Guardian Cryptic 28,388 by Vlad

85 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,388 by Vlad”

1. Thanks manehi and Vlad.

   Pleased to have completed this hard one (albeit with minor cheating). I had not heard of OFFED, so couldn’t explain that one. And it took me far too long to spot the SIDE in 26a.

2. And I wasn’t happy that THEOREM is equivalent to PROPOSITION; the former is proved true, the latter not yet so

3. Very enjoyable, the more so as although this was certainly a challenge, I didn’t find this to be Vlad at his hardest. Grid eventually filled, though DOM for ‘little bossy woman’ and the parsing of PARED defeated me.

   I particularly liked the surface for SCEPTIC (‘I’m not sure’ wasn’t the expected “er” or “um” part of the wordplay) and TEMPO.

   Thanks to Vlad and manehi

4. Bravo Marcus Rashford, we need him here too, where lots of kids go hungry, and the best we ever had was free milk until it was killed off.

5. Thanks Vlad and manehi- I needed help with parsing for EXEMPTS , couldn’t see EX for ‘from’ plus some parts of others. I used fairly major aids after only getting TIDDLER on the first run thru. Was rather proud of ANTILIBRATION across the bottom (totally obscure word for me but the meaning of counter poise or balance seemed to fit with payment). Of course it then caused problems in the SW and had to be replaced. In hindsight I should have hung in there and tried harder without ‘word search’ assistance but I was intimidated by VLad. Nothing here was obscure or even too tricky with the benefit of hindsight and manehi.

6. Good old marcus
   Good old Jim for including him here
   Thanks all

7. Great puzzle. Vlad on a Tuesday. What a pleasure. Thanks all

8. There is a distinct feeling of satisfaction to completing a Vlad puzzle by 8.15.
   Some beautifully constructed clues, possibly the neatest being 1A, 16A (despite the slight ugh-factor when the latter was solved!), 8D and 9D. There were one or two which I didn’t succeed in parsing, but which were perfectly fair one explained.
   Not sure I agree with Dave @2 – a theorem is surely a proposition which has been proved; if we are going to get mathy, theorems is a sub-set of propositions?
   Grantinfreo @4 – free milk was an idea which was a lot better in theory than in practice. Certainly at the primary school I attended in the late 50s, it was full cream milk and it wasn’t improved in the slightest by sitting out in the sun for a couple of hours until break time.
   Thanks to Vlad and manehi.

9. I bagged a few clues last night in the North with the superb COMPLIMENTARY, referencing St Marcus, helping. Then I ground to a very sudden halt and thought this is way beyond my capabilities. However, with a new pair of eyes and a cup of coffee this am, the rest went in smoothly. Confidence restored.

   I loved all the long clues as well as SCEPTIC, TARANTINO and SCOFFED. I wondered about ‘tricked’ and ‘pressed’ as anagrinds but I suppose they work OK.

   Ta Vlad & manehi

10. …but yes, good puzzle with plenty to chew on. Dom as little bossy woman (cf Catholic dignitary) was a bit cheeky, while top banana was a bit Lego-ish [Oban has the biggest gulls; one landed on our bonnet while Mrs ginf and I were parked by the sea there…big as a turkey, I swear]. Agree with Dave re theorem as proven. The Tati/Tarantino counterpoint is stark [we saw Reservoir Dogs by accident (recommendation)…what a shock; that evening, Pie in the Sky and The Bill were like healing balm!] Thanks Vlad and manehi.

11. Back to bad Vlad as far as I’m concerned. Completed, but with one error, and the parsing of many of the clues was too convoluted to be fun for me.

12. Thanks Vlad and manehi
    I had 10 question marks, mostly over parsing. I thought some was a bit loose – PARED, for example – easy enough to get, but the instruction to move the D was only hinted at. SONIA was another.
    The note is MI not ME!

13. Top crossword this! Despite a goof with an unparsed SONYA, I enjoyed a steady slog through a lot of creative clues. Great fun. Thanks Vlad and Manehi.

14. Great puzzle and blog.

    Many thanks to Vlad and manehi.

15. I worked my way up from the bottom where a few very familiar devices helped me get a toehold. 26a, “helping” is usually “ration”, so CONSIDERATION went in first. Then 17d, “managed” is nearly always “ran”, so we need a director ending with O and including RAN – no problem! 24a, “bounder” is surely “roo” – aha, ROMEO!

    1a was very clever and topical.

    Many thanks Vlad and manehi.

16. Vlad’s definitions are usually sound, so with a few crossers I can fill the grid, but I do struggle with the parsing. I wouldn’t have seen DOM in a month of Sundays. (Led a sheltered life!) I agree with muffin@12 about MI.
    Thanks, all.

17. I was unable to parse EXEMPTS apart PT in MS, and TOP BANANA (I had no idea about the Scottish holiday spot and was too lazy to do a google search) but it was easy enough to solve it anyway.

    Favourites: EASED, TARANTINO, TEMPO, NOTORIOUS, FOLLOWING, SCOFFED, SONIA (loi).

    Thanks, Vlad and manehi.

18. Like manehi, I couldn’t parse a few: PARED, EXEMPTS and SCOFFED. A nice tricky puzzle, however, which I enjoyed a lot, especially SCEPTIC, TAIWANESE and SMEAR CAMPAIGN. Many thanks to Vlad and manehi.

19. Bit of a workout which gradually yielded. WATERFORD unparsed, having minimal knowledge of towns near London. Lots of ticks, SCEPTIC and TEMPO faves.Ta to Vlad and manehi

20. NeilH @8, similar vintage, primary school ’54 to ’60. Don’t remember any tummy problems, tho Perth summers can be stinking hot. Did you have flavoured straws, choc and strawb, to drink the milk through?

21. Finally finished although I found this a real struggle at times. Guessed a number but some of the parsing was hard to understand. In particular I did not like PARED and SONIA

22. Got loads without knowing why, so thank you Manehi.
    Great puzzle now I understand why, so thank you Vlad.
    And we were lucky – our free milk was made into hot chocolate! (Sixth form only, boarding school, and previously in New Zealand where I don’t remember it being warm yet it was creamy. Maybe we just got used to it.

23. I initially parsed NOTORIOUS as N…….US, with house of ill-repute being Rising SUN!

24. Poor old Joe Root. Thrashed by India and now caught in flagrante. Lovely surface.

    No one seems to have mentioned the cleverness of the surface for TOP BANANA either. No. 1 hit.. Scottish holiday spot… haven for Paul… I now have the bagpipes and drums of the Campbeltown Pipe Band as an earworm.

    Thanks Vlad and manehi.

25. Grantinfreo @8 – no tummy problems, it was just not very pleasant, and I was a fussy little so-and-so. Looking back, I have considerable sympathy for the teachers who had to put up with me.
    I remember my father who was a Deputy Head at another school at the time did arrange chocolate milk (a spoonful of some probably very chemical brown essence) for some of the children in his class for a modest payment. Which must, on thinking about it, have caused its own problems because his school was in a desperately poor area of Birmingham (They filmed some of the location shots for Cathy Come Home just down the road from it, apparently).

26. Found this an interesting challenge this morning, at first struggling to get a toehold, with first one in the raise-a-chuckle SCEPTIC. Needed help with some of the parsing from Manehi once successfully completed with loi CREATES. Especially with WATERFORD, with which I was unsuccessfully trying to engineer a Royal connection to their lovely cut glass, as with, let’s say, Royal Dalton. Lots to like and admire today, especially those TAIWANESE…..

27. Difficult challenge, eventually sorted out with a number of fine clues.

    I suppose for some WATFORD is a town near London, although when I lived in St Albans, Watford was north and London south, so it didn’t seem very close to me. I, too, forgot the EX = from; the only one I couldn’t parse properly.

    I ticked quite a few: TAIWANESE, SCEPTIC, SMEAR CAMPAIGN, NOTORIOUS, TARANTINO and TEMPO (Macron and BOJO in the same clue!)

    Thanks Vlad for the torture and manehi for a COMPrehensive blog.

28. I did get DOM but I don’t like it: it isn’t an abbreviation and “little” gives you no idea how much of an unknown word is to be used. Like George Clements@11, found some of this too convoluted to be enjoyable (like EXEMPTS, which I completely missed by assuming the leading E was the swEetheart and getting lost from then on.) And I can never do those sliding-letter ones like PARED even when they are much more clearly indicated than this was.

    However, I did like lots of the rest, like SCEPTIC (ewww!), COMPLIMENTARY, WATERFORD, TIDDLER, SMEAR CAMPAIGN and LIKE CLOCKWORK. And I would have got OBFUSCATE a lot sooner if, having correctly identified the anagram fodder, I hadn’t decided blur was the anagrind. Vlad uses odder ones than that.

29. Yes, COMPLIMENTARY was the cream off the top of the pinta. We could have done with Marcus Rashford when Thatcher, the milk snatcher was on the prowl. I also liked TOP BANANA and WATERFORD.

    [SONIA hit the crossbar for the UK, finishing 2nd in the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest with “Better the Devil You Know”.

    essexboy @24 Joe Root may have just been enjoying a tickle down the leg side?]

    Thanks Vlad and manehi

30. Robi @21 – I sympathise with your reaction to “Watford is a town near London”, which was my initial reaction as well. I gnash my teeth every time I schedule a Zoom meeting and the computer informs me that it’s taking place in London. But Watford does have a station on the London Underground and two on the London Overground, so I think Vlad can be excused.

31. After all the complaints we get about London-centric clues, finally the definition of Watford isn’t London-centric enough!

32. Thanks Vlad and manehi

    Gladys @ 28 DOM is certainly an abbreviation in BDSM circles (so I hear!)

33. I found this the most difficult puzzle for a long time – I had to leave it for an hour and come back to it and even then I had to resort to a few word searches in places. This had all of Vlad’s hallmarks: the clever definitions and the ingenious constructions – so ingenious that I was left with several unparsed.

    Too many brilliant clues to enumerate.
    Congratulations on a masterpiece Jim, and bravo manehi for being able to sort it all out.

34. Once you now that Tarantino includes TATI you look at Pulp Fiction in a different way and once I accept that I am not going to finish a Vlad without a little help, I can enjoy the wit and allusion. I think proposition is the general term and a theorem “is a proposition proved by reasoning” hence, by INFERENCE a proposition??? Once I had Mrs Slocum in mind, I couldn’t think of pussy in the right way and I thought that, given the nature of Vlad all sweethearts would be Exes, so thanks for the enlightenment Manehi

35. What a wonderful crossword. 1A is an absolute classic. Loved the misdirection in NOTORIOUS. Too many other favourites to mention. Thanks Manehi and Vlad.

36. First Vlad I think I have ever finished without word finder or the odd reveal. Not that I can say all were parsed perfectly…
    Am I alone in entering PARIS at 3d? Inadvertently used ‘Department’ twice but happily entered as paris(h) – reduced clergyman’s department and the definition – Department finally (Paris wasn’t always a dept. in its own right – was Seine). Looks daft when reading it now! There it stayed though until the tense required for 12a made me think again.
    Thanks Vlad and Manehi

37. I thought this was a fine but tough puzzle, my first Vlad for a while that didn’t need any aids.

    My only question-mark was for “press” as anagrind in 9d. Can you really interpret it as a variety of movement/disturbance/wrongness? Maybe I’m being a bit thick-headed (no coffee yet this morning).

38. Thank you Vlad and manehi.

    A wonderful crossword, even though hard going and some parsing help needed.
    “press” as an anagrind did not bother me, it put me in mind of the action of a cider or wine press.
    The clue for the TAIWANESE was topical, it is most unfortunately a question of “wait and see”…

39. All I can say is ‘Ay caravan! A million miles above my solving level.
    Ta for the hints.

40. Bloody spellchecker…

41. Dr. WhatsOn @37 & Cookie @38: or how about the idea that the letters are being pressed into service?

42. Didn’t go much on 23A, but otherwise an enjoyable and moderate challenge.

43. Tough but worth persevering to complete the grid and then come here for the 6 un or partially parsed clues. I still think EXEMPTS is overly convoluted and like gladys@28 I was stuck on the E from sweetheart. How devious of a setter not to use the trick we’ve become familiar with! Lots to like with the brilliant SCEPTIC my top clue when MrsW helped me see PUSSY as an adjective. Many thanks to Vlad and manehi for the much needed help in parsing.

44. Lord Jim @41, yes, that is a good idea, it makes one think of a press gang.

45. [Neilh @25, grantinfreo @20 etc. Flavoured straws? Chocolate milk? I’m a similar vintage, and we just got the little bottle, warm in the summer. I was pretty expert at passing mine to anyone who wanted it when the teacher wasn’t looking. Can’t bear to drink neat milk to this day. But I’m sure it was a godsend for some.]

46. Simon S @ 32: I bow to your superior knowledge! Not my field.

47. Mention has been made of Marcus Rashford’s campaign to feed our kids, but not on the Government’s failure to deliver – hence “Free school meals tiny”.

48. I finally gave in and used an online crossword for the last three (5dn, 6dn and 16ac), which I was glad for doing, because no way would I have be able to solve those contorted clues.

49. I didn’t manage to post the link for pictures of the tiny meals – hope it works this time!

50. Apparently not – just look for tiny free school meals.

51. JudithG – you need to delete the http:// before entering the URL

52. My least favourite compiler. Parsing typically convoluted and whilst I completed it, as usual there is no fun element. My son and a number of his fellow cruciverbalists from Cambridge no longer bother to do Vlad crosswords so I’m not alone in my dislike.

53. Hard work, but got there without, too much, help. Grew up on a farm in Lincolnshire – mainly arable. At home we drank homogenised milk, which tasted foul. School milk in comparison was lovely.

54. I got less than half of this last night, and needed the check button for a lot this morning, still leaving many unparsed until I got help from manehi. I really am a duffer.

    Canberragirl @5 and others What is word search?

    muffin @12 and Auriga@16 The third note of the diatonic scale is MI when it’s major and ME when it’s flatted to make a minor third. The same applies to the seventh note — TI when sharp, TE when flatted.

    Doofs @36 I thought of PARIS too, but couldn’t make it fit.

    [At Mountainville Elementary (Mountainville NY, pop 500) there were two classrooms for six grades, a tiny library and no food. At Chestertown Elementary (Chestertown MD, pop 3000) in the 50’s we had what were called C lunch and A lunch,. C lunch wasn’t boiled agar, it was a carton of milk — why C I have no idea. A lunch (A for all?) was a hot meal for 25c, all too often including the loathsome stewed tomatoes, which I’d never met before.]

    Thanks Vlad for the diversion and manehi for saving my sanity.

55. Very hard work throughout, but got there in the end and parsed everything, which to me indicates fair but inventive cluing. No complaints from me today! Oh, except that as a Luton Town fan, the town near London is spelt with asterisks instead of vowels (to avoid contamination). Surprised to hear from Robi @27 that this town was to the north of St Albans when he lived there; having lived most of my childhood in Hemel Hempstead I was used to thinking of St Albans to the east and W*tf*rd to the south, and I now find that Google maps agrees with me!

56. Thanks manehi, “Stiff Tuesday” is clearly a thing and I needed your help to understand many of the wordplay elements (I think drofle@18 summarised them, plus TAN) and agree with muffin@12’s grumbles.
    I think that when a mathematical proposition is proved (and becomes a theorem) it moves from the set of unknown things to the set of known things which I wouldn’t class as a subset of those unknown things – long winded way of saying I agree with Dave Ellison@2 – but am open to counter-attack, especially as there may be more general uses of Theorem that invalidate our specific argument!
    Thanks for the press arguments everyone, I had considered our “French Press” which surely agitates the ground beans, the press gang is even better.
    Robi@27 you may be thinking of the WATFORD GAP which is indeed some way N of the great cesspit, but Watford itself, being within the M25, is surely fairly described here. Anyway having failed on Paul’s Tyrone I was very happy to spot that one. Quite a challenge for me but lots to satisfy, long one across and both down were great but just pipped by misdirection of SCEPTIC, thanks Vlad.

57. Full of confidence after yesterday’s finish I couldn’t even get started today! Not sure I am much wiser after reading the blog but thanks anyway. I guess Vlad is just not my cup of tea.

58. I’m surprised that there is any debate about ‘proposition’=THEOREM as it is right there in Chambers: ‘demonstrable or established but not self-evident principle; a proposition to be proved.” I refer also to Collins Dictionary of Mathematics: ‘1. A statement or formula that can be deduced from axioms; 2. less formally, a proposition derived from previously accepted results.’

59. Bounder stealing note, one for the ladies (5)

    Also a legitimate answer would be – ROU-G-E (Roue around G a musical note)

60. Well, Euclid’s 48 Propositions is a fairly hefty clue.

61. Lovely crossword, lovely blog , thank you. Hard going at first but went smoothly after 8 down. Had no idea how pared worked until I read this.

62. [sh @55 Your dislike of hornets made me smile. I’m sure that you’ll have encountered neighbours for whom the days of the week go Monday, Tuesday, the day after Tuesday, Thursday, Friday etc. I was pleased, the other Saturday, to see owls that had been flying high in the first half, were brought back to earth with a bang (or three) :)]

63. [Penfold: have you seen the ‘murder’ hornets that decapitate whole swarms of bees? That’s their football mascot…

    Meanwhile in Luton, the mascot is called Happy Harry. Says it all, really.

    Yes, it’s a bit different here in Sheffield, with one half of the city totally unable to operate in the hours of daylight and the rest being stopped and searched by police for hidden weapons.]

64. On “press”, I thought of it as meaning “cause
    stress” or “harass”

65. sh @55, Gazzh @56; I must be go senile, doh! Watford is indeed south of St Albans.

66. … or even, to make the point, going senile …

67. I seem to remember that at school (1950s) we always had to write qed (quod erat demonstrandum) after a theorem.

68. Oh My Word. That was tough not helped by my mammoth 10-hour Zoom-a-like session (MeetEcho – like Zoom but much, much worse) today and 14-hour on Thursday.

    Started at 7.30 as per usual – dipped in-and-out all day and a DNF by 17.00 so I’m off to find the Merlot.

    Thanks (I think) Bad Vlad. And manehi.

69. The Britannica gives
    “Theorem, in mathematics and logic, a proposition or statement that is demonstrated. In geometry, a proposition is commonly considered as a problem (a construction to be effected) or a theorem (a statement to be proved).”

70. [Cookie @67
    QED – ‘Quite Easily Done’ ; )
    One of my university tutors preferred W^5 – ‘Which Was What We Wanted’. (Or, if the proof had not gone well, ‘Which Wasn’t What We Wanted’.)]

71. “Dom” isn’t really an abbreviation, it’s just the male form (with “Domme” for F — as with blond/blonde, although I think English is better off without this convention), so “bossy man” would have been neater than “little bossy woman”. And, this being Vlad, “Dom” would also have worked as a dig at a former political advisor.

72. Agree with a couple of comments. I just find Vlad involves too much fussy ,convoluted parsing for the result to be fun. OK,some gooduns, of course, and 9 was a great anagram, but I’m off to clean the treacle off my boots.

73. [Cookie @67 and Katherine @70: QED = “Quite Enuff ov-Dat.”]

74. Just wanted to come very late to 15sq to proudly say that I have completed. In terms of filling the grid that is. In terms of parsing, not so much. Well hardly at all.

    But 1a was a great surface.

75. Valentine@54 re word search. Google “OneLook”, which is a reluctant but very effective goto when the mental thesaurus dries up. Preferable to a reveal, but not by much – a definite cheat…

76. Very enjoyable puzzle – some wonderful misdirections (ROMEO and NOTORIOUS, in particular).
    My only complaint? The dreaded “common noun for a proper noun” clue, as in SONIA and TAIWANESE; I just hate those…

77. Daniel Miller @ 59. Yes, I did the same as you and got ROGUE instead of ROMEO. Messed things up for NOTORIOUS though didn’t it?
    Great puzzle, which I found hard. Needed help with parsing too. So thanks to Vlad and manehi.

78. Thanks to manehi for a very nice blog and to others who commented.

    And thanks to essexboy@24 for pointing out the Mull of Kintyre link in 13ac.

79. [Valentine @54. My definition is a program where you put in -e-e-e-c- and it gives you numerous possible words. No help at all in the beginning of a solve. I dither about deleting the app from my phone as consider it ‘cheating’ but then Vlad comes along]

80. Thanks both.

    Offed was new. Don’t understand “bit of alright” for A in SONIA.

81. Most people with ears do not want any reminders of Mull of Kintyre, thank you.

82. Timmytimtim; ‘a bit of’ ‘a little of’ ‘a touch of’ etc are often used to indicate just the first letter.

83. I liked this a lot; great surfaces, and entertaining misdirections which I managed to navigate past (not always my experience with Vlad). More please.

    [Penfold@62, Sheffieldhatter@63: my Sheffield grandmother used to tell me that in one of her formidable sisters’ households bacon was never allowed on the menu].

84. Roz @81: 🙂 hear hear

85. [g larsen @83. It seems that the Wednesday’s ground was built on the site of a former pig farm, so the United fans called them pigs. Then the Wednesday fans called them pigs back – with the excuse that red-and-white stripes look like streaky bacon. Now each set of fans call the other pigs with little awareness of the reason why, other than “they call us that, so we call it ’em back”.]

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