Guardian 28,312 – Vlad

70 comments on “Guardian 28,312 – Vlad”

1. Chewy indeed! Managed to solve/parse everything, so pretty jazzed… despite painful reminders of how screwy things still are over here. DNK POLLEX, and guessed re Port of Calais. Thought ABH might be assault w/bodily harm… got me close enough.

   Is “easily” the anagrind in 14d? Not sure I see how it works… look forward to comments fr/others.

   Always do enjoy a MOOSE sighting 🙂

   Props to our setter, blogger, and (impending) commenters!

2. Me @1: Ok, easily as in “without difficulty” (lexico) or “free from trouble” (Chambers online), w/”?” for some latitude.

3. My first one in was 15a CHINA, of course. Soon enough the theme became evident. It’s really nice to see so many theme words worked into the grid. They are all well done too. Congrats to Vlad and thanks to Andrew.

   My LOI was 13d TORTELLINE.   ,

   Without detracting from the merit of the puzzle, I want to raise a question. I note that in the ac. set of clues there are as many as nine consecutive clues where the def is at the beginning. Would that be a give-away?

   Should setters worry about this sort of successive clues with def in the same place? Or is that a needless imposition on the setter?

    

4. Superb clues and a fitting comment
   Thanks JT and Andrew

5. Saw the setter and gulped but actually managed – and parsed and enjoyed – a lot more of this than I expected. I particularly likes VERONICA, WITTGENSTEIN and IN DENIAL. However I needed considerable help with the rest, both the try and check procedure and the blog. Andrew, in SPOUTS, it is the R, not a T, that is lost from SPROUT. Thank you for the explanations which were much appreciated. And thank you to Vlad for the challenge and the wit in the political commentary.

6. OddOtter@ 1 and 2

   When ‘relaxed’ is an accepted anag ind, ‘easily’ can well be !

7. I was not on Vlad’s wavelength today, so it was quite a hard slog.
   Guessed quite a few solutions. Solved but did not parse AGHAST, INTERPOSE, PORT OF CALL, OBSTRUCTIVE, RESIGNED.

   Liked LUNCHTIME.
   New: ABH = actual bodily harm.

   Failed to solved TEXT + POLLEX.

8. Biffed both subtractives, thinking ‘re’ for ‘about’ in resigned, then shrug, and no idea at all for port of call, so, lazy and not smart. Last few in the SW, mucking around with anag [c]rime spate for 16d, til remembering the lunch for ‘perhaps one’ trick, which made abhorrent obvious. The bracketed ‘it’s been said’ in 11d evoked another view (from Bryan Magee, who reckoned Ludwig W got the bulk of his ideas from Schopenhauer, unacknowledged). Hey ho, all part of the fun. Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

9. An enjoyable Vlad as ever and I enjoyed the US election references. Got Aghast but had no idea why, so thanks Andrew for explaining.

10. I really believe that I am getting to appreciate Vlad’s puzzles more and more.

    When he first appeared, I found his clues over-contrived and convoluted, but recent puzzles have been challenging but enjoyable. Thanks to setter and blogger; the latter for a parsing that eluded me, though the solution was clear.

11. What George @ 10 said

12. What George@10 and Dave E @11 said! I’ve mentioned before about finding Vlad’s clues convoluted, but this puzzle was so well done I was full of admiration. Especially liked VERONICA, TORTELLINI and ABHORRENT. Many thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

13. With a few crossers, and the theme, I so wanted 18ac to be LANDSLIDE.

    Didn’t bode well for 16dn; though ABSURDEST might have been apropos.

    (And to Grant @8: as Martin H. tells us, Schopenhauer was an idiot!)

14. In OBSESSIONS I took “repeatedly” to be part of the definition in order to pluralise the solution, otherwise I can’t see what it’s doing in the clue. One quibblet regarding REASSEMBLES; mirrors synonymous with resemble; really? A theme related nina at end of R2, but I suspect it’s unintentional.

15. Another crossword where Monty Python’s Philosophers song helped me get a clue 🙂

    Might be the first Vlad I’ve ever finished as well!

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

16. I think that I was on the same wavelength as michelle @7, as I found this hard work and LUNCHTIME was my favourite clue.

    [Like buses, you don’t see an Eric Idle reference for a while and then two come along at once: A lot of people in this country POOH-POOH Australian table wines and WITTGENSTEIN was a beery swine.]

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

17. Wiggers: I read OBSESSIONS the same way… with “repeatedly” in defn, justifying the plural answer. Re mirrors, how about “his opinion mirrors/resembles my own”? Agree it’s not ideal, but thought it close enough.

18. I slowly seem to cracking Vlad, although the repeated use of devices today made it a bit easier. Liked the whimsy of PORT OF CALL and TENNIS BALL and had no problem with POLLEX once the X was filled in.

    POOH POOH, of course, just set that deliciously barking Stephen Fry monologue from Blackadder going around my head….”A whole regiment destroyed – by Pooh Pooh!”

19. A most enthralling and enjoyable solve, with many grins and sighs of satisfaction at wily constructions and witty surfaces.

    Huge thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

20. I agree with George@10 and for the second time in a row I think why does Qaos have such a fearsome reputation? All of these clues were clued beautifully, but apart from POLLEX which was new but gettable, there was nothing obscure in the words or definitions. WITTGENSTEIN was FOI as it leapt straight off the page from the clever anagram. My favourites were PORT OF CALL, GLOBETROT, IN DENIAL and TEXT, which I thought was a subtle historical link to the ever-present ‘issue’ of CHINA. (Cue Trump’s grotesque pronunciation). Ta Andrew & Qaos.

21. Haha Vlad of course, but same sentiment for both

22. What Eileen@19 said. But i don’t see how all=quite inTENNIS BALL.

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

23. ngaiolaurenson @22: “we are quite/all done here” was how I parsed it.  I’m another happily humming the Philosophers’ Song this morning and I also wondered about the equation of mirror with resemble.  I thought the whole point of resemble is that it doesn’t quite mirror, though I appreciate OddOtter’s suggestion @17.

    Not everyone likes politics with their crossword but this was so artfully done that I hope there aren’t too many complaints.  The references to Pompeo and Rudy, to Pence and Melania were both neat and many of the surfaces (rightly) made mockery of what’s been happening in the greatest democracy on earth.

    Particular ticks for TENNIS BALL, POOH POOH, PORT OF CALL, LUNCHTIME, VERONICA and OBSESSIONS but there was very little here I didn’t like.  I have to admit to falling towards the last; the NE corner was very tricky with POLLEX a dnk, the unusual spelling of AGAH and, for some peculiar reason, not calling the TET offensive readily to mind.  I thought there’d be an X in it but didn’t imagine it would be where it was leading to impenetrable brain fog.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

24. Not in the Vlad mindset today at all despite loving the game of poking fun at US politics (and then weeping uncontrollably at our own dysfunctional crew who will NOT be leaving office on the 20th Jan, more’s the pity…)

    About as chewy as a toffee on an ancient amalgam filling for me today – lots of checking, much searching and a scratched head over several, even with the parsing. Will sit later with a glass or three and re-educate myself.

    Thanks Andrew and Vlad – you’ve compiled me.

25. Longest struggle I’ve had for a long time.  I add my thanks to the genius setter and the as-always scrupulous blogger.  I share Wiggers@14 view about the plural in 2d.  I am still not convinced as “all” as a synonym for “quite” in 14d.  Is it to be seen as similar to using “quite” in the affirmative emphatic way? What am I not seeing?

26. TerriBlislow@25: I had the same thought regarding ALL=quite. I don’t see it. I also wonder about IN=here in 27a. Are these accepted conventions, and if so, why?

27. [Trovatore @13: “The distinguished people who taught me philosophy at Oxford in tbe 1950s openly denounced Hegel and Heidegger as obscurantist charlatans, and asserted that Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were not philosophers at all…that Mill was second rate…that Russell and Wittgenstein have been overrated.” (Magee, 1983, p96). Hey ho!]

28. grantinfre@27: is Magee the chap who used to front a BBC programme in the 70s/80s discussing philosophers. I remember being totally bemused by the content, but thinking surely something will sink in (which of course it didn’t).

29. TerriBlislow @25 & poc @26: what did you think of my suggestion @23?  TB referred to the emphatic use of quite which is how I saw it working.

    gif @27: they had moved on from that position by the time they were teaching me the same subject in the early 80’s.  Probably because they suspected our generation of being unable to understand the phrase ‘obscurantist charlatans’.  I suspect, given recent politics the world over, it has a new lease of life now.

30. More luck that judgement on 7d.

    I got Fails less F rather than Wails less W :O)

     

    I enjoyed this puzzle, Vlad clues are hard but very fair , though I needed Andrew several times.  All (quite) is new to me and I frankly don’t see it even now. Thanks for 5 and 9 Andrew I got the answers but not the reasoning. Mother in law had an Aga but she only cooked on it, and heated the water tank.

31. Thanks Vlad and Andrew

    poc @ 26: How about if someone rings you at home, asking if they can call round (possibly in less restricted times). Possible answers could be “Yes, I’m in” or “Yes, I’m here”.

    Similarly, “I’m all ready” & “I’m quite ready”.

32. After quite a while became RESIGNED to a DNF today, even if I had soldiered on past LUNCHTIME. But strange to come across WITTGENSTEIN as I had gazed at his horizontal/flat gravestone just up the road from where I live only the other day. Found this too fiendishly difficult today, I’m afraid…

33. Simon S@31: I think you could construct any number of equivalents to “here” using similar arguments, e.g. someone arranges to pick you up from the dentist’s: “I’m out” = “I’m here”. “I’m all ready” = “I’m quite ready”? Perhaps.

    Anyway, neither is a hill to die on.

34. PostMark@29 and poc@26 – looks as if we all have the same interpretation (sorry I missed your point PostMark and ngaio@22 also – probably bounced in as I was stumbling over the keyboard.  I think it is a little dubious but who cares when the overall setting is so magnificent.

35. There is a theory that hurricanes with female names tend to cause more casualties than ones with male names as people are less intimidated by Storm Elsie than they are by Storm Eric and so take more risks. Though Vlad puzzles are often tricky, I am not sure they are any harder than the more innocuous sounding Nutmeg for example. This one all eventually fell into place, though I, too, forgot the Tet offensive. Genius indeed to link Wittgenstein and Trump

36. AlanC @28, yep that’s the chap, interviewed the then heavywieghts, Russell, Popper, Berlin et al.

    Mark @28, yes, perhaps because increasingly less obscure.

37. [gif@27 Was Russell one of the distinguished people who taught me philosophy at Oxford!]

38. GiF thank you. I definitely remember Popper and Russell being interviewed-heady stuff

39. A brilliant analysis of a superb grid. Thanks to Andrew and Vlad.

40. Odd that 7 is a repeat of a Geniuis solution from yesterday …

41. Having read the forewordfrom Andrew, I have unexpectedly twigged where the theme lies ( I thought themes always related to answers).

    This puzzle has risen 1000% in my estimation. The clues are pure genius and lose nothing in their value as genuine crossword clues.

    Magic! And I never saw the connection apart from the word vote being overused :O(

     

    I may post the clues to my family because they don’t need a grid to be appreciated.

     

42. 1 Down is a gem of a clue.

43. George Clements @10, thanks for your comment; perhaps there’s hope for me yet. I found this puzzle contrived and convoluted in several places! 9 is a good example – you have think of “rest” for others, less “st” for “no way”, and “signed” for “indicated”, and that’s just the cryptic part.

44. Great cluing and an amusing  and playful touch with the theme. I have heard some commentators say they have had enough of political/satirical elements in crosswords, but IMHO it’s fair game and I thoroughly enjoyed this. Many thanks Vlad.

     

45. Rishi @3, nicely spotted!  My answers to your three questions would be:

    1) no, I didn’t find any of them a giveaway, though CHINA and SEE RED were definitely on the gentler side for Vlad;

    2) yes, maybe ideally that’s something to avoid; but

    3) in this case the clues are so good that I’d go for ‘needless imposition’.

    Many thanks V & A.  I echo others’ favourites, especially LUNCHTIME and TENNIS BALL.

46. Further to my previous comment @43, if I was good at synonyms maybe I would feel differently. I also found the level of GK rather difficult – TET, AGHA? But IN DENIAL was satisfying when I finally found and parsed it.

47. [Monkey @46: amazingly enough, you require almost precisely the same GK to complete the Independent today!  Freaky coincidence.  And I think I’ve avoided spoilers with that observation)

48. Wow! That was tricky. Managed to finish thanks to some inspired guesswork so many many thanks to Andrew for the parsing of 9ac and a number of others.

    But all that torture was worth it, Vlad, for the wonderful surface of 11dn. Thank you.

49. Many thanks Vlad and Andrew.  A DNF for me as I could not get POLLEX either from the definition or the word play, although the latter was obvious once Andrew explained it all.  Other than that not one of Vlad’s most difficult, but nevertheless very enjoyable.

50. The electoral soap opera goes ever on and on, and Vlad is welcome to have fun with it and share it with the rest of us.  I’ll bet Trump is frothing that the Supreme Court, including three of his appointees, has unanimously trashed his desire that they toss out millions of votes — what else did he appoint them for?  Thank you, Vlad!  And thank you Andrew for dispelling of fog.

    I biffed in PORT OF CALL with no glimmer of a thought of Calais.  I realized I knew the phrase but didn’t know what it meant, and now I do.

    Thanks, Andrew, for parsing ABHORRENT; since I didn’t know ABH I didn’t parse.

    Anybody else try to work “Einstein” into 11d, the genius?

    To the QUITE questioners @here and there, “quite” can mean “completely.”  As in “I’m quite ready” above.

51. I too found this a less tough Vlad than usual.

    I didn’t think the question-mark at the end of 21d MOOSE was necessary.

    Some of the justifications in the comments today reminded me of the London Bus discussions we had a while ago.

    [If one’s thesis advisor is one’s father, then Bertrand Russell was my great-grandfather.]

52. Valentine @50: yes, I first started thinking along Einstein lines (not that that could be said of me that frequently!). BTW, I appreciated you winkling in your late comment on yesterday’s blog 😀

53. Thanks Vlad and Andrew

    Filled the grid easily enough, but several were unparsed. Favoruite was LUNCHTIME.

    My main reason for posting was to share my favourite Alan Bennett quote, relating to Wittgenstein. He has taken his elderly mother, who was suffering from dementia, for a ride in the country. I haven’t been able to find a text quote to paste, but there’s an image of the text here. (The bottom right one.)

54. Not on Vlad’s wavelength at all today, and I did find some of the clues contorted to fit the surface’s themes. I may be a bit grumpy about it because I’d just come from reading about the post-election shenanigans over here to do something else! POLLEX, AGHA, “perhaps one” for LUNCHTIME, “port of calais” and TET for “offensive” plus “X” for vote (at least where I am we fill in bubbles to vote) were beyond me, as were some of the anagrinds; I’d seen ABH in other puzzles but like “Porridge” for jail time I can never remember it.

    I did appreciate 11d as that’s who I’ve just finished teaching about!

55. essexboy@45
    Thank you for your response.

56. Re “quite”, lexico has “To the utmost or most absolute extent or degree; absolutely; completely”… then for “all” has “Completely”.

    Re “in”, lexico has “Expressing arrival.
    ‘the train got in very late’”, which works fine w/”here”. It also has “Present at one’s home or office”, which could work as “the doctor is here/in” or “is anybody here/in?”

    Gordon McDougall: Perhaps better not to mention (without strong necessity/relevance to the current puzzle) specific answers to specific other puzzles that some might still be working on (there was a bit of a dust up re this recently… would hate to see that flare up again).

57. Too difficult for me today but appreciate being able to come here for answers, explanation and elucidation. Thanks to all.

58. Left with all the crossers for 10a I assumed ‘poll’ was in there somewhere and google gave me ‘pollux’ as the spelling for thumbone so I bunged it unparsed. Stupid of me not to spot the obvious ‘late =ex’, but how annoying to have two alternatives for such an obscurity (or is that just me?)

59. @Oofyprosser, I thought 10a was ROLLEX which is also on a hand, or at least a wrist… POLLEX was new to ne.

60. Thanks Vlad and Andrew. I got about 2/3rds today which I’m counting as a win as that was not easy!

    By my maths there are 10 subtractions of one form or other in there – Is that some sort of record?

61. I’m very impressed with Vlad’s ability to construct clues with such clever thematic surfaces. 27ac was a particular favorite, but there were many others.

    I found this easier than other Vlad puzzles, but unfortunately it was a DNF for me as I was vanquished by POLLEX. If I’ve ever seen that word before, I managed to forget it, and while it would have been possible to work it out from the wordplay, I didn’t do so.

    ALERT and PAGER don’t seem the same to me — the latter is a physical object, and the former isn’t. But I can easily imagine that I’m missing some sense in which they match, or that this is a transatlantic language difference (I’m in the US). Anyway, the intent was clear, and this is an extremely minor concern. I also couldn’t see ALL = QUITE, but commenters have convinced me.

     

     

     

62. Thanks to Andrew for a very nice blog and to others for their comments.

63. Beobachterin @59:  ditto re ROLLEX! – until I remembered there’s only one L

    Oofyprosser @58:  ‘Pollux’ for thumb bone is on google because so many people have got POLLEX muddled up with Castor and Pollux.  This BMJ article sets the record straight, and also gives an entertaining explanation of the anatomical terms for the other four fingers.

    [For those with a penchant for linguistic titbits – from Latin pollex (acc. pollicem) we get French pouce, which as well as thumb can also mean big toe, or inch – not a great deal of use since the advent of the metric system, except for measuring TV screens.  Pouce! as an exclamation means pax/truce, and a coup de pouce is a helping hand.  French has also inherited from Latin specific words for each finger: working outwards from the pouce, they are index, majeur, annulaire, and my favourite auriculaire (the one you use for sticking in your ear!)]

    [muffin @53 – enjoyed the Alan Bennett quote – thanks 🙂 ]

64. 10a POLLEX was new to me (it seems so for many of the solvers) but it could be worked out from wordplay. The def that is given  here does not lead us anywhere. if someone, with two or three letters, guessed ROLLEX, they could be excused.

    Well, I looked it up. It is an anatomical/zoological term and so it’s  no wonder many of us had not come across it before.

    It is “the first digit of the forelimb of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, such as the thumb of humans and other primates” (Collins). It is as clear as it can get

    What’s the plural of “pollex”. I learn that it’s ‘pollices’.

    And what is the term for the innermost digit of the primates? It is HALLUX The big toe in humans..

    We could go into the root of these words, but not today, not here.

    Thanks for being with me.

65. [PS: I had not read essexboy@63 when I posted my Comment at 64.]

66. Bit of a teaser but good fun and much appreciated in the cloisters.

67. Hmm it should a page (which is an alert) not pager (which is the device on which you see the alert) unless I am missing some obscure noun version of alert.

68. Re PAGER: For “alert” Collins includes “a warning signal…; alarm”. Think the idea is one might say “their alarm/alert/pager went off”… tho defns in various refs didn’t clearly distinguish btw a device that issues an alert, and the *event* of an alert (which are separate in pager/page as Manoj notes). Raised an eyebrow for me too, and agree it’s one of today’s weaker defns, tho thought it close enough.

69. I’ve not seen TET offensive for ages. It used to be a crossword cliche.

70. I’m with MaidenBartok @24: “as chewy as a toffee on an ancient amalgam filling for me today” and Monkey @43: “found this puzzle contrived and convoluted in several places”. I didn’t know AGA could be spelt with an additional H; I knew hallux (big toe) but not POLLEX; completely forgot about the TET offensive; and the whole NE corner was a wasteland as far as I was concerned. Just not on Vlad’s wavelength, I guess, but also I must admit my initial thought on reading some of the surfaces was, do we have to have the US election again? (With belated apologies to trishincharente for my reaction to her similar thoughts a few weeks back.) Trying to solve a cryptic crossword while grumpy is not to be recommended.

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