Guardian Cryptic 28,351 by Vulcan

76 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,351 by Vulcan”

1. Not yet read the blog but just posting to ask if others are having issues accessing the crosswords through the Guardian app? I could not access the cryptic on Thu and Fri; all fine over the weekend, but today it tells me there are connection issues although my connection seems fine. I am on an android phone and I have premium.

2. Enjoyably gentle start to the week. Thank you Vulcan.

   Beobachterin – No issue with the app at this end, but we use it on an Apple device.

3. Beobachterin @1 – The Azed yesterday morning was lacking any clues, but they appeared around 11am. Apart from that it’s been OK for me (also on a Mac).

   All quite fun today with Vulcan. Got a bit stuck in NW corner, but suitable Monday fare. Thanks to V & manehi.

4. Agreed – enjoyable and gentle. When I finished, I went looking for the Quiptic, but it hasn’t appeared yet (but no other problems, Beobachterin). I liked TOILETTE, JUST AS WELL and SILENCE. Had to look carefully to distinguish RUNG/RANG. A pity the INJURIES clue starts with “In”, because otherwise I thought it quite clever. Thanks, Vulcan and manehi.

5. Thanks Vulcan and manehi
   JUST AS WELL my favourite too. LOOFAH/”sponge” again – it’s not even like a sponge!

6. I hope SPanza is around this morning to see his master getting a sort-of namecheck:

   “En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo…”

   (first line of Don Quixote)

   [HIDALGO is also the name of the Spanish-born mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. Whenever the French say her name it sounds like Annie Dalgo.]

   [One more fun fact: HIDALGO is derived from a contraction of hijo de algo, ‘son of something’.]

   It took me almost as long to write all that as to do the crossword! Sin embargo, thanks Vulcan and manehi.

7. Lovely little puzzle. Thanks to Vulcan for today’s offering and to manehi for the blog.
   I agree with manehi and Tassie Tim@4 that JUST AS WELL (24a) was an enjoyable clue. I also ticked SILENCE at 19d, TT. Other fun to be had was with the visual clues about sponging the ass’s back which gave LOOFAH at 4a and the circus performer enjoying a hot meal to get FIRE-EATER at 6d. Small smiles too at EXCELLING with the spreadsheet (13a) and INJURIES (21a) (I won’t be able to look at the latter word without pronouncing it differently in my head from now on).

8. [Crossed with muffin@5 and essexboy@6. eb, thanks for that fascinating background to today’s new word for me, 18d HIDALGO.]

9. Have contacted the Guardian about the app problem and they say:

   “We are aware of this problem with crosswords missing in the app on occasions and this has been passed to the development team who are investigating the problem.

   However, we are continuing to gather evidence and the developers are trying to understand why this is happening, but this type of issue it is a real puzzle and so, unfortunately, we do not have an estimated time of a fix.”

10. Swift stroll for the start of the week. Thanks Vulcan and manehi

11. David @9 – a real puzzle, and indeed in many ways a non-real puzzle.

    As to Vulcan’s effort today: ‘…a short wee’?! Well I never. 🙂

12. [those searching for today’s Quiptic could try searching on the Guardian website for Cryptic Crossword 1106 by Anto]

13. HIDALGO is now my favourite, after reading essexboy @ 6. I’d forgotten about ens and ems, so I wanted 14 d to start with EARL for a while. BOOM was good. Has that been done before?

14. [David Helliwell @9: “…but this type of issue it is a real puzzle…” So they’re puzzling over the puzzle of the puzzles then?]

    Lovely, quick solve for me this morning; nothing too difficult but SW was a bit slow-going as the coffee had stopped working by then.

    muffin @5: A sponge is (err) spongey – a Loofah/Luffa is nasty and hard (the whole point of it is to exfoliate) and (I think) a dried gourd of some sort? Must go and Google…

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi!

15. This was a DAWDLE. I liked CHIVALROUS and JUST AS WELL. Ta both.

16. On the Guardian app, on iPhone, (newspaper app, not puzzle app) the Quiptic appeared on Friday, labelled “Cryptic crossword No 1,106 Setter: Anto”. I completed it on Friday, and today’s Cryptic rather easily by 00:48. I suspect that will remain my record completion for some time!

17. [Quiptic has now appeared on the website]

18. I have a friend who is just starting her cryptic journey…this will be perfect for her!

    Many thanks, both.

19. Fun and easy Monday puzzle
    Favourites: JUST AS WELL, FIASCO, HAUNTED
    Thanks, Vulcan and manehi

20. Shirl @12. I tried that and got the dreaded ‘404’. And @17 – so it has! Ta.

21. Muffin@5: I had the same thought, but Chambers defines loofah as “a hard sponge”.

    Regarding the crossword app: I tried it when it first appeared and didn’t like it. I’ve recently tried it again because the Guardian app’s included crossword function is sometimes broken. I still don’t like the app much. For one thing it doesn’t remember settings from one session to the next (this is on an Android tablet), and I think the Check/Reveal menu is poorly designed (Check Word is by far the most common function yet I have to hunt for it every time). I also dislike having to pay for it when I’m already supporting the G monetarily.

22. The CDs are back with a vengeance and I fear another pedants’ revolt over LOOFAH
    BOSS/STUDY was a special treat as my mum used it to introduce me to cryptics many many years ago

23. [currently – on IPad – Quiptic working on website but error message on Guardian app]

24. Short and sweet – and enjoyable. I liked DAWDLE best, partly because waddle and dawdle are such a pleasing pair of words…
    Thanks to essexboy at 6 for the extra info on HIDALGO – and yes, I’m often amused at hearing the french talking about Annie Dalgo.
    I wondered, with BOOM, whether there was also an allusion to a mic-boom…
    Thanks to Vulcan for the fun, and Manehi for the blog.
    [David Helliwell at 9: my partner received exactly the same reply on Friday from the Grauniad – though we noticed they posted today’s Quiptic shortly afterwards. It was called “Cryptic” at the time, but was nevertheless Anto number 1,106…. We’ve just checked again, and the Anto’s still in its erroneous Friday slot – and there’s nothing on my partner’s android for today.
    I have an iPhone, which seems to be unaffected…?]

25. poc @21
    Chambers is being inconsistent. If you look at its definition for “sponge” (too long to reproduce) it repeatedly stresses absorbance; loofahs do not absorb water. As MaidenBartok said earlier, their function in the bath is exfoliation.

26. Thanks, manehi.

    Slightly puzzled by “capital lover” for ROMEO. I thought it might be a double – Romeo for the letter R, which *might* be a capital, and for the character in Shakespeare. If it just means “excellent lover” that hardly fits the lovestruck boy in the play.

27. I am using (or trying to use) the crossword section of the Guardian app. It is not loading any of today’s crosswords as yet. It tells me there is a connection issue, but everything else is connecting fine. I’ll have to get the crosswords on the website later today.

28. A perfect write in, but enjoyably satisfying nevertheless. And yes, I’m not sure I would term the abrasive LOOFAH as a sponge.

29. Miche @26
    I wondered if the “capital” referred to R in the NATO alphabet, but that doesn’t have to be a capital, of course.

30. If you added cream and jam to a LOOFAH it would it be more like a sponge?

31. A perfect Monday puzzle

    Thanks to Vulcan and manehi

32. [bodycheethah @30: The Bartok household took delivery of some Cornish Clotted Cream grace a Waitrose yesterday. I am about to take my shower and will port said cream and Strawberry Conserve up there. What could possibly go wrong?

    BTW, my mother says Wait {pause} Rose as if the “wait” of Waitrose means one should …. wait. Bizarre.]

33. Miche/muffin @26/29

    I was thinking ‘office Romeo’ – a ‘capital lover’ (at least in his own estimation)

34. Yes gentle fun. Felt slightly jarred by called up =RUNG as rang seemed more fitting to my ears, ie I called up/rang X. As did others, I liked JUST AS WELL, and appreciate the info re HIDALGO from essexboy. Miche@26, I too wondered re Romeo being a capital lover.
    Thanks to Vulcan and manehi

35. A good start to Monday.

    As I’ve said before, you can’t blame setters for using dictionary definitions, viz for loofah: Oxford: ‘The fibrous interior of a fruit that resembles a marrow, dried and used as a sponge for washing the body’; Collins: ‘A loofah is a long rough sponge-like piece of plant fibre which you use to scrub your body’; Chambers: ‘2.The fibrous network of its fruit, used as a hard, rough sponge.’

    I also liked JUST AS WELL and CHIVALROUS.

    MaidenBartok @32; my mother also used to pronounce Waitrose like that!

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

36. Romeo = “capital lover” in the sense of lost his life as a result of love.

37. Quiptic now up on the website for me. As we say so often harder than the Cryptic

38. [Robi @35: How odd! My mother also says Jay Elle as opposed to John Lewis. I think it makes her feel down wiv the kidz.

    I’m really surprised no-one has linked to a Loofah, so here is one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNj9bXKGOiI%5D

39. Thanks all

    For ROMEO I thought, like essexboy, was that it was referring to a type of person rather than the character in the play. I wasn’t too convinced about it, and appreciate the other suggestions.

40. Time hangs heavy . . .

    The lockdown SILENCE was broken: a friend had RUNG to INFORM me of his ENCOUNTER with a DISTINGUISHED and CHIVALROUS HIDALGO. A ROMEO (EXCELLING as a STUD in the SACK), he’d married a FIRE-EATER from PHOENIX. Standing by her one day while she was doing her TOILETTE, complete with LOOFAH, her BOTTLE of petrol went BOOM! His INJURIES were the WORST since he had got SUNBURN while watching a PARADE of OKAPIS (he’d known he shouldn’t DAWDLE).

    What a FIASCO! HAUNTED by his NARROW escape, he ran off to Mexico where he spent the rest of his days trying to AUTHORISE an alternative to the DECIMAL system. JUST AS WELL.

41. [drofle @40: Chapeau!]

42. A pretty well perfect Monday offering – stop/start all the way. As William@18 says, perfect for the initiate. Thanks to Vulcan and manehi.

    MaidenBartok@38: It took me far too long to spot the LOOFAH in your link. Smile of the day so far.

43. [MaidenBartok@38 and Alphalpha me too. Made me think of those other Cockney hard sponges Martin and Blissett, not to mention Idris Elba.]

44. I am a newbie to cryptics (but long time G reader), and find this site immensely helpful, and fun. The link on my iPad enables me to cheat/check (I hear the huge intake of many breaths) as I go along which stops me throwing towels in! After following you all on here for many months I am improving no end, and just wanted to say thank you.

45. My goodness that was quick. It helped that the cds were down at my level rather than being perfectly formed English sentences at which I gazed without understanding.

46. 25ac. I may be contrary but I think RANG is as valid an answer as RUNG. If not better.

47. Essexboy @33 – Thanks. Yes, I’d forgotten the more colloquial use of Romeo (“a Don Juan in the making,” says Chambers). That works a bit better, but I still think “capital” has been shoehorned in somewhat awkwardly for the sake of the surface.

48. Ken Wales @46: RANG fits the definition (called=RUNG) but not the wordplay (to manage=RUN not RAN).

49. [mb @32 it must be a mum thing. Mine pronounces co-op as kwop ]

50. [AnnieClem @44, nice to see you]

51. [Bodycheetat @49: Ah! Not just mine with the complete box-set of oddities then. Mine pronounces Co-op as in chicken coop! We’ll re-train them come the revolution…]

52. Vulcan could have used “scrub” instead of “sponge” in 4a. It can be a noun, as in “a pan-scrub”, and would make a better (and more correct!) clue.

53. Robi@35: I think those definitions say a loofah can be used as a substitute for a sponge, not is a kind of one. No getting setter off the hook there, even if the hook is in the shower.

    Re INFORM: I see manehi had to slip in a “being” to make the definition line up. Not just Ximenes but all books on crosswords I’ve read say the answer and the definition have to be substitutable for each other in a sentence to make them work properly. But maybe “properly” is not required on a Guardian Monday?

    Grumpiness aside, I did like the puzzle today.

54. A very pleasant Monday puzzle with a few good old crossword stalwarts such as “boss” = STUD and my favourite crossword antelopes the OKAPIS. And yet another chance to have an argument about “sponge” = LOOFAH (see for example Arachne 27,958). All good fun.

    My take on the “capital lover” was just that “capital” was meant to suggest something like “important”, with Romeo and Juliet being among the most noted lovers in literature. But the other suggestions are good too, with VW’s @36 being particularly ingenious.

    Many thanks Vulcan and manehi.

55. MaidenBartok@51. As a small boy in deepest East Sussex, with the Co-op van delivering to our door, I had no idea that the word should have been pronounced with 2 syllables. So another chicken run here…

56. …and a pronunciation of Wallis for Wall’s ice cream, oblivious to the apostrophe’s intent…

57. Ronald@55 Other way round for me. I thought chickens lived in a chicken co-op

58. After completing Redshank’s (Crucible) excellent prize in the FT I came down to earth for Vulcan’s walk in the park. It was a very pleasant walk with OKAPIS and LOOFAH being my favourites. Thanks to both.

59. A quick Google showed that the plant that we get loofahs from can also be called a vegetable sponge. Googling that gets plenty of sites that list “vegetable sponge” as an alternative name and also “sponge gourd”. So, to me, if you’ve got a plant called a vegetable sponge (or sponge gourd) that the dictionaries say is used as a sponge, then it feels like calling a loofah a sponge is perhaps not as big a leap as some folk here are claiming.

    Fun Monday puzzle, Thanks S and B.

60. MarkN – good research and well argued. Hope this gets Vulcan off the hook with those who have been criticising this clue.

61. After a few weeks of doing old Quiptics and reviewing the answers on here I’ve ‘graduated’ to the full Guardian cryptic and today completed it for the first time ! So happy !!!!

62. Ronald @55: I think I can forgive small boys in the rural backwater that it East Sussex (I’m in the rural backwater that is West Sussex “on the border” with East Sussex and Kent) but my mother is 86 and lives in the middle of cosmopolitan (!?) Portsmouth and STILL can’t get it right…

    Petert @57: I now have a mental vision of Kibbutznik chickens all clucking together in perfect Worker’s Harmony…

    [I notice a lack of PostMark today on the blog – hoping all is well with them.]

63. [slowowl @61, congrats and welcome.

    ‘Unrushed predator from the East cackles briefly, devouring… Oh my!’ (4,3) 🙂 ]

64. MaidenBarton @ 62 PostMark has defected temporarily to the Independent

65. essexboy @63: ‘Whispers by lad responsible for comical contributions (8)’ 😀

    Welcome to the blog slowowl. An evocative moniker. And AnnieClem @44 too, if that’s a first post.

    All well MB @62 thanks. Not much to add to the blog today, no app problems, didn’t consider Romeo a capital offence and threw in the sponge on LOOFAH having not smoked one in ages…

66. A lovely solve. Favourites were JUST AS WELL, CHIVALROUS, and DISTINGUISHED. Many thanks to Vulcan and Manehi.
    [BC@30 – “no” and MB@32 “absolutely everything imho”]
    [Coop/co-op – perhaps calls for a link (yet again!) to the 2Rs crossword sketch]
    {slowowl@61] – brilliant – keep going – it gets easier and is always fun – fifteen squared helps lots]
    [Finally, to all on Friday who urged a further attempt at the Paul from the previous Saturday – a big thank you – what a great puzzle – doffing of hat to Paul. Everything fell into place once I turned the key, and I am glad I persevered]

67. AnnieClem@44: Everyone uses cheat/check, at least occasionally, although there will be those who say they don’t (and perhaps they don’t). (Perhaps).
    Welcome aboard.

68. [PostMark @65: in case you haven’t seen them, there were a couple of late comments last night on yesterday’s Everyman blog that you might be interested in.]

69. Pauline in Brum – and anyone else – re Co-op / coop:

    I’ve provided a link to the Two Ronnies sketch several times but we were introduced to a new one today on the Indy thread – it’s equally hilarious.

71. Here’s the link – I hope!

72. [Self @65 & eb @63: Revised and more relevant surface: ‘Shout-outs by lad responsible for comical contributions (8)’

    LJ@ 68: I’ll go and take a look. Thanks.]

73. Thanks Eileen! Brilliant.

74. [PM @72: 🙂 ]

    [Eileen @71: 🙂 Now we know where R & R got the idea]

75. essexboy @74 – glad someone saw that.

    Yes – but brilliantly turned it on its head. I can’t believe I’ve never seen it before – many thanks to WordPlodder. (I do remember Beryl Reid.)

76. Thanks Eileen, I enjoyed that

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