Guardian 29,495 – Vulcan

by

Another Vulcan Monday for those who like a gentle start to the week, with quite a few cryptic (or barely cryptic) definitions. Thanks to Vulcan.

 
Across
1 BIOPIC A sexually fluid work I see announced? Not necessarily (6)
BI (sexually fluid) + OP (work) + I C; not really an &lit, I would say, but the definition is certainly tangled up with the wordplay
5 BESIDE Nearby, very angry with oneself (6)
To be “beside oneself” is to be very angry
8 RETRIAL A consequence of bad hearing? (7)
Cryptic definition
9 GENERIC Information on boy getting cheaper drug (7)
GEN (information) + ERIC
11 TIGHTROPE WALKER One’s success is in the balance (9,6)
Cryptic definition
12 LOAF Idle head (4)
Double definition; for the second, as in “use your loaf”
13 JUMP THE GUN Start one’s piece, but not wait for the signal (4,3,3)
JUMP (to start) + THE GUN (one’s “piece” – slang for a firearm)
17 STEAM RADIO Old-fashioned medium broadcast modest aria (5,5)
(MODEST ARIA)*
18 WASH Clean up US state briefly (4)
Abbreviated WASHington
20 A PASSAGE TO INDIA In novel, a short section an idiot misread (1,7,2,5)
A PASSAGE (short section of a book etc) + (AN IDIOT)* – novel by E M Forster, first published in 1924
23 EXAMINE Test: cut back the one for me (7)
Reverse of AXE (cut) + MINE (the one for me)
24 AT A LOSS Bewildered by how badly business is going (2,1,4)
Double definition
25 PEANUT After exercise bring back fish and a sort of butter (6)
PE (exercise) + reverse of TUNA
26 LASERS Idlers said to go for the bright lights (6)
Homophone of “lazers”
Down
2 INTEGRATE Assimilate where fire may be lit, if not hot (9)
IN THE GRATE less H
3 PLINTH Solid support for Rhodes’s statue? (6)
More or less a straight definition, with a reference to the controversy over the status of Cecil Rhodes in Oriel College, Oxford
4 COLLOQUIA Seminars using slang endlessly (9)
COLLOQUIA[L] (using slang)
5 BUGLE One calls for the Army (5)
Cryptic definition
6 SUNBATHE Ashen, but work thus to get some colour (8)
(ASHEN BUT)*
7 DEREK Mike redubbed, turning up bearing another name (5)
Hidden in reverse of miKE REDubbed
8 RATTLESNAKE Dangerous creature, a kestrel – ant is pulverised (11)
(A KESTREL ANT)*
10 CORINTHIANS One or two of these appear in the New Testament (11)
Reference to the two epistles to the Corinthians in the NT
14 PAINTBALL Mock battle in which the losers are the more decorated? (9)
Cryptic definition – the losers in the game of Paintball are the ones who end up with more paint on them
15 GRAND TOUR Educational journey to old city, under £1K (5,4)
GRAND (£1000) + TO + UR (old city)
16 EMISSION Discharge online assignment? (8)
An online assignment could be an E-MISSION
19 FINALS Exams that French speakers often miss out (6)
The final letters of French words are often silent, e.g. in français, or indeed silent
Thanks to Criceto and other commenters: a better parsing is that a FINAL S is often not pronounced in French words
21 AGATE A barrier of stone (5)
A + GATE
22 GUEST Hotel patron gets out uniform packed away (5)
U in GETS*

70 comments on “Guardian 29,495 – Vulcan”

  1. Defeated by LOAF and distinctly underwhelmed by PLINTH but apart from those a pleasant enough and gently entertaining start to the week.
    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

  2. Agree with Andrew’s assessment, though a bit of thought was required to complete the puzzle with the cryptic definitions. A bit of a shrug about 3 as I looked for something more in the clue to justify the Rhodes. Liked JUMP THE GUN, STEAM RADIO and A PASSAGE TO INDIA. Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

  6. Nice Monday fodder. Came to the blog to see what I had missed with plinth – pretty underwhelming. Liked A Passage to India and most of the cds

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

  7. A very pleasant solve, came here for the parsing of PLINTH and FINALS which I got but wasn’t sure how they worked.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

  8. At first it seemed impenetrable, but then it’s first thing Monday morning. Once one or two were in place then the rest of it came together quite steadily. Agreed that 1 felt rather tangled but the elements for solving were clear enough.

  11. Agree with Criceto @4&5

    Ticks for FINALS, A PASSAGE TO INDIA for the subtle IN and PAINTBALL for the HMHB reference to their perennial crowd-pleaser Paintball’s Coming Home. And also for being an example of a good CD – unlike some of the others!

    RATTLESNAKE provides todays ear-worm from Lloyd Cole

    Cheers V&A

  14. I’m with NeilH and Tomsdad re PLINTH – I was expecting some reference to the Colossus, which was, presumably, a misdirection – and with Andrew re most of the cryptic definitions.

    I quite liked BESIDE, A PASSAGE TO INDIA, PEANUT (for not being ram or goat), GRAND TOUR and the neat anagram STEAM RADIO.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

  16. I liked PLNTH. I thought it cryptic in several ways, .referring both to the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford which was not solidly supported for reasons of slavery etc, and was taken down, and the statue of Rhodes, the Greek sun god Helios, which gave us PLINTH, a word of Greek derivation.

  18. Just in case Vulcan (or anyone else) takes the slightest interest in views expressed on this site, I love a cryptic definition in a cryptic crossword, and enjoyed the ones today. They bring pleasure to Monday mornings and are part of the rich world of potential clues that a Guardian crossword ought to contain.

  19. Echo scraggs@8. I actually found this a struggle to get started! After the first full pass I only had PLINTH (but seemed too direct), TIGHTROPE WALKER, PAINTBALL (both plausible but lacking confirmation through checkers), JUMP THE GUN (but I didn’t grok the “piece” at that moment), RATTLESNAKE, LOAF and GUEST. Which seemed a pretty poor showing given that the puzzle was dubbed as easy! (I tend to look at the blog summary on the listings page as there’s often an indication of difficulty level in that first paragraph, which helps me to decide if and when to tackle the puzzle.) It didn’t bode well that I was fairly baffled by lots of the remaining clues at first reading.

    However, bit by bit it fell into place without any great struggle, so overall it was indeed decent Monday fodder.

    Like others have said, I read it as FINAL S, I think plinth indeed had slightly more depth because of the Cecil angle, I found BIOPIC weak because of the vague definition, and I didn’t spot the utility of the “In” in “In novel…”.

    Favourites were RETRIAL (a good cd, along with PAINTBALL) and FINALS.

    Thanks both

  20. Liked J T GUN, A P T INDIA, PAINTBALL, FINALS.
    Adding PLINTH after reading the comment@16 from pdm. Liked the explanation.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew!

  22. This was enjoyable, thanks, Vukcan. I struggled to find the definition for BIOPIC, and didn’t parse FINALS, which was rather tricky methought. The Rhodes reference in PLINTH was a head scratcher, so thank you for the link, Andrew, which I might read when I’m at a loose end. I’ve not heard of COLLOQUIA. No standout favourites but a fair number of smiles.

  23. Criceto@4: Well spotted…I enjoyed this, though agree that PLINTH is a bit weak. Perhaps a little more chewy than a traditional Monday puzzle (?), but everything fell into place. With thanks to both.

  24. Although I solved and parsed it, I wondered about the definition for 1ac.

    I did not parse 4d but the answer was obvious from the crossers I had.

    New for me: STEAM RADIO.

    Thanks, both.

    paddymelon@16 and others – the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College has not been taken down, supposedly due to costs and “complex” planning processes. Instead, the college has placed an explanatory plaque about Rhodes.

  25. Pleasant puzzle. BIOPIC was my FOI, despite the lack of a cast-iron definition and PLINTH was LOI – also somewhat vaguely defined.

    Some nice CDs and DDs, though I defy anyone to solve CORINTHIANS without the crossers (just the enumeration might do at a pinch).

    Favourites were SUNBATHE, PAINTBALL and FINAL S (which I parsed thus).

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

  27. Michelle@24. Thanks for the correction about the statue of Cecil Rhodes. Don’t know where I thought I read it had been taken down. But I still believe that’sthe cryptic element.

  28. In 1a BIOPIC “announced” may be be alluding to the common mispronunciation of the word. It’s not BI-OP-IC, rhyming with MYOPIC.
    It’s BIO (biography) and PIC (picture).

  29. This was not a Monday walk in the park for me. I’ve often wondered exactly what the word GENERIC meant when uttered by pharmacists. Now I know. I thought SUNBATHE and INTEGRATE both excellent clues. Wasn’t sure about how PLINTH or EXAMINE deserved their place in the grid. Once I got BIOPIC it had to be COLLOQUIA, a new one to add to my vocab. Last one in had me scratching it in perplexity – LOAF. Very enjoyable, however…

  31. Not a good morning and a DNF. I didn’t help myself by carelessly starting with BIOPSY for 1a, which meant the unfamiliar COLLOQUIA went unsolved – and although we had a reading from one of the Letters To The CORINTHIANS in church yesterday, I still ended up revealing it. Nor did I see FINALS in spite of speaking French. Couldn’t see anything cryptic about PLINTH, and I missed a lot of other subtleties like the IN novel.

    I did like the CDs for TIGHTROPE WALKER, RETRIAL and particularly PAINTBALL.

  33. Good Monday puzzle where a few of the cds slowed me down.

    I liked the TIGHTROPE WALKER, A PASSAGE TO INDIA, EXAMINE, INTEGRATE, and, especially, PAINTBALL.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.

  34. I was going to post the earworm of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ Rattlesnakes (1984, a 40th (Ruby) anniversary) but bodycheetah@11 pre-empted me.
    Nice one! The HMHB link is great too. 😉 But two links in a post – is that working again, kenmac?

  37. Reasonable work-out for a Monday. Can’t see the def for BIOPIC but thought PLINTH was a nice cryptic by way of misdirection.
    Thanks both.

  38. CORINTHIANS
    CORINTHIANS 1 and CORINTHIANS 2 become ‘1 or 2 of these‘?
    BIOPIC
    FrankieG@28
    Is the ‘announced’ not to indicate a hom of ‘see’?
    Does it not work if we take it as ‘not necessarily biological but biographical‘?

  39. Got held up for ages because I was sure that “success in the balance” referred to some kind of banker.

    Also agree that PLINTH did not really belong in a cryptic puzzle.

  40. ronald @29: GENERIC doesn’t actually mean cheaper (although such drugs invariably are), but unbranded. When a pharmaceutical company launches a new drug it comes to the markets at a high price to cover the high costs of R&D. Once the original patents have expired, other companies are able to manufacture and sell the medicine, and make a good profit at much lower margins. [For reasons I have never investigated, generic drugs are virtually unknown in Italy, and medicines are consequently very expensive. Bayer still has exclusive rights to aspirin in Italy, although they have been marketing it since at least 1899, so there it is sold branded, at a price at least twenty times that in the UK]

  42. Gervase @ 40

    “When a pharmaceutical company launches a new drug it comes to the markets at a high price to cover the high costs of R&D.”

    The pharmaceutical companies certainly say that, but what they don’t say is that they spend more on marketing than on R&D.

  44. I didn’t much like lasers as I’ve never heard of lazers to refer to idle people. It isn’t in my Collins dictionary or on an online dictionary that I’ve found.
    I did like integrate, though. That was rather clever.
    On the whole, a fun solve, thank you Vulcan and Andrew.

  45. Very Mondayish I thought, which puts me in the mainstream of comments above. Thanks Gervase@40 for the interesting tidbit about Italian drug pricing. Surprised that it is allowed in the EU, but there you go. And I didn’t think that Italy had a pharma industry worth protecting – certainly not compared to the US, UK, Germany and Switzerland – so will now go and see if I can find out what the Italians are up to.
    Simon S @42 – the spend on marketing might well be higher than R&D for the majority of pharma companies that mostly manufacture and sell generics, but I doubt that it is true for the minority that produce new medicines on a regular basis. I don’t have the stats to back up my hunch on this though.

  46. I don’t see why LASERS are defined as bright – they are just as bright as you make them be, just like any other light.

  47. [Simon S @42: Sadly yes, particularly in the US, where prescription-only drugs are advertised on the TV – a practice considered unethical in most jurisdictions, but which harnesses the pester power of American patients]

  48. PAINTBALL was a clear favourite. I had qualms which have already been laid forth by others, but otherwise a nice start to the week! Thanks Vulcan and Andrew!

  49. Gervase@40 and Paul@45: I’ve just come back from Italy (to the UK), and can certainly attest to the fact that basic medicines are a lot more expensive there than here. Actually, I don’t think it’s got much to do with a lack of generics. European law applies to ensure competition once patents have expired, and to control prices even when they haven’t (up to a point). I think the bigger problem is that there are restrictions on where you can buy at the retail level. There is much more competition in the UK, e.g. from supermarkets. It’s a good example of where Italy has many opportunities for structural changes which could benefit consumers. The politics of doing so is another matter, of course…

  50. paul @ 45

    My source is Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma (2012)

    Big pharma, which includes those developing new drugs, spends twice as much on marketing as on R&D.

  51. [nuntius @49: Your point about restrictions on where pharmaceuticals can be sold is well made. However, even in pharmacies, common over-the-counter medicines like paracetamol and ibuprofen always seem to come ‘branded’. They are generic, in the sense that the constituents are no longer patent protected by the original inventors, but they are packaged and sold under brand names and heavily marketed, with the names of the active ingredients in the small print]

  52. Struggled a bit with top left corner: like others not sure about definition part of 1ac and put plinth down in very faint pencil. Lots to enjoy however and generic drugs got me off to a good start.
    Last one was 8ac: hearing was used as a synonym for a court trial in Saturday’s quick cryptic and that was my last one in as well. I’m a slow learner!

  53. [Simon S @50: I’m afraid this is more or less an inevitable consequence of big pharma consisting of commercial enterprises operating in a capitalist system. It wouldn’t be necessary if the industry were nationalised…]

  54. Was stumped in the NE corner by putting in tightrope artist for 11across. Can’t see anything in the clue to lead to walker, so a bit miffed. Once I twigged they all fell into place.
    Thanks for the blog everyone, and the explanation of finals.

  55. Another one here who didn’t like PLINTH overmuch. And, speaking as an Oriel alumnus – although all the time I was there I knew nothing about the existence of that wretched piece of stonework – I should point out that it doesn’t stand on a plinth, instead it’s set in an alcove high up on the wall of the building.

    The reason I never knew about it is that it’s on the outside wall, facing The High – whereas I spent most of my time within the college.

    The rest was OK – a fairly quick solve. Liked PAINTBALL, TIGHTROPE WALKER, INTEGRATE, GENERIC, and a few others.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

  56. [In Spain there are generic drugs but the systemic problem of only being able to buy them through pharmacies exists, meaning that pharmacies, as in France and Italy, are this bizarre hybrid of boutique-like purveyors of €50 suncreams and dietary supplements from which they earn their money and Boots-style prescription handlers. Without a prescription, things are expensive, the most relatively expensive compared with the UK being, indeed, paracetamol and the like, which here too are all branded and never white label. I stock up in Sainsburys and being them over!]

  57. I don’t find Vulcan’s puzzles as easy as the experts, I often find them harder than Paul or Vlad puzzles.
    Today was an exception, though I needed the explanation for FINALS and I had no idea what PLINTHE was all about.
    Thanks both

  59. HIYD @57
    Interesting point on relative difficulty. Some people used to find Rufus fairly impenetrable too. I suppose it depends on whether you catch on to the (relatively frequent) cryptic definitions.

  60. Thanks both. A nice entertainment.

    I was hoping that someone here would elaborate on the meaning/origins of STEAM RADIO – I appreciate it’s whimsical but why? And when would you use it?

  61. Alphalpha@60
    From Wikipedia

    “Etymology
    The phrase originated in Britain when television was beginning to take over from radio and steam locomotives were giving way to diesel and electric ones.

    Noun
    steam radio (uncountable)

    (chiefly British, informal) Radio (sound broadcasting), considered as old-fashioned compared to television.”

  65. My reaction to the puzzle is to ask how many cryptic definitions is too many. Whatever the answer is, this puzzle exceeded it.

  66. @18 Sagittarius- well said, Vulcan is a truly classy setter (great surfaces, great cryptics). RETRIAL, PAINTBALL, SUNBATHE, FINALS all inspired. Thank you Vulcan, thank you Andrew!

  67. I thought the reference to Rhodes in 3d was to signal a word of Greek origin. Cecil didn’t even enter my mind until reading the blog.

    Every nation has its controversial commemorations – Confederate military leaders in the US, our first Prime Minister here in Canada, Bob Dylan in Sweden. The desire to glorify or erase our past, depending on which end of the pencil we gravitate towards, seems to be a universal human characteristic.

    Thanks, Vulcan for the enjoyable puzzle and Andrew for the clear and informative blog.

  68. Any chance of a glossary of abbreviations?
    Dnf immediately seems rude. cds?
    Took a while to get going for a monday but good fun, thank you.

  69. Googly @68
    DNF has come to crosswords from horse-racing – it’s “did not finish”.
    CD – cryptic definition

  70. This was a great puzzle. I struggled with it at first and had to put it away and come back to it. When I finished it I wondered why it was so hard in the beginning. It was because Vulcan is clever but the clues were not convoluted. Never heard of colloquia so that was a guess then look it up. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.

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