Guardian 29,074 – Vlad

88 comments on “Guardian 29,074 – Vlad”

1. Thanks, Vlad and Andrew!

   Liked COMMON NOUN, SPITTOON, THE MET, STROLEED and GET THROUGH.

2. Hard, reveal button in use towards the end.

   ALFRED THE GREAT FOI.

   I must remember ladies are often WI.

   Thanks Vlad and Andrew

3. I too had Helping Dog for 18a. The clue would work better for Dog Handler, I think.
   Annoyed with myself for not getting LAP DANCE which is obvious once explained.
   “Up” as an anagram indicator in a down clue is a neat bit on misdirection, I guess; the answer WISEACRE to 17d reminded me of Noel Coward’s brilliantly unkind description of Osbert, Sacheverell and Edith Sitwell as “two wiseacres and a cow”.
   Thanks to Vlad for the entertainment and Andrew for the explanations.

4. I knew THE MET had to be THE MET, but was puzzled by the parsing – so I came here to see what Andrew made of it, only to find he clearly had the same problem! The ‘on drugs’ seems to indicate a single E – is it to be read as per Widdersbel here?

   (By the way Kenmac – we seem to have a spam problem @85/86)

   Great challenge as per usual, thanks V & A

5. Thanks Vlad and Andrew. I found this to be just the right level of toughness – made me think without being frustrating.
   Andrew – a minor point, but you’ve not parsed the second E in 26 across.

6. A bit of a toughie. I too started with HELPING DOG, but it did not feel right. I looked up HEARING DOG and was surprised there was such a thing. I liked BUMP INTO. and LAP DANCE although I started out with TAP, but then I realised it was an amagram of CLEAN and LAP fitted the surface better too
   Thanks both. I should mention EMBONPOINT, not a word I have seen for ages, but it gives me a warm feeling

7. Thanks Vlad and Andrew
   Tough – I took ages to finish the SE corner. I didn’t parse ORIGIN or RELATION. I wondered about the “drugs” in 26a too.
   Favourites BUMP INTO, EUNICE, and SPITTOON.

8. Crispy@6 There is HE & M two males E for drugs and TT races

9. Yes, but isn’t there a singular/plural mismatch in the drugs?

10. Lots to enjoy here, though like Andrew I first entered AS WELL for 20d, and I had to come here to properly parse RELATION. And while COMMON NOUN wasn’t among the more difficult clues here, it made me wonder why it is so much more rarely heard than is proper noun. Or is that just me?
    Glad to GET THROUGH this, the north west corner held out for a long time.

11. Muffin Yes, but the E in HE can’t be doing double duty. Vlad has sacrificed some grammar for surface

12. Nicbach @8. I realise that, but some, particularly beginners, may not. It’s not mentioned in Andrew’s parsing.

13. Tricky to get into but well worth persevering with. I laughed out loud at the BUM PINTO. Other favourites were SPITTOON for the brilliant surface and play on “Hawking”, and STROLLED for the excellent lift-and-separate of “constitutional crisis”. Too many other ticks to mention.

    Many thanks Vlad and Andrew.

14. Some lovely stuff. But I found a couple of the anagrinds a bit iffy: rarely(?) in the clue for LAP DANCE and up(?) in the clue for WISEACRE. Perhaps I’m missing something?

15. blaise @14: we’ve discussed “up” as an anagram indicator before. This is what I said about it on Fed 28,977:

    Chambers includes for “up”: “amiss” and “in an excited state; in revolt”. For the former, think of “There’s something up with him”, “What’s up?” etc. For the latter, in The Sign of Four, when Jonathan Small is describing his experiences during the Indian Mutiny, he says “The whole country was up like a swarm of bees”. Seems ok to me.

16. Wouldn’t one (not me!) ask a dealer for ‘some E’ rather than ‘some E’s’ ?

17. Criceto @16
    Do you not remember the Pulp song “Sorted for Es and wizz“?

18. well above my ability today but at least i managed the corner before surrendering. why does “dangerous races” = TT? and why is “quite” = “all”?

19. NW corner! Couldn’t get going, didn’t see BY GEORGE until the end!
    Rest was simple enough but that corner…

20. Gillafox; try riding a motorbike round the TT course on the Isle of Man and you’ll see why = dangerous races

21. blaise @14: ‘up’ seems fair to me as an anagrind in the sense of ‘wrong’ as in ‘what’s up with him?’ or ‘something’s up’. However, an experienced setter once commented on my own use of the word with the withering observation, ‘with 800+ anagram indicators available, it seems a shame to resort to using ‘up’!

    This was hard to break into but eventually I had everything bar the NW – but nothing at all in that quadrant except two unhelpful crossers. I came back to it after doing the Indy and all fell into place. I’m another with a raised eyebrow at the pluralised drugs – I take widders’ recent explanation as highlighted by eb @4 but had got my head around what I took to be a convention of singular for E and plural for EE.

    Favourites today: BY GEORGE, BUM/PINTO (although, unsurprisingly, that combo has been spotted before), SPITTOON, STROLLED, LAOTIANS (brilliant), LAP DANCE, WISEACRE and SNAKED.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

22. Gillafox @18 The Isle of Man TT races are probably the most dangerous in the world.
    Not QUITE, not ALL there yet

23. Muffin @17. True, but I’m not certain song lyrics are always reliable when it comes to English usage (nobody does it half as good as you!). You wouldn’t ask for ‘some Ecstasies’ though?

24. Lord Jim @15: took me too long to type so we crossed on ‘up’

    muffin @17: there is also the song by The Shamen – Ebeneezer Goode – with its clearly pluralised reference in the cheeky chorus, Eezer Goode ‘Eezer Goode He’s Ebeneezer Goode

25. Pleasingly knotty. Not much popped out on first pass, and I completed the RHS before I had much on the left – like Charles I had most trouble with the NW quadrant.

    Drug names can be either countable or uncountable nouns: ‘I took aspirin’ or ‘I took two aspirins’. In my view that exonerates Vlad over the contentious E. The ‘lab assistant’ was obviously canine, but I had HUNTING DOG at first…

    Many smiles here: BY GEORGE, the BUM PINTO, SPITTOON, EUNICE, and I liked the allusive surface of LAP DANCE and the deceptive ‘constitutional crisis’ and ‘money transfer rejected’ – but much more to enjoy here.

    Thanks to Jim and Andrew

26. Muffin @17 that’s a great ear worm to start the day. However, wouldn’t “he’s on drugs” and “he’s on E” mean the same thing?

    Like NOSTRUM yesterday, EMBONPOINT was a word I recognised but had no idea what it meant.

    And I had HUNTING DOG until the crossers put me straight

    Cheers V&A

27. Tough – especially the SE. The NE went in relatively quickly then the SW. Then needed some use of a word finder and a couple of reveals to get the rest.

    Favourites included: BUMP INTO, GAMETE, GIMCRACK, DETHRONE, LAP DANCE and I thought MISTER was well hidden.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

28. Different folk have different pet hates. I’m perfectly OK with E=drugs (for reasons mentioned by Criceto@16, and Widdersbel via eb@4 *). But ‘rarely’ as an anagrind does annoy me. I can accept ‘up’.
    But all in all, a typical good crossword from Vlad – I found it less hard than some of his, but still got held up in the NW corner for a while.
    Among others, and for no particular reason, I liked BABOON, BUMP INTO, SNAKED.
    Thanks both.

    * and Gervase@25 while I was typing

29. I found this really hard and had to reveal a couple just in order to get going. Eventually it got better, but there were loads I couldn’t parse.
    Still don’t get why OUTRIGHT means FLAT.
    Thanks to Andrew and others for the helpful blog. But Vlad has certainly impaled me today (excuse the pun)

30. SinCam @29: an outright/flat rejection?

31. SinCam@ 29
    Collins: ‘OUTRIGHT: without qualifications or limitations’
    ‘flat: without qualification; total: a flat denial’

32. Apologies, PostMark. 😉

33. SinCam@29. A flat denial. An outright denial.

34. As PM and Eileen said.

35. How do you even pronounce EMBONPOINT, let alone use it in conversation!!!!????

36. Very tough puzzle. NW corner was most difficult for me.

    New for me: EMBONPOINT.

    I could not fully parse 4d.

    Favourites: SNAKED, NO-BALL, RELATION, EUNICE, by george, ORIGIN, MISTER (loi).

    Thanks, both.

37. Lord Jim @13 has highlighted my top favourites. Like him, I had many other ticks – and smiles.

    I’m intrigued by the continuing discussion of E = drugs. Widdersbel’s response, helpfully recalled by essexboy @4, to my query just a couple of weeks ago seemed to be accepted without question – it certainly satisfied me.

    Many thanks to Vlad for a super puzzle and Andrew for a blog to match. [Now for Buccaneer – what a good day!]

38. Simonc @35
    EM as in en bloc
    BON as in bonjour
    POINT as in nul points (sic) 🙂

39. simonc @35: I have used EMBONPOINT in conversation, pronounced as essexboy recommends, very occasionally and only with friends whose vocabulary is extensive. But it really falls into the category that Fowler sniffly dismisses in ‘Modern English Usage’ as ‘polysyllabic humour’.

40. 12a – is there a way of knowing this is a “reverse”clue?

41. I’d never heard of EMBONPOINT either, but on looking it up, it seems to refer more frequently to women. It’s a lovely throwback to the times when being rounded was seen as a positive attribute, and with that French pronunciation, how refined! Now we can starve ourselves, exercise umpteen hours a day, and be considered attractive.

    On looking this up I came across a synonym which I’d also never encountered, “having a bay window”, which seems to refer to men with their belly protruding. Lovely image.

42. Found this tough. Liked STROLLED. As a little boy, was always perplexed by signs that read “Hawkers will be prosecuted” in the entrance lobby to my grandparents’ flat. Wondering if you’d be in trouble for spitting there, unaware of its other meaning. GIMCRACK a strange word, also the name of a famous grey racehorse from the 1760’s, and the Gimcrack Stakes is these days a race for promising two year olds held at the York August Ebor meeting.

43. 25a – is “setter’s” always I’M?

44. 1d – I don’t understand where “BAN” comes from in this clue.

45. Steffen – ban = bar, both meaning to forbid.

    “Setter’s” is not always “I’m” – it could be MY or DOG’S, to name but two.

    12a: the reversal is indicated by “over”, as in “turned over”

46. I must be a little dense today, but could somebody explain why SPITTOON is Here’s Hawking. I saw the anagram and assumed it must be that. NW corner held me up for ages.
    Thanks V and A.

47. PeterH@46 : I took it as meaning 5 in Collins

    https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hawk

48. Flea@47 : Thanks. Chambers is my goto and I couldn’t find it in there. Not often that Collins has something not in Chambers. Must dust down my old copy.

49. Thank you Andrew 45

50. PeterH @46: The Chambers app has this: hawk3 /hök/
    transitive verb
    To force up (phlegm, etc) from the throat
    intransitive verb
    To clear the throat noisily
    noun
    The act of doing so
    ORIGIN: Prob imit

51. A cracking puzzle that I didn’t quite crack. I think there used to be a tipster called Gimcrack which set me looking for a racing theme. Guy’s puzzle yesterday helped with LAP DANCER.

52. So close and yet so far. I was defeated by the (to me) very obscure ‘extra’=’no-ball’.

53. HAWK is in the Chambers app on ios
    [TILT: a HAWKER is a door-to-door salesman who uses a beast of burden or vehicle whereas a pedlar carries his goods on foot]

54. I know I said earlier that SPITTOON was brilliant, and it is, and I know this is presumptuous of me, but I was just entering it in my hall of fame when it occurred to me that perhaps it could have been even better as:
    Hawking’s here, describing time travelling options (8)
    which would have avoided any possible quibbles about the misleading capitalisation of Hawking.

    Steffen @various, I don’t know if you’re interested in looking at reasonably doable cryptics to practise on, but if so I would highly recommend The Times Quick Cryptic Crosswords. In my view these are set at a much more consistent level than the Guardian Quiptic. You don’t have to buy the Times to do them – you can get books of them, which at about £6.50 for 100 crosswords are not bad value per puzzle.

55. 54. Thanks for the tip.

56. An absolute delight to solve. I want it to end
    If I had to pick a favourite it would be EUNICE
    Thanks all.

57. Didnt want it to end, sorry.

58. I got about four answers and then had to resort to the check button. Not my finest hour.

    Thanks, Vlad and Andrew.

59. Steffen @ 55

    This site is great for learning how to do cryptic crosswords.

    I also found the paperback

    How to Crack Cryptic Crosswords by Tim Moorey (pub The Times Oct 2018)

    really useful – it’s only around £6 – even less second hand.

60. I agree with copmus. With the entry fee for EUNICE and the useless horse alone. The pithiness of 9a is particularly impressive – my LOI and a big LOL when the penny dropped.

    Nice to see I’ve been able to contribute something useful without even commenting! I knew as soon as I solved that clue it would cause some debate – thanks essexboy @4 for digging that out of the archive.

    Re HEARING DOG – this is a well defined (under the Equality Act 2010) category of assistance dog in the UK, which I think makes the clue sound and rules out HELPING DOG, which as Andrew observes is not a recognised phrase.

    Thanks for the great puzzle and blog, Vlad and Andrew.

61. *worth the entry fee. Damn autocorrupt

62. Absolutely clueless!!

63. Thanks for the blog , my least favourite grid but a fine set of clues. BY GEORGE is novel and precise with the correct removal of the first O , often ignored by setters. GAMETE very neat as well , I agree with other favourites mentioned. I too had AS WELL in mind but when I put the Downs in the crossing letters made me think again.
    Agree with Lord Jim @54 , the fake capital is not wrong as such , but always better at the front, I initially thought this clue might be linked to the tachyons from the puzzle next week.

64. Really four mini-crosswords hidden in an unfriendly grid. But beautiful clueing and for me a struggle to get a foothold in the NW, which eventually cracked.

    The Stand-out was the wonderful SPITTOON. Close behind were BUMP INTO and BY GEORGE.

    A great puzzle to end the week on.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew (by the way Andrew the number of the puzzle in the heading has a typo it should be 29074 just in case anyone tries searching for it).

65. PeterH @48
    The definition of hawk given by Gervase @50 is in the hard copy Chambers from 1961 (yes, I still have that edition, though it is falling apart) onwards.
    Steffan @40
    You have posted a number of similar enquiries, and responses have been given along the lines of, for this clue, 12A MISTER, ‘over’ indicates the reversal. I would put it a little differently: ‘over’ can indicate the reversal, and that is a possibility to be borne in mind searching for the answer (note Andrew @45 responding to you @43). Of course, it helps to have seen that usage in previous clues. The only way I have of “knowing” that 12A is a reversal is that that assumption leads me to a viable answer. I say ‘a viable’ in that, as seen in fifteensquared comments every now and then, people have come up with alternative parsing to clues leading to other answers that the “right” one. Such alternatives span a broad range, from the downright wrong to the improbable, to ones which fit the clue but not the crossing letters, to ones which fit clue and light – the last rare, and an oversight on the setter’s part.
    Thus the answer to your query @40 is that I would know that 12A is a reversal because I am convinced that MISTER is the right answer, and I would not know it before coming up with that answer.

66. I initially had SUPPORT DOG for 18a, which to me seems just as good an answer, if not a better, as HEARING DOG. Or is “support dog” an Americanism, and therefore not a recognised phrase in British English? I notice that Widdersbel@60 talks of an “assistance dog”.
    Many thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

67. Roz@63 great closing comment.

68. Very enjoyable for a Friday even though I couldn’t complete the NW corner. Favorite was definitely SPITTOON for the magnificent surface.

69. Tough as usual, and the NW corner in particular (is a BABOON notably hairy?), but all fair and lots of ingenuity. Special kudos to SPITTOON, SNAKED, BY GEORGE, and GAMETE.

    EMBONPOINT was new to me and my LOI, partly as the ‘NP’ in the middle seemed unlikely, but thankfully very kindly clued.

    To echo what others have said, I have no problem with ‘drugs’ being E, ES, or EE (and given they’re valid abbreviations in their own right for ecstasy, heroin, and cocaine, perhaps any combination of E/C/H for the really devious… like Vlad).

    PeterO @65 has given a great explanation of ‘over’. Lots of elements of crossword clues can potentially play more than one role; part of the fun is working out which role they’re undertaking *here*. OVER could indicate a reversal (as per ‘turning over’), a container (as in something going over/covering something else), or the letter O (as in cricket notation). Or it could be the definition, or part of the definition! Trying out the different options and seeing how they could fit in with the other elements of the clue, while not holding too firmly to any one possibility (in case it’s wrong!), is the art of the solver.

    In this example, ‘harbour’ leaps out as a potential containment indicator, as to ‘harbour’ something is to keep it. So ‘harbour over’ made me think straight away that it could be a hidden reversal, and a quick scan back finds MISTER, which yep, is a ‘man’, and is the right number of letters. All checks out so it must be right.

    [It’s made a bit trickier by the fact that for the cryptic grammar to strictly work it should be ‘harbours’; the letter string regretsimay ‘harbours’ a reversal of a word meaning ‘man’.]

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

70. I may be being a bit slow (nothing new there), but I can’t think of a case where “quite” can be replaced by “all” as in 20d. Put me out of my misery, someone.

71. monkeypuzzler @70
    I would be happy to help you, but I am quite out of ideas.

72. One of those puzzles where I was VERY slow to get going (two entries in the whole first pass) but it unfolded bit by bit and I got there in the end – and every parsing was a “oh yeah, of course” (and never a “huh?”) which is the mark of a good puzzle.

    SPITTOON, BUMP INTO, BY GEORGE, SNAKED, STROLLED – lots of great clues.

    Thanks both and have a good weekend all.

73. Ha! Thanks PeterO @71

74. Bear @66 – ‘Support dog’ is indeed a recognised category of assistance dog (identified by their blue jackets; hearing dogs have burgundy jackets) but alas, for our purposes, not yet recognised by dictionaries, whereas ‘assistance dog’ and ‘hearing dog’ both are. As for Americanisms, ‘assistance dog’ is the internationally agreed umbrella term but Americans do also use the term ‘service dog’.

75. [Anyone remember the seein’-eye dog from Alice’s Restaurant?]

76. Had to reveal six in the NW.

    EUNICE was my outstanding clue of the week.

    Thanks both.

77. Thanks Andrew, I was with the majority in finding the NW toughest, and like you not helped by an early mis-step, in my case EUROPA for 24a, which i did think was a bit weak but I was really desperate for progress at that point! But made it eventually, had the same thought as LordJim re 23a ordering (I had to back parse that one from the colloquial term “hock”). When eventually solved I thought 1a superb, especially after the whiff of vagueness around ODOUR yesterday. [Petert@51 I think you are right, thanks for the trip down memory lane, scanning the generally incomprehensible racing pages (of the Daily Mail probably in my case) and wondering if any of the tipsters actually had any idea. wasn’t there a Robin Goodfellow too, years before I encountered Shakespeare.] And thanks Vlad for another witty and devious puzzle.

78. Got rapidly stuck by blithely putting SERVICE DOG at 18a for my foi. Got myself unstuck thanks to leaving the oven on a bit too long and thereby remembering 5a 15d. I’m never quite on the same wavelength as Vlad, so I find his puzzles a slog; this one wan no exception. But like many other commentators upstream, I do think 24a EUNICE is a hall of famer.

79. *was no exception, grr

80. My dislike of the grid was overcome in this case by Vlad’s several excellent constructions and misdirections. The quadrant-sharing clue at 5a,15d helped too.
    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

81. Did the NE and SW then lost the will to live with this.
    Thanks both.

82. Gervase @25: how decorous of you to resort to “allusive” in your praise of the LAP DANCE clue. With all the discussion of “up” in this thread, I must say that I imagined the dirty old man being “uplifted” by the not-so-clean entertainment rather more literally, and not nearly so decorously.

83. Thanks to Andrew for a nice blog and to others who commented.

84. I also found the NW quadrant harder, but got there in the end – mostly by not thinking about it and doing something else. Somehow GAMETE popped into my head while reading a book. I tried to do something similar with the last holdout: 17d. But after finishing my book I went back to the puzzle still none the wiser. I then decided that, like a cup of cold, stewed tea it was probably best left alone.

    For some time I tried to make BING the singer in 1a, but BY JINGS was too short. I would never have thought of the actual featured artist, but for suddenly realising that BY is BOY without the O. Doh.

    EUNICE and SPITTOON were funny.

    Thanks Vlad for the strange pleasure we get from being tortured by you, and thanks to Andrew for elucidating where necessary.

85. I’m a little proud of finishing this.

    Not least because I had WORKING DOG for 18A until it was clear that wouldn’t work, and for 24A I had RAMONA and then EUROPA and then finally EUNICE, so I spent a lot of time trying to find impossible crossers for those.

86. I’ve come late to this crossword as have been on holiday. Was surprised so many solvers had not heard of Hearing Dogs. Hearing Dogs for Deaf People is a very worthwhile charity. Deafness is a very isolating condition and these dogs can be life-changing. I don’t suppose anyone will see this now.

87. @86 Quite right; these days, the term “hearing dogs” seems to be the normal preferred one, though in my younger days I seem to think folk were most likely to talk of “blind dogs”! or “dogs for the blind” or am I misremembering?

88. William@87 they are still called Guide Dogs when they are for the blind and I suspect that these are still by far the most common . As Bonnie says , a Hearing Dog is a wonderful thing and I hope they become equally well known and supported.

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