The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29626.
Vulcan in good form; I found the bottom half the more difficult, but nothing too strenuous.
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | OVERHANG |
Create too much suspense in project (8)
|
| Double definition, the first being somewhat cryptic. | ||
| 9 | OSWALD |
Man, old, was suffering (6)
|
| An anagram (‘suffering’) of ‘old was’. | ||
| 10 | SNUG |
Comfy as an insect in a carpet? (4)
|
| A reference to the expression “snug as a bug in a rug”. | ||
| 11 | HARD CHEESE |
Cheddar is too bad (4,6)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 12 | BESTOW |
Give some bribes to warden (6)
|
| A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘briBES TO Warden’. | ||
| 14 | AMBUSHED |
Taken by surprise, confess to being exhausted (8)
|
| [I] AM BUSHED (I ‘confess to being exhausted’). | ||
| 15 | STURDY |
Robust door finally installed in workroom (6)
|
| An envelope (‘installed in’) of R (‘dooR finally’) in STUDY (‘workroom’). | ||
| 17 | IN PART |
Home leave, only a little (2,4)
|
| A charade of IN (‘home’) plus PART (‘leave’). | ||
| 20 | ART HOUSE |
Seat that you filled in serious cinema (3,5)
|
| An envelope (‘that … filled’) of THOU (‘you’) in ARSE (‘seat’). | ||
| 22 | CHEAPO |
Pile into business that’s worth little (6)
|
| An envelope (‘into’) of HEAP (‘pile’) in CO (company, ‘business’). | ||
| 23 | SPOT CHECKS |
Random scans for measles? (4,6)
|
| Cryptic definition. | ||
| 24 | FLOW |
Feminine, quiet, gliding movement (4)
|
| A charade of F (‘feminine’) plus LOW (‘quiet’). | ||
| 25 | ORANGE |
The colour of an old house (6)
|
| Double definition; four royal houses have incorporated the name Orange, the first founded in 885, which is old enough. | ||
| 26 | NANOTECH |
He cannot work out modern engineering (8)
|
| An anagram (‘work out’) of ‘he cannot’. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | AVENGERS |
Seekers of justice squirted nerve gas (8)
|
| An anagram (‘squirted’) of ‘nerve gas’. | ||
| 2 | BRAG |
Pick up dress to show off (4)
|
| A reversal (‘pick up’ in a down light) of GARB (‘dress’). | ||
| 3 | CASHEW |
Money we raised for a tree (6)
|
| A charade of CASH (‘money’) plus EW, a reversal (‘raised’ in a down light) of ‘we’. | ||
| 4 | LOG CABIN |
Enter body of aircraft for start of journey to Pennsylvania Avenue? (3,5)
|
| A charade of LOG (‘enter’) plus CABIN (‘body of aircraft’); the definition is a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s route to the White House, starting from a log cabin in Kentucky. | ||
| 5 | SWEEPSTAKE |
Keeps a stew bubbling – it’s a bit of a gamble (10)
|
| An anagram (‘bubbling’) of ‘keeps a stew’. | ||
| 6 | ELYSEE |
One palace in two dioceses (6)
|
| ELY and SEE (‘two dioceses’, one specific, one general), for the official residence of the French President. | ||
| 8 | GERMAN |
Hamburger, say, one that infects a number (6)
|
| A charade of GERM (‘one that infects’) plus ‘a’ plus N (‘number’). | ||
| 13 | TOUCHSTONE |
Criterion for judging fool on stage (10)
|
| Double definition, the second being the character in As You Like It. | ||
| 16 | DAUGHTER |
At sea, guard the offspring (8)
|
| An anagram (‘at sea’) of ‘guard the’. | ||
| 18 | TOP-NOTCH |
Excellent shirt, not check? (3-5)
|
| A charade of TOP (‘shirt’) plus ‘not’ plus CH (‘check’). | ||
| 19 | DEACON |
Senior cleric keeping care of a junior one (6)
|
| An envelope (‘keeping’) of C/O (‘cate of’) in DEAN (‘senior cleric’). | ||
| 21 | RUPERT |
Bear name of rugby forward (6)
|
| A charade of RU (‘rugby’ union) plus PERT (‘forward’); Rupert Bear is a comic character. | ||
| 22 | CASINO |
About to go astray ending with nothing here, I bet (6)
|
| A charade of CA (circa, ‘about’) plus SIN (‘go astray’) plus O (‘nothing’). | ||
| 24 | FATE |
That’s your lot! (4)
|
| Cryptic definition. |
Old Abe’s log cabin clue was pretty funky. Thanks VnP.
My ignorance prevented me from fully understanding TOUCHSTONE & LOG CABIN. So thank you, PeterO, for the explanations. I struggled with low/quiet, but I guess “in a low voice” means “in a quiet voice”.
Or does it? If ever I’m asked to lower my voice, I’m always tempted to reply with “How much lower would you like? A fifth? An octave?” 🙂
Thanks PeterO I needed the parsing of ART HOUSE, and I didn’t understand the LOG CABIN, never having heard of it.
A quick finish for me, as the anagrams just popped out.
Thanks Vulcan – you have restored my confidence after getting zero solutions so far on this week’s prize.
OVERHANG for ‘create too much suspense’ was a droll start and set the tone. Thanks PeterO (early blog appreciated again) and Vulcan.
Nice puzzle, not too hard, not too easy, generated some smiles Liked NANOTECH, GERMAN, RUPERT.
The intersecting ART HOUSE and TOUCHSTONE were both bait tricky at the end. I was nowhere near spotting the elements needed for the first and trying to find wordplay to parse for the second. And LOG CABIN beat me completely until I had the crossers. NHO that allusion which all seems rather removed from the politics of today.
OVERHAND, BESTOW, STURDY, ELYSEE, GERMAN, TOP-NOTCH and DEACON my faves. NANOTECH would have joined them but surely the cryptic grammar requires ‘works out’ rather than ‘work out’, though that messes up the surface.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Once again, I admire Vulcan’s ability to keep a simpler puzzle interesting. Liked TOUCHSTONE for the reference and RUPERT, SPOT CHECKS and NANOTECH (took me a while to see the anagram there). LOG CABIN is part of the US myth which is somewhat dented by the malign influence of billionaires these days. Thanks to PeterO and Vulcan.
I also found the bottom half slower – although I needed all the crossers to see LOG CABIN. TOUCHSTONE popped into my head after the T and U were in, but I’ve seen As You Like It when I used to see everything at the Globe, wasn’t sure which play, mind you, and that opened up that SW quarter.
Thank you to PeterO and Vulcan.
Thanks PeterO for putting me straight on ORANGE. i parsed it as O (old) and RANGE, as in “range over” or “the 30 to 40 year old age range”, being equivalent to housing something, combining to make the colour.
Good challenge. SE corner was hardest for me.
I could not parse the ‘start of journey to Pennsylvania Avenue’ bit of 4d.
Enjoyable puzzle. Got up insanely early so that I could do my favourite crossword and enter a comment.
Number 9 is my highest ever entry (though it could be greater if I don’t stop making typing errors). Perhaps I’ll be sing Love Potion Number 9 all day.
Thanks to PeterO and Vulcan.
Oh Well!
That’s a good song too!
I,too, was confused about ORANGE. I tried GRANGE at first for old house. Not a colour though, so it had to be ORANGE. Then settled for RANGE somehow meaning house. House of Orange! D’uh!
I seem to have been cut off from the interactive format with an anagram helper and the comments section. I don’t like the impersonality of the other interactive format and I can’t find a version to print. Can anyone help please?
Carolyn Murphy @14 – try the link at the top of the blog.
Thrilled to have completed in one sitting as one who floundered before the quick cryptic and the chance to read the parsings here.
Now I check up on all the explanations it all seems rather obvious.
Another here who tried to parse the colour as O RANGE and didn’t quite succeed. Liked SPOT CHECKS and ELYSEE.
Did anyone else try SOLD! for “that’s your lot”?
Thank you for the ideal Monday Cryptic Vulcan. Lots of fine clues. My favourites today STURDY, DEACON, ELYSÉE and GERMAN for the ingenious cluing. ART HOUSE was cheeky and LOG CABIN was interesting. I suspected it could be Abe, then looked it up. A far cry from the current incumbent as others have said.
Thank you for the blog PeterO, I agree the bottom half was more chewy. The intersecting FLOW and FATE were the last to fall.
Wittgenstein @11, you were the last entry when I started typing..
Gladys @ 17, I did!
PostMark@6, you could treat the the components of the anagram for NANOTECH as a list: “he [and] cannot work out …” It’s not the finest prose but works as an instruction.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO
Carolyn Murphy @14, click on the pdf link and if you’re using Firefox like me in the last few days it will give you a black page. Technology,……. , making all our lives easier!!!
A pleasant puzzle from Vulcan this morning.
I liked 10 ac SNUG (a favourite expression from childhood), 1dn AVENGERS (nice surface), 5dn SWEEPSTAKE (another), 8dn ELYSEE, for the novel use of ELY, 13dn TOUCHSTONE, for the reference and FATE, for the smile at the end.
I remember being fascinated, as a child, by the title of an old book on my grandparents’ shelf, ‘From log cabin to White House’ – I never looked inside it.
Thanks, Vulcan and PeterO.
Apart from trying to make an anagram of “modern out” to mean someone who cannot work, this was all very smooth. Setters often clue thou, thee, and ye as “you, once”, but I suppose there is no real need of an archaism indicator?
Carolyn Murphy @14, It seems that MS Edge no longer works with the Guardian crosswords, as of today.
I switched to Google Chrome and got the interactive crossword back.
That may be the issue. Not really tech-savvy enough to understand it.
Apart from not being able to quite parse DEACON or loi TOUCHSTONE (forgot about the Shakespearean character), this was a nice, smooth solve this morning…
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Though it didn’t cause a problem, several definitions were allusive rather than precise; SNUG and LOG CABIN, for instance.
Favourite ELYSEE.
My faves: OVERHANG, SNUG, SPOT CHECKS and FATE.
NANOTECH
Cryptic grammar:
DuncT’s suggestion @19 seems to work. Or it could be ‘he cannot-work out’?
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
I didn’t know the stage reference in TOUCHSTONE but it was gettable from the rest. I similarly had enough for ART HOUSE and CHEAPO without fully parsing, but had to reveal ELYSEE.
Most of the rest of it flowed nicely, so it made for a well-balanced puzzle.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Tougher than a usual Monday and all the better for it. Loved Elysee among others. Had to rely on Peter for explanation of log cabin
Ticks for CASINO and ART HOUSE
This felt a bit heavy on GK while solving but with hindsight maybe not so much
Cheers V&P
Good fun with smiles for SNUG, ÉLYSÉE, ART HOUSE, TOUCHSTONE (O’ Level fodder) and SPOT CHECKS. I thought there might be a Presidential theme starting in the NE with LOG CABIN, OSWALD and AMBUSHED, but thankfully the current incumbent didn’t appear. ABC and LSE appear across the top, where you might start and finish your education. I’ll get my coat.
Ta Vulcan & PeterO.
Apologies if this has been asked before, but hands up if you think you may be the youngest person solving. I’m interested to know if teens can get their heads round cryptics.
DotinFrance @31 I started solving cryptic puzzles as a teenager – I was buying my own paper for the crossword at 17/18. Stopped for decades around children, but that’s when I started paying to solve, before that I was asked to fill the gaps in my mother’s crossword (not allowed it first – with a pen).
Thank you all for your help. Got it!
@31 I won an Observer crossword competition at age 16. I’m 85 now, stil doing crosswords.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man
knows himself to be a fool”: Touchstone …The last one in. The first seven words definitely apply to The Donald: who was most certainly not born in a log cabin. With thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
I thought this was excellent with some really nice clever surfaces. Favourite LOG CABIN.
PostMark @6: I think you could read the clue for NANOTECH as DuncT suggests @19 (“the words he and cannot work out”), or perhaps as “the letters h, e, c, a… etc work out”.
muffin @25: how is “comfy” not a precise definition for SNUG? To me they mean exactly the same!
Many thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Gladys @17 yes! SOLD and GONE as in Going going …
Always useful to keep Occam’s Razor handy with Vulcan
“General” knowledge is such a loose term, innit? I’m guessing LOG CABIN was a write-in for all Americans, but I wouldn’t have figured out the parsing in a million years. However, being a Brit and having had to “explore” a different Shakespeare play every flaming year at school, TOUCHSTONE was easy-peasy.
Horses for courses.
I’ve never cared for random names being clued as “man”, “woman”, “boy”, etc – though at least OSWALD was obvious – but the plethora of good stuff outweighed this quibble.
ÉLYSÉE and RUPERT were clever, the surfaces for STURDY and NANOTECH were pleasing – and SPOT CHECKS made me grin.
Many thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Lord Jim @36
Sorry – I meant that the wordplay was allusive in that one.
Enjoyable Monday fare, thank you Vulcan and Peter.
I wouldn’t attribute a log cabin solely to Lincoln, it forms part of the origin story of several US presidents.
MCourtney @23 – I can do the crossword using MS Edge. I’m still on Windows 10, if that makes any difference.
I enjoyed this Vulcan puzzle, the pleasure much improved by tuning in on the correct wavelength.
So many good ones: LOG CABIN (not in agreement with the dislike of this, seems to match the wide and shallow criteria which I use as a yardstick for GK in cryptics), ART HOUSE (gave my infantile brain a chuckle when I parsed it), OVERHANG, ORANGE (a definite d’oh moment when it clicked), CASINO.
Last one in ELYSEE as I didn’t know either part of the clue so relied on the crossers. NE was the toughest for me.
Top anagrams as well as you would expect from Vulcan.
Thanks PeterO and Vulcan
Highly enjoyable romp. Like others, I failed to spot the parsing for ORANGE, dammit (Home on the Range??). Favourites already flagged up.
Re LOG CABIN, the present incumbent has such a big mouth because he was born with a whole canteen of silver cutlery in it.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
DotinFrance@31…I think I started at the age of about 13, perched on the arm of my Dad’s chair, trying to help him with the Telegraph Cryptic. My other job was to pull out any white hairs that had begun to appear on his head. Not sure who was grooming who at the time…
I was another trying to make sense of O RANGE, doh! I liked the well-hidden BESTOW, the seat/arse in ARTHOUSE, RUPERT where the prop forward wasn’t seen, DEACON where it wasn’t the ‘a’ but the c/o that was kept, and the SPOT CHECKS cd. I see from The Guardian that Texas is having its worst outbreak of measles in 30 years, due to the misinformation about the safety of vaccines. Let’s hope Robert Kennedy Jnr doesn’t make things worse! I wondered whether there was any significance to Vulcan of the OSWALD and RUPERT.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Dotinfrance@31 my question, which might be contentious, is how many solvers are autistic? I ask because my son is autistic and would never be interested in crosswords but many of the Bletchley Park code breakers were top level crossword solvers and many would also undoubtedly be diagnosed as autistic now. Ironically, the research that began to unravel autism and could have led to their diagnosis was conducted during that same period by Hans Asperger, a Hungarian who worked for the Nazis and is now known to have been involved in sending children to their deaths and Leo Kanner, who was a Hungarian/Ukrainian Jew who fortunately emigrated to the US and so avoided the death camps.
@31 DotinFrance yes absolutely, I think cryptics over the last few years have got a bit more balanced in their newer and older references. The runner up in the Times Cryptic Crossword Championship is in her 20s. If there is a reference that ‘is before your time’ (don’t say it out loud or you will just get scorn) just treat it as a learning experience. I am still adding to my lexicon of plants and flowers through cryptic crosswords.
A nice Monday crossword with a good mix of easier clues and ones that made me think a while. Didn’t know TOUCHSTONE the character but crossers gave the answer. Smiled at LOG CABIN (I did have the GK for it but again needed crossers – it was my LOI). My favourite was NANOTECH, I just hadn’t spotted the anagram and with N_N… I was looking for NON… for ages thinking it was a cryptic definition. Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
@36: As an American, can confirm! LOG CABIN wasn’t quite a write-in but an “of course,” and TOUCHSTONE was LOI and I needed to come here to find about the fool. We read a fair amount of Shakespeare and I was in my high school’s Shakespeare club (I was the drunk watchman) but not sure I ever read As You Like It–is that the one with “Exit, pursued by a bear”?
Anyway, my experiences were much like many others, did the top in a rush and had a little more trouble with the bottom. Particularly liked ART HOUSE and FLOW where I appreciated “quiet” not being P or SH! Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Matt W: “exit, pursued by a bear” is A Winter’s Tale. The most famous thing from As You Like It is “All the world’s a stage.” It’s a beautiful play, one of the four or five top-notch comedies in the Shakespearean canon (yes, there are also some clunkers in there). It’s often performed, so go find a production.
I agree that LOG CABIN was an “of course, not a write-in. Incidentally, Lincoln was neither the first nor the last president born in a log cabin–only the most famous. If you Google “log cabin presidents,” it looks like there’s some disagreement on how many there are, but it’s a number between seven and nine. In the nineteenth century, that phrase was a means of suggesting that humble beginnings didn’t necessarily limit one’s prospects.
I was yet another who tried O RANGE, with deer and antelope playing and discouraging words seldom heard–but of course in that song the home is on the range, the range is not itself the home. A ranch can be a home (in its secondary US meaning of a one-story home), but… So I thought the setter was confused. Turns out it was me. Thanks for clearing that up!
matt w@49 [That’s A Winter’s Tale.]
mrpenney@50 I think a ranch can be a home in its primary meaning as well, as can a farm. It isn’t a building, but it’s a place.
I got all except the ingenious ELYSEE. Bonked myself on the head when I saw it online.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO
Funny enough ELYSEE was my first. But Ely usually the end to an adverb clue (like largELY or solELY) so I was stuck for a long time until it clicked.
Overall enjoyable and my average brain power got most of them.
jabiru in oz
I am surprised that there has been no comment on 14a. Peter’s solution needed an “I”. I cannot imagine anybody starting a confession with “am” – “am guilty”? I did the guardian crosswords many years ago, but transferred to an Australian setter who was a sticker for accuracy. He is no longer setting crosswords professionally, so I have returned to the Guardian. and trying to work my way into the minds of the setters, so probably not appropriate to comment.
Otherwise I did quite well with this puzzle, before I sought help.
Arthur@54. If you read Peter’s blog carefully, he has used punctuation to separate the letter I in versions of both the clue: (I ‘confess to being exhausted’) and the answer: [I] AM BUSHED. In other words, if I AM BUSHED is equivalent to I confess to being exhausted, then AM BUSHED is equivalent to confess to being exhausted.
Phew! 🙂
Dave F @46: On the prevalence of cruciverbalists at Bletchley Park, this 1942 Telegraph crossword was used as a recruiting tool by the agency, which reached out to those who could solve it within 12 minutes. I think Ximenes might have a problem with some of these clues.
Thanks Coloradan, 56.
I was confused by the puzzle’s being a mixture of cryptic and non-cryptic, but the piece reminded me of my late mother-in-law who was good at cryptics, and who helped Mrs E and me a lot when we started doing them.
And she worked at GCHQ…
I had a couple of crossers that made LOG CABIN leap out at me. Must confess I’m surprised that anyone smart enough to tackle the Guardian crossword can not know the ‘log cabin’ reference, but I guess we all have stronger or weaker areas of GK.
Bosun @58 the I’ll put my hand up to the LOG CABIN reference going over my head – to me a Log Cabin republican is a euphemism for a homosexual right winger in the US. I had no idea about the Lincoln connection.
TBF, I’m probably not a good representative for “smart enough” as RUPERT and DEACON both stumped me. Bushed = tired is also new. Combined with a misplaced certainty that 7 across was OVERMAKE caused the whole thing to be a bit of a struggle for me
How is HANG suspense? Suspended I get but suspense I don’t.
From Log Cabin to White House was also a graphic story in what were called Illustrated Classics in the 60s. Didn’t get OVERHANG till I read the first comment. Loved the description of ARTHOUSE as cheeky:-)
Thanks all
Should have completed this, but got one letter wrong with the unparsed GRANGE
Peter @60, not just “suspense”, but “create suspense” = HANG. Thus, “create too much suspense” = OVERHANG