Guardian 28,076 / Vulcan

57 comments on “Guardian 28,076 / Vulcan”

1. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

   I liked LABORATORY and BROADWAY. Why is SET PIECE “some fireworks”?

2. At least I’ve got lots of time to do other things now. Bring back Anto

3. My favourite was easterly.

   I failed to parse florin – I knew (once) that a bob was a shilling but I am sure that I never knew that two bob = 1 florin. I think that set piece was my least favourite today.

   Thanks, Eileen and Vulcan

4. Same question as muffin.

    

5. Thanks Eileen – Vulcan has definitely done better puzzles and I thought this was lacklustre – as indicated by the number of ?s you have against cryptic definitions. I had queries against the WAY part of 16d – why is the synonym in the clue plural? And why “appealingly” in 23a? My ticks were for EASTERLY LABORATORY and DOCTORAL – although no doubt others will question the homophone. Thanks also to Vulcan.

6. Thank you, Eileen.

   Nothing to put my finger on (other than the very unhelpful grid) juts not ma thang this morning.

   Same question as muffin – what has set piece to do with fireworks?

   Nice week, all.

7. …just…apologies, can’t type.

8. I wondered about SET PIECE as well – Chambers does have “an elaborately arranged display in fireworks”

9. Hi muffin and Pedro [et al, while I’ve been typing!] – it should have been flashling blogging this puzzle! See here

   WhiteKing re 16: ROAD + WAY – thoroughfares?

    

10. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.  This was not hard but seemed a bit less penetrable, as has already been mentioned, by the grid which really made it 4 small crosswords.  I agree that SET PIECE is weird for fireworks but I suppose the modern firework display might just about be described as a set piece.  It certainly did not hold me up much.  Favourites were LABORATORY for the rather pleasant notion of a Labrador standing at a lectern, CABLE CAR and EYELINER.

11. Thanks Eileen. Not a usage that I’ve ever come across – but the last firework display I attended was in the eighties!

12. Yes those four QUARTERS (1a) of the grid as mentioned by several previous posters (William and SPanza) meant it felt like an unfriendly gird for me too.

    However, I felt the “dog speaking” for LAB ORATORY at 14a was a lovely crossword moment for me. I also liked DRAGON at 21d, though I was looking for a way to fit in gryphon/griffin.

    OTOH, the double definition for EYELINER at 23a made me groan.

    So a mixed bag for me.

    Nevertheless, thanks to Vulcan and of course, as ever, gratitude to Eileen for a very fair blog.

13. [GRID not gird!!! GRRR!!!]

14. “Bob twice gets this”-a bob was two tanners but TANNER looked clashy with the across clues

    So a bob each way on this.

15. P.S. Sorry to be dense, but could someone please explain why 12a is REVIEW. Is VIEW a magazine?

16. Eileen@9 – thanks – of course – solver rather than setter shortcomings as usual.

17. I had to have free-kicks and set-pieces explained to me by my football-aficionado partner – and although SIDEWAYS was hardly difficult to guess, I’m not sure the clue entirely works. However, these are more than compensated for by the pleasing surfaces to ABOARD, THESIS and STUNTMAN, and the wit of AT WORK, STUNTMAN and BROADWAY. (I don’t know if they have B roads in America, but I was also tickled by the idea of Broadway being linked to a “minor” thoroughfare.)
    Thank you Eileen for the blog, and Vulcan for giving my week a satisfying start.

18. [PS Muffin, thanks for explaining Dis and Dante’s Inferno in Qaos recently. I didn’t spot your comment until a couple of days later, and presume few people check back on these blogs after the event.]

19. This took me longer than usual. I must add my disquiet about the grid – we eventually persuaded Rufus to drop his bete noire grid, so perhaps we can do the same with this one.

     

    Thanks Eileen and Vulcan

20. [Wellbeck @18 – I’m glad you saw it and found it useful.]

21. The canine orator was fun, as were the two in the ark, while sideways and Broadway were inventive if a bit questionable. So, worth the time, thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

22. I liked this, especially the talking dog in the LABORATORY, AT WORK and, once I’d figured it out, my last in CARBON COPY.

    Julie in Australia @15, if someone doesn’t beat me to it, 12a is a double def, with REVIEW as ‘Look again’ (of course) and a ‘magazine’, as in eg those magazines which come with the weekend papers.

    Thank you to Eileen and Vulcan

23. Enjoyable solve on the whole, and although I watch too much televised soccer to not know set piece in that context, like others on here today I can’t clearly see the fireworks connection. Maybe the question mark flags up the setter’s slight doubt about this as a clue…

24. Thank you Vulcan and Eileen.

    I enjoyed this Monday offering.  Unlike Ronald @23 the soccer connection for SET PIECE was unknown to me whereas the firework connection was obvious – the COED gives “an arrangement of fireworks composing a picture or design” (ILAN CARON @8, I always try to find another dictionary definition as well as that of Chambers) – on Bastille Day, July the 14th, most villages here in France have an elaborate firework display, not just a setting off of fireworks as for Guy Fawkes Night, the 5th of November, in England.

25. I think of a set piece as a carefully planned and timed section within a larger fireworks display.  As an example you might start playing some patriotic music and use colour and precise timing to throw up some fireworks that suggest a Stars and Stripes or a tricolor.  I was aware of the usage, and very aware of the sporting usage, but it still took me a while to spot.

    I like it when my LOI is also my COD.  It lets you leave the grid with a warm feeling.  I had that today with EASTERLY, and I also enjoyed STUNTMAN, AT WORK, and LABORATORY.

     

    Thanks to Vulcan for the workout, and to Eileen for the working out.

26. Ronald @23 – if you follow the link I gave @9, you can see an example, labelled ‘set piece’.

    Cookie, you’ve reminded me how for several years, my younger son, when we were on holiday in France, thought the fireworks on 14th July were for his  mum’s birthday.

27. A mixed bag for me. As others have mentioned, LABORATORY was amusing, and I liked CARBON COPY, but I was less keen on a few of the other cryptic(ish) definitions and didn’t care for the grid. Not one of Vulcan’s best, but thanks to him for the bright spots, and thanks also to Eileen.

28. Julie in Oz@12: a magazine can be a review, eg the London Review of Books.

    Muffin@1 and others:  at Lewes Bonfire night the term “set pieces” refers to the large pyrotechnic sculptures of the traditional effigies (eg Guy Fawkes) and tableaux of current interest (and usually scorn), which are filled with fireworks carefully fused to go off in relays, and exploded at one of several societies’ firesites. I assume the term is also used elsewhere.

    Google “Lewes bonfire set pieces” for examples.

29. Eileen @26, my youngest son used to think they were for his grandmother’s birthday…

30. Sorry, Eileen@9, hadn’t clicked on your helpful pyrotechnic link before dashing in my response to today’s puzzle. I’m totally up to speed on my Set Piece meanings now!

31. Thank you Vulcan; I very much liked the SW corner. And to Eileen for the graphic illustration; Martha clearly moves in the right circles !

32. I can’t see why “not born yesterday?” (26a) is day old. Surely it can only mean born yesterday. Can someone please explain what I am missing?

33. Also, we parsed 16d as “B Road” – a minor thoroughfare and “way” another minor thoroughfare, rather than B being minor by itself.

34. Bayleaf @32 – ‘Surely it can only mean born yesterday.’ Yes, so it’s the contrary of ‘not born yesterday’.

35. Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

    This kind of “quartered” grid will always make me quail and I was glad to finish – there is little more enervating than an entire quarter uncompleted with no hope of rescue from, well, another quarter.  I had pretty well the same ticks and frowns as Eileen.

    On SET PIECE I parsed this as SET=”routine” which could produce a PIECE being a synonym for the usual firearm or “fireworks”, with “free kick” acting as the definition.  But there are adjectival/nounal considerations which could speak for the more obscure (imho) parsing reached by her eminent self.

36. I’ve never quite understood why Monday crosswords have so many cryptic definitions, when they often seem harder than the other clues. I suppose its because they are often used in quick crosswords.

    Michelle @3 – I am too young to have used pre-decimal currency but I can remember florin coins still being in circulation. They were the same size, shape, and weight as the original decimal 10p coin.

    Julie @12 – when watching a certain film, it occurred to me that there could be a Thomas the Tank Engine story called “How to drag on your train”.

     

37. Julie – a REVIEW is a magazine which contains a look back at something, making the clue uncomfortably tautological imo. Once again, the Quiptic was a more interesting challenge. I’m off to buy a paper with a proper crossword. Bring back Rufus – all is forgiven.

38. I took far too long in the SE corner as I kept on thinking of other words for ‘ring-pull’ for the thing on the lid, doh! Actually, quite a good cd, I thought. I agree with Howard that cds are sometimes more difficult than conventional clues.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

39. Thanks Eileen @9. Just goes to show that even Mondays can be educational.

40. While hunting through a drawer yesterday to find something I had put in it only a few days previously, I came across a 2/- piece and thought to myself, ‘It comes to something when it is easier to find a defunct coin than what one is looking for’. So I was well-primed for ‘florin’.

41. I too couldn’t get my head around not born yesterday. I see it now. Overall this crossie left me feeling underwhelmed. Of the cryptic definitions i liked carbon copy best.

42. I rather enjoyed this, and have no complaints with almost all of them. I rarely do. But I do have a quibble with stuntman (mainly because I didn’t get it). Surely “stunting” something just stops it from getting bigger? You end up with something that’s smaller than it would have been, but it doesn’t actually get smaller.

43. Vulcan seemed to be getting better but I didn’t like this much. I can’t quite put my finger on why because,in retrospect,I can’t see much wrong with the puzzle but I made very heavy weather of it nonetheless.
    Thanks anyway Vulcan.

44. I actually parsed BROADWAY as the minor thoroughfares BROAD and WAY, missing the obviously correct B ROAD idea completely!  Well, the Broads aren’t exactly the M1, are they?  All the other points have been addressed, particularly the fireworks issue (thanks, all).

    I was left wondering why there was at one time both a florin (2 bob) and a half-crown (2.5 bob, or “two and six”).  Seems a little redundant to me now.

    Thanks, Eileen and Vulcan.

45. Sadly I still don’t understand day old. Anyone?

46. Sort of assumed that the cryptic defn for CABLE CAR was an error on the part of the setter- I would have expected it to work something like:
    Transport on mountain in vehicle fitted with television?

    Construction is the rather uninspired CABLE for television plus CAR for vehicle, with “fitted with” as some sort of position indicator.

47. Veronica @45: “Not born yesterday” whilst being a phrase that means “not stupid” also means that you were not born the day before today. Which means you’d have to be something other than one day old.

    “On the contrary” though tells you to use the opposite of that. Hence “day-old”.

48. Given 1 Across, I suspect Vulcan is very aware of the (annoying) characteristics of this grid.

    My favourite aspect of this puzzle was the unusual Q that ended up in the far NW corner.

    Thanks to E and V

49. Thanks to Eileen and to Vulcan. Another of those appalling Guardian grids which undoubtedly make the setter’s life easier at the expense of annoying the hell out of the solver. At one stage I had completed the entire top half of the grid while the bottom half remained completely empty. Grrr !!

50. Veronica: A day old baby was born yesterday.

51. Oops sorry: already answered.

52. I do think DAY OLD is a rather odd clue – the “not born yesterday” colloquial meaning seems totally irrelevant.

53. I found this one quite a bit easier than today’s quiptic. It all fell in pretty much as write-in, apart from the the SE corner where FLORIN held me up for a bit as I was initially trying to use two ‘S’s in it somehow. LABORATORY, DOCTORAL and THESIS – is Vulcan trying to tell us something?

54. I thought laboratory was very funny, but alas, spouse had already done it. It has finally dawned on me that not born yesterday is indeed a cryptic def. They are so amusing when they work, bit like jokes in general  really. Sometimes for no discernible reason they fall flat.
    As an aside, whoever it was on this site who said that if you keep pressing the space bar, the keyboard goes blank and you get a CURSOR that you can slide anywhere to correct errors deserves a medal! I have been teaching students for many years, and never have I told them anything to delight them more.
    Happy Monday everyone, and better luck with the cryptic defs next time, Vulcan.

55. As for the oddity of florin vs half-crown, I recall from somewhere that the Florin was an early move towards decimal currency, being one tenth of a pound. That project never got any further and folk stuck with the old ways, with the half-crown being one eighth of a pound. Maybe they liked to count on their fingers but not their thumbs!

56. A bit late to this but adding my thoughts on 11a. Do things make more sense if the 2 definitions are ‘Free kick’ and ‘routine producing some fireworks’?
    In football a set piece isn’t a ‘free kick routine’, it’s just the free kick itself (or a corner)

57. Belated thank you, JohnB. I actually followed that and I get it now!

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