Vulcan steps predictably into his fortnightly Monday slot.
We have the usual Monday medley of charades, anagrams and double and cryptic definitions. I quite liked 8ac GUARD, 16ac DIALECT, 19ac DESCANT, 6dn TRIVIA and 21dn ESTONIA.
Thanks to Vulcan for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
7 Popular schoolgirl royally entertained at the Albert Hall? (4,5)
PROM QUEEN
Double / cryptic definition, referring to the Queen attending a promenade concert, perhaps
8 Keep one article away from us (5)
GUARD
GUARD[ian] (‘us’) minus i an (one article)
9 Sack employees in insufficient numbers, getting attacked? (5,4)
UNDER FIRE
To underfire could mean to sack employees in insufficient numbers but it’s a bit of a stretch
10 A bishop finished, almost — in heaven? (5)
ABOVE
A B (a bishop) + OVE[r] (finished, almost)
12 Mechanism to eliminate sex crime? (6)
DEVICE
DE-VICE (eliminate sex crime)
13 Crop tail, suffering in such heat (8)
TROPICAL
An anagram (suffering) of CROP TAIL
16 Local speech day: smart chap opens it (7)
DIALECT
D (day) + ALEC (smart chap) in IT
19 Top tune, two consecutive notes short (7)
DESCANT
D E (two consecutive notes) + SCANT (short)
22 Appointments — mine gets rearranged (8)
MEETINGS
An anagram (rearranged) of MINE GETS
25 Group of artists urgently enthusiastic? (6)
RARING
A group of artists could be thought of as a RA RING – ‘urgently enthusiastic’ as in ‘raring to go’
27 Glasses of wine knocked back in bad temper (5)
STROP
A reversal (knocked back) of PORTS (glasses of wine)
28 Speech to which no one replies (9)
SOLILOQUY
Cryptic definition – it was a toss-up between that and ‘monologue’ but the simple 25dn soon made it clear
29 Householder making very slow progress (5)
SNAIL
Cryptic definition
30 Getting into Emirates improperly, very short cut (4-5)
TIME-SAVER
V (very) in an anagram (improperly) of EMIRATES
Down
1 One for placing behind the silver? (6)
BRONZE
Cryptic definition
2 In August, a stag with lots of points and a beard (8)
IMPERIAL
Double definition: a stag with antlers having fourteen points – see here and a type of beard, see here
3 Trump extremely liable to be disturbing (6)
RUFFLE
RUFF (trump) + L[iabl]E
4 Hide in a corner of Greek island (7)
SECRETE
SE (South East) CRETE (a corner of Greek island)
5 Old lady on airline to India — where exactly? (6)
MUMBAI
MUM (old lady) + BA (British Airways, airline) + I (India, NATO phonetic alphabet)
6 In short test, four or six quiz questions perhaps (6)
TRIVIA
Take your pick: either IV (four) or VI (six) in TRIA[l] (short test)
11 Drink too much to exercise (4)
TOPE
TO + PE (exercise)
14, 15 Converse about the French holiday home (6)
CHALET
CHAT (converse) round LE (the French)
16, 17 Woman entitled to conceal a grand loss (6)
DAMAGE
DAME (woman entitled) round A G (a grand)
18 Inclination to talk hypocritically (4)
CANT
Double definition
20 One bearing stripes from such punishment? (8)
CORPORAL
Double / cryptic definition
21 Area of Europe crumbling into sea (7)
ESTONIA
An anagram (crumbling) of INTO SEA
23 Stretch old canvas (6)
EXTENT
EX (old) + TENT (canvas)
24 Also related being deceived (4,2)
TOOK IN
TOO (also) + KIN (related)
25 To be given a lift not initially approved of (6)
RAISED
[p]RAISED (approved of)
26 Sexless: imagine uterus partially removed (6)
NEUTER
Hidden in imagiNE UTERus
I expect that I am being dim, but what is “in August” doing in 2d?
Edit – its when the stag has points!
Absolutely right, Shirl. In the case of red deer, for sure, they are growing through the Summer in preparation for the late Autumn rut and then get cast over the Winter.
Shirl – I assumed August was the definition and didn’t understand the rest of the clue!
Nice puzzle, thanks Vulcan and Eileen.
Shirl@1 :It’s a triple definition, august=royal etc.
Dnk imperial the beard, like learning ascot the tie. Under fire somewhat of a groan; you’ve gotta have ’em, to leaven the erudition. The neuter clue otoh, somewhat grue. All good fun, ta VnE.
Agree nicbach: royal; stag etc; beard.
7a Eileen I think this refers to the American custom of having a prom at the end of the summer term at school. A girl is chosen as the Prom queen.
nicbach @4 – thanks: your first definition didn’t occur to me. I gave the link (to save myself time) because it included the information given by PostMark!
Thanks, Shirley @7 – that’s the way I interpreted the definition.
Wot Eileen, don’t u stream US teen coming-of-age?
Oh sorry, you have 😉
I find Vulcan’s style strangely difficult. Give me a good Qaos or a Vlad!
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
Curiously I knew the stag reference but not the beard.
Some nice clues. DIALECT favourite.
I suspected a pangram with x and z present, but I can’t find j or w!
Auriga – I’m the same, never on the wavelength! But came through unscathed this time after the penny dropped for the rather nice GUARD.
Thanks both.
The three minute delay makes for fun sitcom. Oh I see, you really meant … Oh sorry I thought it was … Oh sh one t I give up …! Wottev …
Ah, not MONOLOGUE then. Explains the problem with 25d. OK Vulcan, you win! Thanks both.
Vulcan’s Mondays are getting tougher and I stared at the NE for ages until it yielded slowly. Some excellent clues including UNDER FIRE, DIALECT, TRIVIA and MUMBAI. Couldn’t parse IMPERIAL, as I suspect others may have experienced.
Ta Vulcan & Eileen
Another MONOLOGUE here and most of the crossers matched too. Except the one that mattered 🙂
Top ticks for TRIVIA, GUARD and IMPERIAL for teaching me two new meanings and which I assumed was 3xdef
Great start to the week
Cheers V&E
Some obscure definitions for a Monday (inter alia 18d,2d,19a )
Thank you Oofy @16 and Bodycheetah @18 for reassuring me I wasn’t alone with a MONOLOGUE. Not enthusiastic about clues where the wordplay leads to two completely acceptable answers and they can only be resolved by the crossers. Even less enthusiastic when it’s coupled with this rather unfriendly grid where ten lights have a majority of the letters unchecked.
Some gentle Monday amusement elsewhere, though; I think UNDERFIRE is quite witty, DIALECT, DESCANT and CORPORAL are rather neat, the surface for RUFFLE prompted a rueful smile (especially if you’re in ESTONIA).
Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.
Another MONOLOGUE here, held me up somewhat.
Why sex crime for vice? Aren’t there many others that are covered by vice?
I found this more convoluted than usual for Vulcan. I couldn’t parse the meanings of Imperial other than August so the stags and beards are new to me. I knew the word descant but was looking for scale notes, not letters. Don’t think I’ve seen a word cut into pieces before, especially not two in one puzzle and I don’t know why a Mum is an old lady. A Mum is a Mum no matter what age she is. Favourites were PROM QUEEN and TRIVIA. Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.
Re Alan C at 17, agreed. I just found this a bit all over the place for a supposedly easy Monday run-out. The ropey CDs made for some extra difficulty, and the horrible 26 was a real turn-off! I wouldn’t necessarily say that Rufus was always easy, but still. Guardian Monday and Everyman now Toughies?
Favourites: TRIVIA, UNDER FIRE, GUARD, DESCANT.
New for me: RUFF = trump.
I could not fully parse 2d apart from august=imperial. Tbh I think it is good that the imperial beard style has gone out of fashion!
Thanks, both.
Like Oofyprosser@16 and others, I put in MONOLOGUE at first.
I agree that Mondays are getting tougher but it was not too bad. My first response to Mum=old lady was the same as yours oakvillereader@22 but then I remembered that ‘the old lady’ is sometimes used for Mum, as is ‘the old man’ for Dad.
Thanks V and E.
I agree with AlanC et al that Mondays are no longer a brief stroll.
Ticks for DIALECT, DESCANT, MUMBAI and CORPORAL. The double wordplay for TRIVIA is clever. Fortunately I inserted SOLILOQUY without further thought. I interpreted IMPERIAL as a triple def.
Seeing Q, X and Z made me look for a pangram….
oakvillereader @22: ‘The old lady’ and ‘the old man’ are (British?) slang terms for one’s mother and father – no implication of advanced age.
Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen!
Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog!
Having the obvious MONOLOGUE entered, with all the other crossers checked, made 25d far from simple for me, Eileen! oakvillereader@22, we use old lady/man that way in Oz too. Most of this was Mondayish, but the last few were not, I thought. Thanks, Vulcan and Eileen.
Ah, TassieTim @28 – but I didn’t enter MONOLOGUE (I said it was a toss-up!) and so had nothing to put me off when I got to 25dn. 😉
Gervase @26. I think that old lady=mother and old man=father is, yes, British (or, says TT @28, Australian) slang. In American slang the terms tend to refer to a wife/husband or unmarried partner. So, when, for example, Joni Mitchell sang, ‘a big yellow taxi took away my old man’, she was not referring to the departure of her father. Maybe one of our US contributors will confirm.
I enjoyed this one.
Completed in a single sitting, which is just right for a busy Monday. The NE corner took quite a bit of work! And I appreciated the variety of clue types.
I particularly liked UNDER FIRE, which made me laugh. I thought TRIVIA was clever. And I also liked IMPERIAL, since I had to look up the stag part, and learned something new.
I get roofed for 25d and monologue for 28a, which work fine.
Had “ra ra ra” for the horrible 26 making the easy “neuter” less easy!
Agree with William @21 about the gratuitous sex in this puzzle! Thanks to Vulcan for the many satisfying surfaces in this puzzle, especially 1d and 26d. Thanks Eileen for the blog and for parsing 2d
Quite tricky, especially the NW corner. Knowing how the Guardian likes topical themes, I’m surprised there was no Super Bowl reference tbh.
I also thought 6d TRIVIA was clever for what I thought was an oblique reference to the game Trivial Pursuit that has 6 question categories.
Yes, I’m pretty sure my own Mum would object to having given birth to me at 21 years of age and then being called Old. Last two in PROM QUEEN, and IMPERIAL, which I had to look up to understand the Stag reference as Veronica did @31. Some very nice clues today…
DEVICE
vice (Collins)
Vice refers to criminal activities, especially those connected with pornography or prostitution.
(William@21 & SwissSteve@34)
Like several others, I got only the first of 2D’s three definitions. Also I wallowed around for a while on 19A trying to do something with PREDOMINANT minus Do and Re before the crosser from 20D came to my rescue!
Tough but fair for a Monday.
Has finally dawned on me (like many others it seems) that I had to rethink monologue. Having scrubbed that, RAISED was obvious and SOLILOQUY was LOI. Enjoyed the rest of the puzzle, especially GUARD, RARING and DAMAGE. Nearly put in extend for stretch before thinking about the word play which pointed to EXTENT. I suppose the meaning here is something like ‘a stretch of land’. Thanks for the challenge VULCAN, and for the excellent blog Eileen, especially for enlightening me to the meanings of IMPERIAL, which was a bung and hope for me based on ‘august’. Very pleasant to look at some stags in August and dream of warmer weather!
Thanks for the clarification KVa. Bit cherry picky though, as Collins also says “criminal activities involving sex, drugs, or gambling”. Anyway, I was just agreeing that the word sex was superfluous. I also thought “glasses” was superfluous in 27a, so maybe I’m just having a pedantic day.
Ruff=trump was a new one. (Bridge, I assume, which all crossword setters believe their solvers are intimately familiar with.) I liked UNDER FIRE, stretchy or not, and didn’t like the vagueness of PROM QUEEN. For IMPERIAL I knew the beard but not the stag in August.
Thanks Eileen and Vulcan. Mostly fine but I went down the MONOLOGUE rabbit hole and never emerged. Like NeilH@18, I am unenthusiastic about a clue that has 2 long, equally valid answers. Edit?
Gosh, what a lot of moaning and groaning! I enjoyed Vulcan’s wit and fluency today, and was pleased to find I’d solved exactly half the clues on the first pass. Maybe staying up to 4am to watch American football unlocks unused parts of my brain?
Some of the off the wall definitions were amusing, like ‘eliminate sex crime’ for DE-VICE and ‘sack… insufficient numbers’ for UNDER FIRE. I solved 26d NEUTER from seeing ‘partially’ and looking for a hidden answer, so never properly read the “horrible” surface and having now done so I’m surprised at SwissSteve’s praise for it @34 and I sympathise with Orcwood@33. Perhaps it’s surprising that the editor didn’t ask the setter to tone it down a bit.
Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.
SwissSteve@41
I liked your comment.
For the ‘glasses of wine’, cherry-picking took more effort.
Wiktionary says:
Port
(a glass of) port, port wine, Porto
The devilish thing about MONOLOGUE (yes, me too) is that it is so rare to have such a long word that fits a number of crossers, and also fits the clue perfectly, AND IS WRONG! You just don’t think there can be an alternative answer.
It’s not unheard of for me to stick a wrong answer in, having misinterpreted a clue, so excuse me if I permit myself a smile at RA-RA-RA and ROOFED. In the case of MONOLOGUE I can certainly sympathise, but after all this is a crossword, so relying on crossing letters is part of the game. Complaining about it is a bit like playing bridge and being shocked when someone trumps your ace.
Who knew there were such things as Friendly Muttonchops?
Thanks, Eileen, for explaining DIALECT (couldn’t think of smart Alec)
Spooner’s Catflap@30 I remember “old man” and “old lady” meaning “unmarried partner,” but I think that usage went away in ar the seventies. I haven’t heard it for years.
As a child I read the grades of stag in — was it Children of the New Forest? At any rate, the top-ranking one was a Hart Royal, don’t recall any Imperials.
Thanks, Vulcan for the questions and Eileen for the answers and the links.
As an American, I can report that “old lady” and “old man” can mean wife / husband / romantic partner, but they can also refer to one’s parents. I don’t think that either usage is particularly common in the US these days, but to me the parental one springs much more readily to mind. In particular, when I hear that famous Joni Mitchell lyric, it sounds very old-fashioned to me.
But the US is a big country, and people of different regions / ages / backgrounds will no doubt have different impressions.
Liked it a lot .. Didn’t know the beard / stag but that was my ignorance. Liked device, tope, and dialect . Thanks !
I think you can reply once a monologue is finished, you just can’t interrupt. Mind you, I was even further off beam inventing the word MORITURUM for a speech addressed to the dead.
I was monologued.
I accidentally wrote “monologue” too, and also made the mistake of writing “port” instead of “tope”. My reasoning was that “to exercise” was an anagram or change of position indicator of “trop” for “too much”.
As a Canadian, I’ll mention that “old man” or “old woman” is more commonly applied here to spouses than to parents, but it’s not a term that anybody really uses anymore.
Like jimd@32 I MONOLOGUED and ROOFED at 28a and 25d. Rather than complaining, I simply considered my answers to be equally correct and moved on – they were both good clues.
Spooner’s catflap @30, re old lady/man, in Canada we are part Brit and part Yank, so we use the term to mean parent or spouse/partner. More confusing in the taxi context when you consider that Joni Mitchell is Canadian.
I especially liked 9a UNDERFIRE and 16a DIALECT for their smart-alecky wordplay.
This took me 90 seconds longer than Anto’s Quiptic, so clearly the editor got it right this week. 😉
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen for the excellent crossword and blog.
My thanks to Cellomaniac, Ted, Valentine & Pops for taking up my point @30 about the US use of old man/lady for romantic partner. It may indeed be old-fashioned now, and certainly the last time it struck me was in Rupert Holmes’s song ‘Escape’ (the Pina Colada song), which, alas, was inescapable towards the end of 1979 when I was living in the US: ” … me and my old lady / Had fallen into the same old dull routine”. Any later sightings by closer observers of American popular music than I am would be interesting.
I cannot immediately make a sentence in which “stretch” and EXTENT are substitutable, although both clearly refer to prolongation.
Cellomaniac@54 (and jimd@32 if you’re still around): I’m intrigued as to how you see the clue for 25d working, if you consider ROOFED to be a perfectly good answer. (I can see how the troublesome crosser from MONOLOGUE is nicely accommodated, but I can’t parse the clue adequately for your answer.)
Are you by any chance thinking of JD Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters?
Andrew@56. I can’t produce a sentence, but my Oxford Thesaurus has EXTENT as the first synonym under the fifth sub-heading of stretch. Chambers has under stretch (amongst others): ‘extension, utmost extent, extensibility ‘.
How about “the full stretch/utmost extent of your imagination”?
s_h@57, yes, “raised to the roof” for “given a lift”, and (p)roofed for “(not initially) approved of”. You may be right, it was probably subliminally suggested by Salinger.
I rely on Vulcan for a confidence boost – only partial today! Failed on NW corner (and SE corner of Crete). Some super clues however – very pleased to get 16ac. Like many put monologue. Apparently monologue is a one sided conversation whereas soliloquy is thinking aloud – so perhaps monologue fits the clue better – but 25d and a helpful comment on the Guardian website put me right.
It was when I tentatively entered ROOFED (the only vague possibility an alphabet trawl threw up – the parsing along cellomaniac’s lines @59) and then checked that I found – to my astonishment – that the O in MONOLOGUE was wrong. Only then did the alternative SOLILOQUY occur to me. So Eileen’s hesitation @29 is only possible if the two possibilities simultaneously occur to you.
On old lady/man – yes, in Oz they can be (more accurately, were) used both ways.
Extent/ stretch of land probably.
TassieTim @61, if you’re still there (I’m just in from choir practice)
I always tackle the clues in order and, when I reached 28ac, having no crossers, I did – believe it or not – think practically simultaneously of SOLILOQUY and MONOLOGUE and waited for the second pass, when I had the I from the (easy) RAISED.
Interestingly, they have identical derivation: MONOLOGUE from Greek (monos – single / alone + logos – speech) and SOLILOQUY from Latin (solus – single / alone) + LOQUI (to speak) – another example of the richness of the English language, which allows nuances such as that noted by Petert @51. I know I’ve endured many a monologue, waiting to get a word in edgeways and delighted in so many Shakespearean soliloquies. 😉
The second track on Joni Mitchell’s Blue album is “My Old Man” and the lyrics suggest they’re not married. Make of that what you will
Very late to comment but just wanted to thank Vulcan for an enjoyable puzzle with fun clues like GUARD at 8a, and to thank Eileen as well for the links that helped explain why it had to be IMPERIAL at 2d, as well as for the rest of her blog and comments [I actually filled in 28a as MONOLOGUE after RHETORICAL didn’t fit, then had to do a re-think to derive SOLILOQUY.]
Thanks Eileen, for the monologue/soliloquy explanation and the imperial links. I should also have thanked Vulcan for an enjoyable (if difficult for me) puzzle.
“My old man’s a dust man”…
Or the Monochrome Set’s “my old man’s a viscount” 🙂
Or Chambers.
Largely impenetrable. Some of us can only do cryptic crosswords on Sundays (Everyman) and Mondays (both Guardian), because they are too difficult on the other days of the week.
8A, 2D, and 3D too hard for me. I really struggle with bits of words, i.e. first or last letters removed. I never seem to see the instruction, so 6D and 25D obvious when you see the answers.
I got guffle for 3d, which is valid when checking the meaning. For me a guff is a trump more than a ruff. So another potential flaw. Agree with others on a really tricky Monday that I only got 3/4 of the way through.
Huh. When we had our unit on Shakespeare, the teacher made sure to tell us that a soliloquy was specifically a speech made by a character who is alone or thinks so. So someone can reply to a monologue, but not a soliloquy.