Guardian 28,327 – Vulcan

by

I made rather slow progress on this at first, probably because of what seems like a large number cryptic and double definitions, but it’s all pretty straightforward in retrospect. Thanks to Vulcan.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
5. OUTBID Offer more: you’ll get a lot from it (6)
Sort of a double definition, though really more of a definition plus a hint, referring to auctions
6. IN FOAL Having expectations of a new horse? (2,4)
Cryptic definition
9. VALISE ‘Farewell’, clutching one’s overnight bag (6)
I’S in VALE (Latin “farewell”)
10. AGE GROUP Cohort that gets on together (3,5)
Cryptic definition – “gets on” = “ages”
11. SLIP Knocking back lager is a slight mistake (4)
Reverse of PILS
12. TOOK IT EASY Grabbed something simple and sat back (4,2,4)
TOOK (grabbed) IT (something) EASY (simple)
13. TRICERATOPS When travelling, spot erratic old creature (11)
(SPOT ERRATIC)*
18. BOTTLE BANK Rely on nerve, where there are many dead men (6,4)
BOTTLE (nerve) + BANK (to rely) – “dead man” is slang for an empty bottle, usually of beer etc; this isn’t in Chambers, though it’s common for bar staff clearing glasses to say “are these dead?”
21. COOP Store where hens sleep (4)
The store is the CO-OP (co-operative)
22. SUNBURNT In pain after bathing? (8)
Cryptic definition – reference to (excessive) sunbathing
23. TRIFLE Last to shoot weapon: it’s not important (6)
[shoo]T + RIFLE
24. SHOW UP Appear to embarrass (4,2)
Double definition
25. DEFINE Carefully determine what’s cooked in feed (6)
(IN FEED)*
Down
1. STRIPPER One can barely finish one’s stage act (8)
Cryptic definition
2. SILENT Christmas Eve was such a quiet night (6)
Cryptic definition, I presume, referring to the carol “Silent Night”
3. UNSEXIST Any number in America are favouring gender equality (8)
N (any number) in US + EXIST (are)
4. COARSE Inferior, so joint bottom? (6)
CO-ARSE
5. ORALLY Love to gather together by word of mouth (6)
O (zero, love) + RALLY
7. LOUISE Sixteen kings and finally one woman (6)
LOUIS (any of 16 kings of France, though one could quibble about the exact number – see here), plus last letter of onE. It could be argued that LOUISA also works, though it doesn’t account for “finally” so precisely
8. LABOUR PARTY Left organised chain gang (6,5)
Double definition – the Labour party is the (political) “left, organised”, and a chain gang is a party doing labour
14. CLEAR-CUT Unambiguous measure of volume curate’s drunk (5-3)
CL (centilitre) + CURATE*
15. PACK IT IN Stop trying to stuff suitcase? (4,2,2)
Double/cryptic definition
16. ROGUES Villains have run over visitor, severing foot (6)
R[un] + O[ver] + GUES[t]
17. GOALIE No 1 saver (6)
Cryptic definition – in football the goalkeeper (“saver”) usually has the number 1 on his shirt
19. TO BOOT Additionally, where one may apply a shoehorn (2,4)
Double definition
20. KITTEN Young pet: one’s anxious to have many (6)
Double definition, to have kittens is to be anxious or agitated

75 comments on “Guardian 28,327 – Vulcan”

  1. As did our blogger, I made slow progress this morning and, with the number of cd/dd, it’s all about wavelength and I’m not sure I shared Vulcan’s. I share the query about the number of French kings called Louis, I’ve never heard of dead men in the context of empty bottles and 1d is a chestnut. Quibbles over, I very much liked GOALIE. And I’ll leave it to Eileen to try to find a clip that might be appropriate for 21a…

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

  3. More or less what PostMark said @1, though I got bored with the last few and quit

    Thanks Andrew and Vulcan

  4. Louis XVII never ruled (he died aged 10 after years of abuse/neglect in prison). Louis XVIII did rule, though as a constitutional monarch. Louis XIX was technically king for 20 minutes; and then there was Louis Philippe, last king of the French.

    So yes, the quibbles are justified, as is the LOUISA variant which I never thought of. But even after all that the clue still gets a thumbs up from me.

    Thanks V & A (I’m sure we visit that museum more often than the law of averages would imply? 😉 )

  5. It’s frustrating when you get the clever misdirection but still fail to get the answer. So it was with 18a; I got the dead men bit, but have never heard of a BOTTLE BANK, so I bunged in an unparsed bottle rack, guessing that that’s where a bartender would stack the empties.

    For 7d I wrote in LOUISA/E, because they are equally good solutions imho.

    Not being up on my French history I didn’t bat an eye over the 16 Louis’ – Louis Dix-sept and Louis Dix-huit somehow aren’t in the forefront of my consciousness. Always something new to learn from 225.

    Nevertheless this was a fun puzzle. I especially liked 8a IN FOAL, 10a AGE GROUP, and the cheeky 4d COARSE.
    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

  6. …or 19 or Philippe for that matter, essexboy@4. This community has so many interesting commenters with such a broad range of knowledge that there is always something beyond the puzzle to keep me coming here.

  7. 2d 9a and 18a all gave me problems , and were not great clues unless you knew Latin, or are sexist! dead men? Dead on it’s own makes more sense imho, bottles are not chess pieces. Poor clues, not worth solving though I got Bottle and therefore got Bank after 20d was solved. 20d was quite good as it happens.

    Good to Andrew not being sure on the Christmas Eve clue – where is the suggestion of a song?

    wasn’t a silent night might have suggested singing, I was thing of Jodie Comer, having split Christmas away from Eve (or Adam) and sod’s law after Boxing Day, and Christmas Day before Xmas today’s puzzle did not treat them separately :O(

    Louis 16th clue was fine, in Vulcan’s defence.
    Louis 14th or 16th are expected , who knows any of the others? , and “finally one” can only be an E , so Louisa was clearly wrong!

    Quite enjoyable though 2d and 9a were a bit iffy.

  8. I managed to get all the way through the across clues without a solution. Made normal progress on the downs and then the whole thing capitulated in minutes. Thought IN FOAL was clever. LOI store for hens.
    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

  10. Odd that the clue in the printed edition for 2 down is ‘Not speaking, listen out’ Wondering why the change and which came first?

  11. I liked BOTTLE BANK, IN FOAL, KITTEN and COARSE (Cellomaniac@5, liked your ‘cheeky’). On the tougher side but I still enjoyed it. Ta Andrew & Vulcan.

  13. Definitely not a Monday write-in for me. Like Auriga @8 I found it hard to get started, but got there in the end. Many thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

  14. A rather tedious puzzle, I thought, relying more on definitions than word-play.
    Didn’t know that the goalkeeper wears a number 1 shirt. Just accepted the 16 kings. And I am in the LOUISE camp.
    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

  15. Quite difficult for a Monday puzzle

    Was not really sure of how to parse LABOUR PARTY as a chain gang. Or the dead men bit of 18a.

    New word for me: UNEXIST – never saw this used before but I guessed it must exist.

  16. Michelle @15: At the risk of being a bit Jean-Paul Sartre, I’m not sure UNEXIST does exist! UNSEXIST does – though neither of them are in online Chambers.

  17. Scored an own goal by playing ‘keeper’ rather than GOALIE between the sticks, until CO-OP paid dividends.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

  19. I was puzzled about the comments mentioning Christmas for 2d, and then realised like Steve Ade@10 that the clur in the printed edition was different, and in my opinion much more satisfying.
    Isn’t UNSEXIST a clumsy word.
    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

  21. [blaise @20: indeed it is. I posted a link to it a month or so ago and Eileen responded to say she posts it as often as she gets a chance and, indeed, COOP came up in (I think) an Indy before Christmas and she stepped up to the mark. The Two R’s really were very clever – and are nicely referenced in the Boxing Day Indy which is worth a try if you have time to spare.]

  23. Slow going but got there in the end. Re LOUISE/LOUISA, “finally” in the clue is superfluous if it’s LOUISA which is why I went for LOUISE

  24. I think this is only the third time I’ve abandoned a crossword due to ennui rather than difficulty. It just felt like an extended exercise in trying to guess the word Vulcan’s thinking of. Bah humbug

  25. Also found that quite hard-going for a Monday morning (although here in Tier 4 land days, nights, weeks all seem to be one lump).

    [Postmark @1: “I’ve never heard of dead men in the context of empty bottles” – I started Googling this to see if there was some natuical connection between Dead Man’s Chest as he island and bottles-of-rum but searching so far has yielded some Disney film nonsense and nothing else.

    Except the great Peter Sellers – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAe6Lq9-dgY%5D

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

  26. For “Dead Men” meaning empty bottles, as referenced by 18A, the best known use is in a rousing 18th century drinking song “Down Among The Dead Men”, with a fine tune, possibly by Purcell: it turned up frequently in popular song books in the first half of the 20th century. Wikipedia gives links to various performances. On the clue itself, I think it would actually work better as a straightforward cryptic “Where there are many dead men” – elegantly succinct and making one think laterally, in the best traditions of this undervalued type of clue.

  27. Well, I slogged through it, more because I don’t like to leave crosswords unfinished than from any sense of enjoyment. I generally dislike dd’s or cd’s though we expect a few on a Monday, but this was ridiculous. New horizons in tedium.

    Has the Christmas Maskerade been blogged yet, or is it too soon?

  30. The unfriendly grid and the large number of cd/dd made this a bit of a slog. Not an ‘easy Monday’ puzzle IMHO.

    I did like IN FOAL and LABOUR PARTY, however.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.

  31. Well, going completely against the tide here, I must say I thought this an excellent and most enjoyable puzzle. The CDs and DDs were witty and ingenious, IMO. The “finally” in the clue for 7d does indeed make LOUISE the better choice than ‘louisa’. “Dead men” for empties was a DNK for me, but I I am sure I’ve heard the bar staff referring to collecting up the “dead” glasses/bottles from the pub table.
    poc@27 lays into poor old Vulcan quite unjustifiably, I think. I find it odd that so many commentators in the community here sneer at a well crafted DD/CD but are oddly relaxed and happy when the clues require complex parsings, charades, lazy crossword shorthand (“i”=”a”, any single letter clued by any word you choose as long as Chambers includes it, etc.) and indeed even when the setter or the editor screws up on those tortured, mangled convolutions (with extraneous ‘a’s, left-over ‘s’s, missing containment indicators, substitutability failures, and so on) many here will airily wave the hand and applaud the setter for being such a genius.
    Thank you, Vulcan, for a very well constructed puzzle. One person’s meat is another’s poison, as they say.

  32. I also enjoyed this puzzle, and had the printed paper clue for 2d: Not speaking, listen out, which was my FOI. I agree with pserve@31. Thank you Vulcan for a Monday crossword that I can get my tiny brain around. Thank you Andrew and others for some of the parsing. Dead men and goalie indeed!

  33. As ever, I have a dose of FourShortItis, to the point that I intend to get my headstone changed to “Here Lies Hoofi”.
    The NE was my undoing, but the rest went in very quickly before I hit the wall.
    I had no idea now many king Louis there had been, but I guessed and added an O not an A.
    I liked 4d.
    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew for some parsing, particularly the Roman greeting.

  34. I’m still intrigued about the “dead men” reference. Several commenters have referred to the practise of referring to empty glasses as “dead” but I’ve never ever heard of the combination with “men” and have just taken dead to mean no longer in use/in play. “Dead men” is quite a specific term and I’m not sure that dead glasses covers it. Thanks to Sagittarius @26 for the Wikipedia reference to the song. Strangely, most of the other references I can find on the Web simply refer back to the Wikipedia article which, itself, states that “dead men” refers to empty bottles but gives no reference other than a 1901 American almanac-style work “5000 Facts and Fancies”. Which hardly seems the most robust of sources. This has to rank as one of the more obscure pieces of GK I’ve encountered in a puzzle in a long time. Given the paucity of data available, I wonder if the erudition of the fifteen squared community will turn up something more convincing?

  35. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew
    Very quick until I got to the NE, which I found extraordinarily difficult. COARSE is quite funny, but the definition is very loose; I couldn’t see why “Sixteen kings” gave LOUIS, and I also had LOUISA.

  37. Couldn’t agree more with pserve_p2, I usually find Vulcan amusing in contrast to the convoluted and often cliched parsing crew.

  38. ‘Dead men’ rang a vague bell but not enough for me to solve. Not really convinced by SUNBURNT as a cd either.

    COARSE gave me a good chuckle, though, and I thought GOALIE was a cute bit of cluing.

  39. Andrew@29: thanks, just spotted it.

    Pserve_p2@31: my opinion of the excessive CDs and DDs is what it is. Other opinions are available. I agree that the esteemed editor could often do a better job. For example I dislike extraneous words in the clue that are there only to make a phrase run smoothly but don’t participate in the wordplay, but that’s not relevant for this puzzle.

  41. I’m pretty sure that I recognise the phrase ‘dead men’ for empty bottles but maybe from the mouth of someone used to speaking a language other than English.?

  43. Jack @40: many thanks for that. I’m assuming you must have the hard copy? I haven’t been able to find the combination on the Web, even when searching with Cassell’s/slang.

  45. pserve_p2 @31. I’m with you all the way! I normally groan at cryptic definitions, and have been known to struggle with double definitions too, especially Paul’s, but most of what Vulcan served up here was very witty, I thought, and perhaps more importantly, clear and unambiguous. Sorry to hear so much grumpiness from regular contributors here, and hope you are all feeling better tomorrow.

  46. Postmark @43. Yes it is the 1500-odd page book that I got remaindered for a couple of quid. Strange it’s not on the web as I often heard it around pubs, though as SimonS @42 says, perhaps dead soldier is more common.

  47. I thought this was enjoyable for a Monday, though SILENT didn’t work for me. Favourite was COARSE. I do agree that there seem to be some rather negative views on Vulcan, personally I like the range of compilers and suspect that’s why many of us enjoy the Guardian Cryptics. Came very late to the crosswords last week. Strangely busy for tier 3 lockdown… Grantinfreo somewhat envious of your Boutique bar jaunt. Not happening in Brum anytime soon. Enjoyed the dead men, marines etc thread. Belated happy Christmas all. Will raise a glass to you on New year’s eve if we have live men left by then…Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

  48. Last post.
    From Partridge 1984

    dead man
    . (Very rare in singular.) An empty bottle or pot at a drinking-bout or the like: late C.17–20; orig. military. (B.E.) Cf.
    the later dead marine.

  51. I put in LOUISA and am fine with it, though Louis XVIII and Louis Philippe caused me to be cross for the rest of the crossword. 19th-century French history is in fact interesting.

    I had an acquaintance at Princeton (a friend of a friend really) who always called empties “dead soldiers.” She was annoying, so that phrase is also annoying to me by association.

  52. “IN FOAL” could be parsed as “a” = one/I, “new” = N, plus the (young) horse – and the question-mark for the overlapping definition.

  53. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Dead men. Empty bottles. When the ‘spirit’ is out of the bottle it is dead. In the USA ‘dead soldiers’ has the same meaning.

    Down among the dead men let me lie: let me get so drunk that I slip from my chair and lie under the table with the empty bottles.

  54. I found this a tricky solve, but really enjoyed finishing it. I’m definitely familiar with dead men for empty bottles, so really enjoyed that clue.

    It seems that many posters’ Google-Fu is weak, because a simple google for “dead men empty bottles” gets a first page with links to Collins online dictionary, the Free Dictionary, a Wikipedia article about the song “Down among the dead men” which explains this very meaning, and a quote from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, amongst others.

  55. Re: 7d, the phrase “and finally,” is often used to indicate the last thing, so I see finally as adding emphasis, rather than being redundant (in the context of LOUISA as a possible solution).

    It is interesting to see the viewpoint that cryptic definitions make cryptic crosswords boring. They do make you groan (if they’re clever), but isn’t that one of the objectives of a good clue? Admittedly, they are usually easier than other clues, so they are better suited to Monday puzzles. The opposing opinions expressed on this site remind me that Rufus was a marmite setter. And finally, I note that Vulcan uses them a lot on Mondays, but Imogen doesn’t on other days.

  57. After a fast start I got bogged down especially the NE corner. I ended with Louisa which I would argue is valid with the ‘finally’ referring to the fact that the ‘a’ is the last letter after the kings.
    Although struggling with some of the CD’s, I am firmly of the view that one of the joys of Guardian cryptics is the variety of styles across any week.

  58. Thanks Vulcan — that was more of a challenge than I expected and I needed a word finder for several clues. I enjoyed the simple SLIP, the anagram for TRICERATOPS, and ORALLY for its surface. I hadn’t heard of BOTTLE PARK but I guessed it correctly — as Plotinus @53 mentioned, empty bottles are sometimes called “dead soldiers” in the US. It’s not uncommon for a beer afficionado to line up the empties of mostly craft beers and post a photo of the “dead soldiers” on social media. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

  59. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.
    I found this tough and quite enjoyable. I am loathed to suggest that double definitions can be quite enjoyable, as the jury seems to find against them. I’m not sure if I would have broken into this crossword without TO BOOT, SHOW UP and COOP. Cryptic definitions I like not so much – for instance I thought IN FOAL was barely cryptic and needed the crossers for it. OUTBID similar.
    But hey ho it’s only a pleasant pastime and I passed some pleasant time engaging with Vulcan, Andrew and the general college of contributors so how bad?
    [But Pauline in Brum@47 – are you in psychic communication with ginf? I (nor can my computer) can’t spot him anywhere today.]

  60. The clues look better in retrospect than when wading effortfully through them. But none, I’m afraid, offered an endorphin rush to compare with that of the punch line in the “Two Ronnies” sketch.

  61. Took a while, but I think that was down to ‘wavelength’ as others have said. I did like ‘co-arse’. Thanks to all.

  62. Agree with those who found this a bit “meh”, only enlivened by my silly insertion of “bus queue” for 10 across before I had any crossers. Doh!

  63. Upon seeing several comments on how this was quite tricky for a Monday I surprised myself at how quickly I was making headway earlier. Rattled off all but six clues in less than half-an-hour. Then after a little more time and thought both 7 and 17 slipped in. 17 I felt I should have seen sooner. This left me staring on and off for a full four hours at 3, 4, 6 and 10. Finally the penny dropped for 10 and thus I was able to pick the rest off pretty pronto. PHEW!
    Re 7d, I simply saw ‘finally one’ as telling me to use the last letter of ‘one’. I never gave it a further thought until I came here which I mainly did to see the only clue I didn’t fully parse myself, that being 9a which I got mostly with the ‘clutching one’s’ and then looking at what was left after the crossers had gone in.

  66. Toothsome for a Monday, in a good way, and rather enjoyed it… by chance was tuned closer to center than some others, I guess. COTD: TRICERATOPS… dinosaurs rock 🙂

    Curious re 2d… looks like other cds are fully underlined but not that one… any particular reason?

    DEFINE: Saw “what’s” as part of defn… rereading now, see it an interesting case where could be in defn or wplay and still work.

    Got LOUISE, but agree, LOUISA quite justified too.

    LABOUR PARTY: Saw defns as “Left” and “organised chain gang”.

    PACK IT IN: Saw defns as “Stop trying” and “stuff suitcase?”; grammar of “trying to stuff suitcase” doesn’t match answer?

    GOALIE: Didn’t fully parse when solving, looking at it now, could also see as dd: “No 1” and “saver”, the former a bit cryptic.

    Hats of to setter, blogger, and commenters!

  68. OddOtter @66. PACK IT IN means ‘stop’ in the sense of trying to get your giggling pre-teenage kids to behave, and ‘trying’ therefore belongs to the second part of the clue. I think sometimes we are too prescriptive in requiring the setter to exactly match the sense and grammar of the clue with the solution; there sometimes needs to be a little wriggle room to allow for a smooth surface, and ‘trying to stuff suitcase’ is surely near enough.

    If LOUISA had been the answer, rather than LOUISE, would there have been commenters here criticising Vulcan for having a functionless ‘finally’ in the clue?

    In DEFINE’s clue ‘what’s’ is just a link word between the definition (carefully determine) and the wordplay (cooked in feed), in much the same way as ‘is’ in 11a, ‘and’ in 12a and ‘so’ in 4d.

  70. essexboy @69. Not very convincing though, is it! Barely literate, in fact…

    I still think the ‘trying’ belongs to the suitcase part of this clue, because of the tacit play on the normal meaning of ‘pack your bag’ without the hint of desperation implied by both ‘trying to stuff suitcase’ and ‘pack it in’.

  71. Way too many definitions for my liking, I’m afraid. It took much longer than a usual Monday puzzle, and wasn’t really all that satisfying at the end. Of course, your mileage may vary…

  72. I didn’t find this bad at all. Required some thinking, which is all too the good. Dead men was a common phrase in my youth for empty long necks.

  73. As the setter has said, when setting as Vulcan he tries to emulate Rufus. Hence all the cryptic and double definitions which are difficult for the setter to get right – they’re sometimes “barely cryptic” and sometimes too obscure for me. I either know the expression or I don’t and there are only crossers, no wordplay, to help. I like them when they are as well done as they are here and usually were with Rufus.

  74. Re PACK IT IN: Thx, essexboy, for the link, and sheffield hatter for your take. Appears there are two different senses, both supported by refs:

    Chambers online: “exclamation expressing annoyance and irritation at what someone is doing, and telling them to stop doing it”

    Collins online: “American English – a. to give up; abandon one’s efforts (We packed it in and moved back to Florida); b. to cease being a nuisance”

    lexico: “informal – Stop what one is doing”

    I’m unfamiliar w/the exclamation/command; have used/heard the verb (akin to “give up” or “call it a day”) for decades. So perhaps a US/UK thing, and either could work… tho still prefer my parsing as a better fit for 2nd half of clue. Wonder which Vulcan had in mind?

    Re DEFINE, yes understand some may view “what’s” as connector, but disagree it is definitively so. For those who dislike large/extraneous connectors, I think it quite plausible to take “carefully determine what is” as a drop in replacement for DEFINE (both would work in “[…] the meaning of the word”). Likewise “what is cooked INFEED” is quite plausible wordplay. Perhaps we disagree… but see no basis for only one of the three possibilities being deemed correct.

  75. I agree with pserve@31. I too enjoyed this puzzle and didn’t find it in the least boring. There was wit and charm in abundance. Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew. I associate the expression ‘boring’ with frustrated teenagers. I imagine the comments above re ennui/boring were not written by teenagers, but who knows?

Comments are closed.