Guardian Cryptic 28,710 by Vulcan

69 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,710 by Vulcan”

1. Thank you Vulcan for a good Monday start to the week. And manehi for the blog.

2. Mondayish (of course) but some great clues: SHIFT KEY, CHRISTEN and particularly IN CAHOOTS (LOL). Many thanks to Vulcan and manehi.

3. All good fun. 13a and 27a were my favourites.

4. Pretty good overall, though MR BLOBBY reads like a GK quiz question – not very cryptic (I guessed the answer, then checked such a character existed). UPTICK is an ugly word, and I have only vaguely heard of Atomic Kitten (it played no part in my answer). SHERLOCK, GREAT WESTERN, BACK IN THE DAY, LEFT BANK were all nice. Thanks, Vulcan and manehi.

5. Nice, gentle start to the week although I’m waiting for some spluttering about the less cultured references (MR BLOBBY & ATOMIC Kitten).

   I didn’t parse FIREPROOF and I didn’t know that UPTICK was specifically American. I live and learn.

   Thanks Vulcan & manehi.

6. Like drofle@2, IN CAHOOTS raised a big smile.

   Couldn’t see the group in ATOMIC, even though I’ve (surprisingly) heard of them. D’oh.
   Took ages trying to remember MR BLOBBY (selective amnesia – he’s best forgotten imo).
   And TassieTim@4 totally agree on UPTICK.

   Suitable start to the week.

   Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

7. Ah, yes, MR BLOBBY, remember him? (Noel Edmonds, remember him??).
   Nice and straightforward for a Monday morning (particularly as I had been wrestling with No 373 by Tug on the mycrossword site, which I recommend to anyone who wants a real challenge); but some clever cluing. Favourites were ATOMIC, SHERLOCK, DIETARY FIBRE, PIPER (very neat), FIREPROOF (likewise).
   Thanks to Vulcan and manehi

8. Happily shoved in LITTER for 5a until the crossers made me rethink

9. Mr Blobby did seem rather unfair for non UK solvers, there being no wordplay to help. I never thought the the day would come when I was pleased to see his name!
   I had reside instead of beside, which didn’t help. It felt a bit forced because it needed “edge nearby” = side but plausible for a Monday.

10. No doubts today that it was a Monday.

    IN CAHOOTS is a fun clue for a fun expression and I liked the anagram for DIETARY FIBRE.

    Puzzle was marred for me by two modern expressions which I find illogical and unnecessary: UPTICK and BACK IN THE DAY.

    However, thanks to S&B 🙂

11. PS: I was another who started with LITTER for 5ac….

12. Shirl and Gervase, me too with LITTER for 5ac.

13. Agree with TassieTim@4 that MR BLOBBY is not very cryptic.
    Taste could equally have been a solution to TOUCH. Not sure I like cryptic clues than need confirmation from crossers. It’s too much like filling in a “quick”.
    Favourite was IN CAHOOTS. 🙂

14. Loved the access to capitals.

    Quite a few that I only partially parsed including PIPER, and got in a tangle with FIREPROOF, being unable to link tongue to flame.

    Enjoyable crozzie to start the week, many thanks, both.

15. btw…this site has now decided, bafflingly, to remember me and my email address. I changed nothing.

16. Enjoyed that.

    Another UPTICK for 13A.

    One minor quibble, doesn’t the phrase OUT OF HAND usually mean ‘beyond control’?

    Thanks to both.

17. A plethora of helpful anagrams at first, but then got rather held up in the SE corner. But there lurked the rather more cunningly clued FIREPROOF, SHIFT KEY and FRILLY, I thought. PIPER took a while to fathom. Don’t know why, but the clue for AMAZON made me smile. Thanks Vulcan and Manehi on this lovely sunny morning in East Anglia…

18. You’re correct Mark@16. It does mean out of control, but it can also mean at once, immediately or without premeditation.

19. Very enjoyable. There was a cluster of clues in the NE corner where my knowledge of things UK was found wanting. What’s the relevance of the hall in 25a?

20. Sounds like it’s just me but I found this closer to Imogen than Vulcan. The NE corner was especially troublesome, never having heard of ATOMIC (Kitten) or MR BLOBBY and having to convince myself UMBER was a ‘mineral’ and not just a colour.

    Regarding GDU @19’s query, is the def of 25a ‘a hall that’s this grand?’?

    I’m not a big fan of the two modern expressions either. Favourite was the ‘access to capitals’ def at 27a.

    Thanks to manehi and Vulcan

21. Went in quite quickly till I got to the NE where I got held up for a while by 5a and 7d.

    Like others IN CAHOOTS was my favourite and I didn’t see how the best forgotten Mr Blobby was cryptic.

    Other likes were: LEFT BANK, FRILLY, FIREPROOF

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi

22. Monday fare, with some smiles esp IN CAHOOTS.

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi

23. Thanks Vulcan and manehi
    I found this much easier than the Quiptic, although, just to be different, I started with KINDLE at 5a.
    Penfold @5: I’m more concerned with the parochiality of ATOMIC and MR BLOBBY rather than their “less cultured” level. The latter in particular would be pretty impossible unless you had had the misfortune to see him.
    IN CAHOOTS was my favourite too.

24. Good, albeit brief, fun. As quite often happens I had a similar experience to Fiona Anne. I think the point of “hall” for BARONIAL is that it only means grand when applied to something like a hall, and we had already had a pile.

25. GDU@19 and WP @20 “BARONIAL hall” is oft used to describe a large and old stately home.

26. Mark @16: I agree. I’ve never encountered OUT OF HAND with the simple meaning of ‘unconsidered’, though it’s listed first in Chambers, so it must be right 😉

27. Thoroughly enjoyable, and just the right level of difficulty for a Monday. One quibble though – umber is a pigment, not a mineral.

28. Thanks Vulcan and manehi

    To dismiss something out of hand is a fairly common expression, I’d have said.

    from Chambers:
    umber1 /um?b?r/
    noun
    A brown earthy mineral (hydrated oxides of iron and manganese) used as a pigment

29. Simon @28: Fair point.

30. Good start to the week with IN CAHOOTS, SHIFT KEY and SCARE TO DEATH my picks.

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

31. Simon S @28: Yes, that’s a common expression, but surely to dismiss something ‘out of hand’ is a much more forceful rejection than simply not thinking about it?

32. Pleasant Monday fare, with some neat clues esp. OUT OF HAND and SHIFT KEY.

    UPTICK was a DNK for me and I thought 7D was a little weak.

33. I must dig out my record of Cahoots by the Band and play “Smoke Signal”
    This was an enjoyable start to the week
    Thanks all.

34. Thanks to Vulcan for a delightful start to the week, and to manehi for the blog. Uptick was new to me, but gettable from the word play.

35. Geervase @ 31

    “That’s a daft suggestion, I’m not even going to think about it” seems a reasonable description of dismissing something out of hand.

36. A lot went straight in (including LITTER) and I didn’t know SCHLOCK or UPTICK. I enjoyed SHIFT KEY. I think that’s the first time I’ve actually got a keyboard based clue. Thanks to Vulcanised and manehi.

37. Liked IN CAHOOTS, LEFT BANK, SCARE TO DEATH, PIPER, SHIFT KEY.

    Did not parse ATOMIC – never heard of the group or the reactor!

    New 7d MR BLOBBY – which did not seem to be a very cryptic clue?

    Thanks, both.

38. Simon S @35: Reluctantly, I will concede, but your quotation is illogical. How can you rate a suggestion as daft without even thinking about it!

    It all depends on whether you take ‘think about’ to mean ‘call to mind’ or ‘give due consideration to’. 🙂

39. Another LITTER here, and then distracted by the presence of a TOM (kitten) in ATOMIC so I missed the group completely and failed to parse it.
    I agree that MR BLOBBY is a unfair to those lucky enough not to have met him, since there is no wordplay to help.
    Traitors, prisoners etc are sometimes described as being “shot out of hand” – i.e. immediately and without a trial.

    I only know UMBER when it’s burnt: I hadn’t really considered what the actual substance was.

    [On holiday in South Africa, I stayed for several nights in a lodge right next to the favourite tree of the local BUSH BABY, which woke me with unearthly deafening screeches at 3 a.m. The creature itself may look cute: its voice is horrible.]

40. Never heard of Atomic kitten.

    I looked up UMBER, not having heard that it’s a mineral, and found that raw umber is lighter in color than burnt umber, which explains the name of a crayon in my box as a child.

    Once the check button told me that the first two letters of 7d were none of the vowels, “Mr” occurred to me, probably because we had a “Mrs” recently in the hedgehog puzzle. Then the name surfaced — I must have run across it somewhere.

    Nice puzzle, thanks Vulcan and manehi.

41. I was another with LITTER at 5a – it still seems a better fit for the clue, but the crossers eventually ruled it out. A few other tricky ones for a Monday. Did Vulcan get out of Imogen’s side of the bed?

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

42. Anyone else confidently insert OUNCE for TOUCH at 6d. A better solution I think. Good fun. Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

43. I started with KINDLE at 5a. Isn’t that the collective noun for kittens? Anyway, after that I managed without any reveals!

44. Thanks for the blog, good range of clues and generally quite neat.
    I agree with Tim@13 that taste works just as well , crossing letters no excuse, I like to solve the Downs without looking at the grid.
    William@15, always best to ignore it, these things just crave attention. Or try your best Paddington stare.

45. A perfect Monday crossword – easy but fun. (Not that Monday means much to me – it’s the last day of my working week usually, rather than the first, but I like the Graun’s convention of making it easier.)

    Gervase @38 – surely, you must have said “I’ll have to think about it” about a suggestion before now, whereas others you will have dismissed or accepted immediately (or without thinking about it)?

46. Nice crossword from Vulcan, and blog from manehi. Thanks both.

    It’s funny how the brain can sometimes produce uncanny guesses. I have no knowledge of Atomic Kitten or Mr. Blobby, but like gladys@39 I thought of A TOM for kitten, and so I guessed ATOMIC and with all the crossers and figuring that 7d had to start with MR, BLOBBY was the only (bizarre) thing I could think of that fit with “spotted” and “puffed-up”. Pure guesswork, with very little to support them. All part of the fun.

    TimC@13 and Roz@44 complain about 6d requiring crossers to choose between two equally logical answers (touch and taste). And, as sheffield hatter@41 points out, 5a is the same (atomic and litter). But, isn’t it legitimate in a crossword for a setter to make use of the crossing words in determining the correct answer? Otherwise, why have a grid at all? When you encounter such a clue, you simply keep both solutions in mind while testing the choices of crossing letters against the other clues. It’s similar to the way you deal with two words of equal length which could both be anagram fodder – you test each one against the rest of the fodder (and the crossers) to see which is correct. It’s all part of the cryptic experience.

47. LOL, I missed MR BLOBBY, after spending ages looking up UK Children’s shows and not finding any yellow-spotted characters! (May come in handy in another puzzle!)
    Also never got HUMBER.

    An unusual puzzle for me, as I got many of the long phrases early on.

    Loved “Inca” for “old American”!

48. cellomaniac@46 you make a good point about crossing letters but I still feel a good clue can be solved in isolation without any ambiguity. I try to solve every single clue in order as an individual without the grid. After every clue has been given a fair chance I enter the Down answers I have and use the grid to complete the puzzle.
    For me ATOMIC was a far stronger answer for 5Ac because of the word pile.
    Your point about anagrams is different, a clue SHOULD be as ambiguous as possible but if you manage to sort out the answer you should definitely know you are correct.

49. All doable though UPTICK was new to me

    Thanks Vulcan & manehi.

50. I agree with Roz. I like to use crossers to push me in the right direction for a solution I haven’t got yet, but I think a clue that needs the crossers to distinguish between more than one possible valid answers isn’t as good a clue as it should be.

51. I tried LITTER at first too, but I thought it was a stretch to fit the second half of the clue – best I could come up with was a pile of litter.
    In the end, the crossers quickly gave me ATOMIC.
    Could someone please offer a better explanation why LITTER would have been a good solution? Thanks.

52. Fun puzzle. Struggled with the NE quadrant. ATOMIC went in unparsed, and I’d never heard of MR BLOBBY. Like many here, I found OUT OF HAND dubious; to dismiss something OUT OF HAND is to judge it not worthy of consideration, which is not the same as “offhand”, which to my mind actually means without thinking. YMMV. Loved IN CAHOOTS and SHIFT KEY, as did y’all. Thanks M&V.

53. Did anyone else try Mr Tumble, famous for his spotty bag, at 7d? At least he’s current on CBeebies.

54. Gervase@: A call to surrender might be dismissed out of hand – no thought required?

    No complaints, quite enjoyable (UPTICK and all). Is a filly always a complete unknown? (There is so much about horse-racing I don’t understand.)

    Thanks to Vulcan and manehi.

55. Alphalpha @54
    Have another look at the blog for FILL Y

56. Oh, how I envy those who have never heard of Mr Blobby.

57. With regard to clues that seem to admit two (or more?) plausible answers, and need the crossers to disambiguate, my guess is that the setter will sometimes? often? not have even thought of the alternative. Here, I would be very surprised if LITTER had occurred to Vulcan as a possible answer for 5a. Maybe TOUCH/TASTE might have (they are both senses) – maybe.

58. As Notabene and I both said, the collective word for kittens is kindle rather than litter; for completeness, it’s a clowder of cats.

59. muffin @58 & 50. I haven’t checked Chambers, as I’m on holiday and I didn’t have space in my rucksack, but I guess most people, asked for the word for a group of kittens, would say LITTER rather than kindle, lovely word though it is. Certainly a few of us did.

    And I thought of a pile of leaves littering the path for the second part. Even when I backtracked and got ATOMIC I was unable to parse it, so for me it was never a case of waiting for the crossers before writing the answer in.

    Some days I struggle to get one answer, never mind two, so the idea of comparing the merits of multiple potential answers has not been on my agenda.

60. SH @59
    You’re probably right, but the opportunity to use kindle in its correct sense is too much to miss!

61. …I meant original rather than correct sense.

62. IN CAHOOTS was my favourite. Being old and British, I had (unfortunately) heard of MR BLOBBY. Completed this after flubbing the Quiptic.

63. No one will see this but I think the objection to viable alternative answers only ‘revealed’ by the crossers is absolute tosh. What’s the point of it being a CROSSword otherwise? Part of the game is to establish the crossers and hence end up with the right answers. If you are the sort who writes the answers next to the clues (rather than in the grid) and starts putting them in later, you are kinda missing the whole point of a CROSSword.

64. Tim@63. In a really good crossword surely there is only one viable answer. Isn’t that well established? Being misled to an inferior alternative is another matter.

65. Xj – yes, the one that answers the clue AND fits the crossers, not the one that just answers the clue.

    I suppose there must have been (many?) cases in the past where an alternative had simply never occurred to the setter – is that bad setting or (whisper this …) part of the (shhhh … ) fun 😉

66. I’ve very occasionally come across clues where the crosser couldn’t resolve the issue. For instance, in a Radio Times a few years ago there was a solution that could have been BUREAUX or BUREAUS, and the wordplay had BEAUX or BEAUS. The last letter wasn’t a crosser!

67. Tim @63. I don’t know about anyone else, but I wasn’t “objecting” to the existence of a viable alternative answer. I just said I had entered one and only discovered it was wrong when the crossing clues couldn’t be solved. As you say, that’s all in the game.

68. I sped through this, even quicker than the Quiptic. Was there a loose 90‘s pop culture theme? Mr.Blobby, Atomic Kitten, (Billie) Piper?

69. I had to reveal Mr Blobby, which got me searching the internet. I wish now I hadn’t.

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