A Prize-worthy Saturday puzzle from Vlad
I am indebted to bridgesong for standing in for me for two Prize blogs – the more recent of them being one of a Vlad puzzle – during my stay in hospital and subsequent convalescence. It’s good to be back – especially with a Vlad puzzle to blog: it appears that he’s been away quite a while too!
As always, this was a challenge and, as always, a rewarding one. Apart from a couple of ingenious references in 12,29 and 6dn, Vlad seems to have eased back a little on his customary target(s) but there’s still enough wit and ingenuity, especially in the long clues, to keep us absorbed and interested and raise a smile or three – with the usual nifty misdirection and great surfaces throughout.
Apart from the long clues, my ticks (and there could have been more) were for BAH HUMBUG, TRESPASSES, ALL-IMPORTANT, KENYAN, DIEGO, GENERALIST and, of course, IMPALE. Two favourite synonyms from my childhood for ‘make oneself scarce’, in SCRAMMED and VAMOOSES, made me half expect ‘scarper’ to continue the ‘theme’.
Thanks to Vlad, as ever, for an absorbing and enjoyable puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
9 Having conned rook inside, made oneself scarce (8)
SCRAMMED
R (rook, chess notation) in SCAMMED (conned)
10 Why ‘noble’ misrepresented royal (6)
BOLEYN
An anagram (misrepresented) of Y (why) + NOBLE for Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne
12, 29 Taking over in charge, monster emergin’ – you bastard! (2,4,6,4,3)
NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY
An anagram (bastard) of IC (in charge) + MONSTER EMERGIN YOU – a neat definition
15 Method of selection for school team an asset (6-4)
ELEVEN-PLUS
ELEVEN (team) + PLUS (an asset)
17 See about including a little incentive – it should help things go smoothly (3)
OIL
A reversal (about) of LO (see) round I[ncentive]
19, 5 With no time for a good wash, smell an irritation? Rubbish! (3,6)
BAH HUMBUG
BA[t]H (good wash) minus t (time) + HUM (smell) + BUG (irritation)
20 Right about sixth sense? Fools – they’re wrong! (10)
TRESPASSES
A reversal (about) of RT (right) + ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception – sixth sense) + ASSES (fools)
22 Vital mail-order left inside by dock worker (3-9)
ALL-IMPORTANT
An anagram (order) of MAIL – neat ‘lift and separate’) round L (left) + PORT (dock) + ANT (worker)
26 African’s principal relative a bit mixed up (6)
KENYAN
KEY (principal) + NAN (relative) with the middle letters reversed (a bit mixed up)
27 He designs rubbish as well, I think (8)
TATTOOER
TAT (rubbish) + TOO (as well) + ER (I think)
28 Offensive female’s on moor (6)
TETHER
TET (offensive) + HER (female’s)
Down
1 Bored due to frequent exposure, ignoring large bottom (4)
BASE
BLAS[é] (bored due to frequent exposure) minus l (large)
2 Mount Everest’s peak undergoes damage (4)
MARE
MAR (damage) + E[verest]
3 Victory when animal locked up runs off (8)
VAMOOSES
V (victory) + AS (when) round MOOSE (animal)
4 Spanish guy departs (5)
DIEGO
DIE GO (two words for ‘depart’)
6 Lovely place Surinam, occasionally Trump admitted (6)
UTOPIA
TOP (Trump) in alternate letters (occasionally) of sUrInAm – a perhaps welcome change of definition from ‘More work’, although I always enjoy seeing that one
7 One paying flying visit from Oregon best getting busy (5,5)
BRENT GOOSE
An anagram (getting busy) of OREGON BEST
8 He’s not particularly concerned about upsetting celebs with intelligence (10)
GENERALIST
GEN (intelligence) + a reversal (upsetting, in a down clue) of RE (about) + A-LIST (celebs)
11 Attempts to prove wrong tense used in puzzle (6)
REBUTS
T (tense) in REBUS (puzzle)
13 Angry tweet about empty fire extinguisher? (3,7)
WET BLANKET
An anagram (angry) of TWEET round BLANK (empty)
14, 1 Expression of defiance suggested by nobles’ wealth (2,5,3,2,5)
WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED
NOBLES WEALTH is an anagram (MOVED) of WE SHALL NOT BE
16 Time for a party, I reflected (6)
PERIOD
PER (a) + a reversal (reflected) of DO (party) + I
18 Commend school over accepting small number good at drawing (8)
MAGNETIC
A reversal (over) of CITE (commend) + N (small number) + GAM (school of whales)
21 Stick around, mate – Vlad’s close to finish (6)
IMPALE
I’M (Vlad’s) + [clos]E round PAL (mate)
23 Coach drops team leader for a start (5)
TRAIN
T[eam] + RAIN (drops)
24 Leaving, I wanted knighthood possibly? (4)
GONG
GO[i]NG (leaving) minus i
25 Pub finally sacked crazy host (4)
ARMY
[b]ARMY (crazy) minus [pu]b
Very tough. I nearly conceded defeat but kept coming back and chipping away at it until the grid was filled
Top ticks for the bastard, MAGNETIC & DIEGO
And the self-referential IMPALE 🙂
Cheers E&V
I was really slow to get started on this and it took several sessions but eventually I nearly got there – didn’t get BOLEYN and a couple weren’t parsed.
Lots of aha and smile moments.
Liked: IMPALE, TRESPASSES, BAH HUMBUG, TETHER, BASE, VAMOOSES, MAGNETIC
Thanks Vlad and Eileen
I got through this last Saturday. It was definitely a challenge, looking back through it last night, I could barely remember how I worked it all out. Luckily Eileen was here to bring it all flooding back. Having read the blog, I realise I had 3 letters unparsed, the reversed GAM for MAGNETIC. It was potentially LOI though and I was at dad’s, so I’ll forgive myself.
I liked DIEGO, IMPALE, KENYAN (big delay between thinking, then knowing, then justifying it was correct) and NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY.
Thanks Vlad and Eileen for the excellent blog.
Martin
[Oh god, Pangakupu today. I find him harder than Vlad. Fingers crossed.]
A tough challenge that took several days, but not complete. Missed 1d BASE (looking at the wrong end for the definition) and 2d MARE (“Mount” as a noun), and couldn’t parse a few
Favourites, several overlapping with Eileen’s: 22a ALL-IMPORTANT (follow the instructions), 26a KENYAN (tricky little switcheroo, treading on dangerous territory), 3d VAMOOSES (run MOOSE, be free!), 4d DIEGO (succinct), 8d GENERALIST (“not particularly concerned”), 13d WET BLANKET (an actual fire extinguisher, not wordplay), 14/1 WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED (great reverse anagram)
16d PERIOD, could it be “for a” = PER?
Thanks Eileen for a great blog (and all the links!), and Vlad for the invigorating mental workout
My faves: BOLEYN, KENYAN, DIEGO, WET BLANKET and MAGNETIC.
Thanks Vlad and Eileen.
Thanks for a great blog as ever Eileen, and some much needed parsing
Too many to list I’m afraid
(I think there’s an O missing in the answer to 27a ?)
Comment #7
Having been away for a few weeks (mostly travelling with very limited scope and time even for crosswords), and hoping I could still do these things, I find the first Prize on offer for me is a Vlad. In the end, I got there, which was very satisfying, and there was a lot of entertainment here – IMPALE, indeed! The long phrases made it a lot easier, I thought, and I did like WET BLANKET as an extinguisher. Even so, I had trouble with some of the parsing – TRAIN, which looks so obvious now Eileen has explained it, and KENYAN, which I don’t feel so bad about not working out. I’d not heard of the 11-plus since I was, well, eleven, and in the UK – I didn’t realise it was still a thing. Thanks, to both Eileen and Vlad.
Thanks for the blog , very good set of clues and just right for a Saturday , WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED a great example of a reverse anagram , IMPALE is very neat and my last one in appropriately .
A minor point , it is SurinamE , even officially in the UK for quite a while .
Tough puzzle, but felt good cracking it completely!
While I got the answer TRESPASSES just by parsing it, the definition “they’re wrong!” seemed off – according to the definition, I would have thought that the answer should have been TRESPASSERS. Am I missing something?
Keith@8 the 11-plus is still used but only in England , quite rare but scattered across many areas .
Shafar @10 , I was thinking they referred to the acts of TRESPASS themselves , not the people trespassing .
Even knowing his style of device, Vlad still has the plodding ginf brain staring dumbly. Took ages to ‘want’ the i from going, and to ‘finally sack’ the pub’s b from barmy. Good exercise, thanks to himself and Eileen.
Ditto Roz @22, trespasses are acts that are wrong.
I didn’t manage PERIOD, MAGNETIC (I thought of pod but didn’t know gam) or ARMY but enjoyed grappling with the rest. (Still not sure about the parsing of ARMY: shouldn’t ‘sacked’ be followed by a preposition? Am clearly missing something.)
IMPALE raised a smile.
A very chewy exercise over the whole week, but I was delighted to eventually come through uunscathed. LOI was ARMY (after somehow spending the entire time unable to produce further synonyms beyond horde and band); the cryptic grammar was tough there, even once I’d decided what the def must be! (NoryN@15: the implied comma is key. [With] B sacked, ‘crazy’.)
I enjoyed the hinted definitions for NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY (would be hard to associate that one to just “taking over” without all the rest of the surface) and WET BLANKET (you probably are one of you send off that tweet).
Faves were probably GENERALIST (for the def), DIEGO (for leaves), VAMOOSES (funny) and REBUTS (neat). I wanted the latter to be CHESTS = T in CHESS for a while. There’s a solution crying out for a clue.
Re trespassers, I’m too take the def as the deeds themselves. And in England at least, trespasses are torts, which are literally wrongs, so it’s impeccable.
The only shadow was the “Tet” offensive again, to which I’m sensitive after mrpenney explained a while back that Tet is the Vietnamese’s most cherished public holiday. As he said there, I can think of a few people in the world who’d be very vocally unimpressed if Yom Kippur were clued as an offensive.
Thanks to Vlad for the hefty challenge, and to EILEEN for the blog.
I assumed the TRESPASSES were of the type being forgiven in the lord’s prayer. ( I discovered my son didn’t know the lord’s prayer, which was refreshing for someone who had recite it daily for many years of state education.)
I really like Vlad’s puzzles, and this was reliably meaty stuff as ever, but I didn’t hit any walls as I tend to do with a few setters.
IMPALE was last for me too, but down to the order in which I solved, rather than any particular difficulty with it.
I thought that the whole clue was the definition for NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY?
As always, I struggle to recall much of the solve of a week ago. I do recall starting very slowly and fearing I was going to have to throw in the towel at one point. Eventually things began to crack and I did end up with a filled and parsed grid. I seem to recall NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY going in quite late and needing quite a few crossers before the enumeration made sense. I did not spot the anagrind in that one – and sadly it reminded me of one of the late night social media splurges of a certain president – of whom I feel I see and read far more than I want. But that’s not really Vlad’s fault. BRENT GOOSE, WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED and BOLEYN my favourites.
Thanks both
A great puzzle, although too many unknowns for me to be able to complete it – I had to get VAMOOSE from a word finder using crossers; had some help from Google in N M M N G. Alas, I failed to see the reverse anagram, equating “suggested” to “moved” (as in “proposed for a vote”) and wondering about the anagram indicator for the rest. Thanks Vlad and Eileen!
I must have been on a roll from the 30,000 hullabaloo as only ARMY & BASE held out to a second sitting. Spent too long trying to get a parse for ‘bass’.
Had to wait for crossers in NMMNG as the anagram was so long.
I found this very difficult but got there in the end, although I failed to parse TRAIN, thinking it must have been something , to do with strain, doh, especially as drops = rain is a perennial. I liked the unwashed BAH HUMBUG, the mixed up KENYAN, the (VA)MOOSES running off, the WET BLANKET fire extinguisher, the nobles’ WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED, and the MAGNETIC drawers.
Thanks Vlad and Eileen.
Loved generalist, I had in for too long nonchalant!! totally driven off course
Once I got NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY, I was expecting more Trumpisms, but there don’t seem to be any. I second what Roz said about the reverse anagram. Good to see both Vlad and Eileen back in the Prize slot.
Oops, me @14, meant Roz @12, not 22..
I came back to this multiple times over the course of the week and was pleased to almost complete, failing on MAGNETIC (gam is new to me) and ARMY.
I failed to parse NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY, although I did have the IC for “in charge” and realised that an anagram was probably the solution, but I spent a long time thinking “monster” was the anagrind. I’m still struggling to see how “bastard” can be an instruction to mix things up, can anyone elucidate for me?
Still the best I’ve ever done on a Vlad puzzle, so I’ll take that.
Thanks to the impaler and to Eileen for the blog
The two phrases NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY and WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED were the standouts for me. For the former I would agree with AP @16 and Etu @18 that it’s possibly either a clue-as-definition, or an extended definition — but whatever you want to call it, it was brilliant.
Re TET: as I think Balfour commented the last time this came up, the word is much more well known in the west in connection with the offensive rather than as the national holiday, so it seems reasonable to clue it as such in a British crossword. And how is it different from defining say SOMME as “battle” rather than as “river” (or “flower”!)?
Many thanks Vlad and Eileen.
I took the barely started grid on holiday with me, and looked at it from time to time but it still told me I had only filled in nine or 10 answers. Finally got cracking at breakfast this morning and eventually got it all filled in and parsed. What a toughie!
I don’t like ‘offensive’=TET, though I (reluctantly) acknowledge the strength of Lord Jim@27’s argument. It took me ages to remember the equivalance from a previous crossword, whereas GAM was my second guess for ‘school’ and it still took me all week to get ‘good at drawing’ (doh!).
Thanks to Vlad and Eileen.
TantrumPet @26 I think the best that Chambers93 can give is Bastard=false .
Solar neutrinos oscillating between different lepton states are bastards .
Just returned from holiday to find the terrifying prospect of Vlad awaiting us! A late but useful start with (anything but a) WET BLANKET led to (b)ARMY completion with six outstanding explanations, of which I, unexpectedly made short shrift!
Thanks to the eponymously named setter for a truly prize crossword with the two monster clues as stand out, but not forgetting the short BOLEYN, KENYAN and OIL as clever. As usual, there are many agreeable additions to Eileen’s comprehensive blog and 19/5 to anyone who does not agree!
Thank you, AP@16. Now I understand 25d. It was bothering me more than I care to admit!
Thanks Vlad and Eileen. Beaten by ARMY and TETHER and parsing of MAGNETIC. VAMOUSES anybody, briefly?
Many thanks to Eileen (good to have you back) and to all others who commented.
Thank you for dropping in, Vlad – much appreciated, as always. Hoping to see you again before too long …