Guardian 26928 – Vlad

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Rather to my surprise, I got through about half of this pretty quickly, but then slowed down a lot, and almost ground to the halt for the last few. No obvious theme that I can see, but perhaps a couple of nods to the referendum in 20a, 5d and 16d. Thanks to Vlad for a tough challenge.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. BON MOT Sally turned to married big shot (3,3)
Reverse of TO M NOB
5. BEATRICE Largely tolerate flash woman (8)
BEA[R] + TRICE (a short time, a flash)
9. FRICTION Lie about side causing bad feeling (8)
R (side – a bit vague!) in FICTION
10. THINGY Poor fellow you dumped — what’s his name? (6)
THIN + GUY less U
11. DO THE HONOURS Forced Horse and Hound to act as host (2,3,7)
(HORSE HOUND TO)*
13. EVEN Believe no one’s keeping calm (4)
Hidden in beliEVE No
14. MUGSHOTS Patsy’s stolen surveyor’s van — these should help with identification (8)
MUG’S (mug = stooge, patsy) + HOT (stolen) + S (leading letter or “van” of “surveyor”)
17. CREATION Making an erotic compilation (8)
(AN EROTIC)*
18. PEER Look equal (4)
Double definition
20. EXIT STRATEGY Plan to go at sixty — regret abandoning first career (4,8)
(AT SIXTY [R]EGRET)*
23. SIGN ON Government’s wrong about working — you’re not, if you have to do this (4,2)
G in SIN + ON (working). For non-British solvers, to sign on is to register for the dole/unemployment benefit/Jobseeker’s Allowance/whatever comes next on the Euphemism Treadmill.
24. ICED OVER Frozen 24 days before Christmas? (4,4)
24 days before Christmas is DEC 1, or ICED OVER
25. RECOVERY Things better after this run — terribly green beforehand (8)
R[un] + ECO + VERY
26. THRONE Little boy’s in the toilet (6)
RON in THE
Down
2. OARS Blades trio Arsenal bound (4)
Hidden in triO ARSenal
3. MACEDONIA Madness holding church function in the country (9)
CE + DO in MANIA
4. THIRTY Heartless but correct about age (6)
Nearly had to give up on parsing this – but it’s a reversal of Y[e]T RI[g]HT. “Age” is rather a vague definition.
5. BUNKER MENTALITY Defensive way of thinking rubbish — entitle army to go on manoeuvres (6,9)
BUNK + (ENTITLE ARMY)*
6. ALTHOUGH While Henry’s involved with singer, I don’t like it (8)
H in ALTO + UGH
7. RHINO Letter home contained money (5)
IN in RHO. Rhino is slang, of uncertain origin, for money
8. CIGARETTES Tabs kept by spooks conclusively spying on revolutionary individual like me (10)
[spyin]G in CIA + reverse of SETTER. Tabs is slang for cigarettes: apparently mainly a Geordie (Newcastle area) thing – apparently from a brand name.
12. OVEREXCITE Get too aroused by kiss with boob out, reportedly (10)
EX (homophone of X, a kiss) in OVERCITE – homophone of “oversight”, a mistake or boob
15. HAPPY HOUR Chance of us saving a bit of money — why hotel this time is cheaper (5,4)
P Y H in HAP OUR. Happy Hour is a time when pubs etc sell drinks at lower-than-usual prices
16. PITTANCE Prime Minister can upset European? Not very much! (8)
PITT + CAN* + E
19. DECENT Going down south, wanting to be respectable (6)
DESCENT with S “wanting” or missing
21. TANGO Capturing no-good criminal to a T (5)
NG in (TO A)*
22. BERN Picked up torch in Swiss city (4)
Homophone (at least in its anglicised pronunciation) of “burn”

51 comments on “Guardian 26928 – Vlad”

  1. By Jove I feel better after that! Thanks Vlad, and well blogged Andrew.

    Re 4 down, I wonder if Vlad was thinking about the 1968 Dudley Moore film Thirty is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia?

  2. Thanks, Andrew.

    Great puzzle from Vlad. Much fun to be had in the parsing, especially 12dn and 4dn [I’d just about admitted defeat there, too, so a big chuckle when I saw it].

    Lots more to like – too many to mention, in fact.

    Many thanks to Vlad for providing some cheer. [I wonder if anybody does have a 20ac.]

  3. I wonder about “you” for U in 10A. It used to be normal to have a phrase like “when texting” here, but perhaps we don’t need it any more.

  5. It’s always(for me)a blend of challenge and fun to do Vlad’s puzzles and this was a cracker. 4d also needed a long look here.
    Only weakness I can see is the implausible surface of 2d.
    Thanks to S&B

  9. Thank you Vlad for a great puzzle, even though it was very hard for me to solve, and Andrew for a super blog.

    I, of course, failed to parse THIRTY, but I managed to parse RHINO having been monkeyed about with yesterday.

    The clues for MUGSHOTS and ICED OVER were my favourites.

  12. [aye up Cookie meduck; I was being sarcastic – I am a native Sheffielder with 50+ years of SUFC support under my belt (shurely elasticated waistband? Ed.). My comment was aimed the improbable idea that even a wastrel in the transfer market such as A. Wenger could find any potential Gunners on the current roster at “beautiful, downtown Bramall Lane”]

  13. I thought the Blades point might have been that they’re all British – so unlikely to transfer to Arsenal – although in fairness to Arsenal – they have quite a smattering of Enlgish players now.

  14. [baerchen, I clicked when I viewed the comments under the puzzle, a good thing not to view those before posting innocently here!]

  15. I enjoyed this as much as others. Some excellent clues of which my favourites were OVERSIGHT and (even though it’s a pretty humdrum word) ALTHOUGH. THIRTY was my LOI – I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who took an ‘age’ to parse this.

    Apologies for being pedantic, but there’s an ‘S’ missing from the parsing of MUGSHOTS. It should be MUGS (patsy’s) + HOT (stolen) + etc. Yes, you’re right, I should have better things to do with my life.

    A big thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

  18. As Geordie it’s good to see a clue that isn’t cockney or southeast or cricket or classics centric. I wonder if the other compilers are cabable of producing a whole crossword that doesn’t rely on those tricks?

    Thanks Andrew and Vlad

    Mrs Southofnonorth

  19. A very enjoyable puzzle, as you say much of it was at the accessible end of Vlad’s range, but I struggled with the last few, and couldn’t parse THIRTY, which was last in after BON MOT. Ticked THINGY, ICED OVER and TANGO.

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

  20. Not to my taste, I’m afraid. Too many clues where in the solving the practical contribution of the cryptic element was just to give some distraction from the definition element. 10a, 12d, 15d, etc. A not-so-quick quick crossword. I prefer cryptic elements to help me come to the solution rather than confirm it once I have arrived at it.

  21. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew. I always have trouble with this setter and this puzzle was no exception. More than the usual challenge here for a non-UK solver and not just with SIGN ON (which I did parse) but also “career” as an anagram indicator (20ac – US version is “careen”), “tabs” as CIGARETTES, and RHINO (which I knew from previous puzzles). I needed help parsing OVEREXCITE, THIRTY, and especially BERN (my last in) and took a long time seeing RECOVERY because I kept trying to use the letters in “green” rather than “eco.”

  22. It’s just as well I’ve had a long time on public transport today or I might have passed on this earlier – much of it is rather beyond my range. Bit of honesty now solvers – did anyone work out HAPPY HOUR by inserting PYH (money why hotel – it just leaps out at you!) inside HAP OUR? But there we are. I won’t improve unless there’s stuff which stretches me. And I did finish, except for BON MOT / THIRTY, two clues which others have struggled on too.

  23. Always struggle with Vlad with his multiple levels of indirectness like 1a and 4d.Found it harder than the Genius.

  24. Thanks Andrew and Vlad.

    I managed all but BON MOT and BERN because I though they were TOP MAN and BERNE. If I had been more confident about RON in 26a I think I would have looked up its alternative spelling.

    Thanks Cookie for explanation to 15d.

  25. Well, I finally finished this but I didn’t enjoy it much and I found it difficult to parse-eg CIGARETTES,HAPPY HOUR. I liked ICED OVER and THINGY but I found a lot of this habit of a slog.
    Still- thanks Vlad

  26. Great blog and superb puzzle. Too many favourites to list. Top-notch setting.

    I used to think ‘u’ for ‘you’ needed something like ‘on Twitter, say”; however, “while u wait” signs are so ubiquitous I now think it can stand alone in a clue.

  27. Pretty good puzzle.

    The ‘u’ thing needs indication, I think, even though you do see it around here and there. It’s a txt thing isn’t it. The other hitch is the Blades hidden, which doesn’t work – ‘bound’ would have to be past tense, which of course doesn’t work either, so I’m still puzzling on that one! ICED OVER was a bit hard maybe. Had to write in from crossers without really getting it.

    Thanks both for the entertainment.

  28. Genuinely shocked to think that anyone pronounces the Swiss city to rhyme with ‘burn’ instead of ‘bairn’. Awful clue.

  29. Well, I just found this irritating. For me, the clueing should lead to the answer. Here, too often, the answer had to be guessed from crossing letters followed by a tedious slog though convoluted clueing to parse it. I take my hat off to Andrew’s persistence. I simply got bored.

  30. Great puzzle.

    Van Winkle @20

    I prefer cryptic elements to help me come to the solution ….

    Surely this is true for all the clues you list? The cryptic part of 12D in particular led me directly to the solution. This is also true at least to some extent for the other clues you mention.

    Surely it would be more correct to say that you weren’t on the setter’s wavelength today rather than place the blame on poor Vlad 😉

    Crossbencher @28

    You obviously don’t get out much 🙂

  33. Hi Vlad
    Sorry your comment took a while to appear. For some unknown reason it was intercepted by Akismet, the spam filter. I was relaxing with a whisky or three so there was a break in my visits to the site and checking what had been classified as spam.

  34. Could the theme be colloquialisms?

    Thingy, Rhino, Throne, Bon Mot, Bunker Mentality, Sign On, Happy Hour, Do The Honours, Mugshots, Exit Strategy….

  35. Thanks Vlad and Andrew

    On the whole, very enjoyable. I was baffled by the parsing for CIGARETTES and OVEREXCITE, and I thought RHINO a bit unfair (no indication of either Greek letter or slang word, though, in fact, it didn’t take me long to solve).

    Lots of favourites – special mention for ICED OVER (which I was delighted to understand!)

  36. RHINO does remind of the question “Which is the richest animal in Africa? The rhinoceros”. Perhaps I had better not explain fully, but it does involve a mispronunciation of the “ceros” bit.

  37. If anyone got 4d with a blank grid by thinking of YET RIGHT as a semantic equivalent of “but correct”, reversed it, took out the middle letters, and worked out that “age” was a definition of THIRTY, then I would be well, well impressed.

    I am definitely well impressed that anyone could extract such contortions out of 5 words though 🙂

    Much to admire both in setting and blogging, thanks Vlad and Andrew.

    @muffin: it’s been a long day, bit more of a hint please about rhinoceros being the richest animal in Africa?…

  39. Jeremy @37

    I’m regretting this already.

    “Ceros” might be “sore arse” = piles – piles of money?

  43. Thanks blogger and setter. FOI BEATRICE in a flash, then most of the rest of the puzzle doubting myself.
    Another one here who was trying to use the letters of ‘green’ in 25ac – I’m ashamed to say I had recourse to pattern-matching for that one. And I couldn’t parse 12dn because I convinced myself that OVEREX was ‘by kiss’ and then couldn’t explain CITE re ‘boob out’.
    Favourite ICED OVER.

  44. Eileen oh yes former headteacher arranged my exit strategy 6 years ago well you would wouldn’t you? Heaven help those still working today. Found this tricky in parts but got there eventually. Many thanks Andrew great blog and Vlad for a great puzzle.

  45. Yeah. Too hard for me. Got about 2 clues while waiting for wife’s car to be MOT-ed. got home: paper straight under the parrot cage. (Really must get round to buying a parrot sometime soon)

  46. Further to BNTO’s instructive comment @30, I wish to withdraw my comment @20. I realise now that I actually found solving the puzzle by isolating the definition elements for many of the clues highly rewarding and that my reaction to discovering later the parsing of the cryptic element from this marvellous website was not “huh?” but “ingenious!”. I promise not to get similarly confused if similar circumstances arise in the future.

  47. This was as tough as I expect from Vlad. I started it late last night, but gave up with six baffling clues unsolved. Perhaps I was just too tired to think properly. They seemed clear enough this evening, though CIGARETTES had to wait until all the crossers were in place as “tabs” in that sense was new to me. There are too many good clues to pick favourites.

    Thanks, Vlad and Andrew.

  48. muffin @ 39

    Thanks! … but like 4d, I would never have got that…

    But please don’t regret it. Not in the same ballpark as voting for economic, political and constitutional suicide, after all…

  49. re comment 18: I very much agree with Mrs S, particularly about refs to cricket which are very often missed by women – my wife and I are a team and she regularly misses these while being my superior very often in other areas. Charles

  50. Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

    I think Vlad must have been in a kind mood when he composed this one.

    It took a while to solve ALTHOUGH and MUGSHOTS and even longer to work out the parsing of THIRTY but all fair and entertaining.

    Favourites were ICED OVER and TANGO.

  51. Thanks Vlad and Andrew

    Seemed to find this, not so much easier, but able to complete more of it without the use of aids then I normally would. That said, there was still the trademark originality and the devious misdirection to keep one on their toes !!

    Was very happy to be able to pick his logic with ICED OVER and more so with THIRTY – both excellent clues requiring serious lateral thinking.

    Finished up in the top area with THINGY, CIGARETTES (which I had to check up on the ‘tabs’ reference – think that I may have heard them referred by that over here in a fuzzy part of my past) and the vaguely defined and tricky construction of THIRTY as the last one in.

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