Guardian Cryptic 28,992 by Vulcan

94 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,992 by Vulcan”

1. Well, that was easy. Done in fifteen minutes. Good fun, and no obscurities to hamper progress. The only one I’d not heard of was TRIPLE SEC.

2. GDU@1
   Looks like “UP for ‘at university'” is settled now. 😀

3. Similar experience to GDU@1, except maybe he doesn’t drink margaritas.

   Slight typo in blog, in 28a it’s RE disappearing.

   Good fun. Tx V&L

4. Thanks, Vulcan and loonapick!

   Liked FLY A KITE (seen this before in some form), RENTAL (interesting def) and STYX (doubt there will be any work here for the homophone raid party).

5. Nice and easy and no complaints.
   Thanks, Vulcan and loonapick!

6. Yes, KVa @ 2, I guess it’s now part of crossword lore.

7. A not too difficult one to kick off the week. Fortunately I was reading about the Long Island iced tea cocktail (sounds lethal) this morning which mentioned the previously unheard of TRIPLE SEC. I wondered if ‘flat charge’ for RENTAL, which I took (maybe wrongly) as a definition by example, should have been followed by a question mark.

   I liked the double def + wordplay construction for RYE.

   Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

8. I thought FLY A KITE was a dd,
   Good fun,

9. Sorry, I see now.

10. Most of these slipped in fairly easily today with just a few head-scratchers to challenge the grey matter. I liked the aforementioned 19a RENTAL (maybe you are right, WordPlodder@7, that a question mark may have enhanced that one) and 6d STYX, and also ticked 12d REPARATIONS. Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

11. Might it be possible to justify the lack of QM by viewing RENTAL as an example of a flat rather than a variable charge ? The rental is a fixed amount per period in contrast to, say, the energy bill which is dependent on use. It’s a possible double meaning I saw when solving – that would allow Vulcan to dispense with QM?

    REPARATIONS and STYX were on my list, too, JinA, and I would add CO-OPERATE for the craftsman and ULTRAVIOLET for the cracking anagram.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

12. Yes, a gentle but pleasing trot. I only got RYE 2 ways, as I don’t know the port (or its town). In 22a I thought “worried” as a synonym for “ate” a bit loose. “Ate at“, perhaps …

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

13. I parsed 27 as a double definition of RYE—WHISKEY, PORT (the town of Rye has a harbour)—plus WRY as a homophone. Perhaps I’m just over-analysing.

14. Thanks V and L. I have one minor quibble, and others more sartorially expert may disagree… but I don’t think a sash is a scarf?

15. Willbar @13: you are not over-analysing – but confirming what loonapick has said in the blog – two defs and a homophone.

    The Other Mark @14: I make NO claims at all to sartorial expertise – far from it – but Chambers defines sash as A band or scarf worn round the waist or over the shoulder

16. I’m posting before 8am so this must be fairly straightforward but I did enjoy it. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.
    BTW I’m not sure 19ac needs a QM.

17. This post just for the sake of joining in. Strictly speaking, the village of Rye Harbour is the port, Rye itself having been silted out of port-dom many years ago. It was a Cinq Port, of course, and is home to the Ypres Inn, known to all as ‘wipers’. Now THAT might be source of a humorous crossword clue!

18. As easy as the Guardian’s cryptic ever gets. Tried solving in number order for the challenge. Didn’t quite manage it.

    Have very fond memories of Rye – the town, not the harbour.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

19. Enjoyable. Liked ULTRAVIOLET, REPARATIONS, GLADSTONE and MAKESHIFT.

    Ta Vulcan & loonapick.

20. I don’t see any need for a question mark for RENTAL. The charge you pay for your flat is the rental. I liked CO-OPERATE but I think I have seen the same wordplay somewhere else recently?? Thanks, both.

21. Shouldn’t 18a be “old monarch”?

22. Morning tea still warm when the pencil was put down on this one.

    Looking back at ASSAY, however, I now struggle to find a usage of as used to mean for example. No doubt someone will come up with one.

    Many thanks both.

23. Yes, even I completed this at speed. Many thanks Vulcan and loonapick (got the spelling right this time!)

24. I found this very easy, but with nothing to quibble about at all. Favourites CO-OPERATE and RYE.

    William@22, the letter W is sometimes silent, as /for example in “wry”.

    Petert@20 – you pay other charges for your flat – eg Council Tax; plus you may own rather than rent it. But as PM@11 points out, the QM can be dispensed with anyway by taking a different meaning of “flat”.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

25. Vulcan BAITed us READERS with his SOFTER ASPECT to PIG OUT upon and REVEL in, while noting GLADSTONE in an answer and BAGS in a part construction. Didn’t take SO LONG to have A GO at this.

    Pooh Sticks bridge and Rye are nice days out from where I live.

    Will place an earworm, although there is as much video as audio in the content.

    https://youtu.be/BA-g8YYPKVo

    Thank you Vulcan and loonapick.

26. A pleasant Monday puzzle. Bonangman @12: “eat” on its own can mean “worry”, as in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (good film by the way).

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

27. Really enjoyed this even if the difficulty level wasn’t too taxing. Liked the idea of the article “an” becoming “a” in 2d. Thought ULTRAVIOLET excellent. Read somewhere that the BAGPIPES were invented by the French, tried out by the Irish, and the Scots still haven’t seen the joke yet. Before I get into a fight with those North of Hadrian’s Wall let me say that I absolutely love the sound of fifes and drums. Many thanks Vulcan and Loonapick…

28. Only minor quibble is at 7d: I don’t think of “make” as implying just in time. I can make a train, a connecting flight, etc., with time to spare. If it is only minutes or seconds to spare, then I “just make” it.

29. No quibbles from me, just a straightforward Monday. I missed the homophone in RYE – thanks loonapick. Don Maclean seems to think that there is a difference between ‘whiskey’ and ‘rye’ in his famous song, American Pie. Or perhaps he just needed the rhyme.

30. A good, straightforward Monday puzzle.

    I liked the PERSECUTED and ULTRAVIOLET anagrams. For the liqueur, given the fodder, ?E? seemed destined to be SEC, so it then fell into place.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

31. All very nice and straightforward, although a couple of anagrams I didn’t spot were anagrams at first (does ‘[fodder] rip’ quite work crucigrammatically?). Like William @22 I can’t figure out as=for example. ‘Ate’ for ‘worried’ doesn’t quite work, but it’s so common that I think it’s just part of the furniture now.

    Liked the craftsman in CO-OPERATE, the disappearing ghost in ASPECT, and the anagrams for PERSECUTED and ULTRAVIOLET.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

32. Thanks Tuan Jim @26, I see the error of my ways.

    If Rye is a Cinque Port then it has an Australian connection: our longest-serving Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Sir Robert Gordon Menzies
    KT, AK, CH, QC, FAA, FRS, followed up his last stint as Prime Minister with 12 or so years’ tenure of the office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

33. I found this as easy as everyone else with some fun clues.

    UP meaning at university is an old usage: older English literature is littered with characters up at Oxford, or sent down from Cambridge, from Sherlock Holmes stories to Bertie Wooster’s friends and Dorothy Sayers’ characters. Georgette Heyer uses that terminology, so unless it’s one of her traps for the lazy copyists of her genre, she researched it as being current in the early 1800s.

34. The SOED includes for UP, “To or in any place regarded as important, e.g. London, a university, a capital city etc. 1475”.

35. Shirl @18 if 18a needs to be “old monarch” then 16d should be “old Prime Minister”

36. I thought I got a PB at 13:08 today but when I looked here at the blog I realised I’d got 13A wrong as I’d put ‘essay’ instead of ‘assay’. Aargh! Anyone else do the same?

37. Trollope et al. have characters going up to town (London) all the time, and football teams are always said to be ‘up for the Cup’, traditionally held in London. In regard to university, an Oxbridge undergraduate guilty of a serious misdemeanour would be ‘sent down’, implying that they would be ‘up’ at university in the first place.

    @36: LTL I made the same mistake 🙁

38. beaulieu @24: Ah yes, well done.

39. LongTimeLurker @36: Yes, me. I finished this in around twenty minutes, and I got a bit careless. PS and yes, it was very much on the easy side (though well crafted), but it is important to have a range, and the tradition for Mondays should hold. With thanks to both.

40. LongTimeLurker – I too had unparsed ‘essay’ at 13a which just goes to show one can be over confident.

41. Railways in England always have up and down lines, defining the former as to London which led to confusion with, for example, Bristol to Derby main line and I can’t remember how that was resolved!

42. manehi, thanks for parsing CO-OPERATE. I didn’t think of “cooper.”

    A SASH isn’t a scarf. One goes around your waist or across your chest, the other goes around your neck. Chambers or no Chambers, I don’t think anybody out here in the English-speaking world uses one word to refer to the other.

    Petert@20 I think RENTAL is a dbe and therefore needs a question mark. You can pay rent for a flat, but also for a house or a car or an office or a party venue.

    Nice stroll for a Monday. Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

43. The hyphen and word length of “CO-OPERATE(2-7)” seem to violate the Guardian and Observer style guide, which says this:
    Co-operative Bank (abbreviation: Co-op bank), Co-operative Group, Co-operative party
    Co-op as in “I still shop at the Co-op”
    co-operative movement when talking about Robert Owen, the Rochdale Pioneers, etc
    co-operative (abbreviation: co-op) as in a housing co-operative
    cooperative, cooperate, cooperation when used in a general sense, as in “they were surprisingly cooperative when asked to work longer hours for less money”
    It’s a funny one. Hyphens usually don’t last long. E-mail quickly became email. I think this one persists in Britain because without it we’re reminded of barrel-makers and Tommy Cooper (and Henry, too).

44. Ronald @27 bagpipes have existed, and still exist, all over Europe since medieval times, and possibly before then. (One of the two German names for them is Dudelsäcke, one of my favourite German words). “Typically Scottish” seems fair enough to me, but it rather irks me that so many British people think they are exclusively Scottish. Even among the Scottish, very few realise that Highland pipes aren’t the only type of Scottish bagpipe.

45. Ate=worried is a crossword staple that I never fail to miss (likewise eat=worry). Whether or not it works for you, all the setters use it. Also failed the wry=RYE homophone and the hidden SOFTER. I didn’t find this as much of a walkover as everyone else – maybe I’m just distracted by wondering how much it’s going to cost to get the car through it’s MOT. (look at that: I know I typed its, but autocockup “fixed” it for me!)

46. 27d: Rye is Canadian whisky and it should be spelled correctly in the clue. Accept no imitations!

47. An enjoyable puzzle.
    Thanks, Vulcan and loonapick.

48. [I have been wondering whether to spend some of my spare time writing a program to give these puzzles a difficulty score. This will make me feel not so bad if I’m having a hard time solving, and deflate my ego if I find it easy. However, this all rides on the assumption that puzzles have absolute difficulty levels. The fact that almost all commenters so far say this one is on the easier side supports the view. Also, the fact that we have Vulcan and Imogen says that the distinction can be deliberately contrived. But don’t hold your collective breath – I know how to do it, but it’s a big job.

    Puzzles like Sudoku are published with difficulty ratings. If I did such a thing for cryptics, would you be interested in seeing the assessments, or should I keep them to myself?]

49. Thanks for the blog, a very suitable Monday puzzle . GEMINI reminded of the old Guardian setters , very much not Monday style. ULTRAVIOLET a neat anagram but the clue is a bit anthropocentric. ASPECT was clever.
    A very mini theme- as Phlegyas ferries you across the STYX he says ” Welcome to Hell , here are your BAGPIPES ” .

50. Yes, nice and straightforward, as a Monday should be.
    I know Rye Harbour well having spent many hours birdwatching there. I saw my first Pectoral Sandpiper there far too many years ago. Cracking rarity for the UK.
    Thanks both.

51. [ AlanC @19 I was number 1 in Cyclops again today, current score 13 – 7 to me ]

52. This all slipped down pleasantly, as others have said. I almost overthought 1ac because the words ‘smoker’ and ‘Scottish’ in the same clue made me think ‘lum’ but I soon saw the error of my ways.

    I agree with The Other Mark and Valentine that a SASH is not a scarf, despite what the ‘good book’ says. Sometimes I think setters deliberately look out Chambers’ most contrarian definitions just to annoy us 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

53. Dr. WhatsOn@48 do you intend to use the comments in your assessment? This will give a skewed data set. I am sure a fair number of people find nearly every Guardian puzzle very easy but do not say so in the comments.

54. Roz @49 – My grandad fought at Passchendaele and used to tell me that the reason that the Scots were such fearless fighters was that there was no retreat with that row driving you into battle from behind.
    Also, wasn’t it Charon who ferried people across the Styx?

55. HYD@54 maybe Charon as well , lots of myths of course. I was thinking of Dante.
    We had RARA AVIS recently and you said you did not get it but should have been easier for you than anyone else.

56. Re sash / scarf, my 1970s SOED has “Sash: 2. A scarf, worn by men, either over one shoulder or round the waist. Also, a similar article worn round the waist by women and children. 1681.”

57. [Dr. WhatsOn @48. Re establishing a difficulty score. May I recommend that you open this as a new topic on General Discussion?]

58. Dr.WhatsOn @48: Unless it’s clearly on the easy side (like this one) or really challenging (Paul on a “bad” day) then I’m not sure there would be much agreement as to what is a two out of five, or a three or a four. Perhaps it’s better just to consult this blog as it soon becomes clear what most people think…I rather like starting out with no prior knowledge: except the reputation of the individual setter of course.

59. Record solve time of about nine minutes for me today.

    Frankie G, the word cooperate long ago lost its hyphen in the US in all contexts. Even the shortened co-op is usually seen spelled coop–you know from context not to pronounce it like a chicken coop. (Unless it’s the Harvard Coop–that one’s a bit of a shibboleth.) The New Yorker is the last major publication left that insists on a diaeresis, spelling it coöperate. But never a hyphen.

60. FrankieG @43 / mrpenney @59 – re the hyphen in CO-OPERATIVE – you’ve reminded me of something.

    If Cooperate were a heavy rock band, they would definitely be spelt Coöperate.

    Nice puzzle, thanks V & L.

61. I got bogged down for a while on 1a because I thought KIPPER had to fit in there somehow

62. Me @59: I guess we’d be in trouble if a bunch of poultry ever got together and decided to collectively run a grocery, The Chicken Coop.

63. Managed to complete a Guardian crossword. Perhaps I should retire at the top. (Last Monday hardly got started.) Came here to check the parsing of one or two clues and enjoy the inevitable “I finished this whilst my coffee cooled” comments.
    Roz@53 – I am sure there are a far greater number of Guardian readers who find nearly every Guardian cryptic near to impossible and none of them blog here either!

64. Nice quick solve for us … our quickest ever! And some fun clues. LongTimeLurker@36 we also put “essay” instead of “assay”. It was our LOI so rushing to finish … should have thought about it a bit more!

65. Marginally more challenging than the quiptic but not much in it, a very Monday-ish start to the week (hey, it’s good that Monday has some positive connotations, no?)

    Slight eyebrow twitch at ‘rip’ as anagrind in TRIPLE SEC.

    Thanks both!

66. DrWhatsOn @48 – I like the idea of a difficulty rating (in a sense, the G supposedly has a rudimentary rating in that a quiptic is supposed to be more accessible than a regular cryptic, but obviously that doesn’t always work). However, I imagine the subjectivity involved might render it only of 100% use for an audience of one 🙂 I think Sudoku, being mathematically based, would be easier to assign an objective score to, based on permutations and whatnot. Crosswords, in their creative beauty and with every solver’s mind different (in particular with reference to GK) – perhaps not! But give it a go!

    [ As an aside: I am an amateur setter over on MyCrossword.co.uk and have two accounts intended to aim at two distinct difficulty levels. I have my own (arbitrary but strict) rules on what clue devices and word types I will use for each setter persona – and yet every now and again I will get a solver telling me that a puzzle is ‘easier/harder than usual’ and others disagreeing. So even as a setter trying to deliberately engineer a difficulty level, one can’t always pitch it at the same level for everyone. ]

67. They have a star difficulty rating on Big Dave’s Telegraph site, but it just pisses people off. A blogger grades a puzzle one star (easy) and it causes no end of row as to why it was so graded. “This took me all day, ridiculously graded” etc…
    I would steer well clear.

68. [Thanks for the feedback. I do agree that the majority of cases may fall in the murky middle. And to Roz@53 in particular, the assessment should be relative to the training data, so for example there may well be a different assessed difficulty for G commenters than for fifteensquared posters. An interesting outcome would be to see how much of an improvement can be made from examining the puzzle over using the setter’s id alone, since I think we mostly all have a baseline expectation from each setter.]

69. [Actually, it would be no harder to generate a personalized assessment for all the frequent posters, although the error bars would possibly be bigger.]

70. Dr W the point I was making was that people who find the Guardian puzzle too easy will often just comment on some aspects of the puzzle and not mention the lack of difficulty. People who find a puzzle too hard will usually bleat about it .
    The “too easy” comments are usually self-censored .

71. [Roz @51: doesn’t seem like you have much competition with Cyclops 🙂 ].

72. {AlanC , it is very exclusive, also the FT has a brand new monthly Sunday puzzle, I had Number 1 in the very first blog. This counts for 10 , see the small print in the rules. ]

73. [Roz: you are Man City to my KPR].

74. I have often wondered whether the setters who compile the Guardian Cryptic ever get slightly upset or miffed when people on here comment/complain that the Quick Crossword that day was harder/took longer. I’m imagining that a setter puts a considerable more thought and energy and guile into the Cryptic. But I might well be wrong…

75. [ My lead will not last long , Cyclops only once a fortnight and you are dominating the Guardian charts }

76. Ronald I think that Vulcan makes a considerable effort to make Monday very accessible , like Everyman. The Monday is a great tradition, this one is very well set, I would have loved this when I was learning cryptics.

77. Tyro @63: it’s a hobby with a very slow learning curve. It took me many years before I was proficient at it, and I’m sure that’s true for every regular commenter here.

    EssexBoy @60: finally got a chance to watch the clip–I LOLed.

78. Regarding the scarf/ sash issue, couldn’t one argue that the item of clothing could be the same, but its name changes according to how it is worn?

79. Re difficulty ranking, Dr Wh, wouldn’t you need hard data, like solving times? [I started out doing the Times ones. Reading their blog, where most posters give their times, quickly placed me as a plodder. When I occasionally came in under 60 minutes, their speedsters would be sub-10 and heaps more would be sub-20 or 30]

80. Dr Whatson@69 and earlier posts.
    I’m sure there’s (another?) Ph D for you or someone there. The University of Buckingham study looked at the characteristics of solvers. It would be interesting to analyse what makes a more or less accessible clue or setter. As you’ve pointed out in today’s comments, there is the common ground between setter and solver, and solver and solver, but the differences are also interesting, eg when we say I’m just not on Setter X’s wavelength, or I find Setter Y really difficult. And then you’ve got setters, like Vulcan, who can set in different styles and with different levels of difficulty. I think this is one of the reasons why Guardian solvers like to comment on a particular setter by name. An analysis of perceived difficulty and cluing style would provide fascinating insights into the dark art of compiling cryptics.

81. Gif@79 the beauty of machine learning is that the developer doesn’t need to know what the pertinent features are, as long as they, or others that are correlated with them, are included in the mix. There are I think enough mentions of “quick” or “took ages” etc. to do the job; whether indeed there is enough information will be one thing that is learned by this exercise. If all that comes to naught, I could use my own subjective take on past puzzles, which I’ve found tends to comport with community sentiment, but I’d prefer the whole process, from solving to scoring, be automatic.

82. Dr WhatsOn@48 et seq: My difficulty metric would be the number of “Reveal Letter” hints it takes for me to complete the grid. Today’s was a rare zero. Everyman and Quiptic are in my sweet spot, and finishing a weekday with no cheats is a treat. Rare, but delicious.

    Several distilleries in the US offer Port Rye, whiskey aged in American oak barrels, then in used port wine barrels.

83. Dr. WhatsOn:

    Turbolegs, one of the bloggers for the FT puzzles, in his preamble gives a rating (FF for fun factor, DD for degree of difficulty) for each puzzle he blogs. If you could select a representative sample of solvers on 15squared, you could ask them to rate each puzzle accordingly. The absolute mean ratings would be meaningless, but the relative ratings might be instructive.

84. Ok, then it sounds like a project, Dr Wh!

85. Turbolegs who blogs FT puzzles here always includes his assessment of degree of difficulty. Not sure how scientific it is, but nobody ever comments about it.

86. Far too competitive for me, solvers out to demonstrate to others about how quick and clever they are with solving the daily puzzle. There all kinds of helpful cheats and reveals on line, anyway, so how can anybody trust the validity of these superfast claims. Give me pleasurable enjoyment every time, never mind how long it takes me. I’m only talking about Cryptic Crosswords here, naturally…

87. I’m not sure how useful or interesting a difficulty rating would be, necessarily being a post hoc assessment.

    Anyway, this one was lots of fun, which is what matters most to me. Thanks, Vulcan and Loonapick.

88. Roz@72, where do I find the FT sunday monthly? I couldn’t find the puzzle online or the blog here.

89. Greg@88 , it is FT 17,318 Sunday January 29th. It should be on here on a previous page, they seem to be in calendar order.

90. mrpenney@59:
    Coöperate with a diaeresis? Well I never!
    The New Yorker style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928 said once, in the elevator, that he was on the verge of changing it and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died. This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.
    mrpenney@62: ?

91. That ? shoiuld have been a smiley face.

92. essexboy@60 & mrpenney@77: Very funny!
    At Ronnie Barker’s funeral they doubled the usual number of acolytes so that there would be four candles.

93. 🙂

94. Possibly the easiest cryptic ever for this Texan. Thanks

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