Guardian Cryptic 28,497 by Vlad

75 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,497 by Vlad”

1. 18d = the (t)ories

2. Re 18D: I think it’s just THE TORIES, missing the middle T (time).

3. Thanks, both – much more obvious than I considered

4. Thanks loonapick, needed you for several explanations. Only two solved last night (SPRY and NEVADA), but managed most of the rest this morning, but quite seriously hard, I thought. I am never quite on Vlad’s wavelength, so had to cheat on a few at the end.

   My parsing was as madman’s

5. Easier to complete than the Boatman, I found, but clever enough to be beyond me here and there. Knew Schiller via Schubert but not that he wrote plays too. And a TV channel called Dave .. really? Took ages remembering key/isle, d’oh, almost a chestnut. Had the same ? as loonapick re theories (thanks madman), and was hung up on Hal for Henry, forgot about the unit (if that’s what’s meant). Didn’t spoil the enjoyment, loved the union member, among others, thanks both.

6. Hard but enjoyable.

   Failed SPIT.

   New: Dave (TV channel); OFF THE PACE; LISLE material.

   Liked EFFACE, HIPPODROME, REVOLT, AGUE, THEORIES, EROTIC, SEE RED.

   I did not parse 26ac COMPILER.

   I parsed 19 as did madman.

   Thanks, both.

7. Defeated by Vlad today. A similar battle to yesterday though the Boatman capitulated and this one did not. A few reveals at the end when I ran out of time. And they were all fair but just not the way I was thinking.

   I loved the cd for SANDCASTLE, OUTHOUSE and HIPPODROME were satisfying to crack and I was chuffed to identify anagram and fodder for CAULDRON and to spot the tricks in THEORIES and COMPILER. COTD is URINAL which was beautifully disguised.

   Thanks Vlad and loonapick

8. Difficulty verging on 9/10 but was so was quality and enjoyment.
   An absolute belter

9. Very hard though took me less time than yesterday’s Boatman. Admittedly that’s not saying much! Ended up failing on my last in 7a. I incorrectly thought a ‘job slate’ might be a personal record of jobs done/to be done, so had the def. as ‘my own work’, with ‘Book’=’Job’ and ‘small creature not all’=’slate(r)’. Maybe an “almost but not quite” but obviously wrong anyway.

   You could take your pick of the good ones here, but I liked the parsing of COMPILER and the surface of the hidden URINAL.

   A big thanks to Vlad and loonapick

10. Vlad won.

11. I think that in 18D the Tories are “the party running the show” – ie the government- with the surface of the clue giving Vlad’s comment about how that show is run. Many thanks to Vlad and Loonapick.

12. I thought SANDCASTLE was more than just a cd; also SAND=strand and CASTLE=building, making it quite easy for a Vlad clue. Favourite was HIPPODROME.
    Like PostMark@7 I revealed a few, which turned out to be quite fair (always annoying to reveal one that makes me think “I should have got that”).
    Thanks Vlad and loonapick.

13. Not for the first time, I’m with copmus @8.

    Like PostMark, I enjoyed the construction of OUTHOUSE and HIPPODROME and also NEVADA and COMPILER.

    COD for me by a mile was THEORIES – so simple, really, that I’m surprised not to have seen it before (or, if I have, I don’t remember) – but what a brilliant surface! I also liked the cowboy contractor and the behaviour in Aldi and smiled at SPRY and SPIT.

    Many thanks to Vlad and to loonapick.

14. Well and truly impaled. Phew.

    Thanks Vlad and loonapick…

15. Well, I’m glad you introduced this as “a toughie”, loonapick – reassuring to know it’s not just me who struggled. Thanks for the blog. And thanks, Vlad, for the challenge.

16. Gosh that was hard! My first ones were all in the north east corner, starting with 9a which gave me 6d then 14a, 4d and 6d and finally 5d. DNF, could not see red or chiller never mind the S! Loved sandcastle and job share. Thank you loonapick and thanks for the practice, Vlad!

17. First two in were URINAL and OUTHOUSE, so briefly wondered whether this might herald an unlikely theme. I too found the NW corner hard to shift, with DEFACE instead of EFFACE not helping matters. The SE corner was fairly unyielding for a while too…

18. Thanks loonapick. ( Is Vlad… a lunar pick? 🙂
    Why is SPRY ‘pretty active for an old guy’? Dictionary definitions do refer to an older person who isn’t spry, but spry is not ageist or sexist..

    COMPILER – a bit twisted! Understatement.

19. Like many others, I found this tough, and I had to keep trying to guess some of the answers before I could work them out, but it was satisfying in the end to complete it. There were some real gems here. THEORIES was my favourite because the clue as a whole read so well in combination with the wordplay. URINAL and SPIT ran it close.
    Thanks to Vlad and loonapick.

20. And just when I thought Vlad had started to mellow…

    Excellent puzzle though, and THEORIES is a strong candidate for my clue of the month. Pleasantly lavatorial in places.

    However DNF I’m afraid – JOB SHARE and ISLE escaped me. As did SPIT – impeccably clued, but I put it down to panic. Like having to deliver a penalty at the end of a difficult match…

    Thanks to loonapick and the estimable Jim T.

21. The NE went in quickly but then tumbleweed. Brilliant puzzle but too tough for me. SANDCASTLE, JOB SHARE and THEORIES were beautiful.

    Ta Vlad & loonapick

22. Afterthought – why is spit an impales going round?

23. A bit surprised that others found this so hard. (It is more often the other way around.) Perhaps a reduction in local GK and slang helped. One exception was the only one I didn’t fully parse, NEVADA. It had to be and anything to do with TV goes over my head so I didn’t even try to parse EVAD. Needed full mental horsepower which made for lots of aha moments and a satisfying completion after a few blah DNFs recently. Big thanks to Vlad and to loonapick.

24. Oh, its a spit on a fire….

25. SinCam@22, meat roasted on a spit is first impaled and then rotates over the flames/heat.

26. Enjoyably defeated by this one. Revealed several, and yes, the only one I didn’t think “Should have seen that” was COMPILER. I liked SANDCASTLE, URINAL, OUTHOUSE, CAULDRON, MARRIED MAN. And my goodness, Vlad does some excellent surfaces too.

27. I found myself OFF THE PACE, then on a SPIT this morning, but there was much to savour.
    Thanks Vlad and loonapick for help with vAGUE and ISLE.

28. Very tough and slow. NW corner held me up the longest. Some great clues. COD was THEORIES. Agree with beaulieu@12 re parsong of SANDCASTLE.
    Thanks to Vlad and loonapick

29. After giving up on yesterday’s Boatman, I found this no less easy. My LOI was THEORIES, which I parsed in the same way as loonapick, and now wonder why I didn’t see it more quickly. EROTIC and its buddy STEAMY took a while too. SANDCASTLE, which eventually opened up the recalcitrant SE corner was a fabulous “penny-drop moment”.

30. Thanks for the blog. Fortunately it is not Vlad the Impala today. The four letter answers slowed me down. Are we missing something with SPRY ? … for an old guy… is not required at all for the clue.
    SEE RED is very neat indeed.

31. Wowsers that was hard! I put off entering EFFACE as Chambers only has EFF as a euphemism for the F bit of FA as in sweet FA
    Hugely satisfying to pick these off one by one with only the definition for JOB SHARE and the loathsome IT/SA feeling a bit sub par

32. I’m with everyone else in finding this tough, but hugely enjoyable and satisfying to do. Got the parsing of theories wrong and wondered what ‘show’ was doing in the clue, though it’s obvious and simple once it’s pointed out. Thanks to Vlad and Loonapick for a super morning

33. [bodycheetah @31: I was so fed-up with that clue at one point that I put EFFOFF in…]

34. [ There was a brilliant Steve Bell cartoon of three panels depicting our liar in chief , ending with EFFOCRACY, I am sure one of our commenters can provide a link ]

35. https://www.belltoons.co.uk/bellworks/index.php/leaders/2021/4587-270121_EFFOCRACY

36. Very tough indeed, it felt more like a Friday than a Wednesday to me or does the difficulty no longer increase each weekday? My first ever Vlad tho so that could explain it.

    Thanks to Vlad and Loonapick

37. My first three in were GAUCHO URINAL TARIFF and with Gaucho being a chain of restaurants that charges you £3 for a thimbleful of mayo for your overpriced steak I hope it doesn’t give them ideas 🙂

38. [ Thank you Bodycheetah @ 35 }

39. This is the first time for ages that I have gone all the way through first time without being able to solve a single clue. Eventually managed all but two.
    Boatman (who I also failed to finish this week) has suggested that a solution should result in an “Aha!” moment rather than a “Grr!” moment. There was too much Grr! for me this time, I fear, though there are some nice ones in there as well.
    Thanks to Vlad for the bits that weren’t Grr! and to loonapick especially for clarifying the bits that were.

40. Depressingly difficult, but I’m rarely on Vlad’s wavelength

41. What do people think of T for Troy in 22d? T isn’t an accepted abbreviation for the word in the way, say, M is for metre. Am I missing something? Or is it now just part of accepted usage in crossword setting to use the first letter of a word like this? “Troy initially admitted” seems better.

42. Dave@41 personally I accept any first letter abbreviation that is in Chambers . Here t for troy is from the weight system for precious metals and jewels.

43. Dave @41 and Roz @42: if you put “oz t” into Google you get plenty of references to it being an abbreviation for troy ounce. And ‘lb t’ is troy pound.

44. Cheers Roz and PostMark.

45. With the crowd on this one – very hard but some very good clues nonetheless. Loved HIPPODROME. Was not sure the grammar was quite right in COMPILER – Loonapick had to insert an extra “someone” to make it work.

46. There is no usage of word=first letter that won’t be justifiable from some obscure abbreviation. Just live with it.

47. Ros@30. I too don’t get why spry should relate to age. “Theories” was my favourite in what was a tough puzzle today – I had to reveal a few. Thank you Vlad, for the challenge, and Loonapick, for the tea-trays.

48. I’ve seen t for Troy before, so that one caused me no problems – one of the few clues today I can say that about.

    For those not familiar with the DAVE TV channel, it’s where you will most commonly see the work of Guardian cryptic newbie Fed. In fact, he’s such a regular there, you could be forgiven for thinking the channel was named after him.

    Re 24ac, the phrase “Pretty spry for an old guy” has some currency (googling the phrase gets over 10 million hits, which is probably enough to absolve it from accusations of obscurity). If you’re aware of the phrase, it’s actually a bit of a giveaway.

49. [ Mr PostMark @43 I think Chambers is quite sufficient here, you can now imagine one of those yellow face things with me folding my arms and frowning and sighing deeply. ]

50. Thanks Vlad and loonapick
    Took three sessions, and even then a DNF, with SPIT unsolved. Several more I needed loonapick’s parsing for. Favourite JOB SHARE.
    I have heard that the TV channel is named after the character Dave Lister from Red Dwarf.

51. Roz @49: come to think of it, yes that is the picture I have in mind. And not just right now 😀

    Would that there were a single definitive source for all things cruciverbal and Chambers has long been acknowledged to be one of the best. But, if quoting prices by the oz t or the t oz is good enough for The London Metals Exchange, Bloomberg, Reuters etc, it’s good enough for me. Specialist, yes, but no more so than plenty of other spheres into which this pastime takes us. And many of them have their arcane terminology and abbreviations too.

52. [ MrPostMark @51 that particular yellow face is mainly for people at work trying to explain IT matters for me but I also use it for people who send me links or mention google.
    I agree entirely that specialist terminology is fine, t = troy for jewellers would seem as normal as m = metres. In this case if I did not explain clearly the first time, t = troy is in Chambers so I was quite satisfied.
    On another issue, I do think you were very gracious and did try your best but to no avail in a recent General Discussion. ]

53. Dr WhatSon @45 COMPILER works perfectly for me: you just have to understand ‘someone’ in both parts.

54. Superb puzzle. A joy to work through and complete. Tough, but not as tough as other recent Vlads.

    I ground to a halt a bit in the SE corner and struggled on the 4 letter ones. I agree with others about the unnecessary “for an old guy” in 24a – started me thinking about archaic terms for rope!

    Some magnificent clueing though and far too many to list but high raise in particular for SALOON, OUTHOUSE, TARIFF, EFFACE, GAUCHO and (COTD) THEORIES.

    Thanks to loonapick for parsing CHALET.

    Huge thanks to Vlad for the working over!

55. I didn’t hesitate over T for troy, but it did quite tickle me that a monosyllabic word of 4 letters needed to be abbreviated. Avoirdupois on the other hand….

56. I agree – tough fair and enjoyable. Thanks to Dave for the question and Roz and Postmark for the answer to t=troy – the capitalisation cooled me. Loi was JOB SHARE – I’d forgotten about the bible book until I got to J in the alphabet trawl. And 18d is a gem. Many thanks to Vlad and loonapick – and there’s a
    Klingsor in the I to come.

57. Fooled – I wonder why autocorrect doesn’t like it?

58. Times Refugee @55, Watt , Volt are four and Ohm is only three letters. All have one letter standard symbols. Virtually all units of measurement have a one or two letter abbreviation, very useful for meters, results tables , graphs etc.

59. Eileen@53 that’s entirely fair, unless you like your definitions and wordplay to be distinct! Still haven’t decided if the way it is is sloppy or clever.

60. DrWhatsOn @59: I’m firmly with Eileen on this one. ‘Who’ serves as an anaphora for the ‘someone’, which therefore doesn’t need to be repeated.

61. I’m being enormously stupid but could someone possible expand upon 2d please?

62. Gervase @60 or it could be a CAD/&LIT – I can imagine Vlad as a bit of a deviant conformist 🙂

63. 2D a KEY is an ISLE , the Florida Keys are the most famous, took me ages to think of this.
    LISLE is a material, originally redacted means remove the first letter.

64. Thanks v much – thought the (I)ISLE was another ‘i’ and was going a bit mad…

65. Ah – I read 10 as PLAGUE minus PL for playing, —

66. Very welcome, you are right , the l on the blog looks like a capital I . I wish these keyboards would use the old-fashioned capital i .

67. M1 @ 60
    The Florida Keys are a chain of islands/ isles, so key=isle. Lisle is a type of material, blanking out (redacting) the first letter(originally) gives isle. Hope this explains 2d.

68. Many thanks to loonapick for the blog and to others for their comments.

69. V is for VERSUS and no way for PLAYING, is it really acceptable to have abbreviations for synonyms? ST for ROCK, LB for HIT, OZ for CAT ….. where does it all end? Never heard the expression OFF THE PACE and as for the twisted COMPILER, well yes. This puzzle was way too hard for me to solve on paper, so I ditched that and went for the guess and check technique on the App while employing all possible cheats bar REVEAL to finally stagger to the solution with 5 unparsed.
    Yesterday I gave up on Boatman completely and I’ve never failed on a Boatman before. Maybe I should just ditch my paper subscription and as a recent Guardian correspondent suggested, just press REVEAL ALL on the App and spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what the connection is.
    Thanks to Vlad, who has done some really good paper crosswords in the past, and to Loonapick for the disentangling.

70. Not the easiest of Vlad’s crosswords but once again one making clear why he is my No 1 Guardian setter by a distance (sorry, James).
    I finished this without ‘cheating’ but unlike our blogger not within the hour.
    The only thing I still cannot see is ‘qualified’ as an anagram indicator (in 11ac).
    Looking at the all the comments above, I conclude that it’s not a problem for anyone else.
    Perhaps, someone can explain?
    Many thanks to loonapick & Vlad.

71. Sil @70: OED has ‘Modified in some respect’ as a major heading for ‘qualified’, then ‘modified, limited, moderated’ as a minor heading. Certainly new to me.
    Caroline @69 I think v. for playing is tough but fair, considering how often it is seen in the order of play at e.g. Wimbledon.
    Does anyone use ‘spry’ to refer to the under-50s? Seemed a helpful nudge in the clue.
    A challenging puzzle, thanks Vlad and loonapick.

72. Yes, indeed, modified as in ‘lessened’ or more ‘limited’, I understand that.
    But is that enough for being an anagram indicator?
    Still not convinced.

73. I was surprised by the number of people objecting to the definition of SPRY, which I have always seen used in just that way: active but elderly.

74. Gave up on this with most of the SW corner unsolved, and quite a few unparsed.

    To me, “it” = “sex appeal” = “SA” is really stretching the point, and I doubt you’d find that usage anywhere outside a cryptic crossword puzzle. Here, “SA” means a state specialising in churches, serial killers and terrible beer.

75. I was sure I had 2 down as (s)TONE, which strikes me as a perfectly reasonable answer to the clue, crossers notwithstanding. Hadn’t heard of lisle.

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