Guardian 28,944 / Vulcan

58 comments on “Guardian 28,944 / Vulcan”

1. Really quick solve this morning! Didn’t understand 17D, but otherwise pretty much a write-in.

2. The anagrams definitely helped. Enjoyed this and my favourites were the same as Eileen’s and QUITS made me laugh

   Not heard of the definition of refrain as burden.

   Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

3. Delightful.

   Ta Vulcan & Eileen.

4. A nice easy start to the week. Macron featured greatly on the television yesterday ( World Cup Football final ) but he was mostly po-faced.
   Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

5. Typical Monday. Like Wallyzed @1 I didn’t understand 17dn. There seemed to me to be a few oddities, particularly 3d where the definition seems wrong to me, though no doubt the dictionaries say it’s OK.

6. Anyone else try PENNYANTE instead of PIPSQUEAK? Worst of all, the check button on the Web page said it was OK. Not the first time this has happened.

   I learned a new meaning of ‘burden’ (a refrain, or a repeated phrase at the end of each stanza).

7. Thank you Eileen
   Wallyzed@1. Me neither about 17D. And for anyone else burdened by the burden of proof for REFRAIN, here’s something that might bring some relief. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Music_and_Musicians/Burden

8. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
   HUSBAND is a lovely clue! PEDAL is a bit weak, though.
   I have come across burden as REFRAIN more commonly as “fa-burden” (from the French “faux burden”).

9. I also was challenged about the second definition of PIPSQUEAK, and had to go looking to find an explanation similar to Eileen’s. Will never look at lemon pips the same way again. I was wondering how you got rid of ‘ruth’ and got money. 🙁

10. You’ve missed the A in AVENUES Eileen fyi.

11. Nice start to the week, very straightforward top half but a sort of critical mass of “guess-what-I’m-thinking” in the bottom-left that it slowed me down a bit.

    Thanks Vulcan and thanks Eileen for explaining PIPSQUEAK and REFRAIN. Can someone less dense please explain the second half of the double definition for QUITS?

12. As a ‘recovering IT consultant’ I must have recovered too far, as I didn’t recognise USB for port any more (5a)!

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

13. McBeak @11
    Informal gambling offer – “Double or quits?”

14. Double or Quits when betting with another.

15. Vaguely remembered something about burden and refrain or chorus, more than likely learnt here.
    [There was a lot of hugging on that dais, Flea @4, or did the French prez only do handshakes ..?].
    Nice Monday puzzle, thanks VnE.

16. I liked DITHERS and QUITS and, apart from PEDAL, I thought it one of Vulcan’s better puzzles.

17. Vulcan could have used the common confusion between “pedal” and “peddle” to create a better clue for the former, perhaps?

18. McBeak@11. QUITS. I had to go looking for this, after not getting a plant (leaves) A + OR +OR.
    ”In a situation where neither of two people owes the other one anything”.
    Pretty mind-bending I reckon, it terms of the clue.

19. Thanks, AlanC @10 – fixed now.

20. For burden, think of the Miller of Dee:

    There was a jolly miller once
    Lived on the River Dee.
    He worked and sang from morn til night
    No lark more bright than he
    And this the burden of his song
    Forever used to be:
    I care for nobody, no not I,
    Since nobody cares for me.

    Thanks, Eileen, for explaining PIPSQUEAK. I had the same question as McNeal about QUITS, since for “double or quits” we’d say “double or nothing” over here, but I did eventually work it out for myself.

21. Thank you, mrpenny – that was one of the instances I was struggling to remember. 😉

22. Fairly straightforward as mentioned above. Though couldn’t quite see how QUITS or ALLOWED worked. Liked both SCRAPYARD and DESTROY. Last two in were REFRAIN, which I also found hard to justify on the definitions (as with QUITS), and FLAME…

23. I thought this was a splendid demonstration of why a puzzle doesn’t have to be difficult to be thoroughly enjoyable.

    PEDAL is the only really weak clue, more than compensated for by DITHERS, REFRAIN and the wonderful HUSBAND.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen

24. mrpenny at 20, this song helped me with REFRAIN, but we were taught ‘No lark more blithe than he’.

25. Well, that was quick! Done and dusted in twenty minutes, but thoroughly enjoyable nevertheless. The northwest quarter was the last to fall. I hadn’t heard of the “squeezed for money” relation to “pipsqueak”, but it was easy to get from the crossers and definition. I didn’t know lamé was a fabric. My favourites were HUSBAND for a great surface, and SCRAPYARD.

26. I would have liked a reference to alcohol consumption in “BUSHINESS”

27. Good start to the week from Vulcan, as ever.

    I particularly liked HUSBAND for the unexpected port, DITHERS for ‘pot this red’, and SCRAP YARD for those not on the right of the Conservative Party.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

28. Geoff @25: lamé is fabric woven from shiny metallic thread. Popular among theatrical types.

    They asked a character in Hamlet how he felt about lamé undergarments. He responded, “Depends on the lamé. I’m against copper bustiers, but I’m Fortinbras.”

29. mrpenny – love it! 🙂

30. I enjoyed it – my favourite was 5a HUSBAND, so I was in synch with others’ experiences as in previous posts. I did like 10a SHALLOT and 18a SCARLET as well. Thanks Eileen for the backstory to PIPSQUEAK at 23a. I still don’t really understand 12a DRIVE which I only got from the first part of the clue and the crossers. Can anyone explain? I was also a bit puzzled (so to speak) about how 7d ALL TIME, 17d REFRAIN and 24d QUITS worked. I think I can be quite thick when it comes to Double Definitions. Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

31. Oh I had a PDM as I posted – 12a DRIVE as in DRIVEWAY?

32. Plenty to like here, as always, with Vulcan. I feel some unfairness in describing 23D as a ‘straightforward definition,’ as there is the surface reading of ‘scram, shoo’. If anything, I feel 27A is less cryptic as a definition. A pleasant start to the week. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

33. Great stuff as ever from Vulcan, and thanks Eileen. As a snooker fan I loved dithers. Tickled me pink – cue the groans.

34. Lippi @12. I will come to your defence and say USB is of course a standard/protocol and not a port: “USB Port” is the port; so it is one of those where a bit of technical knowledge may actually hinder. I realise I will now incur the wrath of those who, quite rightly, praised the lovely surface (and do also recognise that the phrase “plug it in to the USB” would be understood by most)

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

35. Once again on a Monday the Grahniad failed to upload either the quiptic or the main puzzle to the internet, so overseas solvers such as I had nothing. But glad all you guys had fun.

    PS: if anyone reading this knows who’s ear to tweak at the Grauniad, this happens too often.

36. Can’t be easy to devise a puzzle that’s witty and devious but at the same time easy enough to fit into the Monday slot so hats off to Vulcan. Particularly liked FREES UP and SCRAPYARD. Thanks to Eileen too.

37. As McBeak @11 says, there was a lot of “guess what I’m thinking” here, as there often is with Vulcan, but it’s all good sport, and nothing held me up too long. In fact, I rather liked the punning cryptic definition for NATURAL.

    Thanks, Vulcan, and thanks for the blog, Eileen – like others, I appreciated your explanation for the other meaning of REFRAIN.

38. Agree with Gervase@23: not difficult but witty and enjoyable: liked DOSSHOUSE, HUSBAND, COUCH, DITHERS and SCRAPYARD.

    Memo to self: other countries beside the USA have Presidents! I was watching snooker instead of football yesterday, which is why I got DITHERS before MACON.

39. A fine entertainment so thanks both. Like paddymelon@18 I was confident that something like ‘orora’ would turn out to be a leafy thingy but no. The reveal button gave the rather good QUITS so a dnf for me (hey ho the nonny oh). But I wasn’t getting PIPSQUEAK anytime soon anyway.

    Jina@31: precisely. And ‘ALL-TIME record’ would be a familiar phrase to most. For REFRAIN and QUITS see other contributors here.

40. Yep, blithe down here too, JB @24 …

41. Colin Lewis @35
    Must be a problem at your end. I printed off both puzzles without any difficulty.

42. @muffin – I do the crosswords on an iphone, so it’s a issue with the mobile version, I guess.

43. Colin Lewis @42: I solved this on my iPhone in Rome, so the problem seems more local

44. DaveJ@34, I’m of the opinion that, in I.T., nouns or noun phrases ( as Universal Serial Bus ) can be ‘transferred’ to adjectives and precede the word ‘port’. This can be common where a BUS is involved ( electronics for ‘anywhere to anywhere’ with easy add-on manoeuvres ). Thus, I.T-ers talk about Lightning ports ( Apple ), Firewire ports, IEEE ports and even ( this time an original adjective ) parallel port. IMHO, Vulcan’s clueing here is good and proper. HUSBAND, in fact, was my fave.

45. Was I the only one in 5a HUSBAND who thought that “port” was going to be Rio?

    Have we got a mini-theme here? “Operation Wilfred” (I now know thanks to Eileen’s google link) was an element of the Phoney War.

    pm@9 Ruth? Money?

    Nice puzzle. Finished it all last night, as I usually do on Sunday nights. Thanks to Vulcan for the fun and Eileen for the excellent links and explanations. I always enjoy it when you’re at the helm.

46. I thought that PLACE as a clue for HOUSE was a bit weak in a clue with a definition that was obviously some kind of house.

47. Being thick, but still don’t get DRIVE (12A). Can anyone PLEASE explain?

48. Hi Flea @44 you seem to have just repeated my point that we need to add the word Port to the protocol to get the sticky out bit and therefore you cannot *strictly* interchange the two?
    I agree it’s a great clue; I was being ultra ultra picky

49. DD @47
    The drive is the private paved area outside your house where you might park your car overnight; also what you might do in your car.
    Not the strongest clue!

50. Sorry DD @47 – I should have acknowledged JinA’s PDM @31. 😉

51. Thanks Eileen and Vulcan.

    I took 23D as a double definition: pedal as a noun and as a verb.

52. I did not parse 23ac and 24d (loi), and now I realise that I did not parse REFRAIN = burden either.

    Liked SCRAPYARD.

    New for me: PHONEY WAR.

    Thanks, both.

53. Very late to this – it’s been a manic day.

    But just wanted to pay tribute to HUSBAND – what a brilliant clue!

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

54. Just finished over breakfast this morning, so no one will see this. A disrupted day via train and pub and bus to a hostel in the Lake District, so never had the single-minded concentration I usually need to get on the setter’s wavelength. In other words, the solve expanded to fill the time available.

    Those who seemingly skated through this are in danger of damning Vulcan with faint praise. As one who spent a bit longer reading and re-reading the clues, I reckon there was quite a lot to enjoy and appreciate. I needed all the crossers before BUSHINESS (very funny) and SCRAPYARD became obvious, and there were others that had me fooled, with surfaces pointing to something deviously cryptic when there was a straightforward answer lurking in plain sight.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

55. Doesn’t ‘hast’ just mean ‘have’, not ‘have you’? (5D)

56. Peter Ball @55, know what you mean, but ‘hast’, unlike ‘have’, can only be the 2nd person singular of the verb ‘to have’. In many languages (Latin for example, and some of its daughter languages such as Spanish and Italian) the conjugated form of the verb alone is used, with no need for the pronoun ‘you/thou’, because the verb ending already makes it clear. So “Tienes un coche?” in Spanish would be the equivalent of “Do you have a car?” in English.

    I was struggling to think of a similar example in English, but eventually found one here (it’s in the first column, but thou must scroll down a bit):

    Jacobus de Voragine, in twelve arguments pathetic, succinct, and elegant, has described the benefits of marriage. They are these :-
    1. Hast thou means? Thou hast one to keep and increase it.
    2. Hast none? Thou hast one to help to get some…

57. essexboy @56, thank you so much for that – you’ve explained the syntax beautifully.

    As I underlined ‘you’ in the blog, I felt in my bones that I’d come across it in English but couldn’t instantly find an example (I didn’t have your patience – or time, at that stage) and, when no one else commented, I decided it must be more familiar than I thought. I didn’t see comment 55 until I caught up with yours. (Although, as you know, bloggers receive emails of all comments on their blog, for some reason mine go straight into my trash folder and I don’t always go looking for them after the day of the puzzle.)

    (I enjoyed reading the benefits of marriage. 😉 )

58. [Thanks Eileen @57 – and I’m kind of relieved to know that my sometimes late, and occasionally exasperating, comments on your blogs don’t clog up your main mailbox! 🙂 And in case our paths don’t cross again in the next few days, Happy Christmas!]

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