Guardian Prize 28,332 by Vlad

102 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,332 by Vlad”

1. I want to tell you about an experiment I did.

   When I finished this faster than usual for a Vlad, my first thought was that I was on the setter’s wavelength. But then it occurred to me that that thought was as unscientific as the Ether and Phlogiston, and I was being unnecessarily self-deprecating, and maybe I was just thinking more clearly than normal. So I headed over to the harder puzzles, which I normally avoid, and found I could right away start getting traction. So what is my take-away? Multiple espressos are very helpful for doing crosswords.

2. Thanks PeeDee. An enjoyable session but one that left me wondering about some answers. The references I can find indicate that oblates do not take monastic vows and I still have doubts about bombs = races and bar = reef. I spent a bit of time trying to work ‘thou’ (old form of ‘you’) into an explanation of 21a before the PDM.

3. Thanks to Vlad and PeeDee. I managed to get BOTTOM DRAWER (new to me), but CHATEAU and WASHOUT defeated me.

4. It took me until Tuesday to finish this, with only five or six clues on each of the first three days yielding to my prolongued attack. In fact most of the top half of the grid was still blank on Tuesday morning, when OBITER DICTUM jumped out of the memory banks. BOTTOM DRAWER finally gave me the starting letter for OBLATE and everything began to fall into place. I hesitated for ages over CHATEAU, having forgotten that Nancy Mitford coined U and non-U, and just seeing Nancy in the clue as the conventional French indicator (which would have meant the U was in the wrong place), so thanks Vlad for a very original and misleading clue. Favourite was COLOMBO, another misleading one, where I was initially convinced that it was groom that was the definition.

   Many thanks to Vald and PeeDee.

5. Biggles A: a fast footballer can be said to ‘bomb’ down the wing, for which RACE would also do. A ‘bar’ or REEf can form across the mouth of a river.

   Dr WhatsOn: Lucky you! Which brand of coffee are you drinking? I could have used some last weekend…

6. Biggles @ 2

   Think of Tennyson’s Crossing the bar

   I enjoyed this a lot. Some great surfaces and lovely clueing. Particularly liked the anagram indicators: supply (8ac), guide (2dn).

   Just to mention a few of the ticks: TOP DOGS, EFFED (shades of Paul, here), TENNIS PLAYER, ANTIOCH, OBSESSION.

   I’m still not too sure I understand how to parse FILCHED. Is ‘spaces’ a verb meaning ‘separates’? Idon’t know it mean ‘spaces out’.

   I didn’t know what a HOME RUN is but I have heard the expression and guessed it from the crossers. I was vaguely aware that there’s a diamond area in some american sport – baseball is it, then?

   ESTUARY. Oh dear, I hope this doesn’t trigger the whole ‘you/ye ….’ debate again.

   On the whole an excellent puzzle. Many thanks to Vlad and to PeeDee.

   Now I can go to bed.

7. This must be the easiest Vlad ever, as I finished it in one session of about an hour.
   The reference to Nancy in 25a is surely just the setter’s usual way of indicating that we should be looking for a French word.
   Thanks to S & B.

8. Anna: I think ‘space out’ is commonly seen, but Chambers has ‘to make, arrange or increase intervals between’ with no need for ‘out’; ‘space out’ has a separate entry – ‘to set wide apart or wider apart’.

9. Had I heard of Ruritania or is it just its familiar nation-ish structure…hard to say. Had heard of Zenda by cultural osmosis but not of Hope the author. Obiter dictum somewhat similar..heard of it but no idea what it meant, and oblates ditto. But apart from these bits of learning, pretty gentle from the impaler, thanks to him and to PeeDee.

10. Favourites: TENNIS PLAYER, ESTUARY, SCHERZI, INCIDENCE, OBSESSION, ANTIOCH, TOP DOGS (loi)
    Failed RWANDAN
    Was unclear about diamond = series
    New: obiter dictum, oblates

    Thanks, Vlad and PeeDee

11. Strangely, I found this tougher than the normal Vlad. Seemed like every clue had a chewy parsing. Thanks a lot for the Nancy Mitford info, which explained why the posh appeared to be misplaced in the clue.
    I took HOME RUN to be just a CD, with the surface referring to Neil Diamond’s song Sweet Caroline, which is played at Boston Red Sox games when they win and has become the team anthem.
    I had a different COLOMBO parsing – COMB (groom) taking LO (look) inside + O (round) for the capital.
    Thanks, Vlad and PeeDee. Great prize puzzle.

12. I must try to be less scared of Vlad. Expecting every clue to be tricky, I actually missed seeing something as simple as the reverse ‘RACES’, and only went for it eventually as the most likely of the possibilities, giving hints of exercise at least. I’m still not really sure it means ‘bombs’ (I had thought of ‘racks’, as carrying bombs, but couldn’t justify that either). But I got all the rest with less agonising, although slowly, and was amazed I remembered OBITER DICTUM, and the Prisoner of Zenda, and Nancy Mitford (which I thought had ‘Nancy’ doing quite neat double duty). I did like BOTTOM DRAWER. Given that the phrase that comes to my mind is ‘rate of incidence’ I wasn’t entirely happy with INCIDENCE = rate, but I guess it’s OK, and I did like the clue. Thanks, Vlad, for some very clever cluing, and thanks PeeDee for the explanations.

13. I finished, but had problems with several parses, so thanks PeeDee as well as Vlad. Was particularly uncertain about RESTAGES, as I felt ‘stag’ (singular) could not mean ‘men’ (plural), but I now see it has to be ‘for men’, as in stag party.

    I particularly liked the pun in ‘Nancy’s posh’ to give CHATEAU.

    Anna@6, I don’t think there need be a debate about ‘ye’, as there is no attempt here to use it as ‘the ancient’, as in Popeye = he wrote the ancient mariner. ‘Ye’ was certainly, you, once.

    PeeDee, minor point. At 2d, the anagram fodder is misspelt. Should be TO CHINA.

14. sheffield hatter and Anna,thank you. Yes,understood. I just think of a bar as made of sand and usually underwater while a reef is made of rock or coral and usually exposed. There is a difference, and Tennyson might have found his passage less serene and secure had he attempted to cross a reef.

15. Most went in reasonably, though the entries got further apart in time as I went on. Quite a bit of it was fun, too (e.g. FLAVOUR…, RURUTANIA, TENNIS PLAYER). I see 17d – RESTAGE – as the sort of clue I dislike – worse than cryptic definitions, and even Spoonerisms. It is one that – it seems to me – is virtually impossible to get from the wordplay. That becomes (tortuously, sort of) obvious only once you have got the answer, probably from crossers. ‘For men’ = STAG? Can anyone here honestly say they thought of that before getting the answer? ‘Bar’ = REE[F]? Ditto (and here we have to think of a word that’s too long, and figure out that an F has to go). Do others agree? Thanks to PeeDee and Vlad.

16. Biggles A @ 14. I had the same reaction as you (though I do know that reefs can remain underwater), but have just done some research and found my thoughts were wrong.

17. HOME RUN is a charade of HOME (in) and RUN (series).

18. Quite hard (just finished it this morning) but then, it is Vlad, whose puzzles always make me struggle. Like grantinfreo @9 I was vaguely aware of the expressions OBITER DICTUM and OBLATES without knowing what they meant, but they were well clued. In fact I had no issue with any of the clues, unlike some previous commenters.

    HOME RUN is surely a simple charade of home=IN, series=RUN (as in series of performances of a play). But I didn’t know about the Neil Diamond/Boston Red Sox connection (thanks phitonelly @11), which makes it really a rather fine clue.

    Thanks Vlad and PeeDee.

19. My wife and I found this relatively straightforward for us, finishing Saturday evening. Parsed all the clues apart from a missing C in CLASSICAL. We had like=AS and one=I, rather than like=SIC and one=A. OBLATES and OBITER DICTUM were new to us.

    As a pedantic cruciverbalist, according to several sources Nancy Mitford did not coin the phrase U = Posh and non-U. It was the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross, professor of linguistics in 1954. He created a list of words used by the different social classes, published in a Finnish professional linguistics journal. Nancy Mitford very quickly picked up on the phrase and popularised it. Her article was published in the magazine ‘Encounter’ in the same year.

    Thanks to Vlad and PeeDee

20. I parsed 9a COLOMBO as phitonelly@11 did. PeeDee’s parsing doesn’t account for the final O, unless I’m missing something.

21. cellomaniac@20
    Re the clue
    Groom takes look round capital (7)
    Look at it this way:
    Groom – COMB
    takes – insertion ind
    look – LO, so CO(LO)MB
    round – O
    capital – def
    CO{LO)MB+O
    So COLOMBO

22. Having waited a week to find out why BOTTOM DRAWER is the answer (beyond the wordplay, which I solved) I’m still none the wiser. Forgive my ignorance and spare my blushes – but what does ‘bottom drawer’ have to do with ‘preparation for marriage’?

23. I really enjoyed this crossword. The two long anagrams on the east and south borders were excellent. I did this puzzle after reading yesterday’s blog, so there was some extra misdirection in 21A WASHOUT that got me on the wrong track. (I hope that’s not a spoiler.) Thanks, Vlad and PeeDee for the fun, much needed these days.

    grantinfreo@9, it’s funny how sometimes one can take a wrong path and still end up at the right place. For me it was 16a RURITANIA. Zenda and its author didn’t come to mind, but I remembered old Bob Hope movies set in fictitious countries, and so Ruritania popped into my head. Lo and behold, it fit and apparently parsed! Go figure.

24. I too found this week’s “prize” a toughie which tends to be par for the course for Vlad puzzles and me.

    Interesting to hear about your experiment Dr Whatson@1: caffeine is the answer although nothing beats putting the crossword down for a while and returning later if things are not caffeine fuelled thus allowing your brain to do its amazing thing offline and also not keep you awake at night like the caffeine would.

    TassieTim @(approx 10 – can’t see numbers on mobile version ?) I am 100% with you for RESTAGE with both STAG (for men, really?) and bar (reef!?!). Fair only in retrospect I’d say so relying on crossers. No doubt these are in Chambers of course.

    Ultimately really satisfying for a prize so many thanks to Vlad and to PeeDee for the full blog.

25. Rishi@21, yes, that is exactly how I and phitonelly@11 parsed it. As I said earlier, PeeDee’s parsing (‘takes… round” as the insertion indicator), doesn’t account for the final O in COLOMBO.

26. Was I the only one who didn’t know TINES? I now find that ‘tine’ can/could have up to eight meanings – spike/branch of an antler/vetch/small/distress/kindle/rage/shut in – none of which I’d ever heard of!

    Hodge @22: this link may help.

    Rishi @21: I think you, me, cellomaniac and phitonelly all agree on COLOMBO!

    PeeDee, I think your parsing for 16a would give RIRUTANIA.

    Many thanks to you and Vlad.

27. Hodge @22: Mr Google says “household linen stored by a woman in preparation for her marriage”. I’m not sure the phrase is used much nowadays.

    Last Saturday was such a long time ago that I can’t remember much about this except that I finished it and enjoyed it as always with Vlad’s puzzles, particularly SCHERZI, COLOMBO and INCIDENCE. Couldn’t parse RURITANIA – thanks to PeeDee, and to Vlad.

28. Hodge @ 22
    I am not a native speaker of English but I will try.
    ‘Cheek’ has the meaning “either side of the buttocks”.
    A ‘cheeky drawer’ is ‘one who draws cheeks’ = ‘one who draws the bottom’ = BOTTOM DRAWER.
    Do people keep undies and lingerie in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers?

29. I had not read 27 when I wrote my Comment at 28. Comments come thick and fast!

30. Hodge @22: young ladies used to collect items that might be useful when married in a bottom drawer in anticipation of the event.

    Ed The Ball @24: you might find my comment of yesterday helpful if you’re working off a mobile phone: if you scroll down to the very bottom of the screen you should see two buttons entitled Desktop Version and Mobile Version. Select the former and you’ll get the post numbers.

    Anna @6: I’m another who hopes we don’t fully revisit the thee/thou/ye discussion given it was only yesterday it was given a thorough airing, as indeed was the U/non-U (hatter @4: the Wiki article I mentioned credits British linguist Alan S. C. Ross, professor of linguistics in the University of Birmingham as the coiner of the phrase in 1954. Nancy Mitford subsequently took it up. One reflection that occurred after posting the link yesterday is that the phrase tended to be used by those in the U, rather than the non-U, classification which led to an additional unintended division based on ‘us’ as in ‘we’ and, presumably, ‘them’.)

31. Super puzzle from Vlad, with a blog from PeeDee to match.

    My ticks were for TOP DOGS, SCHERZI, INCIDENCE, TENNIS PLAYER and CLASSICAl and I loved the Hope country (was anyone else initially beguiled by RITA as the girl?) and Nancy’s posh.

    [I still have the tablecloth and traycloths (!) that I embroidered in the early 60s for my bottom drawer.]

    Many thanks, both.

32. Turning to the puzzle, I didn’t find it one of Vlad’s easiest though everything fell in the end bar OBITER DICTUM which was a dnk. I didn’t know what I was looking for so didn’t even spot the anagram, even with crossers. Doh.

    TENNIS PLAYER is a lovely anagram, BOTTOM DRAWER, SATYRIC and ESTUARY all made me smile, I enjoyed the pithiness of both COLOMBO and ANTIOCH. I did have to Google RURITANIA to understand the Hope connection and had no problem with ‘bomb’ for ‘race’: I don’t have my Down With Skool to hand but I imagine Molesworth bombing/racing around.

    Thanks Vlad and PeeDee

33. There’s almost a marriage theme. STAG, GROOM, BOTTOM DRAWER, SWEETHEART, SEXY NURSES (as in hen parties). [I love the Tennyson poem, which our choir do a moving musical version of, or did when we could meet]

34. In India in the 1950s and maybe for some more years women were very reluctant to dry their inner garments out in the open.
    My mind goes back to the year 1957 when we were living in Durgapur, West Bengal, and when I was still in school. Into our family came a newly-married lady relative.
    Clothes were dried in an enclosed but open-to-the-sky courtyard. She used to hang a petticoat over the bra so the underwear was not visible to others. Such were the mores. Let me add that I didn’t discover this out of any prurient interest.
    In the mid-Sixties I was living in my grandfather’s palatial house in the then Madras. Into the next-door house of a conservative family came a bride from Bombay.
    Well, we young men saw their clothesline with underwear that we had not seen thus far.
    When Jockey came to India, the advertisement had foreign models; then the company hired a Hindi film actress to model the briefs. Now models outside of the tinsel world are ready to pose like calendar girls.
    Finally, the sedate hosiery manufacturers of Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, have a new line in the ‘smalls’ segment. And desi models!

35. [essexboy @26 Yes, you were the only one, so niw you can sing ‘The fog on the tines is all mine, all mine. The fog on the tines is all mine’.]

    Thanks Vlad and PeeDee

36. Thank you all for clarifying BOTTOM DRAWER! You live and learn!

37. sheffield hatter @ 8
    sjshart @ 13

    Thanks for your replies, whilst I was in the land of slumber.

    Tigger @ 19
    PostMark @ 30

    Thanks for the information re U. I was unaware of that. Do you happen to know which Finnish journal it was? I must try and look up the article.

38. Anna @37 & Tigger @19: apologies to the latter for not spotting the earlier reference to Alan Ross, though, as I noted, this came up yesterday and my trigger for responding was hatter’s comment back @4. I suspect we’ve both viewed the same Wiki article. Anna – the references at the bottom of the page read thus: Ross, Alan S. C., Linguistic class-indicators in present-day English, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (Helsinki), vol. 55(1) (1954), 20–56.

39. Toughie for me – took a couple of days. But then it’s been a bit of a strange week. The Monday Imogen took me absolutely ages, but today’s prize was a write in (as was yesterday’s Qaos, but that’s more to be expected). Perhaps we’re going to see a different approach to setting patterns this lockdown. I remember we got some absolute peaches back in April!

40. I just discovered this fantastic resource! Thanks to all involved, especially lad and peedee.
    For 4d I had “rocks”,having missed the obvious(in retrospect) reverse hidden…googling rocks/bombs seems to indicate a synonym.
    I was caught out again by “North Countryman” summoning images of Orkadians and the like, rather than a Countryman from anywhere ending in N. Otherwise completed eventually after 3 or 4 return visits over 2 or 3 days…particularly enjoyed 26a,7d,6d,11a

41. Postmark @ 38

    Thanks.

    (I always want to refer to you as MX !) 🙂

42. Very nice puzzle for me. Could someone please tell me why attic means classical? I’ve been waiting for it to come up here but, like essexboy with his tines, I must be the only one who doesn’t know!
    Thank you Rishi – love your underwear in India anecdote.
    Thank you setter and blogger

43. trishincharente @42: attic means ancient Greek hence classical. Attic was the dialect as well as the name of the peninsula on which Athens is situated.

    Anna @41: MX or XM!

44. trishincharente @42 – Attica is the region of Ancient Greece that contained Athens, so Attic is “of Attica”. Classics is the study of Ancient Greece, Rome etc.

45. Johnp @40: apologies for overlooking your first post which deserves a response. Welcome to the site. As you have observed, a fantastic resource and a fine community. I hope we see more of you.

    A word of warning, though: it’s not all sunny days and plain sailing. You can expect fierce debate and criticism, dreadful puns and poor jokes, inadvertent spoilers relating to yesterday’s crosswords that you haven’t yet attempted, more dreadful puns, factual inaccuracies, pedantry to the nth degree, irrelevant personal anecdotes and yet more dreadful puns. … which about sums up my contributions over the last week. 😀

46. Thank you Mark and PeeDee. I guess I could have Googled it, but so much nicer to have a bit of human interaction, which is why I suppose we all come here. 🙂

47. @trishincharente – you are welcome. Being a little on the autistic side myself I would always Google something first and go to a human as a last resort. But each to his/her own!

48. trishincharente@42
    [Keats in his Ode on a Grecian Urn apostrophises the urn as “O Attic shape!”]

49. Postmark @ 43

    No. Definitely MX. (Philately joke – sorry).

    Attic. As I recall from my days studying Ancient Greek (and that’s a very long time ago, so I may be remembering wrong) the Attic dialect favoured -tt- over -ss-. Glotta not glossa (tongue). I’m sure there must have been lots of other differences, too, but that’s just the one I remember.

50. Thanks everyone for the corrections, the blog has been updated.

51. 1,13. I have a bit of a niggle. “In” and “in season” are definitions of ” flavour of the month”, obscure perhaps but not really cryptic. If we are meant to use “flavour” in the culinary sense we have to use “season” as = “seasoning” and “of the month” is not in common use.
    24a I had the wrong sort of potters in mind. I had the RA and N and was searching for an equivalent to wheel or cue that would fit until my son nudged me in the right direction. In the meantime I worked out that Ray REARDON, the champion billiards and snooker player would fit but wouldn’t parse despite my desperate efforts with RED (snooker ball) round AR (artist reversed without indication)
    25a Another niggle. I spotted and appreciated the misdirection towards Nancy = French which would have worrked but for the U being in the wrong place but does anyone refer to Nancy Mitford just as Nancy? Even her own family called her “Lady”
    Plenty to like and thanks to Vlad and PeeDee

52. I’m always pleased to finish a Vlad and I somehow dragged OBITER DICTUM out of the recesses of my memory. Very much enjoyed RWANDAN and RURITANIA.

53. [Anna @49: I was thinking XM = Ex Mark but MX has your uniquely cultural stamp upon it! ]

54. Very enjoyable. Feels a long time ago, the first week of the year back at work is always a long one! From what I recall the bottom half went in quickly but the top less so

    Thanks to Steve B and beualieu for pointing out the simplicity of HOME RUN – i was on the same lines as PeeDee but couldn’t quite make it work. I was another who liked the Nancy double-bluff!

    Similar to Pino I do still wonder about 1.13 – I had ‘in’ (fashion) = flavour of the month, however ‘season’ (food) only accounting for flavour?

55. Postmark@40: thanks for the tip. This is a long standing minor bugbear of mine i.e. the numbers and posting times of comments not being visible on the mobile version. From an IT perspective I am surprised that there is no way to use the data (that IS used on the desktop version) to display the entry numbers on the mobile version. Switching to desktop does work but is unsatisfactory on a mobile device otherwise (for example when posting a comment it is only possible to see one side of the posting box at a time).

    I have raised this before but Gaufrid assures me that this is not possible. As I say a minor quibble with the excellent resource that 15^2 is.

    Appreciated your post@45 too ?

56. Myself@55. Sorry ! Not ?

57. Just researching to connect attic = classical to the only attic I knew – the one I keep my mad granny in – and I find it’s used in classical architecture. “A small, square, decorative column used in a low story above a building’s main facade”, later coming to mean the space enclosed by such a structure. Learnt something new today!

58. [Penfold @35: ‘Fog on the Tyne’ was for years one of my personal mondegreens (along with ‘Oh! A tree in motion!’). I was convinced they were singing ‘the bog on the Tyne’, and were laying claim (for reasons unknown) to exclusive use of a riverside public convenience.

    A postscript on TINES: in addition to the eight meanings I discovered earlier, I now realise a tine could also be a place where U people have a hice.]

59. Thanks peedee and all for comments. This was a DNF for me as like Pino @51 I had REARDON instead of RWANDAN and although I couldn’t parse it, even making Odile REDON the artist, was too lazy to go back to it.

60. An excellent crossword which twice had me temporarily stumped, but I got there in the end. There were several ingenious, misleading surfaces to admire, notably the clues to WASHOUT, OBLATES, TOP DOGS, HOME RUN and TRODDEN.

    Other favourites were INCIDENCE, FELT TIP and CLASSICAL and BOTTOM DRAWER.

    Two weeks in a row we have had two former capitals clued as ‘capital’: DAR ES SALAAM last week and COLOMBO today.

    Thanks to Vlad and PeeDee.
    –

61. Nobby @54. I think you’re looking at 1,13 as though it’s a double definition, but in fact as PeeDee points out in the blog, it’s a cryptic definition. So there’s no need for either ‘in’ or ‘season’ to be represented in the answer. An “in” season is a flavour that is only fashionable at a certain time of year (Brussels sprouts, for example).

62. SH@61
    I think it works both ways. Double def or cryptic. I certainly saw the double def first. If you’re in, you’re flavour of the month. And the flavour of the month is seasonal.

63. Either way, a very clever clue.

64. I’d only heard OBITER DICTUM in its DICTA plural form. When considering a precedent set by a judge’s remarks, those remarks are divided into the essential reasons for giving the verdict he (or she) did (the ratio decidendi) and other remarks the judge happened to make which are not relevant to the verdict and do not set a precedent (the OBITER DICTA).

65. trishincharente @62/63. I agree it’s a clever clue (though not as clever as the multi-faceted HOME RUN!), and that “if you’re in, you’re flavour of the month”. But ‘season’ just doesn’t work as a definition without the ‘in’.

66. [essexboy @57 Tine hice – marvlous!]

67. Pleasant puzzle, which I didn’t finish until a session with the Check button this morning. Thank you Vlad. And thanks to PeeDee for an engaging and enjoyable blog.

    Eileen — what is a traycloth? I must lead a very non-U life.

68. Hi Valentine @67

    I was going to say, ‘Was, not is’ but I’m amazed to find that you can still get them – and to embroider, too!

69. The link didn’t work, I’ll try again.

70. Haven’t got time to read all the comments at the moment, so excuse any repetition.

    In 25ac, I thought the “Nancy” was to do with the French origin of CHATEAU and that the clue didn’t seem to quite work properly. Thanks for the enlightenment, Peedee.

    In 2d, ANTIOCH, I wondered about “guide” as an anagram indicator, but it had to be.

    4d, RACES, was neat.

    Wasn’t sure about 6d, HOME RUN, but didn’t know about the TV series and only vaguely aware that Sweet Caroline has something to do with baseball.

    In 17dn, RESTAGE, I didn’t get the wordplay for REE, but put it in anyway.

    19dn, ESTUARY, made me laugh.

    22dn, TINES, was clever

71. No luck – sorry!

72. I think this is the link that Eileen was trying to post.

73. Many thanks, Gaufrid – you never cease to amaze me!

74. Postmark@45, here we are at comment #72+ and not a pun, dreadful or otherwise, to be seen. And I only found one bit of wordplay fun (tine hice, thanks essexboy@58). I’ll just have to go back to reading a punny dreadful for my cheap entertainment.

    And may I join you in welcoming Johnp@40 to the site.

75. Thanks to Steve B and Beaulieu for the additional “in series” parsing of HOME RUN, which I missed. Quite a complex clue, if all that’s been read into it applies. I forgot to mention earlier that the “Hope” part of 16a referring to Anthony Hope also escaped me, so needed PeeDee’s help with that too. Thanks!
    This puzzle is certainly in stark contrast to the current Prize.

76. [Cellomaniac @74: you have your books, I have my chickens… ]

77. Thanks SH and trish, that helps. Yes I was looking at it as double defn. It just didn’t seem a cryptic enough definition for a Vlad! It’s almost like a you can read the whole clue as both a straight definition and a cryptic definition?

    As others have said, a number of multi faceted clues in the puzzle, a master setter at work

78. Thank you, Eileen and Gaufrid. I look at that beautiful white to-be-embroidered cloth and think “That goes on a tray with food? The first thing I’d do is spill coffee or jam on it@? Gaufrid — how did you know which was Eileen’s link as opposed to, say, a straight wikipedia definition.?

79. Valentine @78
    I read all comments on a page in which they are listed in the admin part of WordPress and the URL that Eileen was trying to add appeared in the comment displayed there even though it hadn’t actually been added as a link.

80. Gaufrid @79: I’m sure you shouldn’t be giving us your tricks! I see you as some kind of deus ex machina who knows all, solves all and holds us puny mortals in the palm of your hand! It seemed entirely natural that you would know what Eileen intended to post. 😀

81. Hi again Valentine

    I really don’t know why these things have been lurking unused in the bottom of my airing cupboard for decades – this might be just the prompt I need to get rid of them.

    Different uses of trays, I think. I don’t really remember ever using them, as supposedly intended, to adorn a tray bearing china teapot, cups and saucers and cream jug for an ‘afternoon tea’! Embroidering them was just something that, you did, believe it or not. I’m not proud of this.

    These days, a teatray is something you bang against your forehead when you manage to solve / parse a Vlad clue. 😉

    And Gaufrid, as we all know, is a wizard.

82. I posted before seeing Gaufrid and PostMark’s comments.

83. Up above the world he flies
    Like a teatray in the skies…

84. essexboy @83 😉

    I haven’t yet joined in the welcome to Johnp @40, which I now do, wholeheartedly. I well remember that serendipity moment, years ago, when I stumbled on this site

85. [ PostMark@76, you can pluck your chickens, I’ll pluck my strings – while enjoying my favourite Italian dish, violoncello pizzicato. ]

86. [cellomaniac @85: I was thinking of cheep entertainment…]

87. Thanks for the fun Vlad. This was a case of having the correct letters in the correct boxes but why they were there was another question. Thanks PeeDee for the explanations I needed.
    I did kook sideways at the bar=reef link as my understanding is that a bar is built of loose material so can change shape, whereas a reef is solid rock or coral and cannot. That certainly is the way we talk of them out here. The only connection I can see is they are both obstructions in the water.

88. Appreciate the “welcomes”! Thanks
    No one’s mentioned it- under what circumstances can “look” be abbreviated to LO ?
    I know a bit more about baseball than Harry Potter, so 6a seemed a straightforward (very clever) reference which had nothing to do with “Sweet Caroline “, whereas I got hung up on snooker paraphernalia in24a and never got there…

89. Johnp @88: it may be a bit late for you to see this but, nevertheless, LO is not an abbreviation of look but a word in its own right. It’s archaic but basically means “Behold!” as an exclamation. “Lo, the Saviour cometh…” kinda thing.

90. Thanks Vlad and PeeDee for the explanations–I missed several parses so needed them. Two of them came from not knowing particular authors had special connection to phrases, I’d heard of Ruritania and U (mostly through this blog for the latter!) but didn’t know who invented them. I thought “Nancy’s posh” was part of the definition, and indeed that helped me get the answer as something I’d parse later. Didn’t parse ESTUARY either.

    This week’s American troubles: It took me a long time to figure out “Flavour of the month” because of the spelling (again, I need to remember British spelling).

    For 7d I had “BRIDAL SHOWER” for the longest time, figuring that an artist shows their work, and… well, that I didn’t understand the rest of it, but it was the only preparation for marriage I could think of, let alone 6, 6! BRIDAL SHOWER turns out to be chiefly US. It seems as though we call the bottom drawer a hope chest.

    Then again “Home run” was particularly US-friendly.

    Thanks again Vlad! I particularly enjoyed “wand” for Potter’s equipment and “classical” for “Attic perhaps.”

91. Many thanks to PeeDee for a nice blog and to others who commented.

92. I’m a bit surprised that after 88 comments nobody has taken me up on my suggestion that oblates by definition do not take vows.

93. Biggles A @93: sorry, my friend. Frustrating when a question or suggestion goes unanswered throughout the day and you’ve waited long enough! A bit late for commenting now but I will attach the link to the obvious source – Wikipedia inevitably – a brief read of which suggests enough situations, either historically or presently, in which oblates make promises, commitments or are, themselves, promised that the clue works for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblate#:~:text=Oblates%20are%20individuals%2C%20either%20laypersons,monastic%20community%20of%20their%20choice.

94. Johnp @88
    PostMark@89
    People would say “Lo and behold!” as an expression of surprise. “I was sitting in the restaurant drinking coffee when, lo and behold, Rajinikanth walked in.” (He is a superstar in south India.)
    It may be out of fashion now.
    P.G. Wodehouse often used it in his novels.

95. PostMark@93. Thank you for your helpfulness. The obvious source wasn’t obvious enough for me I’m afraid, I’d relied on dictionaries. From the OED:
    A person dedicated to monastic or religious life or work, spec. a member of an order which does not require solemn vows; (also) a lay person who is attached to a religious house, usually observing the rule but not professing the vows, or one who observes part of the rule of a particular religious order while remaining in the secular world.

96. Having come back to read the comments, I’m pleased to learn the charade parsing for HOME RUN, which must be right. Surely it’s the surface which is referring to the song by way of misdirection from ‘Diamond’s greatest hit’ as the cryptic definition for the biggest hit in baseball?

    Essexboy, thanks for “tine hice”. I believe you are now well-placed to appreciate this pleasing clue I once wrote somewhere you’re unlikely to come across it otherwise:

    Ground to spike drink (8)

97. [Thanks Tony @96. For anyone puzzling over the clue, this is a spoiler (‘made for today’s adult tastes’!)]

98. Johnp @88. Amazingly accurate surface in 6d if it has nothing to do with Sweet Caroline – see this from Fenway in the 2013 World Series.

99. 98 comments for a Saturday puzzle and no big arguments? Vlad must be doing something right!

100. [beery @99
     There was no room for any argument!]

101. So great to see the Super White Army named checked (ie Tranmere Rovers). Let’s hope they can get enough points to go up again. Thanks Vlad

102. I didn’t find this ‘a bit tricky’ I found it unforgivably awful. Dreadful, annoying, impenetrable. I love cryptic crosswords but setting like this discredits the genre.
     Shame on you, Vlad.

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