Guardian 28,647 – Vlad

89 comments on “Guardian 28,647 – Vlad”

1. Definitely on the gentler side for Vlad, although I couldn’t see what Trump was doing in 5D. Will we never be rid of him?.

   Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

2. Thanks Vlad and Andrew
   Not sure how to judge this. I used an anagram solver for 1a and 8d, neither of which had I heard of. After that it all seemed fairly mild.
   I liked LIVERYMAN. I spotted the “stable” connection quickly, but tried to work “Smith” in!

3. Blah @1
   Trump is to give the US spelling. In Britain it would be “arse”.

4. Trump was telling us that ASS was USA vocabulary. I liked that one, along with SCOTCH AND SODA and DJINN (please write any complaints about the homophone on the back of a postcard and burn immediately).
   DEAN OF FACULTY was a new one to me, and I couldn’t think what the changed middle letter of NOOSE might be, either. I accidentally revealed LUMPISH which was just as well as I don’t think I’d have got it.

5. Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

   I also thought this was easier, and managed to complete it, for once.

   Several I couldn’t explain, including LIVERYMAN, as, despite being British, I have never heard of Ryans.

   [Andrew, small omission: (END FUL)* should be (END FUEL)*]

6. Thanks Andrew and agree with your assessment although i needed you to remind me of Ryman’s (ongoing?) existence and a few others required some long hard staring before the parsing emerged.
   I have Tony Santucci’s suggested clue @77 yesterday to thank for putting me onto DRAWS early on.
   First in FAUX PAS remained a favourite along with almost-last VEDIC – I still regret not buying a book on Vedic Maths (containing mostly rapid calculation tricks etc I think) in India years ago, but looking online now find some controversy as to how ancient any of it actually is.
   Some may grumble but I am enjoying the gentler but still witty Vlad, thank you.

7. I was thrown by RYMAN too. I’m familiar with the shops, but thought that they’d all closed. It seems that they still exist but not where I live anymore.

   Thanks Vlad and Andrew

8. In 2D, the vocative is a case specifically used for addressing someone

9. I found this surprisingly gentle but welcome nonetheless. I failed to parse INDIA and NOOSE but the crossers helped. I’ve not heard of the US writer. Strange choice from the many but Vlad probably ran out of options. LUMPISH made me smile.

   DE @5 – I’m not sure if it’s a London thing but there are (or at least were) Rymans stationers everywhere.

   gladys @4 – thanks for the preemptive strike on homophones; what are the odds someone is going to skip past all the comments later and go for the jugular?

   Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

10. I was thrown by RYMAN as there aren’t any in Oz and tried to work Smith into the answer like muffin@2.
    I didn’t have a homophonobic problem with DJINN you’ll be pleased to hear Gladys@4 🙂
    Never heard of UPTON SINCLAIR so I needed help. I may enjoy reading him given my research.
    I did wonder whether drugs should have been drug in OF AGE.
    Favourite was FAUX PAS if only for the “nothing” Paulism.

11. As Gazzh says @6, gentler but still witty.

    I pass a Ryman shop every time I go into town but, like muffin, I still tried Smith first!

    Ticks today were for PHILIPPIC, LIVERYMAN, INDIA, SCOTCH AND SODA and TRAMP.

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

12. Ryman’s? There’s one near us in Dark Edward!

13. Well I found this extremely hard. Some lovely clues – 12a,21a and 9d were favourites – some I should have seen much sooner – 5d, 23a and d – but some were almost impossible – 1a, 11a, 22d. I managed to finish with help from my Mr, who got 8d as LOI.
    Thanks to Vlad for a challenge and to Andrew for the parsing. Phew!

14. Strange how people are saying that this was easy. I finished but couldn’t parse all of it. I found it quite difficult, whereas recent crosswords have – for me – been relatively simple. It’s odd how different solvers have different reactions, isn’t it?

15. 5 ASSAILS Trump’s behind troubles and torments (7)

    Love the double entendre.. Trump’s (ASS) – behind (i.e. after) troubles (AILS) – Torments = Assails (attacks)

    Intentional?

16. And there I was momentarily thinking 4d was F*** All (Nothing)!

17. Enjoyable puzzle but it was hard to parse some of my answers. Found the lower half harder.
    Favourites: FAUX PAS, MUDDLED, INFORMANT, LUMPISH.
    New for me : RYMAN stationery company (21ac).
    I did not parse 12ac or 9d apart from KNUCKLE = joint but guessed it might be a CD.

    Thanks, both.

18. Impaled only lightly by this enjoyable puzzle. Many favourites, but Trump’s behind = ASS raised a smile – good surface, too.

    I hadn’t come across UPTON SINCLAIR, so this was a late entry, but it (he?) seemed the only likely solution from all the crossers.

    Is there any dubiety about the homophone for DJINN? Strictly speaking, this should be ‘spirits’ because it is a transliteration of the Arabic plural – the singular is ‘djinni’ (hence ‘genie’), although this seems odd to us IndoEuropean speakers.

    Many thanks to Jim and Andrew.

19. Who is Andrew?Have seen a few other unfamiliar names added to pseudonyms over the years can somebody enlighten me

20. O Don Rogers @8, well spotted.
    Thank you Vlad for a challenging puzzle, and Andrew for a helpful blog.

21. EVOCATIVE and IMITATIVE were classy; nice to see that fine writer UPTON SINCLAIR putting in an appearance; DJINN made me grin – gin does that, too!
    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

22. Gladys@4: speaking as one who occasionally objects to homophones, this one didn’t bother me. My particular bugbear is with the rhotic vs non-rhotic variety.

    Muffin@2: I too required an anagram solver for 1a. The one I use (in the Chambers app) could handle this, though it’s not much help with proper names as a rule. Can I ask which solver you use? I confess to being pretty helpless with most longer anagrams and only got UPTON SINCLAIR from crossers. Luckily I had heard of him (his novel “Oil!” was adapted as “There Will Be Blood”).

23. Mostly enjoyable, but there were several I had trouble with. Hadn’t heard of 8d but managed with a bit of help from Wikipedia. 23a is new to me. And, believe it or not, we don’t have a Ryman’s in Coffs Harbour, Australia …

24. [poc @22
    I use this. It has a companion crossword solver too, which can be useful for multiword solutions.]

25. INDIA reminded me of Boatman’s devious FULL STOP last week. Footy alert – West Ham’s old ground (close to ‘Barking’) helped me get UPTON SINCLAIR and as Gervase @18 says, it could only be that with the crossers. Favourites were LIVERYMAN, INFORMANT and SCOTCH AND SODA. PHILLIPIC, VEDIC and the US writer were new.

    Ta Vlad & Andrew

26. Gladys @4: As someone commented yesterday on the subject of homophones – hear, hear.
    Delightful puzzle from Vlad, with, to my mind, just the right amount of devilry. Particular favourites INDIA, (very clever misdirection), IMITATIVE, FAUX PAS, ASSAILS (Blah @1: Given gerrymandering, voter suppression and the rest, you’d better get used to the idea of another four years of the Orange Ass), MENTION.
    Took me ages to parse NOOSE, which I suppose balances out the fact that as a retired lawyer I got DEAN OF FACULTY at once.
    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

27. Well done Andrew – todays puzzle could have been published with the answers in the grid and I would still have spent an hour trying to match up the clue to the answer!

    I for India, Ir for Ireland would have fooled me forever possibly.
    Have you all studied Chambers abbreviations perhaps?

    After Andrew’s well explained blog, I still had to look up “spits” and found the verb to impale.
    Philippic, Vedic, and prorogue also needed lookups.
    Looking up words in a dictionary also feels like defeat to me.

    My only reveal was the “c” in Philippic , and was annoyed to see “c” – what else could it be?

    For once I enjoyed 225 more tha the puzzle, thanks Andrew.

28. Almost finished it without too much help.
    Thought it was a Monday!

29. A few gnarly ones but got there in the end. I don’t know where I had come across UPTON SINCLAIR before but once SINCLAIR seemed the logical second part, UPTON was about the only bit of the anagram I had left.

    After yesterday’s prolonged and rather pointless discussion, I wonder if the word ‘homophone’ should be banned in these waters …

    My picks were PHILIPPIC, INDIA, FAUX PAS, ASSAILS [nice dig at Donald] and LUMPISH

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

30. I don’t get to post much these days, I don’t always start the crossword till well after others have finished, but today was a happy exception.
    Vlad always used to be a nemesis of mine, and a struggle I didn’t enjoy. Whether he’s got easier or I’ve just attuned to his wavelength, I don’t know. Plenty of ticks today, with ASSAILS pick of the crop.
    I wonder if Vlad started his grid with UPTON SINCLAIR. Vlad was once rather notorious for wearing his political sympathies on his setter’s sleeve, and Sinclair was a prominent leftist writer of the day who came within an ace of winning the governorship of California in the 30s.
    AlanC @25, not only was Barking very close to the old Upton Park, it was also the birthplace of the greatest player ever to grace its turf, Bobby Moore. Though alas he hailed from the south of the town rather than the north.

31. [Tangentially to 5dn, I have often wondered if they use the KJV in the Bible Belt, and if so, what they make of the exhortation in the 10th Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s …ass]

32. akaRebornBeginner @27 I took I = India to be a reference to the phonetic alphabet, it seems more likely than a simple abbreviation and not the first appearance of said alphabet in crosswordland.

    Otherwise all, eventually, parsed with thanks to Vlad and Andrew

33. I was surprised to see that Upton Sinclair is not a village. Stratford Johns is, of course.

34. Walter Doyle@19 There is a resume of Bloggers at the top of this site

35. I was hopeful of getting ‘knees’ into 9d until it finally occurred to me that a different joint was involved after I got ‘philippic’. In my defence, I’m still rather sleepy after waking up early to listen to the Ashes (why do I keep doing it?).

36. Agree that this was less painful for me than Vlad’s offerings usually are. Concurring with the enjoyment of clues such as 25a IMITATIVE, 26a SCOTCH AND SODA, 4d FAUX PAS and 5d ASSAILS; I also liked Vlad’s self-referential clue for 14a SPIRITS. As for others above, I ahadn’t heard of RYMANs the stationers in LIVERYMAN at 21a, and had trouble with a couple of other parses, but generally things flowed pretty smoothly in my solve today. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

37. I seemed to be off the pace today, but slogged through this anyway.

    I particularly liked FAUX PAS and KNUCKLED UNDER.

    Musical review = Evita makes its return

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

38. Muffin@24: thanks, I’ll look into that.

39. Re: nullified for offset, in something like a budget, an item of income could be nullified or offset by a corresponding item of expenditure, I suppose.

    I spent some time waylaid by thinking of LIMPUSH for 19D, which apparently is also a Peruvian stream. Would be really rather obscure, but it is Vlad. Eventually talked myself out of it as ‘current’ would be doing double duty – and the penny dropped. I also pencilled in DATIVE in 2D for a bit, and parsed SPIRITS as I in SPRITS (assumed they were some medieval thing). Like muffin@2 I wanted SMITH to work…

    New to me in answer/wordplay were SWARD, LUMPISH, and DEAN OF FACULTY. I knew Upton Sinclair from some time I spent researching the history of investigative/muckraking journalism; both Oil! and The Jungle were novelised exposés, and early examples of the genre.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

40. Muffin@24: yes, that’s the anagram-o-matic I use, though I try to work them out first by the time honoured method of writing down the fodder in random order on the nearest bit of paper. It’s also sometimes useful for proving that a suspected anagram …. isn’t.

41. Fairly flew through this, with several nods of appreciation along the way, then managed inexplicably to shoot myself in the foot by thinking 26ac was a 4,3,6 clue. Unable also to get the holy books at 22d, I was left with N-S-D- for the 6 letter word. As the only possible fit was (Jeremy) Noseda, who used to train flat horses nearby in Newmarket, I became a DNF and hurried, very frustrated, on here. I definitely could do with a (very large) SCOTCH AND SODA before lunch now…

42. I am with the majority opinion here, that this was a gentler Vlad than usual. Some very straightforward clueing, as in SEMINA[R/L], DRAWS/sward, the uncontentious homophone DJINN, and PRO-ROGUES; the anagram fodder was clearly demarcated and anagrams signalled. I couldn’t work out what the high-street stationers had to do with LIVERYMAN, but it was biffable. A most enjoyable solve, I thought. The I=India was very neat and misled me for quite a while. And I enjoyed Trump’s bottom.

43. I felt that Occam’s Razor could be applied to the clue for 5d leaving it as “Trump troubles and torments” , because to me Trump = ass, without further ado.

    [btw I’ve been doing the Guardian cryptic for about 25 years now, but it had eluded me that the clues do not have a full stop at the end. There was a clue last week with one, and it was the definition. It may also go without saying that I wouldn’t spot a theme even if there were special instructions stating “THERE IS A THEME TODAY”]

    Thanks as always to setter & blogger.

44. Thanks both,
    I, too, spent time trying to fit knees into 9d and was tempted to quibble that the knuckles of the hand are not a joint but part of one, but then I recalled a knuckle of ham is definitely a joint.

45. Monkeypuzzler @43: see my comment @25 re last week. Trailman @ 30: the only player to have Pele in his pocket for 90 minutes. Thanks for the reminder.

46. [the last Plantagenet @33 When driving round the countryside we look out for villages that would make good names for actors, e.g. in Dorset there’s Burton Bradstock, Okeford Fitzpaine, Sturminster Newton and the brothers Kingston, Worth and Langton Matravers]

47. Thanks for the blog, found it a bit tricky at first, less than half on my first look , but the corners were very friendly , every entry seemed to give three more. I think the grid was helpful, a lot of first letters.
    Makes a change to see VOCATIVE instead of dative, I thought the last four Down clues were all pretty neat.

48. Crossbar@46 I always thought that Fenny Compton (in Warwickshire), where my uncle was a GP, would have been a good leading lady.

49. MUDDLED, LUMPISH, UNTRIMMED TRAMP PROROGUES … do you think Vlad had anyone particular in mind?

50. To add to the mix, there’s both a Constable Burton – and a Burton Constable – in Yorkshire, if there are any budding crime writers out there looking for names for super sleuths down the pecking order…

51. [Crossbar @46
    A friend went into a pub in Shaftesbury. The barman said to him “I expect you can tell from my accent that I’m not from these parts. I comes from Sturminster Newton.”

    It’s less than 10 miles away!]

52. Who could forget Chalfont St Giles in Hamlet

53. How about Newton Burgoland in Leicestershire? Or Norton Juxta? (It’s really Norton Juxta Twycross but the locals never use the full name as they know very well it’s just down the road from Twycross!)

54. Along with some of my fellow colonials, I’ve never heard of RYMANs. Another special UK thing.

    muffin@2 I’d never heard of the Scottish legal official either, but had heard of both deans and faculties, so with some crossers (and the assumption that the two-letter word was OF) I guessed it.

    Upton Sinclair was a trenchant social critic whose works are still worth reading. He also made such memorable remarks as “adding a lane to a highway to reduce congestion is like letting out your belt to lose weight.”

    [muffin@51 — your story reminds me of a remark I overheard in San Francisco in the 70’s. I was in a small miscellaneous-store, of the sort that no longer exists, in the Portola district. A customer was chatting with the owner about a neighborhood baseball team from some decades ago. “I don’t remember that,” the owner said,”I’m not from here, I only came here when I married.” “Where are you from, then?” asked the customer. The owner replied “Bernal Heights.” Bernal Heights is about two neighborhoods away from the Portola district!]

55. When I finally got DJINN, I thought “Doh”, which meant I got Djiin and tonic. Weirdly this puzzle felt like it should have been easier than I found it.

56. #46 crossbar you can’t have forgotten Lytchett surely?

57. [To add a transatlantic note to this whimsy about place names, there is an exit sign on I64 in Virginia, east of Charlottesville, which I used to drive past during times spent in those parts many years ago. It directs those exiting the interstate to two nearby townships, and reads, ‘Louisa Ferncliff’. What a wonderful name for the heroine of a 19thC novel, I thought.]

58. Crossbar@46
    One to add to your list is Felton Butler in Shropshire.

59. [lady gewgaw @56. We can pick from Matravers or Minster.
    Togs @48 Nice one. I shall look out for more ladies from now on.
    Happy to have provided a diversion 😀 ]

60. [Crossbar passim: One of the best is Mavis Enderby in Lincolnshire]

61. [muffin @51 I’m not at all surprised. I’m still a newcomer to not very far away from SN after 36 years]

62. […. But I did come here from up north, and via that London.]

63. [there’s a laid-back jazz band near my old home – Shelsley Beauchamp on vocals, Hanley Child on trumpet, Edwyn Ralph on bass and Lem Hill on the drums. Nice!]

64. Initially I had a sprinkling of answers and a feeling of dread, but some serious application and reading the clues to understand the word play properly and the lights started to go on and be filled. Thursday strength Upton (on Severn) being the last one in.
    Many thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

    [ Within a few miles of each other and myself:- Stansted Mountfitchet, Ugley Green, Nasty, High Wych, Furneux/Brent/Stocking Pelham, Cold Christmas, Much/Little Hadham. More porn star than Hollywood I’d say.]

65. I’m still convinced Leighton Buzzard is actually a retired Colonel in an Agatha Christie novel, despite having lived there for a time.

66. [You’re not too far away from me Taffy @64. From my window I can see Matching Tye, or at least I can in daylight.]

67. [Trailman @64, very good. I’m over in Hertford, have the brothers BenGeo up on the hill]

68. Makes me think of two villages in T H White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose — Much Dithering and Long Suffering.

69. The children’s author Joan Aiken invented a village called Loose Chippings.

70. Litton Cheney and Compton Valence are definitely actor-laddies of the old school.

71. Petert @55: 😀

    For 17d, I thought of carbon ‘offsetting’ = ‘nullifying’ the effects of carbon emissions (supposedly)

    Although I’m from the UK, I would have found 21a easier if RYMAN had been clued ‘auditorium’, or even ‘mother church’.

    Thanks V & A for another enjoyable exhibition.

72. Alternately, for 2D, NOOSE could be the changed heart of “noise”…with “pointless” referring to the lack of meaningful information that must be ignored if one is to succeed in separating the signal from the noise

73. I like that, Andrew @72, though I had the NO USE parse.

74. Pleased to have finished, having parsed all answers. Never heard of 8 down or 22 down, but the clues were fair. I wrote in FAUX PAS, but took quite a time before the penny dropped. A wonderful clue. Daniel Miller@16 – at least you were on the right lines!

75. Thanks Vlad, this was an enjoyable challenge. Loved INDIA and LIVERYMAN. Like gladys and others, I couldn’t think of a suitable letter swap in the middle of NOOSE, so thanks for that Andrew, but otherwise managed to parse everything satisfactorily.

    And thanks everyone else for the amusing diversion on place names. Wish I could think of a good one to add!

76. Is it really less than six months since this post ?

77. Came late to this puzzle today; I agree that it was on the easier side by Vlad’s standards. I didn’t parse the LIVERYMAN clue, of course (and I agree with Essexboy that it would have been easier if the Grand Ole Opry were involved.)

    [On the subject of town names that sound like women, we have this wonderful bit of Massachusetts-centric innuendo: Entering Marion.]

78. #76 Van Winkle I was wondering about all those square-bracketed posts: could it be the de rigueur signalling for off-topic discussion?

79. [paul b @78 Yes]

80. Have now finished 2 Vlads in a row even if not all parsed. As a Scot, 1a was easy and FOI. As a Scot and whisky lover, I’m not keen on the use of “Scotch” so struggled with 26a. I was in Rymans about a week ago for the first time.

81. Well, this has woken Rip up…

82. Thanks to Andrew for the blog and to others who commented on the puzzle.

83. Whoops feel LUMPISH commenting right after Mr Vlad but I don’t see DJINN = it. I thought it was something with gin. But nobody else commented so probably just me.
    Similarly I got ASS but USA right.
    Didn’t know UPTON SINCLAIR
    Thanks both now back to cricket…hence day late.

84. Tim the toffee@83. It is to do with gin. The ‘it’ refers to ‘Spirit’ which refers to both djinn and what djinn sounds like ie gin.

    Thanks to Vald and Andrew and to allvthe commenters.

85. [ jellyroll@80, as a single malt whisky lover I didn’t mind the SCOTCH, but I strongly objected to the SODA ]

86. Thank you Andrew and many thanks to Vlad; time spent searching for your theme, whether there or not, is never wasted, and today was no exception.
    I’d like to add to Valentine’s priceless Upton Sinclair quote @54 the following:
    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” ; (echoing the father of philippics, Demosthenes: “What a man wishes, he will believe.”) and…
    “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” – Sinclair’s comment on purchases of American meat falling by half after the publication of his novel on the horrors of the Chicago meat packing industry.

87. Well, I had RYMAN as “railway man” with ‘stationer’ being a cryptic definition, but couldn’t see where the ‘high street’ came into the picture. I have both heard of and shopped in Ryman’s, so no excuse for missing it. Thanks, Andrew, for setting me straight.

88. [Thanks, principe@86. I’ll expand on your second Sinclair quote by saying that his novel “The Jungle” created, as he meant it to, a revulsion for the products of the meat processing industry. but no corresponding condemnation of the treatment of the workers. There’s also a real estate scam that sounds all too familiar, in which workers are enticed into buying houses at extravagant mortgages, that the company then reclaims and resells when they can’t keep up the payments.]

89. Gervase@60:

    There’s a (possibly apocryphal) story that a signpost reading “To Old Bolingbroke and Mavis Enderby” was appended with rhe words “…the gift of a son”

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