Guardian 27,339 – Vlad

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Perhaps slightly less fearsome than Vlad at full strength, but still some quite intricate parsings, including one of which I almost had to give up on. Thanks to Vlad for the challenging entertainment.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. WHERE’S THE FIRE Massage with 4 free? Why the hurry? It’s … (6,3,4)
Anagram of WITH SHEER (answer to 4d) FREE. The “it’s…” points us to the next clue …
10. INGRATE … here — though there won’t be any cheers from me! (7)
… where for once the ellipsis has some meaning: the fire is IN [the] GRATE
11. MICROBE Vermin Nick caught which can’t be seen normally (7)
ROB (steal, nick) in MICE
12. TACIT Understood sensitivity speaking about independence (5)
I in TACT. I wasn’t sure about I = independence (as opposed to independent), but Chambers has it
13. RATIONALE Reasons to cut down on drink? (9)
RATION ALE – pretty sure I’ve seen this idea a few times
14. ELAND Pill to get one horny (5)
E (Ecstasy) + LAND (to get), and elands have horns
16. SLUG IT OUT Fight for settlement after criminal guilt’s revealed (4,2,3)
GUILTS* + OUT (revealed)
18. EARLY BATH Get this sent off! (5,4)
Cryptic definition – a footballer who is sent off is said to be going for an early bath
19. SMASH Band receiving money for hit (5)
M in SASH
20. LAUNCH PAD Ultimately one run short (Chanderpaul built platform) (6,3)
Anagram of CHANDERPAUL less [on]E R
23. SHIVA God — picking up Ivy has worked out! (5)
Anagram of (IV (homophone of “Ivy”) + HAS)
24. NOISOME I object to boss — very offensive (7)
I struggled with parsing this one: it’s NO 1 (boss) + SO (very) + ME (I as a grammatical object)
25. OBLIQUE Require question for government to be slanted (7)
OBLIGE (require) with the G replaced by QU
26. BELLES LETTRES Allow plug for new bestseller — it’s fine writing (6,7)
LET in (plugging) BESTSELLER*
Down
2. HIGH CHAIR Said, greeting children: “Look, you may eat in here” (4,5)
HIGH (homophone of “hi”) + CH + AIR (a look)
3. REACT Edit without day to respond (5)
REDACT less D
4. SHEER Pure woman? I need to think about that! (5)
SHE (woman) + ER (hesitant sound)
5. HOME TRUTH In reality? (4,5)
Cryptic definition – the reality or truth you might have when you’re at home, or “in”
6. FACTORIES See politicians after nothing works (9)
FA ([Sweet] Fanny Adams, nothing) + C (see) + TORIES
7. RIOJA Drink port and punch — no beer at first (5)
RIO + JAB less B[eer]
8. HIT THE CEILING Eighth client I shafted got very angry (3,3,7)
(EIGHTH CLIENT I)*
9. SEVENTH HEAVEN Say nothing about incident at hotel — a regular’s claimed it’s a delightful place (7,6)
EVENT + H[otel] in SH (say nothing) + A in EVEN (regular)
15. DAY SCHOOL Lad choosy about place of education (3,6)
(LAD CHOOSY)*
16. SHARPNESS Clarity of phrases Poles translated (9)
Anagram of PHRASES NS
17. ODALISQUE Old boy mounting naughty topless concubine (9)
O + reverse of LAD + [R]ISQUÉ
21. URINE Hour in Eagle drinking the amber liquid? (5)
Hidden in hoUR IN Eagle
22. DRONE Flyer run over outside (5)
R in DONE (over)
23. SPLIT Rent place in Europe by the sea (5)
Double definition – Split is indeed by the sea, so that just extends the second definition

40 comments on “Guardian 27,339 – Vlad”

  1. Thanks Vlad and Andrew

    Well, I finished it, but there were lots I didn’t like. Some of the definitions were very loose – MICROBE, ELAND and SPLIT for example. What is “speaking” doing in 12a? M doesn’t stand for “money” in my Chambers (M0, M1 etc. stand for various forms of money, but not m by itself.) “See” for C in 6d is stretching it.

    Lots of guess then parse. I didn’t parse NOISOME, in fact – well done Andrew.

    The “4” in 1a actually helped. I guessed INGRATE, which gave me 1a and then 4d, which I don’t think I would have got otherwise.

    It may be a chestnut, but RATIONALE raised a smile.

  2. Hard work this morning. I struggled with the NE corner especially. I did enjoy lots of the wordplay. In 12a, ‘Sensitivity speaking’ for ‘tact’ seems fine to me. For 19a, though, I had ‘slash’, which I thought worked better. Thanks to Vlad, and to Andrew – I couldn’t sort out 24!

  4. Thanks for the blog Andrew, especially for putting me out of my parsing misery for NOISOME!

    As you said, not VLAD at his toughest thanks mainly to the helpful anagrams. I especially liked the linked clues solving them, as muffin did, in reverse order. A good challenge. ELAND made me laugh. Thanks Vlad.

    muffin@1 – Chambers does have M for money in a separate list from M0/M1/…, along with maiden, Malta, master, et al. Chambers also has the third definition of see as “(noun) The third letter of the alphabet (C,c)”. This complaint arises every single time a setter uses see for C. Does no one bother to check a dictionary? I thought the definition of ELAND was funny, though did wonder whether it needed a question mark.

  5. I have just checked the oldest copy of Chambers that I can easily lay my hands on – a 1993 edition, which surely predates the ubiquity of textspeak!

    see n the third letter of the alphabet (C,c)

    Can we please stop with the lazy complaints against setters for see/C when it is our laziness for not checking facts?

    Sorry to be so blunt but this complaint arises every single time a setter uses this device.

  8. Thanks for the blog, Andrew.

    I did manage to parse NOISOME but, like you, I took a while.

    Apart from that, I agree with everything ClaireS has said @4 and 5.

    Many thanks, Vlad, for an enjoyable challenge to end the week. Looking forward to seeing you – and many others – in York tomorrow.

  9. M for money was unexpected, but I’ve long ago given up on arguing about abbreviations. Does anyone else find that Nick doesn’t exactly equal ROB? The thief robs a person but nicks his watch… Or is it just me? Anyway, it didn’t stop me getting the answer. Thanks Vlad, and thanks Andrew, especially for NOISOME.

  12. I had much the same experience as Muffin. OK, so we can find m for money and c for see, but perhaps from a solver’s perspective it isn’t very satisfying if there are two many of them.

  14. I enjoyed this. The combination of 1a and 10a was great. (Or grate?) Always good to see ELAND, my favourite crossword antelope after the okapi, and the clue for it was clever. Needed the blog for the parsing of 6d and 24a.

    Just about to set off for York for the S&B!

  15. To me, this puzzle was a case of “sprinting through the tape” – finishing strong in what has been a great week. There were many challenging parsings and some excellent (and sometimes laugh-inducing, e.g. 17d) surfaces. My favorites (for both surfaces and wordplay) included FACTORIES, HIT THE CEILING, and ODALISQUE.
    How exciting for those of you who’ll be getting together in York tomorrow. Hope someone will be serving up BUMMOCK. Not to make anybody jealous, but this weekend I will be replacing a leaky toilet and the water-damaged floorboards around it. So I’ve got that going for me.
    Many thanks to Vlad and Andrew and commenters. Have a nice weekend all!

  16. I too liked that the ellipses were relevant for a change and getting INGRATE second brought a smile. I was also another who needed Andrew’s parsing for 24a. Has everyone but me come across ODALESQUE before? It was fairly clued but didn’t come up as a synonym for concubine when I searched, although concubine came up when I searched for the definition of odalesque. I’m obviously using a dodgy thesaurus – I must dig out my dad’s old 2 volume Roget’s if I’ve still got it and see if that has it.
    My favourite today was HOME TRUTH – especially as I’d bunged in HALF which meant MICROBE was my LOI after concluding 11a couldn’t be LACTOSE. I feel well crafted short clues are the zenith of the setter’s art – and I think I’m repeating myself from a few months ago.
    Thanks Vlad and Andrew, and I hope whoever is going to York enjoys each other’s company.

  17. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew. Tough going for me. I couldn’t parse NOISOME and also FACTORIES (I had forgotten the sweet Fanny Adams phrase that I had encountered here before). I got the “early” in EARLY BATH but took a while getting the “bath” (showers in the US) and struggled with 1 and 10 across. Still, lots of fun.

  20. Eileen – a few months ago you replied directly to me and I’ve wondered ever since how you did that – and after all this time I’ve just spotted the “Reply” link in the posts, so I assume that’s how it’s done and am sending this to test it out.
    Whilst writing I’ll also say that I’m interested in joining the next weekend in spring – I think I saw somewhere that you are going to organise it.
    Thanks for your affirmative approach to your blogs.
    Andy

  22. I found this quite hard going but thanks all the same to Andrew and Vlad.

    Could someone please tell me how I find out what is going on in York tomorrow, not that I can make it, unfortunately.

  23. Martin @ 22

    The details re on the home page of this very site and at the top of the column on the left.

    hth

  24. Hi WhiteKing @20

    Yes, I remember replying to you directly – something I would do very rarely and, on this occasion, I think it was because your comment was rather late and I wanted to make sure you saw my response. I think I explained to you that the blogger for the day receives an email of each comment and thus I saw your address. I delete all these emails from my inbox each time I blog, so, to retrieve your address, I would have to trawl through the archive. [I don’t know what you mean by the ‘Reply link’.]

    As for a possible spring event, I think at the moment that’s a work in progress – see Kathryn’s Dad’s subsequent comment @28 on the York S and B thread. The organisation of the Midlands meets is a bit of a running joke. 😉 I think it’s safe to say that it won’t be a whole weekend event!

  25. Check the Announcements in the left sidebar Martin @22. I’ve been a couple of times – alas won’t be there this year – and can thoroughly recommend it. Helps if you like beer as well as crosswords, mind.

  28. Well if we are to allow see=C then we must allow all the phonetic spellings of our alphabet. That’s right isn’t it?

    I wonder if there is already a list…

  29. NHS @28
    I reluctantly accept that it is in Chambers, but I can’t imagine a situation in which one would write “see” when “C” was meant. (It’s the other way round in “text-speak”.)

  30. Thanks for link Mark – I’ve not come across The Demeberists before. They sound like a cross between REM and Oasis. Their old fashioned storytelling songwriting approach is interesting.

  31. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and noisome was the only one that I found a little clunky. The interweaving of 1 and 10 across with 4 down was very satisfying to work out and sorry to disagree with Muffin but 14 across was an excellent cryptic definition given the fabulous surface. Finally, again somewhat against the blog tide, I thought 6down an excellent clue and a very pleasant change of see as C as opposed to the now very tired Ely and Lo. Thanks to Vlad and of course, Andrew

  32. gsol @31
    ELAND was one of the more amusing clues, indeed, but I said that the definition was “loose”. There are several thousand “horny” animals to choose from, let alone other meanings of the term.

  33. I rather liked this- and no, I didn’t parse NOISOME either-and found it more approachable than I usually do with this setter. I started just after lunch and completed the puzzle after a couple of hours weeding and lawn mowing. I liked WHERES THE FIRE and INGRATE even if I did get them the ‘wrong’ way round. LOI MICROBE.
    Thanks Vlad.

  34. Not a setter I’ve tried before. Tough style with vague definitions and obscurities like ‘Where’s the fire’ (never heard that or seen it written!), ‘belles lettres’ (likewise) and ‘odalisque’ – but that’s obviously my fault for being stupid. I don’t think the ‘definition’ for MICROBE is fair, at least without a question mark in the clue…

    Despite the honourable poster’s explanation, I’m afraid I still don’t get the parsing of NOISOME. As shown, it would give MENOISO. What in the clue is suggesting the correct order of the pieces, please?

  35. speckledjim @34: I still consider myself a novice solver but I have noted that “to” usually just means “abutting” with no intended indication of position. Unlike in mathematics, there is no commutative property so you have to try piece together the bits both ways. For my part, I wasn’t able to parse NOISOME but I doubt an additional indicator would have helped me since I was convinced that “I object” equalled “NO”.

    The only new phrases for me were EARLY BATH and HOME TRUTH. I’m dying to fit the latter into a conversation but unfortunately no one in the US will have any idea what I’m talking about.

  37. Re 11 across: ‘nick’ is a synonym of ‘steal’ but ‘steal’ isn’t a synonym of ‘rob’. ‘I was robbed’ = ‘Something was stolen from me.’ ‘I was nicked’ = ‘I was arrested.’

  38. Re 19a the answer must be smash as in ‘smash hit’ record, slash doesn’t fit the meaning even tho that was my first attempt. Re 11a rob = nick in some parts of the UK (I lived in L’pool for a few years and seem to recall hearing it)

  39. When I was a runner for the Liverpool Mafia in the 1980s, if we nicked a car, we stole the car. If we robbed a car, we stole what was inside it. Or did I just pick this up from an episode of Brookside. It was all a very long time ago.

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