Guardian 28,644 / Vulcan

61 comments on “Guardian 28,644 / Vulcan”

1. Fun start to the year with a mixture of the not so cryptic, such as MOBY DICK and CASE and some amusing clues like RELEASES, BIKINI, MONSIEUR and TSARISTS. MASTER CARPENTER was good and there was obviously an earlier problem with the electronic version of NOUGAT/NOUGAH, but it has now been rectified I see.

   Ta Vulcan & Eileen and welcome to 2022.

2. I found the definition of GREEN BELT to be a bit lacklustre, and two strips = BIKINI ?? Otherwise a gentle introduction to the week.

3. In the on-line version, the given solution to 10a is NOUGAH, which is obviously wrong.

4. The problem with 10a was fixed sometime between me finishing the puzzle and this blog appearing.

5. Thanks, AlanC, for clarifying what was happening with 10ac. I came to the puzzle only at about 6.00, which is late for me – I am more often a ‘wee small hours’ solver – and I could not understand the problem that a couple of the earliest commenters on the G’s own thread seemed to be having with NOUGAT.

6. I enjoyed the humour in clues such as PUSH, DOUGH, BANDYING, DESIRE, RELEASES, CENTRING.
   Also liked DARTMOOR.

   I did not parse 19d.

   Thanks, both.

7. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
   I enjoyed this, especially RELEASES, GREEN BELT and DESIRE. I didn’t see how NURSERY RHYME worked, but I like it now it’s explained.
   Needless to say, I didn’t like DARTMOOR!

   btw Carpathian’s Quiptic is worth doing too. I found it slightly harder than this one.

8. A great Monday puzzle which was just what I needed today after a challenging Saturday. Yes, one or two clues were a little weak and I wasn’t entirely sure that 23ac wasn’t Rimini which has a beach. Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen for the blog. Best wishes for 2022 to all.

9. Worth it for NURSERY RHYME and the splendidly anagrammed MASTER CARPENTER. The first inspires an earworm: The Music Box by Genesis which inspired the cover of the Nursery Cryme album, the first to feature Phil Collins and Steve Hackett

   muffin @7: why didn’t you like Dartmoor? The place, the prison, unhappy memories or something about the construction of the clue?

   Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

10. PostMark @9
    It’s metonymy I don’t like; Dartmoor is a moor, not a prison, Dartmoor Prison is a prison.

11. PostMark@9: great earworm

12. [muffin @10: ah, I see. Not an issue for me but I ACKNOWLEDGE it is for others.]

13. I generally enjoyed this but two minor gripes.

    First I’m in the thumbs down for the BIKINI clue. The only reference I can find to beach being linked to it is an obscure 1964 film. Maybe ‘Two strips for the beach?’ would be better.

    Also I found the construction of 14 to be clumsy with the ‘putting’ where it is.

    CLAMMINESS was my favourite.

    Thanks to both.

14. muffin @ 10: if convicts are sent to Dartmoor I don’t think they’re free to roam.

15. A laugh out loud at BANDYING – great. As AlanC @1 says, there were other amusing clues too. However, I’m another who didn’t like BIKINI – Bikini is an atoll, not a beach (or was before it got blown to bits). TEETHE was a bit weak as well. When the first four went straight in, I thought I was off and running, but the SW held me up for quite a while. Thanks, Vulcan and Eileen.

16. Mostly fun especially the typo in the answer to 10 which I wouldnt have noticed apart from the plethora of posts
    BIKINI weakest-never heard of anyone going there to check the beach since 1946
    BIMINI could have made for a good clue-submissions on a postcard please

17. The Bikini atoll is not much more than a beach: used by the USA for testing nuclear weapons in the past.

18. Enjoyable start to the year or week.

    It took me a while to see BAN DYING, which was my favourite. I think the reference in BIKINI is not to the atoll but just to two strips being seen on a beach – perhaps not very well worded but that was the image I had anyway.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen, and Happy New Year to all.

19. SimonS @14
    That’s because they’re sent to Dartmoor Prison…

    I know that metonymy is frequently used, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

20. Re. BIKINI: surely, the clue works simply as a cryptic def. There is no need to identify ‘beach’=BIKINI as the definition. The whole clue is a definition and could be paraphrased as ‘two strips of cloth which are typically seen at the beach’ = BIKINI.

21. Thanks for the blog , trying not to be negative so better if I say very little.
    MASTER CARPENTER and TSARISTS among the best clues here.
    MOBY DICK and BIKINI already amongst the favourites for worst clue of the year.

22. Isn’t it bi-kini? Kini is a beach (in Greece).

23. Nice start to the week, with some good clues (ITCH and DESIRE have particularly good surfaces) but some weak definitions (BIKINI, GREEN BELT and BANDYING – fun construction, but the verb doesn’t mean ‘discussing’ without an object).

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen

24. pserve_p2 @20. You have what was surely intended – and what a weak clue it is. Especially the word “of” which you have paraphrased (expanded?) as “which are typically seen at the…”. How are those two in any way equivalent?

25. SimonS@14: DARTMOOR for the prison (if such abbreviation may be rightly termed metonymy) is widely used and accepted, I think; but there is no arguing muffin out of his personal distaste for such erosion of the English lexicon, I fear.

26. To expand on my earlier comment: Kini is a strip of beach, so “two strips of beach” is “bi-kini”, which is also a definition for bikini.

27. TassieTim@24: yes, it’s weak. I read it like one might define a helmet as ‘headgear of the battlefield’ paraphrasable as ‘headgear which might be typically seen on a battlefield’.

28. Forgot to mention that the excellent anagram for MASTER CARPENTER reminded me of Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee”.

29. pserve_p2 @20 – that’s how I read it (but I wasn’t impressed). I initially had question marks after ‘cryptic’ for BIKINI, MOBY-DICK and TEETHE.

    I don’t see Vulcan ever approaching my list of favourite setters but I know a lot of people here enjoy his puzzles and I didn’t wish to be too negative, either, especially on the first Monday of the year. 😉

30. Hullian @22 Kini is a beach in Greece
    

31. Nice gentle start to the week. RELEASES, DOGGED CLAMMINESS all made me smile and good to see WHIT – a word I like to use.

    Now off to the allotment and then I’ll try the quiptic

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

32. I’m with pserve_p2 re BIKINI: it’s just a reference to the garment, and there is no need to force it to refer to an actual beach, Greek or otherwise, except as the probable habitat of the wearer. Trying to compress it into as few words as possible makes it clumsier, not neater.

    Like others I enjoyed BANDYING, and DOGGED (with the helpful reference to a lead). Couldn’t parse MARASCHINO.

33. Thx to Vulcan for a little light exercise to welcome the new year.
    Thx also to Eileen for the blog and A better than good 2022 to all.

34. Ticks for NURSERY RHYME, DESIRE and BANDYING. Good grief – I’ll be laughing at Giles Brandreth at this rate

35. MarkB at @30: Not sure what your comment is about. In my comment @22 I wrote that Kini is a beach in Greece.

    I think BIKINI is meant to be an &lit.

36. Didn’t much like CENTRING, or the slightly unpleasant image that PUSH produced. Some other fun clues for a Monday, however. Just watched a rerun of The Wolf of Wall Street on the TV last night, when MOBY DICK got the full vulgar humour treatment from Leonardo DiCaprio . But I agree with Roz@21, it wasn’t much of a clue…

37. I thought BIKINI might have had something to do with waxing but that would have made three strips. Not entirely happy with any of the parsing for it but lots of other good clues to make up that slight clumsiness. Thanks to V & E…and everyone for interesting comments.

38. [bodycheetah @34: I always laugh at Giles Brandreth, though rarely with him]

39. Thanks for explaining the cursory nursery, Eileen.

    16a “whit” is one of those words that you pretty much only see in the negative — would anybody say “I learned a whit about that today”? That said, the example at one google site for it this morning was “the last whit of warmth was drawn off by the setting sun.” Who’da thunk it?

    Tim@2 Lackluster definition indeed — the definition of “green belt” is “this.” How much more luster could it lack?

    Who’s Giles Brandreth when he’s at home?

40. [Gervase @ 38 I thought he was funny in “Just a minute” where he used to be a regular and go head to head with Paul Merton.]

41. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

    Much to enjoy and grateful for the mild enough workout after all the festive hey-ho. I liked NAILS for the mis-direction (while ACKNOWLEDGED held out) along with BANDYING and the clever DESIRE.

    And, for me, BIKINI covers all the necessary bases and its brevity only adds to its subtlety.

    Valentine@39: Mr Brandreth is a somewhat ubiquitous television personality in the UK.

42. Dartmoor as a prison is fine I think. If someone was sent to Alcatraz, you don’t wonder if they were sent to the island. If someone said they’d spent 10 years in Dartmoor, you;d know what they mean. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word prison follow “Wormwood Scrubs”.

43. Not at all keen on either 23A or 21D, but 5D just about made up for them. No issue with Dartmoor as ‘prison’. Thanks Eileen and Vulcan.

44. It would be pedantic to call it wrong, and there’s usage to consider in these matters.

    ‘The Music Box’ indeed. We’ll be having ‘The Return of the Giant Hog’ next.

45. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen. I thought this was enjoyable enough – typical Monday Vulcan fare, channelling the spirit of Rufus. Eileen, I was going to question your use of “cryptic” in the blog for 5a but I see you’ve already addressed that in a later comment. Lots of fun clues though, the good far outweighs the bad.

    I’m entirely with pserve_p2 and gladys (and Eileen) on the parsing of BIKINI. Not sure why some people are looking to make it more complicated. It’s not my favourite clue ever but I don’t feel as strongly about it as Roz.

    As a side note, I was puzzled when I finished and the app told me “some letters are incorrect” – after much head-scratching, I eventually had to hit the reveal button to see the error in 10a, which left me 19d!

46. Re: DARTMOOR ….

    HM Inspectorate of Prisons (and just about every other official governmental organisation) refer to it as HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison) Dartmoor and never HMP Dartmoor Prison.

    Others simply use Dartmoor when referring to the prison.

    If that helps …

47. Paul b@44: my bad. Mistake unnoticed at the time; now acknowledged.

48. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen. This was pleasant enough — I enjoyed RELEASES, the anagram in MASTER CARPENTER, and DOUGH. I agree with Roz @21 about MOBY-DICK and BIKINI — they are typical of the clues one sees in American puzzles which is why I switched to British ones.

49. I’m sure I’ve heard that The Guardian has been struggling to find a new Rufus for the usually easy Monday slot, as presumably demanded by readers, and Imogen, while retaining the original pseudonym and difficulty level, became Vulcan to accommodate the need. The list of setters on this site seems to confirm it, though I would like to know if the plan is as I have guessed it to be in the above. Does anyone know?

50. Beginner @ 46. Quite so. Of course they wouldn’t call it HMP Dartmoor Prison as the P of HMP means Prison, so that would be HM Prison Dartmoor Prison!

51. Muffin@10 etc., isn’t saying that metonymy is bad, just that he doesn’t like it. I feel the same way about Wagner – his music isn’t bad, I just…. (Mark Twain said that Wagner wrote music that is better than it sounds.)

    Of course, Muffin would have preferred me to write “I’m the same way about Wagner’s music – it isn’t bad….” 🙂

    [ Markfield@50, my favourite is PIN number. ]

52. cellomaniac@: [… which we use at the ATM machine.]

53. [cellomaniac @51
    Thanks for clarifying my position. I just think that it’s sloppy use of language.]

54. [muffin @53, yes, just as “she went to Oxford [University]” is sloppy …]

55. [Monkey
    There was that strange programme “Vicious” with Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen as predatory homosexuals. I didn’t watch it, but I remember one exchange from trailers.
    “I went to Cambridge”
    “Yes, but just for lunch…”]

56. I can’t believe I didn’t see BAN DYING! And I needed Eileen’s explanation of the relevance of “cursory” in the clue for NURSERY RHYME. Not a good start to 2022 for me! Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

57. muffin @55: The only reason that is a joke is because it defies expectations. If someone says they went to Cambridge everyone knows they meant the university. The joke here is that it wasn’t – it was just for lunch. That’s why it’s funny. Everybody thought “university”, and then that was revealed to be a trick.

58. MarkN @57 – many thanks. 😉

59. MarkN @57
    Conversely, I think it demonstrates that “Cambridge” doesn’t necessarily mean “University”, but I expect we will continue to disagree..
    To stress again, I accept that it’s a common trope; however I really don’t like it.

60. Re 54/55/59, reminds me of that classic Blackadder Goes Forth exchange:

    Captain Blackadder: You mentioned a clever boyfriend? … I asked if he’d been to one of the great universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Hull … You failed to spot that only two of those are great universities!
    General Melchett: That’s right! Oxford’s a complete dump!

    Missed out on DESIRE, I got sloppy and forced DESERT there without thinking (get rid of). Wasn’t a fan of CENTRING, as I’d spell it with another e, and I agree with the consensus that the Quiptic was harder.
    In terms of learning, I think this is the first time I’ve seen ‘record’ listed as CD rather than LP – nice to see crosswords entering (entring?) the modern(ish) age.

61. Hi Eileen, don’t know when you’re next on blogging duty but since this one is still live, just dropping in to answer your comment on Friday’s Picaroon – yes, of course, happy to answer any questions, feel free to contact me.

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