Guardian 29,037 – Vlad

67 comments on “Guardian 29,037 – Vlad”

1. Thanks Vlad and Andrew
   Quite a rapid gridfill for a Vlad, but there were 4 or 5 unparsed. Never heard of 27a.
   I had HASSOCK first at 12a – works if “vegetable” and “ass” are equivalent derogatory terms!

2. I finally remembered a = ARE 🙂

   Loved this with too many faves to mention but QUEEN ANNES DEAD got the loudest guffaw when the penny dropped

   Cheers V&A

3. All done and all parsed except 15a, which was a bit too tortured for my taste. Certainly a toughie. I prefer Vlad’s puzzles when they are more benign.

4. I think I’m getting the hang of Vlad. Top went in fairly easily, the bottom distinctly less so. LOI was SPARE as I have no interest in him or any of his family. Good clue, though. “ASS” is not seat round here!
   Thanks to Vlad and to Andrew for a couple of parsings.

5. I managed to parse 8 across differently: Individual = LA, in EN (for En dash), + [be]d

6. Hard work. Main trouble was in the NW corner, where initially putting in “chafe” for 2d didn’t help. Didn’t know the expression at 27a so took a punt on the wordplay.

   Favourites were the misdirection of the surface for 1a and the 1d def.

   Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

7. Thanks, Vlad and Andrew!
   Liked OFFHAND, Q A Dead, ARE YOU DECENT and ILLICIT.

8. That took twice as long as the Brummie from yesterday, but all in and parsed, except for SPARE which I’m doing my best to ignore.

   Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

9. Really tough but worth the struggle. Wasn’t sure about SPARE, but remembered that Revelation was considered an extra bit of the Bible (rather than SPARE being the name of Harry’s book). Hadn’t heard the phrase QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD; lots to like, including CAMERA-SHY, ARE YOU DECENT and CHAFF; have seen a lot of ESTAMINETs recently. Thanks to V & A.

10. That was tough but worth the effort. Favourite the brilliant and laugh-out-loud QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD. Nice to have CAVA as our sparkling wine rather than the usual Asti.

    ESTAMINET always reminds me of (the rather unpleasant) Gerontion by T S Eliot: “Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp”.

    Many thanks Vlad and Andrew.

11. Phew! I thought that was the hardest Vlad puzzle for a while, particularly in the parsing, which raised many a smile, sigh or groan as the various pennies dropped – very satisfying to finish.

    I particularly admired the construction of 17ac CAMERA-SHY, 27ac QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD, 5dn ILLICIT, 10dn BATTLEGROUND and 16dn MARTINMAS. I also had ticks for 1ac ANCIENT HISTORY (only yesterday, I said I thought I’d encountered RISHI in a crossword for the first time since he became PM), 1dn ARE YOU DECENT?,3dn ENDEAVOUR and 22dn SPARE (setters are having a field day with this).

    Many thanks, Vlad and Andrew – great stuff. Now for Julius in the FT!

12. I am with Auriga@4 regards top half and possibly getting the hang of Vlad. The bottom right was the hardest for me – had to reveal CHILLER and the rest followed. Forgot to complete SPARE.

    Thanks Andrew and Vlad

13. Tough but fair, and managed to get there in the end, though I couldn’t fully parse SATSUMA – thank you Andrew.
    ANCIENT HISTORY and QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD were excellent, and I love the idea of Spare as a Book of Revelation.
    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

14. Oh dear. Vlad. I had so many unparsed must-be-thats that I cheerfully put in an unparsed ILLEGAL for 5d… it didn’t help. I got all the answers eventually, and worked out most of the MBTs, though ARE YOU DECENT and TWADDLE held out, and it took ages to work out the grammar of MACAU. Queen Anne’s Dad raised a smile, as did the identity of the book of revelations.
    By the way, “boat” is part of the wordplay, not the definition, for CATAPULT.

15. Very entertaining puzzle with a lot of smiles along the way. For me there were some clues that I solved immediately and others that took quite a bit more thought. Beautiful surfaces, as usual for Vlad.

    Some excellent cryptic definitions, and ‘day’ for MARTINMAS takes the biscuit for most vague. I haven’t seen an ESTAMINET for a long while – this used to be a crossword regular.

    Favourites as for Eileen @11, with the top prize going to Queen Anne’s dad 🙂

    Many thanks to Jim and Andrew

16. Thanks Vlad and Andrew

    I think the parsing of 1D has become a little mangled. It’s

    Homophone of R U (two letters or characters) + DESCENT (going down) with “S missing”.

17. I was just congratulating myself on having solved this (with a little bit of help) when I realised I had put SPATE for SPARE, reasoning that there must be some kind of flood in the Book of Revelation. I had the same favourites as Eileen.

18. I enjoyed this. Quite a friendly grid, in that 1A and 1D went in pretty easily and gave access to a lot of others. I had to look up TAMIL NADU to check the spelling, and lingered long over QUEEN ANNES DEAD, which is a spectacular clue. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

19. [For those feeling battle-weary, I recommend Julius in the FT https://www.ft.com/content/919497ab-99dd-4de3-af42-20fc5d71f1a4 – much gentler but lots of fun.]

20. This took a lot of thinking and working out, and, as Eileen said (@11), very satisfying to finish. I loved the ‘matching pair’ ANCIENT HISTORY and QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD. I was lucky with CHILLER because Schiller was the first German writer I thought of. I enjoyed getting BATTLEGROUND by working it out before connecting it with Front.

    An excellent puzzle.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

21. A real mixture. Got ANCIENT HISTORY straight away which helped get the NE quickly. The rest took longer. There were a few quite easy clues scattered around the rest of the grid to help with crosses but found others very difficult.

    Didn’t get QUEEN ANNES DEAD – not heard of it. And didn’t parse a couple. Enjoyed it all the same – and did better than usual for a Vlad puzzle.

    And like body cheetah @ 2 for once I remembered that are = a

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

22. [27ac reminded me of an old Hancock sketch in which he picks up a mag in the dentist’s waiting room and says I see Lloyd George has died!]

23. RETRAINED

    see – now *that* means UPSKILLED!

24. Found this extremely chewy. Had Spark instead of SPARE for 22d, so couldn’t fathom out loi QUEEN ANNES DEAD. Realised something wasn’t quite right, but still no spark of realisation when I finally had to reveal it. Also had Chafe instead of CHAFF, so that held things up for a while in NW corner. Couldn’t parse TWADDLE, MACAU, and wasn’t too impressed with the clueing of CATAPULT. Very much a mixed bag, I thought…

25. I sympathise with those who’d never heard the phrase “Queen Anne’s dead.” I vaguely remembered it from the Saki story “The Hen” (available online here) but never understood its significance until I saw it paired with ancient history.

26. Re 27ac – From Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
    ‘Queen Anne is dead: A slighting retort made to a teller of stale news. The expression is first recorded in 1798, by which time Queen Anne had indeed been dead for 84 years; but there is evidence of an earlier version, ‘Queen Elizabeth is dead’, from the 1730s.’

27. As is usually the case when I’m faced by Vlad, I put about eight in, then resorted to revealing and seeing if I could parse them, which I could with only about 50%

    Also typically, lots of DNKs: ESTAMINET, NULL SET, CAT (as an abbreviation for catamaran), QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD, LIT (for drunk). I actively avoid anything to do with the Royal family, so I was also unaware of ‘Spare’.

    Vlad’s puzzles are always very clever, but they’re not for me I’m afraid!

28. Eileen @26, maybe we’ll get a revival of “Queen Elizabeth is dead” in another 50 years, but I will also be long dead by then. 🙂

29. [Eileen @26
    I see you have quoted verbatim from the 19th edition of Brewer. That edition has a central section of 46 pages called Brewer’s Gems, and on page 2 it says that the saying ‘Queen Anne is Dead’ was in the first edition of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer’s dictionary with the entry ‘The reply made to the teller of stale news.’ You would not have seen that except by chance, so I thought I would point it out.]

30. @https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day
    MARTINMAS – 11 November aka Armistice/Remembrance day
    @https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1797_in_literature
    ‘July 15 – George Colman’s comedy The Heir at Law opens in London. It introduces the character of Dr. Pangloss to the stage and the phrase “QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD” to the language.’
    @https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Queen_Anne%27s_dead
    Maybe it took a year to catch on and mean – ‘(colloquial) That is yesterday’s news; everybody knows that already.’
    This was all news to me. 🙂

31. Alan B @29 – many thanks. My Brewer’s is the 18th edition, which hasn’t got such a section, so I would have missed that.
    (I’m reminded of a lunchtime conversation in the staff room, in the 90s, when I expressed surprise when some well-known person – I can’t remember who – was referred to as being dead. A kind colleague leaned forward, tapped me on the knee and said gently, ‘Yes, Eileen, and so is Churchill’.)

32. As well as CATamarans, there were historically small trading vessels known as “cats”. (I expect Patrick O’Brian, as usual, is responsible for me remembering this.)

33. Thanks for the blog, a tough puzzle but a very friendly grid once I put in what I had solved.
    For 27Ac the paper has ( 5,5.4 ) I stared at that full stop for a long time.
    Great set of clues with intricate word play , I loved the TIN MA(N) in MARTINMAS .
    NULL SET = valueless ? Hmmm I will not even start , anyone who has studied Lebesgue will know what I mean.
    I tell the ANCIENT HISTORY students to come and see me if they really want to study ancient history.

34. Completely messed this up. Put 22 SPARK fight + end of booK = revelation. It didn’t help that the print edition had 27 as 5,5.4 which my poor eyes read as 5,5-4. Ho hum.

35. I didn’t finish with QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD unknown to me and not helped by having SPARK instead of SPARE so looking for _U_K_ for first word. ARE YOU DECENT was also too clever for me.
    Thanks both

36. Quite a toughie. For a while I was thinking of MARDIGRAS for 16 (but surely that’s two words?) – but couldn’t parse the “heartless friend” bit. And I was looking around for a vegetable beginning with CES (“Sec” i.e. wine, rev.) – and then a “seat” beginning with COS (another veg.). But both these clues let through a ray of light in the end…

    QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD has to one of the cleverest I’ve seen for some time. I wasn’t quite sure of the parentage of Q Anne, along with Q Mary II and James Stuart (the Old Pretender) – but yes, they were all sprogs of K James II – confirmed by Wiki.

    And I remember the phrase “Anne, a dead queen” from 1066 And All That (required reading for all those who, like me, failed ‘O’-level History).

    Thanks to the Impaler (who just spared me) and Andrew.

37. Great puzzle and blog-loved book of Revelations

38. Roz @33
    Hmm – I see what you mean about NULL SET. It’s a subtle point: a null set is not necessarily empty, but it has a cardinaIity of zero, I believe, and “it’s valueless” is at worst a loose way of describing a zero value. Instead, the phrase “it amounts to nothing” might have been better.

39. Laccaria @36 … and James II did accept exile ultimately – it really is a brilliant clue.

40. Alan B – the null set is most definitely empty! I was thinking that with the journalistic connection something like “…tell Sun it’s content-free” would have been better.

41. Yes, pretty tough today, with a few obscurities – never heard of the phrase QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD, so the parsing of that was mysterious until coming here, TAMIL NADU and ESTAMINET were both new to me, didn’t twig the parsing of SPARE (the sooner we can forget about that book, the better), and please…. ASS is a mammal, not part of anyone’s anatomy!

42. In Lebesgue measure theory the null set is often not empty but does have zero measure. I am not saying anything else on this topic.

43. U had QUEEN ANNE’s ans I knew he was her dad, but I was wondering LACE?, GATE? AH put an E in DAD, I have never heard the expression, but it is ancient historyI suppose and worked. I also had CHAFE for a long time, which slowed me up and SPARE as a book of REVELATION minus the S, I have not read it and feel no compunction to do so, but I take it that it reveals little new, I only parsed the DEENT part of 1d, but I think I was smiling too much to bother.
    A difficult but witty and rewarding puzzle. Thanks Vlad & Andrew

44. Enjoyable puzzle.

    I failed to solve 22d SPARE.

    Liked ANCIENT HISTORY, ELAND, ENDEAVOUR (I recently rewatched all episodes and really enjoyed it); ARE YOU DECENT.

    New for me: MARTINMAS; QUEEN ANNE’S DEAD; CHAFF = rib

    Thanks, both.

45. Enjoyable. 27 across, not difficult to parse but not an expression I know?

46. I hadn’t heard “Queen Anne’s Dead,” but had heard “As dead as Queen Anne,” though never knew why she should be any deader than the rest of us.

    I thought that ENDEAVOUR was a bit specialized as a clue, since it’s only revealed as Morse’s first name in the very last book, I’d forgotten about the TV series, which I haven’t seen.

    This was terrible hard. (“A soldier’s life is terrible hard,” says Alice.) I got only a handful last night and no more this morning until I began the judicious application of the check button, letter by letter. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

47. [Andrew @40
    Thanks for your response. I first learned that the null set was another name for the empty set, and on that basis I would not not have made my earlier comment. It’s a question of terminology, I think. On this specific point I will follow Roz’s lead and say no more. On the matter of the clue as a whole, and its Sun connection, I liked your suggested alternative to mine for the closing phrase.]

48. I bet myself a negroni that Roz would have something to say on the null set issue and shall be raising a glass in her honour. Might have a drop of CAVA to celebrate my stupidity in staring at CASSAVA for ages wondering why the ASS was backwards until the blindingly obvious struck

49. I had QUEEN ANNE’S and still had to reveal the answer! I recently heaped praise on Pasquale for exquisite word play and I have to do the same for Vlad. Even when I have no clue as to the answer, parsing after revealing can be just as fun.

50. Don’t normally do Guardians that I’m not blogging but someone mentioned on my FT post that today’s Vlad was difficult, so I decided that I needed something else to get my fix after the straightforward FT puzzle. I was actually disappointed, not with the quality, but with the supposed difficulty. It was certainly harder than Julius’s FT, but it was easier than most Vlads.

51. Hello from a lurker who has haunted this site for years, honing my crossword solving skills with your invaluable expert help. I had to join in today to say I think Queen Anne’s Dead is the best crossword clue I have ever encountered. It made me laugh aloud when I got it, then I had to try to explain it to my husband – who is still none the wiser! I had heard this phrase – first encountered it in a Billy Bunter book, I think. Those will be banned reading now, I expect, in this sadly enlightened post-Queen-Anne age.

52. Hello Karen and I do agree that 27Ac is very good, you made me have another look at it, first time I did not really appreciate it because I was distracted by the fake full stop.
    Bodycheetah@48 I will aim to be less predictable in future. I did think the clue was okay but care is needed with such a technical term, just like lepton on Tuesday.

53. Like most Vlad puzzles, I laboured away for ages with about half solved then suddenly remembered this thing called ‘a life’, so took the grand-kids swimming.
    Thanks for filling in the blanks.

54. Thanks Andrew, I had a similar solving experience to you and no doubt many others. Didn’t help myself by thinking that Dorothy’s heartless mate was the Scarecrow, which makes me as brainless as him and denser than bodycheetah@48 to boot, also I tend to spell MACAU ending in an O which caused further delay. I liked NULL SET as my encounters with measure theory were sufficiently minimal and 1A to have slipped away entirely, enjoyed a dip down that rabbit hole so thanks for setting me off @33 Roz. And thanks everyone for explaining the background to 27A, educated guesswork eventually sufficed to solve but I envy your delight at getting the joke. Thanks Vlad for a fine challenge.

55. Like a few others I held myself up with an unjustified CHAFE, so OFFHAND was next to last for me. Last in was TWADDLE, unparsed – lack of motivation as much as brain seizure.

    I enjoyed the dead queen, and the distraction of gunners and shot kept me from getting CAMERA for such a long time…

    Thanks Vlad – always a pleasure. And thanks Andrew for parsing TWADDLE for me.

56. A very enjoyable puzzle, quite straightforward for Vlad, but with two or three tricky parsings.

    27a clearly the star clue. I found the parsing of 15a the trickiest. 22d and link to Harry eluded me. I just guessed.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

57. Thanks to Andrew for the blog and to others who commented.

58. Nope. Total fail for me. Managed to get TREES and that was it.

    Question time…

    1a – how can you tell this is an anagram clue?
    9a – “no money upfront” – how does this contribute to clue?
    15a – still confused despite explanation.
    25a – is there an anagram indicator here?

    1d – what hints at it being a homophone clue?
    5d – stratospherically over my head!

    “Practice makes perfect”…..

59. Steffen @ 58

    1A “dodge around” is the anagrind [ANAGRam INDicator]
    9A M = money (economics abbreviation). “no money upfront” means the leading M is removed from ’mailmen’
    25A “worked” is the anagrind
    1D “caught” is the indicator (eg if you didn’t hear something you might say “I didn’t catch that”

    hth

60. Hi Steffen
    1a “dodge around” is the anagram indicator
    9a M is a standard abbreviation for “money” is some applications
    15a can’t add to the blog
    25a “worked” anagram indicator
    1d “caught” is the homophone indicator – I thought that this was the weakest clue in the puzzle

61. 59.
    60.

    Thank you.

62. Thanks both. Enjoyed this tough (for me) challenge. Had spate for 22d – maybe I am too much of a republican!

63. Steffen@58 – re 15A: an ESTAMINET is a small café serving alcoholic drinks and the whole clue points to us needing to find a place to eat. The word play is made up of a) an anagram (doctor) of EATS + b) an anagram of MTEIN which is made up of every other letter (occasionally)of the word MoThEr and the word IN. The anagram indicator, doctor, needs to apply to both bits of wordplay although that’s not totally obvious, to me, within the clue. Comments above have discussed what to call a clue where the whole clue serves the dual purpose of being the definition and the wordplay.

64. I was like muffin@1 – 27a new but interesting; but put in COSSACK for 12a at first (made a sort of sense…)
    Great playful while challenging, just the way I expect a Vlad. Thank you V&A.

65. We didn’t get very far with this on Thursday, but returned to it today and just about finished (except Spare, which defeated us despite having the crossers). But we had to comment – even if no one will read this now – because of the stunning 27a. Thanks Vlad and Andrew for explaining the ones we couldn’t parse.

66. It hard

67. No it not

Comments are closed.