Guardian Cryptic 27,259 by Vlad

56 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,259 by Vlad”

1. Thanks manehi and Vlad.

   Quite accessible…though needed to check here parsing for Het up and Ferret out…3d never heard of.

   Liked EMANATING, VIE, ORIGAMI AND REFINE.

2. 12/23 is actually one of those reverse anagrams. TEARS WHEN SHOPPING is an anagram (“at sea”) of WORSE THINGS HAPPEN.

   Thanks Vlad and manehi, especially for parsing KATOWICE, which I had to look up, and still never would’ve parsed myself.

3. Thanks manehi and Vlad. I couldn’t parse KATOWICE (this not surprisingly!), ENHANCE and WORSE THINGS… Re 23dn: in HE TUP (sic), part of the sense of ‘tup’ is duplicated by ‘he’ so this is a pleonasm rather than a tautology.

4. Was nearly impaled today, but was saved by the wordplay in lots of the clues. I too had never heard of 3d but, hopefully, will remember it for future use. I’m not ashamed to say that “TOWIE” isn’t a programme I’ve ever watched, but it’s in the news often enough at the moment. 13ac was also new, but accessible enough from the wordplay. I liked 12/23ac & 2d particularly.

   Thanks to Vlad for the enjoyable challenge & to manehi for the much needed blog.

5. Same problem with KATOWIcE. TOWIE was totally outside what I experience on TV.

6. I didn’t end up feeling as impaled as I thought I might when I first saw the setter’s name – a very enjoyable solving experience with some excellent wordplay throughout – too many ‘favourites’ to list

   Thanks to Vlad and Manehi too

7. Bizarrely I spent some time yesterday looking for a hotel in Katowice where i go in October! So that helped. All quite tricky but fair . I liked VIE CARTOONIST and IDIOTIC.

8. Thanks Vlad and manehi

   Easier to fill in the grid that is often the case with Vlad, but I didn’t parse SUITCASES, NICER, or ENHANCE, and didn’t know the Hefner connection for SWITCHEROO. Also, not knowing H was in Steps, I thought the clue for STAIR was pretty feeble. Favourites were STOCKING FILLERS, SAID and ORIGAMI.

   I was irritated by INVERSE as I had REVERSE for some time – a much better answer.

9. I had dimly heard of KATOWICE, and managed to fill it in, but with no idea how TOWIE worked. Is it fair to take a TV series (which I’d heard of, though never seen) and reduce it to its initials in this way? I reached 8D via SIDLES, though of course SLIDES must be the correct route.

10. Jason @9
    I’ve never seen TOWIE either, but the acronym is in general use.

11. Many thanks, Vlad and manehi.

    Once again, I agree with crypticsue @6 – but have to add that I thought the long one was brilliant.

    I took the ‘film’ in 17dn as being SKI[n] but thought manehi’s reading was just as good. Just for fun, I looked it up and found,in Collins:
    skim: any thin layer covering a liquid;
    skin: any coating or film, such as one that forms on the surface of a liquid.

12. Epeolater@3
    My Oxford dictionary defines both ‘pleonasm’ and ‘tautolgy’ as ‘saying the same thing in different words’.There must be a fine distinction which I cant catch

13. Must confess to some use of the check button and couldn’t parse several. Like Eileen I thought of skin rather than skim but thanks Eileen for confirming that both are in dictionary. So I’ve learnt a new definition of a word…that wasn’t even fully there. Only in the cryptic…

14. Agree with Muffin @8 that REVERSE makes more sense for 21D

    Definitely impaled today. Too hard for us poor solvers in the slow lane. Crossword solver to the rescue again 🙁
    Though I did manage to get 12,23 just from H – P – – –

    well done to manehi for parsing everything that I failed to

15. Superb puzzle. I love Vlad’s use of downbeat culture like TOWIE; awaiting a LOVE ISLAND ref. next time out.
    I have broadened my ferret nomenclature knowledge dramatically today!
    Thanks Jim and manehi

16. Thanks manehi and Vlad.

    Only CHA first time through and I thought it was going to be impossible. However, guessing ARIA in 27 ac, along with a guessed THE in 16d suggested IN THE MAIN and 12ac followed and then several others quite quickly and easily.

    Then, ground to a crawl for the top half.

    I, as muffin, had REVERSE at 21d and thought it a better answer.

17. I also thought of OB at 21d but it obversely wasn’t correct. We seem to have had a plethora of answers including “VERSE” in the past week or so.

18. muffin @8
    Lucy Lastik @14
    Dave Ellison @16

    I can’t see how ‘poetic’ could clue RE VERSE – let alone how/why it would be a ‘much better clue’. I must be missing something – would one of you please explain?

19. Hi Eileen
    Definition “opposite”
    “of poetic” – “re verse”

20. @muffin
    In case you’re collecting stats, I was a reverser too and it was only when I got stuck with 20 and pressed “check” I discovered it was wrong. Seemed plausible to me at the time. Still does, actually.

21. muffin and baerchen @19 and 20 – as so often, I sort of saw it as soon as I’d posted! Plausible, yes, but we could argue all day about whether it’s better. 😉

22. I too got “inverse” pretty quickly because of crossing “vie”. But a difficult solve, I found. Excellent wordplay.

    Thanks Vlad and manehi.

23. Like Eric @13, I confess to the use of the check button (quite liberal in my case). Rather a shame: I started off thinking how nice Vlad had become, with clues like PASSENGER PIGEON and HET UP, but around half way things ground to a halt – not helped, it has to be said, by SUNRISE (nurseis*) at 7d and REVERSE at 21d (not just me it seems). Even when these were resolved, entering in answers like KATOWICE and FERRET OUT gave no pleasure, having no idea how they parsed.

    Pleased it’s all over and I can look forward to tomorrow.

24. Thanks Vlad, & Manehi for some pretty tricky unravelling
    I had reverse, didn’t think to check it and as a result didn’t get CARTOONIST. We had Toulouse-Lautrec the other day, and *A*T*O*R*T made me think it might be some lesser known alternative.
    Favourites were WORSE THINGS HAPPEN AT SEA and FERRET OUT. SAID, too.
    KATOWICE is a particularly fiendish combination of obscure bits of trivia, but if you’ve heard of the place, you’ll get it from the crossers, so why not?
    I think I’d pronounce TERMINI with an ‘ee’ at the end
    Pleonasm’s a very pleasing word. What’s the tautological equivalent? Pleonasmic?

25. Martin @22
    VIE doesn’t help distinguish between INVERSE and REVERSE!

26. For me, 21d fell into the ‘old friend’/chestnut category so putting RE rather than IN never occurred to me

27. Thanks Vlad and manehi.

    Not quite impaled this time; I was another reverser at the beginning. Although I’ve heard of TOWIE, ‘programme’ is a fairly loose description, although I suppose it’s no worse than ‘animal’ or ‘bird.’ On consulting Wiki, I was amazed to find that there have been twenty series of this soap.

    I don’t think many people would be aware that SWITCHEROO was published in Playboy. I thought they published more revealing articles.

    Enjoyable, LOI was SAID, which seems to have been written in Yoda-speak to me.

28. Fine puzzle. My own solve started on the easy side – I wondered if he was going milky on us. Not so – it soon tightened up into a real slow-burner.

    Good to have some let-ins for more mid-strength punters to enjoy this stuff maybe.

    Overall there was plenty of meat – smiles too.

    I didn’t know the Polish city but TOWIE, when it eventually came was a mega-PDM – lucky to know that not being UK resident – possibly lucky too not to have endured it.

    Many thanks to Vlad and manehi

29. Thank you Vlad and manehi.

    I found this hard and had trouble with the parsing of CARTOONIST, FERRET OUT, IN THE MAIN and STAIR. At first I wanted to enter PROSAIC at 21d, but that is not cryptic, and had to google SWITCHEROO to check the word.

    I enjoyed the clues for STOCKING FILLERS, EMANATING and FERRET OUT, now that I have seen the parsing.

30. Tricky puzzle. I still had ten words not filled in when I went to sleep last night. But I do like “Worse things happen at sea,” a common phrase I’d never heard.

    I’d never heard of Delia the chef. And I’d never heard of Katowice, but it was predictable from the components — it looks Polish. But it didn’t help that I’ve also never heard of KA or TOWIE. When I read manehi’s parsing I thought “The only way is Essex” must be Ford’s slogan for its car of that name.

    I put in PROSAIC too, Cookie, but gave it up pretty soon in favor of (of course) REVERSE. I do think INVERSE is better.

    Thank you, Vlad and manehi.

31. Thank you Vlad and Manehi. A decent workout with a couple of unparsed entries. I was never going to get TOWIE or nurse = EN. I want to add my vote for REVERSE. I know it doesn’t work but is a better fit. Opposite poetic clues INVERSE but the “of” requires Re Verse.

32. I wonder whether the definition of INVERSE is supposed to be ‘opposite of’ or just ‘opposite’. It seems more natural to be just ‘opposite’ but you get such expressions as ‘inverse sine’, which would be ‘opposite of sine’ than ‘opposite sine’, so perhaps it’s OK either way.
    Otherwise, I think the ‘of’ is misleading and a bit unfair, given that it leads to an alternative answer, and it’s not generally used as a redundant link. I don’t think same mitigation applies as for KATOWICE, that the crossers will resolve the difficulty. CARTOONIST is a hard clue, and INVERSE should be the easier one that gives the crosser for the harder.
    ‘Poetic opposite’ perhaps?

33. Another great if sometimes challenging puzzle, which almost goes without saying when Vlad is the setter. Struggled with a couple of parsings but there were enough helpful crossers to be reasonably sure of the solutions before parsing. I think I was familiar with all of the references this time, which definitely helped with KATOWICE…

    Thanks to Vlad and manehi

34. Thanks both,

    I liked 28 very much. I was another reverser. Inverse doesn’t mean opposite in my idiolect. Saying ‘the inverse of that’ for ‘the opposite of that’ sounds like a malapropism to me. I won’t deny it’s used, just not by people with a feeling for the language.

35. Thanks to Vlad and manehi. I did get INVERSE early on (I’ve come across that clue before) and used Google to confirm Delia Smith as chef, but was stumped by KATOWICE, did not know jill = FERRET or the WORSE THINGS HAPPEN phrase, and could not parse ENHANCE. Tough going for me.

36. Another puzzle made unnecessarily difficult, for me, though Vlad seems okay when he or she isn’t trying to be a ‘Guardian compiler’. Curious.

37. I was another REVERSE,and a SKIN instead of SKIM – although I thought the former was better-,couldn’t parse ENHANCE and I got SWITCHEROO from the anagram. I do think the ‘Hefner’ reference is pushing it a bit. Still, I did enjoy this. I think because about two thirds of the puzzle were quite accessible – and then there was KATOWICE which I wouldn’t have parsed in a million years- TOWIE indeed!
    Thanks Vlad.

38. I’m with Trailman @23 and Robi @27 on this. And ‘Yoda-speak’ deserves to enter the Fifteensquared lexicon as a term of criticism!

39. I enjoyed this – partly because I got all the solutions (although not all the parsings) in a Vlad puzzle and partly because I thought there were some great clues. The Hefner allusion eluded me, as did the “term” part of 26a, the “ust” in 27a, 16d altogether, and the “ski” but of 17d. I had smileys by 1a, 18a (very clever), 20a, 28a, and 5d (because I knew the Jill reference).
    And I’ve managed to post before midnight – an upside of a train journey to London and back. Thanks to Vlad and manehi.

40. And I’m a supporter of the inclusion of contemporary culture. Like it or not things like TOWIE are very much part of life for many people – certainly many more than ferret fanciers – so it seems reasonable to stretch beyond the familiar to both extend our own awareness and strive to engage a broader audience with this pastime.

41. I missed the ‘reverse anagram’ at 12/23a. Should have spotted it! So few clues are of this type – this makes it tops for me – even though I had to write-in.

    Not too comfortable with 7. When a letter or letters are to be taken off and replaced with others, shouldn’t the indicator be more explicit e.g. “replaces” or “substitutes”? Reading it through a few times, I suppose it does work – just about!

42. Thanks all
    I failed to solve refine because I assumed ?E?Ice. In charge at the end th(e).
    Favourite was 12,23

43. Beaten, fair and square, by several in the NW corner. Bizarrely, I “guessed” at KATOWICE based only on –T-W—, but dismissed it as clearly having nothing to do with the clue!

    Thanks, Vlad and manehi.

44. I also had REVERSE, and by the end maybe wasn’t impaled but felt hung, drawn and quartered! All in all a bit too hard for me – I spent too many hours on it, although I did complete it with several unparsed. Nevertheless, many thanks to the redoubtable Vlad and to manehi (for me, what you described as a “pleasantly tough solve” was more like an unpleasantly tough solve!).

45. James @32 Other than in the location sense I think that ‘opposite’ and ‘opposite of’ have exactly the same meaning, I don’t think reverse works because ‘verse=poetic’ doesn’t work whereas ‘in verse=poetic does’.

    Harhop @12 I agree with Epeolater @3, He doesn’t mean the same as Tup so it isn’t tautology but the ‘he’ is redundant as gender is already defined by Tup.

    I liked 20A and 1A among others, not at all keen on 1D.

46. Great puzzle. So much to admire but my favourite was the beautifully simple STAIR. I like to see modern references in puzzles. Good blog, too.

47. I’m a bit surprised that so many stumbled at the gates of KATOWICE – I thought the city was pretty well-known. And surprise surprise! My habit of avoiding soaps notwithstanding, I’d heard of TOWIE – although I must confess I’d never watched any of it. Since it’s an accepted acronym in current usage (try googling it), the word ‘initially’ in the clue is perhaps redundant? Would that have made it harder – or easier?

    Anyway, KATOWICE went in very easily for me. At least, it did once I got 1a.

48. I’m familiar with Katowice but the only part of the wordplay I knew was the “c”. I also was completely thrown by the Hefner reference (and still cannot fathom that anyone knew to make a connection between Roald Dahl and Playboy). Finally “worse things happen at sea” must reflect the UK’s history as a seafaring nation because I’ve never heard that expression ever ever although I managed to guess (quite unhelpfully) the “at sea” part. In the end I wasn’t left with a lot to work with so I was completely defeated by this one.

49. Now that I have finally got round to checking things, I enjoyed it but needed this blog to help my parsing of 3D, even though I knew the city. To add to the complexity of that clue, Ford used Essex as the name of several engine series, but not in the Ka.

    Thanks to both.

50. Should have put it in the too hard basket.
    My experience echoed that of several other commentators:
    Like Peter Aspinwall@37, I didn’t understand the Hefner reference in 13a SWITCHEROO and I only got it from the anagram.
    Missed 20a CARTOONIST because of REVERSE instead of INVERSE at 21d.
    28a PASSENGER PIGEON was a guess based on the crossers; didn’t know it was extinct.
    Had never heard of 3D KATOWICE and couldn’t even make a stab at it.
    The use of Jill in 5d FERRET OUT went right over my head.
    7d ENHANCE was an unparsed guess.
    I knew about a tup being a sheep but could not see why 23d was HET UP.
    Missed that reference to the band and its member for 24a STAIR: it just seemed nonsensical to me.
    So to sum up this tale of woe, I was well and truly outsmarted by Vlad. A humbling experience.
    Thanks for making it all clear, manehi.

51. PS TOWIE as fodder for 3D KATOWICE was also unknown to me, though I do learn a lot about British “culture” from choosing to solve The Guardian cryptic…

52. Harhop @12: There is strictly a difference between tautology and pleonasm. Tautology = saying the same thing two (or more) times; the example par excellence is Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary Reaper’ where in the first five lines there occur ‘single’, ‘solitary’, ‘by herself’ and ‘alone’. Pleonasm = saying part of the same thing twice as in ‘wooden xylophone’; a favourite example in modern-day language is the information on my bank’s web page saying ‘You have successfully logged off.’ If I haven’t logged off successfully, I haven’t logged off!

53. Thanks to manehi for the blog and to others who commented.

    Think ‘tautologically’ in 23d is OK as a more commonly recognised word though strictly speaking ‘pleonasm’ is correct.

    Robi @27: TOWIE was defined as ‘programme initially’ rather than just ‘programme’ which does narrow it down quite a lot.

    The Hefner reference in 13a was merely to indicate an American usage.

54. Thanks to Vlad (and for dropping by) and to manehi for many illuminations.

    Finishing this “tomorrow” so to speak – always lagging behind – but as the commentary has leaked forward, I feel licensed to say that the clue for enhance is too multi-layered, requiring a triple whammy: prospect=chance, c=about and en=nurse. No chance or prospect of getting that “cold”; granted with crossers yes.

    Other esotericisms (ferret sexing, TOWIE watching, Playboy) have been pointed out and led to my defeat in several parsings. But the overall feel was of a challenge well defended and I was never going to get it all and parsed.

55. I don’t suppose anyone will read this as the guardian is always 2 days late down here in Charente and it has taken me a day to finish it. Under normal circumstances I’d be attempting this on my daily commute and would not have got near to finishing it. While this site is invaluable for explaining the most obscure clues for those of us who have been hooked on the damn guardian for years , the majority of the contributors refuse to see that midweek puzzles of this obscurity deter new entrants to the cause. And recently there can often be 2 or 3 in a row requiring far more time than most of us have available.
    I think Vlad requires far too many obscure synonyms and/or special knowledge for his puzzle to be called fair. E.g prospect / chance – last / remain. Jill / ferret , hefner , towie
    T for Thailand
    Well that’s my rant over. Down to maison de la presse to get one of the three guardians stocked.
    Come back Araucaria, all is forgiven.

56. Tc – well I read it! Just shows we all are different – with varying tastes, experiences etc. I, for example, have been defeated more than once by an Araucaria but have yet to be skewered by Vlad. So you’re calling for the return of a setter who is arguably tougher at times, for some, than this one…..? I’d hate the general level of G crosswords to become easier. For me, a puzzle that is both elegant and a good tussle is what I look for – and the Guardian is a top hunting ground for such quarry. There are plenty of other sources for more straightforward crosswords…..?

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