The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/30015.
Vulcan well filling his usual function of providing a smooth start to the week’s crosswords, with humour and without seeming trivial.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | RUDIMENTARY |
Makeshift untried army beaten (11)
|
| An anagram (‘beaten’) of ‘untried army’. | ||
| 9 | ENGAGED |
Busy preparing for wedding (7)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 10 | GAMBLER |
Grand thriller writer? I bet (7)
|
| A charade of G (‘grand’) plus AMBLER (Eric, ‘thriller writer’). | ||
| 11 | ASTRONAUT |
To Saturn, a trip for her (9)
|
| An anagram (‘trip’) of ‘to |
||
| 12 | RHODA |
Stick around hospital with a woman (5)
|
| A charade of RHOD, an envelope (‘around’) of H (‘hospital’) in ROD (‘stick’); plus ‘a’. | ||
| 13 | HOOT |
What the uncaring owl doesn’t give? (4)
|
| Cryptic definition, for want of a better description. | ||
| 14 | REASONABLE |
Fit after work out, not too expensive (10)
|
| A charade of REASON (‘work out’) plus ABLE (‘fit’). | ||
| 16 | SHOT PUTTER |
Athlete murdered golfer (4,6)
|
| A charade of SHOT (‘murdered’) plus PUTTER (‘golfer’). | ||
| 19 | FIAT |
I must sit in oily car (4)
|
| An envelope (‘must sit in’) of ‘I’ in FAT (‘oily’). | ||
| 20 | CORFU |
Holiday island’s clubs, four in resort (5)
|
| A charade of C (‘clubs’) plus ORFU, an anagram (‘in resort’) of ‘four’. | ||
| 21 | IDENTIKIT |
Picture police build up of one kitten I’d mistreated (9)
|
| An anagram (‘mistreated’) of I (‘one’) plus ‘kitten i’d’ – or separate the first I from the anagram if you prefer. | ||
| 23 | AMBIENT |
Such relaxing music in the morning wreathed around one (7)
|
| An envelope (‘around’) of I (‘one’) in AM (‘in the morning’) plus BENT (‘wreathed’). | ||
| 24 | ORINOCO |
River, one under Wimbledon Common? (7)
|
| Double definition, the second being a Womble named after the first. | ||
| 25 | EMPTY-HEADED |
Worthless sort of notepaper is stupid (5-6)
|
| A charade of EMPTY (‘worthless’) plus HEADED (‘sort of notepaper’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | RIGHT HONOURABLE |
How to handle a privy counsellor? (5,10)
|
| Cryptic definition (‘handle’ as name, address). | ||
| 2 | DOGGO |
Quietly hiding pet, leave (5)
|
| A charade of DOG (‘pet’) plus GO (‘leave’). | ||
| 3 | MEDIATE |
No time to contemplate – intervene (7)
|
| A subtraction: MEDI[t]ATE (‘contemplate’) minus a T (‘no time’ – the clue would have worked better if there had not been a second T). | ||
| 4 | NEGATES |
Renders ineffective nearly new entrances (7)
|
| A charade of ‘ne[w]’ minus its last letter (‘nearly’) plus GATES (‘entrances’). | ||
| 5 | ADMIRING |
Enjoying watching rigid man relaxing (8)
|
| An anagram (‘relaxing’) of ‘rigid man’. | ||
| 6 | YELLOW BRICK ROAD |
Way to fictional city made of monochrome Lego? (6,5,4)
|
| Cryptic definition, the ‘city’ being Oz.
Thanks to Philinch for filling in the details: it is the Emerald City in the land of Oz. |
||
| 7 | METAPHYSICIAN |
Philosopher went to see a doctor (13)
|
| MET A PHYSICIAN. | ||
| 8 | ORNAMENTATION |
Annotate minor change in embellishment (13)
|
| An anagram (‘change’) of ‘annotate minor’. | ||
| 15 | SPRUCE UP |
Neaten Christmas tree after erection (6,2)
|
| Definition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 17 | THISTLY |
Lisper heard to struggle with start of Med island, so weedy (7)
|
| With a little goodwill this may be seen (heard, rather) as a lisped version of Sicily (‘Med Island’). | ||
| 18 | EYEHOLE |
I complete speaking, getting something to look through (7)
|
| Sounds like (‘speaking’) ‘I’ plus WHOLE (‘complete’). | ||
| 22 | TRIAD |
Chinese gang sending up missile across India (5)
|
| A reversal (‘sending up’ in a down light) of an envelope (‘across’) of I (‘India’) in DART (‘missile’). |
Most enjoyable, nothing too obscure or taxing.
I didn’t understand GAMBLER, as I’d not heard of the author. I was not sufficiently familiar with the Wombles to understand ORINOCO. I don’t think we use DOGGO in the Antipodes — Collins says it’s British. I wasn’t sure the clue for RIGHT HONOURABLE was cryptic — I guess using handle for address sort of makes it so?
Liked HOOT (CD or whatever!), EMPTY-HEADED, YELLOW BRICK ROAD and EYEHOLE.
THISTLY
The soundalike part seems fine for our purposes.
Lisped the first S sound, but managed the second S sound all right.
Fresh idea, I guess.
R HONOURABLE
Handle:
Collins gives ‘title’ as one meaning.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Good fun. I liked METAPHYSICIAN, HOOT, SHOT PUTTER, EYEHOLE (LOI) and THISTLY (which I parsed as KVa, though was a bit surprised at the lack of the second [i] sound – but I guess it is often omitted). For a while, tried to make NEUTERS work for 4d until it got killed by the crossers. Thanks Vulcan and PeterO!
ORINOCO returns only a month after his last appearance. People must be getting used to the Wombles by now.
I hadn’t heard of AMBLER and wasn’t sure about DOGGO. Fairly straightforward though and just right.
I liked ASTRONAUT, SPRUCE UP and SHOT PUTTER.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Looking back, Picaroon referenced Mr Ambler twice a month apart in late 2024. I didn’t comment on those days but must have solved at least one of them. So I had heard of him, probably.
Usual Vulcan stuff for the bank holiday.
Couldn’t work out the Med Island though it seems obvious now. Didn’t know DOGGO but it was fairly clued.
Liked INDENTIKIT and METAPHYSICIAN.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
THISTLY my LOI and all that I could think of to fit the crossers. And even then I could not back parse it.
Enjoyable start to the day and thanks for the clear and timely blog. I didn’t know handle in that sense could be a verb.
Gentle sailing, nice for a Monday. Fave was SPRUCE UP, amd I also chuckled at THISTLY (as per KVa@2, the clue is quite clear that only the first S is lisped, though as per Layman@3 one has to use imagination for the missing i).
Loi was DOGGO. Apparently Br.E. but I’ve never heard it. Is it still used (exclusively in “lie doggo” it seems)? Interestingly it doesn’t seem to derive from dog, starting life in English as doggoh.
I liked the idea of the uncaring owl, though presumably it both does and doesn’t give a hoot.
Thanks both
Favourites: THISTLY, SHOT PUTTER, METAPHYSICIAN.
New for me: writer Eric AMBLER for 10ac. Martin@5 – I find that a lot of the trivia aka GK that I learn here does not stick as it is unimportant in my life 😉 Ditto I could not parse 24ac (not familiar with Wombles except from blogs here and if this appeared recently, it did not stick in my brain!).
Also I wondered about 1d the ‘how to handle’ bit.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Good Monday puzzle, apart from the barely cryptic RIGHT HONOURABLE. Favourite YELLOW BRICK ROAD,
Easy and fun. Didn’t like the clue for FIAT (my loi) as fatty not fat means oily. Stretching a point I felt.
I’m old enough to remember Eric Ambler, but after looking up his novels I realised I have never read one. I also remember Orinoco as well as Great Uncle Bulgaria (will that crop up in a crossword)?
Favourites SHOT PUTTER and the terrible homophone THISTLY.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO
Lovely start to the week. Eric Ambler’s best known novel, The Mask of Dimitrios, is still well worth reading.
PhilB@12
FIAT
The Big C says
fat
adjective
7. oily
KVa@14. Fair enough.
No problems with this, which all went in smoothly. I had read Eric Ambler, very popular in his day but probably forgotten by most. The Mast of Dimitrios is one of the better known, and Journey Into Fear was filmed a couple of times (Wikipedia says that Ian Fleming took many elements of From Russia With Love from the latter).
Thanks to PeterO and other commenters, I now get the parsing of RIGHT HONOURABLE, but still cannot grasp how ASTRONAUT works – anyone care to enlighten?
Sam @17
There’s a misprint in the blog – it’s an anagram of TO SATURN A, not “sarurn”.
Yes, I got ORINOCO but couldn’t parse it although the Womble reference is clear enough now. The thing is, the Wombles were a bit of a thing in British culture for only a fairly short period. You can’t say that they have endured (to the best of my knowledge) like say, Winnie the Pooh, or The Wind in the Willows or Paddington Bear. I honestly don’t think about them every time I think of Wimbledon. It’s more tennis. I have a close friend who lives in Wimbledon and whom I visit often. We often walk on the Common (an uninspiring piece of scrubby land) and I haven’t thought of the Wombles once when I’ve been there.
Very entertaining. RIGHT HONOURABLE produced a smile, though it did leave me wondering whether “handle” can be slang for “name” as a verb as well as a noun.
I liked METAPHYSICIAN. If I remember correctly, the word comes from the titles that Aristotle’s works were given after his death. The Physics dealt with natural science, and the work following it, dealing with what we would now call philosophical matters, was called The Metaphysics, with meta meaning “after” or “beyond”. Nobody is quite sure if the idea was that the subject matter went beyond physics, or if was just the work that happened to come after The Physics.
Many thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
1950 is calliing and it wants its words back 🙂
I have somehow heard of Eric Ambler, but I couldn’t have told you what sort of books he wrote.
Wombles are certainly wombling free in these parts recently.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Thanks for the blog , good set of clues and seems right for a Monday , neat use of her for ASTRONAUT .
Bell Alex@19 , I partly agree , as a 70s child they are low down on my list of TV shows but they were also a terrible pop group with many top 40 singles . Amazingly they had Chris Spedding “playing” guitar . They also played Glastonbury before it became so boringly mainstream .
[ For fans of Atachne this is a link . She also sets as Rosa Klebb in the FT with a jumbo puzzle on Saturday just gone . I have seen a linked headline on this site that includes a link . ]
I enjoyed that, a pleasant start to a Monday, I really enjoyed 7D, I needed all the crossers and then when the penny dropped smiled. 19A was LOI, I wondered if there were a hint of a triple definition with I must being a fiat.
I think the Wombles still have some cultural relevance, a litterpicking group near where I used to live in West Yorkshire call themselves the Willowfield Wombles. On at least one occasion their theme tune (“Underground, overground, wombling free, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we…”) has led to wombling free being added to a station sign proclaiming Underground and Overground line trains. https://br.pinterest.com/pin/397513104609760162/
Eric Ambler is on my bookshelves alongside other mystery/thriller writers of that era, so that was straightforward for me. And I am of the right age to have had the Wombles as part of my childhood. DOGGO was new to me, but fairly clued.
Good start to the week. I liked the CAD for ASTRONAUT, the uncaring owl with his HOOT, the RIGHT HONOURABLE privy councillor, and the good anagram for ORNAMENTATION. I hadn’t realised that the Wombles lived underneath Wimbledon Common.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
I agree with Roz @22: this seems a good fit for a Monday.
I giggled at METAPHYSICIAN & HOOT – and thought YELLOW BRICK ROAD was delightful.
I also agree with Bell Alex @19 about the Wombles’ 15 minutes of fame. (The original books had a certain charm, the TV series was liked as much for Bernard Cribbins’ narration as anything else – and we’ll draw a tactful veil over the pop group…) I went to school in Wimbledon, yet tennis is always the thing I associate with the place.
And it’s true, Wombles do seem to have delighted us enough in crosswords of late. May I put in a plea for more inventive kids’ characters? Catweazel? Molesworth? The Clangers? Mr Toad? Peppa Pig?
Thank you Vulcan & PeterO
Straightforward
THISTLY reminded me of “Slurvian”, as in “We had a holiday nitly.”
In a minority here, but didn’t get / don’t care for THISTLY. I don’t really consider thistles to be weeds or weedy.
Enjoyed this puzzle.
Specially liked METAPHYSICIAN (groan) & SHOT PUTTER.
Please can someone explain how ASTRONAUT = “her”?
Thanks to Vulcan & PeterO.
insert name here @31
Why shouldn’t an astronaut be female? Arachne started making any unspecified person in a puzzle female; Nutmeg followed suit, and it now seems to have reached farther.
Wellbeck@27 , how can you miss out Bagpuss and Mr Benn ?
Bagpuss did not even get a 50th Anniversary puzzle . Mr Benn would make a brilliant theme from all the characters he played .
muffin @32 – no reason at all why an astronaut shouldn’t be female. So are you saying that the parsing of the clue is that “To Saturn” = “a trip for her/an astronaut”? If so, clever clue – I get it now.
Revealed 8d as I’m not familiar with the word.
Apart from that, a nice way to spend time in the shade in this burning bank holiday.
Keep the pets safe…
Thanks both
insert name here@34
ASTRONAUT
The blogger has mentioned that it’s an extended definition,
meaning that the whole clue acts as a definition in a way
(not as strictly as in the case of a clue-as-definition).
“To Saturn, a trip for ‘her’?” (A trip to Saturn for her) leads
us to identify her as an ASTRONAUT.
The pause in proceedings today in what was a smooth and delightful steady solve was trying to get my tongue round the THISTLY clue so it adequately met requirements. Have come across words like Gnarly, but never this one before. Loi therefore…
Roz @33 ooh… great idea… I loved Mr Benn…
Good Monday/Vulcab puzzle.
There was a band called the ‘Wombles? Did they predate the TV show?
;Roz, what link? I thought you eschewed them, and now you say you’re providing one and I can’t find it.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
I like it that ‘her’ is a definition for various occupations. Is this to scare away any Mail readers that fancy a trickier crossword than their own one?
KVa @36 – thanks
This was fun. Lots of smiles along the way, including loi 7d METAPHYSICIAN. Other favourites 1a RUDIMENTARY (surface), 11a ASTRONAUT (normalizing the female), 16a SHOT PUTTER (there’s a story there), 1d RIGHT HONOURABLE (“How to handle” = “What to call”. This held out for a long time, fun pdm), 5d ADMIRING (easily amused), 6d YBR (invoking the great movie), 8d ORNAMENTATION (good surface), and many others
Just to clarify to death, 11a the blog is very clear. Wordplay: an anagram (“trip”) of TO SATURN A. Definition: “her” (a female ASTRONAUT), extended to include the whole clue
Thank you both for the enjoyment
David#49 – ooh, you are naughty – but I like you!
Valentine @39 , my link is simply what I have written . Go to the main page of this site and down to the FIFTH headline , it is there .
David@40 , try and use the correct name , it is the Daily Heil .
I have just checked Valentine , it has dropped to number SIX , late entry for the FT at number two .
The Wombles pop group came directly from the TV series, which itself was based on books by Elisabeth Beresford.
BBC radio serialised some of the book stories a couple(?) of years ago – no longer available to listen, sadly.
Plenty of smiles in this gentle Bank Holiday stroll through the Uxbridge English Dictionary! Liked METAPHYSICIAN, got 17D and agree it’s a weed – my garden is definitely thistly right now – but I think calling it a homophone is stretching it a bit! No problem with ORINOCO as the words ‘River’ and ‘Wimbledon’ triggered it without conscious thought!
I’m surprised at people saying that the clue for RIGHT HONOURABLE is barely cryptic. Surely the point is that ‘handle’ does not normally mean name, address or title as a verb. In ‘how to handle’ it is clearly functioning as a verb, and is therefore cryptic, as the answer is a form of address, and a noun. A Privy Counsellor’s handle (noun) is Rt.Hon., and they expect to be addressed (verb) as such.
THISTLY from Sicily is better than some are making out. The S becomes TH with a lisp, and thistly is sometimes pronounced with a half-hidden syllable – similar to the way athletic is said ath-el-etic by some – so not so much THISTLY as THISSELY, perhaps. Isn’t there an argument often proposed here, that the best aural wordplay should elicit a groan? I enjoyed it anyway. [Edit: Dangerous Davis@48 No one is calling it a homophone, except yourself and PhilB@12. And then only to say that it’s not! It’s a bit of wordplay, or an aural pun.]
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
[hello Roz @33, if you’re still around.
I didn’t mention Mr Benn because he was part of a Qaos crossword from around a year or two back.
(Or maybe longer ago – Time tends to telescope where fun moments are concerned.)
Personally, I’d adore a crossword based on Mr Benn’s various adventures – and I yield to nobody in my admiration of Oliver Postgate. I’m astonished no setter has yet seen fit to use his phenomenal range as creative inspiration. As well as his Small Films work, Postgate was an inventor (and my landlord at University).
And, also, a genuinely wonderful man….]
For those who don’t remember the Wombles, this is because you didn’t have my father who used to sing:
Underground, overground,
Don’t give a f***
The Wombles of Wimbledon
Common as muck.
Quite hard to forget that when you’ve heard it at an impressionable age.
The clue for HOOT calls to mind, for Americans of my vintage, Woodsy Owl, a mascot created by the US Forest Service who reminded kids each week to give a hoot–don’t pollute.
[ Wellbeck@50 , using my unique search engine , Qaos 30/7/2024 had a childrens TV theme including Mr Benn . Qaos 11/2/2025 a Clangers theme . No sign of Bagpuss . ]
Thanks Vulcan for a well-constructed but simple puzzle. My first ever complete write-in of the Guardian cryptic. Every solution sequentially on fist look. Have to admit, I switched to down clues half-way through the across to make it more likely I would achieve this. Delayed writing in RIGHT HONOURABLE until I’d finished the across, in case it was RIGHT HONOURABLY- strange, but more punning.
Thanks PeterO for the parse of THISTLY – although I agree, I think it’s a bit of a stretch.
I think it’s good for the Guardian to include simpler puzzles from time-to-time, but I’d like some advance warning, as this would be a perfect crossword to use to introduce cryptic novices in my family on a bank holiday Monday.
PS ERIC AMBLER – Brilliant spy-thriller writer – 1930s-50s. Around 200 pages – not the turgid 400+pages of padding you have to wade through nowadays! Very popular in his time and much adapted for TV and radio.
Peter B@54, congrats! I’m not quite there yet, but today’s was reasonably close – with the following strong caveat. I’m very strategic about the order in which I attempt the clues. (I find the shortest answers, and multi-word or hyphenated answers, or even very long answers, easier than your 7-, 8- or 9-letter ones in general, so I always start with those but usually interrupt that flow to tackle clues of any shape which already have promising checkers: the higher Scrabble score the better, and their position in the word also counts for a lot.)
I think there are lots of levels of write-in. The one I’ve described is the starting point, I suppose. Harder would be to go in some pre-determined clue order that makes a good proportion of the answers checkerless. At the most extreme lies the cold solve in which you don’t even fill or refer to the grid (so no checkers at all); I believe Roz is a fan of that challenge.
To put it all in context though, I still fail to finish without “cheating” (much? – or perhaps less, these last months) more often than I fully complete a puzzle unaided. And then I always enjoy coming here to fill in the gaps and to chat more widely about the puzzle.
Anyway, it’s nice that this sport has plenty of ways to increase the challenge, from beginners’ QCs and Quiptics all the way up to Genius and Listeners and others, with plenty of personal milestones along the way. No wonder it’s a life-long pleasure for many.
AP@55 , my normal method is for when I am travelling home from work on the train . Try each Across clue in order and write them in as you go along . Fold my paper so I do not see the grid . Now try the Downs in order but no entries until the end of the Downs . Now tackle the corners .
Two reasons for this . First it is very democratic , each clue gets a look all by itself to be solved on its own terms with no help . Second , it slows me down a lot and I want it to last as long as possible .
For Azed/Gemelo I want to be as fast as possible so go for the top row and left hand side and then use all the first letters for other entries .
Thanks for all the reminiscing on Wobles and Eric Ambler, unknown to me prior to today.
If I remember correctly, the yellow brick road leads from Munchkin county to the Emerald City, both of which are already in the land of Oz. Actually getting to and from Oz needs a tornado, a balloon flight or some magic shoes.
I use a variant of Roz’s cryptic approach. I go through all the across clues and put a check mark next to the ones I can solve, but don’t write them in. Then, with no crossers, I do the same with the downs. When I’ve done as many as I can in both directions this way, I start to fill in the checked ones, not all at once but as needed, so that I sometimes solve the later clues with some crossers but not all that I’ve already found.
Valentine/Roz: I do exactly the opposite! I fill in the first answer I get, then immediately try to get the answers that cross that one, and then the answers that cross those, etc. If I reach the point where I can’t get any of the answers for which I already have at least one letter, I have failed, since the challenge is to fill the entire grid without needing to “jump”, as I call it.
mrpenney, thank heavens there is someone else out there who, it being a crossword, works with the nature of the beast and fans out from solutions using the available crossers. I must say, though, that I don’t regard it as a failure if I have to open up a second front, as it were, or ‘jump’ as you put it, but I do get slightly antsy until I have the two fronts connected.
I’m with you, Balfour
I look at an across one along the top and a down one on the LHS to give me first letters. If I don’t get those, I work through the rest in order.
Late to finish tonight. I studied Logic I at university as a BSc student. MA students studied Logic and Metaphysics. Same course, everyone in the same room.
Late to the comments tonight. I did the puzzle with pleasure over breakfast, but it’s been a busy day and evening!
METAPHYSICIAN gets my CotD; I do like a good “Dad Joke” clue, as my daughter calls them.
I’m with mrpenney@59 and Balfour@60 (etc.) – it is a crossword after all, so to me, using the crossers is all part of the game. Others differ: and if we were all the same, what a sad old world it would be.
Wombles, now there’s a thing…
“We’re the Womble bashers from Walthamstow
We make Womble trouble wherever we go
From Wimbledon to Wembley Park
We bash Wombles for a lark…”
Thanks Vulcan & PeterO
Lots of fun in this one, and nothing too taxing. Thanks PeterO and Vulcan.
Never mind a cd, 13A ‘HOOT’ looks suspiciously like a riddle to me, and one worthy of a Christmas cracker. But I suppose that is rather déclassé for a crossword clue category. As for thistles not being weeds, them as thinks so don’t have them in their vegetable patch.
Struggled to parse FIAT as was obsessed with fiat and sit as third person active subjunctive verb in Latin meaning let it become/ let it be.
Nice ‘easy’ crossword, took me several goes to finish it.