Guardian Cryptic 27,850 by Vlad

68 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,850 by Vlad”

1. Thanks Vlad and manehi

   My wife was helping today, and we found it surprisingly easy to fill the grid. The parsing, on the other hand! No idea for 1a etc. 27a, 1d or 7d etc.

   Favourite SWAN SONG.

2. That was genius at work – or at play! So many inventive ways of cluing and so many satisfying solves. Yes, quite a few went in and were parsed after but I suspect that’s what Vlad intended. Anyone getting 1A from the ground up should be working for GCHQ (or Rory Stewart…). Lots of smiles here and lots of head-scratching but surprisingly easy for a Vlad.

   Now to get out and enjoy the sun with the dog before the thunderstorms drive me to more indoor pursuits.

3. A brilliant piece of work.

   After a slow start I was able to complete this fairly quickly, but couldn’t parse 1, 6, 12 or 14. Thanks for the explanations. 1, 6, 12 is quite superb.

4. We got further than I would expect for a Vlad (in our allotted time).

   Had no idea what Hip’s Alma was all about. Original and contrived but fair enough given the relatively easy definition.

    

5. The parsing was too convoluted for my taste, but I’m pleased that other people enjoyed it.

6. Thanks both,

   More so than usual. Wonderful fun from the crossword and elucidation from the blog for some quite brilliantly inventive and obscure parsings. ‘Roger’ as an anagrind raised a snigger. And 18d, when finally parsed, a big smile. All over too soon.

7. To be picky, NO-TRUMP needs a number (from 1 to 7) to turn it into a “bid”.

8. I thought this would be a great puzzle after the inventive and smile-raising first clue, and I was not disappointed. Favourite was 17.

   I don’t see how ‘roger’ works as an anagram indicator, though I’m sure I’m missing something. Can anyone explain?

   Thanks to Vlad and to Manehi for the blog

9. Must try to adopt the exemplary virtue, a la Dr Whatson and DP last week, that it’s not done until you’ve parsed it. Filled the grid but had no idea about friends etc or Freya, tho solutions were easy. My laziness re long anagrams or convoluted Lego clues where the solutions jump out without work is one thing, but a clever innovation like ‘Hip!’ Alma tells deserves proper attention for the cracking thereof. I will try to do better in future. Thanks Vlad for a ripper puzzle and Manehi for the blog.

10. I solved a Vlad! All right it was the easier end of his spectrum and it was courtesy of guessing 1A (not sure I completely understand, still) but still a Vlad….

11. It was in the parsing that the brilliance of this setter shone.The first clue was pretty easy to guess with the letter count and a couple opf crossers but the construction was immaculate. Thanks Vlad and manehi for blog.

12. Charlie M @ 8: I suspect “roger” may be used in its coarse sexual sense, equivalent to “screw”.

13. Charlie M @8. Charlie gives “of a man, to copulate” as a vulgar slang meaning for “roger”. I imagine any synonym of the the f-word would work just as well as an anagram indicator, as in snafu.

14. … 27a was another I didn’t sweat over; got the ‘to pre p’ (reversed) bits, but the pep/manager bit was a shrug; coming here, I realise I have vaguely heard of Pep Guardiola but he was never going to come to mind. Hey ho.

15. Like Jem@10 I was happy enough to say I solved a Vlad today – I usually get impaled at some point. As has already been posted it was very much a case of “solve now – parse later” for me. Whilst I loved the surface for ROYALIST@11a, my COD has to be 1, 6, 12a, the parsing to which was so well hidden I congratulate anyone who got it.

    Thanks to Vlad and manehi.

16. What copmus said @11. So often it’s Vlad’s definitions that show his deviousness. Today’s on the whole, were crystal clear, especially 1,6,12, from the enumeration, but I don’t think I’d have seen the parsing in a month of Sundays.

    Apart from that one, my favourites were ROYALIST, SWAN SONG [good to see it without Gloria], SATIRES and SHORT STOP.

    Huge thanks to Vlad for a superb puzzle and to manehi, for a brilliant piece of blogging – rather you than me. 😉

17. I have very rarely, if ever, confidently written in the answer to so many clues without being able to parse them correctly. Fun, though…

18. Like most I found this very doable and enjoyable, which was a relief because I have been stumped a few times recently. I am surprised that many had trouble with the parsing, esp. 1,6,12. As I was reading through I was thinking “I bet an experienced solver like Eileen won’t have any trouble” so her contribution @16 was a surprise. I think most of us got the answer from the definition and word count, so now to make something of the wordplay fodder. With “friends” front of mind, PAL and MATE jumped out at me leaving HILLS. QED, (as in quick and easily done, not the Latin original.)

    The only one for which I was not sure of the parsing was 8ac, but I resigned myself to the fact that some dictionary would have Fell = Dire but it was an unsatisfying end after so many aha moments.

    Thanks to Vlad and Manehi

19. Unusually straightforward by Vlad’s standards, apart from a couple of tricky parsings. All very enjoyable as always

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

20. At 27, I liked the fact that Pep is the manager of the team who were this year’s table toppers!
    In what sense does “fell” = “dire”, please?

21. I wrote this post into Word before going out late this afternoon (Australian time) and now I have returned home to see the blog is up.  I see my comment about not getting the parsing for such clues as those involving Alma and Pep foreshadowed the experiences of others.

    Very enjoyable puzzle. Lots of ticks. As an intuitive solver, I put in a couple of answers without parsing them fully, so thanks to X for the blog. Well done, Vlad: I loved the misdirection in 11a ROYALIST, though NO-TRUMP at 20d was my firm favourite.

    So now it’s thanks to manehi for the blog, and previous posters too.

22. 1a reminded me of this one, also Vlad:

    Detective story – read end! (1,5,2,7)

23. I see I had the same experience as many, solving reasonably easily (a surprise for me with Vlad) but no idea re the parsing of “hip alma tells” – I would never have see that, so thanks Manehi. Also, being an antipodean non-football follower, had no idea re Pep, though managed to parse the rest of it. A fun solve. Thanks to Vlad and Manehi.

24. Gasmanjack@20. My dictionary includes ‘fell’ as an adjective meaning ‘of terrible evil or ferocity; deadly.’
    eg “the fell disease that was threatening her sister”

25. I have never seen SHORT STOP as two words in baseball–is there another sport where there is a fielding position spelled this way? Being an American with a good knowledge of baseball and next to none of cricket, I was just assuming it was a cricket term…

26. We completed but nowhere near parsing FREINDS IN partularly. Very enjoyable though, all the more so when explained. Thanks to both. Liked NAPPY RASH and BANG ON the latter next to LOI, which gave us FREYA.

27. Gasmanjack @20 – we were just about to ask the same question!  Apparently fell comes from the same root as felon or felony.

28. As usual with Vlad, I found this quite tough.

    I liked PICK OF THE BUNCH, ROYALIST and SHORT STOP.

    The idea in 1A was neat but I think the clue was somewhat flawed in that it did not give an appropriate instruction to a solver.

    Thanks Vlad and manehi.

29. @Goujeers and @Blaise, thank you. I did wonder if that was the explanation but I thought that would be seen as too rude. Obviously not! What a good clue, anyway.

30. I loved it. Looked impossible at first glance but fell into place beautifully. Lovely fresh clueing. Muffin, I think it is ok to talk of a no-trump bid, the number of no trumps unspecified.

31. Gaufrid – we have comment @31 that needs to be removed

32. Thanks to Vlad and manehi. For me a classic example of get solution, then parse – and my LOI was FREYA.

33. Umm, what is that post @ 31?

    Whoops, I threw out my hand-wriiten notes by mistake, but I do recall that I found this easier to solve than to parse. My absolute favourite was NO TRUMP.

    Like many others, I had trouble parsing 1/6/12, 21a, 27a, 14d.

    Thanks Vlad and manehi.

34. EDIT ignore my comment about the post @31 – I see that the spam post about herpes has been removed now, thankfully!

35. Easier end of Vlad but some tricky parsing. I couldn’t parse FREYA but with the crossers in what else could it be? The problem with the long answers is that they were all easy to get without too many crossers in. I did parse most of them but after the event,as it were. I’ve learnt a new meaning for FELL so thanks for that.
    Liked SWAN SONG,NAPPY RASH and ROYALIST.
    Thanks Vlad.

36. xjpotter @30

    Yes, you’re right. Odd one that – “a no-trump bid” makes perfect sense, whereas “a bid of no-trump” doesn’t without the number inserted.

37. Like a few other commenters, I was happy just to have solved a Vlad, but I had to come here to appreciate the genius that went into its composition. This is one that I’ll study for a while to hone my chops as a solver!

    Among those that I couldn’t parse was PEPPER POT, where I took ‘manager going back’ to be a reversal of TOP REP, which sort of works but of course leaves the rest of the clue hanging.

    Thanks to Vlad for setting a masterpiece and to manehi for what must have been a challenging blog to write.

38. Like muffin@1 (and also acknowledging your response to my GATED comment yesterday) MrsW and I rattled this off once we got going but with several left to parse. Like many have said it was a pleasure to come here and understand what an inventive puzzle it was. FELL FLAT, ROYALIST, LOCUST, NYLON and NO TRUMP were my top picks. With thanks and what Eileen said to setter and blogger.

39. As customary, still astonished that so many posters appreciate a crossword that they “solve” by ignoring the cryptic content of the clues and working just on definitions and crossers. Especially those who also complain about the barely cryptic nature of the Monday crossword.  For me, a crossword is far less enjoyable the greater the number of clues where there content provides no assistance in actually filling the grid in.  Such as this one.

    Also not sure what mood we are supposed to be in to take a synonym for having sex as an instruction to rearrange the letters of a word. What is the connection, if not a violent one?

40. Thanks to Manehi and to Vlad (I think !) Not much to say that hasn’t already been said – favourites were ROYALIST and LOCUST. I’ve seen sillier anagrinds than ROGER – shame there wasn’t a vaguely avian theme, he could have used SHAG then……

41. Good clueing, fun solve.
    I agree with Robi @28 that 1,6,12 seems incomplete. It needs a term like “suggested by” but I can’t for the life of me think of a way to do it that doesn’t ruin the surface.
    Iroquois@25, I think you’re right – SHORTSTOP should be one word. The closest cricket positions are Long stop, short leg or silly mid on/off. Can’t find any other sport in which it might feature.
    Thanks for the entertainment, Vlad and manehi

42. I can admire the cleverness of construction of 1a etc. , but it’s not amongst my favourite clues as the surface doesn’t make a lot of sense.

43. Thanks to Vlad and manehi.

    I enjoyed it plenty. It passed a pleasant time. It reassured me that I am not losing my mrables, rambles, blamers – oh dear.

    Didn’t much care for GOOD SENSE OF HUMOUR but being a bit picky. And “f” fro “following” (remind me anyone?). FREYA was new to me and, it seems, always will be.  Always nice to see an innovative 1Aetc, makes you feel the setter has been saving it up and has to blurt it out – so I suspect Vlad enjoyed this and I hope he enjoyed it as much as I did, which was plenty.

44. Alphalpha @ 43

    F = following is a literary/index citation

    for instance

    p94f means pages 94-95

    p94ff means page 94 and more than one following page

45. [And greetings to Mrs muffin@1, if I may make so bold.]

46. I am a little surprised at all the comments about “fell” and that no-one has yet mentioned Tolkien.

    I agree with muffin @ 42 about 1a. I played around with synonyms for friends (ally, bud, chum, …) and for high places (fells!, tors, bens Alps!, …) but couldn’t spot anything else that worked; so a clever clue in concept, but not in execution.

     

47. Simon S@44

    Tvm and it seems to be one that won’t fit into the remaining synapses.

48. Alphalpha

    Mrs. Muffin returns your salutations!

49. It’s all been said.  A great crossword, crammed with cryptic content.  In NO-TRUMP (one of my favourites), the hyphen makes it clear that this not a bid but a type of bid (as blogged).  The other two that I liked very much were BANG ON and SWAN SONG.  I parsed some but not all of the more complex ‘Vlad-ish’ clues, and I’m grateful to manehi for working it all out.

    Thanks also to Vlad.

50. 14 d isn’t even cryptic! Hal Quick was a Short Stop.

51. Thanks Vlad, highly enjoyable, great variety and inventiveness throughout I thought. Favourites LOCUST and ROYALIST.

    Defeated by parsing of 1/6/12.

    Also by 27 in the end – forgot Pep despite being a football fan – as mentioned above nice touch that his team were table toppers. My very dodgy parsing had TO + P (2nd April) all ‘going back’ which left manager = pepper (someone whose job it is to pep people up…oh dear)

52. COD LOCUST. Top- class crossword.

53. Van Winkle @39 as no-one else has answered your comment perhaps I can give my perspective. My complaint on Monday (and on other Mondays) is with weak CDs (or “PDs” as I have now dubbed them, “poor definitions”) and DDs where, even once I think I know the answer I have nothing to corroborate it except crossers. In even the most Vladic clues here, it was possible to parse the clue once the answer was surmised and, at that point, the solution was unambiguous to a certainty even Sherlock never attained. This is the essence of a solid clue.

    How important is the balance of wordplay and definition? That is personal and I think can also vary across a crossword. TBH if I am looking at a 9 letter anagram I have no idea why the answer pops into my head. Actually I have no idea why most things pop into my head but that’s a horse of a different feather. Am I inspired by the definition? Am I really going through factorial 9 combinations in my head in less than a second (well, ahem, sometimes…ok rarely)? Most clues end up being a bit of both which is hugely appealing, in the same way a fine painting is good not just because of the strokework, or the composition, or the colours etc but some combination.

54. Hi thezed @53 – well said! I’d been pondering whether – and how – to respond to Van Winkle’s comment. – and had decided to go to bed instead!

    ‘How important is the balance of wordplay and definition? ‘

    As I intimated above @16, this was a different Vlad experience for me, with complexities in parsings, rather than definitions, as is often the case.

    I try to explain to friends and relations who ‘only’ do the ‘quick’ crosswords, that I can’t do them, since you only get one bite at the cherry.

    Does it really matter which way you arrive at the solution? Most contributors today, I think, have said that they solved most of the puzzle [relatively quickly] by means of the definition / word count alone and had to go back to muse about the parsing. I had to do that several times today [and still didn’t manage it with 1,6,12, where the solution immediately leaped out, from the letter count – thanks again to manehi] but that simply added to the enjoyment. [And I’m always urging folk to go back and savour surfaces that they may have missed.]

    I know we’re all different – and thank goodness for that – but surely most of us just solve puzzles for enjoyment, don’t we?

55. Thanks to manehi for a fine blog and to others for their comments.

56. Very lovely!

    I was reading through the comments, puzzled that so many people had not heard of “fell”, and vaguely wondering if I’d learned the word while reading Tolkien in the early 1980s — and then I got to David Ellison’s post, which helpfully confirmed it. I also played Fighting Fantasy gamebooks as well as text-only adventure games on microcomputer, so there was plenty of opportunity for reinforcement.

    That said: the phrase “in one fell swoop” is surely familiar also to the non-fantasists among us?

    Echoing Van Winkle’s comment, I do find myself bemused to learn that so many crossword enthusiasts (I assume everyone here is an enthusiast) seem to be happy writing answers to clues that they haven’t parsed. For me: if I have not parsed it, it’s not going in. The only exception is if it is the last clue left and I want to take a chance on a word that fits so that I can be done with the crossword.

    The point of cryptic crosswords, to me, is that the full clue verifies the correctness of the answer to a very high degree of certainty. There are exceptions, of course, but in general the definition and the wordplay intersect precisely to give one and only one answer. This disambiguation is a crucial part of my enjoyment — I need to know that everything I write in is correct.

    So I am mildly surprised to see so many people admit to filling in answers without corroborating those answers by parsing the wordplay. I cannot bring myself to do that, and if I am solving a puzzle with friends I will fight them if necessary to prevent them from writing in answers to clues we haven’t parsed.

    American crosswords (such as the one in the NYT) take a different approach to ambiguity. Almost every clue is ambiguous, but there is an enormous amount of crossing, and these constraints yield a unique completed grid. I don’t have the skills or patience to solve those
    crosswords.

    With regard to thezed’s “PDs” (poor definitions): my Australian cryptic-crossword-solving friend and I have agreed that the appropriate term for a low-quality cryptic definition is “craptic definition”.

57. This was 10a with with 9,25 being impossible to choose with so many clever clues.

    Excellent puzzle Vlad and brilliant blog manehi, thanks both.

58. Eileen @ 54: I concur.

    If a combination of clue, enumeration and crossers lead you to a potential solution, pencil it in [I always use pencil, as after my parents’ deaths I discovered they had tried to corner the market], trigger more crossers for further solutions, and if necessary come back later to try to complete the parsing.

    For me at least, crosswords are a fun game, not a rule-bound intellectual exercise.

59. thezed @53 – I don’t disagree with you, except I have a greater hope that the cryptic content will play a role in surmising the clue, and the more substantial compared to the definition the better.

    Eileen @54 – agreed that enjoyment should be the key, and I am curious to find out why I don’t particularly enjoy Vlad puzzles, when the majority of posters so clearly do. My favourites are puzzles where every word in every clue contributes to the solve. I struggle to see where the fun is in completing a grid in spite of the cryptic content.

60. Simon S @58: You say “rule-bound intellectual exercise” as if such a thing could not also be a fun game! I have tremendous fun with my approach, as I am sure you do with yours.

    Van Winkle @59: Completing the grid isn’t, in itself, the main goal for me. Enjoying the setter’s wit and wile is perhaps the more compelling attraction. This particular Vlad masterpiece reveals it’s charms in its many amusing parsings. As you say, one can end up correctly filling in the whole grid without fully using all the information in the clues. I can see why one might find that disappointing. At that point, one has to find extra motivation to dig deeper to appreciate the full artistry of the setter. There are no empty squares in the grid to motivate this extra effort: the motivation has to come from within. That’s one of the reasons I choose not to write in any answers until I understand the clue fully. The empty squares keep me going.

61. Just wonderful.

    Vlad is so different from the other Guardian setters – never stuffy, always exciting.

    [‘different from’ doesn’t equal ‘better than’, I hasten to say – although I have an opinion of my own]

62. A cracker of a puzzle which I cracked, with help from Manehi for parsing of ‘hip Alma..’ and ‘pepper pot’. Never heard of Pep manager. Favourite has to be ‘no trump’. Thanks Vlad for the fun and Manehi for the help.

63. And of course Hip Alma. A wonderfully inventive clue

64. Nice. I agree with beery. Many thanks, both and all.

65. Started this too late last night, and finished this morning. Having been beaten up by Vlad in the past, I have to say how satisfying to complete this one, even if the parsing of 1ac was beyond me (though I am in good company with Eileen!). Maybe Vlad at his more charitable but everything fair, and so much fun. Thanks to both.

66. Did anybody else put in 26a as DUEL, parsing as expected (DUE) + L (long) meaning STANDING ENMITY? Fooled me for a while. Good puzzle but obscure as usual from this setter. Thanks anyway Vlad and all bloggers.

67. BTW I agree with some of the earlier bloggers who do not put in the answers unless they can confirm the parsing. Biffing the answer is a last resort for me and only after grid staring for at least an hour. It is just not satisfying for some reason.

68. We thought it was “Hal Quick” (a short stop player).

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