Guardian Cryptic 28,513 by Vulcan

58 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,513 by Vulcan”

1. I found this even gentler than today’s quiptic but eminently enjoyable. Shatter = shiver is new for me too.

2. I initially thought 13D was a poor cd, I completely missed the dash. It’s actually rather good. I also slowed myself down by putting OMA in for 19A.

   Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

3. As loonapick observes, 12a has split the pack on the G’s own thread and I can see why. It is a lovely cryptic clue with a neat misleading surface but, on its own, very difficult to solve. With crossers, it was a write in which enabled me to enjoy the cd. Apart from that, I thought two adjacent down clues – BALDERDASH with the clever use of punctuation and the lovely &lit BIRD OF PREY (which had me desperately thinking about lions) were in a class of their own.

   Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

4. Re 10A I’ve only come across shiver in this sense in the phrase “shiver me timbers”
   Thanks Vulcan for an enjoyable start to the week and to Loonapick for the blog.

5. Fun puzzle, neither too easy nor too difficult.
   Liked BALDERDASH, HEYDAY, POET LAUREATE, ASPIC (loi)
   I did not fully parse SHIVER.
   Thanks, both

6. Oops! I had tried to include a link to this but obviously have a lot to learn about how to do that.

7. This looked like it was going to be a doddle but proved to be more challenging than that. Like Postmark @3 I was certain 14d was Lion of something for ages until Dad arrived. Nothing wrong with 12ac for me. Thanks Vulcan and Loonapick.

8. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick
   I think 12 is fine; the misdirection is to think of a linesman in a football match at Crystal Palace, often just known as “Palace”.
   BALDERDASH was my favourite.
   CAYENNE isn’t a plant, it’s a place from which the particularly hot cayenne pepper comes.

9. I read CAYENNE as Yen in support for plant, ie plant is part of the wordplay, not the definition

10. What’s the definition, then, Fiery Jack? “A hot one” would be very loose.

11. Muffin @10, true, but if a cayenne is not a plant, and I don’t know whether it is or not, it is loose one way or the other

12. My problem with CAYENNE was that it just wouldn’t fit in 28a – doh!

13. From dictionary.com

    cayenne
    noun
    1. a hot, biting condiment composed of the ground pods and seeds of the pepper Capsicum annuum longum.
    2. the long, wrinkled, twisted fruit of this plant.
    3. the plant itself.

14. Well, POET LAUREATE was certainly cryptic enough for me – had me completely bamboozled, hence a DNF today. Excellent clue though, bravo Vulcan. Likewise BIRD OF PREY.

    muffin @8 – I agree with you on 12 but think you’re being too pedantic on 29ac. In cooking, I might “add a pinch of Cayenne” as short for Cayenne pepper.

15. Forgot to add thanks for the blog, loonapick.

16. apteryx @4 Me too. Surprised how many didn’t know this meaning though. Don’t always care for Vulcan offerings, but this was a pleasant start to the week.

17. ‘Shiver’ meaning ‘shatter’ is especially prevalent in older literature that deals with chivalric activities, where it is the default term for what happens to a lance or spear when it collides with an opponent’s shield. Thus, for example, among many examples in Thomas Malory’s ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’, describing hostilities between Sir Launcelot and Sir Gilmere: “And so they hurtled together with all their mights, and all to-shivered both their spears. And then they drew their swords and lashed together eagerly.”

18. 19 across – I had WHO – relative pronoun. Did anyone else make this mistake?

19. “Shiver me timbers!”

20. I parsed 12 as muffin @8 – excellent clue. All straightforward but no less enjoyable

    Ta Vulcan & loonapick

21. Thanks for the blog. As soon as I saw linesman I thought poet, clearly I have seen it too many times, it is a bit like scorer for a composer. I found the anagram for ARREST quite elusive and I have no idea why now.

22. Always good to learn something new, for I hadn’t realised that the Palace appointed our Poet Laureate, every ten years or so is it? Enjoyable puzzle today. GAINSAYING and that rather less used meaning of SHIVER I liked. Was going to say that the least impressive clue was TRAVEL until Loonapick pointed out that it was a hidden word – I hadn’t even spotted it!

23. Isn’t Whey a PRODUCT of cheesemaking, not involved in?

24. Didn’t see that shatter = SHIVER but I liked the other double definitions.

    Also liked HEYDAY, WHEY, APPALLED

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

25. I love the one’s that use punctuation; hence BALDERDASH was my cotd.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

26. [red face] should be ones

27. M = mark? Huh?

28. Ronald @22 – yes, as well as fiddling about with the laws of the land to their own advantage, the palace also chooses our poet laureate. A really good cryptic clue though.

    Thanks, Vulcan, for a really good Monday puzzle – and, loonapick, for the explanations.

29. Yes, “shiver me timbers” – apteryx @4, here’s your link – you forgot to delete the first http//.

    Good Monday crossword with a lot of entertaining clues. I particularly liked REFRIGERATOR, BALDERDASH and the simple DAD.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

30. Some very clever misdirection. I tried hard to get lion into 14d and spent too long thinking about ‘carriage’ or ‘marriage’ for 12a. In my Norfolk upbringing ‘shiver’ was the normal word for ‘splinter’, so that went in easily. Thanks Vulcan.

31. hilt @27: HWM – high water mark comes to mind. And TM – trade mark. (But not postmark 😉 ) And, of course, pre Euro, the Deutsche Mark was abbreviation to DM although I can’t recall whether the M ever stood on its own two feet in the currency context.

32. hilt @27, m for mark, ie the former German currency, is in Chambers.

    Re “shiver”, in the memorable scene in The Lord of the Rings when Eowyn faces the Nazgul:

    “… he let fall his mace. Her shield was shivered in many pieces, and her arm was broken…”

    Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

33. Not his finest hour

34. Nice puzzle – BALDERDASH was excellent – once I came here for the full parsing. Despite being an LoR fan I didn’t equate SHIVER with SHATTER. ARREST also took me ages to see Roz@21. Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

35. Lord Jim @32 and others, yes the currency is the only m= mark in my Chambers 93. I wonder if this will disappear in future editions ?
    WhiteKing @ 34 I do not know why, I am normally good at anagrams and it seems so simple now.

36. Slightly late this morning having spent the last hour-plus trying to work out the intricacies of the BBC’s Proms day ticket booking system…

    I must have really been on Vulcan’s wavelength this morning though because POET LAUREATE was a write-in and my FOI so I am duty-bound to say it was a lovely clue.

    And BALDERDASH – lovely!!!!

    Compared to last Monday, mostly a walk in the park – a very large one with quite a few interesting avenues, but at least I was sure that at some point I would get out and not be locked in overnight trying to cut my way out through the fence with a pair of toe-nail clippers. Not to say that has ever happened to me…

    Thanks Vulcan and loon pick!

37. I enjoyed this – although I entered most fairly easily, there were some meatier ones, with some nice misdirection (as already noted, the lion – where I totally missed the anagram – the poet [like Norbrewer @30, I had carriage and marriage in mind] and the dash). Thanks, Vulcan and loonapick.

38. I think M = MARK is on that can be used alone as it appears in various combinations, eg Deutschmark, Ostmark, Finnmark. Not saying I like it, but the same principle applies to S = SOCIETY. As far as I know that’s only ever seen in compound abbreviations.

39. PM/LJ/Simon S

    M by itself was the symbol for the Goldmark (1873-1914), the Papiermark (1914-24), and the East German Mark (1948-90) – though whether that’s why it’s in Chambers I’m not sure.

40. Pretty standard Monday fare, even slightly on the easier side. To make it more interesting I tried a strictly numerical solve, albeit 1d went in before 1a.

    My quibble with 12a is not whether it’s cryptic – I think it is – it’s more the word linesman. Carol Ann Duffy was holder of the post until 2019. I thought that was not a good clue for that reason.

    My numerical attempt failed as I couldn’t get 20a until I had the crossers and it was my LOI.

    A pleasant work out with ASPIC my favourite today.

    Thanks to Vulcan and to loonapick

41. I got stuck for ages because of 19 across. I had ‘son’: a doctor’s round = (Dr) No’s reversed.

42. postmark@31 thank you. Re ‘pantry’ the other day, I hail from Dundee. Thought you might have guessed with ‘Help Ma Boab’

43. [Alas, hilt @42, Broonspeak is not widely known and practised beyond the cultural and geographical reach of the Sunday Post. Were it so, I feel sure that Paul would have found a way to include ‘Crivvens’ in his ‘minced oath’ puzzle a few weeks ago.]

44. Jack @41
    Valiant effort, Mr Bond! 😉

45. I was delayed on POET LAUREATE by thinking the “linesman” was going to be a specific poet (John somebody, before the crossers disqualified him): I thought it was OK as a CD. Another one here looking for lions in BIRD OF PREY.

46. Roz @35: I suppose people will still want to refer to currencies which are not around any more. My Chambers (10th edition, 2006) has s for shilling and d for penny or pence (though the latter is qualified by “before 1971”). It also has, for example, RFC for Royal Flying Corps (qualified by “until 1918”) and SS for the Nazi elite corps (not qualified by date).

47. Good point Lord Jim, of course Chambers is a historical record of words as you say. I would guess that groat is in there as well, will check later.

48. Robi @25. Thanks for including the link correctly.

49. Spooner’s Catflap@43. There was a production of The Broons at Dundee Rep quite recently and when Hen said, “Jings Crivvens!” the whole audience shouted, “Help Ma Boab!”

50. Just beaten by 12a, a great example of where I don’t think laterally enough. I was convinced it was something to do with ‘blood’ lines involving royalty.
    Apart from that, great fun, good for doughnuts like me.
    Thanks both.

51. A pleasant crossword which I found easy except for the three I didn’t solve — POET LAUREATE, GAINSAYING, and MAHOGANY. My favourites were CAYENNE, PERCENTAGE, BABOON, and BALDERDASH, the latter for including the punctuation in the parsing. Thanks to both.

52. Like Hoofit very nearly beaten by 12a but the penny dropped after not too long. Very enjoyable puzzle & mostly gentle thankfully.
    Thanks both.

53. Shiver = shatter. New to me as well.

54. I didn’t have 14D down as an &lit, or if it is it’s a bit loose. Birds of prey don’t kill for pride. I had the def as “one that kills” and the rest as fodder (with an avian anagram indicator as a hint).

55. Robi@29 Your link took me to a page that demanded that I assent to more info-gathering than I liked, so I didn’t go for it.

    I was hung up on lions too.

    Pleasant puzzle, thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

56. Really good crossword, thank you Vulcan – favourite clues were 28a, 13d and nobody has yet mentioned how clever 24d is, with “tail” having aircraft conitations?

57. Dash it – missed the dash

58. Managed to complete it, with a little help. BALDERDASH was the main ‘D’oh!’ moment.

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