Guardian Cryptic 28,423 by Vulcan

76 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,423 by Vulcan”

1. CORNY JOKE was as good as it got for me. I’ll say no more. Cheers all

2. Nice puzzle.
   I solved but did not parse 15ac.

3. Soap opera was the most fun, and the grist for 1ac was pretty cute, but putting the lip after the ox for the unknown plant took longest. Ta both.

4. Oh dear on CORNY JOKE which I got but did not parse at all. Thanks also for the parsing of SOAP OPERA which I now can’t see why I did not get… Otherwise some lovely clues especially HYDRANGEA, several of which we gave just planted.

5. Done and dusted by 8am. Happy to have a gentle start to the week. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

6. HYDRANGEA was my flowery fave. Unlike Beobachterin @4, I’ve just got one. It’s a lone hydrangea.

   Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

7. Enjoyable Monday fare – I thought the long clues were good. Like Beobachterin @4 I couldn’t parse CORNY JOKE or SOAP OPERA. Many thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

8. Pleasant start to the week. I liked CORNY JOKE as it got the response I’m sure was intended by the setter. SOAP OPERA was another groan and I liked CHAPATI and LORELEI

   Ta Vulcan & loonapick

9. Relaxing start to the week. Favourites were VICTORIA SPONGE and SOAP OPERA. Loi was OXLIP. Like Beobachterin @4, I didn’t get the crack about the ears so thanks for explaining CORNY JOKE loonapick.

   Thanks Vulcan

10. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick
    I didn’t parse RHONE either – in fact I thought it was a mistake, with the T rather than the N removed from “north”, then anagrammed with E.
    HYDRANGEA was my favoruite too.

11. Quick and mostly straighforward except the two DNKs – SATINET and GALATEA.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick!

12. OK, spose, just not my cup of tea.

    RHONE & CORNY JOKE a bit contrived and the rest either a write-in or ‘meh’.

    Many thanks, both.

13. Like muffin, I wondered if there was a mistake with RHONE,

    Not heard of LORELEI before but guessed it was a plant found on the banks of the RHINE 🙂 Then looked it up.

14. Monday morning breeze. TRIALLIST held me up for a minute or two, unaccountably. Loved SOAP OPERA.

    Penfold @6: More pernicious paronomasia! You can never resist a 3dn ?

15. Like others, I got RHONE from the def and failed to parse it.
    Anyone else trying to get CORNY JOKE by shoehorning something or other into COKE?
    Favourite HYDRANGEA, though I don’t grow any.

16. Loved the POPE in the SOAP OPERA. I wrote in RHONE very quickly carelessly thinking N off north and only realised later I needed the N and not the T, so then couldn’t parse it at all. I originally had DIE DOWN thinking DIED OWN, parsing have for own but … All the long clues made it all a quick and enjoyable solve. Thanks Vulcan and Loonapick

17. I thought this was an excellent Monday puzzle and don’t understand why Vulcan gets so much stick. Solid cds for CORNY JOKE, IDENTITY PARADE and HOUDINI , although I’m sure the latter veers into ‘old chestnut’ territory. SOAP OPERA was very nicely put together, as others have pointed out.

18. I must admit that I was only really familiar with the figurative use of ENFANT TERRIBLE (“a successful, and often young, ‘genius’ who is very unorthodox”, Wikipedia) and didn’t realise that it is in practice also used to refer to an actual child. Well fair enough, but the clue doesn’t seem very cryptic, closer to a straightforward definition.

    Like others I thought SOAP OPERA was very good, and I also ticked OXLIP.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

19. I sometimes have ‘one clue left’ nightmares with Vulcan, often cryptic defs, and I feared 3d was to be today’s example. It took a mental run through of C*R*Y combinations to crack it, and I’ll settle for that. No alarms elsewhere.

    [If you’re looking for an OXLIP in the UK, you’ll have to be very precise in your search. It’s restricted to woodlands in the area where Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire meet. I once needed a photograph for a book and it took a lot of patience, plus a field guide to make sure it wasn’t a cowslip.]

20. My mum used to sing LORELEI to us. Ella’s version is better. Sorry mum

21. [Bodycheetah @20: Long time since I heard that, thank you – what a stunning voice…]

22. [Trailman @19: I have an old book of country wine recipes which, believe it or not, includes a recipe for OXLIP wine! I vaguely recall you need several pints of flowers – and that’s just the petals – to make a gallon. Something you wouldn’t think of doing now.]

23. [Nice one Bodycheetah]

24. I was looking for a word with KID in (‘a little butter’?) at 10a. It’s kinda tricky doing a Vulcan after a Paul or a Brendan, with synonyms deliberately *not* chosen to mislead, so misleading anyway. The cryptic definitions were fine, and a couple of nice anagrams in ‘yo-yo game ceases’ and ‘I prove agnostic’. Last one in for me was SOAP OPERA, and although I eventually solved and parsed it, I can’t really see how ‘senior bishop’=A POPE. A senior bishop might hope to one day become pope, or the pope might conceivably think of himself as a senior bishop, but there’s only one pope so where does the indefinite article come from?

    Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

25. sh @24: only one pope – at a time but there have been plenty of them so the indefinite article works doesn’t it? Assuming one has allowed the senior bishop equivalence.

26. @25 The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.

27. I knew about the Lorelei from doing O-level German: we had to translate “Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten/Daß ich so traurig bin“, but sadly that, and “ruhig fließt der Rhein” are about all I could remember. More recently I’ve been past on a boat, but fortunately the captain of our ship was immune to the song of the “schönste Jungfrau” and just steered us carefully round the rocks.

28. A pleasant stroll for Monday, finished in time for coffee. [From Keble Martin, oxlips are almost the same as cowslips, just paler yellow like primroses]. Thanks to both.

29. Ebbourt @26. “The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.” Yes, I see the equivalence of ‘senior bishop’ and POPE, but I note that you have used the definite article (twice!) whereas the solution to 14d requires an indefinite article. Mark @25: I agree that “A” pope could be considered as one of a line of popes, but the normal way of referring to each of them is just POPE. Like I said, I solved this and parsed it, so it’s no big deal. But just thinking about it, if the clue said ‘motor vehicle’, would you expect the solution to include A CAR? Or just CAR…

30. [Bodycheetah @20: I see your Ella and raise you Daniel Barenboim and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – Liszt, Die Loreley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfCJx_SjSW0 ]

31. Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

    A nice Monday (and therefore on the easy side) offering but when the intention (but is it declared?) is to inveigle the interest of wannabes things like GALATEA and LORELEI are a bit too pre-watershed for the purpose imho. I thought the surface for TATTOOING painted an interesting picture. It reminded me of a small ad I saw many years ago for “ear-piercing manicures while you wait”.

32. Willingale @28: As well as being paler than cowslips, oxlips lack the characteristic markings on the inside of the petals. As Iachimo describes Imogen in “Cymbeline”:
    “On her left breast
    A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops
    I’the bottom of a cowslip”

    Primula veris and Primula elatior are attractive plants, but their English etymology is more prosaic. Cowslip is from the Old English ‘cuslyppe’ – ‘cow slime’, ie cow dung.

33. Pleasant effort, easier then the Quiptic again. Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

    LOI was SATINET, which I’ve never heard of. Never heard of a TRIALLIST either, though I could guess it.

34. Sheffield hatter @29: Just to say that I am entirely with you on this one. While the solution was obvious, without any other explanation for the ‘A’, I tried, in my attempts to parse, to suppose that ‘senior’ must be ‘OAP’, but failed to be able to fit the other elements of the wordplay around it. (The clue as provided leads to ‘SOP OPERA’). Therefore, I just bunged it in and transferred my attention to yesterday’s baseball scores.

35. Spooner’s catflap @34. “I just bunged it in and transferred my attention to yesterday’s baseball scores.” Is that the ultimate insult? I hope Vulcan doesn’t take it personally. 🙂

36. I agree with sheffield hatter@24 and Spooner’s catflap@ 34 concerning A POPE in 14d. Also, I immediately spotted SHOW (and SHOWS) imbedded in the clue, and because of the reference to TV, tried to fit one or the other into the solution for a while.

    In 24a, WHEATEN isn’t really a synonym for, or even an example of, WHOLEMEAL.

37. Sheffield hatter @24
    There are two other Popes
    Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria in the Coptic Orthodox Church
    Pope Theodore II of Alexandria in the Greek Orthodox Church
    Both were senior bishops before.
    So referring to the Bishop of Rome as The Pope is wrong as there are two other Popes, he is just A Pope

38. Aren’t Tawadros and Theodore the Coptic and Greek versions of the name of one person?

39. Hmm, MB @30, a hard one. D F-D, (whom my ma and pa and rels affectionately called D Sticky Dicky), and Hotter with Gerald Moore, are revered. Otoh, what a wonderful legacy from the US via Africa (the beat of which terrified the same ma, pa and rels). I’m smack in the middle and love it all. Desert island choice… tsu shver.

40. On Popes, this may inform the debate. (In that “senior bishop” might be taken as equivalent to “a pope” (perhaps not (but perhaps (but no..)))).

41. Theodore is Greek and was born in 1954, Tawadros is Egyptian born in 1952.

42. [grantinfreo @39: my personal Tao when it comes to music is that it is like wine; in order to know what you like you need to taste it all, preferably several times over…]

43. ginf/MB – yes indeed, tsu shver mein Herr

    On 14d: yes, other popes are available, but I think the simplest explanation is errare est humanum, or alternatively lapsus Vulcani (or even lapsus editoris).

44. Me @39 should be in [ ]

45. Thanks for the blog, otherwise I am nearly speechless.
    Bring back Rufus , all is forgiven.

46. Penfold@6 I used to live near Hyde where the antithesis of Sloane Rangers were known as…

47. Is 11a &lit? I’m happy to be corrected, but I thought a proper &lit had the whole clue as both definition and wordplay.
    Here, I read “May she look after” as definition and “girl in empty nursery” as wordplay, so not really &lit, although it is certainly a smooth surface.

48. [@31 Alphalpha
    ‘It reminded me of a small ad I saw many years ago for “ear-piercing manicures while you wait”.’

    This is a coded warning: whilst you are waiting for your beauty treatment of choice, the manicurist will accidentally miss another customer’s nail, resulting in a deep and painful cut to their finger and hence an ear-piercing scream.
    You would be well advised to book elsewhere ; ) ]

49. I enjoyed this – just what I needed with today’s 40-watt brain.

    Personally I think Lorelei is fair game as a tricky bit of general knowledge because it’s a hidden clue. I always find them easier to make a stab at and google (which I have no qualms at all about doing). Galatea is possibly more of an obscurity, but then I got it because there’s a video game (well, piece of interactive fiction) called that, so there are different ways to get there.

50. I knew GALATEA from Handel’s work Acis and Galatea – there seems to be some confusion of what type of work to call it; “pastoral opera” seems favourite.

51. muffin @50: Indeed so. The Galatea in Handel’s opera is the second of the three options offered by loonapick. I have attended it performed in ‘oratorio’ style but never staged.

52. [Alphalpha @31 and Katherine @48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnQ2zOmb6Hg ‘The first cut won’t hurt at all…’]

53. [muffin @50: The Aria Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori in Acis and Galatea is a quite stunning piece that jumps about all over the place.

    Christopher Purves does it rather well:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFcY40h-vH8 ]

54. [@MB today’s ear worm has arrived 🙂 released on ZTT – I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that’s the only record label ever named after a Filippo Tommaso Marinetti sound poem ]

55. [Thank you for the link, Maiden Bartok @53. Given the range of your musical knowledge, I was surprised that you tagged GALATEA as a DNK in your comment @ 11.]

56. [bodycheetah @54: A Secret Wish is a flippin’ good album – one of those ‘not a bad track on it’ types. 36 years on (UGH!) and it still sound fresh although I am NOT going out dressed like THAT; well, not on a workday. ZTT in their time were a very progressive label – they had Art of Noise and Africa Bambaataa (sp?) on their books at one point…]

57. [Spooner’s catflap @55: I know! It took a LONG time for the penny to drop. They make ’em thicker in Southend, don’t you know…]

58. I am pretty sure the statue in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is NOT called Galatea , but I have not read it for a while. Does anyone know better ?

59. Roz @ 58
    britannica.com would disagree. Please see here.

60. Sorry I do not do links , I will look it up tomorrow with the original source.

61. Looking up GALATEA in the big red book I saw that it’s defined as “a cotton fabric, [usually] with coloured stripe. Couldn’t find any more materials to combine with NYLON and SATINET to build a real theme though…

62. Gaufrid @59. Thanks for the link. For anyone (such as Roz) who doesn’t do links, this is what it says about Galatea: “Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, Book X, relates that Pygmalion, a sculptor, makes an ivory statue representing his ideal of womanhood and then falls in love with his own creation, which he names Galatea.”

63. MarkN @49. “I think Lorelei is fair game as a tricky bit of general knowledge because it’s a hidden clue.” I didn’t find this at all tricky (for reasons stated at #27) but you make a good point, that if a setter suspects that the answer might be thought to be obscure, a friendly clue will be appreciated by many.

64. Just read the original now plus a commentary, Pygmalion did not name the statue at all. Galatea is an 18th century addition due to Rousseau.

65. Cliveinfrance @37. Thanks for the other popes, but just like Mark @25, I’m not sure you have really addressed my point, which I restated @29: The clue gives ‘senior bishop’ and the answer includes A POPE; if the clue said ‘motor vehicle’, would you expect the solution to include A CAR? (To get to A POPE, doesn’t the clue need to either give us a hint that will get us an A, or simply say ‘a senior bishop’?)

    essexboy @: Can I borrow your lapsus Vulcani for a minute please?

66. Roz @64. This is interesting, because Brewer names Galatea (as the “beloved” of Pygmalion, and a different person from the nymph in Handel’s Acis & Galatea) and refers also to Gilbert’s Pygmalion & Galatea (1871 – obviously post-Rousseau). Does your source give any reason for Rousseau making this addition? Does it refer to Ovid as mentioned in Gaufrid’s link @59 and which I quoted @62 – just interested, not challenging your research. 🙂

67. …found a translation online (it’s a bit creepy – actually, a lot creepy): https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph10.php. In it Pygmalion appeals to the gods to make his statue (which he had carved from ivory – quite a lot of ivory) into a human so that he could have her as his bride (told you it was creepy). In the poem, this is stated as “I wish as a bride to have…” and not daring to say “the girl of ivory” he said “one like my ivory girl“. Galatea means “she who is milk-white” in Greek, so I guess this gives some justification for Rousseau and (subsequently) Gilbert, though there’s no excusing Pygmalion, really. (I wish I hadn’t looked, now.)

68. [sh @65: It’ll cost yer. Lapsuses don’t grow on trees you know… sorry, lapsi… no! 4th declension, what am I thinking? – lapsus, same in plural, but with a long u – how do I do the thingy to indicate a long u – I can’t! – help!

    Back to Ovid: sometime back in the last century, Ted Hughes did his own translations/retellings of the Metamorphoses and published them as Tales from Ovid. Worth treating yourself to.]

69. Thanks, essexboy. Ted Hughes did his own translations/retellings of the Metamorphoses and published them as Tales from Ovid. Spoiler alert: Don’t anyone read on if you haven’t already done Ovid’s Metamorphoses at school.

    [Worth treating yourself to? Does Hughes edit out the bit where Pygmalion kisses the statue and puts his hand on her breast? (Bk X:243-297) There’s also a more recent verse translation (see this 2004 review on the Guardian website). “You may also feel that Ovid’s description of Philomela’s tongue twitching on the ground after her rapist, Tereus, had sliced it out of her mouth, was a little over-detailed.” It’s not getting any better, is it?]

    Can we go back to talking about the Lorelei instead? I’m feeling a little queasy.

70. sh@65
    I was just trying to challenge your earlier post

    “A senior bishop might hope to one day become pope, or the pope might conceivably think of himself as a senior bishop, but “there’s only one pope””
    There is no one person “The Pope” there are three, four if you count Legio Maria in Kenya. The orthodox popes have Pope in their title, the Catholic pope does not have Pope in his title but assumed it in the 10th Century. All three are senior bishops of their church. So a senior bishop is a pope, he never hopes to be a pope as he is a pope.

71. [sh @69 – er, no, I’ve just looked it up, and if anything Hughes tends to accentuate the erotic:

    And soft as warm soft wax –
    But alive
    with the elastic of life (!)

    Not a million miles from the golden-haired siren of the Rhine, come to think of it. But then Heine had the moral decency to doom his lust-stricken boatman to be dashed on the rocks and then drowned. Venus, on the other hand:

    heard every word
    Pygmalion had not dared to pronounce.
    She came near. She poised above him –
    And the altar fires drank her assent
    Like a richer fuel,
    They flared up, three times,
    Tossing horns of flame…

    And from that moment Pygmalion could never hope to be a pope! 😉 ]

72. [Not a million miles from the golden-haired siren of the Rhine, come to think of it. Yes, that line about “soft as warm soft wax” had me looking again at Die Lorelei, where the Jungfrau is combing her hair with a golden…comb. There’s that same lack of reluctance to repeat a word soon after its first use. “Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme.”]

73. Hi Roz @60, No need to fear links. If there’s any doubt as to it’s authenticity, simply right click on the link word, copy the link location, and paste into a browser address line. Its veracity or maleficence will be revealed. In this case “https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pygmalion”. Perfectly benign.
    Thanks V/L for your entertainment/erudition.

74. Oops, slip of its apostrophe!

75. OXLIP was close to my LOI. Had –LIP for a while and was wondering if the answer was some sort of riff off cowslip before it occurred that LIP = edge and that I should be thinking about what farm animal was two letters long.

    MarkN@49 See, I’ve heard of Galatea and have the general gist of the story (it inspired “My Fair Lady” somewhere down the line), but have no idea of Lorelei beyond ‘German’ and ‘…maybe a water spirit’?

    me, earlier today: IDENTITY… PARADE? Is that some sort of… serial identify fraudster? *googles* Oh, a police lineup. *shakes fist at sky* Britiiiiish peopleeeee!

76. Gaufrid @59 britannica is completely wrong as I suspected. I have put a comment on General Discussion with the library references.

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