Guardian 29690 / Vlad

93 comments on “Guardian 29690 / Vlad”

1. 17a ONE (identical, Chambers has ‘the same’) preceded by TB (a complaint)
   28a P + EL in RUDE

2. 29a AT T(he) ENDS

3. BOUDOIR may be BOUDICA minus CA (about) plus O (old) plus R (king)

4. yes a bit of impaling for me also! can’t work out 29.
   i think 18d might be BOUDICA (queen), without CA (about), admitting O (old) + R (king)

5. 17a identical=one, complaint=TB
   29a “at the end” + South without “he”
   18d Boudi(ca) around Old, + Rex

   28a’s DE might be extremely dismissive, but can’t account for the U?

   Apologies everyone else commented whilst I was still writing! Thanks Jay for 28a 🙂

   Thanks Eileen & Vlad!

6. Many thanks, Jay @1 and 2.- I’ll amend those two now.

   David @3 – I’m sure you’re right: I so wanted it to be Boudica – but I would spell it with two Cs. I should have looked it up!

   Thanks to cranberry fez for adding the S to 29ac.

7. 29a Apologies… AT T(he) END (ultimately) + S (a point)

8. Thanks Vlad and Eileen
   Similar here – I finished, but with a lot of electronic help. Baffled by the definitions for T BONE and POUND SIGN, and the parsings of BOUDOIR and UNBOWED.
   I took LITTLE TOE as LITTLE = WEE, TO, and comE from end, with an extended reference to “this little piggy”.
   Favourite LOI ATTENDS, which I (eventually!) parsed as Jay @2.
   Pleased to remember ORINOCO the Womble – I wonder how well known that will be?
   I agree that “army” looks wrong in19a.

9. This was hard to solve and harder to parse!
   I took 17 as TB, complaint preceding ONE, identical.
   Thanks to Eileen and Vlad.

10. Re 18dn – see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

11. Why don’t we ever see Mark Goodlife & Simon Anthony attempt this?

12. I do like Vlad’s puzzles and this was 98% brilliance but even I have to say that I think indirect anagrams are a no-no (BONOBO). Sue me for my Ximenean tendencies.

    Also, in similar vein, the ‘news’ in 6d is not really earning its wage in the clue, it’s there purely for surface, which I would expect an alert editor to spot and remedy

13. Thanks for all the help. To avoid a tediously long blog, please try to resist posting a comment simply to agree with others’ suggestions. 😉

14. 28a: Isn’t this P for prince followed by RUDE (dismissive) around EthicaL?

15. I could not parse 2d – I know nothing of Wombles in Wimbledon Common!

    New for me: T-BONE = crash.

    I agree with the parsings of 17ac, 28ac, 29ac and 18d given by Jay and David in the first few posts above.

    Thanks, both.

16. 19ac ARM Y Eileen, do you mean it refers to arms up in the air, or to a firearm a robber would use, or both?

    First one in was 1, 9, 12 also, unprecedented for a Vlad for me.

    Thanks Eileen (and other commentators) and Vlad

17. I parsed PRELUDE same as Justigator @14 but found the puzzle as a whole to be pretty tricky and needed both the blog and the contributions of others today. RIESLING, NONPAREIL and BOUDOIR my favourites. Yes, ‘army’ in STICK EM UP I think is referring to what you do in response to the command. The blood transfusion trick in BONOBO is evil.

    Thanks (I think) Vlad and (definitely) Eileen

18. My take on 17a was: Bone = complaint (as in “a bone to pick with you”), to a “T” (“To a T” = identical).

19. I thought booudicca too, Eileen, but whatev. I like a bit of bawd but I missed the nuts around dis, embarrassing! Ditto TB one — neat! At t[he] end S was neat too. A few wounds to lick, ta V and E.

20. Impaled today as I had to reveal T-BONE (nho the “crash”) and was defeated by the parsing of several more (ATTENDS, BONOBO). I think STICK EM UP is indeed an “arm-y” command and it made me laugh, and I parsed LITTLE TOE as muffin@8 did, and BOUDOIR as David@3. Took a long time to work out NONPAREIL. I think non-Brits may have problems with POUND SIGN and ORINOCO, and the homophone police will be out for TIDIED. Thanks Vlad – I prefer this kind of difficult to any amount of themes – and Eileen for a valiant effort.

21. Many thanks again – I do have to rush out now!

22. That’s how I took it too, cryptor @18, but I wasn’t happy with it so I’ll go with TB -one.

23. Well that all seemed like it was going to be so easy after the first few across clues. And then it wasn’t. I’m glad I took a few minutes to go back over the parsings which eluded me (“attends”, “nudists”, “little toe”) first time round until I was satisfied.

    The blood transfusion trick was nasty but to Vlad’s credit, if you have type A blood you can only receive A or O. With type O you can only receive type O. So strictly the only substitution possible was A->O unless you want a catastrophic result. And bonobos are fascinating, especially in their social structures and interactions (to put it euphemistically).

    Much to enjoy here – lots to complain about while being skewered, but as is typical with Vlad, the complaints evaporate as enlightenment dawns. I left slightly bowed but better for the experience.

    Thanks Eileen and Vlad.

24. For me, Vlad at his fiendishly most difficult, with so many misdirections. Only managed the NE corner, then sadly the Reveal button was utilised. Though I feel that if I had managed to pluck the expression at 1, 9, 12 out of the air early on I might have done much better. Lots to admire in retrospect, though several times still a puzzle over the parsing until I read the blog.

25. Like Eileen, when 1,9 &12 leapt out, I thought I was ready to take on Vlad but frayed knot. Finished but felt bashed, which is how I like a particularly difficult puzzle. I enjoyed army in STICK EM UP and the clever ATTENDS which I did manage to parse. ‘Nude’ seemed to be the word of the day.

    Ta Vlad & Eileen.

26. Funnily enough, I used T-BONE in a conversation with a friend last night when discussing someone’s accident, so that also leapt out.

27. It is news to me that Boudica is now spelt with only one C. It was spelt as Boudicca by Tacitus in the earliest record of her name. Spelling mistakes in medieval copies of Tacitus’s work led to the monstrosity of ‘Boadicea’, which fortunately has almost disappeared by now.
    Whether it is spelt with 1 or 2 C’s, it should be spelt as a hard ‘k’ sound. Celtic languages (such as Boudicca spoke) always pronounced ‘C’ as a hard ‘K’.

28. For LITTLE TOE: LITTLE (Wee) + TO + comE from end

    I thought this puzzle was a great example of “ too clever by half”. At a certain point being too cute just becomes annoying.

29. Super tricky – thanks Eileen! I think 7d is also wee (LITTLE) TO com(E) at the end. Struggled today!! Whoops….what Jay said!

30. Although I liked quite a lot of this I was lulled into a false sense of security to begin with, only to come a cropper later on. I echo many of the complaints (T-BONE?) and add my own: I’m at a loss to see how TIDIED can sound like Thai Did rather than Thai Deed, which doesn’t fit the part of speech in the clue.

    I think POUND SIGN only works on UK-style keyboards, so I wonder what our US friends made of it. On the other hand, they often call the hash sign a ‘pound’ so maybe it’s OK.

31. I am another for whom NOTHING TO FRIGHTEN THE HORSES provided fake reassurance. I liked COME-HITHER. No issues with TIDIED. I would only use a long vowel at the end if I was being very emphatic.

32. I would like to add to this lengthy blog my comment that I disagree with others’ suggestions above.

33. I agree with Jay on the level of this puzzle. Sure, there are people out there much more experienced and more willing to spend time to solve this and get around all the misdirection and vagueness; but personally I’m glad it was difficult enough to make me jump to reveal early. Pains me to say, it was the opposite of fun.

    Thanks Eileen et al for elucidating this one.

34. I was not lulled into a false sense of security. With DEO GRATIAS and NONPAREIL going in first, I knew I was out of my depth and snorkel-free. I sensed the phrase at 1,9,12 would have equine content but it wasn’t familiar to me and had to be pieced together.

    I am in constant admiration of the experts who post here. So, I am pleased to have scraped to the end – one way or another – and parsed the majority. I feel like part of it. Well done all, impaled or otherwise.

    Thanks Vlad and Eileen.

35. Nearly too hard. Took ages to get going and a real struggle to finish. My Grauniad streak is still intact, inshallah.

36. Well that was a true impaling. Got NOTHING TO FRIGHTEN THE HORSES (this was anything but) straight off but it was all downhill from there . Managed to fill in the NE and SW corners but the rest was rather bare. After not getting anywhere for 20 minutes I threw in the towel.

    Cheers blogger it was certainly used today. Cheers Vlad even if this was a few levels above me.

37. It is days like today that remind me I’m still new to this. Ah well. Onward and upward, tomorrow’s another day, etc etc

38. The last time we had Vlad on a Friday (4th April) I felt it was a bit Vlad-lite – in short, 1,9,12. This was, I think, a few points up the equiterribilis scale although not as impenetrable as Vlad can be. I shall be interested to see Roz’s thoughts, who, in a late exchange yesterday, cited that 4th April puzzle as the last occasion on which she had to do any head-scratching.

39. A lot of very obscure definition components. I only got a few answers through elimination of all the viable alternatives that could fit in with crossers, then tried to find a definition and word play. I’m not quite fully functioning on this wavelength!
    Thanks to Vlad, Eileen and everyone else who chipped in with the parsing.

40. [Balfour @38
    I went to remind myself of the Vlad on the 4th April and found it was an Enigmatist. It was very difficult, though!]

41. Back from decking the church with bunting for Christian Aid Week and grateful to find reassurance that it was not just me today and that, between us, we seem to have nailed it – to my satisfaction, anyway. Certainly one of the toughest Vlad puzzles for me to solve or blog – but no complaints: all fairly clued, as I would expect.

    I gave the link @18 to show that Boudica is a variant spelling, which I hadn’t come across before: like Andy in Durham @27, I know her from Tacitus.

    muffin @8 I’ve now, belatedly, given you credit in the blog for LITTLE TOE.

42. You are, of course, correct, muffin @40. Got my wires crossed, I’m afraid, and didn’t check, although I did think that 4th April puzzle was tough but penetrable by Enigmatist’s standards, as I now see I said at the time..

43. Well I found this not as difficult as Vlad usually is, and my only quibble was the ‘army’ bit of STICK EM UP – which I now think works as suggested by Eileen, with ‘arm’ being either an upper limb or a firearm. Needed the blog to parse PRELUDE. Favourites include BOUDOIR, LITTLE TOE (parsed as muffin@8, and amused by the smuttily suggestive clue), ATTENDS and many others.

    [Are there two different Jays here – @1 etc with an avatar, and @28 without?]

    Thanks Eileen and Vlad

44. Fairly well impaled but eventually solved with lots of electronic help. For NTFTH, I thought it must have HORSE in the answer, but no 5-letter word, doh! I liked that one and the well-hidden MIEN (LOI), the arm-y command for STICK ‘EM UP, the surface for DURATION, and the wordplays for COME-HITHER, NUDISTS, LITTLE TOE, BOUDOIR and UNBOWED. I did parse BOUDOIR, not noticing the variant spelling, which is in Wiktionary and Wikipedia but not in the main dictionaries. I missed the Womble again, trying futilely to find some wordplay for ORINOCO.

    Thanks Vlad for the torture and Eileen for sorting most of it out.

45. Well spotted, beaulieu @43 – I’ve checked the email addresses and we do appear to have two different Jays. Perhaps the most recent one to join us wouldn’t mind choosing a different pseudonym?

47. oh that’s interesting – my empty comment was because I used angle-brackets to delimit my comment which got interpreted as HTML somehow. Anyway, yes, # is above the 3 key on a US keyboard and referred to as either hash or pound.

48. As soon as I saw “Common resident” in 2d I thought “Womble”, and there’s only one that’s a river, so that was a good start. Also the HORSES one went in easily. But I slowed down pretty soon after that and didn’t manage to finish. Tough indeed.

    NUDISTS had a rather strange extended definition! Is it normal to insult their private parts?

    Bingy @12, I don’t think the clue for BONOBO is what Ximenes meant by an indirect anagram. Here we’re given the relevant letters and instructed to change one of them before making the anagram. The sort of clue that Mr X condemned was the “Think of a synonym for this word and make an anagram of that” type. The example he gives in his book is “Tough form of monster (5)” for HARDY (an anagram of Hydra).

    Many thanks Vlad and Eileen.

49. Too hard for me, but fun with the old ‘check’ and ‘reveal’ buttons.

    On T-BONE, I thought, ‘T’ as in ‘identical’, ‘to a t’ and ‘bone’, ‘a contention’, ‘a bone to pick with you’. ‘Preceding’ then introducing the answer, ‘crash’. I think that is a reasonable, though not intended parsing. Thanks Eileen and Vlad.

50. Typical Vlad for me–some where I get it and go “aha!”, some where I struggle from the crossers and/or check and go “aha!”, some where I go “what?” But the best ones are worth the bafflers for me–this time most prominently ORINOCO as my brain is a womble-free zone, and I swear I almost typed DOBAREG into a search engine as Rex is an echt dog name for me, almost like Fido. The Rex cats appear to be British mostly? That one didn’t fall until I had the C from STICK EM UP which was another check button special.

    One of Vlad’s special talents is to fit wordplay in where it doesn’t seem like there’s room for it, like LITTLE TOE and ATTENDS. Both checkers for me but I felt bad when I realized. Also particularly liked the elegant surface for AGAINST.

    Thanks Vlad and Eileen!

51. Mark Goodlife did attempt one of Vlad’s cryptic sometime ago.I can’t recall the link or when it took place,say~5 years ago?I don’t believe he ever looked back!

52. Tough but enjoyable.

    A dnf for me, having to reveal T-BONE.

    I love the fact that BOUDOIR comes from the French verb bouder meaning to pout, or sulk. Conjures a lovely image of the wife of a wealthy man who’s swept off to her room having been told she can’t have another racehorse.

53. Stated at this one for ages, only able to fill in NABBOB, which turned out to be wrong. Eventually got the horse joke and got everything except T-BONE but it was hard going, especially the south west corner. Some great clues though, I liked DURATION, POUND SIGN and STATE.

54. I am pleased to say that I got all the right letters in the grid without help. But I was VERY far from having them all adequately accounted for! So a big thanks to Eileen and the team of commenters. ATTENDS, ORINOCO (see below), and BOUDOIR were my remaining bafflements when I came here.

    As pointed out above, Americans have no difficulty with POUND SIGN, thanks to our peculiar name for #. But we do have difficulty with Wombles, so ORINOCO went in with a baffled shrug. My two other associations with that word are the oddly catchy Enya song and the Aphra Behn work, which is actually spelled Oroonoko, often cited as the earliest novel in English. (Behn was not the first English woman writer by any means, but it can safely be said that she was the first to successfully make a living at it.)

    I am surprised, though, at how many have never heard of a T-BONE car crash, which (ever since the invention of the air bag dramatically reduced fatalities in head-ons) is the most dangerous type.

55. MrP @54
    T BONE crash isn’t in common use over here. Wikipedia mentions it as mainly US and Canada. I suppose we don’t see T-bone steaks very often either!

56. [Muffin @55: The price of beef and growing health-consciousness have made T-BONE steaks rarer here too (pun not intended).]

57. [ Eileen@45 that would make sense. The earliest citation of mine that I can recall is from Boatman puzzle 28,496 in July 2021. See me @33 and Boatman @37. I remember this particularly because Boatman quotes this exchange in his latest book.
    Over to you Jay… ]

58. Thanks, Jay @57. It seems that you can claim seniority! – and I think I recognise your style more readily than that of Jay @28, who is still very welcome to continue commenting – but a different pseudonym would be helpful.

59. Plus, Jay @57, your cartoon blue jay is too cute to abandon.

60. I agree with poc @30 regarding TIDIED, I’m very surprised there haven’t been more objections to it!
    A good challenge today though. Almost completed it ( to my surprise), failed on T-BONE like so many other solvers.

61. [I’ve never met the term “T-Bone crash” although I have been involved in two of them over the years, once as the crasher (a very young and inexperienced driver shot out right in front of me from a blind left-hand exit, fortunately at low speed. There are traffic lights at that junction nowadays.) and once as the crashee (in stop-start traffic, someone pulled out from the right into a gap in front of me, just as I pulled forward into it myself. They then made off hastily before I could get their number, and were never traced. ) ]

62. Tamarix @60
    I too would always say thai deed – thai did just sounds sloppy – but it has become tedious commenting on dodgy “soundalikes”.
    I did try to equate “deed” with “accomplished”!

63. Another one who started off breezily with NOTHING TO FRIGHTEN etc and then found the road got a lot more rocky. Loved the use of ‘elastic’ in DURATION, and the aha moment when POUND SIGN emerged from the fog. I thought going from BABOON to BONOBO was pretty cheeky but just within the envelope. Couldn’t parse UNBOWED, ATTENDS or PRELUDE. Many other parsings were very clever but just avoiding too-clever, as I’ve come to expect from Vlad.

    Thanks to Vlad, and commiserations to Eileen!

64. So did I! I agree about the tedium but it doesn’t seem to stop people. I wouldn’t normally, but this one seemed less forgivable than usual.

65. First sweep yielded only 2 answers, but then the SW corner came, & once I got 1 across it all fell into place, with a few full parsings having to wait until after typing. Pretty challenging, but the definitions were mostly not too oblique, which helped.

66. First sweep yielded only 2 answers, but then the SW corner came, & once I got 1 across it all fell into place, with a few full parsings having to wait until after typing. Pretty challenging, but the definitions were mostly not too oblique, which helped.

67. Thanks for the blog , at last a puzzle to puzzle , I often advise people on here to take a break when stuck and it certainly worked for me today . I had about 2/3 when I got home , tea in the garden , another look later and they flew in . My last one in was DURATION , stupid Roslyn , the easiest clue and I will not say what I was trying to do . COME-HITHER the brightest star in a galaxy of great clues .

68. Balfour will be pleased that you encountered some resistance at last @67 Roz.

69. I am puzzled by the difficulty some have with TIDIED. I suppose we all have subtle differences of pronunciation, but I can’t tell the difference between preserved citrus you put in your Christmas pudding and a very honest Liverpudlian DJ.

70. Petert @ 69

    🙂 RIP John.

    [You’ve reminded me that one year I forgot the preserved citrus (for me one of the best bits) and had to poke it in over the couple of months before Christmas, along with the weekly dose of brandy. Actually, cake rather than pudding.]

71. It’s good that the Guardian provides challenges for the skilled solvers.

    This was not for me. Two solved 😳😫.

72. Petert @69
    I’m puzzled by your post. I can’t see how peel and Peel can possibly be pronounced differently, but the difference between TIE DEED and TIE DID is far from subtle 🙂

73. muffin, I think Petert was talking about the difference in pronunciation (if any) between candied peel and candid Peel 🙂

74. Muffin@72 In case you are not joking, the difference is between CANDIED and CANDID, which I would make in the sentence “Let me be candid”, but not in the sentence “Eileen forgot the candied peel”

75. Great challenge of a puzzle today, well done Eileen for getting as far as you must have done in the wee small hours as I assume you bloggers must have to work. Like other solvers I found the parsing pretty pithy so cannot imagine having to do it against the clock. The favourite penny drop moments for me were for PULLMAN, COME HITHER and ORINOCO which was in the sweet spot for my age and background (parents bought us the Wombles’ album for Christmas).

    I agree that the homophone discussions are normally tedious – especially when they’re of the rhotic v non-rhotic variety – but today I have to agree that TIDIED and “Thai did” just don’t sound the same whoever you are. I was expecting a comment sooner than at 20 so feel like there ought to be some other explanation!?!

    [edit removed echo Muffin, thanks PeterT and Lord Jim]

    Veronica@71, don’t give up. So many of us have been impaled by Vlad in the past but coming here (15^2) again and again is the best medicine.

76. muffin @55: T-BONE was a very common description we used in the Met for nasty RTAs, but I suppose it’s not particularly well known outside certain circles.

    Roz @67: and I always assumed you were a Rosalind😉

77. AlanC , I was named after Rosalind Franklin but my mother “modernised” it .

78. Renewed thanks to all for an ultimately satisfying experience – a great joint effort, which is what this site is all about, as I have reiterated many times: bloggers are not self-confessed ‘experts’ but simply folk willing to take the driving seat for discussion of the day’s puzzles.

79. Amazing how just a crossword puzzle can produce so much discussion. Do we not have anything better to do? Like many, getting the equine clue as first one in got me quite excited, only to have before me quite a mental slog, a puzzle that has to be left to stew several times. Orinoco, that was only available with the crossers, I had no idea of the Wombles, even though I’m from the UK (haven’t lived there for forty years ) I suppose the Guardian can be as parochial as it wants to be. The pound sign one too, I have an Australian keyboard here in NZ, and there is no pound sign, except by using the option key. But we expats have to put up with these Guardian foibles to enjoy a free and worthwhile pastime. And I have to admit to see even the fifteensquared pro be puzzled, I really enjoyed that!!

80. Roz @77: now that was some role model to live up to, but it seems you have.

    Eileen @78: nice sentiment, grateful for your blogs which are always friendly and humorous.

81. Switched to the Quick.

82. Thanks to Eileen for what must have been a frustrating blog, to others
    who filled in the gaps and to the remainder for their comments.

83. UNREEL
    Sounds (unequivocally) like ‘unreal’

    You’re wrong there, Eileen. The vowel sounds in “reel” and “real” are pronounced entirely differently where I come from.

84. Thanks for a great puzzle and blog.

    This brought out the best in Mrs. E, and led to a sound night’s sleep.

85. A record number of failures to parse. TBONE, PRELUDE, NUDGE, ATTENDS. The last three a failure in understanding the cryptic part.
    TBONE as never heard of it being used with crashes, and Chambers didn’t help.
    PRELUDE had PR EL then why UDE?
    NUDGE I had force as the definition, so why G = elbow?
    ATTENDS just a plain WTfoxtrot?

86. Went to bed last night with 29ac still unsolved and ‘is there’ whirring round my head, woke up with ATTENDS about 3am, that’s proper Friday fare, thank you Vlad! And bravo Eileen!

87. Whew! This was a tough puzzle. I managed to finish it without cheating, but I came here with no fewer than 11 clues where I had questions about (or in some cases had no idea about) the parsing.

    I’ve never heard of REX as a type of cat. I thought that perhaps it was a stereotypical cat name, sort of like “Rover” or “Fido” for a dog. It reminds me that when I first started doing cryptics I had the same confusion about “Queen”, as I didn’t know that that word had a feline meaning.

88. The most puzzling thing to me – how can anyone not think that “Thai did” sounds exactly as TIDIED? It must me be, but I had no problem whatsoever and would even have gone as far as to label it an accurate homophone!

    [And to be reminded of John Peel was poignant. He, like Alistair Cook (of “letter from America” fame) were two softly spoken colossi of the slower radio waves whose likes we may never hear again…]

    Great puzzle – wisely (as it turned out!) saved for a weekend solve and savour…

    Huge thanks, Vlad, I was thoroughly entertained…

    And bless you, Eileen for your continued brilliance…

89. Nice one Vlad. A tough one… we solved it over a couple of pints…. by pretending the clue surfaces had been created by Paul!

90. We are a few days behind. Really struggled with this one but got there in the end. Can someone please explain why TB = complaint

91. Robruss24 @90, if you’re still there –

    TB is the abbreviation of tuberculosis.

92. A bit spurious for tuberculosis to be a complaint! I would call lumbago or arthritis a complaint, not a serious lung disease!
    Thanks Eileen.

93. Wow, a puzzle that took Roz two sittings! Her last, DURATION, is indeed an outstanding clue. I took several sittings and declared victory with five remaining in the top half — not a bad outcome for a Vlad

    I find the comment “too clever by half”, which I often see on this site, curious. Surely the setter’s job is to be as clever as possible!

    Got NOTHING TO FRIGHTEN THE HORSES fairly early on, thanks to the phrase being used recently by a blogger on a relatively easy puzzle. I then used it to good effect in a choir rehearsal when we had an easy anthem

    I was all set to huff about POUND SIGN not appearing on North American keyboards, until poc@30 reminded us of the hash sign (#). If that was intentional on Vlad’s part, it’s very clever!

    Road safety is an interest of mine, so T-BONE came readily. These devastating collisions are a feature of traffic-signal-controlled intersections, causing people to drive through the intersection at high speed. They can be dramatically reduced with good intersection design, especially roundabouts, which are sadly lacking in North America

    pserved_p2@32 Very funny! 🙂

    I hope Jay won’t have to change their moniker to “PostJay”! 🙂

Comments are closed.