Guardian Cryptic 29,100 by Vulcan

59 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,100 by Vulcan”

1. ORLOP comes up about once every 6 months or so in Guardian crosswords.

   Last one in TURNSTILE.

   Thanks Vulcan and manhi

2. I continue to feel that there should be clear blue water between the Guardian’s Quiptic and Cryptic offerings. This is much more the former than the latter. I’m told that the overlap is justified by the fact that the Quiptic isn’t available in the print edition – I haven’t read that for a while – but a better solution would be simply to make space for it.
   There’s some fairly tired stuff here. ORLOP has been a staple of the Everyman-level crossword for over fifty years to my certain knowledge, one sees “deck” in the clue and reaches for it more or less automatically. And FUNGI are not plants.
   Despite my grumpiness, thanks to Vulcan, and of course to manehi for the blog.

3. Took a while to get on Vulcan’s wavelength, but then things moved rapidly.

   Are FUNGI plants? I didn’t think so.

   Not really convinced by TAILBACK. Struggling to make back = end.

   Quite liked the dicky play.

4. Fungi, if deceitful.
   “Deceitful” is playing two roles here, I think.
   Because fungi are not plants, although they look like they are.

5. Lovely stuff. I’ve been doing the cryptics for a few years now and don’t remember coming across ORLOP before. Really liked NICKNAMES.

   Ta Vulcan & manehi.

6. Charles@2: Much as we might like it, the Guardian is not here exclusively for we fans of crosswords : let’s not interfere with its priorities and costs for half an hour’s fun, eh?

7. My heart sank in anticipation of the pedants’ revolt about FUNGI – they’re described as such in Chambers so I think that’s Vulcan off the hook? And Chambers has “a growth” for “plant” which would seem to cover FUNGI. At least we didn’t get a “fun guy” pun 🙂

   Good Monday fun made somewhat trickier by my pencilling in the word-split for 1A as 4-10 rather than 8-6

   Cheers V&M

8. M Courtney @4: spot on.

9. Harder than the Quiptic, but not a steep challenge, Ideal monday fare I thought that in 16 not straight was the wordplay and the clue was driving a bargain. I’m not too sure of the DEAL bit. I’m with you on your likes & would add 25 and 21# Thanks both

10. Last appearance of ORLOP in the Guardian/Observer seems to be in 2014

11. I blithely bunged in PLASTER instead of STAPLER in 21a and then wondered why nothing else would fit in that corner.

    Thanks Vulcan and manehi

12. The last time ORLOP appeared in the G
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2013/09/30/guardian-cryptic-n-26066-by-orlando/

13. Is including a non-cryptic clue among all the others an act of crypticity? I allude to 15a.

    ORLOP is new to my lexicon. Nothing else to report. Quite enjoyable, thanks Vulcan & manehi.

14. I enjoyed this, and was cleverly deceived in several places – why didn’t I get that right away? D’oh.
    And I totally agree with M Courtney @4.
    Thanks Vulcan and manehi

15. GDU@13 Yes. It works because of the misdirections.

16. bodycheetah@10, AlanC#12 : the 2013 occurrence of ORLOP was a Guardian one, the 2014 an Observer one

    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2014/04/13/everyman-no-3522-6th-april/

    2013 and 2014 were similarly clued. Today somewhat different.

    In contrast to some of the grumpiness, I found this a most enjoyable puzzle.

    I didn’t need to WHEEL AND DEAL nor SOLDIER ON with this one ; it was in the easy RANGE and just fell out.

    Very much liked BEDROLL, TURNSTILE, ADELAIDE, NICKNAMES and NOTELET.

    Thank you Vulcan and manehi.

17. Quite a tough puzzle. After solving only 10 clues, I was tempted to run away to the Quiptic for a break! I made things harder for myself by entering PLASTER @ 21ac which I later corrected.

    New for me TAILBACK = queue; ORLOP = deck which goes to show that not all of us have been solving cryptics for over fifty years 😉

    I could not parse 26ac apart from range=mountains.

    Favourite: BEDROLL, MARXISM (loi).

    Thanks, both.

18. Like manehi, I also had 25a ADELAIDE as a favourite (South Australian capital – parochial I know). I ticked 17a NICKNAMES (cf. AlanC@5), 10d WHEEL AND DEAL (which seemed to work for me, NICBACH@9) and 14d RICHARD II as well. Thanks to Vulcan for today’s challenge and to manehi for explaining 15a TURNSTILE.

19. My memory of viewing the ORLOP deck on HMS Victory, at the Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth, was having to bend awkwardly down with such a low head clearance. Claustrophobic almost.
    Wondered for a while if II was O.K. for a two letter word for 14d, but it simply had to be that. Last one in WHEEL AND DEAL. And ever onwards with the discussion of the difficulty level Quiptic v Cryptic on a Monday. Thought CIRCUMSTANCIAL excellent…

20. Another fairly easy one, as you’d hope for on a Monday. ORLOP was new to me, and TURNSTILE was my LOI. I thought we might have a pangram after SUBJECT and MARXISM, but no. ADELAIDE was my CoD.

21. Pleasant start to the week, thanks V and M. I really liked TAILBACK.

22. As well as Plaster for STAPLER, I also considered Certifier for RECTIFIER.

23. I enjoyed that – accessibly Monday-ish without undercutting the Quiptic.

    ORLOP is new to me but cleanly clued so in it went. I got WHEEL AND DEAL but I can’t see how it’s actually supposed to parse from the component parts; it makes me wonder if it’s supposed to be a kind of CAD / &lit?

    I liked SHOPPING CENTRE and BEDROLL.

    Thanks both!

24. Crossbar@11: same here, and PLASTER also works as an answer were it not for the crossers. Poor cluing I feel.

25. William @3. The back of, say, a lorry is the rear end of it, and, of course, you can go, or be sent. to the back of the queue

26. I was another plasterer, briefly. But a pleasant, gentle start to the week.
    I’m stuck with being British, but don’t regard myself as a subject of the monarch.

27. Yep lots of stuff on both threads about the biological status of fungi [cue Sheldrake Jnr!]. Orlop was familiar thanks to the late mrs ginf’s O’brian series.
    And here we say traffic jam, so tailback encountered only once before, in a crossword [the clue was something like Queue, by Delores R Goanoware 🙂 ]. Fun puzzle, thanks V and m.

28. Typical Monday fare, and easier than the Quiptic, for me at least. I rarely solve crosswords by tackling all the across clues first, so I didn’t get plastered!

    Plenty of well-constructed clues. Favourite was BEDROLL.

    Pace bodycheetah, it is not pedantic to quibble at ‘plants’ = FUNGI. Fungi are a separate kingdom, more closely related to animals than plants (we are both opisthokonts 🙂 ). Certainly, they used to be considered plants before molecular biology clarified the relationships – hence the dictionary listing. But now this should be marked as either erroneous or archaic. We had a similar discussion a while ago when ‘spider’ was clued as ‘insect’ (or vice versa, I can’t remember). ‘Insect’ was originally used for any jointed-legged invertebrates (ie arthropods) so is listed as such in dictionaries, but now is considered only proper for Hexapoda. It’s like equating ‘bitter’ with ‘acidic’ when referring to taste – which some still do.

    Like AuntRuth @26 I bridled a bit at SUBJECT. For a long time UK passports have described us as British citizens rather than subjects. Another archaic usage 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

29. I liked this, and ORLOP is definitely a new word for me. 17A was my favourite – so obvious when I finally solved it, and it made me smile. Held back by confidently putting ACROBAT at 5 down, realised my error but MOUNTAINEER wouldn’t fit. Took me a while to finally get there – a ropy performance from me?

30. But does NAMES=”commit identity theft”?

31. to me @30, Oh nm I see it now

32. A few careless things in this one, as Charles described above. I wish they’d sort it out over there in Farringdon or wherever it is now. Pah.

33. SwissSteve @30 – it is NICK NAMES which is identity theft. I liked this – good Monday fare. A little more challenging that the Quiptic IMHO – though the FUNGI quibble is both predictable and correct. All’s well with the world. Thanks, Vulcan and manehi.

34. Pat@6. That’s the strawiest straw man I’ve seen for some time.

35. I remember ER, or someone, in one of the royal shows, saying “One should never marry a subject”.

36. Hmm …

37. Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who once famously replied – when being challenged to talk about any SUBJECT under the sun, was asked to talk about the Queen (Victoria) – “The Queen is not a subject”, he said…

38. Thanks for the blog, very suitable for the Monday tradition , NICKNAMES was a neat idea. , I never do the Quiotic because it is not in the paper so I cannot compare. The reason the Guardian has it solely online is to harvest data.

    [ AlanC @5 I have been informed that one of the KPR burglars has committed further offences in Norway, I trust that you will arrest him on his return , ]

39. As a confirmed crossword duffer, this may have been my quickest-ever full solve, with only 8A much past a “write in” – as a non-expert solver I was unfamiliar with Orlop but given the crossers and the cryptic it couldn’t be anything else. Bedroll and Shopping Centre my favourites. Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

40. News to me that TELE can mean “TV.” I thought you lot said “telly.”

    The clue for RICHARD II puzzles me. How does it work? Does it work?

    I was another PLASTERer.

    Thanks to Vulcan and manehi.

41. Valentine @40 — some people do spell it TELE, much to my (pedantic) annoyance, but it’s in dictionaries so that ship has sailed.

    RICHARD II — Dicky = RICHARD and ‘not the first’ = the second = II

42. Lovely, solvable crossword. But can roman numerals be written vertically?

43. DR @42: Can Roman numerals be written in lower case? 😉

    It’s very rare to see them in a solution rather than as part of a charade – horizontally OR vertically. This did make the clue very slightly more difficult for me, but it couldn’t be anything else.

44. I read WHEEL AND DEAL to be someone who is not straight (i.e. “he’s a bit of a wheeler dealer”), leaving WHEEL for drive and DEAL for bargain? Not perfect, but it worked for me 🙂

45. A little tough for a Monday, but very enjoyable. Never heard of ORLOP but hope to remember it for future crosswords; although it seems I will have nearly a decade to wait if history is any guide! Thanks Vulcan and Manehi.

46. Easier than the Quiptic.

    Never heard of ORLOP and couldn’t parse it from the clue and crossers.

    The one I couldn’t get was WHEEL AND DEAL. Not sure I even get it with the answer.

    ADELAIDE made me smile 🙂

47. Thanks Vulcan and manehi

    I saw 10 as split wordplay:

    “Not be straight when driving” = WHEEL

    AND

    “a bargain” = DEAL (as in “I got a real deal at the shop today”

    with the whole clue forming a (loosish) overall definition.

48. I haven’t done the Quiptic yet, so I can’t say whether this was easier than that, but I will make this general observation, in response to grumpy (his word) Charles@2.

    If both the Quiptic and the Monday Cryptic are relatively easy (and therefore satisfying the “for beginners…” criterion), what does it matter which of the two is slightly easier than the other?

    In any event, relative ease can be subjective, and can be different for different solvers. It would be presumptuous to assume that my experience of a pair of “easy” puzzles defines the experience of all other solvers.

    This was a good puzzle and blog, for which thanks, Vulcan and manehi.

49. Perfect Monday fare – very enjoyable. We particularly enjoyed 17A and 11A. Thanks Vulcan and manehi

50. [Roz @38: the ink on the warrant is drying as I type 🙂 ]

51. Re me@48,

    I have now completed today’s Quiptic. On the first go round I got two fewer clues than on this puzzle. Also, the Quiptic took me ten minutes longer to solve. Clearly the editor should be fired for not doing his job.

52. [ AlanC @50 , I now understand your new role at the KPR Academy, brilliant cover story, your secret is safe. ]

53. From the sublime …

54. Loved this, as did my husband who had done the lion’s share before I got to it. We always do paper, so not familiar with Quiptic – it’s not so convenient to do it together. Will have a look now. Incidentally, grumpy Charles@2, I personally had no idea an orlop was a deck! Probably would have thought it was a hairstyle or something…

55. Grantinfreo @27, I was another who got ORLOP thanks to Jack Aubrey. I wonder if Stephen’s execrable joke about the dog watch has ever made it into a cryptic.

    I am often thrown by the fact that we write “telly” when UKers seem to write “TELE”, and that happened again here. I liked RICHARD II, and ADELAIDE of course.

    I don’t get why people are still complaining that a Monday puzzle is easy, after all these years. Surely they have gotten used to the idea that it is the “gentle start” puzzle each week. Unless we want our hobby to die out with us, we need to have a way of getting new people to take it up, and the gentle puzzles are how that gets done.

    Thanks to Vulcan for a good gentle puzzle, and manehi for the blog.

56. Like many others I had PLASTER for 21a and spent a long time puzzling over the second word in 1d which had P as the second last letter. ORLOP was new to me but easy enough to work out once I had the first and last letters so the NW was completed first. LOI was WHEEL AND DEAL. Thanks Vulcan and manehi.

57. Geoff Down Under @13

    15a: A non-cryptic aspect to the clue? Perhaps (cf dog, night time): “That was the cryptic aspect”

58. Blast! My application to join MI6 rejected again ?.

59. I loved this ….thank you

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