Guardian Cryptic 29,088 by Vulcan

88 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,088 by Vulcan”

1. On the whole, a fairly straightforward puzzle.

   I get the apparent contradiction in WELL-WOMAN CLINIC, but drawing attention to it seems to be mocking the modern emphasis on preventive care.

   I was initially puzzled, like PeterO, by ROWS. But on reflection, if you view the two halves of the clue as different routes to the spelling R-O-W-S, rather than the pronunciation, then I think it works.

   Thanks A&P

2. ROWS was a bit of a doozie. Kind of a heteronym and homophone rolled into one? Screw/wages … I can find no correlation in the thesaurus I consulted. Never heard of WELL-WOMAN CLINIC or FLY-TIPPING. I’m more used to “as a last resort”. Couldn’t parse SEXTON, as I was unaware of “sext”. STEAMSHIP elicited a bit of a groan.

   Thanks Vulcan & PeterO.

3. Thanks, Vulcan and PeterO!
   Liked CHIP AND PIN, FLY-TIPPING and TOWER OF PISA.

   STEAMSHIP
   Earlier I was thinking…
   power=STEAM
   move=SHIP
   (the ‘you’ hanging loose).
   Now I feel it works better as a cryptic def.

   ROWS
   I am still with ROSE (homophone-for want of a better explanation).
   Dr.WhatsOn@1
   Could you explain your parsing a bit more?

4. GDU@2: from the Google search that seems to access a reference called Oxford Languages, the fifth definition for screw reads –
   5. DATED•INFORMAL
   an amount of salary or wages.
   “he’s offered me the job with a jolly good screw”

   Thanks, Vulcan, for an enjoyable puzzle and PeterO for the blog which was informative and early.

5. GDU@2
   SCREWS
   The Collins online dictionary has this entry:
   SCREW
   British slang
   salary, wages, or earnings.

6. Rosella2@4
   Sorry. We crossed.

7. I’ve never encountered that usage of SCREW before, nor had I heard of a WELL WOMAN CLINIC. Maybe a UK thing? I felt that ROWS just did not work, for the reasons mentioned. I had to dredge ANNELID and SEXT from deep in the memory banks. Liked BRIDLEWAY and TOWER OF PISA. Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.

8. KVa@6, I’m too slow. 😉

   I parsed ROWS the same way as DrWhatsOn @1. Never gave it a second thought.

9. I think 17 works as a dd:
   a) Arguments = ROWS and
   b) homophone of “rose” =ROWS (tiers)
   As DrW@1 suggested.

10. Ah, so wages/screw is archaic and/or British slang, eh?Hardly surprising that I couldn’t make the connection, nor find it in my (Collins) thesaurus.

    I’ve never encountered a clue like 12a that involves two steps as heteronym and homophone. Not sure that I like it.

11. like others, needed Peter’s explanation for ROWS and SCREW. thanks! (and for the definition of heteronym 🙂

12. ROWS
    Got what DrWhatsOn said. The same as the second part of PeterO’s explanation.
    I considered the same (a homophone of ROSE).
    For a while, I was doubting how ROSE=got louder. Clear now (as in ‘her voice rose’).

13. I was once asked to lower my voice. So I went down about half an octave. 😉

14. I thought ROWS was excellent – an indirect homophone maybe?

    SEVEN had me wondering if there was more to the definition but, as is often the case with Vulcan, there wasn’t

    Cheers P&V

15. Not too fussed about ROWS. I was caught out by looking for a homophone in BRIDLEWAY second last in which then paved the way for. THIMBLE. I like Vulcan’s cryptic and crypticish defs. A fun crossword.

16. Quite taken by the wriggly worm in ANNELID. So much so I bunged in FLY-FISHING before bottoming on. Haven’t heard the term FLY-TIPPING. Good clue. Much better than illegal dumping which now I think about it could have other unsavoury connotations.
    Did anyone else try ‘pongling’ for RANKLING? Was almost going to look that up for some unknown skin disease.

17. Oh dear. It gets worse. I meant cottoning on instead of bottoming on.

18. Thanks Vulcan and PeterO. Not a fan of ROWS. I did wonder whether FLY TIPPING might be unknown to our non-UK contingent.
    Paddymelon @16. Love Pongling. I must have pongled many times without realising it.

19. I didn’t find this as straightforward as some – and the G’s own site certainly seems to feel it was an easy puzzle. I thought Vulcan was on more cryptic form than usual and it took me a couple of further run throughs to crack the NE corner. Not being helped by the nho SCREW = wages. I did do a double take on ROWS which I concluded was unusual and tricksy but not necessarily unfair.

    Favourites included: THIMBLE, VINEGAR, FLY-TIPPING, COPE, ANNELID (COTD), SEXTON, SEVEN, WAGON, TIME SLOT and TINGE. Oh, and PONGLING too.

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO

20. PONGLING (contrary to paddymelon’s original suspicion) is quickly evolving into a funny little crossword pet word.
    Happy pongling!

21. paddymelon@16, I already had the P from STEAMSHIP so knew it wasn’t fly-fishing. Toyed with fly-by-night and some deadly insecticide called fly-???ping before the penny dropped. I think we’ve had FLY-TIPPING before. It was familiar.

    I laughed out loud at ‘pongling’. Great word. Today I pongle, yesterday I pongled, ,,, 🙂

22. Good stuff for Monday.
    A couple of quiblets for me:
    All steamships are old but the clue implies to me that those remaining are no longer known as SS; nice misleading surface though.
    To me, a resort is somewhere you would spend a complete holiday, so the reference to touring doesn’t work.

23. It’s good to see that the one I did not understand (rows/rouse/rose by any other name) confused everyone else!

    Nitpick o’clock – the bride usually walks down the nave. If she came down the aisle then very few people would see her and she’d end up in the wrong place. Why do we use this expression?

24. I thought the top half was quite tricky after ABBESS being an immediate write-in. Liked CHIP AND PIN, BRIDLEWAY, TOWER OF PISA, FLY-TIPPING, RECONVERTED, ROWS and TIME SLOT. I had an unparsed Badminton instead of BRIDLEWAY to begin with.

    Ta Vulcan & PeterO.

25. Quite funny that there’s so much disagreement about ROWS 🙂

26. ravenrider@22 you could be going from one resort to another. You don’t have to stay in one for any length of time.

27. TOWER OF PISA
    Nothing wrong with it. Just sounds a bit strange without the ‘leaning’ bit.

28. JOFT @23. We use that expression because the English language is used by people who don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about.

29. New for me: ANNELID; SEXTON = gravedigger; SCREW = wages.

    I agree with Dr. WhatsOn comment @1 regarding WELL-WOMAN CLINIC.

    I could not parse 5ac apart from warders = screws; 11ac, 4d.

    Thanks, both.

30. I almost out in NOT CRICKET for FLY TIPPING, but sense prevailed. I share Dr Whats On’s reservations about WELL-WOMAN CLINIC.

31. I wasn’t familiar with either CHIP AND PIN or FLY-TIPPING and had the same difficulty trying to work out ROWS as many others. Apart from these, everything went in steadily, helped by just being able to remember SEXT and the relevant colloquial sense of SCREW. Liked the cryptic defs.

    Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO

32. I’m another who was puzzled by the whole rows, rouse, rose thing – though the answer was obvious and so I simply assumed it was one of those regional-accent-homophoney doobries.
    I share Dr W O’s unease about the implied slur at 11A: Well Woman Clinics are brilliant places and save the NHS a small fortune in cures by focusing on prevention. I suspect no female setter would have created that clue.
    I liked ABBESS and SEXTON and 8D made me grin – and I appreciated being given a relaxed amble for the start of the week.
    Thanks to Vulcan for the entertainment, to Peter O for the fun blog, and to Paddymelon for introducing me to pongling – a word I shall now endeavour to work into conversations wherever possible…

33. Liked ABBESS, TOWER OF PISA, THIMBLE, CHIP AND PIN among others.
    All pretty straightforward except the much-mentioned ROWS, on which I’m with PostMark@19 – tricksy but not unfair.
    Regarding ‘aisle’ – in technical church architecture language the bride may walk down the nave, but in plain English she is walking down an aisle, i.e. a straight walkway between rows of seats.
    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.

34. Jack of Few Trades @23 – it depends on the church. The church just up the road from me has a nave aisle, which the bride processes up, a south aisle and a north aisle. Yes, it’s a big church, but that’s not unusual. Aisle just means a passage between seats, also found in theatres and on aircraft.

    In common with others I loved ANNELID and TOWER OF PISA.

    I was irritated by WELL-WOMAN CLINIC as we also have well-man clinics, preventive health care being a sensible thing.

    Thank you to Vulcan and PeterO.

35. So well-woman clinics are a British thing? Aha!

36. Traditional Monday stroll, with a couple of nice clues. SEXTON was obviously the solution but I had to look up the canonical hours thing. Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO

37. I turnedto this from the Quiptic, where I was properly bogged down and it restored my confidence in myself. I have returned and finished the Quiptic, but it doesn’t feel like a Monday puzzle.
    I was alittle puzzled by ROUSE/ROWS, but I reread the clue and it seems fair, just a little misdirection, All my favourites are listed by others , so I’ll just say thank you for the puzzle and blog.
    HAPPY PONGLING

38. Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO
    I didn’t like 12ac, for the following reason. PeterO says
    ROWS as tiers sounds like ROSE, which can mean ‘got louder’.

    But I don’t agree. “Rose” can mean “increased” but it doesn’t have anything to do with sound. Consider the following;
    one can say “The volume of the orchestra rose”, but you can’t say “The orchestra rose” – or at least if you do, it conjures the image of the members getting out of their seats in order to leave. If, in the first sentence, rose were to mean ‘got louder’ then we would be saying that the ‘volume got louder’ ! Now I suppose you might possibly say “The sound of the orchestra rose”, and since there are other qualities to sound other than volume (timbre, for example) it is implicit in “rose” that we mean the volume, but that seems pretty weak to me.

39. GDU@35
    LOL.
    You want British puzzles but without anything exclusively British.
    That’s pongling it a bit too far. 🙂

40. A fairly easy solve for me. Good fun, and very much a Monday puzzle: though I thought WELL WOMAN CLINIC a bit weak.l I also couldn’t parse SEXTON, though it could only be that. I kicked myself on seeing the explanation. I’m sure Nutmeg has used SEXT in one of her puzzles. With thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.

41. Phil@38
    I had the same doubt, but ‘her voice rose’ solved it for me.
    A heteronym of a homophone of a word to arrive at a solution? That could be objected to.
    No. I don’t. I take it as another variety of clueing.

42. A quick Google search showed a number of Well Woman Clinics around here, none of which is spelled with a hyphen.

43. KVa @41
    I had the same doubt, but ‘her voice rose’ solved it for me.

    That implies pitch to me (I.e. she got shriller), not that she got louder. It is essentially the same as my “The sound rose” in that a sound, or voice, may have a number of different qualities, including pitch and volume both of which can “rise” and others such as timbre which can change but aren’t thought of as rise/falling.

    The phrase ‘her voice rose’ is strictly ambiguous since it is not clear which of those qualities is rising. If you consider voice to have a single dominant quality (such as pitch or volume) then the phrase can be read to imply that quality. I suppose it’s about consensual agreement about whether such a dominant property exists. And of course whether the implication is carried by the word “voice” or the word “rose” or only in phrase as a whole.

44. I really enjoyed this puzzle and found it amusing and beautifully clued. (Not sure why so many people seem perturbed by parts of it.) Have suggested a friend give cryptic crosswords another try based on this one – think she’ll enjoy it! Thanks to all concerned.

45. A good straightforward start to the week.

    I liked the picture painted by IN THE LAST RESORT. I failed to put H into SEXTON, not knowing the SEXT bit, which I thought was something to do with naughty photos.

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.

46. I enjoyed this more than the average Monday offering – TOWER OF PISA raised a smile, RECONVERTED and ANNELID are good anagram clues.

    I don’t have a problem with the homophone/homonym ROSE and I wasn’t personally pongled by WELL WOMAN CLINIC – yes, they are A Good Thing, but I read the question mark as Vulcan’s tongue in cheek. I’m sure he would have clued WELL MAN’S CLINIC in the same way.

    It was Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’ that taught me the canonical hours. Is SEXTON still used as a term to describe an occupation? It always reminds me of Thomas Hood:

    His death, which happened in his berth
    At forty-odd befell
    They went and told the sexton, and
    The sexton tolled the bell

    Thanks to S&B

47. I had some good moments with this one but didn’t understand 17a FLY-TIPPING. Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.

48. Hopefully any cruciverbalists who were inadvertently nudged into the realms of medical misogyny by WELL WOMAN CLINIC have now seen the error of their ways

49. Phil@43
    ROWS (ROSE)
    You have almost successfully ‘unsolved it for me’. 🙂
    Technicalities explained by you-no contest.
    What makes me believe that ROSE is ok in12A is that it works in some contexts after all.
    True ROSE doesn’t mean ‘got louder’ in isolation, but it’s fair as long as it means so in some
    phrases.

50. Have tried to find the etymology for SCREW meaning ”wages”. That meaning only dates from the mid 19th century from what I could find. Dug out my 50 – 150 year old Skeats. Nup. No mention. Nothing conclusive online.

    Did Vulcan assume we’d know the word for ”warders” and retroparse it? A reasonable assumption. If you didn’t know it and had the crossers, it wasn’t too unfair. Only 53 words that fit the pattern S?R?W? on Onelook.

51. To those in doubt about “rose her voice” meaning an increase in volume, I think it’s easier to think of the very common present tense “raise one’s voice”, which, I believe, always means “make one’s voice louder”.

52. I idly Googled “Pongle” and found this:
    https://jorvikipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Pongle
    ‘Pongle is an Elf working for Santa at the Winter Village. He can be identified by the large traffic cone he wears on his head.
    “As Chief Safety Helper, it’s my job to enforce proper ice traversal technique to minimize slips, falls, and tumbles. I take my job VERY seriously.”‘
    It’s Elf and Safety gone mad.
    I liked ROWS a lot.

53. paddymelon@50 and others – one of the few advantages of getting older is that one accumulates all sorts of information and vocabulary, of little practical use but handy when solving crosswords. I knew the phrase ‘on a good screw’ meaning well-paid without needing a dictionary – though I’ve no idea where I read it. It seems the sort of phrase that might be used in the late 19th C.
    Phil @38 and 43 – as KVa pointed out, ‘rose’ can mean ‘got louder’, which is good enough for a valid definition in a cryptic clue.

54. paddymelon@50
    Have you noticed that quite a few of our fellow commenters have used the new word coined by you today? And the beauty of that word seems to be in its versatility. A universal fit where everything else fails.
    Mind-pongling indeed!

55. Interestingly, the earliest and most recent usages of ‘screw’ to mean wages cited by the OED are both from Australian newspapers – the Adelaide Times of 1853 and the Observer (Gladstone, Queensland) of 2013. The quotations in between are all British, including Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley and T. S. Eliot (all trying to sound working-class?).

56. The origin of the usage screw = wages is oscure. A screw can also be a small amount of something wrapped in paper. Could the wages meaning refer to a pay packet? But I don’t know when such things were introduced.

57. Nothing too stretching here today. Like many others, I shrugged the shoulders in the direction of ROWS, which doesn’t seem to work for me. I may be the only one who thought the clue for STEAMSHIP to be pretty weak. But it’s Monday and this was a gentle start to the week. Thanks to our setter and blogger.

58. George @51.

    My reply to KVa @43 lead me to wonder what actually happens to the sound when ones ‘raises ones voice’. Perhaps due to my inability to formulate the question well, the only useful article on the Internet I could find was this https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/39942/how-does-singing-volume-affect-vocal-range Which does seem to suggest that a pitch and volume are related;

    The larger burst of air required to vibrate the tighter vocal chords will simultaneously serve to increase the volume. That’s why you see many professional singers pull away from the microphone when they are hitting the highest notes.
    Thus the common phrase ‘raising ones voice’ probably raises both pitch and volume, both of which help in cutting across a noisy room.

59. Me @58. If I were to say
    “Her voice rose in anticipation”
    Would you imagine it getting louder or higher (in pitch)?

    I would think of it primarily getting higher … Hmm

60. Another enjoyable Monday but I wonder if anyone else went to MOTHER for 1 across and pondered the existence of a bachelor moth.

61. Much more enjoyable than the Q, although I tripped up on COPE – I was looking at it from ‘leading position’ rather than ‘manage’ so I had POLE.

    Coincidentally, both the Q and this had Nazi clues/answers and No 1 as a clue (although different answers).

62. KVa @ 39, certainly not — I enjoy broadening my horizons. 🙂

63. I remain baffled by SCREW for wages. Can anybody help me out?

64. J@63 it’s just a UK slang term. It’s in chambers

65. Jacob @63
    As pointed out by various people above, principally Sarah @55, it is (somewhat dated, British) slang, but recorded in the OED and the other usual suspects.

66. You rarely hear “screw” these days as meaning “wages”. I always think of it as meaning a cut, in the sense of a share of ill-gotten gains i.e. with unsavoury connotations.

67. In the Sherlock Holmes story “The Stockbroker’s Clerk”, Hall Pycroft (the clerk in question) says “The screw was a pound a week rise, and the duties just about the same as at Coxon’s”. Dr Watson describes Mr Pycroft as follows: “He wore a very shiny top hat and a neat suit of sober black, which made him look what he was—a smart young City man, of the class who have been labelled cockneys, but who give us our crack volunteer regiments, and who turn out more fine athletes and sportsmen than any body of men in these islands.”

    Despite the word “cockney”, Pycroft is clearly not of the h-dropping costermonger class; in fact his speech is reminiscent of public school banter.

68. Nho WELL-WOMAN CLINIC, so (mis)guided by the plural “hypochondriacs”, I pongled in an E instead of the A.

69. Well, the wrong sound in the second part of 12a may not be unfair, but it’s certainly a facer. It changed the clue from a nanosecond write in to one that required both crossers to be sure.

    I thought STEAMSHIP was pretty good as cryptic definitions go, but the hypochondriacs in the clinic at 11a was distinctly iffy. I guess the editor was taking a nap when this one passed across his desk.

    Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.

70. Liked this a lot. Thanks B and S.

    If an act ROUSES a crowd at a gig, believe me – it gets louder.

71. Thanks for the blog, I thought this was just right for the Monday slot. I am not usually fond of cryptic definitions but I thought THIMBLE and TOWER OF PISA were very neat.
    I do not think the setter was implying any critcism with WELL-WOMAN CLINIC , just a cryptic reference to the word well.

72. MarkN @ 70
    Apart from what I see as a tenuous connection, there is the little matter of grammar: the clue says ‘got louder’.

73. I initially looked askance at WELL-WOMAN CLINIC, the whole point of them being that well women want to remain so and don’t have the anxiety about or imagined illness of a hypochondriac but I remembered it’s (only!) a crossword and I should go and give my head a PONGLE.

    I completed the puzzle on paper instead of online and so didn’t have the check word feature available. That I was successful in doing so gave me much pleasure. So many thanks Vulcan (and PeterO).

    Subsequently filling it in online, purely for completeness, gave me a PB of 03:08. Not bad for a relative novice

74. My grandfather, a Lancastrian, used to talk about people earning a good screw, but I’ve never heard anyone else using it.

75. I’m with MarkN @70. ‘The crowd was roused to fever pitch by the excitement of the match’

76. Neil97 @74: People don’t use that expression any more because it is open to misinterpretation

77. Julia @75
    As you say, “roused” – or should that be “was roused” – either way you have lost the homophone.

78. PeterO@77
    Surely this gives the homophone. In my English accent, ROWS, as in arguments, sounds just like ROUSE as in my example. ROSE is no longer needed

79. Julia @78
    Your example said “roused’, not “rouse”.

80. If it was GET louder then “rouse” is a possibility , perhaps a misprint.

81. I found the well woman clue amusing. It made me smile.

82. Hate to be entry #82 here, but I do need to add that I also did momentarily think of PONGLING. I liked the rank ling, though.

    We have preventative gynecology clinics here, but I don’t think we call them well-woman clinics. [When I was a kid my mom went to one that architecturally was composed of four connected dome-like structures of a style that screamed 1970s. Unfortunate. The first time I heard it described as Tit City I couldn’t unsee it. In a related note, I apparently called a mammogram a mommy-gram once while I was waiting for my mommy to get one.]

83. I understand the hypochondriac clue, but in the states Vulcan would have been hung out to dry for including something like that.

84. Re 11a, WELL WOMAN CLINIC I agree with Roz@71 and Gervase@46. It’s a play on WELL and hypochondriac, and the “?” answers any claims of scurrility. I wasn’t familiar with the term, but when I googled it I found that in the UK Well Man Clinic is also a common term. So for those of you complaining of mysogyny, I would elaborate on Gervase – if Vulcan needed a 13 letter solution he would have chosen MAN instead of WOMAN. But he needed 15, and WELL HUMAN CLINIC is not a thing. Nothing sexist about that.

85. Robi @ 45 I strongly suspect that if Paul or Hoskins were clueing the word-part SEXT they would have taken a different route..

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.

86. Roz @80
    Far too late, but:
    No. It’s a matter of voice. Even making the assumption (albeit all too probable) of a misprint, replacing ‘got louder’ by ‘get louder’ would correspond to replacing the “was roused” of Julia @75 by “is roused”, not ROUSE (and even semantically the connection is tenuous).

87. Not following the talk about raising one’s voice. ‘Rose’ is derived from ‘rise’, not ‘raise’. What does the latter have to do with it?

88. Rows, rose, rouse, who cares? An enjoyable solve, but it took longer than it should have, as I spent far too long trying to justify POLE at 18 across. Eventually I decided on a complete rethink, which led me to the right answer with sensible parsing. Thanks, Vulcan.

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