Guardian 29,004 / Vulcan

64 comments on “Guardian 29,004 / Vulcan”

1. Quick solve. The long anagram was very neat and I liked OMAN and FLANNEL. Spent too long trying to make a country out of ‘Vigour I am ‘.

   Ta Vulcan & Eileen.

2. A gentle start to the week, with one or two chewier clues. I liked OXBOW and VIDAL. It took a while for the penny to drop re the latter. A Gore Vidal quote that sticks in my mind is: “every time a friend succeeds something in me dies”. Which suggests he lacked an understanding of real friendship. With thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

3. Thanks Eileen for making sense of MADE SENSE for me. That makes it one of my favourite clues now. Also liked BRIDE and the penny drop moment for ‘Gore’. Thanks Vulcan for an enjoyable start to the week.

4. Alan C@1, you and me both with vigour I am, I even put it through an anagram solver to make sure it wasn’t possible. But I still solved this in what I think of as a Quiptic time and 33% faster than the Quiptic.

   I often struggle with Vulcan’s cryptic definitions, but I wrote in COME OFF IT and that long anagram.

   Thanks to Eileen and Vulcan.

5. This was good fun, and easier than today’s Quiptic, I thought. Vigo and Tonbridge are two places I’d not heard of. Learnt a new meaning for flannel (evasive talk). And I only found uncle/pawnbroker deep in my distant memory.

   Thanks Vulcan & Eileen.

6. A nice gentle start to the week with cricket rearing its head again ( 1d ) after many days’ rest.

   Liked OXBOW especially after teaching river bends and lake formation to my kids in earlier years.

   Eileen – you have indeed been a busy CONTRACTOR, COVERing 15^2. Three on the bounce !

   Thought the ‘wait around altar finally for her? ‘ clue ( 7d ) was clever. It MADE SENSE that the BRIDE maybe UPTIGHT, but certainly not WINDSWEPT nor UNCLEAN would OBLITERATE her former TITLE to A BETTER one and become a REGULATED “Mrs”. But was she a VIRGO in ROSE-TINTED SPECTACLES in a TONBRIDGE SCENE and on the COVER of BRIDE magazine ?

   Here’s an earworm for general entertainment and musical history :

   https://youtu.be/ZZK5tH7J_0g

   Thank you Eileen and Vulcan.

7. Always happy to read your blogs, Eileen!

   I did not parse 8d.

   New for me FLANNEL = evasive talk (a handy word to use regarding politicians).

   Thanks, both.

8. I never quite know if it’s because I’ve already warmed up on the Quiptic, but this took me far less time than Hectence today. Getting the long anagram quickly certainly helped – a nice gentle start to the week.

   Thanks Vulcan and Eileen (I hope you get a break now!)

9. Vulcan on a Monday was my saviour when starting on my cryptic journey. I am gently trying to encourage my dad to take up cryptics as a new interest in later life. This will be perfect for when I visit him later today. Thank you Vulcan

10. I remember oxbow lakes from geography in secondary school as well as various moraines and “basket of eggs topography”.
    I had the same question mark for WINDSWEPT as you Eileen, and also wondered whether Gore (VIDAL) needed a DBE indicator.
    Cheers

11. Thank you, Eileen.

    Re FLANNEL, ours is an 11C church, and the wall of the porch bears a lengthy inscription with instructions to the vicar on how to distribute the collection money. It includes, “£1 7s 6d is to be distributed among the poor of the parish in the form of flannel.” This was presumably so that children benefited from the clothes made from the cloth rather than the parents who may have been tempted to convert the cash into gin.

    I’ve often thought this may have been the origin of the phrase, “a load of old flannel”, meaning a sop for something really useful or desired.

12. re 6across, and Tim@10 above, this film stands up pretty well (recently on Talking Pictures)
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036244/reference/

13. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
    After putting the Quiptic aside only about 1/3 completed, I was beginning to think I had forgotten how to do crosswords. Thankfully this restored my confidence!

14. I share the feeling of the room about the difficulty level today. I enjoy the cryptic definitions, where a little lateral thinking is required, and a penny drop is the reward.

    Nho “uncle” for “pawnbroker”, but what else could fill that light? I too was checking for a national anagram for “I am vigour”. I had trouble tearing my mind away from “hoard” as “buried valuables”.

    Pedant’s frolic: 14d I would parse as GRAPES HOT rather than GRAPE’S HOT, as the plural of “fruit” is also “fruit”, and for me “grape’s hot” should be clued “fruit’s cooked”. (Is that discrepancy the reason for Eileen’s question mark?)

    Thanks to Vulcan and the indefatigable Eileen.

15. Hi all – I haven’t posted here before but I had to share my pain of getting stuck for some time in the SW corner of this because of incorrectly but very confidently putting in KINDRED for 14ac. “Numbers of species” – KIND (doesn’t quite work but seemed just about viable) then RED for left, with “common” as the definition as in “kindred spirits”

16. bonangman @14 – you’re right: that was rather careless. I’ll amend the blog.

17. Flatfrog @15 – ingenious! Welcome to the site.

18. Nice to have the easy Monday puzzle back. A pleasant breakfast solve.

19. bonagman@14: I knew “uncle” for pawnbroker from some of the dialog in Golddiggers of 1933, an early Busby Berkeley extravaganza that I have seen dozens of times, where the broke showgirls talk about “uncle” having everything.

    I thought from the start that 6d had to be Oman, but I still don’t understand it (ditto with 8d, although the “winds” part seems pretty straightforward). Despite that, I blew 6a at the end, where I put in “elbow” instead until I finally broke down and did a check. 1d also a bit iffy for me. And we’re supposed to know the name of some Kentish town?

    I had the sense of 9a from the start, but it took a while for the “Gore” part to kick in.

    I never heard of Vigo, but the “sign” reference coupled with the altaR clue was pretty unmistakeable.

    The rest were pretty straightforward, though I needed a few of the crossers to get the long anagram.

    –gpm

20. I’m also with the group that kept trying to make 10a into the name of a country.

    –gpm

21. And I viewed 14d as GRAPE + SHOT, equating SHOT with cooked.

    –gpm

22. Good Monday solve, although I started surprisingly slowly with the first few Across clues left blank at the beginning.

    I’m still struggling a bit with the explanation of WINDSWEPT. Wind could be one blow and sweep can be another, but as Eileen says maybe it is just the look after being blown a few times (?). [While I was looking for synonyms of weep, I found this: How much better it is to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!
    William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.]

    I thought ROSE-TINTED SPECTACLES was a super anagram, enjoyed the BRIDE at the altar, and the surfaces for GRAPESHOT and UNCLEAN.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

23. Am I the only one unfamiliar with OXBOW as a river bend? I only know the definition as a wetland that has become detached from the flow of the river that made it.

24. Jacob @23; Chambers: 2.A horseshoe-shaped bend in a river (forming an ox-bow lake when the neck is pierced and the bend cut off).

25. I like the low spark of the high heeled Vulcan but this flopped for me.Write in

26. I’m with the majority here – this was a breeze compared with the Quiptic. Nicely clued, though – I particularly enjoyed BRIDE and TONBRIDGE.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen

27. PS : I was another who tried *(VIGOURIAM) before the final crossing N showed that this was not to be.. Nice piece of deception 🙂

28. Nothing much to add. I’m another who parsed it as GRAPE SHOT (it’s shot–it’s cooked–it’s irreparably broken), but GRAPES HOT works better. Not a big fan of the clue for MADE SENSE, since “set of directions” doesn’t give you any directions as to which directions. But WINDSWEPT just about works for me as cryptic, the surface sounds more like It’s talking about blows from a fist than blows from the wind. (But why a series of blows?)

29. mrpenney@28!
    I initially took WINDS as a series of blows, but could not progress much with WEPT. Then checked if W, E, P and T represented Westerlies, Easterlies, Polar and Trade (We can stretch as much as we like. Can’t we?). No luck there.

    A simpler explanation could be to say that a windswept place is bound to have a series of blows.
    If we see it as a cryptic definition, it’s just about cryptic as you say.

    Liked ENVY, COVER, GRAPESHOT and SCENE.
    Thanks, Vulcan and Eileen!

30. THank goodness for Vulcan afrer last week’s Monday puzzle shattered my already fragile confidence. Just the right level for a beginner like me. Held up by 9 across – thought it was the beginning of Vidal plus something else and the only word I could think of was video – and Americans used to refer to TV as the tube. My fault for over thinking it. Fortunately then solved 3 down.
    Uncle for pawnbroker is used in Walter Greenwood’s books “Love on the Dole” and “There was a Time” – both still worth a read.
    Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

31. Pretty much a write-in though I hadn’t been aware that there was an alternative spelling for abettor.
    Overall I’m with everyone else here. I’m all in favour of a gentle start to the week but the difficulty level here was more quiptic than cryptic. Does it matter? Probably not, I suppose.

32. Enjoyed it. For once, everything seemed to slot in quite neatly without too much head-scratching. I even knew 28a TONBRIDGE in Kent! I thought these were smooth clues from Vulcan -thank you! Great to see you three days in a row, Eileen; your blogs are always welcome.

33. There’s a place called Vigo about 10 miles north of Tonbridge with ref to 28a and 21d.

34. Thanks both (and Eileen you now have, I hope, an extended break to restore balance).

    I had a similar experience to muffin, Jina etc – a welcome relief from the betimes tortuous offerings from others on other days (not complaining, just saying) and a much needed boost to the confidence.

    UNCLEAN reminded me of the (talk about tortuous) story I like to tell about when in my youth I would be sent out to call my uncle Ian in for his dinner: I would be given a bell to ring and instructions to call his name clearly.

    Well yes, that is my coat – why do you ask?…

35. Didn’t have the egg timer on for this, though earlier in the day I did – for a perfectly boiled egg. Rather liked the big rodent turning to that Kent town, reminding me of another rough beast somewhere, slouching it’s way towards Bethelehem…

36. This will be no consolation to the diehard group who register a reflex objection to any cricketing reference as being too obscure … but 28a TONBRIDGE is perhaps best known as the place where the great England batter (note the preferred modern noun) Colin Cowdrey learned his cricket, before he entered the Upper House as Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge. It happens that the school has produced more postwar England cricketers than any other, including a Cowdrey son. Those were the days before the modern phenomenon of the ‘cricket scholarship’, which took current superstars Joe Root and Harry Brook to their respective fee-paying schools, so much more highly-resourced, with intensive coaching, than any, these days, in the state sector. A lot of sporting and educational and social meanings are embedded in that narrative… Indeed, this funnelling of cricket talent into the private sector, plus the foolish removal of cricket from free-to-air TV as of 2006, may help to explain the ongoing resistance of some on this site to cricket references as being too esoteric. But cricket references will no doubt continue – please keep them coming! – and some will go on complaining…

37. To pick a nit, Oman is a sultanate.

38. I was another wondering about the little known (I wonder why!) eastern European country of Mirugovia.
    Also, to add to mrpenney@28, and if I am to be pedantic, ESENSE Is not a set, it’s a bag, or multiset.

39. monkeypuzzler@ 33: Is that the place near the edge of the North Downs with the beastly great hill? It always seemed to come towards the end of our Youth Hosteling bike ride when we were exhausted. It had a gradient near to 1 in 4 I seem to recall.

40. It is indeed William @39! The A227 running north-east from the M20 near Trosley Country Park. It must be about 10 years since I last managed to cycle up it. Too much intimidating traffic for me now.

41. Tunbridge is quite well known to British people because of the phrase “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”

    WINDSWEPT Kva@29 A simpler explanation could be to say that a windswept place is bound to have a series of blows. Yes, I thought this, too. And also that the word WINDSWEPT could be made up of a series of blows as in WINDS WEPT or WIND SWEPT, but couldn’t really reconcile WEPT or SWEPT with blows. After a series of blows you might weep, but too tenuous.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

42. Another who tried to make a country out of VIGOURIAM…very enjoyable, Gore Vidal was well known to me.
    LOI for some explicable reason was 27a.
    quenbarrow @36 – I have fond memories of Colin Cowdrey, being sent into ‘shrapnel alley’ in Australia against Lillee and Thompson. Probably not so fond for him at the time.
    I have been to Vigo on a cruise, was lucky to go there on monthly market day, where the display of high quality seafood etc. was amazing. My wife reckoned I ate half the ocean bed that afternoon.
    Not difficult, but beautifully clued.
    Thanks both.

43. Dave Ellison @ 41: TONBRIDGE, although fairly close to Tunbridge Wells, is a different town.

44. though, Hoofityoudonkey@42, as he was also known as Kipper Cowdrey, because he’d apparently often been seen having a nap in the dressing room before going out to bat, maybe he wasn’t showing any nerves before taking on that fiercesome Aussie duo…

45. Ronald @44 – his brother in law used to be my GP.

46. Well, that was a perfect Quiptic, it’s just a shame that the actual Quiptic wasn’t! Another Monday where the intern tripped up on the way to the photocopier 🙂

47. Thanks for the concern expressed but just to clarify the blogging schedule: the weekday Guardian one advances by one day a week – so my next blog will be Tuesday next week. The Friday blogger blogs the following Monday. I also blog the Prize puzzle every four weeks, so every so often I get three in a row. (But I only do it because I love doing it!)

48. I was another who presumed GRAPE SHOT rather than GRAPES HOT but both work equally well. Pretty straightforward throughout, indeed there was nothing I actually needed to come here for re explanation.

49. Wasn’t jealousy the “green-eyed monster”?
    …and why was “besetting” in clue?
    Still nice Monday romp.
    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen….in anticipation 🙂

50. Isn’t it Zero Men, hence OMEN, not Zero Man in 6D? Did anyone else looking for a homophone indicator in 17A since they use the “abettor” spelling? I agree with the consensus that WINDSWEPT is unparsable in 8D and that the “besetting” is superfluous in 20A. And yes, Tim the Late Toffee @49, a gentle rap on the knuckles for Eileen is in order for incorrectly introducing Othello into the blog: ENVY is green enough without the Bard, who was indeed thinking of a different Deadly Sin when he mentioned green.

51. AT@50: Though you be right the distinction between envy and jealousy is presently lost in general usage. But I don’t recall jealousy being mentioned among the deadly seven unless covetousness is a synonym (seems a reasonable proposition. For discussion by students of ermm..).

52. [Alphalpha @51: Jealousy is the resentment a lover feels towards the beloved when the beloved’s affections are directed towards a rival. Envy is the resentment a lover feels towards a rival when the beloved finds the rival more attractive]

53. AT@: A nice distinction. Bedfellows perhaps?

54. A proper Monday crossword after last week’s slog. Very much appreciated by us newbies. We probably finished in record time. Loved 6D and 18D, and I always like a reminder of Gore Vidal. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen. Happy solvers here

55. Once again there were a lot of comments that this Cryptic was easier than the Quiptic. Strangely, hardly anyone comments when the Quiptic is easier. Thus a reasonable inference is that these comments are criticisms. I don’t understand why.

    Today, both puzzles fit their mandates – the Cryptic was easier than the Tuesday to Saturday Cryptics, and the Quiptic was easy enough to meet the “for beginners and solvers in a hurry” criterion. If both puzzles are relatively easy, why does it matter that one is easier than the other?

    Meanwhile, Flea@6 has done a nice job of working 17 solutions (and one twice) into a 4-sentence paragraph – well done, Flea.

    I enjoyed this puzzle (and the equally satisfactory Quiptic from Hectence). My favourite clue was 6d BRIDE – a clever and delightful surface.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen (especially for “aural wordplay”).

56. Further to me@55: Incidentally, a while back someone – I forget who – suggested that the Quiptic be moved to another day, so that the “easier” puzzles (Everyman, Monday Cryptic and Quiptic) aren’t all concentrated on Sunday and Monday. This would give the “beginners and those in a hurry” something to look forward to later in the week. I think this is a good idea.

57. Those of us in Australia know an oxbow lake as a billabong. Those outside Australia may never heard the word billabong except in the opening lines of Waltzing Matilda by Banjo Paterson. “Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong Underthe shade of a coolabah tree” . All will be revealed if you put oxbow billabong into Google.

58. Agree Cellomaniac@56. And also would give those of us who’ve had our brain stretched a bit of a reprieve towards the end of the week.

59. Much too simple, even for Vulcan

60. I was struck by Flatfrog@15’s solving 14ac as KINDRED, welcomed by Eileen@17 as “ingenious!”. Yes, it is, I agree.
    In the Wiktionary: ‘Noun Kind…
    …4(archaic) Family, lineage.
    Quotation: “She Moved through the Fair” (traditional Irish folk song)
    My young love said to me, My mother won’t mind
    And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kind.’
    Does that get us closer to “numbers of species”? Earworm anybody?

61. George Mair@19 said (re TONBRIDGE):
    “…And we’re supposed to know the name of some Kentish town?”
    It’s worse than that, George. First we have to know the setter isn’t talking about Kentish Town (with a capital T as here), the area of London where I worked for 20 years.
    The setter is hamstrung by the crossers, so has to clue some Geographical (or Cultural) General Knowledge, People always complain, but I quite like it.
    An OPAQUER setter might have clued something about “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”.
    We’ve had MAYNOOTH and TINTAGEL of late, both lovely place names.
    In this puzzle OMAN is something of an old chestnut in CrosswordLand.
    ViGO took me back to a holiday in Asturias, of which the highlight was a free concert in the main square of Gijon, by Martha Reeves (without her Vandellas).
    We were quite literally Dancing In The Street, to Heat Wave, Jimmy Mack, and my favourite Nowhere To Run. My kids surprised me (and themselves, I think) by knowing all the lyrics and singing along. I found this clip online, that confirms the date. Shame it’s so short:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtiptAYmSj8
    This is the kind of thing I do crosswords for, so thanks for the memories Vulcan. And thanks Eileen & George.

62. monkeypuzzler@33 tells us that there’s also a VIGO in Kent. Apparently named after a pub that itself was renamed after the Battle Of Vigo Bay in 1702.

    Alphalpha@34: Very Very Funny! :):)

    Dave Ellison@41 had already mentioned “Disgusted of TUnbridge Wells” . Oops, sorry.

    kevin@57: I always wondered what a billabong was. Thanks!

    Let’s see if anyone replies…

63. FG@62: Purr purr. (Reply to what though?)

64. Just testing if anyone was still here, now that it’s already tomorrow afternoon and I haven’t started today’s crosswords.

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