Guardian Cryptic 28,184 by Vulcan

83 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,184 by Vulcan”

1. Quite difficult for me. I was slow to get started and slow to finish. Was not on the setter’s wavelength at all.

   Did not parse 23a the OCT bit in OCT/AVE. Why does OCT = days or weeks?

    

   THanks B+S.

2. This was my quickest yet. OED gave ‘no search results’ for hindermost. Thanks Vulcan and lunapick.

3. …and some on the G thread said they could hardly write fast enough to put them in. Not me, a scratchy patchy solve, not a write-in at all, so I wasn’t worrying too much about clue quality. I spose wink, inmate, gee, etc are amateurish, but no blood pressure raised. Thanks V and L.

4. Not at all Mondayish for me – like michelle@1, it took a long time, particularly the NW corner with DEFIANCE and  METEORIC. But I enjoyed it, unlike loonapick! Many thanks to V & l.

5. Thanks, loonapick.

   23a: one definition of OCTAVE is “The eight days from a festival to its octave,” so I think “eight days is the def, leaving “weeks” to rather vaguely indicate OCT.

   [You have some strange dates in your entry for 26d …]

6. I read the ‘to’ in 13d as equivalent to ‘into’.  ARCHIMEDES could be ‘forced’, i.e. anaground, into ‘heed racism’.  (And it’s topical!)

   And for 12a, I saw the primary definition for INMATE as ‘How prisoner’s’, i.e. ‘how a prisoner is’ (= an inmate), with ‘How… board game may end’ (‘how’ doing double duty) providing the cryptic definition.

   But I did share the discomfort about Indian = Sikh.

   I liked SECONDS, and any reference to Eric M generally makes me smile.

   Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

7. It took me a while too. I liked 12a INMATE, 26a FAST, 27a LEEDS, 13d ARCHIMEDES (despite the “to” which seemed to me to be there to make for a smoother surface) and 22a PADDLE. I didn’t really like 9a ALICE which seemed awkward, while I also had a question mark beside OCTAVE at 23a and SEEK at 2d. I couldn’t understand the DE part of DEFIANCE (1d) so thanks to loonapick for that parse. And thank you to Vulcan for helping us to start the crossword week well.

8. Miche @5

   thanks, now I can understand the OCTAVE.

   5 a the eighth day (when counted inclusively) after a church festival; b the eight days from a festival to its octave.

   I should have looked in Chambers earlier.

    

9. 1913 to 2006 is Gerald Ford’s lifespan. He had a meteoric rise to President in 1974, when Nixon resigned, but was drummed out in 1977, when beaten by Jimmy Carter in the election.

10. Well, I didn’t dislike it as much as loonapick, but it wasn’t my favourite puzzle due to the number of dds, and my general dislike of puns.

    Favourites were SPRINTER and DIVISION.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick!

11. Certainly not a write-in but some of the difficulty was in dealing with non-cryptic definitions (“mushroom”, “paddle”) and very weak definitions (“Sikh” among others) which is not the kind of difficulty I take much pleasure in. I rather liked “inmate” but there was an element of Everyman’s “I’ll bung in some extra words to make the surface nice” about this, which only sowed confusion.

    I thought “drummed out” referred to the idea that if you’d done too much drumming (“beating”) then you might feel “drummed out” ie unable to drum any more. As loonapick says, it sort of works. Just.

    “Nebula” is a cloud of gas, not a lot of stars. Some are the birthplace of stars but the term doesn’t mean what the definition in the clue says. But then we seem to be living in a crosswordland where scientific terms can be used to mean anything the setter wants these days!

    Anyhow, thanks for the morning wake up Vulcan and Loonapick.

    Ford, of course, was famously never elected to President or Vice-President, having stepped into the latter role when Spiro Agnew departed under a cloud.

12. With several very capable solvers already noting difficulties with this, I suspect it’s down to the point loonapick made in his opening comments: too many double/cryptic definitions.  You either get them or you don’t so the wavelength factor is more relevant than ever.  No wordplay to either get to the answer in the first place or to parse with hindsight.  I happened to be lucky today.

    I liked FRIDGE, DEFIANCE and DIVISION, all of which are basically the same kind of clue and WINK brought a smile.  I always feel sorry for ALICE’s when I see the name clued that way.  I thought SPRINTER particularly weak.  And less than 2% of Indians are Sikhs, making it a poor clue in my book ,even if the homophone stands.

    The tenure attributed to Gerald FORD sounds like the kind of stretch Trump was aiming for.  And that Putin is well on his way to emulating.

    Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

13. I’m with you, Loonapick. Sorry, but no real enjoyment there.

14. Seems loonapick got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning, although I do agree with some of his blog.

    Amused by his (corrected by tenfold @80) suggestion of Fords term of office.

15. (corrected by Penfold @9)

16. I agree that this wasn’t a particularly enjoyable solve. I am frequently not on Vulcan’s wavelength for dd’s however this one didn’t seem so hard. It took a while to see DEFIANCE which I think is a good clue and I enjoyed METEORIC and IRKSOME. A gentle enough start to the week.
    Thanks Loonapick and Vulcan

17. Clearly a marmite puzzle.  I’m in the “OK” camp with no real beefs other than the vague oct = ‘weeks’ in OCTAVE and the superfluous to in 13d already mentioned by the blogger.

    Vive la difference say I – it’s what makes The Graun such a special crossword.

    Many thanks, both.

18. Irksome was in last week’s Quiptic.

19. The redeeming feature of this puzzle was that it was over very quickly, even for Monday.

20. TheZed@11 I think the nebula clue is ok – this was a term used (when astronomers didn’t didn’t have the optical equipment to see the difference, to resolve galaxies into stars) for gaseous clouds and such as the Andromeda Nebula, now known as the Andromeda Galaxy.

     

    Thanks loonapick and Vulcan. I am in the OK camp

21. One down defiantly held out for last one in. Liked OCTAVE and METEORIC. Thought IRKSOME lived up to its name as a not obvious to work out anagram. Lots to like for a Monday.

22. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

    I’m another who thinks nebula is OK. Chambers‘ first definition is “A faint, misty appearance in the heavens produced either by a group of stars too distant to be seen singly, or by diffused gaseous matter”. SOED has similar.

23. Doh, Eric Morecambe and I was thinking for ages about the bay.

    On the first pass, not a lot filled in because of all the cds and dds [surely, that does not make it very easy?] I thought of ‘off break’ at the beginning.

    I guess it filled the brief for a Monday, sort of.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

24. Hmmm in Oz @2; HINDERMOST is in the OED as archaic.

25. Odd one, really. I whipped off half of the grid in no time and then ground to a halt unpicking Vulcan’s “You either get them or you don’t” wordplay. I am in the minority in really liking dd’s and cryptic definitions, but they can be obtuse. Anyhow, favourites were METEORIC and PALM, but the likes of SEEK, FAST and PADDLE needed more work. I still don’t really understand OCTAVE.

26. Well I liked solving this one at a rate of knots, giving me more time to continue the Saturday prize offering from Boatman! A puzzle I’m grappling with enjoyably. Unlike today’s. I agree with Loonapick on pretty much every point, but especially the number of dds.
    Like to add my name to the list of posters regarding displeasure at SEEK. Wrong in pretty much every way.
    Thanks anyway Vulcan, and Loonapick for the disgruntled Monday morning blog! Made me smile ?

27. Fourteen cd/dd clues? I’m with loonapick. I’ll shut up now.

28. Ugh I’m getting so bored of Vulcan Mondays – I think there are some dreadful loose clues here – a mixture of bad grammar (e.g. that “to” in 13d) and really loose cryptic definitions where you can’t be sure you’ve got it right without all the crossers. And so I start to doubt every answer and it becomes difficult not through wit or misdirection but because you feel you can’t trust any letters you’ve already got in case the rubbish cryptic definition was actually pointing to another similarly loose answer.

    Anyway, thanks for the blog and much as I didn’t enjoy it thanks Vulcan for your hard work – as loonapick says, plenty of people loved it so what do I know?!

29. I usually finish too late in the day to comment, not so today, and I really enjoyed this one. Thank you Vulcan!

30. Loonapick, I think you have the dates of Gerald Ford’s life, not his oresidencypresidency.

    I found this something of a slog for a Monday.

31. presidency

32. The preponderance of DD’s where one of the D’s is sufficient to solve the clue made this like a quick crossword and so it proved.  I have reservations about “nebula’ and using “roundabout” to represent “O” when you’ll never see an O indicating a roundabout.   1D, struck me as a very good cryptic crossword clue but unfortunately there weren’t others of its standard.

33. Fully behind loonapick on this one.

34. Hooray, a new week, lockdown’s easing, the sun’s shining and I’m eager to get cracking on the Grauniad crossword, so let’s see- oh gawd, it’s Vulcan. I’m largely in agreement with Loonapick about the need to cater for all solvers’ tastes, but I find the plethora of DDs and feeble cryptic definitions (e.g. SPRINTER) rather IRKSOME (although I did like the clue to that word). MUSHROOM is barely cryptic. Looking for positives rather than being unremittingly grumpy, DEFIANCE and NEBULA were pleasing, while I took more than a few SECONDS to realise my Cromwellian thoughts were leading nowhere. LEEDS is vaguely topical, as the late Jack Charlton’s side surge towards the Premier League. And maybe England’s batsmen should have had a more intensive 17D.

35. Am I the only one foolish enough to have been slowed down in the bottom right corner by assuming presidential Fiat rather than Gerald?

36. Thanks Loonapick. Not my fav crossword but I don’t think I disliked it as much as you did.

    DEFIANCE and METEORIC LOsI and took me a while. I actually had DEFIANCE for a bit before I realised it was the answer, but parsed the D, E as from streamed school classes starting at A.  Demographic classes work just as well but that’s not the system here.  DEFIANCE and PALM were my favs.

    And I think that Loonapick is technically correct – FORD was president between 1913 and 2006, just not for all those years!

    Thanks to Vulcan and to Loonapick

37. I’m surprised at the totally hostile blog by loonapick – and claiming Bob Geldof on your side in not liking Mondays is about as weak as some of the clues that he castigates. I can see that there’s some support either way in the responses so far, with some finding themselves not on Vulcan’s wavelength, some expressing enjoyment and some, like me, skating through with rather more groans than ahas for accompaniment.

    Some clues were childishly simple (I’m looking at you, FORD, WINK and LEEDS), with only OCTAVE requiring much in the way of unpicking. The one that held out longest for me was, appropriately, DEFIANCE.

    I’m with essexboy @6 in reading 13d as ARCHIMEDES being forced into (in the sense of remoulded or morphed to now appear as) HEED RACISM, with “forced to” being just for the surface.

38. Robi @ 24. Apologies. I thought it was the OED but it was a website called lexico.com referencing ‘Oxford English’. The URL was misleading.

    From my Shorter OED on historical principles, there are two entries for hinder. The first (relating to situated behind) gives + hinderest, hindermost. Here the plus sign is their sign for obsolete. I do not know if their + applies to hindermost as well. The second entry is for hinder relating to keep back.

     

39. When I see Vulcan’s name on a Monday crossword I just try and get it over as quickly as possible. What a grouch I am! But when you know a plethora of your least favourite clue type – cd / dd – is heading your way it’s difficult to get out of the mindset.

    But I really liked DEFIANCE.

40. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

    I thought this was OK, and significantly harder than the Quiptic. I did, however, at first enter the equally valid RUNNING at 16a.

    I agree that the distinction between galaxies and nebulae is relatively recent.

    Favourites DEFIANCE and HINDERMOST (a word that’s familiar to me, at least).

    Skip @18

    Not only was it just last week, it was virtually the same clue – do we have a crossword editor?

    I find smoker unusually annoying (7)

41. sheffiedlhatter @37

    Hostile?  That’s a bit of an exaggeration.  I think I was clear that the puzzle was not to my personal taste, and that I did pick out the clues enjoyed and exonerated Vulcan from any blame, as I believe he is setting as per the Gaurdian’s Monday style sheet.

    I think I was clear that it was my personal opionion and pointed out that commenters on the Guardian website seemed to be OK with the puzzle.  Commenters on this blog have generally been more balanced, with some as critical as me, some regarding the puzzle as OK, and some enjoying it.

    It is not the purpose of the blogger (unless I have misunderstood my role) to blindly give the answers and parsing and then thank the setter.  There has to be a critical element too; otherwise the site would be less interesting and the role of blogger less appealing.

    If a blogger gets up at silly o’clock on a Monday, especially during lockdown when I could get up later as the commute is about five yards, then he/she is entitled to be a bit grumpy when he/she is served this kind of thing as a breakfast “appetizer”.

42. A mixed bag, in the end. On doing the very first clue I had an Oh Dear reaction because METEORIC is an adjective but it is clued by an adverb (or noun if you consider the “at” to be a link). I also wasn’t terribly impressed by battening in 9a, needing in 5d, or 28a MUSHROOM which could be a clue in a non-cryptic puzzle. On the other hand, I thought “lower classes” and “unable to play” were great (not the whole clues necessarily, just those bits).

43. FOI was FRIDGE, LOI was OGRESS but this was a very quick solve by my slow and newbie standards.  I’m still at the point of loving every minute of doing these – my new-found love for cryptics as a result of lockdown.  When I’m “back to normal” moaning at students and throwing hissy-fits in the uni canteen I’ll probably find I’ll start judging the setters, but at the moment..

44. TheZed@11 mentioned Spiro Agnew.  I don’t remember ever seeing him in one of these puzzles, despite the fact that, as some of you might know, SPIRO AGNEW is an anagram of GROW A … I’ll stop there!

45. This wasn’t all that easy for me.  I filled in the bottom half last night but almost none of the top half.

    You’d think I’d have noticed Gerald Ford being president for 93 years!  Seems to have escaped my attention.

    I refuse to acknowledge “hindermost” as a word.  Who needs it when we have “hindmost?”

    How is DE the lower classes?  Why is “net” cricket practice?

    You could define February as “weeks,” at least you can three years out of four, but any other month, including October, has leftovers.

    The creek you’re up in 22d is not one we can mention on this site.

46. Valentine @45

    D and E were “lower classes” originally in advertising targeting, I think.

47. Oh, and when you pratice batting in cricket, you do it in a net so the bowler doesn’t have to fetch the ball from far.

48. Valentine @45

    Q.  Who needs hindermost when we have hindmost?

    A.  It’s a useful backup for when the devil takes the latter

49. Valentine @45 – to add to Muffin @47 When practising batting or bowling cricketers use long rectangular tunnels made of netting, not unlike the batting cages used in baseball, though the nets are not rigid. We refer to it as “net practice” and this has been abbreviated to “nets” or “to net”. It’s another cricket term, but not an obscure one. You might say “he should spend more time in the nets” or “We netted for half an hour before the match”.

50. Personally I would rather bloggers did not have a general moan about styles of crosswords they don’t happen to like.  I would prefer them to concentrate on explaining answers, themes etc and pointing out any flaws in particular clues (as you rightly do with 13d loonapick).

    Anyway that’s my personal view.

51. Smacked wrist – wrong “practise” @47!

52. Hmmm in Oz @38; yes, Lexico.com is the online version of ‘Oxford dictionaries’ but it gives words that are mostly in the ODE [Oxford Dictionary of English] or the SOED [Shorter Oxford English Dictionary]. In the UK, if you are a member of a library you can get access to the full OED [Oxford English Dictionary] online.

53. )*

    Yes, I am a programmer and occasionally annoying pedant.

    *As loonapick neglected to close his final paragraph.

54. Thanks Loonapick — count me as one who enjoys hearing what the blogger thinks as well as explaining clues. I’m in the camp that prefers fewer cryptic and double definitions but I know that’s what Vulcan does so I’m free to skip his crosswords if I want. I never skip them, however, because they challenge me in a different way even if they’re not always my cup of tea. Thanks Vulcan.

55. TheZed@11 Thank you I thought I was going to be the only one objecting to nebula as lot of stars.

56. Jenny Cant @55

    We know better now, but even Andromeda – the nearest spiral galaxy – was regarded as a nebula up until the 1920s.

57. ….though actually, that negates “a lot of stars” as the definition – that has to be “galaxy”.

58. Actually, that’s an interesting point for discussion. If what was mistakenly thought to be a cloud of gas in the heavens turns out to be a collection of stars, is it OK to so define it?

    I’m beginning to agree that “a lot of stars” for NEBULA is just wrong.

59. No, sorry – this felt like spending an hour with Gyles Brandreth and not in a good way. I though roundabout for O was pathetic and things never really looked up. Cheers all

60. I felt this took me longer than it should have done when I got the answers, so the dds that people object to must make you have to think rather than manipulate letters. The only clue I didn’t like was 23a with the reference to weeks. I don’t see what’s cryptic about 10a. I agree that the ‘to’ in 13d is part of the anagram indicator. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

61. muffin @58

    Interesting.  If the Magellanic Clouds still go by that title, couldn’t ‘cloud’ (or the Latin) be excused as dated, but no more so than, say, ‘it’ = S.A. ?

62. essexboy @61

    I’m not sure what I think about this. In the past a nebula and a collection of stars could be easily confused, but I’m not sure if that justifies NEBULA as “a lot of stars”, as “a lot of stars” means that it isn’t, in fact, a nebula…

63. The Monday style is not quite my cuppa either, partly because of the cd/dd preponderance but also because of the looseness.  My pet peeve today was the “so” in 26, which can easily be omitted without much of a loss for the surface and with great improvement for the dd.  I share the disquiet for OCT defined as “weeks”.  Why not just put “a month”.  Again the surface doesn’t suffer much.  I agree with Pentman @32’s praise for DEFIANCE.  I tried HURLING for 16 at first.  Could have been right, depending on what you hurl and through whose window!  Obviously FENCING is much better.

    Thanks, Vulcan and loonapick.  I think the only problem with expressing your opinions up front is that it tends to set the tone for the whole thread.  But there are plenty of likes here despite this, so no worries.

64. loonapick @41. I am sorry if I have upset you, and I was going to say that perhaps my use of “hostile” was inappropriate and provoking. However, it was not intended as such, and was genuinely my reaction to your lengthy diatribe in the introduction to your blog. Maybe, as has been suggested, you got out of the wrong side of the bed, and clearly the shifts that you bloggers do – involving early starts to solve crosswords that you may or may not enjoy, before writing something that will be helpful and meaningful to an audience of varying ability, experience and understanding – requires dedication which I’m sure others like me who are free to say what we like btl truly appreciate and admire.

    But as Lord Jim @50 and phitonelly @63 point out, what you write in the blog requires a certain standard and can have consequences, however much you say that it’s your own personal opinion. I can understand the frustration of blogging a crossword that has been written in a style that you deprecate in order to fulfil a requirement for something “gentle” at the start of the week. Surely your fellow bloggers must feel the same, and presumably let of steam in some fashion, such as frequent use of the word “gentle”, which if I were a compiler would seriously get up my nose!

    I have always found your blogs well written and informative, which was why I said in my post @37 that I was “surprised” at your evident hostility towards this crossword. I did not mean that I was shocked in the Claude Rains sense of the word, but in the genuine sense that you appeared to have lost control. Certainly I agree that it is not your role “to blindly give the answers and parsing and then thank the setter”. However, your penultimate paragraph in the preamble to the blog could be seen as, if not hostile, then certainly not of a friendly disposition, not only to the setter and the Guardian’s perceived policy of having an easy start to the week, but also to those who were pleased to have completed and even enjoyed the puzzle.

    Please believe me when I say that I mean all this in a friendly way, with no hostility or intention to cause you pain.

65. Vulcan is my favourite setter. I always feel at home when I see his name. It’s like sitting down with a close friend for a comfy chat.

    My partner and I started to attempt to solve cryptic crosswords together 18 months ago. Surprisingly, we won the Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword the very first time that we managed to solve a prize crossword. It was Nutmeg on Saturday July 13th and one of the highlights of our summer. Setters like Vulcan, and the helpful blog here on fifteensquared, have given us the confidence to attempt cryptic crosswords and opened up a whole new world that we didn’t even know existed.

66. This actually took me longer than Boatman’s Saturday gem, possibly due to overthinking the clues and looking for wordplay that wasn’t there…

     

67. Muffin @62 et al re nebula – thanks for picking up the baton on this. My understanding (though I am by no means a professional astronomer) is that the term “nebula” originally referred to any cloud-like formation. Better telescopes have allowed us to resolve some of those as actually being galaxies where the points of light merged into one with older, poorer optics. However, some of those nebulae turned out to be genuine clouds of gas or plasma (and often some of the most beautiful and interesting parts of the universe) and so the term was redefined in a technical sense to mean such a cloud. Of course, this is how science advances, as we learn things we have to change what we thought was true and move on. In much the same way, the definition of “planet” has changed so Pluto can no longer be called such.

    In this instance, people have cited various dictionaries. This should be good enough but we know they are quite unreliable, especially on matters of science. I would say that calling a nebula “a lot of stars” is technically wrong but barely OK in that there is probably enough of a remnant of the old usage for non-technical language to still include it. However, it is one of those where knowing more makes the clue harder, so I would say it is a poor choice of definition and could easily have been improved. Clues should get easier as they overlap more with your expertise!

    If I were more professionally expert on stars I’d probably be more upset, as I was over the whole current/volt debacle in the Prize last week. With that one I know enough to know there can be no excusing the error, but it’d take someone with more expertise than me to be quite so assertive about nebula. I did quantum physics – quite the other end of the size spectrum!

68. Enjoyed this, didn’t find it too easy and didn’t share the blogger’s irritation. Personally I prefer the cryptic clue to the one that snips letters from several words and needs a virtual tweet to explain the cutting and pasting. So thank you, Vulcan, and keep it up!

69. I don’t think this custom of usually having an “easier” crossword on a Monday really works any more, especially when the consistently good Quiptic is also there for us on a Monday. Today’s crossword was , for me, entirely unsatisfactory for all the reasons detailed by contributors above but, particularly, because of the points at which it tried too hard to be easy.
    Why don’t we just have an “ordinary” crossword on Monday, same as every other weekday?

70. Just one little nit pick, a nebula isn’t a lot of stars, its quite the opposite, a big black gas cloud in space, although they are often illuminated buy stars, the crab nebula being a fine example.

71. Princess V @65 Your tale of winning the Guardian Prize Crossword is strikingly similar to my winning the FT Prize Crossword last year. It was the first time I ever completed a Saturday crossword with no look-up’s so I dashed off to the post office to mail it. I was quite surprised to see my name listed as a winner. I saved a copy of my winning entry — it was an excellent crossword set by Rosa Klebb aka Arachne.

72. sheffield hatter @ 64

    I’m in a better mood now, And I accept the points you have made. In my defence, quite a few commenters have agreed with both my comments and the sentiment behind them.

    In order to blog a puzzle, one first has to solve it, and when that process is not enjoyable, as was the case this morning (and I emphasis this point, for ME), it would be disingenuous of me to blandly thank the setter and not comment on what made the solve a drag. Other commenters have gone further than I in criticising the puzzle, including the debates about NEBULA, OCT, MUSHROOM, PADDLE and ROUNDABOUT, all of which I noticed but decided to pass over rather than be even more critical.

73. As an astrophysicist, I’ll offer my opinion that “nebula” as “a lot of stars” is perfectly OK — a bit old-fashioned, but no more than lots of other terms we use in crosswords. Others have mentioned the Andromeda Nebula. True, it’s not generally called that anymore, but not that long ago all galaxies were called “nebulae,” as were lots of star clusters. Chambers (the version available online; I don’t have the One True Chambers at hand at the moment) has as one of its definitions “the luminous mass of a remote star cluster,” although it is labeled as an “old use.”

     

74. Loonapick @72. Thanks for engaging and accepting what I said. I’m glad you’re in a better mood!

    I agree with a lot of what you said, and with what other commenters have said about faults that you refrained from criticising. As RedKev says @69, is there any need for an “easier” cryptic on Mondays, when the Quiptic provides a “gentler” introduction for those who are dipping their toes?

    At one point I boycotted the Monday cryptic, because I found Rufus so hard to get on with. If you got on his wavelength and got a few crossers, you could skate through it in ten minutes, but if not you could be staring at a blank grid for hours. Win or lose, there was no fun. Or not for me anyway. I dare say his puzzles floated a lot of other people’s boats. More recently, there have been a number of Mondays with more interesting clues providing a bit more of a challenge and raising a few smiles along the way. This one – not so much.

    I hope your next blog is of a more congenial (for you) crossword.

75. The blog was published after my bedtime last night so I had the fun of waking up to read the entertaining and engaging blog and comments. I love the range of views and the honest but considerate expression of them. I only started Guardian cryptics in lockdown so this blog was instrumental in bringing me up to speed and I’m now hooked. This was quick to finish for me, but fun while it lasted. Variety in puzzles is great! No complaints from me, but I appreciate reading other points of view.

76. RedKev@69 … because there are still plenty of us for whom the crossword is an accompaniment to the newspaper, in which the Quiptic does not appear, and want some reliability for our £2.20.

77. 26d I had Fiat which messed me up on 28a

78. Van Winkle @76: I have a similar if contrasting experience.  I buy the Saturday Guardian for the review section etc but don’t attempt the Prize crossword because it’s usually too difficult for me. I’ve never understood why an easier puzzle, along the lines of the Quiptic, isn’t published in the paper on a Saturday to accompany the more challenging Prize.

    Anyway, I enjoyed this puzzle so thanks Vulcan. As for nebulae, I’m with David Mitchell, (who has fulminated on this topic in his BBC Radio 4 programme The Unbelievable Truth) if scientists want to take a term in common usage and bestow a narrow technical definition on it, that’s their problem and they shouldn’t complain when the rest of us prefer to use the previous, or everyday, meaning.

79. ‘Roundabout’ = ‘o’? I can hear the Good Crossword Angel behind my right shoulder harrumphing gently even as the Demon on t’oher side whispers “Oh, sod it, Melton, life’s too short. It’s just a new convention for setters to toy with. Enjoy it”.

    More generally, on setters’ precision: In a previous life as a conference interpreter, it was a delight to (attempt to) render well-crafted and precise speeches. Often, though, one had to work out what message a less coherent speaker was trying to convey – in turn, a task which, if well performed (or at least one believed it to be) could be no less professionally satisfying.

    Here, we rejoice at the precision and – if the term isn’t too plonky or pretentious – the concinnity of the great setters present and past.

    But working out what a – perhaps marginally less puncilious – setter is trying to do, even if a bit naughty, lazy or heterodox, is all part of the entertainment for me.

    It adds that extra level of uncertainty.

    Sometimes the answer I pencil in with a self-pleasuring tut isn’t the right one anyway, and the setter turns out to have been more orthodox than I surmised. Endless fascination – thanks to the extraordinary cadre (there must be a better collective noun) of those indefatigable, much-appreciated setters.

80. I thought this was rather a poor crossword and one I certainly didn’t enjoy..I still don’t understand SECONDS and I’m beginning to think there may not be anything to understand!

81. Peter @80

    The second reference is to Oliver Twist asking for more.

    (The first is to supporters of the contestants in a duel, for example.)

82. Oh Muffin,I suddenly realised who Oliver was. I got hung up on Cromwell!
    Still didn’t like the puzzle much!
    Thanks if you see this!

83. You’re welcome, Peter!

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