Guardian 29,555 – Vulcan

79 comments on “Guardian 29,555 – Vulcan”

1. Fun puzzle! My favourites: TIME FLIES, NIXON, the show must go on, DUST JACKET, AUTOMAT.

   New for me: PROPs and hookers in rugby (for 15ac) – it’s not a game that I follow.

2. Interesting. Had not realised one was the other. In 14d what is the point of ‘to be’? Some lovely anagrams, imo. Thanks for the blog Andrew and for the puzzle, Vulcan/Imogen.

3. NIXON excellent.
   Thanks, both

4. Took a while to get started, but got there in the end, apart from PROP — my knowledge of rugby is non-existent. Never heard of an AUTOMAT or LINCOLN’S INN, and didn’t understand the Falstaff connection in SACK.13a was barely cryptic, I thought.

5. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew
   Lovely puzzle – so much to like. UROLOGIST a great spot!

6. I find cryptic definitions so obvious that I need the crossers to be convinced (PROP), or lots of crossers to see them (THE SHOW MUST GO ON), so I don’t find this easy.

   People may be more familiar with LINCOLN’S INN than they realise, various bits have been used as film locations – Oliver, Downton Abbey, there’s an out of date list if you Google. The chapel has an interesting windows where the stained glass depicts the coats of arms of leaders of the inn, and an open ancient undercroft (much filmed) plus amazing halls. I had an uncle who had chambers in the really old bit so know it well and wrote that clue in.

   Thank you to Vulcan and Andrew.

7. I agree with Andrew’s estimation of this puzzle, though it wasn’t a write-in for me. Held up by NAUSEATES (took a while to see AU=gold=yellow) and, to my shame, PROP. Agree with Muffin@5 that the anagram for UROLOGIST was a good spot. Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

8. AUTOMAT was new to me as a word. I’d associate LINCOLNS INN with cases or briefs, and the Old Bailey with arguments, but whatever.

9. Thanks Andrew for the blog and the extra info. I was wondering about the significance of the McClorens in LOCH NESS MONSTER. Had a look but couldn’t find it. Is there something there, or just part of the anagrist?
   Liked FUR, neat, as in fur flies in rage.
   UROLOGIST was a hoot. I don’t imagine either the doctor or the patient are relaxed or having a glorious time.
   My favourite was PROP. I bunged in ”pimp” from the clue, one has a close relationship with a hooker, before I got the crosser and twigged to the rugby union/league hooker. Great deception. I have to believe that was what Vulcan had in mind (not only me).

10. What a great start to the week and I was definitely on his wavelength last night. I liked TSMGO, PROP, DUST JACKET, CRASH HELMET, WAGON, UROLOGIST, the funny NIXON, POTBOILER and CRAWL. Slightly unsure about yellow and gold being synonymous in NAUSEATES, but I suppose it’s fine. Lots of smooth surfaces here.

    [I’ve never attempted it, but I’ve just read the blog for the Genius set by Twin. Absolutely brilliant].

    Ta Vulcan & Andrew.

11. I had “NOGIN” for 4dn and thought it needed an “on the contrary!” but finally twigged after getting 1ac. Good puzzle.

12. Some fun clues, I was convinced I didn’t know the hooker’s friend until it clicked. LOI NAUSEATES because I forgot about the verb. Thanks Andrew for the parsing of NIXON and the AU in aforementioned sickness (is Yellow really a synonym for the element Gold..?), and thanks Vulcan for the puzzle

13. It’s funny that Vulcan is our guarantee of a gentle start to the week – and yet I often struggle to get onto the wavelength at first. As I did today. Got into my stride about half way through and ended up wondering why I hadn’t been writing them in from the beginning. No offence whatsoever to fellow posters but I am surprised how often PROP catches solvers out: even if one doesn’t know anything about rugby, it must be the position that comes up most frequently in crosswords. POTBOILER my favourite today for the amusing surface.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

14. Well, this was a bit of a battle for me, but the clues and definitions were all fair and nicely constructed.

    In 15(ac), PROP, I thought [ close relationshiP ] = P, with hooker [PRO] was in the mix.

    13(ac) , IN ABSENTIA, seemed a bit weak by Vulcan’s standards? ( not very cryptic?).
    Not to worry, it was the exception, loads of goodies.

    I liked NIXON, because I like crafty concise clues. Then I thought, ” why not just…..Naked President” ? There’s just no pleasing some of us!

    Super work, Ta, V & A

15. The BRB…
    Au (chem)
    symbol
    Gold

    gold
    noun
    …… Yellow, the colour of gold

    How much closer of a synonym can be required?

16. Sofamore @2: I wondered about this, too. I suppose it’s just there for the surface reading.

    Perhaps others are more familiar, but I had to look up OUTLIER to see that it’s a point on a graph or other statistic that’s a long way from where one would expect. Nice clue.

17. 8 down: I was thinking of “Naked presidents” and the Dylan line “Even the President of the United States sometimes has to stand naked”. Unfortunately Clinton has 7 letters!

18. I had TRAP instead of PROP, which I justified by various means. ‘Shut your trap’, means of catching fish, etc.

19. I made steady progress through this, which surprised me as there was enough that was unfamiliar, or that I didn’t parse, to have made this potentially much more difficult.

    NHO the def of BOILER in POTBOILER, and LINCOLNS INN was new, too – though it couldn’t have been anything else from the clueing and crossers. Similar with SACK.

    It’s quite satisfying to be able to navigate the grid taking such things as the above into account, so this was definitely a good start to the week for me.

20. Mostly steady progress with a few clues that held me up e.g. LINCOLNS INN is new to me but I will attempt to file it away. IN ABSENTIA wasn’t really cryptic, simply a case of knowing that Latin phrase. CRASH HELMET, WAGON, NIXON and MADAM (nice twist on a palindrome indication) were my favourites.

    Thanks both!

21. [My favourite Queen song at 1a]

22. How does “ET” come into play for 23a “crash helmet”?

23. AR @22: The film ET, it features a lot in these puzzles.

24. Lovely. I was confused by the president, seeing that it had to be Tricky Dicky but taking NIX as slang for knickers rather than the erudite Latin ‘nothing’, so was wondering why it wasn’t ‘not naked’. Both 23s and 17 blank after first sitting but seemed obvious (and favourites) after the second coffee. 12ac gives an opportunity to plug my favourite small London museum, the Sir John Soane’s House in LINCOLNS INN Fields – well worth a visit.

25. Sometimes I get waylaid on ‘gentle Mondays’ by Vulcan’s cryptic defs, but not today. However I see SAN = clinic, via sanatorium, has reared its head again. Does anybody, in modern British English, ever say “I’m off down the san for a quick checkup today”? No problem for me, been at this game long enough, but my son is just dipping his toe into the Quick Cryptic waters and he gets thoroughly disheartened by this sort of thing.

26. Don’t have Shanne’s @6 family connection to Lincoln’s Inn, but mrs ginf and I did do the London Walks tour, and yes, the Inn does feature in some tv shows. Nice Monday puzzle, thanks V & A.

27. AlanC@10 and Gillafox@12, it’s always amused me that patients handing over gold jewellery for safekeeping before surgery (or gangsters handing over their bling in the nick) see it recorded on the inventory as “yellow metal” – a nice leveller.

28. Perfectly smooth and droll, thank you Vulcan (and Andrew)!

29. I liked the Kerouac reference in ‘On the Road’ especially as the clue follows JACKet.
    And I enjoyed the surfaces of CHAOTIC, recalling ‘The Italian Job’ with its slithering coach, and ERITREA (perhaps not an obvious retirement destination).
    With two Presidents already, I wanted to bung in (Mistress) FORD at 18a, although I know it’s only the crossing of a river bed.
    Thanks Vulcan & Andrew.

30. My usual problem with trying to decipher cds but it all fell together in THE END.

    I liked the simple FUR, where I was misled thinking of fliers. It took me far too long to see my LOI PROP, I thought this was something to do with fishing! Ticks also for DUST JACKET, LOCH NESS MONSTER (I checked and McLoren is a kosher surname), the good anagram for UROLOGIST, and CRAWL where I tRAWLed through many animals at first. Slight quibble in that AU stands for gold, so a double shift needed to get to yellow – I suppose ‘Yellow Sea’ was just too good to miss.

    [I used to work in Lincolns Inn Fields, although as a cancer researcher, not a lawyer; our building was next to ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’.]

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.

31. Well formed puzzle which I didn’t find a pushover – some of the cryptic defs held me up a while – but I reached port without too much of a storm.

    I agree with Robi @30 that yellow < gold < AU Is a bit of a stretch, but I did understand it.

    ERITREA, UROLOGIST and MADAM were my pick of the day.

    MattS @24: NIX is from German, a colloquial version of ‘nichts’ (‘nix’ in Latin means ‘snow’ 🙂 ).

    Thanks to S&B

32. I missed the PROP too (thought it might be LINE as in “hook, line and sinker” until the crossers made that untenable). Can’t say I like the fashion for cluing initial letters as “a little” or “a bit of”, but I’m getting used to it. Got confused in CRASH HELMET because the wood might be either ASH or ELM.

    The “san” for the clinic or sickbay is something that features in 1950s public school stories: is it still (was it ever) in use in real life? Of course it survives in crosswords because it’s so useful, like ET, practically the only film ever referenced.

    Liked the LOCH NESS MONSTER and the neat little FUR. I was rather hoping there might be more to IN ABSENTIA than that, but it is what it is.

33. As very much a learner I found last weeks weekday Cryptics a real struggle (but appreciate how much experienced solvers enjoyed them) but this one was lovely. 28A first in and then I slowly made my way northwards with a few coffee breaks. Too many lovely clues to list. Thank you Vulcan and Andrew.

34. I must admit the image of Tricky Dicky without a stitch on made me smile. Also liked the double meaning/interpretation of CRAWL. Good stuff from Vulcan as ever on a Monday…

35. I think I read 1ac as “the duty of one who performs.” Associate it with a Pink Floyd song a bit more than Queen. Didn’t know PROP (and will probably forget it by the time it comes up again), but LINCOLN’S INN I knew from Sarah Caudwell’s wonderful comic mysteries–if only there were more of them! Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.

36. MattS @27: I used to write the very same thing, when I was a Custody Sergeant many years ago. Thanks for the memory 😉

37. I read a bit more than Andrew into the wordplay of 15: ‘pro’ with close relationshi[p]? I think that nails the answer down better… but it might be my imagination.

38. I will add yet another to the seemingly record-breaking list of alternatives to PROP. For a while I had “loop”, as in velcro = “hook and loop”, which as a fastening have a “close” relationship.

39. PROP was actually my FOI, though only tentatively until confirmed by crossers, as other possibilities did occur to me.

40. Lovely Monday puzzle. Every clue a cracker (if we don’t count IN ABSENTIA). Thanks Vulcan, thanks Andrew.

41. [There’s a famous and important paper on nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang by Ralph Alpher and his supervisor, George Gamow. Gamow was a bit of a prankster, so he added Bethe (in absentia) – a friend of his – as a co-author; the paper has since always been known as the “Alpher Bethe Gamow” paper.]

42. Cryptic definitions can be very amusing, but in the absence of wordplay or crossers, and sometimes even with them, we have to be very much on the setter’s wavelength. Some of these seemed impenetrable for a (very!) long time.

    When it’s Vulcan I generally approach this blog with a sinking heart, because I know someone is going to say “a gentle start to the week”! Not for me it’s not. 🤔

    ‘Yellow’=gold=AU caused me a hold up at the end, but not because it’s wrong – I don’t think we can say that. It’s a bit of a stretch, with Au=gold in one part of the dictionary and yellow=gold in another, but the difficulty for me is that we have to put ourselves in the setter’s mind. Picking NAUSEATES apart, Vulcan sees AU SEA in the middle and thinks Au=gold, gold+sea=Yellow Sea. It’s hard as a solver to intuit this thought process, which to my mind makes it a tricky clue.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

43. CRASH+H+ELM is fine but where does ET come from?

44. R Srivastan @43
    From the ubiquitous crossword film “ET – the extra-terrestrial”. It’s very rare to see “film” in a crossword that doesn’t clue ET!

45. I would be surprised if any of our Australian solvers had the slightest problem with AU=gold=yellow, because ‘green and gold’ are the national colours of their sporting livery, and are very obviously green and yellow.

46. Enjoyed the puzzle.

    I don’t think NIX means “nothing.” It means “no,” regardless of what it means in German.

    In 21d Shouldn’t the definition of KICK OUT be “give one the boot,” not “giving…”?

    paddymelon@9 Me too for the meaning of “hooker” but on reflection I think that meaning is North American.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

47. Valentine@46: Chambers gives ‘nothing’ as the first definition for NIX, though I was more familiar with its use as a verb in the sense of deny, veto or turn down.

48. Learnt that ‘boiler’ is somewhat the opposite of ‘broiler’. Had never heard of it before and it made me realise that I didn’t really know what broiler meant. So two learnings for the price of one! I found IN ABSENTIA and KICK OUT a bit odd; the first was almost a definition rather than a cryptic clue and the ‘double definition’ is pretty much a restatement of one definition in different words. But enjoyed everything else, especially NIXON, DUST JACKET (spent a while thinking how novel was being used in the surface), WAGON and CRAWL. Thanks Vulcan and thanks Andrew, especially for explaining SACK and Falstaff’s love of imbibing.

49. Nixon hatte nichts an, especially after Watergate 50 years ago. And talking of unconditional pardons …

50. Don’t usually comment on here because I tend to do the crosswords a few days after publication, by which time everything’s been said. I too liked Nixon – the clue, not the man – and also the reference to Lincoln’s Inn (Fields) which was my place to relax in my days at the LSE. Didn’t discover the wonderful Sir John Soane’s Museum (yes, MattS @24) until many years after I’d left LSE. A wonderfully bizarre place. Follically (is that a word ?) challenged myself, I also enjoyed 3d…

51. @23 AlanC Thanks for explaining.

52. Trailman @25

    I’m “late” (in 50’s) to cryptic crosswords, and agree with what you say. There are the usual clues e.g. RA for “artist”, ER /ANNE for “Queen”, AB / TAR/ JACK etc. for “sailor”, but there does seem to be unnecessary obscurity at times. In recent cryptics I tried one of the answers was “bend sinister” (a heraldic band / title of a Nabokov novel), another was “bog iron” (iron produced by an ancient production technique),
    and others refer to things obscure like famous ceramic pottery ranges.

53. Also somewhat unhappy about AU = yellow. It’s a double link, (disconnected synonym, maybe?), and so a stretch. It’s like expecting to find the letters Pb from the clue ‘leash’ as they both mean ‘lead’.

54. Hello AR @52
    I’m not so much worried about obscure answers, as long as they are clued sensibly, as some of the ‘old hat’ jargon that lingers on. Thankfully EL = railway, because that was the nickname of a railroad in the States, seems to have had its day, but U and NON-U still crop up from time to time.

55. Much too hard for me, solved 5 clues and gave up.

56. Au = Yellow is definitely not OK. I’m astonished that there’s any question about this.

    It’s true that the word “gold” is a synonym for both, but in two different senses (a metal and a color). Synonymy is not transitive in this way. A ball can be a sphere or a dance, but “sphere” and “dance” cannot be used to clue each other.

57. Ted @56
    Well put! I confess that I filed that clue in the “I’ll come back and parse that later” pile, and never got round to it.

58. Ted @56
    Well put! I confess that I filed that clue in the “I’ll come back and parse that later” pile, and never got round to it.

    (I’ve just had another instance of a post not appearing, but still giving a “Duplicate comment” warning when I try again. It seems I’m not the only person this has happened to.
    My first attempt to post gave a “Bad gateway” message, in fact.)

59. Just to weigh in, I think yellow is Au is okay. Yellow is not just the colour of gold but goldrush slang for the metal, e.g. ‘There’s yellow in them hills’.

60. Rosencrantz@59. Yes, yellow for gold, then gold is Au has been mentioned by several people already, including myself @42 and Ted@56. This makes it tricky to get from yellow to Au though. Personally, I think it’s just tricky rather than plain wrong, though Ted’s analogy with sphere=ball=dance points out very neatly why it might be considered wrong.

    Yellow is a colour, as gold can be. Au is the symbol for the metal gold. Au is not yellow.

    I think a step from one to the other and on again can be acceptable, but perhaps it’s a little too much for a Monday?

61. If there’s dictionary support out there for rosencrantz @59’s statement that “yellow” can be used as a noun to mean the metal gold, then I withdraw my objection. A quick search didn’t turn anything up, but honestly I didn’t try that hard.

62. AR@52: one person’s obscurity is another person’s gimmee. Take BOG IRON, which you cite. It isn’t actually the “iron produced by an ancient production technique”, in fact, but an ore of iron found in bogs, formed through natural processes. It was, indeed, the source for much iron in the Iron Age. For me, it was a well known phrase (the Swedish iron smelting businesses used bog iron as their input ore). General knowledge = what I know but you don’t. Obscurity = what you know but I don’t.

63. Ted@61 – I am going by vague memory of dialogue in westerns only. I also didn’t get any instant Google hits but it’s a somewhat tricky search to do.

64. Why does FUR = this? I get its endless fury but what is the link to flies? Its staring me in the face but I cant see it, please help…

65. Rosencrantz @63. Were you by any chance thinking of the song There’s Gold in Them Hills? 😁

66. 6 clues solved.

    Everything else checked/revealed.

    Bloody hard. I have many questions, similar to @64. Where does FUR/THIS come from?

    Thank you for explaining.

67. Jo@64 Enfless in rage, what flies is fur(y).

68. Steffen @66 and Jo@64. See this for the idiom “fur will fly”.

69. @68. Thank you. I recognise this in my better half. She’s very astute when it comes to noticing my mistakes.

70. Jo @ 64 & Steffen @ 66

    To amplify Valentine & sh, if there’s a single word in the solution it doesn’t necessarily equate to just a single word in the clue.

71. I was much entertained so thanks both. CRASH HELMET gets the applause.

    Well done Steffen@66. 29 clues, so 6 is a 20% return. There is a crossover point coming to you – when you get towards 33% you will have more crossers and more clues will fall. In fact I doubt you will stall at 33% but will take a balletic leap towards 50%+. This one was not that easy for a Monday imho.

72. Jo@64, Steffen@66, for me, it seemed obvious, but that’s probably because in the 60s-70s either of of my (east-London) grandmothers would say “fur will fly” to mean “there’s going to be a fight” (usually followed by “if you don’t stop…”).

73. It’s nice seeing so many commentators leave their connection to Lincoln’s Inn. As for me, I used to work in legal publishing so am familiar enough with all the Inns of Court to have seen that answer immediately.

    As a newer solver I typically find Vulcan pretty approachable, but I think there were some tricky ones this week.

    CRASH HELMET completely eluded me, only filled in with the crossers. POTBOILER was another one I struggled with, being unfamiliar with “boiler” for an old bird, as well the entire term itself. I got COO but needed to come here for the parsing – despite quiet = P being very common, that trick never sticks in my mind for long.

    DUST JACKET made me smile.

    Thanks to Vulcan for the puzzle and Andrew for the blog.

74. Steffan@66 – Six is good going! This week was tricker than usual for Vulcan

75. TassieTim @62 D’oh, I somehow mangled / forgot what I saw on the wikipedia bog iron page, and it does say what you said about bog iron. I agree with your point about perceiving things as general knowledge vs obscurity according to one’s biases.

76. I also enjoyed the Lincoln’s Inn Fields clue (working at LSE and my favourite place for lunchtime breaks/runs when weather allows) and a big fan of fifteensquared which has helped me move across from cryptic crosswords in my native language (dutch) to the joy (and sometimes frustration: “to?” (4,3) really?) of my current home language.

77. I love Vulcan’s puzzles. As usual, I started slowly with this and then one by one the answers revealed themselves. I’ve never been to Lincoln’s Inn but think I must have read about it in some novel or other. Probably Dickens. Favourites have all been mentioned and I don’t have a problem with yellow gold. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew and all the commentators. Good for you Steffen.

78. Thank You valentine & sheffield hatter @ 67& 68….not heard that idiom before, got it now. Lovely descriptive idiom conjuring up foxes and chickens and cats and dogs with screeching and yowling and fur flying!

79. Thanks muffin@44!

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