Guardian Prize 29,231 / Vlad

68 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,231 / Vlad”

1. I too found this very tough and didn’t finish.

   But wasn’t it strange that this puzzle and the Rosa Klebb on the same day had the same two answers for the first two across clues.

   Thanks Vlad and mhl

2. FOUR-STROKE
   Referring to FORE (a golf warning after an unintended shot).
   might have said: homophone indicator.
   FORE comes ‘earlier’. STROKE later in the wordplay.

3. “fore is a warning to everyone on the golf course that a ball has been hit and is coming their way instead of the intended area.”

4. SLIPPERED
   Could the order be this?
   mistake-SLIP
   a=PER
   journalist=ED

5. 5ac, ASPECT: typo (ED for EC)

   9ac, ITERATES: M is used for ‘money’ in categorising the various types of money supply: M1, M2, M3, M4:

   https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/money-supply/#h-measurement

   10ac, VIAGRA: semi &lit, surely?

   17ac, NEFARIOUS: spelling!

   19ac, DARIA: as the murdered journalist, Daria Dugina

   20ac, CRAPSHOOTER: didn’t get this. Thanks for explaining.

   25ac NIGHT OWL: didn’t get this, either. Thanks for explaining.

   27ac, STAMPEDE: nor this. “Run” as an instruction to reorganise letters seems iffy to me, but maybe sour grapes? Thanks for explaining.

   6dn, SLIPPERED: I think it’s “a” which indicates PER (tuppence a/per bag). “By” means ‘you get this def by using the following wordplay.

   13dn, FOUR-STROKE: didn’t get this. Can’t quite work out the wordplay, either. Could the “bad driver” have said it to mean it would take four strokes (hits) to hole this one? Seems pretty good for most holes, though, doesn’t it?

   14dn, ESPADRILLE: didn’t get this. How is “yank” an anagram indicator?

   21dn, OGHAM: didn’t get this. May vaguely have heard of ogham, but buried deep, if so and didn’t crack the wordplay, having no crossers to help.

   Badly impaled!

6. Kva@2, thanks for explaining FOUR-STROKE. I was still writing my comment when yours went up.

7. @2
   FOUR-STROKE
   shot=STROKE (though obvious, just mentioning for the sake of completeness).

   ITERATES
   Seen M for money in some formulas in economics. Maybe it’s used elsewhere too.

8. I’m slowly getting over my fear of Vlad, and this started well with IN SPADES coming to mind immediately and then a number of gettable anagrams helped. But I spent a long time stuck at the end staring at U-A-E and O-H-M. Eventually I thought the first might sound like UK’s and found UKASE in Chambers. Never having heard of either OGHAM or gams I was never going to get that from the wordplay, but I decided there couldn’t be many pronounceable options and tentatively looked up a few. OGHAM showed up after a few tries. So I finished with the correct solution, but I feel whether I ‘solved’ it or not is a bit of a semantic quibble. Thanks both Vlad and mhl.

9. Thanks mhl. Most of the comments I was going to make have already been expressed, probably more expressively. I wasn’t too happy with ‘run’ as an anagrind in 26 and I doubt that Conservatives have a moratorium on pomposity. I did know about UKASE, first encountered it in crossword land many decades ago and it has stuck in my mind ever since – not that I have ever had recourse to use it. DARIA I thought was a bit weak but SIMPLY so simple that it was one of the LOIs.

10. I had KVa’s interpretation of FOUR/fore.

    UNAI in 17a is probably a reference to Unai Emery of AV, formerly Arsenal, PSG and others.

    Altogether I didn’t find it as difficult as I usually find Vlad.

    Thanks V&M

11. “Ukase” is one of those words I read but don’t hear. After 80+ years I learn it’s not three syllables!

12. Thank you mhl.
    OGHAM clever. VIAGRA, CRAPSHOOTER and SCAM made me laugh.
    Tony Collman@5, I also found yank as an anagrind I had to think twice about, but I imagine Vlad chose it for the misdirection of American with the capital at the beginning of the clue. And while my memory is a bit ropey I had some subliminal knowledge of ESPADRILLE.
    Agree that Conservatives aren’t necessarily the only pompous ones, but STUFFED SHIRT was brilliant for STUFF (uncountable, synonym for objects</em, and ED SHIRTS, this red anagram indicator claptrap .
    EPISCOPAL also a brilliant surface, with the image of the Great Wall of China. Found a town called BISHOP’S STORTFORD. Great clue.
    My husband told me he got SLIPPERED as a child, until he went to a Catholic school and was hammered by the nuns and brothers.

13. ESPADRILLE
    Seen ‘yank’ as an anagrind once or twice before.
    Yank in the sense of ‘jerk vigorously’ seems to work all right
    as an anagrind.

14. typo – NIGHT OWL – “Definition”: is blank

15. YOU’RE THE TOP

16. Thanks for the blog, good puzzle for a Saturday, tough steady solve. I had done the FT at the beach so the first two answers went in straight away. I think it is Pompous Conservative to go with the “Red claptrap “. EPISCOPAL was a very neat clue . The (S)PECULATED idea used to be very common but not seen it for a while. NIGHT OWL deserves a severe Paddington stare.

17. I didn’t get UKASE, having completed the puzzle with an unparsed USAGE, but otherwise didn’t find this too bad.

    I parsed FOUR-STROKE and SLIPPERED as KVa, didn’t have a problem with OGHAM and know the town of BISHOPS STORTFORD, which isn’t far from Stansted Airport, so wasn’t fazed by that one.

    Thank you to manehi and Vlad.

18. There is OGHAM script on the window sill of Nevern Church; my home village, although I live mostly in Vietnam now, so that helped. I definitely needed the crossers for UKASE and it took me a while to realise it must be one syllable.
    I completed it on Saturday,so it can’t have been that hard, loved FOUR-STROKE when I finally parsed it and NIGHT-OWL (Sorry Roz)

19. Sorry 2 syllables

20. Last time UKASE appeared (and that was also Vlad) I realised I didn’t know how to say it. This time I remembered.

21. Again I mucked up. But I really enjoyed this one … not least for the cheekiness of some of the clues and indicators. Many thanks Vlad and mhl.

    UKASE was one of my failures: having only an unparsed USAGE. Nice one, Dan Milton @11. Took me back to Steptoe & Son.

22. Very, very tough! Way too difficult for me. I solved 14 clues and gave up. I was busy last week with a lot travelling so I never went back to it and enjoyed my time travelling from Oxford to London, Pisa, and a village in Tuscany where I am now 🙂

    New for me: OGHAM (and also GAM = school of whales).

    Thanks, both.

23. Bergenia is the plant known as ELEPHANTS EARS, though I see from Google that several different houseplants are also called that.

    This was as difficult as I expect Vlad to be: I forgot a=per, and gam=school of whales (I went to the University of Wales, but it didn’t help). Needed a list to find DARIA as a Russian girl’s name.

24. I don’t remember this being as tricky as some previous Vlad’s.

    I liked the surfaces for VIAGRA’ FOUR-STROKE and ACCEPT, the wordplays for NIGHT OWL, STAMPEDE and EPISCOPAL, and the good anagram for ELEPHANT EARS.

    Thanks Vlad and mhl.

25. I found this easier than usual for a Vlad, which is not to say that it was easy, just that it didn’t take all weekend. I knew UKASE (nice pun!), and I’ve seen both OGHAM and GAM in crosswordland before, and luckily the memory cells were on fire last Saturday (I even remembered ‘a’ for PER in 6d 🙂 ). Never heard of the song at 12a, but apparently it’s by Cole Porter.

    Don’t see any problem with L-TWO in the anagrist for NIGHT OWL. OK, so it’s an indirect anagram, but there’s no rule against such. It would only be unfair if it wasn’t obvious. And I enjoy inventive anagrinds like ‘run’ at 27a and ‘yank’ at 14d. The use of ‘money’ for M always seems to prompt a discussion, with the same questions and the same answers as last time it cropped up!

    Thanks to Vlad and mhl.

26. This was by all accounts (and mine too) a tough one, but the only real difficulty I had was one I caused myself by thinking of EPISCOPUS at 16d, ‘great work’ pointing to EPIC OPUS. Once I got over that (a great clue) I completed that small corner without difficulty.

    Thanks Vlad and mhl.

27. Timon and I found this tough as well, although we got there in the end. I liked VIAGRA, which I agree is semi & lit. My only quibble was over LASS, where I felt that “very good” in the clue was a bit vague.

    On a different but related topic, perhaps someone should mention that this will be the last Guardian blog by mhl as he is stepping down, to be replaced by duncanshiell. Kenmac is away but no doubt he would want to thank Mark for his contribution to the cause!

28. Excellent Saturday puzzle which (for me) revealed itself slowly but steadily.

    Robi @24 has already listed my favourites, NIGHT OWL being top for me – a bit cheeky, perhaps, but obvious, as sheffield hatter points out @25, and with a wonderful surface.

    Thanks to Jim and mhl

29. ….and thanks to mhl for many illuminating blogs 🙂

30. Thanks Vlad – a fine challenge.

    I resorted to a web search to get CRAPSHOOTER despite having obsessively read Damon Runyon as a youth. Everything else came out at a slow steady pace but needed my wife to unlock I KID YOU NOT — very much my LOI and a pretty challenging clue I thought!
    .
    Ave et vale mhl, you leave on a high note! enjoy your blog-retirement.

31. A super perfectly pitched puzzle for a lazy pencil-sucking Saturday morning coffee solve! Many thanks, Vlad!

    And bless you, mhl, for your wonderful kindness over the years, you must be chock full of supreme good karma, and I’m sure that wonderful surprises await you…

32. I concur with those who feel this was an easier Vlad than normal. I’m frequently defeated by him, though even with his beastliest offerings I refuse to give up until I’ve completed over half. This time there was only one which eluded me: THAT. (“What I just said”? Really?? Ok then)
    On the other hand, NIGHT OWL was a little beauty, and CRAPSHOOTER made me grin.
    Thanks to mhi for all the blogs – most of which I read & agreed with, so felt no need to comment. I always appreciated them, however! Thanks also to Vlad for the challenge.

33. Oddly I had 22d as Y (young) ASS (lass topless). Giving Yass (or yass!) “expressing great pleasure or excitement.”

34. Mark@mhl. Thank you for your wonderful dedication to the cryptic community, here and on your own site.

35. Thanks everyone for all the kind comments (and corrections – I hope I’ve applied them all!)

    I’ve also added a note in the preamble about it being my last post for the foreseeable future. I’d scheduled the post before arranging to step down, and forgot to update it in time! Maybe in the future when I have more time I can do some more crossword blogging again 🙂

36. SH@25, indirect anagrams are, in general deprecated, but usually well-known abbreviations as part of the fodder are deemed acceptable. Some editors, though, will insist that the abbreviation must consist of letters in the thing abbreviated, on the principle that the fodder must all be visible on the page. Of course, L is not even an abbreviation and that letter doesn’t figure in the word ‘fifty’, so The Times, for example, would be unlikely to accept it. Furthermore, it wasn’t “obvious” to me!

37. Good fun – thanks Vlad. And thanks mhl, for this and all the previous blogs.

38. Best wishes to mhl in his retirement. Thanks for all the blog posts!

39. Bridgesong@27, I think “Class!” meaning ‘very good’ is not that uncommon as vernacular in certain milieus.

40. David@33, where are you getting Y=young from?

41. I really enjoyed this workout, with thanks to Vlad for the challenge which was in my goldilocks zone too. Last one in was EDGY, also one of my favourites.

    I came on here to thank mhl for this and the many blogs you’ve posted. It is very good of you to have given up your time to do the write-ups and it’s very much appreciated by the community. Good luck with your next blog-free phase of life and maybe you’ll be back in the future, stranger things have happened.

42. Tony @36. I’m sorry you didn’t find NIGHT OWL obvious. When I saw ‘fifty-two’ and ‘surprisingly’ I knew I’d be looking for an anagram involving Roman numerals. What else can ‘fifty’ imply other than L?

    This idea of “general deprecation” that you and Roz seem to be espousing doesn’t have much of a basis in reality. Surely we should applaud what is fun, what amuses us, what stretches us, what seems witty – either in the surface or after solving. If I fail to solve a clue I’m more likely to blame myself than the setter.

    I’ll occasionally say that a clue didn’t work, or was too difficult, or even unfair, but to “deprecate” a whole class of clues without considering whether they are fair or not seems like dinosaur thinking to me.

43. Thanks mhl for all your help over the years. I hope your increased busyness is all good.

    I didn’t get 21d, as GAM=school and OGHAM=old script were two NHOs in one clue. Still, getting all but one in a Vlad puzzle constitutes victory in my book.

    I am an indirectly anagrammed NIGHT OWL, so naturally 25a was my clue of the day. I share sheffield hatter’s view (@25) of the acceptability of this device.

    I also had ticks for 1d I KID YOU NOT, and 24a ACCEPT for their excellent surfaces.

    Thanks, Vlad, for the fun and mhl for one last time for the clear and helpful blog.

44. sh@42, we crossed. I fully endorse your additional comment, which says it better than I could.

45. Thanks cellomaniac!

    And I forgot to say extra thanks to mhl for the blogs. Fifteen years on Fifteen Squared! Well done to you and I hope you are able to make the best use of the time freed up.

46. Thanks for this blog and all the others mhl. I appreciate the time it takes to explain everything and I often need those explanations.
    This puzzle needed a decent brain reset in the middle as I found parts tough. Thanks for that exercise Vlad.

47. I have not deprecated anything and I never say things are against the rules , I simply frown at indirect anagrams because all the letters should be in the clue if they are going to be mixed up. If you accept one letter then you cannot complain at any amount of substitution before the anagram.
    This provoked resistance (8,7)

48. Busy day, so too late to add anything meaningful re the puzzle, except to say I enjoyed it, as always (didn’t find it particularly more or less enjoyable than usual) and to add support for sheffield hatter @42 and Cellomaniac @44 …

    .. and, of course, to Mark ( mhl) for all the splendid blogs. He and I started blogging at about the same time and the last time he talked of giving up his (weekly) blog, I managed to persuade him to go for a monthly Prize one, which has worked for a good while (but he didn’t have children then!).

    Many thanks, Mark, for today’s blog and all the others. We’ll miss you – but I’m glad to see you’ve left the door open a crack. 😉

49. Oh dear! – for ‘enjoyable’ in the above comment, please read ‘difficult’! (I don’t know what happened there!

50. Thank you and farewell to mhl! I usually thank the blogger as a closing sentence but that seems inappropriate here. I have always found the blogs here to be an invaluable part of my education about and enjoyment of crosswords, so I wish you well.

    A good challenging puzzle despite some one anagram indicator that tripped me up (‘yank’) but interestingly the indirect anagram in NIGHT OWL didn’t bother me one whit 🙂 I don’t think there needs to be a hard and fast rule that anagram fodder should be in plain sight — who on here doesn’t know that ‘fifty’ can mean L?

51. Roz@457. One of the definitions for deprecate in Chambers is to express disapproval of; and for frown there is to show disapproval. There’s no entry in Chambers for Paddington stare, severe or otherwise, but I think we can all provide a definition. 🙂

52. Thanks for the fine blog, mhl, and all the best for the future.

    Thanks also to others who commented.

53. I actually finished this one, but EC = “city”, GAM = “school”, and PAL = “China” were new to me and so unparsed. (I assumed OGAM was the name of an exclusive school in the UK, with “Letters from old” as the literal.) SLIPPERED also new to me, and utterly silly.

54. Just adding my own word of thanks to mhl for all the helpful blogs over the past fifteen years. I have enormous admiration for the bloggers on this site, and feel sad that I might lose touch with someone like Mark, who feels like an old friend. With gratitude.

55. Thanks Vlad and mhl, Mark. Totally defeated by this. Averaged one clue per day this week. Off to arrange a senility check-up at the GP.

56. I found it tough, but finished it just now with a little bit of help from a word-filler. I could not explain all the answers, so thanks mhl and others above for elucidation. Like ThemTates@53, I struggled with EC for city, but I have come across it before, and another quick Google identified it as a postcode for the city of London. Ancient Ogham inscriptions on standing stones can still be found in Ireland. Best wishes to mhl in retirement (for now at least).

57. ThemTates@53 sadly SLIPPERED was a thing in UK schools in the 1980s . It was usually PE teachers who would hit pupils with a large Plimsoll , it was called being slippered .

58. SH@42, when I say that indirect anagrams are “generally deprecated”, I am not expressing a personal value judgement, but describing the real world of published crosswords and their editors. Ximenes condemned indirect anagrams absolutely in his his seminal The Art of the Crossword due to the huge number of possibilities arising from trying to find a synonym whose letters can be rearranged to give a solution fitting the definition and setters and editors have generally concurred. There has been some loosening, especially, for example, where there is only one reasonably possible synonym (arguably like L for fifty, perhaps) and where some small part of the fodder is supplied by abbreviations of words in the clue. Even this last liberalisation, as I explained, is sometimes restricted to cases where the actual letters providing the fodder are on the page. As a solver, you can say that “there are no rules”, but if you try submitting puzzles for publication, you will find that there are rules which editors use to exclude clues and, potentially, reject submissions. Although the Guardian, traditionally the most liberally edited, allows the NIGHT OWL clue, I seriously doubt whether The Times would.

    Personally, I quite like the clue now I understand it; I just didn’t find it easy when looking at a large area of white in the SE corner at the time.

59. https://cryptics.fandom.com/wiki/Indirect_anagram

60. Tony @58/59. Thanks for your further explication and especially the link to the article. The crux of the matter is summarised there:

    “…not a global ban on indirect anagrams, but general agreement that they are unfair and excessively difficult.”

    The example given makes it clear that they are thought “excessively difficult” because they are two-stage clues. First find a synonym, then do something to it. We see this creeping into Guardian crosswords too, with ‘cycling’ used to denote the first letter moving to the end, which has the benefit of limiting the sort of words we are looking for, and may introduce some help from crossers.

    Personally I still find some of these too difficult – and, more to the point, not enjoyable even when I solve them. This does not apply to the likes of ‘fify-two, surprisingly’, where L-TWO (for what we think of as 52) incongruously forming part of the fodder raised at least a wry smile for me, and I’m pleased to see that you also appreciated the clue once its device became apparent.

61. SH@60,

    “First find a synonym, then do something to it.”

    This is considered acceptable, even desirable, for most devices other than anagrams, including ‘cycling’, containment, reversal and so on.

    Btw, although I said “Ximenes condemned indirect anagrams absolutely”, the linked post goes to the source to contradict this with the quote “the secondary part of the clue – other than the definition – is meant to help the solver. The indirect anagram, unless there are virtually no alternatives, hardly ever does.” (My emphasis). The emphasised words could certainly apply to L = fifty. For my part, I missed the necessity to “lift and separate” the ‘fifty’ from the ‘two’. Hence failure.

62. I think of “I kid you not” as the pet expression of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny and had assumed that the author, Herman Wouk, had invented it, but maybe it was current at the time.

    Farewell and many thanks, mhl.

    For some reason, this blog, which apparently appeared on the 25th as it should, only showed up in my computer this afternoon, Monday. I looked in vain for comments about the lateness until I discovered that most people hadn’t experienced it. Oh, well, another electronic oddity.

    Thanks to mhl for this puzzle and fifteen years more besides, and to Vlad.

63. Hi, Valentine@62. I had the same experience as you on Saturday morning. The icon I hit on my phone to take me to the blogs is filtered to only give me ones for Guardian crosswords. The prize puzzle blog didn’t show up the first two times I tried.

    Being impatient, on the third attempt I went to fifteensquared afresh and all was well.

    My usual icon has worked correctly since. So there was something a bit peculiar going on … even if it only affected thee and me!

    Reading “Water in the service of man” by HR Vallentine taken from my dad’s bookshelves was an important factor in making me open to becoming a hydrologist ten or more years later. Have always liked the name Valentine in consequence … with or without the extra fifty!

64. Valentine & Choldunk, see SheffieldHatter@7 & Admin@8 on Site Feedback.

65. (That’s the place to report stuff like this, btw).

66. (Thanks, Tony. Had forgotten that … if I ever knew it.)

67. Pleased to read others found this difficult. Having just become 82, I feared senility had finally set in.

68. A dnf for me but had to offer knowing that you would be notified (mhl). Thanks to you for your help over the years.

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