Guardian 29,329 – Vlad

83 comments on “Guardian 29,329 – Vlad”

1. I agree that was a solve and parse later crossword, which I mostly did other than having absolutely no idea about NAIL SET other than the definition, and missing bits and pieces elsewhere.

   Thank you to Vlad and Andrew.

2. 80s telly a bit much maybe, though I’m old enough to know it. A few ‘obvious but how to parse’ moments as well. Nice puzzle though. Thanks both.

3. Didn’t manage to parse NAIL SET though I dimly remembered that it’s used for driving in nails until flush.
   A couple of digs at the once and future President (God help us!) and a sly one at the current Chancellor (CONCOURSE) started the day nicely. Much else to enjoy here, too. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

4. I surprised myself by getting all this out and parsed, with the exception of NAIL SET, having never heard of Jeremy Nail and not having seen Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Course/hunt was new to me.

   Very enjoyable, thanks Vlad & Andrew.

5. Guessed that 4d must refer to Jimmy Nail after a Google search for actor’s called Nail, but had no idea what the Oz reference was all about, not watching much television, so thanks for the elucidation, Andrew. Groaned when I saw KHAKI and expected some discussion on here. On the whole, though, I didn’t think this was as tough as Vlad can be, with a fair scattering of gettable anagrams to get going. Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

6. I have spent six years studying and 12 years working in universities and have never seen L used to stand for lecturer…

7. I had no hope with NAIL SET, and I also failed to parse a couple others properly, so thanks for that. It was obvious KHAKI had to be a homophone, but it was a mystery to me how that was intended. Here in the US, KHAKI rhymes with “wacky”, so “car key” would never in a million years have occurred to me.

   I feel like there’s a running sub-theme here related to a certain Republican politician, with the clues for 16 and 26 across and 2 down all of relevance, and a couple others arguably so.

8. Justigator (6). It used to be standard practice to refer to the various pay grades as AL, L1, L2, SL, PL (Assistant Lecturer, Lecturers grades 1 & 2, Senior Lecturer, Principal Lecturer). Being long retired, I’ve no idea if that is now obsolete.

9. Thanks Vlad and Andrew!
   TAKE A HIKE
   A slightly different parsing attempt:
   Go for=TAKE
   TRAMP=A HIKE

10. Enjoyable challenge.

    I did not parse 2d, 3d apart from S=sabbath, or 4d – never heard of the actor Jimmy Nail played the character Oz or the 1980s TV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

    Favourites: HAIRCUT, SITTING PRETTY.

    New for me: NAIL SET.

    I parsed TAKE A HIKE in the same way as KVa@9.

    Thanks, both.

11. Didn’t know the Oz, but saw the sequel (or was it the final season) in which Nighy, Spall and co were brill. Must see if you can stream the whole thing. The musical stretti has turned up before [stretto/stretta means narrow or tight, and is part of a very rude Italian folk-rhyme]. Agree with NeilH ,@3, God help us! Meanwhile, lots to enjoy, thanks Vlad and Andrew.

12. Boy this was no walk in the park. There were 4/5 clues which I only fully understood with Andrew’s help, for which much thanks. I got both references to Jimmy Nail and Sting eventually but thought that might not be known across the globe. Is it a coincidence that they are both Geordies?
    Thanks Vlad.

13. Always satisfying to complete a Vlad. Only SITTING PRETTY failed to parse as I didn’t spot the Policeman. Apart from the potentially dodgy homophone in KHAKI, nothing really to complain about and, as always, Vlad is a master at turning long solutions into short clues. Our setter does have a long memory – as well as Jimmy Nail’s Oz being from the 80’s, the STASI disappeared not long after. LUNATIC FRINGE, however, will never be out of date, I fear.

    HAIRCUT, TIDINGS, ERUPT, JUST THE TICKET, INSULTING and ONESELF were my favourites today.
    Tiny typo in the blog, Andrew – rugby in 24a.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

14. Andrew, I’d prefer it if you didn’t refer to clues like 11 across as a ‘homophone’. It just encourages them. 😉

15. This required a bit of crash retrieval and reverse engineering to unravel the wizardry, but I loved the result.
    I especially liked the ‘bob’, the car key, the ‘lobby’ and the ‘policeman’.
    My ‘Jan 6’ epiphany was a little sluggish, but I love that Trump & HAIRCUT have been neatly melded in 26a.
    Thanks Vlad & Andrew.

16. I’m with those who thought this wasn’t as hard as Vlad can be, though didn’t parse NAIL SET nor SITTING PRETTY (was wondering if ‘sting’ was yet another slang word for a police officer – completely forgot about the band). Also had forgotten Trump’s ‘vermin’ comment (which I suppose was unremarkable, given its source).
    As well as the obscure Jimmy Nail reference, I expect non-Brits will have missed a subtlety in the THERAPIST clue – Pat (Gibson) is a regular on the UK TV quiz show ‘Eggheads’ – but that wouldn’t affect the solving.
    Favourites include LUNATIC FRINGE, JUST THE TICKET.
    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

17. Enjoyed this and pleased to finish it without aids (except for actor Nail) or much head scratching. I never watched much TV so had no chance of seeing the show or knowing the actor but I remembered Nail Set from regular appearances here, most recent was April 2023 and Dec 2021 before that. So it’s not really a NHO for the regulars.
    The homophone for khaki is spot on for me, as they often are, but from my years spent in California I knew the Americans here would struggle with it.
    Lots of ‘aha’s today. Favourite was 9d for Policeman.

18. I think I set a personal best (worst?) for the number of reverse solves. Not big or clever, the answers just seem to jump out from the wordplay.

    Top ticks for LUNATIC FRINGE, JUST THE TICKET & SITTING PRETTY

    Cheers V&A

19. STASIS (in the final clue) is a state of arrest.

20. All good fun, thanks both.
    I’m fine with the aural wordplay in 11. The double link “[i]s in” less so.

21. Bodycheetah@18 I am not sure what a reverse solve is, but I solved many of these by spotting the definition element and then parsing afterwards, so I either had the same experience as you or the opposite. I spent a couple of awkward moments wondering if someone on the lunatic fringe had said a slave was a comfort before the penny dropped with SALVE.

22. I needed this blog today! I wouldn’t have parsed 9d in a month of Sundays. I think referring to the Stasi as snoopers is a bit like calling Jack the Ripper a bit of a misogynist…

23. I think spell checker has usurped you in your opening sentence, Andrew, and I agree with the solve from definition and parse later. I despaired of completing this but perseverance paid off. Like others, NAIL SET was beyond me, although I know of Jimmy Nail (decent crooner as well). Negotiation was an interesting anagrind in EN GARDE. SITTING PRETTY, ONESELF, LUNATIC FRINGE and the amusing HAIRCUT were my favourites.

    Ta Vlad & Andrew.

24. Not my favourite by a long stretch – and a long stretch was what was needed for too many clues.

    Clues like Lunatic Fringe are excellent but others like Ogres or Stretti are a bit too much for my taste.

    A good workout but not as satisfying as it could be.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

25. This was difficult for me. Couldn’t get “NAIL SET. I remember Jimmy Nail from that song “Ain’t No Doubt”, but had no idea he was an actor as well. Thank you Andrew and Vlad for the puzzle

26. I found this an easier-than-usual offering from Vlad, who has overtaken Paul as my favourite setter. My d’oh moment was realising who the policeman was!

27. As others have remarked, a fair sprinkling of relatively transparent clues made this one of Vlad’s more accessible puzzles, but with enough more challenging constructions to keep the game alive. Lots of the usual political references, with clever wordplay and tight surfaces.

    I echo wynsum’s choices @15 and Bodycheetah’s @18.

    As grantinfreo @9 points out, the primary meaning of ‘stretto’ is ‘narrow’. A similar metaphor is applied in music using the word ‘largo’ (‘broad’) to mean ‘slow’.

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew

28. Maisie @19 is right – the word for state of arrest is STASIS, not STATIS, as in the blog.

29. An actor I don’t know who played a character I’ve never heard of in a TV show from 40 years ago I never watched? Seriously? I only got this because we had NAIL SET fairly recently. KHAKI is a more than slightly dodgy ‘homophone’, but got it from the initial K.

    The rest was tough but fair, though in many cases it was guess and try to parse.

30. Me @28: But to be fair, I needed the blog to parse this and many others, so thanks Andrew!

31. Me @28 again – apologies to Maysie for misspelling your name. That was autocorrect, not me 🙂

32. Some smiles today with SITTING PRETTY and KHAKI, but I found that very tough. I didn’t get the Jimmy Nail reference and couldn’t parse OGRES.

    Thanks Andrew for the parsings and Vlad for the mental workout.

33. Got all the answers, but as for the parsings ! – I think that it’s back to school for me.

34. thanks V & A! and i thought it was only a certain well-known 20C german dictator who use the vermin analogy.

35. I was more fortunate than most with the Jimmy Nail reference, being both old and a native North-Easterner, but agree that reference bordered on the unfair. For the rest, though, I seem to be in the minority, as there were few if any that I solved first, parsed later, and I thought this easier than usual for this setter.

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

36. A joyless slog with a lot unparsed. The sort of puzzle to make you think there must be a better way to waste your time.

37. Ilan Carron@34 Nye Bevin too.

38. This seemed to me to be on the lighter side of Vlad, but I BIFD a few and parsed later.

    I thought there was a mistake in the clue for THERAPIST, taking ‘worn’ as an inclusion indicator and wondering where the anagrind was, doh! I liked KHAKI (but then, that’s how I and the dictionaries pronounce it), Bob Hope’s haircut, the excellent anagram for LUNATIC FRINGE, the wordplays of NEVER MIND and SITTING PRETTY, and the well-hidden ONESELF.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

39. If not being able to parse everything counts as total impalement, then I was totally impaled. I did much better on the two Geordies than on the much more recent Trump-related vocabulary. Having got as far as E_I for the Jan 6 events, I wasted a lot of time trying to use Epiphany in the wordplay, and never did parse NEVER MIND. Couldn’t parse TIDINGS either, or STRETTI, which I thought was ALLEGRI until the crossers told me otherwise.

    I liked LUNATIC FRINGE and SITTING PRETTY, and an appreciative OUCH for the khaki car key.

    poc@29: “An actor I don’t know who played a character I’ve never heard of in a TV show I never watched” applies to most of the currently ubiquitous Friends references for me, so I can sympathise with your frustration.

40. Took a couple of sessions to get over the line, so excellent value for money! NHO NAIL SET and glad to add it to my lexicon, although I will leave the carpentry to experts. Are car keys still a thing? I’ve been given a fob for every car I’ve bought since the 1990s. HAIRCUT, LUNATIC FRINGE (both perhaps because I went to the barber today) SALVE, and TIDINGS were my favourites. Thanks Vlad and Andrew.

41. Alistair@36 expresses how I often feel after struggling fruitlessly, but today was more enjoyable and doable for me than many offerings from Vlad. I dislike the use of initial letters quite so often but that happens with many setters. 🤷‍♂️

42. Thanks V and A. I really enjoyed this, and just about managed everything. Some excellent groans, as well as pdms.

43. 1a,12a – always reminds me of Jack Rosenthal’s Bar Mitzvah Boy(1976) (aka Play ForToday S07E01)
    ‘Now that I am a man, I will follow my dear father’s example, and that of my dear grandfather, and last but not least that of my sister Lesley’s boyfriend Harold. They have been no end of a tower of strength IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS. I trust you will enjoy your evening, not forgetting the dancing which is about to ensue, as I feel sure you assuredly will. Thank you.’ [Scroll down to 21:35]
    Thanks V&A

44. ‘Khaki’ and ‘car key’ are homophones if you pronounce ‘bit’ and ‘beat’ identically. If you don’t, they aren’t.

45. I enjoyed it although didn’t like KHAKI, never heard of DI Troy and didn’t get the Jimmy Nail reference!

46. Great fun, and it helped that I was on Vlad’s wavelength today.

    Held up by 16ac as Jan 6 is Twelfth Night/Epiphany so spent too long trying to make something of that, until the penny dropped.

    I loved ERUPT for the very neat, evocative surface.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

47. I echo poc@29 regarding NAIL, but I got the Midsomer reference in TIDINGS. Go figure!

48. I don’t think I’ve ever tentatively entered so many solutions in a cryptic crossword without being able to even come close to parsing them. So not a particularly pleasurable experience for me today. I suppose a slight sense of achievement as I entered NAIL SET as loi, but not my favourite ever Vlad impalement, I’m afraid. Though I thought KHAKI an absolute ripper, as the Oz actor at 4d might have said, if indeed he had been Australian…

49. I found that tricky for a Wednesday. Had to verify that Nauru was a country and that imago and stretti were real words. I didn’t watch Auf Wiedersehn, Pet, and whiffed on the reference to Sting.

    I’m not entirely happy with T from Troy and L from Lecturer without some additional indication that we should take their first letter, but it does seem to be a convention in Grauniad Crosswordland that almost any word might someday be replaced by it’s first letter.

    Thank you Vlad for the puzzle and Andrew for the parsings I missed.

50. Especially liked 25a THERAPIST for its ‘lift and separate’ of “Egghead Pat’s” (Gibson). followed by a repunctuation,”egg head” to get an “E” for the anagram.
    (As beaulieu@16 has noted).
    [Pat has won £1mn on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. He’s also won Brain of Britain, and Mastermind (his specialist subjects included Father Ted).
    He’s !rish, but quizzes internationally for England.]

51. From Guardian 28887 Philistine (blogged by Andrew):
    They say you might need this to start the engine in the shade (5)
    Everyone knows the solution. Right?

52. Jacob @48: Grim and Dim @8 give a justification for L = lecturer. T for Troy refers to the troy weight measurement system for precious metals. One troy ounce (oz t) equals exactly 31.1034768 grams. Specialised terminology, certainly, but not random ‘take the first letter without telling you’.

53. I thought khaki was one of the better homophones.
    Is T a recognized abbreviation for Troy or is there something in the parsing that I’m missing?
    Has Trump ever called his opponents vermin ? He has used the term to refer to immigrants but I don’t recall him using it about opponents. However he is so verbose it it always possible.

54. Jacob @48, T for troy (small T) is the standard abbreviation to indicate troy rather than avoirdupois measures. Troy weight

55. Dr. WhatsOn: if you’re still around, I was intrigued by the app you designed to gauge the helpfulness or otherwise of crossing letters. If you have a minute, a couple of questions…

    Firstly, do your weightings roughly follow the numbers on Scrabble times? And secondly, do you adjust for position? (An A or I in the middle of a word might not be too helpful, but at the end, possibly more so.)

56. Dermot @43: Can you elucidate? For me “khaki” and “car key” are absolutely homophones. The only alternative pronunciation I have come across is in North America where I have heard it pronounced like the other name of the persimmon or Sharon fruit (“kaki”). On the other hand I cannot conceive of pronouncing “bit” and “beat” even close to the same, so really do not understand what you are trying to say.

    Gervase @51: Absolutely – I find that, over the years, I have learned a lot of abbreviations which turn out to be standard and not a one of them has simply been the first letter of a word without any other justification. That is not, and never has been, sufficient justification for a single letter being clued in the Guardian crossword in my experience.

    On the other hand, I am not a great fan of abbreviations which apply only as part of a combination but not on their own (e.g. if one took A=automobile because it appears in AA (or AAA) and RAC. Others seem to accept these if the abbreviation occurs in more than one instance (as above, or e.g. in F=fellow as it is used in so many abbreviations) even if it does never stand alone, or if the abbreviation is one of a number of options. E.g. One can be a *member* of the Institute of Physics (MInstP) or a *fellow* (FInstP), just as one can be MRCS, FRCS, MRGS, FRGS etc. So there is a case of M=member and F=fellow because they can move between sets of abbreviations so easily. But it does not justify P=physics, S=surgeons, G=geographical even those also appear in those abbreviations as they do not readily move between abbreviations.

    Always interesting to explore these grey areas!

57. JOFT@55: ‘khaki’ and ‘car key’ are only homophones for non-rhotic speakers. For the rest of us, they most definitely are not. This comes up frequently.

58. “A joyless slog” sums it up nicely for me. Thanks Alastair@36

    Verbose clues with fiddly answers are my least favourite. Like others, I finished the puzzle with several clues unparsed. I had run out of time to do the parsing and, frankly, had lost interest in the puzzle anyway.

    I did not have any favourites today. NAIL SET has established itself as an early favourite for the worst clue of the year award.

    Thanks Vlad and Andrew

59. There will always turn out to be a legal justification somewhere, no matter how obscure, for any first-letter abbreviation. And somebody here will pop up to tell you what it is. But for practical solving purposes, just shrug, say “really?” or “well, I suppose so” and get on with it.

60. poc@57: But what does that have to do with the pronunciation of “bit” and “beat”, which was my question? I had assumed that the issue of the homophone was to do with how “khaki” is pronounced, but you rightly point out there is also variation in how “car key” is pronounced!

61. Thanks for the blog, quick start , slow middle and fast finish , the finish helped by most answers having the first letter checked. ONESELF was very nicely hidden, TIDINGS is very neat. I am surprised that AlanC has not found a law and order theme.
    Auf Wiedersehen, Pet had further series in the 2000s with nearly the same cast. The original series launched a lot of successful careers. Series 2 my favourite.

    I am pretty sure that L=Lecturer is still used in FE for job descriptions and pay scales. Not in HE anymore, there has been a single spine for about 5 years.

62. Reading through the comments made me quite pleased to have solved most of this without help. For those of us able to watch day time TV, I am writing this while watching Take a Hike which is being shown every afternoon this week.

63. I forgot to mention @58 that I too found a few answers easy to guess from the crossers, notwithstanding the absence of parsing. Thanks to Vlad for an accommodating grid.

64. JoFT @56: I agree wholeheartedly about the dubiety of single letter abbreviations which are never used in isolation. I don’t even like ones which, though never used alone, appear in many different combinations, such as the F = fellow and M = member, which you quote.

65. [Wiiliam@55 the weightings are from an analysis (not by me) of letter frequencies in a large corpus of English. The Scrabble (and Words-With-Friends) frequencies and letter scores approximate this. I do not weight by position, since there is no ready scale to use. I could in principle construct one by tracking thousands of puzzle-solving instances clue-by-clue from a random sample of solvers of different abilities, and use machine learning to infer the positional weights, but I’m not going to! Thanks for the questions.]

66. [DrWhatsOn @65: Years ago I made the observation on this site that Rufus puzzles usually had crossing letters with low Scrabble values – something which made his cryptic definition clues that much harder to solve. For the setter it probably makes the task easier, as words with such alternating letters give more options for intersecting into the puzzle]

67. [Dr. WhatsOn @65 and Gervase @66: As well as weight by position (which would vary with word length – what a nightmare!) there is the weighting of letter combinations. In English the likelihood of a letter is significantly changed by the letters either side of it, so you can’t simply follow the ETAOINSHRDLU route of most common letters. In fact, Claude Shannon pointed out that the information theory entropy of English was (in his opinion) nearly ideal for crosswords because with half the letters supplied by crossers you had significant help towards the word without it being totally given away. Languages with higher entropy allow more possibilities for given crossers so they are less help and vice versa. So a “helpfulness of crossers index” would depend not just on the letter frequency and position but also the other crossers e.g. if you saw ????i?g you’d be pretty certain that was an “ing” ending. Ditto ???t?d would be much more likely to end “ted” than “tad”. All fascinating stuff, and one of many reasons to love great puzzles.]

68. My views on crossing letters . Most helpful are first letters , for Azed they are like gold dust, for daily puzzles this means that perimeter grids, like this one, much better than sticklebrick grids, we had a lot of these last week.
    For crossing, consonants much better than vowels and certain consonants better still, the higher scoring, less frequent ones from Scrabble. See the Brummie puzzle blogged on Saturday.

69. Completed with much guesswork, but my ability to parse the answers is appalling.
    Seems so obvious when explained!
    Thanks both.

70. I’m always quite chuffed when I complete a Vlad, and seem to be in the minority in having found this pretty approachable. NAIL SET went in from crossers with a vague guess it was Jimmy Nail I was looking for.

    L for Lecturer does appear in Chambers on its own – so any complaints should probably be directed there.

    Thanks both.

71. I enjoy Vlad, this wasn’t quite in his top drawer (too many single letter abbreviations for my personal taste). The friendly grid made it easier than he can be. I thought LUNATIC FRINGE a fine anagram, and enjoyed the definition for HAIRCUT and the neat surface/construction for CONCOURSE. Good challenge, for which many thanks.

72. IC@34: but apparently Trump thought that that particular German was a “great guy”.

    DT@44: I don’t pronounce “bit” and “beat” anything like identically, but “khaki” and “car key” are near enough homophonic for me (and anyway, aren’t we meant to be avoiding the “h” word?)

73. Roz @61: did cross my mind for reasons you have spotted but police/prisons seem to feature in most crosswords.

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

75. Never heard of Jimmy Nail or his show. Have heard of Sting but didn’t remember (if ever knew) that he was in the Police, so that didn’t help.

    mrpenney, you and I apparently speak variations of our dialect, because for me KHAKI rhymes with “rocky” — but that didn’t help a bit. The phonemes match “car key” but the tune is all wrong.

76. So many spurious complaints about the non-rhotic aural wordplay at 11a KHAKI. The fault is not with the pun, but with Andrew’s (not Vlad’s) characterization of it as a homophone. Hear, hear, Tim C @14.

77. Cellomaniac@76: I’m afraid that even as a pun this doesn’t work for me, but de gustibus …

78. Paul @40 … nothing to do with the crossword but, rather, your fob car key.

    My money says that if you look closely at your fob you’ll find a little, very little, quite unobtrusive, set back ‘something’ – to which you’ve never paid any attention.

    If you do, and if you push it, an old-fashioned car key will be available….

79. #JoFT@60
    In most British accents the second vowel of ‘khaki’ is a short vowel, the same as the vowel of ‘bit’ or ‘wit’. It’s a different phoneme to the vowel of ‘key’, which is a long front vowel, the same as that in ‘beat’ or ‘wheat’. It’s also unstressed. I thought this applied to American and Australian accents too, but maybe not. I rhyme ‘car key’ with ‘marquee’; and ‘khaki’ and ‘malarkey’. There are more than 5 vowel phonemes in English, so the differences aren’t well represented in the spelling

80. This took me forever to solve, my only excuses being a bad cold and the distraction of the Cheltenham Festival on TV. I found it very tough but satisfying – despite not fully parsing NAIL SET.

    I wish that some of the people who come here to vent their spleen would a) consider how difficult setting crosswords is, and then b) now imagine setting a crossword without using any initial letter abbreviations. Oh, and c) how about looking it up in Chambers before complaining?

    I’ve been trying hard not to comment about the (inevitable) discussion of puns, but I have to say that I always pronounce the final syllables of marquee and malarkey so that they rhyme with car key and KHAKI. Always.

    Or if I didn’t before, I shall certainly make a point of doing it now. 🙂

    Thanks to Vlad and Andrew.

81. I was a day late starting this one (busy yesterday) and very late finishing, or more accurately, DNF’ing. NAIL SET escaped me: never heard of ‘Oz’ in that context and I don’t even know what sort of ‘punch’ is referred to (boxing? making holes? a horse? presumably not the drink…).

    Also I put TAKE A RIDE instead of TAKE A HIKE. A reasonable alternative I thought. Certainly not my favourite clue.

    And then there was CONCIERGE instead of CONCOURSE – but in the end I fixed that. Likewise STASI instead of STATI and HAIRCUT instead of HAIRNET.

    So on the whole a bit disappointed with this from Vlad. But in mitigation, I’ll say I really liked the four long ones going round the perimeter – so that makes up for it.

    Not even looked at today’s Paul yet… 🙁

    Thanks to the Impaler and Andrew.

82. [Fan@78 – yes I know all about that, having had to use the hidden ‘real’ key once when the battery in the fob went flat. (I was most annoyed about that: I’d only just bought the car and one might assume the dealer would replace the fob batteries before selling it…)

    Some time ago I rented a car in the USA which also came with just a fob – and I don’t recall there being any physical key with it. I now wonder if we would have been stranded if the battery gave out. But luckily that didn’t happen.]

83. There was a TV series called Oz, about a prison, and I racked my brains trying to think of a four-letter actor from that. Then I thought of Bert Lahr, from the Wizard of Oz, but no dice where either. I finally bunged in NAIL with no understanding why. Thanks for the explanation; AWP is not a show I’m acquainted with.

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