Guardian 29,016 – Vulcan

53 comments on “Guardian 29,016 – Vulcan”

1. Thanks Andrew and Vulcan.

   I liked the first long one, but does GIVE ONE A BAD TIME actually exist as such? I could find, for example, Gave me a bad time but not the actual phrase.

2. DNF for me (Zero-Rate and Hardy). It didn’t feel as smooth as a usual Vulcan.

3. I did like the AM ENDS and TOM DICK AND HARRY. Needed a second look to be sure which way round MAIL/MALI went.

4. Also, despite the fact it was a write in, not sure I’d describe stollen as a cake. It’s bread.

5. Not quite a write-in for me. Had to return to the NE corner, mainly because there were several possibilities for 9a until the crossers were in place. 5d didn’t immediately jump out at me either. So enough in the puzzle to offer some satisfaction without undue delay for the important things in the week. Thanks to PeterO for the early blog (and the information about Truman) and to Vulcan for the entertainment.

6. Good fun, thanks Vulcan, with no sticky moments. Learnt a new meaning for “bustle:.

7. Zero-rate felt vague, unless it’s a thing I dnk. Yes Crispy, stollen is a bread, but our German friend Herr Muller did call it stollen cake. Hey ho. Ta V and A.

8. I got hung up on 8a because I thought that ‘nothing’ was the ‘o’ at the end of the first part, not the whole thing.

9. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew
   I was unfamiliar with AUDIT TRAIL, so needed all the crossers. Otherwise straightforward, though I too thought DRIVEN was weak, and the “In” in 3d makes no sense.
   Although it was a write-in, I liked TOM DICK AND HARRY.

10. It’s usually A HARD TIME isn’t it? Wouldn’t fit though. We are in Crosswordland after all. I loved AMENDS & TOM DICK AND HARRY.,Otherwised I just enjoyed the gentleness.
    Thanks V&A. That maybe inspired EDWARDIANA.

11. gratinfreo@7 ZERO-RATE(D) is one of the 3 VAT rates. It applies to fresh food, childrens’ clothes and some other things.

12. Not quite a write-in, in the NE, and like Dave Ellison @1 and nicbach @10, I thought GOABT didn’t sound right. I liked EDWARDIANA, FRECKLES and AMENDS. Andrew, slight typo in ‘uncle’ for TOM DICK AND HARRY, which I also liked. Nina of New Scotland Yard (NSY), my old place of work for many years, appears on the extreme top right.

    Ta Vulcan & Andrew.

13. OK for a Monday. Someone on the Guardian page said 16a would be better as “without line” rather than “without a line” and I agree, as it took me ages.
    Thanks V and A

14. I was minding my own BEESWAX when I suddenly realised what a beautiful word EDWARDIANA is.

    In parsing 14d. much prefer TT = Tourist Trophy, the annual Isle of Man motor cycle races. Have some evidence that Chambers agrees with me.

    Thank you Andrew and Vulcan.

15. Stollen is (here in Germany) an enriched bread, +butter, eggs, currants/sultanas, marzipan, etc., – so rich in fact that it’s cake!
    I found this just right for a Monday. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew.

16. Fun puzzle, very nice for a Monday. Liked AMENDS, AUDIT TRAIL, ACCURSED, BEESWAX

    New for me: English poet Hardy, Thomas; COVENANTER.

    Thanks, both.

17. Ta, nicbach @11, thought it might be something like. We have similar exemptions for our CGT, tho the Dries long to remove them.

18. … @17, I mean GST (goods and services), not CGT (capital gains, a property tax).

19. A generation ago EDWARDIANA could have been “conflict between a prince and his sister in law”. That sort of thing couldn’t happen now of course.

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew

20. Not quite a write-in for me, but not far off.

    A nice variety of constructions and good surfaces here. I liked AMENDS, AUDIT TRAIL and AMNESTY. Thomas HARDY is perhaps better known as a novelist, but many literary folk consider his poetry to be his best work.

    Thanks to S&B

21. A very satisfactory start to the week. Thank you V & A

22. Thanks, Vulcan and Andrew. 8a ZERO-RATE was a guess. The aforementioned “Presidents” clue at 12a and BEESWAX 4d were favourites. I also liked RIFE at 6d.

23. I initially had EMENDS for 11ac. Crossers put me right.

24. Though I found this a bit of a mixture of the straight forward and the quite tricky. With the NW corner the hardest to unravel. Liked the rather similar in nature AMENDS and TOM DICK AND HARRY, and cotd for me BEESWAX. Some time past this was spoken as a gentle REPROOF, as in Mind Your Own Beeswax (instead of Business)…and I see that Flea@14 has already hopped on the bandwagon with this…

25. Very Monday-ish, mostly quite straightforward. Like others I raised an eyebrow at GIVE ONE A BAD TIME. That’s not a thing. It’s a HARD time. And I agree that DRIVEN was basically non-cryptic.

    But I loved AMENDS so that made up for it 🙂

    Thanks both.

26. Easy even for a Monday. I did like AUDIT TRAIL for a neat surface though.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

27. No write-in for me, NE corner holding our longest.

    Odd to see reprove and REPROOF in 1a and 1d.

    Had to reveal DRIVEN due to its highly uncryptic nature.

    Whatever the true definition is, I’d still think of stollen as cake, delicious!

    Many thanks both.

28. Had RIPE (which didn’t quite parse) for RIFE, but otherwise all fine. If a little tougher than expected for a Monday. Favourite was the presidents being ordinary folk.

29. Pretty much agree with all the quibbles and praises today. I would just say in partial defense of DRIVEN that if the surface meaning that first jumped to mind (and stayed there) was that of deception, then it would be a perfectly fine cryptic definition, and maybe that was the case with Vulcan himself. The problem is that for me and it seems many others seeing the transportation meaning is as automatic if not more so.

30. I slowed myself down some by thinking “cape” as I read the clue and then (on autopilot, perhaps) writing in NESS, which bolllixed up 23 and 26ac.

    [Once when I was a kid we had one one of those German breads on the table. I asked my mother what it was. She said (I thought), “It’s stolen, honey.” Apparently not disturbed at the thought of my mother as shoplifter, I still wanted to know what it was called.]

    Enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks, Vulcan and Andrew.

31. Quick but enjoyable. It was a shame that 1a included the word reprove, with reproof being the solution to 1d.

32. Thanks both,
    In the interests of preserving a useful distinction of meaning, much Edwardiana is ephemeral and of no lasting significance, ‘historical’ maybe, but not ‘historic’.

33. Seriously held up in the NW corner by entering SCOT-FREE for 8a, which seemed to fit adequately – “scot” can mean tax. CHECKing removed all but the final E, shared with beeswax. Even after completing the crossers I couldn’t get the answer 🙁

34. I always thought of HARDY as a novelist rather than a poet, but have now learnt that he was both. 12A reminded me of a friend who was named by his parents Thomas Richard Henry. Thanks Andrew and Vulcan

35. Andrew: you’re missing a “+ RAIL (train track)” in 14d.

36. Paul@34…my understanding is that after the bad press he got after publishing Jude The Obscure he only wrote poetry thereafter. I might be wrong, though…

37. Thanks for the blog , I liked AMENDS , quite novel, AUDIT TRAIL seemed to fit together very nicely, agree with Flea for Tourist Trophy and the whole week of events on the IOM are usually called the TT races. EDWARDIANA was a very neat anagram.
    A write-in for me is every clue cold-solved in order without using the grid, nowhere near that today.

38. {AlanC@12 not even the top 10 today. I hit number 1 in Cyclops so now 17-6 .You could have put a link for CARAVAN, From the first album “Policeman” . ]

39. Despite having attended Thomas Hardy school in Dorchester I wasn’t aware he wrote poems. Every day’s a school day

    I’m beginning to quite enjoy Vulcan’s DRIVEN style clues in the same way that I sometimes have a chuckle when I find myself trying to parse the Everyman “primarily” clues 🙂

    Cheers V&A

40. [There’s a scene in Alan Bennett’s The history boys in which Richard Griffiths and one of the scholarship candidates discuss a Hardy poem. (That’s the extent of my knowledge of Hardy poetry!)]

41. Ronald @36 That is pretty much correct re. Hardy. Ten years or so ago I found myself in my so-called retirement teaching Hardy’s poetry on the International Baccalaureate Diploma syllabus in Prague. The vicissitudes of life can lead you to unexpected places, and this was a pleasure, making me, as it did, appreciate Hardy’s gifts as a poet more than I had previously done, academically immersed as I had been in Shakespeare, 17thC poetry and Gothic novels.

42. DNF on Hardy – even though I read Chanel Firing at school forgot he was a poet.
    Otherwise a very enjoyable confidence building puzzle. Favourite was 14d as so pleased to solve the sort of charade type clue I am usualy so bad at. Thanks Vulcan – hope we don’t have to wait 2 weeks to see you again.

43. “Write-in”….well no not really and seeing the blog….I remembered I hadn’t got RIFE despite looking at it a few times.
    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

44. Flea@14, re TT – Tour Trophy is a specific Manx race that is not given any press in the rest of the world, while Time Trials are worldwide. So Andrew chose the less parochial parsing for his blog.

    I admit to failing on 8a ZERO-RATE, as that appears to be another Britishism that I am not familiar with. Having all the crossers I desperately entered VETO-RATE from vet=assess, o-rate = no VAT to pay, and a guess at a definition. I reprove myself for that.

    The stollen, bread or cake distinction reminds me of the same debate about the meaning of Marie-Antoinette’s “let them eat cake”.

    Thanks Vulcan and Andrew for the fun.

45. No write in for me in the NE. I was suspicious of DRIVEN as it seemed too simple, and I took the longest time to see RIFE, as I was trying to take ST or RD off the end of a word. D’oh! Thanks, Andrew and Vulcan.

46. Just failed on 16a.
    Agree with others that it should be “…without line”…
    Lovely Monday crossie apart from the above.
    Thanks both…

47. I don’t think anyone has picked up on muffin’s criticism @9 of the function (or lack thereof) of the word ‘in’ in the clue for 3d: ‘In African country I picked up a little post’. It is arguable that it’s there for the surface, but I see it as being justified by treating ‘in African country’ as a brief version of ‘in [the word which represents an] African country [in which the letter I appears]’. This allows ‘I’ to be the subject of the phrase ‘I picked up a little’, which would not be possible if the clue began with ‘African country’.

    Sorry, that was a bit more long-winded than I anticipated. 🙂

    Thanks to Vulcan and Andrew.

48. Very fine Monday puzzle. We really liked 11A, 12A and 17D. Thanks Vulcan and Andrew

49. Fell down on the NE corner, and could not get GIVE ONE A BAD TIME. Loved AMENDS.

50. Minor eyebrow raise at 13d. I’ve always known it as covenantOr.

51. Cellomaniac 44, ‘not given any press in the rest of the world’, The Tourist Trophy (TT) races are probably the most famous motorcycle races in the world among motorcyclists and motorcycle race enthusiasts, competitors and spectators (in their tens of thousands, 46000+ in 2019) from across the globe attend every year, it’s not as parochial as you appear to think.

52. Ronald @36 thanks for that tidbit. QI

53. Well, who knew Hardy was a poet? Not I, for one. Still, I’m not too old to learn, so thanks, Vulcan, for adding to my knowledge.

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