Guardian Cryptic 29,209 by Vlad

100 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,209 by Vlad”

1. A few I didn’t parse ALL OR NOTHING – I’ve come across the Icelandic Parliament in the past but didn’t think about it. Solved the east side first. EELLIKE needed all the crossers here too.

   Thank you to Vulcan and loonapick.

2. Vlad, Vlad not Vulcan, and no, it’s chewy.

3. I’d have been happier if RE-ENACT was (2,5) and EEL-LIKE (3,4).

   After ripping through Moo’s in the FT, I only finished a third of this then got stuck. I often find it hard tuning in to Vlad’s wavelength.

4. Got there in the end, but not convinced this was on the easier end. Needed your help, loonapick, with quite a few of the parsings, so thanks for that. Is WHATABOUTERY a word? SIAL is the continental part of the crust (richer in silicon and aluminium than the oceanic crust). GEORGIA and RHODIUM were near. Thanks, I think, Vlad.

5. That’s 2-5 & 3-4.

6. Too many unparsed for this to be enjoyable for me – 8 in total, on top of not knowing the Icelandic Parliament, sial, chimer and whataboutery. Dod like WOMBLES though.
   Thanks to Vlad and loonapick

7. Very enjoyable to tease this one out – many solutions required crossers as I couldn’t parse them cold. EELLIKE came earlier than for our blogger, though – but it doesn’t look right without a hyphen which might have made it easier to solve. I had no hope of parsing ALL OR NOTHING so am hugely grateful for the annotations here. Tons of favourites with highlights of those being CHIMERA, RETRO, YELLOW HAMMER, WOMBLES, TWISTER and RHODIUM. One of my favourite Vlads for a while.

   Thanks Vlad and loonapick

8. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/whataboutery so I suppose it’s fair.

9. Thank you loonapick for my unparsed ALL OR NOTHING, aptly. Didn’t know the Icelandic parliament.
   Liked YELLOWHAMMER for the gold, and RHODIUM for the surface.
   Favs were WOMBLES wombles(s) and ORCAS killers deeply

10. I also thought this was on the tougher side for Vlad. Didn’t see the parsing of ALL OR NOTHING having forgotten about the ALTHING and not thinking of LORN. Can’t get owls out of my mind when I see ‘parliament’, and didn’t know that SIAL was part of the Earth’s crust, though the answer was obvious once the crossers were in place. Didn’t see the parsing of WOMBLES either and can see how clever it is after loonapick’s explanation. Liked RHODIUM and TROCHEE and HYDRANGEA, though ‘ranger’ wasn’t the first synonym for commando that came to mind. Thanks to Vlad for the challenge, and to loonapick for the lucid explanations.

11. WHATABOUTERY was first one in as the clue was basically the same as one from Imogen in these pages last week…

    Wasn’t that a great fight! Have you forgotten? (4,5)

    After that I struggled, not even close to finishing today.

12. Generally enjoyable for me, though I’d have put it at the tougher end of Vlad spectrum. I’m another guesser at ALL OR NOTHING so thanks to loonapick for that explanation in particular, and to Vlad for the (mostly) fun challenge.

13. All done but several unparsed.

14. Thanks Vlad and loonapick
    Finished, but with several question marks. These were mostly resolved by the blog, but one remains – why does “commando” give “ranger”? Loose at best!
    Favourites ABOLISH, WOMBLES, and REENACT.

15. Also Nho ALL OR NOTHING parsing so thanks loonapick. Needed help with parsing TWISTER as well, but it’s a great clue when you understand it. I can remember easier Vlads, so I’m not sure it’s on the easier side of the spectrum.

    I have no idea what “becoming” is doing in INHERITOR.

    The “itself” in RETRO is definitely the reversal indicator.

    Charlie in ETHICAL could not only be the NATO alphabet, but also Cocaine. Take your pick.

16. Helped by remembering the What a Bout device from Imogen as pointed out by Jimbo. WOMBLES, HYDRANGEA and RHODIUM my favourites.

17. What a birthday treat 🙂 top marks for WHATABOUTERY, WOMBLES and RHODIUM for the rhotic-friendly aural wordplay. No doubt someone will insist the H should be pronounced

    Cheers V&L

18. As always with Vlad I found this tough – but for once managed to finish it with help from word wizard etc. As usual got a fair few from crosses and then parsed and needed help parsing some others.

    Liked: GEORGIA, LOGICAL, AUSTERITY, ANTHILL, ETHICAL, RHODIUM (made me smile)

    Thanks Vlad and loonapick

19. Hard going for me so thanks, loonapick, for filling in the tag-ends of parsing that I was too exhausted to continue with ([v]ERY, orCAs, e[R]Ellike). And thank you Vlad for a difficult but joyful challenge. Top fav probably CHIMERA, but also loved TWISTER and the clever reversal trick indicator in RETRO.

20. My heart always sinks when I see Vlad. No hint as to which country’s Parliament is needed? One clue among many that I couldn’t parse, but good to see several solvers enjoy the challenge.

21. Took me a while to work out who you meant by “Sillie Nelson” in your explanation of 21a, loonapick! The previous typo was more obvious 😉

22. This was very tough and I thought I was going to be OUTPLAYED (made me smile) today. Like others, I would never have parsed ALL OR NOTHING. WOMBLES, ANTHILL, CHIMERA and RETRO were top notch and both homophones, HYDRANGEA and RHODIUM worked fine for me. I parsed AUSTERITY as WHY = Y rather than the ultimate letter.
    Very satisfying solve in the end.

    Ta Vlad & loonapick.

23. After several days of being behind solving I’ve finally caught up, and doing the recent Imogen (with a very similar clue) only yesterday gifted me WHATABOUTERY straight away, which helped with the top half hugely. Overall this was one of the more accessible Vlad puzzles for me, they’re often a tad too obtuse in parts but this one I could complete, albeit with a few unparsed (ALL OR NOTHING amongst others).

    WOMBLES is fabulous. RETRO being its own indicator was a bit meta but it works. Also liked GEORGIA, simple but neat.

    Many thanks both!

24. Didn’t twig wombles[s]=unable to carry, or the reflexive implied reversal for retro, so biffs and d’ohs for both. Put in sisal, thought “sial ??”, looked it up and went “part of crust, wibf!” And the Icelandic parlt. was a total nho, not alone there. Whatagreatword whataboutery is. Is it a thing? I love it. All part of the fun, thanks both.

25. And yes, as Jimbo says @11, 1ac made easy by immediately ringing with Imogen’s recent “great fight” clue.

26. Interesting how folk seem to be divided as to the toughness of this puzzle: ‘on the easier side of the Vlad spectrum’, ‘ ‘I’d have put it at the tougher end of Vlad spectrum’, etc …

    I thought it was pretty typical Vlad – tough but enjoyable – and I agree with PostMark @7, in that it was one of my favourites for a while. Like our blogger, I had ticks against most of the clues, with top favourites being WHATABOUTERY, WOMBLES, AUSTERITY, RETRO and TROCHEE. I was relieved to see that others fell down on ALL OR NOTHING: I didn’t know the Icelandic Parliament and I don’t think I’ve ever come across LORN by itself, but familiar with it in forlorn and lovelorn, for example.

    Many thanks to Vlad for a real treat, although it isn’t my birthday – have a good one, Bodycheetah 🙂 – and to loonapick for a great blog.

27. Gave this a pretty good go, but ultimately defeated by EELLIKE and WHATABOUTERY. Also rather defeated by the parsing of these I did successfully insert – SISAL, TWISTER, SET SAIL, RHODIUM, and CHIMERA. Bloodied maybe, but unbowed this morning, with ADDERS TONGUE a very helpful anagram when I was beginning to flounder, if I can swap a reptile for a fish…

28. Another who found this nearer the impaling end of Vlad’s spectrum.

    Several went in unparsed – mostly those already mentioned.

    Still feel that bands = sets in the otherwise excellent SET SAIL clue, is a bit of a stretch.

    Much to enjoy though and even though I was piqued by your claim that this was “on the easier side of Vlad’s spectrum”, loonapick, many thanks for the fine blog.

29. …and whenever “in bed” seems to suggest one has to laboriously trawl through all the flowers and plants in the herbaceous border that one can think of, yesterday I brought in late flowering HYDRANGEA’s to dry and display through the winter and beyond indoors. So 15d immediately sprang to mind…

30. I found this somewhat tricky for a Tuesday.

31. I’m !rish but I don’t pronounce RHODIUM as HRODIUM, so I liked “ROADIE UM”.
    But I parsed as AlanC@22 the ‘Y’ in AUSTERITY as ‘Why’ – it’s in quotes, so the homophone is intentional. I wonder HWY.
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whataboutery looks !rish:
    1983, Foras Forbartha, Towards a national strategy: issues and perspectives: Criticism is stereotyped as ‘civil servant bashing’ or the weapon of whataboutery is unsheathed: official statements accelerate about inefficient private sector management.
    1998 Gerry Fitt, House of Lords debates Vol.591 col.457 (29 June 1998): As the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, will know, we have in Northern Ireland what we have referred to over the years as “whataboutery”. When one talks about the atrocities of the IRA, someone from the other side will say, “Ah, but what about?” I have lived with that for 30 years in Northern Ireland. There is a lot of “whataboutery”.
    dnk Si + Al, and forgot to remember LORN for ALL OR NOTHING by Small Faces (1966).

32. All filled in but lots unparsed.

33. The “th” in the Icelandic parliament, the Althingi, is actually a thorn in Icelandic. It’s pronounced as our “th”, which is why we use it as a substitute. The thorn looks like a hybrid of a “p” and a “b”. I’ll try to include it here, but I fully expect that this site will turn it into a question mark. Let’s see …

    Alþingi

34. My goodness, it worked!

35. Vlad fooled me many times today, with devices that loonapick would later reveal to be misdirections.
    I started badly, thinking “extremely late starting” in 1across would give me LE as the opening two letters. (The extremes of “late”, starting.) And so it went on.
    Thank you to both Vlad and loonapick – I couldn’t quite finish but I learned a lot.
    My favourites were TWISTER, CHIMERA AND TROCHEE.

36. I agree with loonapick that this wasn’t Vlad at his toughest but nor was it as straightforward as some of his recent puzzles (neither Vlad the Vicious nor Vlad the Vincible but a bit of both?)

    Like others, I had some difficulty parsing ALL OR NOTHING. I particularly enjoyed ANTHILL and loved the gentle power of “or” in the clue for YELLOWHAMMER; WOMBLES was a stonker

    Many thanks both and all

37. @36 – that’s “stonking” in the English, not Australian, sense I hasten to add!

38. Being from Belfast, I appreciated your entry @31, FrankieG. I’m more familiar with Whataboutcha (ph) as an NI greeting.

39. ronald@29 – I’m a little surprised by your comment since HYDRANGEA was the very first flowery word beginning with an H that sprung to my mind …..
    [and without wishing to be pedantic, I think yours is the first, and only, use of a “grocer’s apostrophe” that I’ve seen on 15²…. does this mean that society is finally crumbling round our feet, and nowhere is safe?!! 🙂 ]

40. Ground through this but I didn’t feel particularly uplifted to finish it, but that’s probably because of the difficulty to me.

    I BIFD TROCHEE at first, having seen it recently in another crossword. I liked the wordplay for CHIMERA (although being a scientist I always think of this as a hybrid), the good anagram for INHERITOR, the definition and wordplay for WOMBLES, and the surface for AUSTERITY. I had no hope of parsing ALL OR NOTHING – yes, I wondered where the owls were.

    Thanks to Vlad for the near impaling and to loonapick for unravelling it all.

41. I’m in the “this was an easier Vlad” camp.

    Several gems in there today but is EEL-LIKE not hyphenated? Is ADDER’S TONGUE not two words?

    Didn’t spot the Icelandic Parliament although the answer was clear.

    Thanks Vlad and loonapick

42. grantinfreo@24 – “wibf”: that’s a new one for me, I’ll try to remember it – much better than the full “well I’ll be flabbergasted” ! You Ozzies, eh?

43. Thanks Vlad, that was a most enjoyable ‘thing’.
    I liked CHIMERA, and the conjunctions of ADDER & EEL, LOGICAL & ETHICAL

    muffin@14 – in the U.S. military, I think a ‘ranger’ has a similar role to ‘commando’

44. [Bodycheetah@17 – Happy Birthday!]

45. I’m another who found this tough, even for a Vlad. I only managed about four fifths. I especially liked TROCHEE (though I’m sure we had that a few days back??), YELLOWHAMMER (for the “or”), WOMBLES (which I didn’t get) and AUSTERITY. With thanks to Vlad (I think…) and loonapick.

46. This took me a while. I thought “what the hell is this doing on a Monday???”. Then I realised it was Tuesday – still travelling home from a holiday abroad and a bit out of sync!!!

47. wynsum @43
    Thanks for “ranger”. Having been tipped off I found this on Wikipedia.
    Still think it’s pretty loose, though!

48. Not my vibe. Nevertheless, thanks to Vlad and loonapick. Always interesting to see others’ experiences.

49. nuntius @45

    We had TROCHEE on Monday last week in Nutmeg’s last puzzle:
    ‘Maestro cheekily clasping foot’.

50. Definitely very tricky, I thought. Feeling smug about knowing the parliament and remembering Mrs. Gummidge in ‘David Copperfield’:”I’m a lone, lorn creature”. Totally missed the ‘or’ in 26A, and failed to parse several others. But thank you Vlad and loonapick.

51. Thank you Vlad, enjoyed this a lot. LOLed at YELLOWHAMMER, admired ALL OR NOTHING once I’d figured it out, laughed again at RHODIUM, many other goodies too numerous to mention. Special love for RETRO which was brilliantly meta.

52. I finished this, with the only difficulty being the parsing of ALL OR NOTHING, so I’m in the “easier end of Vlad” camp. I agree with Eileen that it’s odd how much disagreement there is on that point.

    Here, the usually-seen word is WHATABOUTISM, not WHATABOUTERY, but it was obvious from the clue which was required. It’s a frequent tactic of Republicans, especially now that they’ve backed themselves into the corner of having to defend the indefensible, so we’ve seen the word more often in recent years.

53. Thanks Elieen@49. The word always bring to mind Lizzie Borden for me with the grim rhyme: “Lizzie Borden took an ax
    And gave her mother forty whacks,
    And when she saw what she had done,
    She gave her father forty-one.”.

54. William F P @39…this is the first time I’ve come across the expression, “grocer’s apostrophe”, but I think I know what you mean! It’s just that whenever I refer to answers that appear in the grid I try and put them in Caps in their entirety. The apostrophe must have sneaked in via predictive text when I wasn’t looking…
    There’s also a very annoying man who lives in my elderly mother’s independent living scheme who, with a red pen when nobody’s around, corrects wrongly inserted apostrophes on the notices that the scheme manager puts on their general notice board.

55. Nuntius @53: my personal go-to bit of trochaic verse is the less grim but still dark “Double, double, toil and trouble / Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” Long bits in trochaic are rare for Shakespeare, which is part of why it stands out so much.

56. Thanks for the blog , Vlad the Impala for me, I found the long answers very easy and very helpful. I still appreciated the skilful cluing throughout. WOMBLES is very clever, TWISTER has a neat twist, ALL OR NOTHING contains my favourite quiz question.
    Unfortunate that WHATABOUT(ery) used again so soon , these things bound to happen sometimes.

57. Goodness, is this an easy Vlad? V hard work for me and completed only because of the recent “what a bout”. Several unparsed but relieved to finish.

58. Another great puzzle from one of my favourite setters. A game of two halves for me – or rather a relatively easy three-quarters and a sticky NW quadrant. I had forgotten the Imogen clue and it took a long time to make sense of 1ac. EEL-LIKE would have been easier if hyphenated, and I mistyped EEELIKE into my phone, which made WOMBLES (great clue, though perhaps not a novel construction?) impenetrable until I realised my mistake.

    ALL OR NOTHING is very neat, the homophones are fun and I particularly liked CHIMERA and LOGICAL. ‘Fancy’ for CHIMERA is a bit left-field though. Originally a monster from Greek mythology, it now connotes, not a hybrid (pace Robi @40), which is a cross between two different species or varieties in which all cells contain the same genetic material, but a composite organism with parts from different sources. In animals this can occur if two separate fertilised eggs fuse very early in development. The resulting organism develops normally but with organs or parts having different parentage. In plants, chimeras can be created by grafting different species together.

    Thanks to S&B

59. nuntius and mrpenney: The longest well known trochaic verse is Longfellow’s ‘Song of Hiawatha’:

    By the shores of Gitche Gumee
    By the shining Big-Sea-Water etc etc

60. I would never have got “whataboutery” or “eelike” (I’m with GDU @ 3&5 on that one), so I’m plumping for the tougher end of Vlad’s spectrum.

    I was going to complain about the vagueness of 26a (none of my hammers have ever been yellow) until I came here & saw it was actually quite clever.

    I thought 6d could have begun “Greek’s naked…” to tie in with Greek plays etc, and therefore not have the first 4 letters of the solution in the clue, when only 3 were called for.

    [ronald @54 – that’ll be me when they drag me kicking & screaming into a home!]

61. Thanks Vlad for a challenging crossword. There was a fair amount I couldn’t parse and I used the guess-then-check method for the NW corner but generally this was satisfying. I particularly liked the well written AUSTERITY, INHERITOR, ABOLISH, WOMBLES, LOGICAL, and RHODIUM. In the US we have WHATABOUTISM as mrpenny@ 52 pointed out; it’s very common and many critics of our current administration reply with “But whatabout Trump?!” Thanks loonapick for the blog.

62. Tony @61: [that should read “… many critics of our current administration are met with the reply whatabout Trump?!]

63. Perhaps YELLOWHAMMER could have been clued as bunting rather than bird.
    “Song of Hiawatha” has an interesting puzzle in projectile theory.

64. [Nuntius @ 53

    Just in case you or anyone else is interested.

    Lizzie Borden is the subject of one episode of the “Lady Killers” series on radio 4 – it is available on BBC Sounds]

65. Re YELLOWHAMMER, a bunting as Roz rightly comments, ‘or’ is etymologically ‘gold’, to be sure, but it is the heraldic term for YELLOW (like argent = white, sable = black, gules = red, vert = green, azure = blue)

66. loonapick, rhotic speakers make up at least half the English-speaking world (Scotland, Ireland, west England, Canada, United States, etc. So HYDRANGEA is not a homophone for a lot of us. It is, however, excellent aural wordplay. Use of that term would not ignore such a large proportion of your readership.

    Nevertheless it was a great blog, which I much needed in order to make sense of many clues. Thanks for that, and thanks, Vlad, for the masochistly pleasurable impaling.

67. Fiona@64: Thanks for that. I will listen with interest.

68. Gervase @ 58 Chambers’ first definition of ‘chimera’ is “(sometimes with cap) any idle or wild fancy”.

    Thanks Vlad and loonapick – great puzzle yet again.

69. Cellonaniac @66

    I’m Scottish. I gave up on trying to win the rhotic argument very early in my blogging career and any attempt to make to raise the issue again is generally shot down in flames.

70. Loonapick@69, I’m not saying don’t use rhotic or non-rhotic wordplay, just don’t call it a homophone. That suggestion is getting some traction, and is reducing the number of complaints from homophone police. See, for example, Pierre’s blog and subsequent comments on the Everyman puzzle last Sunday (#4017). Join the fight, and help render these comments unnecessary.

71. Roz@63: ‘Song of Hiawatha’? I noted you your fantastic lead btw.

72. TROCHEE, ADDERS-TONGUE, SIAL and WHATABOUTERY were unknown to me so making for a less than satisfactory solve.
    Thanks both

73. ttlt@72 – isn’t it satisfying to learn something new, though?

74. Another fine offering from Vlad. Faves – the Killers deeply, TWISTER, ALL OR NOTHING, OUTPLAYED. Didn’t feel the latter at all today. Thoroughly enjoyable.
    Like GrannyJP @21, I thought “Sillie” Nelson a tad harsh, loonpick 😉 .
    Thanks, V and l.

75. Oops. loonapick. Apologies!

76. I didn’t find this puzzle to be a breeze but I ended up being defeated only by EELLIKE and found a very pleasurable solve with RETRO being a fave.
    I didn’t know where WOMBLES lived so thanks to Loonapick for that explanation.

77. Filed under DID NOT EVEN ATTEMPT.

    IMPENETRABLE

78. Beat me all ends up but ‘that was a great fight (extremely late starting)’. And a blog de force iimss.

    (Spookily I was just listening to this.)

    [Steffen@77: This is one to study and understand imho.

79. ]

80. LORN I got due to a recent re-re-reading of David Copperfield, but only after the crossers told me what it must be, and ALTHING was still a blank. I don’t know that I’ve ever come across ‘RIGGER’ as meaning a ship – to me, it’s either a job or the thing rowers put their oars in.
    Hard work, but ultimately very satisfactory (although that’s only ever a couple of lucky guesses away from a complaint that a crossword is unfairly hard).

81. 78. Agreed, but my goodness, the cranial dexterity and flexibility needed to make these jumps is so impressive.

    The ability to explain how to break down the clues is ridiculously good, and stratospherically above my station.

    The desire for tutorials grows!

82. Steffen has hit the nail on the head: dexterity and flexibility. These attributes are present in variable quantities, and vary from day to day in individuals. Hence different reports of experienced difficulty levels.

    My particular daily allocation of flexibility became exhausted about two-thirds of the way through, and I struggled on to the finish by banging my head against a brick wall from time to time.

    Only joking about the wall, Steffen. Don’t try this at home. 🙂

    Thanks to Vlad and loonapick.

83. 82. After trying and failing , I do not have the energy to batter my head off a wall.

    If I did, the Great Wall of China would be in pieces.

84. “This was on the easier side of the Vlad spectrum”

    Yah, 10D was pretty obvious ?

85. Thanks to loonapick for a very nice blog and to others who commented,

86. Steffen @77, very wise, few straightforward entrances here, unless (Steffen @81) you recognise the codewords – it is not all cranial dexterity. Quite a bit of it is knowing the language and chopping up the clue so you are not distracted by its surface. The great clues allow the surface to re-surface with the answer.

87. [AlanC@71 – Song of Haiwatha was mentioned @59. There is a verse that starts- Swift of foot was Hiawatha … then bits about firing arrows . You have to work out how swift he was, about 45m/s , hmmmm poetic licence. ]

88. [Roz @87: I’m obliged].

89. Favourites: WOMBLES, EELLIKE, ABOLISH.

    New for me: SIAL = crust (13ac); ADDERS TONGUE; TROCHEE; YELLOWHAMMER.

    I did not parse 5d, 10d.

    Thanks, both.

90. I only finished half and had to up the rest but couldn’t parse them so thanks Loonapick.

91. look up

92. Didn’t get 1A, 1D, 3, 4, or 11. Shame on me for 3 and 4; should have had those. Not disappointed to have not gotten WHATABOUTERY or EELLIKE (especially as “butcher” =/= “killer”). WOMBLES entirely new to me.

    The rest of the puzzle was slow but rewarding. Pleased with myself for putting on my Brit ears and pretending that HYDRANGEA might possibly sound something like “hide ranger”.

93. “Easier side?” How I laughed and despaired!
    Is there a helpful list of which setters are “easier” than others for beginners or is it more whose wavelength you “get”? Perhaps I need to make notes of which setters I can get the furthest with!

94. Ps i can still appreciate the art of the very clever clues especially wombles(s), orcas, retro and yellowhammer!

    I don’t quite understand ethical though: I get the H and the C, and the Late backwards, so where does the I come from and what is the visiting in the clue?

    Thanks Vlad and Loonapick for the fun!

95. QE@94

    Hello = HI

96. Ah yes thank you loonapick, not just the letter H!

97. I guess visiting is an indicator for a reversal, then? (Not the “in retrospect”?)

98. QE@97 HI C is “visiting” ETAL in the sense that it is inside ET HIC AL.
    The EVERYMAN crossword in the Observer on Sunday is for less experienced solvers, it should be in the same place online as the Guardian ones.

99. For the Guardian try Vulcan , often on a Monday , and the Quiptic on a Monday.

100. Thanks Roz – I try all the guardian ones nearly every day through the week. I just need to learn which weekday ones I gel with, it seems. I found Imogen easier than Vlad, for example.

Comments are closed.