SPRY and 6d SKYE were included, as they form an assonance (true) rhyme. But I think ROSE (24d)and DOSE (27d) are fine, NNI@4 – they look like they rhyme but they actually don’t.

    Thanks very much to Brendan and Eileen for today’s fun.

12. I’d never heard of EYE RHYMES, so thought Brendan had made a hash of things (and couldn’t solve 29 and 22d)!! Enjoyed it muchly nonetheless. Many thanks to B & E.

13. muffin @7: I guess I could look it up but I think they started from the Outer Hebrides.  South Uist?  An island just off it?

14. [Sorry Eileen, for not reading right to the end of your entry regarding EYE RHYMES – of course!!! The rhyme for 1d SPRY and 6d SKYE does indeed sound like EYE!!!! I had underestimated Brendan’s cleverness!]

15. [Hi Mark

    Benbecula. He escaped to Lewis, but the townspeople of Stornoway wouldn’t allow him entry, so he made his way down the Outer Hebrides to Benbecula.]

16. Nice to get a puzzle I could finish today, after failing on the last two. I plead lack of time as much as the difficulty of those two. Lots of very clever clues here – make you think, but accessible, as I didn’t really have more time to devote to it today. Having PLACATING held me up a little while, until I looked more closely at the clue (I had been thinking A T[ory] for the reactionary). I had also thought of SPRY, but couldn’t work out what the supply [sup+lie] was doing – kicked myself when I realised I should have been reading [sup+l+ee]. SKYE was really clever – so succinct and seamless. Thanks, Eileen and Brendan.

17. NNI @$: Chambers gives the ‘Z’ pronunciation for ‘dose’ as ‘commonly Scottish’ – I also heard it in Northern Ireland when I lived there, decades ago.

18. Very clever as always from Brendan, whose puzzles usually reveal more after you’ve finished and read back through.  I didn’t fully appreciate 6d SKYE at the time, so thanks for the explanation Eileen, in retrospect it is indeed a great clue.

    Interesting fact about 16d: in 1946 they took the drastic step of changing the name from Liége to Liège (look closely to spot the difference).

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

19. Far too many ticks to list here but a definite feeling that you either get on the wavelength early with Brendan, or go home wounded. The slightly misleading definitions, the cunning misdirections (how many of us tried anagramming “chairs” around “a LSE” or similar?) but somehow I sidestepped many of them but appreciated them anyway. A lovely solve.

    I’m going to give Brendan credit for the hidden eye-rhymes in part words such as “seaward” and “award” and “moused” and “used”. He’s too clever not to have intended those.

    Many thanks Eileen for unravelling the mystery of the “skye”, “spry”, “eye” connection, and Muffin for today’s geography teaser. And Brendan for a lovely puzzle – not terribly hard, but that really doesn’t matter.

20. Muffin @15 An interesting fact. I’ll remember that. My dad was on Benbecula during WWII.

21. Another lovely construction from Brendan. Got the two poets and EYE RHYMES very early, and there were a few more generous starters, but some trickier stuff to finish.

    6th SKYE of the year.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

22. gsolphotog @3 and JinA @11 and 14: you are certainly not alone.  I’d finished the puzzle and almost finished my comment, having only spotted daughter/laughter in addition to the eye rhymes mentioned by Brendan in the clue (and been thrown by the reference to two perfect rhymes like you).  I was going to note that ROSE is a bit hackneyed and then realised it was an eye rhyme with DOSE, at which point the penny dropped.  (And I never spotted the nauseating/reheating pair or moused/used, for which many thanks to Andy @9)

23. Theme still beyond my limited ken, but will no doubt emerge somehow. Great puzzle ntl, with a mixture of subtleties–the audiovisual rhymes including the double flight–and a run of gimmes at the end..alarms, rose, ahem and dose. The sc before avenge was beyond my smattering of Latin, so a shrug, and 7d rang the senility alarm (“now what IS that saying about the best medecine?”, d’oh), and I wanted 18d to be “Type of” rather than “Part of”. Never mind, nwst some uneasy feelings, enjoyed, thanks Brendan and Eileen.

24. Thank you Eileen. I should have known Brendan wouldn’t make a mistake 😀

25. I loved this but dod not see how clever it was until i came to the blog.  “I take it you already know…” etc etc.  On Prince Charlie, I was thinking Eriskay but that was where he made his landfall, and the “over the sea to Skye” was from Benbecula as has already been pointed out.

    [And fro thos who don’t know it, here is “English” by  T.S.Watt

    I take it you already know
    of tough and bough and cough and dough?
    Others may stumble, but not you
    On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
    Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
    To learn of less familiar traps?

    Beware of heard, a dreadful word
    That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
    And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
    For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!

    Watch out for meat and great and threat,
    (they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
    A moth is not a moth in mother.
    Nor both in bother, broth in brother.

    And here is not a match for there.
    And dear and fear for bear and pear.
    And then there’s dose and rose and lose-
    Just look them up-and goose and choose.

    And cork and work and card and ward,
    And font and front and word and sword.
    And do and go, then thwart and cart.
    Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.

    A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
    I’d learned to talk it when I was five,
    And yet to write it, the more I tried,
    I hadn’t learned it at sixty-five!

26. Oh I DO like Brendan! I’m not always completely on his wavelength, so it’s sometimes an enjoyable tussle – but today everything went like a dream. Having already got KEATS and SKYE, 29A gave me YEATS and the fun kicked up a gear. Up till now I’ve always been pleased if I spot a theme early, thinking it’ll help with remaining clues – but with this one it was more a case of simply being delighted at spotting another eye-rhyme after having solved it.
    It wasn’t all plain sailing though: am I the only one who first tried CANADA at 2D, then MALAYA – failed to parse either – then ransacked my B(+) intellect for another country, ideally with a synonym for chap in it.
    Thanks to Eileen for the blog and Brendan for the pleasure – especially AHEM, which made me giggle and my COTD, STRIP. Well-classy!

27. [muffin @15: some online research has clarified that, a couple of weeks prior to hiding out on Benbecula, Bonnie Prince Charlie was on the uninhabited island of Eilean Liubhaird, off the coast of Lewis, for four days.  Neither that or Benbecula, of course, are South Uist so I’m still wrong in detail but I was in the ballpark.]

28. Please can somebody help me out.Struggling to find Eileen’s five eye rhymes, assuming SEAWARD and AWARD aren’t. SIEGE LIEGE, DAUGHTER LAUGHTER, ROSE DOSE and PLUGGED RUGGED are clear to me. I assume the other one is GYRATING NAUSEATING but not convinced they are eye rhymes. Or have I missed something. Is my pronunciation awry? I have long thought Brendan and Eileen are just about the ideal combination.

29. ..just needed to look at the pairings.. being a bit of a knit .. nothing new!

30. Philip @28

    NAUSEATING and REHEATING.

    [Close enough, Mark!]

31. Beobachterin, we crossed. Thank you for that poem!
    [We live in France and I spent a good half-hour the other day explaining to a neighbour that “laughter” doesn’t rhyme with “daughter”, nor “cough” with “tough”. He was happy to accept this, but asked what the reasons were for these differing pronunciations. Whereupon it dawned on me that an English degree is brilliant for summoning up quotations from Shakespeare and Pope and Chaucer and Plath – but rubbish at times like this….]

32. Philip Kerridge @28; NAUSEATING / REHEATING  – I highlighted the eye rhymes in red in the answers. I did consider both USED / MOUSED and AWARD / SEAWARD, as others have suggested, but I’m still not entirely comfortable with them.

33. Beobachterin @25 – many thanks for the poem. I wish I’d come across that when I was teaching English Language!

    I meant to say in the preamble that this is, of course, one of the things that make English so ideally suited to cryptic crosswords.

34. Eileen @17, our chief health reporter and covid commentator, Dr Norman Swan, is a Scot who says doze for dose (and for necessarily he says necess are ily)…

35. .. oh yes and his son, Jonathan, is also a journo, in the US, who did a telling interview with Trump about covid..

36. I did notice that there were solutions that could be paired, e.g. DAUGHTER and LAUGHTER, YEATS and KEATS etc. but did not realise this was the theme …  I thought EYE RHYME referred to poems that were written in a planar shape such as a triangle or an hourglass until I had finished and googled it. Groan. 

    Could not see the wood for the trees!

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

37. Lovely crossword and theme

    Thanks to Brendan and our lucky blogger

38. Like Beobacterin@25 I enjoyed this but my appreciation has gone up since reading the blog and seeing how very clever Brendan has been. Had not twigged that SPRY and SKYE were indeed rhymes for eye. Lots of ticks but COTD for me was STRIP for the neat definiton.

    Thanks also to Beobachterin for the poem, what a fascinating language English is.

    Thanks to Brendan for the fun and Eileen for the blog.

39. Thank you Eileen (and various other contributions) for drawing out even more enjoyment from this very agreeable puzzle and for teaching me some new tricks (SC in Latin, Yea as US vote – I have of course seen “Yeah” in fiction a lot but couldn’t see any way to ditch the H so figured there must have been something else going on). I had to google “different types of rhyming” to be sure of 29A but then for once was able to spot some of the themed entries and also enjoyed the way the theme appeared in the solutions of some clues eg Eating in Nauseating, even though this one threw me for a while as per TheZed@19 (and it wasn’t alone). Thanks to your blog SKYE is my favourite as I now understand it properly, but lots of others also really good – thank you as usual Brendan.

40. Had not heard of EYE RHYMES before, but cobro correctly guessed what they were.

    Neither of us are any good at Latin so failed to parse the SC of SCAVENGER…. wondered if it might stand for so-called!

    Favourites were RADII and GYRATING.

    Thanks to both!

41. Wellbeck@31 I live in France too and had a similar problem explaining to my physiotherapist the different pronunciations of “anger”, “banger”, “hanger”, “danger”, “manger”…  Some must be the origin of the word, e.g. danger and manger are of French origin so have a soft “g”.

42. [Beobachterin @25 et al. I well remember driving through North Yorkshire and seeing a signpost for Broughton. I said to my wife “How do they pronounce that?”. We ran through(!) as many possible variations as we could – all there in your poem – but I never did find out the answer. Knowing Poms and pronunciation of place names, though(!), it might not have been any of them]

43. Liked: MOUSED, LAUGHTER, NAUSEATING, SPRY

    I did not parse SCAVENGED; STRIP = performance barely finished

    New meanings learnt today: YEA = American’s vote for / (in the US Congress) an affirmative vote; EYE RHYMES

    Thanks both

44. I can’t see any sense in which USED / MOUSED and AWARD / SEAWARD are not eye-rhymes. Can Eileen, or anyone, explain please?

45. Tassie Tim @ 42, Beobachterin @ 25:  Broughton is pronounced Brotton! (I was born just over the border in S. Durham. Robin Hood’s Bay is not far away; this is where Captain Cook learnt to sail a dinghy as a boy. He went to school in Great Ayton, also close by.)

46. Herb @44 With this theme there is no doubt about the 5 Eileen indicated and the two poets used to mark the theme. The other two you might disagree with because the rhyming part is the entirety of the paired word. Would you accept “borrowed” and “rowed” as rhymes or think that a little weak?

    My take on this theme is similar to yesterday’s discussion on rules and whether the same answer could be used twice. If there are rules, they are most fun when broken. I think Brendan has left the two questionable ones in there to tease us and leave it up to us to decide if we want to include them. After all, there’s no harm or hindrance in doing so or not and no way to prove the answer formally. This is art not science, despite the number of scientists who clearly love this hobby and this discussion forum! So you count them, Eileen won’t, both of you are happy and neither of you is wrong.

    Beobachterin @35 Many thanks for that. I think I’ll go and learn Italian! Penfold @8 I see what you did there…bravo!

47. I don’t know why either (any historical linguists here), but it is one of the aspects of English that I love.  German kids don’t have lists of spellings to learn like we English-speaking kids did because German is basically phonetic.  Those who liked the poem above, might enjoy this one too:

    Poem of English Pronunciation

    Dearest creature in creation,
    Study English pronunciation.
    I will teach you in my verse
    Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
    I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
    Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
    Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
    So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

    Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
    Dies and diet, lord and word,
    Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
    (Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
    Now I surely will not plague you
    With such words as plaque and ague.
    But be careful how you speak:
    Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
    Cloven, oven, how and low,
    Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

    Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
    Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
    Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
    Exiles, similes, and reviles;
    Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
    Solar, mica, war and far;
    One, anemone, Balmoral,
    Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
    Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
    Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

    Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
    Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
    Blood and flood are not like food,
    Nor is mould like should and would.
    Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
    Toward, to forward, to reward.
    And your pronunciation’s OK
    When you correctly say croquet,
    Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
    Friend and fiend, alive and live.

    Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
    And enamour rhymes with hammer.
    River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
    Doll and roll and some and home.
    Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
    Neither does devour with clangour.
    Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
    Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
    Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
    And then singer, ginger, linger,
    Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
    Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

    Query does not rhyme with very,
    Nor does fury sound like bury.
    Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
    Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
    Though the differences seem little,
    We say actual but victual.
    Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
    Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
    Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
    Dull, bull, and George ate late.
    Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
    Science, conscience, scientific.

    Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
    Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
    We say hallowed, but allowed,
    People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
    Mark the differences, moreover,
    Between mover, cover, clover;
    Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
    Chalice, but police and lice;
    Camel, constable, unstable,
    Principle, disciple, label.

    Petal, panel, and canal,
    Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
    Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
    Senator, spectator, mayor.
    Tour, but our and succour, four.
    Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
    Sea, idea, Korea, area,
    Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
    Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
    Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

    Compare alien with Italian,
    Dandelion and battalion.
    Sally with ally, yea, ye,
    Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
    Say aver, but ever, fever,
    Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
    Heron, granary, canary.
    Crevice and device and aerie.

    Face, but preface, not efface.
    Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
    Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
    Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
    Ear, but earn and wear and tear
    Do not rhyme with here but ere.
    Seven is right, but so is even,
    Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
    Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
    Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

    Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
    Is a paling stout and spikey?
    Won’t it make you lose your wits,
    Writing groats and saying grits?
    It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
    Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
    Islington and Isle of Wight,
    Housewife, verdict and indict.

    Finally, which rhymes with enough?
    Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
    Hiccough has the sound of cup.
    My advice is give it up!

    Written by Gerard Nolst Trenité

    And I think I didn’t actually say thank you to Brendan and Eileen, though my appreciative thanks were perhaps implied in my first post.

48. By the way, you have to be a bit imaginative to make the metre work in places in this second example, but it can be done, and it also helps with the Greek.)

49. The poem is good but you might like to google The Chaos (pity it’s not Qaos) for an even more detailed one (sorry if someone else has mentioned it).

50. TheZed @46 – thank you so much for that.

    I’ve been struggling with a reply to Herb – I wasn’t ignoring you, Herb! – and you’ve said just what I’d like to have said, if I could have articulated it, especially the bit about Brendan teasing us. I seem to be in a minority of one, which doesn’t bother me at all but I just can’t see those two pairs in the same light as the others.

    Now to read and savour Beobachterin’s poem – many thanks for it!

51. Tassie Tim

    The hamlet of Broughton near me (between us and Skipton in fact, so definitely also in Yorkshire) is pronounced with the same sound as “bought”.

52. Eileen@17
    Thanks for that. I hadn’t bothered to check with Chambers because there was no doubt in my mind about how to pronounce DOSE.
    I would also pronounce AWARD and SEAWARD (see + word) differently.

53. Wow! -  I can’t understand how I’ve never come across this poem before. And he was Dutch!

    Many thanks, Beobachterin and NormanJL – I enjoyed listening to this

54. Yet more work interruptions meant this was a slow solve for me today and technically a DNF but only just.  Once the theme popped out (and it did pop out!) things moved along a little more swiftly.  FOI was REHEATING which is essentially my style of cooking…

    Thank you Brendan for the challenge and Eileen for the blog.

55. I was just pleased to finish one of this week’s crosswords in less than a day that I never gave the prompt of a theme at 29a any further thought. Bet I’m not alone!

56. @46/50
    Thanks, I see the distinction.

    For what it’s worth I agree with theZed’s point about weak rhymes (although “borrowed” muddies the waters a bit because of its different stress). But I would not apply the same stricture to eye-rhymes, which I think only require a) that the pattern (identical letters) is seen by the reader and b) that there is no rhyme. The question of how weak the rhyme would have been doesn’t tip the balance for me, although I do see the other view.

57. A couple of further thoughts.

    I did think that both this and Brendan’s recent prize (28,201) were rather easier than his crosswords used to be.  That is not a criticism because both were very clever and enjoyable, but I wonder if he has deliberately lowered the difficulty level?  He did comment on the prize that his preference is for “easy but enjoyable” puzzles.

    Either the clue for 22a REGRADE was composed in the last week or so, or it is remarkably prescient!

    Does Beobachterin @47 now hold the record for the longest ever comment on this site?

    [muffin @51: I guessed that you were located not far away when you mentioned a while ago the escape lane near Bolton Abbey which I’ve been past many times (thankfully never gone down it).  Greetings from Harrogate!]

58. This was brilliant.

    On getting KEATS and YEATS up front, I had two thoughts: “Maybe we’re going to have a theme of poets today” and “I wonder if anyone is going to mention these two don’t rhyme”.  (Yes, honest!)  You can fill in your own punchline …

59. Thanks for your contribution TheZed @46.

    Question for perhaps Eileen – In layman’s terms, would it be fair to say that rhymes should have the same number of syllables?

    While solving I was thinking there are too many unnecessary words in the clues so I am surprised to see Mark@10 say the opposite.

    eg ‘great in English verse’ for poet; ‘regularly culled’ when ‘regularly’ would do; ‘Part of issue’ instead of ‘issue’

60. PS. Forgot what I came here for – to say I thoroughly enjoyed this.

    Thanks to Brendan and to Eileen for parsing of PLACATORY and where the SC in 12a came from.

61. Yep, a great puzzle for sure. I knew it was good when I was doing it; the blog and all the comments above tease out all the reasons why it’s just so good. My faves were STRIP and RADII.

    And thanks to Penfold @8 for The Smiths reference.

    Thanks to Brendan, Eileen and y’all.

62. No credit to me in terms of length! I did wonder if it would be rejected but could not decide what to leave out.

63. I was today years old when I learned that “yea” as a yes vote was an Americanism.  I mean. that sounds SO British.

    Note that the way SCAVENGED is clued could count as another eye rhyme (it does not rhyme with avenged). But of course that’s exactly the kind of eye rhyme that cryptic crosswords depend upon.

    Thanks to Eileen and Brendan.

64. Pedro @59:  those words aren’t unnecessary.  They’re disguising the definition as wordplay.  I spent ages (in crossword-measured time, so probably about 45 seconds in reality) thinking that “great in English verse” meant i needed a G in between an E and a V somewhere.  The “extra” words also make the surface of the clue elegant.  And while they do make the definition wordier than it strictly needs to be, what’s wrong with that?

65. Lord Jim @57

    See General Discussion

66. Mark @10 summed up my feelings, “smoothly crafted and impeccably clued puzzle from the master.” EYE RHYMES, of course, was a favourite but I didn’t realize the extent of them throughout the grid, so thanks Eileen for expanding my enjoyment of the theme. SPRY was fun because I remembered that “supply” can be an adverb (thanks again to Eileen.) I guess supply/supply are anti-EYE RHYMES if you will.

67. Pedro a little earlier (I’m on my phone which doesn’t give me comment numbers): I guess it must just be my perception re the tightness of the wording. If you were noticing verbosity as you went through, there must be more superfluous wordage than I’d appreciated. That said, I think there were many clues there without a single wasted word. I’m not sure I agree with your three examples: ‘poet’ would work but a) be a giveaway and b) not support a surface that was leading us on a tangent; omitting ‘culled’ leaves a less sensible surface – ‘being regular’ in what? And I did think issue referred to children in the plural meaning daughter is part of it. But I may well be wrong. I suspect there aren’t too many other superfluous words to be found.

68. mrpenney @64: (now you gave me a reference point I can count up to your comment: hear hear. We crossed. Totally agree that an extra word to deliver elegance is justified- even if many of today’s clues achieved the latter without the former!

69. Mark @67/68 You can click on the 3 dots to the top right of your phone screen, then tick the Desktop Site box, if you want to see the comment numbers.

70. Penfold @69: no dots anywhere on my iPhone screen I’m afraid. But it may just be me not seeing them – after all, I didn’t notice all those unnecessary words! 😀

71. Mark @70 Apparently you click the “aA” icon on an iPhone, rather than the 3 dots.

72. Mark @70 on an iPhone scroll to the bottom of the page and there you can choose between mobile and desktop views. The mobile view does not show comment numbers but the desktop does. Be warned though that switching back from desktop to mobile is tricky because a credit banner obscured the buttons! Close the tab and reopen and it should default back to mobile. Clunky but there you go. Bit of attention from the webmaster would be handy?

    Brilliant puzzle and companion blog thanks!

73. Mark @67: I take your points and did think well OK, Brendan is being poetic himself in this crossword and beating about the bush as it were. Twas only when I saw your “barely a single superfluous word” that gave me cause for comment on here.

     

74. Tim @72

    “Be warned though that switching back from desktop to mobile is tricky because a credit banner obscured the buttons! …… Bit of attention from the webmaster would be handy?”

    I don’t possess a smart phone and so can only display the mobile view by using Chrome’s emulator. It doesn’t matter which phone emulation I choose, the ‘Desktop | Switch to Mobile’ option is always displayed below the ‘Fifteensquared is powered by …’ banner. No one else has mentioned a problem with switching back from desktop to mobile in all the years (~10) that the mobile view has been available.

75. Pedro @73: gracefully acknowledged and it’s my own verbosity partly to blame.  Given that I argued with TheZed yesterday that ‘a few’ might just stretch to 14 (!), perhaps I should have said ‘few superfluous words’ which would have been both pithier and precise!

    Thanks to all for the iPhone advice which I will explore.

76. Pedro @73: I thought exactly the same – was Brendan giving us phrases such as “person who paints” instead of the more common “artist” precisely to put us in a more poetic state of mind? “Part of educational foundation” to clue the letter “r” possibly is not a record, but close surely? The clues were long, perhaps circumlocutious. But verbose – not to my mind because they delighted rather than bored.

    Mark @75 touché!

77. Tim @72 and Gaufrid @74: found it.  Never got that far down the page before.  And it works fine in both directions.  Thanks so much.

78. [muffin @65 – ditto.]

79. Very enjoyable throughout. I especially liked the pairs KEATS/YEATS and SKYE/SPRY – the latter once I’d seen the light thanks to Eileen!
    Thanks also to Brendan for a skilfully themed puzzle.

80. Thoroughly enjoyed this. Unlike others here whose English degree helps with the literary references in cryptics,  my degree was almost entirely linguistics, so this was right up my alley, and one of the reasons why Brendan is a favourite setter.  He loves to play with language. English orthography, deriving from  various root languages  and historic shifts,  does make for great cryptics, although homophones can be contentious. It’s ironic that English has become a dominant language when it’s so difficult to spell or deduce the pronunciation from the text. Doesn’t seem to matter as much now though, with technology to decode voice to text and vice versa.  As a late-comer to  smart phones I’m now having to decipher  SMS and emoji language.

     

    Thankyou Beobachterin for the poems. And Eileen and bloggers here for a fun day.

81. I completely failed to realise how clever this grid was until I came here. Bravo to Eileen and Brendan!

    Paul will have his work cut out tomorrow to beat this.

82. We were happy to finish this, having struggled with NAUSEATING and SCAVENGED, but like many others we completely missed the sheer ingeniousness of Brendan’s clueing today until reading the blog. So thanks to Eileen and others who spotted all the EYE RHYMES (a phrase I didn’t know but makes perfect sense). And to Brendan of course.

83. Thanks ever so to Brendan (yes, that one!) and Eileen.

    I missed the joke in “strip” until Wellbeck @26 called my attention to it.  I had STRAP, which is also a band, and didn’t read the blog carefully enough to spot my error.

    Could somebody explain penfold’s contribution @8?  The Smiths?

84. Valentine @83

    Cemetery Gates is a song recorded by The Smiths in 1986.

    The narrator walks through a cemetery and is saddened by all the people with his loves, hates, and passions who have died. The opening lyrics are:

    A dreaded sunny day
    So I meet you at the cemetry gates
    Keats and Yeats are on your side
    A dreaded sunny day
    So I meet you at the cemetry gates
    Keats and Yeats are on your side
    While Wilde is on mine.

85. Dr. WhatsOn @58 – I think a POETS theme would only be appropriate if it was Friday…?

86. Lovely theme and solve, and a fun way to discover that I’ve been pronouncing Yeats wrongly all my life!

    Thanks Brendan & Eileen!

87. When the English tongue we speak.
    Why is break not rhymed with freak?
    Will you tell me why it’s true
    We say sew but likewise few?
    And the maker of the verse,
    Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
    Beard is not the same as heard
    Cord is different from word.
    Cow is cow but low is low
    Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
    Think of hose, dose,and lose

    And think of goose and yet with choose
    Think of comb, tomb and bomb,
    Doll and roll or home and some.
    Since pay is rhymed with say
    Why not paid with said I pray?
    Think of blood, food and good.
    Mould is not pronounced like could.
    Wherefore done, but gone and lone –
    Is there any reason known?
    To sum up all, it seems to me
    Sound and letters don’t agree.

88. SKYE is a wonderful true &lit.
    Such fun and fluidity as ever from Brendan.
    Many thanks both and all

89. That is great, Phil Smith. Thank you!

90. You’re welcome, Beobachterin. So are yours. I taught that poem to the students in my Listening and Pronunciation class for many years.

91. I loved this puzzle, but I have one query.
    I’m not a medical man, but surely SLAUGHTER is fatal for everyone, and not just many?

92. Hi Jeremy @91

    I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘everyone’? – everyone involved in the killing, certainly,  but I think the emphasis is on many as opposed to some, or just a few. All my dictionaries give ‘slaughter’ as something like ‘the brutal or indiscriminate killing of large numbers’. We don’t talk about one or two people being slaughtered.

    Glad you loved the puzzle, anyway. 😉

     

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