The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29955.
The utility that I normally use to blog crosswords is not available for whatever reason, so here is a hash up with a lot of cut-and-paste. Definitions are identified by italics, which is confusing for double definitions – you just have to guess where the break comes. There’s no grid, and blank lines have crept in, and I cannot find how to eliminate them.
ACROSS
1 Looking like a Teletubby with a sour expression? (2-5)
PO-FACED A reference to the Teletubby character Po.
5 Material is wonderful and no end costly (6)
FABRIC A charade of FAB (‘wonderful’) plus RIC[h] (‘costly’) minus its last letter (‘no end’).
9 Airborne soldier without his dog tag is unnecessarily fearful (8)
PARANOID A charade of PARA (‘airborne soldier’) plus NO I.D. (‘without his dog tag’).
10 Meat spread left in light shade (6)
PASTEL A charade of PASTE (‘meat spread’) plus L (‘left’).
12 Send girl to do work for tree specialist (12)
DENDROLOGIST An anagram (‘work’) of ‘send girl to do’.
15 She dropped everything to tour Midlands town (4,6)
LADY GODIVA A reference to the well-known legend of her naked ride through Coventry.
17/19 Cannon and Ball (3-3)
POM-POM Double definition, the first a gun, and the second often rendered without the hyphen.
20 Like the part of Africa that is below the sand? (3-7)
SUB-SAHARAN Cryptic definition, depending on interpreting ‘below’ as southerly, as usual in a map with north at the top.
22 Faulty information on the computer (5,7)
ERROR MESSAGE Slightly cryptic definition.
26 An interval before VAT comes back reduced (6)
OCTAVE A hidden (‘reduced’) reversed (‘back’) answer in ‘beforE VAT COmes’.
27 Religious leader who’s gone off the record (8)
ANTIPOPE Cryptic definition, the ‘record’ being the list of popes.
28 Very small, or a little high (6)
TIDDLY Double definition.
29 What dogs do, pleased to see bird (7)
WAGTAIL WAG TAIL (‘what dogs do’).
DOWN
1 Without permission snaps A-lister’s breasts (4)
PAPS Double definition, the first being a verb formed from paparazzo.
2 Tyson’s rage (4)
FURY A reference to the boxer Tyson Luke Fury.
3 Meet to study a strip of grass (8)
CONVERGE A charade of CON (‘study’) plus VERGE (‘strip of grass’).
4 What’s definitely decided is cut with this (5)
DRIED A reference to the expression “cut and dried” (‘definitely decided’).
6 The river that moves vast quantities of goods (6)
AMAZON Double/cryptic definition, the second being the on-line market place.
7 Later I failed to leave car in out-of-town centre (6,4)
RETAIL PARK A charade of RETAIL, an anagram (‘failed’) of ‘later I’; plus PARK (‘to leave car’).
8 Remember: ring for the babysitter? (4,2,4)
CALL TO MIND Definition and literal interpretation.
11 The pack, or a whole team (6)
WOLVES Double definition, the first being the animals, and the second Wolverhampton Wanderers FC.
13 Warmly received, returning to pavilion, exhausted (7,3)
CLAPPED OUT Definition and literal interpretation.
14 Vaguely outlined throwing mud at beard (10)
ADUMBRATED An anagram (‘throwing’) of ‘mud at beard’.
16 Put out needing two days to cross river (6)
DOUSED An envelope (‘to cross’) of OUSE (‘river’) in D D (‘two days’).
18 Clubs embracing in-your-face charity collection (8)
CHUGGING A charade of C (‘clubs’) plus HUGGING (’embracing’).
21 Material for path of serious length (6)
GRAVEL A charade of GRAVE (‘serious’) plus L (‘length’).
23 Strength of wines intoxicated (5)
SINEW An anagram (‘intoxicated’) of ‘wines’.
24 Scrap part of an alphabet (4)
IOTA Double definition; in the second, the ‘alphabet’ is Greek.
25 Phone to America from prison (4)
CELL Double definition, the first being the American usage answering to a mobile phone.
Thanks PeterO. It doesn’t look too bad from my end.
I didn’t know an ANTIPOPE was a thing despite being what would be a useful adjective at times.
I thought this was good, Monday Vulcan fun. I liked the cryptic definitions as usual. DENDROLOGIST was just GK really, but a nicely packaged anagram.
Thanks again.
Chugging was loi, hadn’t come across that charity/hugging combo. Also slow to work out the first bit of 12ac, despite well knowing that dendrites are the treey parts of neurons. Owise, yep Mondayish, ta VnP.
Great Monday stuff by Vulcan.
CHUGGING always reminds me of that Sean Lock joke which wouldn’t be appropriate here. Not my favourite people.
ANTIPOPE last one in after trying to justify the only word I thought fitted -antidote. Probably should have abandoned that idea earlier.
Only other problem was a erroneous COME TO MIND but that was soon corrected by the acrosses.
Liked PAPS (although never used that term for the second definition) and CLAPPED OUT.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO blog reads just fine to me.
nho ANTIPOPE and cluing isn’t helpful, so an unsatisfactory finish to an otherwise pleasant Monday puzzle. Thanks both.
I think Vulcan puzzles are getting a little harder than they used to be. Took me a while to get ANTIPOPE – the only word that seemed to fit; ‘off the record’ is vague and unhelpful.
Not come across PAPS as a verb before, but the noun was familiar to me as a hill-walking Scot; there are quite a few rounded, somewhat breast-shaped hills named thus, e.g. the Pap of Glencoe.
grantinfreo@3 – CHUGGING is actually a portmanteau of CHarity and mUGGING though chuggers don’t usually go as far as using physical threats.
Thanks PeterO (the blog makes perfect sense in spite of the difficulties you had) and Vulcan.
Initially thought IOTA was A-TO-I before realising there was no reversal indicated.
Typical Vulcan fare and none the worse for that. Quite a bit of GK. Ticks for PO-FACED, CLAPPED OUT, and ADUMBRATED
Agree Vulcan could have had a bit more fun with ANTIPOPE
Cheers P&V
Agreed that the vocabulary today was a cut above the usual Monday level with ADUMBRATE, PAPS (the hills on Jura come to mind: I think the word being used to describe a woman’s breasts is obsolete), DENDROLOGIST, CHUGGING and so on. Never heard of the “record” as a specific thing for Popes, so ANTIPOPE got revealed although it was obviously anti-something. I liked the PARA stuck with NO ID.
Thanks PeterO for putting the blog together against the odds: it looks fine.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Several that needed specific UK GK – PO-FACED, FURY, CHUGGING for example. Also some oddities – why “A-lister’s” in1d? Why does ” reduced” mean “reversed” in 26a? Was an ANTIPOPE a leader? (Does it refer to the Papal Schism, when the French set up a rival pope in Avignon?)
Presumably the “pavilion” in13d is a cricket reference.
I had only vague memories of having heard ADUMBRATE, and no idea what it meant. Needed a wordsearch.
Not one of Vulcan’s most enjoyable.
Me @9
Yes the Schism was just one example of there being an ANTIPOPE. See here.
Another meaty challenge for a Monday with a few obscurities listed already. Like Bodycheetah @7, I was trying to justify A TO I, so that was a shrug and I liked the intersecting of the West Mids cities, Coventry and Wolverhampton. The only CHUGGING I knew, was what I was doing lots of, watching the marvellous rugby on Saturday.
Ta Vulcan & PeterO.
Muffin @9, 26a I took ‘reduced’ to indicate the hidden element (ie, not all the letters needed), with ‘comes back’ as the reversal indicator. Which is, I think, what PeterO says in the blog. In 1d, a paparazzo will normally target celebs, hence ‘without permission snaps A-listers’. And yes, when a batter is out they return to the pavilion.
Nice puzzle, a bit trickier places than usual for a Monday, but a lot of fun. Thanks to both.
Tough puzzle. I gave up in the NW corner where I failed to solve 9ac, 1d (ugh, what an ugly surface to this clue), and 4d.
I have felt for a while now that many of the Guardian setters use too many military equipment and war-related clues for my taste, and is it really necessary? I’m so disheartened by wars and violence in the news, I don’t want it in my cryptic crosswords as well.
New for me: POM-POM cannon; WOLVES = football team; boxer Tyson FURY; CHUGGING.
Favourite: IOTA.
Muffin @9 I’m not sure the name of a double world heavyweight boxing champion counts as UK-specific general knowledge. There are overseas boxers too numerous to mention, stretching back several decades that I’m sure we wouldn’t complain about being expected to know.
All fine other than a poor clue for ANTIPOPE, as there’s no way of solving it if you don’t know the word. It either needed a different way in, though Vulcan could have used ANTIDOTE is ANTIGONE instead.
Did anybody else try ATOM for IOTA? I tried to justify ANTIPOPE as one no longer fond of pop records, but couldn’t account for the final ‘e’.
Lovelyplace@6, yes of course. I looked it up, then wandered off before commenting, then got it wrong … aging brain!
MOH @12
Thanks. I actually worked out that the A-listers went with the snaps rather than the breasts as I was driving to the supermarket!
Another here finding ANTIPOPE a bit of a let down after the rest of the (rather nice) puzzle. If it had to the ANTIPOPE instead of, say ANTIGONE, I would have thought it could have been more clearly clued.
What a great word ADUMBRATED is. Game of the week: try to slip it into conversation as many times as you can.
I especially like PARANOID and CALL TO MIND. For once my very skimpy football GK stretched just far enough to get WOLVES.
[grantinfreo @3: “Dendritic” is also a description of a way that crystals can grow from a liquid or vapour: the growth surface can be unstable against minor outward perturbations, so the growing crystal continuously branches out. The “Jack Frost” ice patterns on the window pane on a chilly morning are a nice example.]
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO .
Here’s Robbie Coltrane as ANTIPOPE Mason Boyne
Some barely cryptic definitions here (20a and 27a in particular). I did know ANTIPOPE and guessed CHUGGING from the cryptic fodder, though it’s not a word I’ve ever come across with that meaning. OCTAVE was well hidden.
My usual problems with dd and cd but got there in the end. Another who found the clue for ANTIPOPE somewhat underwhelming. I liked the PARA with NO ID, LADY GODIVA dropping everything, OCTAVE, my LOI, which was well-hidden, and GRAVEL path material.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Petert@17: another ATOM here!
Could someone please explain where the pavilion comes into CLAPPED OUT? I gather from the comments it’s a cricket thing?
I share the appreciation for ADUMBRATE. Thank you Vulcan and PeterO!
Calabar Bean @24
When a batsman is dismissed (i.e. “out”) he returns to the pavilion (as the changing rooms/players’ viewing area is always known at a cricket field). If he has had a good innings, he will be clapped by the spectators as he walks back.
Calamari Bean@24: Yes, it’s a cricketing reference. When a batting team or an individual player is out (of play) they return to the pavilion.
Cricket has multiple, and contradictory, definitions of the word out.
I interpreted the clue for ANTIPOPE slightly differently, as the Antipope that came to my mind had “gone off” to Avignon.
I came here prepared to be irritated by whichever pedant pointed out Coventry is a city, not a town, but nobody did, so I’ll have to.
Coventry was a town at the time Cormac@28?
I really enjoyed this one. As a new solver I am used to guessing the straight definition then trying to parse the clue. If I can’t, I usually blame myself rather than the setter. Hardest one for me was “Cannon and Ball”. (How embarrassing, not being able to solve a 3 letter clue when you already have 2 letters!)
Enjoyed it. Couldn’t get FURY. Thanks, Vulcan and PeterO. (Did you have a blizzard on Long Island?)
pavement@29 AHA! Good point, thank you!
[Much appreciated muffin@25, DaceW@26]
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO. As already mentioned, the blog looks fine Peter – sorry you’re having problems.
Could I just point out that for WAGTAIL the definition in brackets could be more precisely stated as ‘what dogs do pleased’.
Cormac @28: I referred to it @11?
Enjoyable puzzle and slightly easier than Turnstone’s Quiptic from yesterday IMO, and I felt easier than some of the other Vulcan puzzles of recent weeks. Loved PARA NO ID and disliked ANTIPOPE. I tried ANTIGONE but felt it was wrong and I still don’t really understand how the clue works to give me ANTIPOPE. Thanks PerteO and to Vulcan.
I smiled at the first one, PO-FACED, and that set the tone for the rest of the puzzle which was very enjoyable. Favourite LADY GODIVA. (A city is a town — “Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner that I love London town”, “New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town”…).
PAPS meaning breasts is rather archaic, as in The Faerie Queene: “And her two lily paps aloft displayed, And all, that might his melting heart entice”.
Many thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Enjoyable.
I thought of ANTIPOPE, but I couldn’t see the “off the record” (I thought it was going to be anti = against or off).
I loved WOLVES, AMAZON and WAGTAIL. They were reasonably simple, yet they all made me smile because quaintly clued: sometimes simple is enough when well done!
Less keen on the clue to 1 down, which seemed as a tad tasteless and unpleasant, and I have a lot of sympathy with the point made by michelle@14.
We agree with Michelle @14 that military terms are overused by many setters. Please try to avoid them, comrades!
By breaking up POM-POM into POM and POM, Vulcan has committed the Crosswordland sin of putting in the same grid entry twice. I held off entering it for a while for that reason.
I’d never heard of the word CHUGGING in this sense, though I’ve certainly been chugged before. My workplace is near one of their favorite corners to ply, so it’s almost a daily occurrence during the warm seasons. I’m not a rude person by nature, but they’d be wasting their time with me; so my rudeness to them is actually a kindness, I’ve concluded. Anyway, thanks to Vulcan I now have a word for them.
PeterT @17
Yes, I entered ATOM for 24. In fact I ticked it as I thought it a clever clue. So I was disappointed when it turned out to be the much less clever IOTA. That made the obvious WAGTAIL a lot less obvious, and even after ATOM was corrected, I still didn’t get ANTIPOPE (which I am doubly ignorant about, both the “religious leader” and the “off the record” elements). So I didn’t actually finish a Vulcan puzzle, which is disappointing.
In other news, I thought SUB SAHARAN was barely cryptic, DENDROLOGIST was new, LADY GODIVA was amusing (I went to Warwick University near Coventry, where she was the talk of the town; this would have been a bit after the famous Lady’s big moment), and OCTAVE was cleverly concealed in a plausible surface.
A nice start to the week’s labours.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
We had thigging (from thig Scottish for ‘to get by begging) at 18dn, but, of course, could not parse it.
A slow start for me but I ended up really enjoying it – good for those of us who like double and cryptic definitions and aren’t keen on complicated envelopes. I particularly liked PO-FACED, TIDDLY and AMAZON.
Thanks for the blog , pretty good and the ones I did not like have had enough criticism .
I also had A TO M , a much better answer , but when I tried to put it in the A was there from WAGTAIL .
CHUGGING often attempted at the railway stations , I feel sorry for them because everyone always in a hurry .
Michelle @14
I agree with you on 1D: not a very savoury clue or answer. Ditto on the depressing amount of awful military news currently, not being something we need reminding of in our daily puzzle-struggles.
Another bugbear of mine is the military OR for “men”, something I have never come across outside of crosswords. Can’t anyone think of an alternative for OR? 😉
1961Blanchflower @47
Heraldic gold? Alternative?
We often have OR = gold , sometimes yellow . We could have gate .
If it must be military I prefer OR = soldiers , men is so disparaging just because they are not officers .
I agree regarding the distaste for 1d, which could easily have been avoided by choosing a different word – “pope” for example. That could have given Vulcan the opportunity for a more interesting clue for 27. Two birds with one stone 😊
Otherwise a good start to the week. Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Roz @49: not to mention the fact that many of them these days are women!
[The Paps of Jura are puzzling. There are in fact three of them, but I don’t think there are many places you can stand at ground level to see all three at the same time.; most places you just see two (as you would expect!).
There’s also a Pap of Glencoe.]
Thanks @muffin and Roz. My comment seeking “an alternative for OR” was what passes for a joke, as “alternative” is often used to signify OR. I always think a joke is much better once you explain it!
My wider objection is that I have never seen that usage of OR outside crosswords. I sometimes complete crosswords with part of my brain engaged in theoretically trying to explain what is going on to my kids (a waste of time as they have shown little interest in crosswords). Explaining OR as “Other Ranks” would be tedious, since none of us have seen it used that way in the flesh.
Typical Monday, quite straightforward but stumbled at the last with the CD ANTIPOPE like a lot of others, I see. Nho for me, but I think that’s my problem, not the setter’s.
I tried KEEP IN MIND at first, but it was soon corrected by crossers.
It’s always nicer to my mind to have DD’s without unnecessary linkers, so I’d have preferred Phone to American prison for 25.
Thanks, Vulcan and PeterO for your efforts.
Relieved to read that I’m not the only one who found this tougher than the usual Monday Vulcan.
As so often, my GK is “upside down” to many others. I knew ANTIPOPE (and now also know that it is more obscure than I thought), but not the boxer (I don’t follow the sport, nor celebrity gossip). NHO CHUGGING. And I didn’t know either definition of PAPS, so that was a headscratcher.
And as usual I did not know the bird, but got there with the wordplay.
Ace @55
I’m glad at least two people have confirmed that Tyson Fury is a bit obscure, as I suggested earlier! However I find it difficult to believe that you have never seen a wagtail. (If you had , you would know why they are called that.)
Mention of the Paps of Jura put me in mind of a similarly-derived toponym out my way: the magnificent Grand Tetons in Wyoming. Like others I would much prefer Antigone at 27: Annie got weird for champion of divine law. (8)?
MOH @ 12.
I think the reversal indicator is just “back” otherwise “comes” is working twice as hard as it needs to.
cyniccure @34.
Or even “what dogs do pleased to see”.
What day is this? Tough puzzle. My Chambers hasn’t had such a workout in a long time. Couldn’t solve 27a and 24d. For kicks I put in INTIMATE (as a priest at confession) and PAPA (part of an(ato) alphabet) respectively, but both were wrong, as expected. Spent too long vainly puzzling over them, only to see they are both considered weak clues, so feeling peeved. I liked 9a PARANOID
Thanks both.
CLAPPED OUT is surely: ‘warmly received’=’clapped’ and ‘returning to pavilion’=’out’ with no need for applause for a dismissed batsman to arise.
ANTIPOPE is one for Papa Bunny…
Ooh oooh and Paps
jeceris @59, my apologies, you’re quite right about 26 ac. Should have looked more closely before commenting!
LordJim#37
And “Blessed be the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck” Luke11:26-27 in the King James Version.
Got ANTIPOPE completely by accident. It is a track on The Damned’s Machine Gun Etiquette album, which seemed way too obscure for ‘off the record’, but in the end it was the only possible thing I could justify even at a stretch. I had no idea that it is a real thing. Serendipitious TILT, is that a new category?
Too many military clues, which are a depressing comment on the human condition.
Too many religious clues, which to most atheists are a depressing comment on the human condition.
Too many cricket and rugby clues, which to most North American solvers are a depressing comment on the British human condition.
Yes, setters should limit their clues to nice, pleasant subjects that everyone can enjoy. 😉
Cellomaniac@: It’s St Patrick’s Day – the season to be jolly! Ok, it has ‘religious’ overtones but nothing to do with warfare, cricket or rugby so we can put 1a the aggressor and 2d the throat…