Vulcan in his customary Monday spot.
A typical Monday offering from Vulcan – long anagrams, not terribly cryptic definitions and a couple of double definitions (and a triple thrown in for good measure).
I didn't like the clue for LAMBDA, which seemed lazy, unless I'm missing something (which, as we all know by now, is entirely possible!), but I did like YOU'VE GOT ME THERE.
My last Guardian blog before Christmas, so have a good 'un, folks!
And thanks to Vulcan for not taxing me to much the day after my booster.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | THRASH |
Husband enters to wreck party (6)
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H (husband) enters TRASH ("to wreck") |
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| 5 | LAMBDA |
Largely woolly letter from abroad? (6)
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Most of the word (so largely) LAMBDA is LAMB (indicated by "woolly") |
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| 8 | CORNCOB |
Sort of pipe Spooner couldn’t confuse! (7)
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As CORN and COB start with he same letter, a spoonerism wouldn't change the word. |
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| 9 | CLUED UP |
Hint to politicians in the know (5,2)
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CLUE ("hint") + DUP (Democratic Unionist Party, so "politicians") |
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| 11 | YOU’VE GOT ME THERE |
Job done, cabbie, but now I’m confused (5,3,2,5)
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A cabbie should get you there. |
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| 12 | TIER |
Level in cup match, right? (4)
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TIE ("cup match") + R (right) |
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| 13 | GLASWEGIAN |
Celtic fan, perhaps, sawing a leg off (10)
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*(sawing a leg) [anag:off] |
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| 17 | LANDOWNING |
Come ashore, admitting being a laird? (10)
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LAND ("come ashore") + OWNING ("admitting") |
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| 18 | HIGH |
School is excellent, but beginning to go bad (4)
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Triple definition, the first being a type of school rather than a straight definition. |
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| 20 | A MONTH OF SUNDAYS |
Many thousands of moves taking ages (1,5,2,7)
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*(many thousands of) [anag:moves] |
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| 23 | LETTERS |
What children learn early: they can get through a door without opening it (7)
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Double definition |
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| 24 | OBESITY |
An increasing problem ties boy in knots (7)
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*(ties boy) [anag:in knots] |
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| 25 | CREDIT |
Believe this may be on the cards (6)
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Cryptic definition |
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| 26 | EXTENT |
Size of old temporary housing (6)
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EX ("old") + TENT ("temporary housing") |
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| DOWN | ||
| 2 | HERCULEAN |
Extraordinarily powerful article Poirot was on to (9)
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AN ("article") with HERCULE (Poirot) on |
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| 3 | ARCHER |
Old soldier heading off demonstrator (6)
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[heading off] (m)ARCHER ("demonstrator") |
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| 4 | HOBGOBLIN |
Mischievous spirit to depart, limpin’ around (9)
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GO ("to depart") with HOBBLIN' ("limpin'") around |
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| 5 | LOCUM |
Doctor taking holiday: that’s a relief (5)
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(not very) cryptic definition |
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| 6 | MOUNTIES |
Policemen in some unit reorganised (8)
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*(some unit) [anag:reorganised] |
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| 7 | DODGE |
Automobile seen in Kansas City (5)
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DODGE City is in Southwest Kansas, and will be well-known to anyone who likes a good Western. |
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| 8 | CRYSTAL BALL |
Sphere in which your fortune may lie (7,4)
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(not very) cryptic definition |
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| 10 | PIE IN THE SKY |
Unrealistic expectation of high tea? (3,2,3,3)
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PIE ("tea", as in a meal) + IN THE SKY ("high") |
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| 14 | SANDSTONE |
Beach pebble or rock (9)
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SAND ("beach") + STONE ("pebble") |
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| 15 | IMITATION |
Copy restriction? Not at first (9)
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(l)IMITATION ("restriction", not at first, i.e. with its first letter removed) |
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| 16 | GOATHERD |
Nanny’s nanny? (8)
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Someone who looks after a "nanny" goat |
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| 19 | INVEST |
Put money in, having lost one’s shirt? (6)
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In the UK, if you are only IN a VEST, you are not wearing a shirt. |
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| 21 | OUTER |
External route diverted (5)
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*(route) [anag:diverted] |
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| 22 | ONSET |
Start getting leg fixed (5)
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ON ("leg" side, cricket) + SET ("fixed") |
I’ve possibly spent longer pondering what to say than I did over the puzzle. And, to the relief of all, I haven’t come up with very much. I’d agree with loonapick on both the highlight and the low point and would add in that A MONTH OF SUNDAYS is a nice anagram.
Thanks Vulcan and loonapick
Me too!! I’ve got a busy day so it was good not to be held up too long. It met my Monday expectations. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.
Fun puzzle, ta both. [Many pleasant hours with Mrs ginf watching 10d. I fell in love with Maggie Steed when she won a bet by downing a pint .. don’t remember the show].
Pleasant enough puzzle; I share loonapick’s view of LAMBDA, I agree that LOCUM barely qualifies as cryptic, and I’m not a great fan of clues which don’t actually give you any sort of steer towards the answer in the wordplay, especially as I haven’t the faintest idea what a CORNCOB pipe actually is.
But A MONTH OF SUNDAYS is a neat anagram and the surface if GLASWEGIAN raised a Monday morning smile.
Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick; and seasonal greetings to all.
I took 5 across as referring to a woolly as a “lamb dad”, or the father of a lamb. May be a bit of a stretch but it works for me.
Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.
Hmm…slightly unsatisfying this morning.
I was going to make the same comment as loonapick re LAMBDA, and also why is a tie necessarily a cup match? Perhaps I just don’t know footie-speak.
Thanks both.
The nanny’s nanny made me smile.
Lovely start to Xmas week, thanks Vlad and loonapick. I had not heard of corncob as a pipe, and I was nicely led up various garden paths by 5d, 9a and 5a. Now for the Quiptic!
Pleasant start to the week. I agree with both loonapick and PostMark on the highs and lows. I would also add GLASWEGIAN as a fun anagram. CORNCOB is the only explicitly non-Spoonerist clue that I have ever encountered!
Thanks to S&B
Thank you loonapick.
Your diplomacy is a marvel.
I, too, thought LAMBDA a bit weak, but otherwise an enjoyable start to the week. Now back to continue with Saturday’s prize.
Same muted reaction as loonapick. Ticks for YOU’VE GOT ME THERE, GLASWEGIAN and A MONTH OF SUNDAYS for raising some smiles.
Ta Vulcan & loonapick.
Same here
HERCULEAN made me smile
Thanks Vulcan and loonapick
LAMBDA could be made from LAMB DAG with the G cut off. A dag is a bit of wool hanging off the backside of a sheep with dung on it.
I also thought LAMBDA = father of a lamb – Da being dialect for Dad. Works well with the question mark and I thought it was a good clue when I got it.
Thanks to Vulvan and Loonapick
I believe a corncob pipe is the kind of pipe that Popeye has, which helped me to get it. Still unconvinced by Lambda.
Thanks all, and I hope everyone has a terrific build up to Christmas this week.
Lots to enjoy here and a welcome reminder of this masterclass in rhyming GOATHERD
Thanks for the blog, not much to add really to your comments or MrPostMark@ 1 .
I did think ARCHER was a neat clue.
I thought this was a very good Quiptic. What’s that you say? It wasn’t the Quiptic? Oh, well. Thanks, loonapick and Vulcan.
Thanks Vulcan and loonapick
I found the Quiptic very much harder, but I enjoyed this one more. Favourites OBESITY for the misleading definition, and GOATHERD.
I was hoping for a more satisfying explanation of LAMDA as well.
Found this an odd mixture this morning, definite ticks for YOU’VE GOT ME THERE, GLASWEGIAN, OBESITY, HERCULEAN and INVEST. But question marks about the sharpness in the clueing with LAMBDA, HIGH, and LETTERS. And stared at my loi CORNCOB for a while before with a shrug of the shoulders that one went in too, an almost anti-Spoonerism to end with. Thanks Vulcan and Loonapick…
THRASH =party?
YOU’VE GOT ME THERE got me. Thanks for the explanation, loonapick.
A nice Monday stroll. Thanks to Vulcan too.
William @6
Yes, in football, cup matches are almost always referred to as “cup ties”.
Mmm. I agree there are some dubious clues in here. I think Mondays could do with an editorial re-think.
24Ac made me wish that there was an overweight tribute act to a mid-1970s Scottish boy band called The Obesity Rollers.
Some clues I liked (same as other people’s), some I didn’t, some OK, but I didn’t find this as easy as some did.
Qb@25 they’re currently on tour with flabba
Is ‘school’ a legitimate way of cluing HIGH? Could a setter also clue PUBLIC or PRIMARY in this way? I can see how it would work for GRAMMAR and ACADEMY, as these words can stand on their own, for example in answer to the question “what sort of school does your daughter go to?”, whereas just answering HIGH would seem unnatural. Possibly just sour grapes on my part, having spent as long as I was prepared to spend on my last one in on a Monday and bunged down FISH, which is admittedly a worse answer than HIGH.
I agree that ‘largely woolly’ looks weak for 5a, but I enjoyed INVEST, LETTERS and OBESITY.
Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.
Bodycheetah@27, now I know that was probably very naughty of me, but your comment did make me chuckle…
[Quizzy_Bob @25: we had a local R&B (that’s the old school R&B) band who went by the name of 36 Stone. The combined weight of the two frontmen!]
Not sure this helps, but DA can stand for Denmark.
Bodycheetah @17, I prefer Harry Graham’s effort:
https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/lord-gorbals
(from “More ruthless rhymes for heartless homes”)
Giulina @31. Not sure where you got Denmark from! The conventional clue for DA would be District Attorney
– Vulcan could have rewritten the clue to read ‘Woolly lawyer gets letter from abroad’, or even better, how about ‘Woolly lawyer gets future variant?’
[SH @33 Unfortunately they seem to have bypassed lambda…]
I see a few comments from those not having heard of a corncob pipe. Sing Frosty the Snowman to yourself and you might revise your opinion.
muffin @34 – The Lambda variant has appeared in 30 countries but hasn’t hit the UK in a big way.
For the other less publicised COVID-19 variants see here.
Have to agree with NeilH @4 that if, like me, you hadn’t heard of CORNCOB, you had nowhere to hang your hat. (I don’t know Frosty the Snowman lyrics either 🙂 )
For the second week running, the Quiptic was harder for me
[pdp11 @36
Thanks. I wonder why we haven’t had it – we seem to get most variants in rapid time!]
sheffied hatter @ 28: I think “high” for school is more, referring to your school without saying “school”. So if you ask someone “What school do you go to?” they might answer “Catford High”.
Thank you BodsnVimto@35, I have been trying to think where I have heard it in a song.
[muffin @37 – there are quite a few variants that most people haven’t heard of and haven’t overwhelmed us in the UK. Yesterday’s New York Times said that early research shows that only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (with booster) stop the spread of the Omicron variant. “The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, early research shows.” Given that in the UK we have mostly had the AZ vaccine, it may explain why we’re seeing high numbers. I am not an epidemiologist or virologist 🙂
Of course, spreading is one thing, becoming seriously ill is another. For the removal of doubt, the NYT says, “All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron, which is the most crucial goal.”
PS this is not an invitation to discuss the merits or otherwise of vaccines. None of the above is meant to change your view, one way or the other.]
Even I was able to complete that one. CORNCOB was very weak in my opinion.
[pdp11@40
I thought most us here had had the Pfizer vaccine – most people I know had that one – and certainly for the booster – anecdotal I know. Well hope that whichever one anyone had keeps them safe.]
MarkN @38.. I agree, “Catford High” would be fine, but just HIGH?
Here’s another example to make my point clearer: suppose the clue said ‘horse‘. It seems to me that you can have a race horse, a pack horse or a cart horse, but the answer RACE, PACK or CART would make the clue unfair. On the other hand, HURDLER, SHOW JUMPER or STEEPLE CHASER would be fine, as they are all nouns that stand apart from the noun that they would have originally qualified.
To generalise, if the clue is a noun, but the answer is an adjective, it would have to be one that is uniquely associated with the noun. HIGH is associated with ‘school’, but also with jump, court, jinks, seas, treason. Whereas GRAMMAR, for example, is so well associated with ‘school’ that it can be used on its own. Catford Grammar can be shortened to just “the grammar” in the answer to my hypothetical question @28, whereas your Catford High would sound a bit odd if shortened to “the high” – it would be more natural to say “the high school”.
[Fiona Anne @40 – that’s interesting! In London, most people I know had AZ as their first two doses and Pfizer/Moderna as their second (“anecdata”, again 😉 ). I vaguely remember at the beginning the UK had access to more AZ than other vaccines but that may have changed. And, of course, your age made a difference because younger people were driven away from AZ because of the (very minor) risk of blood clots.]
sh @43 – Sometimes I look up a word in a clue in my thesaurus and there are 30 “synonyms”. I’m not sure why HIGH should be exempt from the combinatorial explosion others regularly make use of! Regardless, your case would be stronger if this hadn’t been a triple definition. Think of the school reference as a bonus 🙂
pdp11 @45: In my thesaurus the relevent synonyms for ‘school’ are “institution, kindergarten, nursery school, primary or grammar or secondary or high school (etc)”. Whatever “combinatorial explosion others regularly make use of” has no relevance at all. I’m not suggesting that Vulcan should have checked in a thesaurus before setting this clue, but it still looks a bit loose to me, and the fact that it is a triple definition provides only a smidgen of an excuse.
The position of the word ‘school’ in the clue made it look like a definition (rather than a bonus 🙂 ), with wordplay following, a conviction I was unable to shake; the fact that I couldn’t solve the clue from the other two definitions shouldn’t undermine what I still believe is a valid point.
Re CORNCOB. I see what SanDiegoBrit says. I trust Imogen/Vulcan – who is a clever, sophisticated setter – to mean more than just “both halves start with C”? I can’t see it though. Is it to distinguish from some other kind of pipe? Meerschaum / sheer Maugham; conduit / don quit; scrannel pipes of wretched straw / panel’s “Cripes, of stretched raw”?
sh @46 – if the combinatorial explosion (an ornate way of alluding to, amongst other things, the many synonyms of a word) has no relevance, I wonder why you referred to the many meanings of “high” to make your case @43? It sounds to me that Vulcan’s clue successfully misdirected you and you couldn’t see a way through it. This happens to me all the time. When it does, I congratulate the setter rather than talk about “loose” clueing. Any apparent misdemeanour has to be seen in perspective: I especially don’t object when the setter has given me three ways of getting to the answer, which strikes me as fairly generous! In this case, the one “loose” clue makes your glass just a third empty but two-thirds full — which sounds pretty good to me 😉
pdp11 @48. You’re conflating synonyms, definitions and associated adjectives. Grammar, secondary and high are adjectives. Grammar by long-accustomed association with school can (just about) stand on its own as a synonym for school – this is not supported by my thesaurus, but it looks good to me – secondary possibly even more so. High has so many other words with which it is associated as an adjective (of which I listed a few @43) that you can’t just say “high” and expect someone to understand that you mean school – or vice versa.
Like you I am happy to congratulate the setter for putting one over on me, but in this instance I felt that the device used is one that deserves disapprobation rather than applause.
Spooneriisms are usually for the consonants but can also be vocalic, only Azed seems to use these. In this case neither will really work at all so even Spooner couldn’t confuse it.
Long time lurker, first time poster here. For 5A I entered Lamedh. Lam for largely woolly (lamb), edh is an old English letter, and together Lamedh is a Hebrew letter, so “letter” doing double duty. Maybe I overthought it.
1 across, why is trash a party?
The party is THRASH – slang term.
sh @49 – whenever a setter uses a word to get you to another word (regardless of its grammatical function, which may not be clear from the context), there is the possibility that there are many answers. Take the word “set”, which is often used in clues; this has several pages of entries in my (electronic) Chambers Thesaurus. And yet setters are directing us to one of those referred words. Is this unfair? It happens all the time: you’re always having to get from A to B in cryptic crosswords. Whilst some people won’t immediately jump to “high” when they see “school”, others will. And if Vulcan is, as Komornik @47 said, “a clever, sophisticated setter”, he/she may even have been aware of this and gave those people (who don’t readily associate “high” with “school”) two other ways to get to the answer. That sounds fair to me. The challenge for setters is, as I’ve said before, is: can their “average” solver work this clue out? That is a matter of judgement. If they have any doubts, they should provide extra help. Vulcan does in this instance.
Anyway, we have spent far too long on what I’m sure was a minor quibble from you. I hope Vulcan tunes in to note your disapprobation.
SH@49: On the “high” thingie, here in the US it’s pretty common. There’s a famous (infamous?) movie called Fast Times at Ridgemont High…
NeilH @4: Check out https://corncobpipe.com/product/missouri-pride-corn-cob-pipe/ for a corncob pipe (I have an earworm now from Frosty the Snowman…). Considered an essential ingredient for a snowman around these parts!
pdp11 @54. Yes, it was only a minor quibble, and I’m not really criticising the setter, just saying that I found it ever so slightly unfair; but I’m afraid I must not have explained what the problem is very adequately. Let’s look at your example of “set” and its many pages of synonyms. What if the clue was ‘set’ and the answer was TRAIN – would you be happy with that? Because the way I see HIGH is that it only means ‘school’ if it has the word SCHOOL after it (or, depending on context, implied, as in Catford High – see #38) just like TRAIN (SET) doesn’t mean a layout of rails and locomotives that you can play with unless it has SET included.
But yes, just a minor quibble. 🙂
I’m afraid that “High” in a school context always suggests “Rydell” to me – sorry! (Grease is the word…)
Dave in Sussex @51: welcome to the forum! (And what better way to debut than with the Hebrew alphabet? 😉 )
I always knew the Old English letter as Eth. (Eth’s long-time partner, Ron, was sadly supplanted by Thorn.)
sh/pdp: ‘Smelly welcome in Bali, reportedly? (4)’
essexboy @58. “I always knew the Old English letter as Eth.” So did I, but according to this it is alternatively EDH.
sh @54 – understood, and thanks for persevering. I suspect if I had your cryptic crossword experience, I’d probably quibble more. More often than not when something new appears, my initially reaction is “shurely not!” followed by “OK, I have to remember that!”
eb @58 – thank you: could have saved a lot of typing 😉
[pdp11 @60. Thanks for sticking with me to the end! And I’ll certainly remember “combinatorial explosion”, though I think I’d struggle to get it into a conversation again.]
Fun, thanks to both. Did anyone else try SEDAN for 7D? It is a city (admittedly a rather small one) in Kansas as well as being a style of car, especially in the US…
I did not parse 5ac (apart from LAMBA = Greek letter from abroad), 8ac, 5d.
Failed 18ac HIGH.
Thanks, both.
An embarrassing DNF. I had FISH for 18a, from ‘school’ and ‘go bad’. Like many others, I wasn’t impressed by LOCUM.
@sheffield hatter sorry this is so long after the event but been working on this crossword a little per night…
I went to Wimbledon high school and it was often referred to as the High or as the high school or as WHS, so pleased to finish it after a few sleeps in between
I’m late getting to this one, but I have to say I like 8ac (CORNCOB), because any clue that does something unusual with the Rev. Spooner’s name is to be welcomed. The only problem with Spoonerism clues is that seeing the reverend’s name is a dead giveaway of the type of clue. Every time a setter does something nonstandard, it plants a bit of doubt, thus making all the other Spoonerism clues just a bit more interesting. Even better are those all-too-rare clues where the word is used in a way that has nothing at all to do with a Spoonerism (e.g., as anagram fodder).