The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28040.
Typical Monday fare from Vulcan. 1D MAGNOLIA tickled my fancy.
| ACROSS | ||
| 5 | PLACID | Unruffled tartan worn by chief of clan (6) |
| An envelope (‘worn by’) of C (‘chief of Clan’) in PLAID (‘tartan’). | ||
| 6 | MARROW | Vegetable essence (6) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 9 | SIGNAL | Aligns malfunctioning warning light (6) |
| An anagram (‘malfunctioning’) of ‘aligns’ | ||
| 10 | A GOOD JOB | Secure employment is a piece of luck (1,4,3) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 11 | GILL | Girl is both good and bad (4) |
| A charade of G (‘good’) plus ILL (‘bad’). | ||
| 12 | WELL I NEVER | Me always sick? There’s a surprise (4,1,5) |
| Definition and literal interpretation (with a bit of unusual syntax). | ||
| 13 | CARRY THE CAN | Take responsibility for transporting the paint? (5,3,3) |
| Definition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 18 | ALL THE RAGE | Not stupid about silver being immensely popular (3,3,4) |
| An envelope (‘about’) of AG (chemical symbol, ‘silver’) in ALL THERE (‘not stupid’). | ||
| 21 | THEN | Another time in the north (4) |
| A hidden answer in ‘THE North’ – or a charade, take your choice. | ||
| 22 | SPRINKLE | Spray knocks antelope back after short jump (8) |
| A charade of SPRIN[g] (‘jump’) minus the last letter (‘short’) plus KLE, a reversal (‘knocks … back’) of ELK (not an ‘antelope’). | ||
| 23 | TURNER | Artist not following straight career? (6) |
| Obvious, however you want to describe the clue. | ||
| 24 | ELINOR | Woman selected from deli, normally (6) |
| A hidden answer (‘selected from’) in ‘dELI NORmally’. | ||
| 25 | PRESET | Arranged in advance, gift’s not new (6) |
| A subtraction: PRESE[n]T (‘gift’) minus the N (‘not new’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | MAGNOLIA | Main goal: to be relaxed in the shade (8) |
| An anagram (‘to be relaxed’) of ‘main goal’. As for the surface, I’ll drink to that. | ||
| 2 | BILLOW | Great wave means trouble in front of the ship (6) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of ILL (‘trouble’) in BOW (‘front of ship’). | ||
| 3 | CAMOMILE | Arrived, having secured posh car to roll up for tea (8) |
| An envelope (‘having secured’) of OMIL, a reversal (‘to roll up’ in a down light) of LIMO (‘posh car’) in CAME (‘arrived’). | ||
| 4 | BRIDGE | Captain’s place in game (6) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 5 | PHILIP | Sound boost for man (6) |
| A ‘sound’ alike of FILLIP (‘boost’). Vulcan has avoided the ambiguity of many homophone clues, but has left himself open to the charge of a vague definition. Sorry guy, you can’t win. | ||
| 7 | WOODEN | This the last spoon? (6) |
| A reference to the booby prize. | ||
| 8 | BALLOT PAPER | One may be spoilt for choice in an election (6,5) |
| Cryptic definition. | ||
| 14 | REEF KNOT | Does it make the bank secure? (4,4) |
| A charade of REEF (‘bank’) plus KNOT (‘secure’), with an extended definition. | ||
| 15 | ASTERISK | Star guide to note (8) |
| Double/crypticish definition. | ||
| 16 | ELAPSE | If worried, please pass (6) |
| An anagram (‘if worried’) of ‘please’. | ||
| 17 | DEFECT | Abandon cause that shows flaw (6) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 19 | TWILIT | Fool hems in one inexperienced driver in the half-dark (6) |
| An envelope (‘hems in’) of I (‘one’) plus L (‘inexperienced driver’) in TWIT (‘fool’). | ||
| 20 | EXTORT | Shake down old revolutionary that’s turned up (6) |
| A charade of EX (‘old’) plus TORT, a reversal (‘that’s turned up’ in a down light) of TROT (‘revolutionary’). | ||
It took me a while to get going on this puzzle and I got a bit stuck in the NW corner but happily, I finished it.
Thanks Vulcan and Peter.
A gentle but satisfying puzzle to start the week, following a challenging but equally-satisfying prize-puzzle at the weekend. Consistent clues, and well-constructed.
I found a lot right with this and one or two, well, not so much. Regarding 22a SPRINKLE, didn’t we have a discussion recently about whether elks and antelopes were the same, and decide they weren’t?
It was also mentioned recently that it seems nowadays almost any verb can be used to indicate an anagram. Conventionally it’s something that means “disturbed”, but in 1d today it’s just the opposite!
In 7d WOODEN it’s clear what is implied, but the clue just doesn’t seem to work properly, imo.
14d sounds like a kid’s joke, but I thought all the rest quite good.
An innocuous little start to the week. Last in was 14d because i wanted to work in knox and didn’t connect bank with reef!
Got off to a bit of a slow start because I wanted to fit in ‘gloaming’ and ‘Gail’, but I soon realised that they wouldn’t work with crossing answers. Thanks to Vulcan for a non write-in Monday puzzle, and to PeterO for the blog.
Under a brolly 3 yards from Indian Ocean whose waters feel like silk, but it hasn’t helped the brain. Rattled through this, but didn’t parse ill in bow or asterisk as ‘guide to note’ (quite neat), and stupidly bunged in taker instead of paper in 8d. Ah well, can’t complain. Thanks V and P.
Only problem with this otherwise witty quick puzzle was GILL-I love Gillian Welch (pronounced with a hard G) but I dont think she’d like me calling her Gill or Jill
I also like Gil Evans. So it doesnt work for me.
If it want Vulcan of a Monday I would have suspected something deeper
Thanks, PeterO.
I think there’s more to “a good job” than security of employment.
Dr. What’sOn @3 — Vulcan, 6 Jan:
8d Detailed plan to bring antelope up to little spot (7) [SPECKLE]
An elk is no more an antelope than a gorilla is a bear.
As with Norbrewer@5 I rather stymied myself at first by imagining that Gloaming was an anagram of Main Goal. More haste, less speed….but an enjoyable solve. 12 across brought a smile.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Vulcan obviously doesn’t read 225 or the Guardian blog – if he had, he wouldn’t have repeated the elk/antelope thing!
I didn’t see the second definition for ASTERISK, and (naturally) didn’t like the “in” in 4d.
Odd grid – little connection between bottom and top.
I liked MARROW and WELL I NEVER.
Plenty of nice clues here for me – I had lots of ticks for elegance rather than depth of challenge and I enjoyed it. It seems Vulcan is growing as a setter – and despite its technical inaccuracy the elk/antelope thing doesn’t bother me and hasn’t held up my solving them – in fact probably the reverse given the extensive discussion. Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
A very enjoyable perfect for a Monday crossword. I too remembered the is an elk an antelope discussion and when you’ve got a K and an E as checking letters in your ‘reversal’, what else could it be?
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO
Thanks for the blog. Had “reject” rather than “defect” although the correct answer is clearly better. Hey ho.
Liked the puzzle, but the grid was a bit uncomfortable.
Thanks both.
Not my cup of tea, this morning. Can’t put my finger on why, no real complaints (except the elk/antelope thing) just found it all a bit pale.
Entered GAIL instead of GILL at 11a until PHILIP brought the rubber out.
ELAPSE was quite good, though.
Nice week, all.
GILL just seems a bit lazy given the opportunities offered by the many different meanings of the word. Vulcan’s not alone in using the boy/girl etc. in this way and I always feel a bit short-changed. Even by Monday standards this felt a bit flat. Thanks to all
Entertaining start to the week. I liked ASTERISK, ELAPSE and EXTORT.
Obviously, antelope was wrong but it didn’t stop me solving the clue as we’ve been here before.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO. It’s worth looking at the Quiptic for comparison.
elk noun
1 A deer of N Europe and Asia, identical or closely related to the moose of N America, the largest of all living deer
2 The wapiti (N American)
So says Chambers, and the wapiti is also a deer.
Unlike some of the above commenters, I rather liked Vulcan’s deliberate or defiant revival of the elk/antelope thing – although I suppose “spray knocks moose back…” would have worked too. (Er, I forget how we left that: if elks aren’t antelopes, what are they? Are they a kind of moose?)
ELINOR, PHILIP and GILL were early solves for me and I was all set for a name-theme but then it didn’t develop – however I was struck by how many clues had a definite Rufusian touch: BRIDGE, WOODEN, BALLOT PAPER, REEF KNOT, TWILIT, EXTORT. Vulcan is definitely getting better and better.
Many thanks to him/her and to PeterO for the blog.
Copland Smith: sorry, we crossed. So an elk IS a deer, and also related to a moose. Right. So Vulcan’s clue works. Huzzah!
I dislike clues like 23 where the category is too wide and you can’t solve it from the wordplay. There are just too many six letter artists.
I’m another who dislikes definitions like ‘man,’ ‘girl’ or ‘woman,’ all of which showed up today, but they bother me less when they don’t hold me up, and these didn’t. Some good clues here including MAGNOLIA for its surface and ALL THE RAGE, but I agree with Miche @8 that a secure job is not necessarily good (or vice versa).
One question: I can see BALLOT PAPER as ‘choice in an election,’ but what does ‘spoilt’ have to do with it? Since no one has brought this up yet, I assume I’m missing something obvious.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
DaveinNCarolina @21:
Some people choose to spoil their ballot paper (e.g. by defacing it) to indicate that none of the candidates is acceptable.
Courtesy of google, an elk is a species of deer and taxonomically:
“The most prominent difference between antelopes and deer is that male deer have antlers which they shed and grow every year while antelopes have horns that are permanent. … Antelopes belong to family Bovidae (as do sheep, goat and cattle), while deer belong to family Cervidae.”
So the clue is inaccurate – but I didn’t have problem with it.
Before we came here today, Yorkshire Lass and I were pretty sure that the elk/antelope dichotomy would get an airing from ‘the usual suspects’. So that proving to be so was a bonus to a pleasurable solve.
A bit dubious about REEF KNOT and ASTERISK, but otherwise fine, and nice that YL got a mention at 11 ac, to go with her birthday a week or two ago. Thanks to setter and blogger.
A finish/didn’t finish for me as I had reject for 17d which I think also works well enough, albeit arguably not as well as defect.
Copmus @7 my sister is a Gillian who goes by Gill (pronounced like Jill) and this isn’t rare in my experience (whereas hard G Gillian as in the musician Welsh would be very rare in the U.K. in my experience?) . Although obviously I started with Gail and changed as crossers demanded!
Hmmm… decent enough, but for some reason nothing really fired me up with enthusiasm. A few slightly loose definitions didn’t help. About the elk, etc… I was in Dublin last week, and spent a pleasant couple of hours in the natural history museum. It’s an interesting “museum of a museum”, a bit like the Pitt Rivers in Oxford. There were a couple of “Irish Elk” aka Giant Irish Deer, very in one’s face on entry: colossal antlers that, astonishingly, they regrew every year. The upper room had specimens of more different species of stuffed deer or mounted heads thereof than I knew existed. Though, if they had a gnu (which surely they must have) I didn’t see it, so other visitors were spared my breaking out into Flanders and Swann.
Gill/Gail held me up for a while … and in the process I had 2 comments removed from the Guardian comment section by the mods (for saying something silly like ‘Stop holding me up Gail’). Anyone know why mods remove comments from the Guardian site? – there’s a whole answer given/parsed on the site but they have let that one stand. (Other than writing silly comments).
ccmack@27
The other comment on 11a has now also been removed, but not soon enough. It must have been there for 10 hours, perhaps even longer.
I never see these dodgy comments so I’m rather intrigued! As to the ELK thing,we all seem to have solved the clue so it can’t be that much of a problem, Mind you, I got WOODEN despite the clue being a bit naff. Anyway, the puzzle was about the norm for this setter so —.
Thanks Vulcan.
@Peter Aspinwall
Have I rightly understood you? “We all seem to have solved the clue so it can’t be that much of a problem”…does that mean that the soundness/construction of a clue is of secondary importance to being able to bung the answer in the grid, in your opinion?
Because it emphatically isn’t, in mine.
I thing Vulcan did that antelope/deer family thing just to annoy me. And it did. I hope this doesn’t establish it as a conventional usage in cryptics. I think we expect a bit more rigor than that.
Btw, I live ‘where the deer and the antelope play’. Only the ‘antelope’ aren’t.
Funny how so many people went for GAIL (I did too) rather than the clearly better GILL. Some of this was a little imprecise (like WOODEN, WELL I NEVER), but I did like ASTERISK and MAGNOLIA.
Mystarsngarters @31 No pronghorns, then?
I have always sensed a crossword convention that a simple Christian name (Gill, Elinor, Philip) can be indicated by boy/girl but not by man/woman (presumably because everyone would normally call the boy/girl by that name, and the man/woman would be Mr/Mrs/Ms etc. Have I imagined this? Or is it now a casualty of the mainstream chat forums where everyone is Tim or Mary from wherever and surnames are redundant? It felt a good convention because a simple Christian name is hard enough to guess when you are sure that is what it must be, without adding it to the multiple possibilities covered by ‘man’.
I agree that an elk is not an antelope but the conflation in this case doesn’t bother me simply because I doubt that an actual antelope name could be very useful in any wordplay – except perhaps bongo. I would be mightily impressed to see a setter wring something out of nyala, dik-dik or duiker. Having said that though, “deer” would have worked just as well in the clue as “antelope”, so perhaps Vulcan did do that just to annoy Mystarsngarters.
As was the case three weeks ago, there is no reason why Vulcan couldn’t have used the correct “deer” rather than the inaccurate “antelope”.
I remember an example from a year or two back when the puzzle couldn’t be archived because of an incorrect “crustacean” rather than “mollusc” (or was it the other way round?). I forget the setter on that occasion, though.
BlueDot @ 34
Crucible Prize 27 776 23/3/19 blogged by Eileen 30/3/19
21 Animal in Africa, one invading cities (5)
NYALA
A [one] in New York and Los Angeles [cities] – it’s an antelope, wouldn’t you know?
Sagittarius@33 – I think the convention that Vulcan is following is to use “boy” and “girl” for short versions of names like Gill (or Phil or Ellie) and “man” and “woman” for the full Philip and Elinor (or Gillian). I’m not saying it makes sense.
There are a lot of names in this puzzle.
Thanks all.
Miche @8 “An elk is no more an antelope than a gorilla is a bear.” Yes, it is. An elk isn’t an antelope, but it is more closely related to one than a gorilla is to a bear, which belong to different orders — primates and carnivores, respectively. Elk and antelope belong to different families of the same order, artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates). Elk are in the deer family and antelope, deer-like though they look, belong in the bovine family. Wellbeck @19 — no, the clue doesn’t quite work, because though elk are deer, antelope aren’t. They just look like them. Troglodyte @26 — antlers in the deer family not only grow back every year, they have one more point each time they grow back. For the most part, only males have them, but caribou have them for both sexes. Antelope, being bovids, not deer, have horns, which don’t drop and grow back and which do appear on both sexes. (Think of the cow with the crumpled horn.)
Pleasant puzzle, thanks Vulcan and PeterO
I think I’ve run across the wooden spoon tradition in a crossword, but we don’t have it over here so I just biffed it in — we do have wooden spoons, and that was enough to go on with.
Oops, sorry about all those spaces at the top. Didn’t realize I was doing that.
DESERT was LOI because I couldn’t factor flaw in. DD for abandon and cause.
Fave, of course, was PHILIP. Never seen me in a crossword before. Would have furious if it was the 7-letter spelling.
Thanks DuncT @37. That makes a sort of sense; I had never thought of it like that (and still don’t much like it). Especially since there are many other possible definitions that could have been used for ‘Gill’.