Guardian Cryptic 28,621 by Vulcan

64 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,621 by Vulcan”

1. I liked this a lot with ticks for RECTORY, GOBSMACKED and INANITY, DEACON and adjacent THE BLUES brought Steely Dan and this earworm to mind. https://youtu.be/5SD4lI9GKUE.

   Ta Vulcan & manehi

2. Thanks Vulcan and manehi. Some lovely clues here – I particularly liked NICETIES. I didn’t fully appreciate 26a, so thanks for the parsing – I guessed ‘The Blues’ was a nickname for the RN, which sounds plausible, but I like your reading much better.

   AlanC @1 – 22d gave me a different ear worm – https://youtu.be/aRHqs8SffDo

3. Yes, I enjoyed this, too. Clean and tidy clueing but not too easy. I wasn’t entirely convinced about ‘eying’, but maybe it’s OK. I liked the ecclesiastical play in the ‘dean’ + DEACON, and the two blues of royal and navy.
   Lovely!

4. Enjoyable – neither too hard nor too easy.

   Solved NW corner last.

   Favourites: DIVINE, DEACON, INANITY, NICETIES, GATE.

   New for me: GILL = a unit of liquid measure.

   Thanks, both.

5. A DNF for me on several counts. Firstly, a careless NECKTIES at 18d (I just shrugged my unease away), then an inability to get the crossing RECTORY and BRUNETTE. The former strikes me as bizarre (REC = field????), and the latter very weak. Surely all shades of hair are colours – why pick out brunettes? And why are brunettes only women? Could be sour grapes on my part, though. Thanks, manehi, for trying to justify these, and Vulcan.

6. Brunettes are only women because the ‘-ette’ is the feminine inflexion of this French word. Like ‘blonde’.

7. Er…. would a man be a ‘brun’ or a ‘brunet’?

8. 15a is obviously LEASHED – lea = field, shed = house, leashed = tied. Apart from the “right”.
   Oh well 🙂

9. Thanks Vulcan and manehi
   No problems.
   TassieTim @5
   REC is a commonly used abbreviation for “recreation ground” or “recreation field” in England. There’s a rec not half a mile from where I’m sitting!

10. pserve_p2 @7. Exactly. I have heard men described as brunette, but never brun or brunet. And the blond/blonde distinction has all but disappeared (thankfully).
    muffin @9 – thanks for the enlightenment.

11. Thanks both.

    Applause for this puzzle which had a mix of the straightforward (those involving anagrams mainly) and the nicely complex : INANITY, NICETIES and THE BLUES (this last getting the COD gong now that I see manehi’s parsing). RAPT (loi) took far too long and involved a worried alpha-trawl before the final (possibly audible) mental click. Enjoyable to see so many coherent surfaces serving to illuminate the setter’s skill in conjuring a puzzle at just the right level of difficulty for a “Monday” offering.

12. Like Tim @5 my last two were BRUNETTE and RECTORY.

    1d needed a bit more info, I think. And 15a – does TORY really mean right??

    Otherwise, all good stuff.

13. Like Tassie Tim@5 I carelessly bunged in NECKTIES vaguely thinking what a poor clue it was. I should know better by now; and I didn’t appreciate how clever 26a is until I came here.
    So thanks for the enlightenment, manehi, and for the puzzle, Vulcan.

14. After RAPT, DIVINE, ego-TRIP and gobSMACKed, almost forging a theme, I was in a bit of a trance, stoked even. And then Steely Dan!
    Very enjoyable, thanks Vulcan & manehi

15. Not sure why we need “used to” in 18d.

16. Good, enjoyable start to the week.

    John Wells @15; perhaps it’s shorthand for (are) used to. I particularly enjoyed SHORT CUT, GOBSMACKED and NICETIES.

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

17. Shirl @8 Leashed is exactly what I had too. Took me ages to accept it was wrong…
    Apart from 1d, I enjoyed this – just the right level for me.

18. Slow going towards the end after an enjoyable start. I thought BRUNETTE was weak, but mostly my slowness was down to me. Overall a good puzzle, with some subtleties (they are the nicer sort, on the whole) which completely passed me by till I read this blog.

19. Another held up by the BRUNETTE and the RECTORY. We never seem to define a man solely by the colour of his hair, which makes it hard to think of a male version. John Wells @15 Nobody wears nice ties any more, it seems.

20. Same favourites, but a different earworm (love that sax…)

21. Monkey @18 are SUBTLE TIES an alternative to NICE TIES? Something to wear with a drab shirt perhaps

    Not sure I buy the REC = “recreation field” defence – can’t see much support in Chambers – and it’s not often we get to say that 🙂

    BRUNETTE was almost my LOI as I was nursing a forlorn hope that it might be something else but alas

    I enjoyed the simplicity of DIVINE and the surface

22. Blaise your ear worm was THE BEST! Thank you for sharing. Wonderful.
    Oh and a good Monday puzzle, and some nice parsing. Failed to spot rectory. Not sure right is always a Tory but a Tory is always right!

23. Re REC – I don’t know what the dictionaries say but the scrappy piece of ground near the swings has always been the “rec” to me (most of my life spent in Greater London).

24. I really liked this, but had one problem and one anti-problem.

    I looked up “tied house” and only saw definitions concerning pubs and breweries, so I’m a bit confused how the rector gets into the act. I’m sure someone can explain.

    The “anti-problem” is an extra interpretation of an answer, namely GATE. “finally suggesting” = G, and Ate in Greek mythology was the goddess of, well, skulduggery.

25. Dr. WhatsOn @24
    The expression “tied cottage” is more common – cottages for farm labourers that they could occupy only when working for the farmer. A RECTORY carries the same association between occupation and job, but is generally much larger, hence “tied house”!

26. Thanks both,

    According to OED online ‘brunet’ can be used for the male equivalent of ‘brunette’. As a greybeard myself, I thought hair colour is sometimes used to define a bloke.
    I got 23 without any crossers and thought, ‘Hang on it could be either ’round dance’ or ‘dance round’, but 16d determined which.

27. Shirl @8 & Smot @17
    Another LEASHED here, and I thought I’d been very clever to get it… until it didn’t fit two of the crossers. But I was very familiar with ‘rec’ for (playing) field as a child, although it took me a long time to realise it wasn’t spelt ‘wreck’.

28. bodycheetah @ 21: from Chambers

    rec /rek/ (informal)
    noun
    1. Recreation
    2. A recreation ground

29. bodycheetah@21:
    Try Googling “red rec” for further enlightenment as to the park in Weatherfield.

30. After a couple of dismal failures last week, it was nice to find myself completely on the setter’s wavelength and whizz though one for a change!

31. Simon @28 I know what a REC is – I’m just questioning the connection to “field” which seems to depend on adding an un-clued word like “playing” for it to make sense

32. rt @29 so where’s the FIELD connection? Other than in WeatherFIELD 🙂

33. Muffin@25 thanks! I wonder why the dictionaries didn’t broaden their definitions.

34. Needed to come here to clarify GRANDSON, GATE, THE BLUES. Wasn’t that impressed by BRUNETTE. A DNF as RAPT and RECTORY defeated me today…

35. I neglected to say that I really liked GRANDSON.

36. Thanks for the blog , a lot of neat and elegant clues here. I did like GATE and NICETIES. The whole clue also works for SHORT CUT, in summer a very short hair cut saves a lot of time if you swim regularly.

37. Fun Monday puzzle.

    Brunette for woman seems well past its use-by-date.

38. Another hasty NECKTIES here – the proper answer is rather good. I have no problem with the Rec – there’s one just down the road, definitely more of a field than a park. Liked GRANDSON: wasn’t impressed with BRUNETTE.

39. Dr WhatsOn@24 I really like your extra interpretation of GATE. I too thought it could be G-ATE but I had not heard of Atë so was content with the ‘-gate’ suffix.

40. [blaise @20: as I hinted at in my post @1, my first thought was your earworm, but I fancied something good from the 80s (no mean feat!). I saw Steely Dan in 2008 at the Hammersmith Apollo and they were wonderful. RIP Walter Becker]

41. Hmm. Some nice clueing? Well, maybe. Can’t include 20A in that though – GRANDSON could just as easily be ‘a girl’s boy’ or even ‘a lady’s man’. Or ‘a man’s man’, come to that. Give that one a ‘could do better’. More positively, I liked RECTORY, which held me up for a while until I remembered I’m in Guardian world, where ‘right’ yields TORY perhaps a bit more often than is the case elsewhere. Thanks to our blogger and setter.

42. Dr W@24 – I tried, unsuccessfully to link “ate” to “skulduggery” but your parsing is the road I went down.

    Re tied house, Chambers has

    tied adjective 4. (of a house, cottage, etc) denoting one whose tenant may occupy the premises only as long as he or she is employed by the owner.

    Re: brunette, Chambers has

    brunette (masc brunet) A person with brown or dark hair.

    Perhaps the clue may have been less controversial for some as a person of colour.

    BTW, lots to like about today’s puzzle. My initial pass produced little but then the answers came thick and fast.

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

43. Big Norm @41
    Yes, there are other possibilities, but a boy’s boy is a GRANDSON, surely? I don’t see the problem.

44. Unlike ichelle @4 who found this “neither too hard nor too easy”, I found it both ridiculously easy and incredibly hard. I got more than half the answers without even trying, but was left with four that I couldn’t see my way into at all (including 1d, which I see I was not alone in failing to see), with my brain having unexpectedly set like concrete.

    I thought at first that Dr. WhatsOn @24 had plucked ATE out of thin air, but there really is a Greek goddess of mischief going by that name. 🙂 I enjoyed NICE TIES and I thought the Royal and Navy bits of 26a were very nicely done. Which brought me nicely to one of my favourite Laura Nyro songs: I Am the Blues.

    Thanks to Vulcan and manehi.

45. Yes, I only had the G ATE parsing, missing the Watergate connection.

46. Personally I am not content with the clueing of 1 down, although I enjoyed the creativity in much of the crossword. There is nothing in the clue to direct us towards hair colour as such. My inclination for sometime was to go with PRIMROSE but may be there are other 8 letter words which cover both a female name and a colour. I also thought we had moved on from referring to women directly as ‘blondes’ etc. without reference to that being their hair colour. But then again, I think of all Tories as ‘right’ – hey ho. Thanks to all

47. Like Sheffield Hatter @44 I too found much of this “ridiculously easy” but RECTORY, GRANDSON, and THE BLUES were beyond my grasp. Maybe with extra time I would have seen the latter two but RECTORY as a “tied house” was never going to happen since I never heard that expression nor did I know “rec” as field. Favourites included KEYING, INANITY, and GILL. Thanks to both.

48. Pdp11@42 glad to hear that. The online Chambers only has:

    tied house noun, Brit a public house which may only sell the beer of a particular brewery.

    Collins, Merriam-Webster similarly.

49. I’m with Sheffield hatter at 44. 75% of this went in very quickly and then I came to a grinding halt. After much head scratching I finished the SE corner but the NW proved troublesome because I had primrose for 1dn. I eventually realised it was brunette but agree with those who think it’s a bit of a weak clue.
    (Thanks AlanC @1 and @40 for the Dan references, my favourite band of all time. Only got to see them after they reformed but memorable nights nonetheless. )

50. [Ken Wales @46
    You remind me of the description in 1066 and all that of the opponents in the Civil War – the Cavaliers were wrong but wromantic, the Roundheads were right but repulsive.]

51. Bodycheetah@32 and others
    REC
    Rectory Field, the home of Blackheath RFC and where the early England rugby internationals were played, also old home to Kent CCC and Charlton hockey team always known as the Rec when I lived there in 1950s

52. REC = field always stumps me too and held me up. (Ref TassieTim) and thanks for explanation of GATE
    A friend of mine visited another friend both of them a bit set in their ways. The visitor’s car had a bumb with the driveway gate. For a while it was gategate.
    Thanks both

53. DNF today thanks to BRUNETTE and RECTORY. I don’t think it is sour grapes to say that the former is just pathetic. I have yet to meet a woman with colourless hair so the clue might just as well read “Woman”.

54. Living in a vicarage (another tied house), RECTORY went in quickly once I’d got the T from 13D. But BRUNETTE stumped me too. Like Ken Wales, I was searching for a colour name.
    Not a popular clue- are we heading for BrunetteGATE?

    BTW, Fiery Jack, I was taught in O level physics that whilst black is a colour, white is an absence of colour. On that basis, I for one am on the way to becoming a woman of no colour …

55. Katherine @54
    I rather think that it’s the other way round. White is all the colours together, whereas black is a complete absence of colour.

56. A rare finish for this cranially challenged solver.
    Much to enjoy.
    Palace in the Cup! Lovely-jubblie.
    Ta for the hints.

57. Katherine @54 – the other way around. White is a blend of all colours (which can be split into a spectrum by a prism, or by rain drops into a rainbow). Black is the absence of light and hence of colour.

58. I stand corrected – my O levels were some time ago.
    I thought I recalled the explanation being about absorbtion of light: red objects absorb all wavelengths but red, green absorbs all but green, black absorbs everything; but white objects absorb none of the light and so have no colour.
    Perhaps it depends then whether we are talking about additive or subtractive colour theory.

59. Katherine @58. Indeed it does. We can get into philosophy here too – is colour in the object or in the mind of the observer?

60. Katherine @54, Fiery Jack @53

    Me @42 gave the noun meaning of BRUNETTE. It can also be used as an adjective, meaning (of hair-colour) dark brown.

    I think the clue is a double definition: the first being woman (referring to noun BRUNETTE) and the second being colour (referring to the adjective BRUNETTE).

    Chambers, as I said @42, refers to person rather than a woman, and since a woman is a person, the clue is sound. This is similar to GRANDSON: it can be clued several ways (as Big Norm @41 suggested) but the clue is sound (the setter has only to pick one of the multiple options available 🙂 )

    Sorry to labour the point. This may not exonerate the clue in your eyes.

61. pdp 11@ 60. I agree – it may not be the most subtle of clues, but it’s perfectly legitimate.
    On another note: If ‘tory’ only means ‘right’ in “Guardianland” (referring to political orientation rather than correctness, of course), then I’d be very interested to know in which lands it could mean anything else. Rightwingnutjobland, perhaps?

62. Streuth! Do we believe that a dictionary definition must trump reality? Plainly, in the lived world a rectory is a tied house regardless of what Chambers, OED or any other dictionary has to say …..

    Better keep an eye out for Manse ….

    Isn’t that enough?

63. Another NECKTIES here. After all they used to be refinements to smart shirts. Had to do a word search for BRUNETTE and RECTORY, which I parsed as RECTO without explaining the RY.

64. I’m involved in the management of a Manse, so that kind of TIED HOUSE is a familiar concept, whether or not the Almighty Chambers has heard of it.

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