Guardian 27,747 / Vulcan

38 comments on “Guardian 27,747 / Vulcan”

1. Far too easy, even for a Monday.

   I don’t like the ‘weak’ clues at 2 dn, 9 dn, 15 ac.

   21 ac should have a ‘maybe’ perhaps after granny?

   Thanks to Vulcan and to Eileen.

2. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

   Easier than the Quiptic today. My only hold-up was initially taking “folding” as the anagram indicator in 17a, rather than the dubious “carried out”.

   I liked the anagram for CLEOPATRA.

3. When even I think it’s a write in, it’s probably too easy, even for a Monday. But I’m always happy to finish one.

4. The brevity of Eileen’s introduction and the comments says it all. Time to see what the FT has to offer. Thanks for the quick start to the week Vulcan and to Eileen.

5. As a tacker, my dad taught me the difference between a reef and a granny; it’s almost as long since I heard the latter. Yep pretty much a write-in, with a couple of quiblets, viz how to precisely equate irritated/itched and love/dote. Thanks Eileen and Vulcan.

6. Definitely one to recommend to cryptic-solving beginners

   Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen

7. grantinfreo @5 – I wondered about those, two, too. Dote needs to be followed by ‘on’ or ‘upon’ to mean ‘love [to an excessive or foolish degree]’ – otherwise, it means ‘to be foolish’ [Collins]. Collins [but not Chambers] gives a transitive use for ‘itch’: ‘to feel or produce an irritating or tickling sensation’, so I suppose that’s  OK. I didn’t mention either, because I knew someone else would.

   For once, I disagree with crypticsue: I don’t think cryptic definitions, where there is no wordplay, are particularly easy for beginners and I have commented several times lately that a puzzle need not be difficult to be good. It was not the ‘easiness’ of this puzzle but the weakness of the cluing that left me feeling unsatisfied.

8. It really itches me….hmmm.

9. Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen. Generally a very straightforward solve, but a couple slowed me down here and there (generally the CDs). That said I still thought it was a pleasant enough solve for a Monday. Thanks again to Vulcan and Eileen.

10. Thank you, Eileen.

    I was going to voice the same quiblings as grantinfreo @5, and also had a ? against carried out as the anagrind at 17a.

    Not much else here to fire the imagination, but thanks for kicking us off, Vulcan.

    Nice week, all.

11. grantinfreo @8 – I do think I’ve heard someone say that of a jumper.

12. A straightforward puzzle today, but as I’m busy at work this week, I was happy to have it done & off my desk within 20 minutes. 24a raised a smile with me.

13. Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen. Yes, a quick start to the week with few problems even with all the CDs. In the US DANISH is common usage rather than anything longer (e.g., danish pastry).

14. Cryptic: 23d Chuck small fish (5) SLING & Quiptic 3d Cast for fine fish (5) FLING !

    I enjoyed solving the Quiptic far more than the “Cryptic” today.

15. “Danish” for the pastry is common in the US — “I’ll have the cheese Danish.”  Don’t know if that usage has crossed the water, though from my wistful look just now at the menu at the Old Horse in Leicester (S & B venue) I’d guess a lot of food terms and customs have done just that.

    For years I thought that “cent” was a value of money but “penny” was the coin, but I’ve learned from authorities that “cent” is the true name for the coin, though I doubt that anybody would say “Look! I found a cent!” any time soon.

     

16. Hi Valentine @15 – I see now that Wikipedia gives ‘just a Danish, [especially in American English]’ but no mention, even there, of a cheese one!  The only kind I’ve ever seen / tasted have been sweet – and delicious.

17. As with others I found this a bit unsatisfactory – dodgy parts of speech and weak rather than straightforward clues. I am particularly peeved by clues like 26ac where you know it is two notes but with all of A-G (plus H potentially) and do-ti to choose from (some in 2 and some 3 letter form), the possibilities are endless, especially when you invent a new note “te” that is not in the solfege system. Without the crossers (and with the poor definition) it’s hard to see how you’d solve this ab initio.

    Enough griping – I am probably annoyed because I solved my first Listener crossword from scratch but it turned out to need 15 minutes of writing a spreadsheet to do all the sums for me and then about 5 minutes of work which was easier than a basic sodoku. Hardly a satisfying solve!

18. Thanks Eileen, and Vulcan. I too found this unsatisfying, but I am conditioned to have low expectations on Mondays anyway. I find the various names for sweet pastries amusing. I lived in the USA for a while in the late 70s and found that a sweet pastry was called “a danish”. Then from the mid 80s I lived in Norway and discovered that there and in Denmark they are referred to as wienerbrød, Vienna bread. I soon learned that the French use a similar term, viennoiserie. So on my first visit to Vienna I was curious to learn whom the Austrians credited with the source of their pastries. But Vienna does appear to be the origin of the category with a long and proud tradition of creative pastry chefs.

19. Ditto what Harpo @ 3 said.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen

20. l beg to differ with someone up there that 9d is weak,it’s ok by me. FOI 1d, LOI 23d.

21. Loved it. But then I find all crosswords difficult.

22. Distracted by the splitters today. No, not an affliction but a job lot of Labour nonentities leaving the Party. A bit disappointed that this was so easy and that the standard of cluing was slightly naff. Can’t say I had a favourite today.
    I’m sure I’ll regret being so scathing later in the week.
    Thanks Vulcan.

23. Eileen @16, cheese Danishes are sweet. The filling is like a sweetened cream cheese or quark.

24. thezed @ 17: Chambers offers te as a variant of ti, while Collins offers ti as a variant of te. Take your pick.

25. Thanks, VinnyD. 😉

26. Simon S @24 fair enough re the definitive guide but that makes an even larger phase space in which to search for a word that cannot substitute for the definition!

27. I thought this was fine for a Monday.  Some of the CDs were a bit weak (yes, ROGER, I am looking directly at you), but back when Rufus was furnishing most of the Monday Cryptics, that was par for the course then also.   And, as in those Rufusian puzzles, there would often be an odd CD here or there that could induce a small chuckle — even if you had a vague recollection of having encountered it previously.  For me today, those clues would include HOLY SMOKE, AMNESIA and TOPKNOT.

    I had question marks for TURN UP ONE’S NOSE, as, to me, this phrase means deliberately and haughtily *ignoring* someone or something (by physically turning away as if he/she/it were not even there), rather than sneering at that person/thing, which to me suggests looking directly at such person or thing with scornful contempt.  For sneering, I think an essentially reverse or opposite phrase, “look down one’s nose”, would be more apt.  Perhaps others (or their dictionaries) may disagree.

    I enjoyed reading the comments on DANISH,  which brought me back to my introductory German course (which is as far as I went in that language), in which the instructor told us that John F. Kennedy should have said “Ich bin Berliner”, and that by including the “ein” in that phrase, he was essentially proclaiming “I am a jelly doughnut”.  The instructor said it was akin to someone proclaiming to a US audience “I am a Danish” when they meant to say “I am Danish”.

    Random final comments:  I think that, by a wide margin, the LING is The Most Important Fish in Crosswordland.  There was an unexpected (and I think unintentional) Nina: “SILKY”.  14ac has me singing “… a soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the NATIONAL TRUST …”

    Many thanks to Vulcan and Eileen and the other commenters.

28. Sometimes I need a nice, easy stroll to counteract a Paul stinker.
    I understand more experienced cruciverbalist’s frustration though.
    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen for the explanations.

29. As a complete beginner who has only been solving since Jan 1st (yes, I make the daftest resolutions), this was the first one that I completely solved and parsed on my own.

    Was pleased with this, especially after I got absolutely nowhere with yesterday’s Everyman, but reading some of the comments both here and on the Guardian site, I am now going to slink back into my hole and only come out when I can do Friday’s offering in two minutes whilst brushing my teeth in the morning, standing on one leg.

    (Thank you Vulcan, and thanks to Eileen and the rest of the crew for your invaluable daily enlightenment.)

30. Eileen @16 Just today at a Stop ‘n’ Shop I bought a Danish for a friend, who usually chooses cheese but today went for cherry/almond, and could have chosen blueberry, raspberry, guava or mango. I’ve also seen apple.  And yes, the cheese is sweet.

    thezed @17 “Te” and “me” are notes on the scale that are flatted down a half step from their usual position in the diatonic scale.  That flat third that make a minor scale minor is “me” rather than “mj” (pronounced “meh.”)
    What kind of sums do you need to do on a spreadsheet to solve a crossword?

    KL Colin @18 what do the Viennese call this traveling pastry?

31. Pzinget @29 –

    “Good on ya” for your first 100% solve/parse!  Please don’t feel the need to “slink” anywhere!  This forum is populated by solvers at all levels — some like you, who are just getting onto this weird pastime, and some who have been avid and expert solvers of Guardian Cryptic and Prize puzzles for many decades, and a lot of people who are somewhere in between.  And comments are contributed from many different places in the world, so it is great fun to learn about the different perspectives and experiences that solvers have when tackling the same puzzle.  I hope you will continue to come back here and share!

32. Valentine @30 –

    Ahh, the Stop & Shop!  One of the grocery store chains of my youth, growing up in New England.  It was an old chestnut of a joke back in grade school days that Stop & Shop was going to merge with the (back then) nationwide A&P grocery store chain, and the merged company would be called “Stop & Pee”.

33. Well said, DaveMc @31!

    Pzinget – have you come across the Quiptic (online only, on Mondays). Supposedly for beginners and those in a hurry (though the consensus is that this one was harder than the Cryptic!)

34. Valentine @30 I decided on the grounds of brevity to exclude from my list the additional 20 or so terms in the solfaggio which are used in minor keys, flattened and raised notes etc as I did not think their use could be readily justified except in a stinker of a crossword. If you allow them then almost every consonant-vowel is a note (and a single character in the katakana alphabet)!

    As for a spreadsheet, it turns out that once a season or so the real stinker that is the Listener Crossword (the sort of thing where it takes an hour just to understand the instructions and even then you are not sure you’ve got it right) goes numerical instead of wordy. I’ve never tried a numbers one before and this one required you to be able to take the numeral form of a number (e.g. 11), express it as a word (“eleven”) and count the letters in that word (easy for “eleven” but don’t count the spaces or hypen in “one hundred and thirty-four”) and then add up the letter values (“a”=1 etc) or the unique letters in the word e.g. 5 + 12 + 22+ 14 for e,l,v,n. To solve the problem you had to be able to move quickly between the sums, the answers and the lengths, but with a spreadsheet calculating all of them that was really all there was to it – there was no more challenge.

35. Muffin/DaveMc: Cheers both: will endeavour to have insight worth sharing at some point in the future! About to have a bash at the Quiptic but I find it pretty variable and yes, often harder than the cryptic.

36. Hi Pzinget @29 – I’ve been out or I would have responded earlier.

    Please take note of what DaveMc said @31.  Congratulations on your first completion – and please comment again soon!

37. Also my first complete solve following a similar new year resolution to Pzinget @29… I appreciate it’s an easy one but still feeling encouraged / pleased with myself!

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen and all on this site.

38. Well done, Jeevesy – all the best with the next one!

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