Guardian 28,576 / Vlad

107 comments on “Guardian 28,576 / Vlad”

1. 17a ref: Battle of CULLODEN

2. Aargh! – I’ve been there!
   Many thanks, Kurukveera.

3. Thanks Vlad and Eileen
   CULL is half of CULLODEN, battle in the 18th century.

4. 27 a:

   I was thinking this way:

   Triple def.

   SLAM+D+UNKS (unknowns-lost)

   About 6 not 9 (certain that it is 6, not 9 or not taking 6 for 9!)

   Does it work?

5. Re 17a Cull is half the battle of Culloden

6. Yes, a really tough Vlad but most enjoyable and rewarding. Lots of tricky clueing. I particularly LIKED USER, HADDOCK and SHOT PUT together with Eileen’s favourite, OLD BOY NETWORK. Many thanks to Vlad and Eileen.

7. A lot of checks and electronic help needed, and still several not parsed, Favourite RECKLESS.
   Isn’t there a clash between comparitive and superlative in 8d?

8. Oh!
   UNK-unknown-lost
   Six-ix =S

   That’s ok, I guess.

9. Re SLAM DUNK: I think it’s SUNK (lost) about (around) LAM and D, followed by S (SIX less IX).

10. Got Culloden. I had LAM + D in SUNK + S(ix).

11. I’m old enough to remember Angelo Dundee, but he must be one of the most obscure person references for some time!

12. drofle @ 9!

    I think that works better.

13. I’ll settle for drofle’s take @9 – I was nearly there!

14. Thanks Eileen for a great blog-there was me thinking BSE for IBSEN no wonder parsing failed
    I carelessly wrote POWPOWS _I think I was drunch punk by then
    Thanks again for parsing of RUDEST
    This was JT at his most devious-what looks like a CD actually has a structure, hidden anagram or whatever and unlike his Tyrus puzzles, little in the way of an anti Boris message in the perimeter
    So glad I had nothing better to do this morning
    Thanks all

15. I have to go now, until mid-afternoon. Thank goodness it was all settled in time!

16. LAM (hit) +D, SUNK (lost about) +S (six not nine)

17. I used the same logic for SLAM DUNKS as drofle @9. Didn’t twig the SHOUT in 5D in spite of the big boss buying us a round last Friday in my first visit to a pub since COVID started. A refaire!
    And I had an alternative parsing for LET DOWN: oLd and nEw sporTsmen (at the centre) and DOWN = SORRY. I *think* it works, but I hesitated for ages before pencilling it in as it seemed to make 12A impossible.

18. Vlad always produces some intricate constructions and brilliant surfaces. As usual with this setter there were several enter-first parse-later examples, and I failed to spot the Culloden reference. TELETHON was my LOI – I don’t expect CDs from Vlad. More envelopes here than I receive on my birthday 🙁 !

    A lot of smiles, but the standout for me, as for Eileen, was OBN.

    Many thanks to Jim and Eileen.

19. A tough challenge indeed. I thought OLD BOY NETWORK was brilliant – and it’s surely a CAD (clue as definition) as Pierre would call it, or to use other terminology, a semi &lit.

    I couldn’t parse SLAM DUNKS – way too convoluted for me.

    Thanks Vlad and Eileen.

20. PS SLAM DUNK was another parse failure for me – thanks to drofle and Tim C.

21. Gervase @20. Now I feel snubbed 🙂

22. I parsed SLAM DUNKS like Hovis (hope your feeling buns-ed now 😉 ), and LET DOWN like blaise @17. I prefer Eileen’s parsing for the latter though.

    This went more smoothly for me than seems to have been the case for others here. (And a lot better than yesterday – I’m still stuck on the Boatman!)

    Like everyone else, I thought OLD BOY NETWORK was terrific. Anyone else wonder why they couldn’t force TROGLODYTE into 11ac?

    Thanks Vlad and Eileen.

23. Goodness me – you’re

24. Phew, that was a tough workout! Loved TROLLEYED, OBN, BH&C, TUNDRA and RECKLESS. Alas, I had to reveal LASSI and TANGELO (kicking myself on the latter) to get TELETHON, my LOI like Gervase @18. Thanks all for parsing RUDEST, HTB and SLAM DUNKS.

    Ta Vlad and well done Eileen for sorting it all out in the end.

25. Those who’ve seen an ECHIDNA (19dn) will recognise 19dn as &lit.
    And a darned good one too!

26. Great puzzle and thanks for the parsing – I still don’t see why RUDEST equals ROUGH though.

27. That was so hard … but brilliant. Thanks Vlad and Eileen

28. essexboy @ 22. I also prefer Eileen’s parsing (DOWN for SORRY is pretty dubious, which is why I hesitated…) But I found it interesting that there were two ways of getting to the same result.

29. [Eileen, I’ve just read your link to William McGonagall, ‘The World’s Worst poet’ – hilarious]

30. Trovatore @25: yes indeed, we’ll-spotted.

31. Me @26 – is anyone going to tell me why RUDEST = ROUGH?

32. essexboy @22. Thanks for the snub reversal.

33. SinCam @31
    I’m not happy about the “est” (superlative) ending, but it refers to “a rude hovel” being a rough dwelling.

34. SinCam. RUDEST = EXTREMELY ROUGH, not ROUGH. RUDE = ROUGH, see Chambers for example. I tend to think the -est ending gives “most rough” rather than “extremely rough” but I’ve been corrected on this in the past.

35. Is Princess Diana needed to parse 1 across? It seems to refer to ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd’, with ‘lasting’ pointing to ‘eternal triangles’.

36. Tough puzzle. Solved NW corner last. Guessed a lot of answers without parsing them: 8d, 27ac, 19d, 5d, 16d (got this wrong, I guessed FECKLESS), 17ac, 12ac – never heard of ANGELO (Dundee) boxing trainer.

    I liked: USER.

    New for me: TROLLEYED = drunk (11ac); IBS/irritable bowel syndrome for 2d.

    Thanks, both.

37. Failed completely today! Still learning so it’s all a good lesson. Needed to come here to have the remotest clue on how to parse some of the answers. No idea who Angelo Dundee was nor what a pomelo is, and 1d went over my head – when was the last time someone used the word ‘set’ to refer to a TV? I also didn’t know TISANE existed in English, and only got it because they use tisana all the time in Italian. Anyway, one day I’ll be at the level all of you are at… maybe…

    Enjoyed some of the clues once they clicked, particularly 14ac. Thanks Vlad and Eileen!

38. *what a tangelo is, I meant

39. LoveableJim @37
    Sounds like you are making good progress, I’ve been doing crosswords for 5 years and I could not get one answer!

40. SinCam (+muffin + Hovis) I feel it is my duty to provide a literary example: this from Wordsworth’s poem, ‘Hart-Leap Well’ –

    “Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter rear’d,
    And built a house of pleasure in the dell.”

    I chose this one because, while ‘RUDE’ in this sense is certainly most commonly applied to a mean dwelling of some kind (hut, hovel, cottage), here the ‘dwelling’ itself is not (it is described a few lines later as a ‘pleasant bower’), but the pillars of stone are ‘rough’ in the sense, I take it, of being ‘undressed’.

41. Hovis @21: Bravo. Sorry for the oversight.

42. I struggled through this one. Some of the references were a massive stretch: Culloden (which I completely failed to see), Angelo Dundee (which I inferred post hoc), IBS=’distressing condition’. I really think OPINE=intimate is rather iffy, since to ‘opine’ is to declare one’s views openly while to ‘intimate’ is to convey one’s views indirectly.
    I did like blaise@17 and thought that that clue was very ingenious: Eileen’s parse seems a bit of LET DOWN!
    Congratulations to our blogger today.

43. It was all going smoothly & then SLAM hit the buffers, parsing failure.
    Liked RECKLESS, DEHYDRATE (tidy surface) & OBN. I too began writing ‘trog…’ for cave-dweller.
    Thanks Vlad for the workout, and Eileen for elucidation.

44. Too tough for me, although I ‘solved’ it with a lot of help from my computer.

    I also couldn’t parse a number, which is rare for me. I also thought OLD BOY NETWORK was the stand-out. I thought Boatman’s puzzle yesterday was quite straightforward in comparison to this one. Perhaps one day I’ll get through a Vlad without being impaled.

    Thanks Vlad for messing with my brain and to Eileen for explaining most of the answers.

45. Once again Vlad provides the toughest and most satisfying puzzle of the week. And, as usual, I’m Paler after struggling with it. Many thanks to Vlad and Eileen.

46. I was also bamboozled by ‘Cull’, thinking it must be something to do with HALF as ‘halve’…

47. muffin & SinCam passim: Setters always have a problem clueing a superlative without having to use one in the wordplay. I think Vlad gets away with this if we interpret ‘extremely’ as ‘at the extreme’ – which would qualify for -est.

48. I found this too tough and gave up, so I am disqualified from making any further comment today.

49. Gervase @47
    I suppose so…

50. As ever, Vlad’s convoluted parsings were beyond me, although I was pleased to fathom Culloden. Having never heard of Angelo Dundee or a pomelo, let alone TANGELO, 12a was a problem. ASS does not mean behind round here.
    Thanks to Eileen and other contributors for the clarifications.

51. Very tough today, and the fact that I always imagined SHOT PUT had an extra T like a golf stroke on the end meant it was a DNF today. Didn’t know LASSI either. Struggled to parse IBSEN, LET DOWNS, RECKLESS (wasn’t sure whether it should be Feckless), and DRAGOONED. Did like OLD BOY NETWORK very much, though. Time for a well earned cup of tea…

52. muffin @49: Perhaps the problem is that we use the word ‘extremely’ as a hyperbolic intensifier (like ‘terribly’ and ‘awfully’) whereas its literal meaning is ‘utmost’.

53. Gervase @52
    Wouldn’t “utmost” be “extreme” rather than “extremely”?

54. I usually give up if I haven’t finished in around 20 minutes, but I persevered with this, largely because I got off to a very slow start, with only 5 answers on my first pass through the clues. It was well worth the effort – a properly cryptic challenge.

    Thanks to drofle@9 for SLAM DUNKS which was the only one I couldn’t parse after eventually getting home. My sympathies to Eileen – I wouldn’t have wanted to blog this beast !

55. muffin – if ‘trip, extremely’ can mean ‘take the letters T and P’, then ‘extremely rough’ = ‘at the extremity of the roughness spectrum’ = ‘roughest’ seems like less of a stretch?

56. You’ve convinced me, essexboy

57. Perhaps it is obvious, but nobody has mentioned that 2D IBSEN has an extended definition, with reference to Ghosts. I think this makes it on a level with 14A OLD BOY NETWORK as the pick among many excellent clues.

58. I enjoy the challenge of The Impaler even though he is a bit above my paygrade. Today I did better than usual although I had no idea about the parsing of SLAM DUNKS until I came here. TROLLIED was my last in because I do not associate a troll with a cave dweller. I own a cave house here in southern Spain and troglodyte (or perhaps trog) is the usual phrase used. My favourite was HALF THE BATTLE which I did parse! Anyway this was generally great fun, so many thanks Vlad and Eileen for the blog which must have been hard work.

59. muffin @53: You’re right – extremely = at the utmost. But it seems that essexboy @55 has done a better job at convincing you 🙂

60. essexboy @22 yes I did!! Do trolls live in caves? I thought they lived in semi’s with lots of computer equipment!

61. [Am I the only one getting error message 1016 when trying to refresh or post lately. For me it started about a week ago and is, regrettably, getting more regular. Anyone have a solution?]

62. [SPanza @60 – Do trolls live in caves? Is the Pope Catholic?
    Seriously though, the definitive authority is Trollpedia. Under ‘Habitat’, it states “The locations depend on what types of Trolls live there. Troll Forest is inhabited by the Pop Trolls who reside in Pop Village, Volcano Rock City by the Rock Trolls, Lonesome Flats by the Country Trolls, Symphonyville by the Classical Trolls, Vibe City by the Funk Trolls, and Techno Reef by the Techno Trolls”. So there we have it.]

    [SPanza @61 – trolls at work!]

63. SPanza @61: Same here. My only solution is to try, try and try again…

64. A series of fairly conference calls this morning which I didn’t need to contribute to, and a top quality Vlad. What a perfect combination! Did not parse HALF THE BATTLE or DRAGOONED, the latter because Dragonfly came into my head early on and then I could not mentally shift DRAGON as the flier part of the clue. But with 5 crossers it couldn’t be anything else.

    Thanks Vlad, that was good at the utmost 🙂

65. A series of fairly dull conference calls. My boss doesn’t read this does he?

66. Extremely testing so needed sheer bloody mindedness to finish. Agree with Eileen re surface of OLD BOYS NETWORK and many more on the grid.
    Thanks to Vlad and Eileen. [Off for a soothing Cuppa]

67. SPanza and Gervase
    I haven’t encountered this problem, but a cure for some site problems I’ve had in the past is to delete the site cookie (or, if you can’t idenify it, all cookies), then check “remember me” next time you use the site.

68. [Thanks Gervase that is what I do as well. Muffin thanks. I remember your solution worked once before when we had a problem. I will give it a go!]

    [essexboy@62 I had of course heard of Trolls but I had no idea of their history or habitat. Nowadays I just think of trolls as idiots who send nasty messages via the internet. Many thanks for educating me!]

69. essexboy @62 this is really not my subject, but I think you will find that the Pope is not Catholic, but Coptic. Francis is Bishop of Rome!

70. A late question and apologies if I’ve missed the answer to this above. I’m sure it’s just me being dim. I saw the ‘Cull’ = HALF THE BATTLE of “Culloden” at 17a, but still don’t get the ‘a big step forward’ bit.

    Excellent puzzle with the degree of difficulty expected from Vlad. Couldn’t parse SLAM DUNK and I doubt I ever would have seen how it worked. Especially liked POWWOWS and the unexpected ANGELO for ‘Dundee?’

    Thanks to Eileen and Vlad

71. WP @70
    “Have you made any progress?”
    “Well, we’ve made a big step forward”
    “That’s half the battle, then”

72. WordPlodder: just to add to what muffin said – I think the context is usually something like “Starting well is half the battle” – meaning that starting well is a big step towards completion.

73. It’s strange how the memory works (or doesn’t). Somehow I conflated Angelo Dundee with Angela Brazil to come up with a writer of schoolgirl stories called Angela Dundee rather than Ali’s trainer.
    This crossword took me back to the days when I would stare at a cryptic crossword in bemusement, a kind of anti-nostalgia. Thanks to all here who have helped me understand this one and get to a point where I don’t usually need so much help to complete.

74. Thanks for the blog , I think everything has been said. Good to see ORION which will dominate the night sky shortly , I will postpone my lecture until Saturday.
    ( The highlight this week is Jupiter and Saturn )

75. That was a bit of a challenge, especially on the parsing front. Thanks to Eileen and others for help.

    I didn’t see shout=round, Culloden or how SLAM DUNKS worked although the answers went in anyway.

    Is it an OLD BOY NETWORK or an Old Boys’ Network? Still a brilliant clue either way!

    My favourite was SKYROCKET

    Thanks to Vlad for a tough but totally fair challenge

76. 12 across: Tangerines is also the nickname of Dundee United football team.

77. Ark Lark @75; the ODE gives: old boy network (also old boys’ network).

78. Well, I’m home, to the expected inundation of comments since I had to go out. I wished when I started the blog this morning that this had been a Saturday puzzle (it was certainly worthy), so that I would have had time to ponder CULLoden a bit longer and to do a bit more research on some of the other clues. I didn’t even think of looking for a theme or Nina, as Vlad often gives us, but, mercifully, there doesn’t seem to have been either (was there?).

    ‘In no particular order’:

    Re troll = cave-dweller: I, too, wanted it to be TROG.., but [t turned out to have to be TROLL, so I googled ‘troll, cave-dweller’, which threw up a number of Tolkien references, such as this one. I’m not one of the number of Tolkien fans / experts here, so i took it at face value and expected someone else to explain it, if there was a problem.

    Re extremely rude: as Hovis says, this comes up regularly and I’ve never been able to see the problem, which is why I didn’t comment, hoping to avoid another repeat of the discussion. For ‘extreme’, Chambers gives ‘last’, highest in degree, greatest’, so extremely rude is surely rudest? For what it’s worth, the equivalent in Latin for the English ‘…est ending is ‘…issimus/a/um’ – which is translated, according to context, as either the superlative or ‘very’. I’m not sure whether the same applies to the Italian ‘…issimo/a’ – perhaps Gervase will enlighten us.

    It seems there was also a query about the word ‘rude’. To Spooner’s catflap’s literary suggestion @40, I’ll add a couple of lines from the Christmas hymn,
    “As they offered gifts most rare
    at thy stable, rude and bare …”.

    John @35 – I didn’t mean that Princess Diana’s comment was essential to the clue (I take your point re eternal / lasting) but the surface immediately suggested it to me.

    Ark Lark @75 – I’ve found both: I’d say ‘Old Boys’ network’.

    krosska @ 76 – many thanks for that additional nugget: so much to be ferreted out of that one clue!

    I’m going to stop here for the moment, because every time I ‘refresh’, prior to posting, there’s at least one more comment. I need to learn to type more quickly!

79. It seems the Trolls have invaded my comment – I don’t know what I did there! So sorry.

80. Spanza@60 Showing my age here – or rather my childhood: i had always thought that a troll (fol-de-roll) lived under a bridge and was there specifically to make life difficult for three gruff billy goats.
    ( And don’t get me started on runaway trains or laughing policemen!)

81. A curate’s egg for me. Some very convoluted answers (job=work and then anagrammed), the Slam Dunks devices, half of Culloden, fan rather than out being the anagrid, Angelo Dundee/Tangelo etc. Went the troglodyte route, thankfully it didn’t fit. Someone on the Graun mentioned a theme, but other than a sprinkling of drinks in the clues and answers I can’t see anything too obvious. Biffed my way to the end with copious guesswork and checking. There were some good ones too I hasten to add.

    Thanks Eileen and Vlad.

82. Hi Gert Bycee @80

    That’s my kind of troll, too! I have fond memories of my husband (as the troll, under the bridge) and small grandchildren, as the three billy goats gruff, singing and acting out the song.
    “I’m a troll, Fol-de roll x 3
    And I’ll eat you for supper”
    at a perfect bridge, that you can walk under, at Foxton Locks near here.
    I still can’t find this classic song on YouTube (I’ve tried before, in response to a comment here) but you seem to know the one I mean!

83. I’m so late I expect everyone’s gone but I’ve finally had to admit defeat and come here after all day wrestling with this! Very nearly finished it but was finally impaled. Really enjoyed it though. Wish we had more like this. Many thanks to Vlad but I really wanted to say a huge hats off to Eileen. Gosh, I would have quailed in your shoes! (Too many items of clothing there methinks.)

84. [Eileen @82: this isn’t the original, but it’s quite funny]

85. Hi trishincharente @83 – good to hear from you. It’s never really too late: we bloggers continue to receive emails of comments on our blog.

    It’s been really good to see how many commenters have, like me, admitted defeat to some extent or other but have still really enjoyed the experience – the sign of a good puzzle, I reckon.

    Many thanks, essexboy. I did see this one on my google travels – quite funny, as you say, in its own way. 😉

86. [Eileen @78: The problem you experienced is caused by the link being extended over the next bit of typing. The way to avoid it is to type a space (or a piece of punctuation, or even another word) after the bit you want to highlight. Then highlight up to but not including the space (or etc) and insert the link. Then, when you start typing again make sure you start after the space etc.

    The alternative, almost as good, is to carry on typing and try to remember to go back and insert the link at the correct location. If you’re anything like me, this mostly results in forgetting to insert the link until after you’ve pressed Post Comment. 🙂 ]

87. Thanks Eileen @78 for the re-assurance about the Old Boys’Network. And thanks again for the blog – it was very much needed today. Great puzzle and a lot more head scratching than usual, but that’s fine by me

88. A tough one and a DNF for me.
    I parsed 4d as LET being the middle of OLD & of NEW and of SPORTSMEN, with DOWN equating to SORRY (as in a sorry state).
    Not correct, I see now, but at least it led to the right answer
    Many thanks Eileen & Vlad

89. Bit late in the day, but I wanted to add my applause for a great and tough puzzle. It’s nice to have a slow burner like this once in a while. I loved the &littish ECHIDNA, OLD BOY NETWORK and IBSEN (thanks for the additional info, PeterO). Lots of other parsing gems too.
    One other point: PITCHES (in the sense of sales talks) works in isolation for 13 quite well. Fotunately, I had crossers to help sort it.
    PS I love TANGELOs (TMI??)
    Thanks, Eileen and Vlad. @Eileen, I was defeated at CULLODEN too 🙁 .

90. This took me a while. Some superb clues, I liked powwows, tundra and dehydrate – these are examples with good surfaces.

    I am less enamoured with anything requiring gk, though I realise others don’t mind. I’d never heard of Angelo Dundee so that clue was totally wasted on me – and on how many others I wonder? I don’t know my battles either. Seems I’m not alone. I’m a purist. Gk belongs in gk puzzles. Or, put it in the clues rather than the answers.

91. Very tough indeed. It felt like my brain was made out of concrete – what happened to all the flexibility?

    I had a putative TRIPOS for 8d: “(Sport I) abandoned”, as I imagine that solving one of Vlad’s incredibly tricky crosswords is about as rough as it gets except for that. But after an hour I had five solutions, and only seven when I decided to go down the pub.

    The first pint produced five more, but 12 out of 28 is still pretty poor. Luckily the beer was very good and the second pint resulted in most of the rest being written in, and the first swallow of the third pint helped me to finally fill the grid. I missed the parsing on the same ones as our esteemed blogger: CULLoden and the impenetrable SLAM DUNKS. I refuse to count that as a DNF. (Hey! I filled the grid, and at least I got as far as ‘six, not nine’=S!) Is it possible that Vlad didn’t realise that SLAM as well as LAM means ‘hit’? Because in a clue as convoluted as that he certainly didn’t need any extra misdirection.

    Thanks to Vlad for the agony, and Eileen for sharing it with us.

92. Oh, and I tried in vain to get DRAGON to be the flier, and gave up. Any one else do that?

93. Far too tough for me I’m afraid. Managed a dozen & then hit the brick wall. Very tough indeed although having read the review reckon I could probably have got a few more with a bit of perseverance. I’d have been really chuffed if I’d managed anything near HALF THE BATTLE instead of fleeing after the opening skirmishes
    Thanks all.

94. I have some sympathy for Dutch @90 about the GK required to get from ‘Dundee’ to ANGELO, but it was one of the first things I thought of, though I didn’t give it serious consideration until the O from LET DOWN appeared. The fruit in the answer is a real obscurity, or so I thought until I searched on this site and found it in a Crucible back in May. At least Crucible’s clue was helpful: ‘Cross to put outside old Islington pub’ – ok, maybe not so helpful for non-UK solvers.

    And Dutch, if you’re still there, DRAGON was so obviously the ‘flier’ that I didn’t even check the parsing. 🙂

95. Days like this are when 15^2 is so vital. Thank you Eileen for great explanations of (almost) everything and to other posters for final details. I managed about half of this and wished it had been a Saturday puzzle with a bit more time. Thank you Vlad.

96. It’s good to see there is a market for puzzles this hard.
    Thanks Eileen for the parsing of SHOT-PUT.
    Angelo Dundee who? Thanks Vlad.

97. Bless you, Sheffield hatter @86, for your explanation, which, of course, I need my grandson to explain to me! I’m not sure whether your guidance means that I’m able to amend today’s comment but I’m too tired to try it tonight, on my own. I’ll try to bear it in mind for the future, though – it’s happened to me before. I just hope people could make out my garbled post …

    …. and @91
    “Is it possible that Vlad didn’t realise that SLAM as well as LAM means ‘hit’? Because in a clue as convoluted as that he certainly didn’t need any extra misdirection.”
    That, of course, is where I went astray in my morning haste: I know so well that lam = hit in crosswords but SLAM seemed so obvious and I didn’t give it another thought …

    “… and at least I got as far as ‘six, not nine’=S!)” SNAP!

98. I also meant to say another big thank you to anyone else who may still be around, for all the help, sympathy and extremely (!) good-natured comments on what was a cracker of a puzzle.

99. sh @94
    ditto on dragon! I usually only check the ones I’ve noted that I hadn’t parsed, so I missed that I hadn’t parsed that one.

100. Thanks to Eileen for a great blog and to others who commented.

101. Lord Jim @72 – As Mary Poppins puts it: ‘Well begun is half done.’

     I know I’m late to the party but thanks Vlad and Eileen, this was a tough but thoroughly worthwhile and rewarding mental workout.

102. Hi widdersbel, if you’re still there

     It’s never really too late, because bloggers receive emails of comments on their blog.

     But I find it very spooky that you were posting your comment at the very time I was responding to yours on today’s Picaroon!

103. I’m afraid there is too much for me to read here, but I expect it’s not too controversial to say that three of the clues were rather obscure, or perhaps a bit too contrived, although SLAMDUNKS was the only one I actually failed to parse. Apart from that, I enjoyed this crossword very much and appreciated the ingenuity in evidence in so many of the clues. OLD BOY NETWORK has to be my favourite.
     Thanks to Vlad and Eileen.

104. Hello Eileen! Yes, I try to be mindful of the fact that bloggers (and poor Gaufrid) are notified of all comments – sometimes helps remind me to think twice before posting lots of off topic stuff! Thanks for your reply on Picaroon too.

105. Rather disappointed that PATTERS – my initial entry for 13a – was wrong. Using mousers and ratters used in the same crossword would have been very pleasing.

106. Excellent value for money (OK, it’s free) in as much as it kept me occupied over three days, after three comparatively easy ones. I had been getting a bit complacent about Vlad but this was a call to order. Culloden a clue of sheer brilliance that I just couldn’t parse. I loved ‘ard nut/tundra though spent some time pondering Phil Mitchell, as no doubt, I was meant to. On to a more restful weekend with Picaroon. I hope.

107. Very good with a few parsings eluding me. Culloden being one. And I couldn’t see the dog in POWWOWS!! Hopeless!
     Thanks both.

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