Guardian 26,635 by Vlad

by

Sorry I’m not able to give full justice to this great crossword

There’s a few holes here, have fun I”m not feeling too welll, Sorry Vlad you deserve a better blog than I can give today.

completed grid

Across

1 No more rest — chief’s coming in (4,2)
STOP IT

SIT (rest) with TOP (chief) inserted

5 Nights travelling round country — politicians campaigning (8)
HUSTINGS

U.S. ( the country) in NIGHTS* travelling

9 Affected person right to want out (8)
MANNERED

Well I guess the def is ok , vlad is a perfectionist MAN (person) & R(ight) in out of NEED

10 Rodney mistakenly put it back in case (6)
DATIVE

DAVE  (Rodney you plonker, think Only fools and horses for those UK based) with IT reversed inserted. Not wholly convinced this is fair for the the rest of the world. My local pub’s cat is called Dave  for much the same reasons, you mean Dave? Complaints in writing to JimT

11 Misleading element could be key (4)
ISLE

hidden, an element of mISLEading

12 Maybe he’s grasping for a name (6,4)
PROPER NOUN

Per (for) in PRONOUN

 

13 Siren increasingly passionate — once taking time out for love (6)
HOOTER

HOTTER with one T replaced by 0

14 Annoyed about party finishing early — complete farce! (8)
TRAVESTY

TESTY around a short RAV(e)

 

16 Feeding donkey occasionally eats grass (8)
BETRAYER

Geat surface again, odd letters od EaTs in a BRAYER

 

19 Saving a little money — one father’s aim (6)
ASPIRE

P(ence) in A SIRE

21 No resistance — frisky grandpa ain’t a reluctant lover (5,5)
GIANT PANDA

Nororiouly unwilling lovers especially in zoos, R(esistance) removed from [GRANDPA AINT]* friskily

23 Spots One Direction’s involvement (4)
ACNE

N(orth) a direction in ACE (one)

24 The French solicitor is free (3,3)
LET OUT

Ask Pierre. Le Tout.

25 Relaxing what escort did — I agreed to be “entertained” (8)
LEISURED

More great imagery, LED (what an escort did) with I SURE inside entertained

26 Man heading off on road to town (8)
STAFFORD

STAFF (man) & heading N removed from O(n) & RD (road). At least thast the best interpretation I can come up with

27 Question boy over earlier absence (2-4)
NO-SHOW

SON reversed then HOW

Down

2 Better the stroke limit — a breeze (5,4,4,2)
THATS MORE LIKE IT

Looks like a cryptic def, but I doubt it, answers on a postcard please.

3 Sharp fellow gets joke first (7)
PUNGENT

PUN joke & GENT

 

4 May, with many others, try to pray for improvement (4,5)
TORY PARTY

[TRY TO PRAY]* improved   Alarming thoughts of what an improved Tory party might try…

5 Important suspect picked up in refuge (7)
HIDEOUT

Sounds like HIGH DOUBT

6 Edge of field isn’t raised (5)
SIDLE

Hidden, reversed answer

 

7 Strong finish in female tennis battle (7)
INTENSE

[end of (femal)E & TENNIS]* battling

8 Cue to invite topless model with great voice (4,9,2)
GIVE UTTERANCE TO
15 Like to end up in bar (American) (9)
ALABAMIAN
17 End engagement talking online — a sign that you’ve done it? (4,3)
RING OFF

Double cryptic def

18 Was irritating doctor about to describe body part? (7)
RANKLED

ANKLE in DR reversed

20 Strip for very little money (7)
PEANUTS

Double def, think snoopy and charlie brown

22 Too much work rearing this creature (5)
POTTO

Over the top an OP(us) reversed

57 comments on “Guardian 26,635 by Vlad”

  1. This one was very tough, so flashling, you have my sympathy! An enjoyable challenge though. I couldn’t parse everything and resorted to a bit of guess and check to finish off the right hand side. Last in was ALABAMIAN, I couldn’t parse that or GIVE UTTERANCE TO so I can’t help with those. Liked TORY PARTY and GIANT PANDA

    Thanks to flashling and Vlad

  2. Sorry you are poorly. Thanks for the blog.

    15d A LA (like) and a reversal up) of AIM (end) inserted into BAN (bar). I was hoping you’d explain 8d but I am sure someone else will help.

    I enjoyed this puzzle greatly, thank you Vlad. Apparently according to a comment on the Graun site, I must be a bit lowbrow because I thought 10a was brilliant.

  3. 2d. Better is definition. Anagram of the stroke limit a . Breeze being anagrind.
    Great crossword

  5. Flashling – I hope you are feeling better soon.

    I saw GIVE UTTERANCE TO as an anagram of CUE TO (I)NVITE GREAT with “model” as the anagram indicator.

    I saw ALABAMIAN as “A LA” (like) with “AIM” (end “up”) in “BAN” (bar). This was my LOI because I would use “Alabaman”, although it seems like both are acceptable.

    I enjoyed this puzzle even though it felt like a stiff workout.

  8. Thanks Vlad and flashling (get well soon)

    For 2D I have the definition as ‘Better’ with the answer an anagram of ‘the stroke limit a’, indicated by ‘breeze’ – a little unusual but if you take it as ‘blow the letters around’ I think it works.

    For 15D I have ‘A LA’ (like) with AIM (end) reversed (up) in BAN (bar). Only gettable from crossers, I think, but once seen it’s entirely fair, and there’s no law against solving first and parsing later. Not in my unrule book, anyway.

    All in all, an excellent puzzle that I found very difficult while solving, but afterwards wondered why. For me, that’s always a sign of a good ‘un.

  10. Thank you Flashling. Sorry you’re not well.

    I found the parsing of most of this really hard, but I think 8d is an anagram of cue to (I)nvite (topless) and great.

    And 2d I think is an anagram of the stroke limit a ….with a breeze somehow being applied to it.

    I’ve never heard of Potto.

    That’s enough brain work for me! Back to the bedraggled window boxes….

  12. Brilliant stuff! So sorry you couldn’t enjoy it, Phil – get well soon.

    I had only half a dozen answers in on the first pass but the first one in, GIANT PANDA, had set me off with a big smile. Other top favourites, among some real stunners, were PROPER NOUN, TORY PARTY, GIVE UTTERANCE TO, PEANUTS and ALABAMIAN.

    Huge thanks to Vlad for brightening up a truly awful day, weather-wise.

  15. I found this puzzle more difficult than many Prize puzzles I have done in the past, but the clues were very clear and I was pleased that I could almost finish it. I failed to solve ISLE and could not parse 23a ACNE.

    New words for me were POTTO and Dave Rodney (Canadian politician) for my alternative parsing of 10a. Possibly there are other Dave Rodney’s as well! I don’t understand what flashling means in his parsing of 10a.

    My favourites were ALABAMIAN, ASPIRE, NO-SHOW, TORY PARTY, LET OUT, PUNGENT, PEANUTS.

    I agree with the way that people above have parsed ALABAMIAN, GIVE UTTERANCE TO as well as THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.

    Thanks Vlad and flashling – hope you get better soon.

  16. This was fun. I’ve never seen “leisured”–the adjective I know is “leisurely,” and I don’t know “leisure” as a verb. I had also never heard of a potto.

    As an American, the Rodney/Dave thing was right over my head. DATIVE went in easily enough from crossing letters, but I just assumed there was some British person named Dave Rodney, and I shrugged and moved on. I later found that if you Google Dave Rodney, it turns out that there’s some politician in Alberta by that name, which felt singularly unenlightening.

    I’ve always liked that particular way of cluing PUNGENT, since I think most male crossword types (solvers and setters a like) are definitely pun gents.

  17. Thanks Vlad and flashling
    Best wishes for a rapid recovery, flashling.
    I wasn’t on Vlad’s wavelength, so this took me far longer than usual. Some lovely clues, though – ISLE, TORY PARTY, PEANUTS and POTTO were my favourites (the nocturnal house at Regent’s Park zoo used to have pottos – pottoes? – pretty little animals).
    Some I couldn’t parse – we’ve had a preliminary discussion on Rodney = Dave, and I wasn’t sure how LEISURED worked.
    The only thing I didn’t like was “donkey” for “brayer”. Yes, it makes sense, but only, for me at least, retrospectively.

  19. Michelle, apparently there’s a TV show where a character named Rodney is consistently referred to as Dave, part of a running gag. So “Rodney mistakenly” is “Dave.” Throw “it” into it backwards, and you get the DATIVE case.

  20. mrpenney@16
    I’m Australian so the Dave/Rodney thing was impossible for me and I found the same Canadian politician via google. Seemed obscure but I was happy enough with it!

    from my online dictionary:
    leisured |?l???d|
    adjective
    having ample leisure, especially through being rich: the leisured classes.
    • leisurely: the leisured life of his college.

  21. mrpenney@19

    thanks – I have never heard of that tv show obviously

    but my Canadian politician worked just as well for a reversal of IT in DAVE so I was happy with the way that I parsed it!

  22. Muffin@16: Oh, ok. Though of course “leisured” in “leisured class” doesn’t exactly mean “relaxing.” Also, although I guess I’ve seen that, I would call them the “leisure class.” Two countries divided by a common language, etc.

  24. mrpenney @16 – some of us are more pun players (an old fashioned cricketing distinction)! The gentlemen are the leisured classes…

  26. Re 10 across – in the BBC sitcom Only Fools And Horses, one of the main characters is Rodney Trotter (played by Nicholas Lyndhurst). For some reason, one of the other characters, Trigger (played by the late Roger Lloyd Pack) is convinced that Rodney’s name is Dave, and always calls him that even when others try to correct him.

  27. CH@26
    thanks for the explanation

    I think that 10a gets the prize for most obscure clue of the day – maybe that TV show has never been shown outside of the UK…..

  28. I found this sloppy, with errors of one sort or another in most clues. It was also pretty clumsy. Vlad the perfectionist? I don’t see how!

    Too many complaints to list.

    HH

  29. Thanks to Vlad, flashling, and the contributors above. I found this puzzle very tough going but did make it through without parsing properly quite a few of the solutions. I did eventually find the Dave-Rodney connection via Google to justify DATIVE but had trouble with STAFFORD and POTTO.

  30. flashling

    I wish you well – and that’s not just for the blog. You were indeed landed with a challenge – there has been many an easier prize crossword – but as Simon S @8 says, it leaves one wondering where the difficulty lay.
    All I have to add to the parsing is that in 25A STAFFORD, the O is more likely to come from ‘heading Off’.

  32. Lovely stuff. I couldn’t parse 5dn (didn’t pick up the homophone indicator), haven’t watched enough of “Only Fools….”, and wasn’t 100% on the “o” in STAFFORD, but completing this was very satisfying after an unpromising start. Dare one ask what hedgehoggy objected to, or will one be entering a world of pain?

  33. For those who of you who think that the existence of the Canadian Dave Rodney is an alternative parsing of the clue for DATIVE, how do you explain the “mistakenly” in the clue? I can’t believe Only Fools And Horses hasn’t been shown elsewhere in the English speaking world, and the main Wiki page concerning the series suggests it wasn’t just the English speaking world that bought it from the BBC.

    Has anyone else noticed that a certain serial griper always seems to reserve the most criticism for the more difficult or inventive puzzles?

  34. Thanks Vlad and flashling (do hope you are starting to feel better).

    I thought we were in for an English or Latin grammar test again today, especially since Rodney D. (David?) Huddleston is the author of “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language”. DATIVE was beyond me.

  35. Yes Andy, I’m sure many of us have noticed. It seems there are many different unspoken standards of perfection!

  36. When I started I thought that (to paraphrase Irving Berlin) there might be brainache ahead, but it turned out to be a perfect level for a moderate mental workout. The standard of clueing seemed very high to me – can’t see how hh has populated his catalogue of errors…but then I rarely can. Managed to parse everything, admittedly often post-insertion – but the definitions for those clues were all accessible (presumably by design), so that’s quite acceptable.

    Do hope things look up for you soon, flash, and that it’s not anything serious.

    For those still confused, here’s some help with RODNEY/DAVE.

  37. Fantastic puzzle. Re Dave/Rodney: as I remember it’s Trigger in Only Fools and horses who kept on calling Rodney ‘Dave’.

    Like others I couldn’t parse several answers (for me it was STAFFORD, ALABAMIAN, PROPER NOUN). Favourites were BETRAYER, ISLE, HOOTER and TRAVESTY.

    HH@28: you are clearly in Eeyore mood today. Sorry that you didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else did.

  38. Thanks limini, hh is the classic definition of a troll, best not to feed them, he said feeding the said troll. Nothing terminally wrong I hope just feel awful and need to sleep all the time, probably just man flu or more likely real flu. Sorry I realise I’ve missed a few clues but just needed something up for the site.

  40. I found this extremely difficult and, as someone has said, harder than many a prize crossword. I struggled with rather a lot of the parsing and am relieved to see that others did too. I’d never heard of POTTO and had POTOO, which, according to the OED,is an insectiverous bird- and I’d never heard of that either!
    Just as well I had nothing planned for this afternoon. My favourite was DATIVE which took me an age to get but was quite brilliant once the penny finally dropped.
    Thanks Vlad.

  42. No need to apologise flashling; it was good of you to even attempt the blog, so thank you very much. Do hope you feel better soon. Was especially grateful for your parsing of “proper noun” which was bugging me – did the puzzle too early for the blog, then was out all day.

    An excellent puzzle, with so many good clues. That for the aforementioned “proper noun” deserves special mention I think. Many thanks to Vlad.

  44. Classy rossword from a class act.
    My PinC after finishing: ‘Gosh, he’s really very different from the others’ [at The Guardian, she meant].

    Yes, this was clever – inventive clueing with an overdose of a-ha moments.
    Difficult to get into but that’s often the case with this setter (especially in his Tyrus guise).

    We found everything, we parsed everything.
    Very satisfying, a crossword like this.

    Thanks Flash, get well soon.
    And thanks to Vlad, of course.

    ps, sometimes your comments make sense, HH.
    Today however, you must be living in a completely different world given your post @28.
    Best to forget about it.

  46. Muffin @45, I didn’t, actually.
    But Beth (my PinC) remembered it from ‘Only Fools and Horses’ (which I saw a few times as well but which didn’t leave a deep impression).
    And because we solved the puzzle together, ‘we’ did parse 10ac – the solution was clear enough.

    And POTTO was almost our first one in, purely by construction.
    Had to be an animal.

  48. Hated every second of it – but only because I was out of my depth! I’m too fatigued even to slog through the Only Fools & Horses Wikipedia entry, although the show’s periodic resurrections pique my interest.

  49. Many thanks to flashling for the blog and others for their comments. Hope you’re feeling better soon, flashling.

    Sympathies to overseas solvers for the Dave/Rodney confusion but I do feel the occasional British cultural reference is justified. Don’t know that much about the political Dave Rodney except, of course, he’s the only Canadian ever to have reached the summit of Mount Everest twice (thanks, Google).

  51. Thanks Vlad & Flashling. I really enjoyed most of the crossword (but not 15d – too contrived).

    I did it offline so I looked at 22d for ages. I reckoned it had to be potto (from the exemplary wordplay) but I had never heard of the animal & had no way of checking. In the long run I chanced it & was correct. An excellent clue for an obscure answer.

  52. Brilliant puzzle.

    I was hampered by preparing for this with 2 large G&Ts and a couple of beers howvever I finally managed to finish it with lots of fun along the way. Everything parsed except HIDEOUT!!!!

    Many thanks to the invalid Flashling and Vlad.

    P.S. I’ve just read hedgehoggy’s verdict and find that this wasn’t a great puzzle after all. Sorry it must have been the alcohol 😉

  53. Massively enjoyable solve. A real slow burner for me even though so many times it was a case of “That’s obvious enough – why didn’t you see it first time?” – evidently an experience shared by others.

    Faves 4d, 10a although UK folk may be surprised to learn that OFAH was not exported to the extent of other UK comedy hits. No prob for me as despite having resided in Australia for nearly 40 (long) years I have resisted the temptation to go native – so I live in a bubble of UK culture (sic) – cryptic puzzles and “Pommy telly” forming a key part of that.

    I do know though that locally one can’t use jokey pig French and follow it with “as Delboy might have said”.

    Many thanks to setter and blogger – to whom (the latter) bonny re coop a ration – as Delboy might have said.

  55. I had the odd experience of completing the left side of this puzzle in about ten minutes, then spending the best part of a day struggling with the right side. Did anyone else find the left much easier?

  56. Thanks Vlad and flashling

    What a gem of a crossword – I think only my second one by him (there is another in the back pile somewhere). It was a work where every clue needed to be prised out on its merit – even the two hidden answers were superbly concealed.

    Like Roland, I worked my way down the lhs, unfortunately taking much longer than 10 minutes. Finished up in the NE corner with GIVE UTTERANCE TO, PROPER NOUN, HIDEOUT and HUSTINGS the last few in.

    Couldn’t call out one bad clue. With DATIVE, as a non-Britisher, there was little chance of me ever decoding the full parsing – but with knowledge of the show, it is an excellent clue. Have a feeling that there was a puzzle in which ‘Only Fools and Horses’ was the theme of the crossword.

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