Guardian 29,124 / Vulcan

90 comments on “Guardian 29,124 / Vulcan”

1. Bit of a slow start but the long answers helped a lot. I thought SMEAR CAMPAIGN and RATTLESNAKE were excellent. AGAMA was new but easily solved and FELLOW TRAVELLER, a bit of a head scratch.

   Ta Vulcan & Eileen.

2. Thanks Eileen. Like you I had to check that AGAMA was indeed a kind of lizard. I parsed OPOSSUM as O plus POSSUM (a colloquial term of endearment in Oz, see the late great Dam Edna Everage) thus making two loves and one marsupial.
   Thanks also to Vulcan for a good Monday-level puzzle.

3. Eileen the answer is DISTANT RELATIVE rather than RELATION

4. …that’s DamE Edna, of course…

5. Thanks, Vulcan and Eileen!
   HEARTBREAK
   I had
   HEART (courage) +BREAK ( (to) overcome)
   Def: Shattering grief.

6. Possums live in Australia, opossum live in the Americas.

7. All good, thanks Vulcan and Eileen. The only one I didn’t parse was ROOSTER. Never heard of AGAMA — has anyone?

8. Thanks Eileen and Vulcan, I needed explanations for 1 and 4 down, though the latter was obvious once I saw it. I tried GAMAL at first for 12 across – being completely unknown, it could have been either.

   A quick solve as usual from this setter, perfect for the Monday slot. I have just one quibble: it’s RELATIVE, not “relation” at 6c

9. Thanks, Alan and Stella – will amend now.

10. Eileen, thank you. What a commitment to the cause? Three blogs, and did you say you also had tennis and grandchildren in between? And a birthday on Friday. Time for a well-earned break.
    OPOSSUM is North American, Possum Australian. I quite liked the clue

    I had ticks for FELLOW TRAVELLER, DYED-IN-THE-WOOL, SMEAR CAMPAIGN, HEARTBREAK, RATTLESNAKE and ERICA.
    I enjoy Vulcan’s cryptic clues.

11. KVa@5. I parsed HEARTBREAK as you did.

12. The consecutive FOGHORN and ROOSTER brought back fond memories of this chap
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DEgDjH1dro

13. My FOI was 22d – AMBER.

    Held me up for a while.

    Thanks to V&E

14. paddymelon@11
    I have some company here. Nice.
    Had it been a down clue, ‘overcome’ could well have been a link word.
    Not in an across clue.

15. [If anyone is interested: https://www.terminix.com/blog/home-garden/possum-vs-opossum-differences/

    I live on the urban fringe and have lots of possums that clamber very rapidly and noisily over the metal roof. If you leave the door open at night you’ll wake up to half-eaten bananas from your fruit bowl, and all your herbs munched. You’re not allowed to rehome them, except with a whole lot of rules attached.]

16. KVa@14.. Had same thoughts about a down clue. Maybe it was intended to be one.

17. KVa and paddymelon – you’re right, of course. I’ll amend the blog.

    And thanks, pm, for the info on (O)possum.

18. I think this was my fastest ever solve. Somehow, I was on the right wave length. That said, there were some good clues, though until I came here I just couldn’t understand the parsing of AGAMA. I was looking at it the wrong way. A doh moment…I liked RAG DOLL, SMEAR CAMPAIGN and ERICA. With thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.

19. paddymelon@15
    Thanks for the interesting info.

20. Once I had eliminated all the ways of gathering hair I could think of, and dismissed the idea that the bird would somehow settle a bill, it all went in smoothly.

21. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
    Possums were introduced to New Zealand from Australia, and rapidly became a pest. NZ has developed quite a good trade in exporting possum skins back to Australia for use in special tribal vestments!

22. I also considered AMBER for 22D, until it dawned on me which Morecambe was being referenced. (Always had a soft spot for dear old Eric!)
    SMEAR CAMPAIGN made me grin, as did PERM.
    And I now know there’s a difference between possums and opossums – having never encountered either (pm you have my sympathy).
    Thanks to Vulcan for the fun, and to Eileen for devoting so much time to blogging in what must have already been a busy few days!

23. Hmmm, I parsed HEARTBREAK a third way. Heart (courage to overcome) + break (shattering). I think the aforementioned version is probably better though.

24. Could Eileen or someone else just say how HEARTBREAK was originally parsed in the blog? I came to it just after it was amended. I had it as now reads but am curious as to the alternative. Thanks

25. Dan@23. That was another version that occurred to me. Doesn’t matter, eh? There’ll be grief at the end, one way or another.

26. [muffin@21. Yeah. Kudos to the Kiwis for their ingenuity. And thanks to the Brits we’ve got rabbits and foxes and all sorts of pests that arrived by ship and wiped out the native fauna and flora, even people.]

27. nuntius @24 – I left my original parsing in the blog.

    I can’t see how AMBER could work in 22dn?

28. Eileen@27: sorry, my mistake…I think I prefer your original thought…

29. nuntius@24. Eileen’s original is still there, although ‘overcome’ is not spelled out. I think we’ve got a few versions here that would work. Who knows?

30. A really quick solve, apart from not parsing 1d, as dyed-in-the-wool was foi and spread out from there with all those useful initial letters. Wish I could say I’d heard of agama but I hadn’t. Like kenmac@13 I thought 22 was Amber but something made me hold my horses until I got a crosser. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.

31. oh dear, hadn’t noticed the extra a

32. Bonnie @31 – I think there’s a word for that kind of mistake.

33. Eileen at 27: Amber doesn’t, of course, work for 22D – but my first thought was that the extra a/area was to be removed (hence the “from”), but even so it all felt far too clumsy for a Vulcan oeuvre.
    And then the correct answer hit me (like Eric slapping Ern’s cheeks) and area did indeed signiify “a”…

34. [Great to see Elileen here for three days in a row, and deighted that she was such a birthday célèbre on Bastille Day, though I only got to see that blog a day or two later.] I liked this pussle from Vulcan, and especially enjoyed the clues that led to 16a HEARTBREAK, 7d DYED-IN-THE-WOOL, 8d SMEAR CAMPAIGN and 17d RAG DOLL, amd I see I am in good company with those. Thanks to Vulcan for the pleasant challenge today, to Eileen for blogging so well three times in a row, and to all contributors.
    [paddymelon@15, I sympathise, we had to cover our herbs with cages and put up with possums tap-dancing on our roof at night when we lived in a more urban setting; now at the beach it’s mainly sandflies and mosquitoes that bug (!) us.]

35. [DELIGHTED!!!] [PUZZLE!!!] [AND!!!]
    [Always check your work!]

36. Vulcan not very fiery today but entertaining.

    I did think of Amber as the girl from Morecambe but dismissed it unless there had been a Grauniad typo somewhere. I didn’t really see the point of the ‘but’ at the beginning of 4D; it seems to me to read OK without it. I liked the RATTLESNAKE that was nearly defenceless and the good anagram for DYED-IN-THE-WOOL. I thought the FELLOW TRAVELLER was just the person who sat on the left of you when driving (in the UK!)

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen for top blogging.

37. Anyone else find this easier than the Quiptic? I haven’t solved the latter yet …

38. [JiA@34. Sandflies and mosquitoes were my childhood bugbears 🙂 I describe my marsupial friends as wearing hobnail boots, not that I’ve ever seen or heard a hobnail boot. }

39. Wellbeck @33 – I was intrigued that three people considered AMBER and (see my comment @32) I can just see how it could happen: reading something that you think is there but isn’t! It’s quite a common thing – does anyone know if there is a word for it?

40. Eileen @39
    pareidolia?

41. [Interesting to hear that the Australian possums are pests. The American opossum (who is also often called a possum for short) is a sweet little thing (well, not that little–the ones I’ve seen are about halfway between the size of a rat and a cat) who just sorta hangs out in trees and minds his own business. While some of then do scavenge around the margins of human society, for the most part they try to avoid us!]

42. Veering ever closer to Rufus, The Guardian maintains its efforts to find that elusive plain on which Mondayness is located. I thought this one was pretty good.

    DNU AMBER for ERICA. Thx Eileen!

43. muffin @40 – that’s a good definition of what I actually wrote @39 but I wasn’t expressing it very well. If you look quickly at MORECAMBE AREA, it’s quite easy to see AMBER, if you’re looking for a girl. Best to leave it there, I think. 😉

44. muffin@40. Great word. Thank you. Can I use that if I can pronounce it.

45. pm @44; try here.

46. [I’m a minor part of a team that attempts a fiendish online multi-part puzzle every Christmas/New Year.. “Pareidolia” often is mentioned in response to suggested solutions to problems therein!]

47. Returning to the theme of opossums and possums, Richard Dawkins in his excellent book The Ancester’s Tale writes that: “It seems that Australinea, for much of its history since it split off from Gondwana, has had no placental mammals. It is not unlikely that all Australia’s marsupials stem from a single introduction of an opossum like founder species from South America, via Antarctica. We don’t know exactly when, but it can’t have been much later than 55 million years ago, which is approximately when Australia (more especially Tasmania) pulled far enough away from Antarctica to be inaccessibe to island hoping mammals.”. It seems that the present day opposom evolved from that common ancester in South America before spreading to the north.

48. Thank you Robi@45 and muffin@46. A great word. And the associated ”apophenia”. And it’s only Monday. What a wonderful crossword community we have on 15sq.

49. [PM @48
    “apophenia” comes up in puzzle correspondence as well!]

50. Eileen@43!
    AMBER didn’t cross my mind when I was solving the puzzle. However, I started seeing AMBER after Kenmac brought up that topic. Took me a while to realise that AMBER wasn’t hidden in the clue. 🙂

    muffin!
    Thanks for ‘pareidolia’!

51. Eileen — thanks for parsing RAG DOLL.

    I now know that possums and opossums are different animals. Opossums are the ones who live in North America, though of course we all call them possums. But apparently the Australian ones have bushy tails like squirrels (says google), while our possums’ tails are long and ratlike. Our possums are also famous for pretending to be dead — do Australian possums do that too?

    I’ve always assumed the the name of the animal came from an indigenous word, like our chipmunk, moose or woodchuck. But it could hardly be an indigenous word in both “Australia and North America. So I looked it up in my beloved print American Heritage Dictionary, and find that the word’s origin is Algonquian. (That’s a Northeastern US language family.) It must be that Anglophone settlers in Australia knew the American name and used it over there.

    Thanks for the puzzle, Vulcan, and Eileen thanks for deftly carrying out triple duty on your birthday weekend!

52. Thanks both,
    Held up by pareidolically misreading ‘cervix’ as ‘coccyx’.

53. I’m another one who got held up at AMBER… isn’t the human brain fascinating! Apart from that minor delay this was very Monday-ish plain sailing, unlike the Other One today of which it is probably most polite not to speak…

    Thanks both!

54. Pretty straightforward stuff even for a Monday. The four long down clues were the best.

    Thanks Vulcan and Eileen

55. Perfect for a Monday. Add me to the list of those who have never heard of AGAMA, but it was clued fairly enough to be found.

    I’m surprised that nobody has suggested that Eric Morecambe may not be widely known except to British solvers of a certain age. He was certainly part of my childhood, but surely not all our overseas solvers?

56. Can’t think where I knew AGAMA from. Gerald Durrell, probably.

57. Suitably Mondayish, with a nicely uncontroversial homophone clue for YULE LOG and a splendid anagram for DYED-IN-THE-WOOL. I also limited RAG DOLL.

    Julie in Australia @34: I like ‘pussle’ – a good word to describe a crossword that is just a pussy cat and nothing to be frightened of – just like this one 🙂

    [muffin: ‘Pareidolia’ reminds me of a printing block given to me by one of my sons which, impressed on a slice of bread, produces an image of the Madonna when the bread is toasted]

58. ‘liked’ and not ‘limited’. I’m another who should proofread before sending…

59. Jacob@55 I for one know Eric Morecambe from this blog.

60. Jacob@55
    When I see Morecambe in a clue, I check if ERIC fits in the solution. Before I could forget Morecambe, one or the other setter comes to my help…
    I don’t know anything else about EM.

61. I don’t know why I struggled with this at 7am and only got 4 solutions. Returned just now and finished it at speed. Nice start to the week. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen for exceptional work over your birthday weekend.

62. Agamas we’re all over the house clinging to the walls in Nigeria sixty years ago

63. KVa @60 – here’s one of EM’s most famous sketches:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-47409017
    I hope it works for you: the YouTube version I found was blocked on ‘copyright grounds’.

64. Eileen @63
    Somewhere I have a vinyl LP from the early 60s with M&W sketches. It includes a version of the Grieg’s Piano Concerto one, but without Andrew Preview. The famous TV one was a remake!

65. Thanks, Eileen@63!
    I located the YouTube version (approx 13 min) after watching the shorter version through your link. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

66. KVa @65 – very strange: why can’t I get it? Glad you enjoyed it, anyway.

67. I was also convinced so that I had never heard of agama, however, a quick check shows it has occurred in several Guardian crosswords.

    Thanks Eileen and Vulcan

68. Crossword that was suitable for an idiot like me.
    No idea what FELLOW TRAVELLER is all about, when I check the blog hopefully all will be revealed.
    Thanks both

69. muffin @64 – Did your album have ‘Boom-Ooh-Yatatata’? If so, we had the same one.

70. Ramon
    Yes, with Sid and Dick.

71. 10a – does “one” at the start of the clue mean anything?

    11a – I was trying to get “sh”, “p” and “mute” into the clue.

    12a – how do you know it’s a hidden clue?

    25a – is “defenceless” always NAKED?

    1, 4, 5, 8D all eluded me. (4d just does not make sense to me at all, despite the explanation).

72. Steffen
    10 strictly “possum” and “opossum” are different species of marsupials, so OPOSSUM is O in front of another one
    12 “in”

73. HoofItYouDonkey@68: Am not sure what other blog you have in mind (?) but Eileen explains this above. Here is a link to wiki that gives more detail. A phrase popularised by Trotsky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_traveller

74. Hi Steffen – good to hear from you!

    I’ve been overtaken by other commenters but, for what it’s worth …

    10ac: I’m still not sure of this clue myself. It seems there are two marsupials (see various links), so O (love) POSSUM, as in the blog.
    11ac: remember that the definition (almost always) comes at the beginning or end of the clue – so ‘makes inaudible’. (But you’re quite right about SH and P.)
    12ac: ‘In’ at the beginning indicates a hidden.
    25ac: not always, but I think it makes sense here.

    I hope 1, 5 and 8 are now all clear.
    4d: I can’t do better than what I said in the blog: someone (I can’t find who!) has suggested that the ‘but’ might be superfluous. Cryptic clues are often rather difficult to explain / understand!

75. I’ll have a go at 4d. Roosters are birds – male hens – but other birds also roost at night.

76. …which, looking back, is pretty much what you said, Eileen!

77. Muffin@75 A Rooster or Cockerel is a male chicken, a hen is the female.
    Vulcan had an explanation for 10a but it has disappeare: O for love POSSUM, Australian endearment, also Love and OPOSSUM a marsupial. So one marsupial, two lovew.

78. Think Ma petite chou or sausage,, which my wife called the sprogs, or aperth, my dad short for ha’pennyworth.

79. nuntius @73 – this blog. I put a comment before reading. All perfectly explained by Eileen.
    Never heard of the lizard though.

80. I found this puzzle quite tough.

    New for me: AGAMA lizard.

    I could not parse ‘very left-wing’ bit of 1d.
    Not sure I fully understood 4d ROOSTER.

    Thanks, both.

81. michelle @80
    re 1dn: I posted the dictionary definitions of FELLOW TRAVELLER, which, I think, explain ‘very left wing’.
    As for 4dn- see me @74 – and muffin @75/76.

82. Thank you folks.

    75 now clicks!

83. Alan C @3 & Stella Heath @8: yes, the crosser means that the answer must be RELATIVE. But there is nothing in the 6D clue to tell you that “relation” is incorrect — so the demerit is for Vulcan, not for Eileen.

84. Andrew Tyndall @83 – it was simply a slip on my part: I was writing the blog from memory at that point, rather than referring to the clue.

85. great crossword and tx for the expanations for my guesses

86. great crossword and tx for the explanations for my guesses

87. For 12A, we considered ABAGA, though ‘male’ would have been left over…
    Thanks both.

88. Thanks both. Mentions in dispatches for FOGHORN and ROOSTER although I don’t know how I failed to spot what Robin Parker@12 spotted, but at least it saved me looking for a non-existent theme….

    Pareidolia? Apophenia? Yikes! Glad I’m not doing the crosswords muffin@40&49 is…. (Would either of these words encompass ‘looking for a non-existent theme’?)

89. Coming in very late, but I think I have something to add re ROOSTER. A group of birds that settle together for the night is called a Roost. So a cryptic definition of Rooster could be a bird in a Roost – i.e. not the only one that settles for the night.

90. I didn’t understand 4dn (ROOSTER), but I reckon that Eileen is right that it’s just a cryptic definition, referring to the fact that other birds also roost.

    I also didn’t know AGAMA, but it was quite gettable. A pedantic purist (not that I am such a thing) might complain that the first “a” in this clue has no role in the cryptic reading: it’s often said that in hidden clues, there should be no extra words in the fodder (i.e., other than those that contain the hidden answer). But that’s a very minor complaint.

    [I’m another who’d always thought possums were the same as opossums. I can confirm from direct experience that opossums “play possum” — that is, feign death. My dog found an (apparently) dead opossum in our back yard. I went to get a shovel to pick it up and put it in the bin, when it calmly got up and walked away.]

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