Vulcan in his customary fortnightly Monday slot
This was mostly straightforward, with the usual medley of anagrams, simple charades and double and cryptic definitions.
Thanks to Vulcan for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Finish brilliantly in two languages (6-6)
FRENCH-POLISH
Self evident, I think – it seems a long time since I’ve seen this one
9 A national symbol came into being (5)
AROSE
A ROSE (national symbol)
10 Model car, a true sport (9)
MINIATURE
MINI (car) + an anagram (sport) of A TRUE
11 Country hotel, so fashionable (7)
LESOTHO
An anagram (fashionable) of HOTEL SO
12 Getting better, we’re told, in hooker’s job (7)
HEELING
Sounds like (we’re told) ‘healing’ (getting better) – a hooker heels the ball in rugby
13 Damning evidence of bad habit: one’s shot (7,3)
SMOKING GUN
SMOKING (bad habit) + GUN (one’s shot)
15 An indistinct band? (4)
BLUR
A cryptic definition, referring to this band
18 Large dog returning, holding this in mouth? (4)
BALL
A reversal (returning) of L (large) + LAB (dog)
19 Be given a red card? Show mercy (4,1,5)
HAVE A HEART
Double definition
22 Realist waving flag (7)
SALTIRE
An anagram (waving) of REALIST, for the flag of Scotland
24 As written, I must be punishable by death (7)
CAPITAL
Double definition: The pronoun I must be a capital letter
25 Witty person alert for cheat (4,5)
CARD SHARP
CARD (witty person) + SHARP (alert) – Chambers has this as hyphenated, Collins as one word
26 Conscious of a solemn vigil (5)
AWAKE
A WAKE (solemn vigil)
27 Flashers risk lenient sentence at first (6,6)
HAZARD LIGHTS
HAZARD (risk) + LIGHT (lenient) + S[entence]
Down
1 Pays for device to make leg-rest (9)
FOOTSTOOL
FOOTS (pays for) + TOOL (device)
2 Blue blanket: current charge may follow this, very exciting (8)
ELECTRIC
‘Electric’ may be followed by any of the first, second, third or fourth words of the clue
3 Small role, but was offered Oscar (5)
CAMEO
CAME (was offered?) + O (Oscar – NATO phonetic alphabet)
4 Cooped up at home, a luxurious one (9)
PENTHOUSE
PENT (cooped up) + HOUSE (home)
5 Child finishing their time at school, no friend of EU (6)
LEAVER
Double definition
6 Middle Easterner first to suffer actual unpleasantness dating Iraqi (5
SAUDI
Initial letters of Suffer Actual Unpleasantness Dating Iraqi
7 Anecdotes about British places to eat (6)
TABLES
TALES (anecdotes) round B (British)
8 They say he can’t choose protein in pub (6)
BEGGAR
EGG (protein) in BAR (pub) – a reference to the saying ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’
14 The King’s home, elegance over acres (9)
GRACELAND
GRACE (elegance) + LAND (acres) – the home of Elvis Presley, The King
16 Always set off, at any rate (9)
LEASTWAYS
An anagram (off) of ALWAYS SET
17 Party manager to bind up neck injury (8)
WHIPLASH
WHIP (political party manager) + LASH (bind up – secure with a rope)
18 Fundamental principles I start to challenge in low voice (6)
BASICS
I + C[hallenge] in BASS (low voice)
20 Shoot ploughman (6)
TILLER
Double definition – I didn’t know the first
21 Celebration: is it safe to dance? (6)
FIESTA
An anagram (to dance) of IT SAFE
23 Grub, a scoop from popular vanilla (5)
LARVA
Hidden in popuLAR VAnilla
24 Cold spring month, almost all in upmarket resort (5)
CAPRI
C (cold) + APRI[l] (spring month, almost)
Another lovely offering from Vulcan, this was a mixture of the usual write-ins and chewier constructions. FRENCH-POLISH was FOI and I also liked SMOKING GUN, HAVE A HEART, HAZARD LIGHTS, PENTHOUSE, BEGGAR and WHIPLASH. Very pleasant start to the week. I’m off to see GRACELAND for the first time in mid-November.
Ta Vulcan & Eileen.
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
I wasn’t convinced by CAME for “was offered” either, and I too didn’t know the shoot meaning of TILLER. Apart from those, nice and straightforward. Favourite LOI HEELING.
Thanks Eileen for the link to the lesser known meaning of TILLER. The problem now is remembering it for the next time it comes up in a crossword!
Eileen, FIESTA is an anagram of IT SAFE.
Thanks Eileen. I thought there was just enough misdirection to make it interesting. A motoring themelet maybe: CAPRI; AUDI; MINI; FIESTA; HAZARD LIGHTS. Even WHIPLASH and ELECTRIC (car) possibly?
AlanC @4 – thanks. I’ll amend the blog now. (Still rather gobsmacked by Fed’s Tuesday FIESTAS!)
bullhassocks @ 5. Agreed, surely too many to be coincidental.
Thanks to Eileen, and Vulcan, for a lovely start to the week.
Difficult puzzle.
New for me: FRENCH-FINISH; TILLER = a lateral shoot from the base of the stem of a plant.
I could not parse the CAME bit of 3d and 12ac – I saw it was a homonym of healing but did not understand the heeling = hooker’s job. Oh, it’s to do with rugby. I have never watched a game of rugby and do not intend to – life’s too short and I have plenty of other things to do 😉
Vulcan did essentially the same TILLER clue on June 2nd last year.
I went to it more confidently as a result – without trying to claim I’d fully absorbed the knowledge.
Eileen is better informed on the intricacies of rugby than I am. HEELING was my last one in. I think of hookers throwing balls in at lineouts. I’ve looked it up now and understand their role in the scrum.
It was a good Vulcan puzzle and a pleasant start to the week.
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.
The original Ford Model T came/was offered only in black?
The ‘shoot’ definition of TILLER feels somewhat out-of-sync with the otherwise distinctly Monday tone. FIESTA my fave.
Thanks both
HAZARD LIGHTS was a delight. Didn’t twig to the Rugby relevance despite playing HOOKER for a short while (in primary school, Rugby league – got out of that horrid game asap and took up the far superior game of Aussie Rules). Thanks, Vulcan and Eileen.
My biggest head scratch was CAMEO, and it’s reassuring to see I’m not alone. My lack of knowledge of rugby or the Scottish flag were my only other speed bumps.
Very enjoyable. I liked the four-way clue for ELECTRIC.
3down ‘came’ = ‘was offered’ is fine I reckon (‘this job came to me’ ‘this job was offered to me’, and it makes for a great surface. I’ve today learnt it’s properly CARD SHARP not CARD SHARK (had Jaws ‘shark alert’?? in pencil). Lovely puzzle thanks Vulcan and Eileen
Enjoyable puzzle as usual for this very competent setter.
Now that the game of international rugby has been embraced by the girls (long overdue), it amuses me to wonder if one of the England fowards travelling to the USA, would enter “Hooker” under the “Occupation” section of the ESTA immigration form.
Chambers has “Offer” as “to present to the mind”.
So, for example, “an idea came to me” cf “an idea was offered to me”.
Best I could do.
GDU @12: I liked the ELECTRIC clue too, but isn’t it actually a 5-way, with very exciting as the 5th?
My playing position was hooker, so I had it in mind that 12ac might have something to do with scrummaging (although the use of the heel was out of favour by the time I played). I interpreted CAME in a retail sense – ‘our drinks come in regular or large sizes’.
Thanks to Eileen for parsing ELECTRIC. I also had never heard of that meaning TILLER.
CAME=’was offered’ continues to mystify me. Doesn’t seem to make any sense.
22a SALTIRE means a diagonal cross in heraldry – the Scottish flag is just the best known example.
2d A pleasing and fairly rare(?) clue type in crosswords, though very familiar from the ‘Only Connect’ wall.
Thanks both
Lovely stuff from Vulcan. LOI was HEELING; no complaints about the clue, but I was held up by the fact that the hooker actually heeling is (unfortunately) a thing of the fairly distant past now. I wasn’t sure about CAME for ‘was offered’, but convinced myself it was OK: “the Ford Focus came with a year’s free insurance.” I was less happy about fashionable as an anagrind, but now I’ve had my coffee I can see I just wasn’t doing the required mental gymnastics: you can fashion LESOTHO out of ‘hotel so’, so ‘hotel so’ is fashionable into LESOTHO.
Thanks Eileen and Vulcan.
Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.
I think PostMark@10 explained the “was offered = came” question very nicely.
The clue for GRACELAND was my favourite. Enjoy your trip AlanC!
Another here with a bit of puzzlement over CAME(o), and HEELING LOI.
Punctuation in ELECTRIC is cleverly misleading
There was some discussion about FOOT a while back, and I think it said that while “foot the bill” means “pay the bill”, “foot” doesn’t mean “pay” in isolation or with other objects. Some agreed, some didn’t, I think, at the time.
A lovely start to the week, thanks Vulcan for a delightful puzzle. Came here to understand Tiller and Cameo. Despite having seen this use of Tiller before, it didn’t come to mind this morning. Tom@20, I think you have best explanation so far for Came, thanks. And thank you Eileen for the blog
Vulcan obviously hasn’t watched rugby for a few years. The ball rarely goes anywhere near the hooker these days
Cheers E&V
The same head scratch over TILLER and CAME as others. Thanks Eileen and PostMark@10.
GDU@12, isn’t admitting a lack of knowledge of rugby grounds for deportation from DU?
Thanks for explaining Tiller, Eileen. It was the one thing I didn’t ‘get’ in an otherwise fun puzzle.
I’m with you Hadrian #13 – my three score years and six have been spent under the illusion that a dangerous opponent in cards was a ‘card shark’! You do live and learn.
PeteHA3@25: only two states take any form of rugby seriously – New South Wales and Queensland. The others follow real footy – and even then the current Premiers are Brisbane, who have won three in a row.
Percybass@27, Hadrian@13: although the original was indeed “card sharp”, over time “card shark” has become a perfectly acceptable alternative under a process linguists call “reanalysis”, whereby people think that something close to the original makes more sense.
It’s the same way “pease” became “pea” (“surely pease is plural?”), “Welsh rabbit” became “Welsh rarebit”, and “burger” detached itself from “hamburger” to become a word in its own right, attachable to many other words.
J@29 that explains the damp squid 🙂
I remembered tiller=shoot from some previous crossword, but was puzzled by my ignorance of the on-field role of hookers. And came=was offered made no sense to me at all, though I see it does to others. I liked BALL.
Clyde @21: thank you.
I was one of the few rugby fans at my (US) university, long enough ago that hookers were expected to heel the ball. It was only today that I learned that it has fallen out of favor. Occasionally it helps to be old. It also helped with FRENCH POLISH, which is not an American thing, but which was a perennial in British crosswords fifty (or more) years ago.
I had to check TILLER, not knowing the shoot meaning.
And yes, Alan@10 settled any doubts I had about CAME = was offered.
VinnyD@33 not just fallen out of favour, but physically impossible to do, if you look at the way modern professional scrums are set up, and the relative heights of the front rows. This explains why the law has been updated to maintain the language requiring the scrum half to put the ball in straight, but to add a line saying they’re allowed to align their shoulder with the middle line — the upshot being a perfectly legal feed directly to the second row!
There are now attempts to tweak this again, and it will be messy, like all the other well-intentioned tweaks to the laws over the past couple of decades, which try to keep something of the old law despite huge changes to how the game is played.
Sorry, sorry, I’ll find myself a RU forum!
Thanks as ever, Eileen.
Rugby a closed book to me, so HEELING a bung-it-in-and-hope. Nor did I know the botanical meaning of TILLER. Ah, sure we can always learn.
Martin @9
I’ve been out since before your comment appeared and am only now catching up. I must confess that my supposed ‘knowledge of the intricacies of rugby’ came entirely from Google this morning and has been shown by later comments to be rather sadly lacking. (I do enjoy watching Six Nations games on television but can’t pretend to understand it.)
Re CAME, I wondered if the definition part was simply “was” and “offered” was explanatory. “I came third” = “I was third”. A bit far-fetched, but so are the other possibilities.
[AlanC @1: while in Memphis, you must go to the Civil Rights Museum–it’s excellent. It’s built into and around the motel where MLK was shot. The striking thing for me about GRACELAND was the level of poor taste Elvis had. It’s like he had all this money, and had no idea what to spend it on.]
The only time I remember seeing a quintuple definition before was in an Arachne puzzle way back in 2013. A masterpiece of succinctness, just five words in the clue!
I may be the only one who was completely fine with CAMEO but for some reason took over-long with LEAVER, as where I live, children finishing time at school aren’t referred to that way. So I had LEARNT, with T for time and the signal for past tense, until it ran into a problem with the now notorious HEELING, for which I had no referent whatsoever. I really liked the constructions and misdirects, looking for royalty in the King’s home as just one example. Kudos to Vulcan and thanks to Eileen for this post.
Nice puzzle…although anyone who thinks that A WAKE is a solemn vigil has never attended one in Ireland!
Thanks Vulcan & Eileen
Eileen @36 well, I rather doubled down on my ignorance with my comment! I’m the fairest of fair-weather fans, and I feel slightly guilty for having found myself totally surrounded by rugby union royalty on a few lucky occasions that others would have killed for.
Was offered = CAME?
The only one I didn’t parse was ELECTRIC. Very clever and worth a smile.
I’m another to not know shoot = TILLER
Last in was GRACELAND, as I was trying to think through the various homes of a very different King, as was doubtless Vulcan’s evil intention. (He says with another smile.)
Enjoyable if not particularly difficult even by Monday standards.
Good accessible Monday puzzle. Favourite CAPITAL.
Is French-Polish usually written with a hyphen, or are we to take it here as a verb?
Didn’t twig to “smoking” as a bad habit.
Since almost anything can be the name of a band, I googled “blur band” on the off chance, and sure enough, there they were.
If you wonder how solemn a wake can be, ask Finnegan. (The song, not the novel.)
I did know the tiller bit, probably from some previous puzzle, and the saltire from life. Well, from reading about life.
Thanks Vulcan for a smooth and pleasant morning and Eileen for the delightful company.
As an ex-hooker – very long ago – I was suprised by 12a. I used my instep (on own ball). Of course back then refs insisted that the ball go in straight, so there was a real contest between hookers. Perhaps a current player could enlighten us on whether they really use their heel?
Chemist @46
Even I’m not old enough to remember a hooker using his heel (women’s rugby didn’t even exist then!). The hooker used to strike, either with the inside of the right foot, or (better, if he could manage it) with the outside of his left foot, in either case diverting the ball back towards his supporting forwards.
Thanks for the blog , seemed fine for a Monday but I was hoping for Brummie .
CAPITAL was neat . The students call me a CARD SHARK but I tell them they are wrong .
AlanC@1 yet again , I know I am old-fashioned but I do prefer to listen to albums not visit them .
[Fortieth anniversary of the Graceland album this year, Roz – I expect you knew that.]
As someone who has lived in Memphis for the last 30-odd years, I almost did not get GRACELAND! I hope you enjoy your time here, AlanC! As mrpenny says, go to the Civil Rights Museum, and Beale Street for the music and Southern cooking. And the ducks in the Peabody Hotel…
Re 3d CAMEO, I’m always slightly surprised at how many commenters say they don’t understand a clue (came = was offered) when it has been explained clearly by other commenters early in the blog. Is it because they don’t read the earlier comments before sending theirs? If so, they are only being one-way participants in the 225 community.
Eileen, thanks for the congenial blog, with very helpful links to 15a BLUR, 22a SALTIRE, and 20d TILLER. The link to 14d GRACELAND reminded me of why, like Roz@48, I associate it more with Paul Simon than with the King of Kitsch.
And thanks, Blaise@39 for the link to that remarkable Arachne clue – not just a clever and concise quintuple, but also a cogent surface. (I think I’ll print that puzzle and do the whole thing.)
The last two took a while. 9a AROSE, I couldn’t get ABORN out of my head. 2d ELECTRIC was loi and took some time to parse. I very much appreciated it once the pennies dropped
Many fine clues, including 10a MINIATURE, 11a LESOTHO, 14d GRACELAND, and others
Thanks both
Thanks to Cello@51 for your comment about “one-way participants”. I think we’ve been getting a lot of them recently. I read what Mark wrote @10 about that clue, and gave it no further thought. It was grating to have to read about it again and again. Eileen is too polite to say anything, but I am not so restrained.
An enjoyable Monday puzzle, but Vulcan seems to have let his inner Imogen off the leash a couple of times. Not a complaint, just an observation.
Thanks to setter and blogger as always.
Valentine@45: Chambers gives French-polish [with hyphen] as a verb meaning to treat with French polish [two words, a varnish for furniture].
I refereed rugby league (mostly amateur) for 20 years from the late 1970s. Scrums were a nightmare until the authorities realised that the important thing was to restart the game as quickly as possible, and effectively sanctioned a roll of the ball to the back of the scrum, bypassing the hooker. Hookers in rugby league usually play a key role as acting half-back at the play-the-ball (ruck in Australia) but don’t use their feet for that. Now, where’s my coat?
No need to walk off with or without your coat, Hector. What you say is accurate, and the clue is still good. The hooker should still strike at the ball with his heel, but it is now legitimate to feed the ball to a place where he can’t reach it!
With regards to the one way participants comments – sometimes there’s a big delay between submitting a comment and then it appearing! Or at least I’ve found. Cheers Eileen and Vulcan.
Thanks Jacob #29. So I’m not completely mad then!
A bit late to the party today. I enjoyed this a lot and like others needed help with CAMEO and TILLER.
I appreciated the succinctness of the clues.
Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.
Interesting to read the contortions trying to justify “came”/”was offered”. I’m still not convinced. Just because you can exchange one for the other in certain specific circumstances doesn’t necessarily make them synonyms.
I’m not sure I understand GDU’s point at #59. If I can exchange one word for another in certain specific circumstances without altering the meaning, does that not make the two words synonyms in those circumstances?
Cellomaniac@60, yes, if two words are synonymous in even one circumstance, they’re fair game in a crossword. PostMark’s example @10 completely justifies “was offered” = CAME. We also see “pays” = FOOTS, which aren’t synonymous except in one context — “…the bill”
Cellomaniac@60, hmmm…I hope I didn’t sound mansplainy @61. I just meant to agree with you…
Cellomaniac@60, I’d certainly have thought so. Isn’t that a large part of the joy of cryptics in the first place? “Ahh it’s not ‘present’ as the noun but as the verb!” and suchlike.
Similar to what others have said, “The champagne was offered / came with appetizers” seems uncontroversial. Perhaps the complaint is that the synonym isn’t necessarily one you might find in a thesaurus. I’m entirely unbothered by that, as I find that thesauruses can be bafflingly arbitrary, imprecise and incomplete.
The more reasonable complaint is about things such as foot = pay, which DrW@32 correctly recalls caused a stir in the past. muffin? 😉. I tend to agree; it’s unconvinving if the synonym is truly a standalone. You can’t foot anything else to pay it, whereas all kinds of things can come with / be offered with all kinds of other things.
Jacob29@ I think things like card shark and damp squid are more commonly known as eggcorns; the change that led to them is not morphological, merely aural, and so is not strictly speaking reanalysis. But to all intensive purposes it matters little 😜.
I do love a good eggcorn, despite “eggcorn” itself being baffling; who’s not heard of an acorn, and who would conceive it – or even merely hear it – as eggcorn anyway! Of them all, I think “free reign” is the one I sympathise most with.
AP@64 an ex-colleague would frequently review work with “the benefit of high insight”.
Mig@62 , you are very far from being mansplainy , some people on here mansplain for England . Have a glance at an FT blog for IO on 30th September .
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen (and others for parsing some clues). I agree with Valentine#45 that almost any word can be a music band’s name – so, dare I say, I think BLUR was a bit too obscure for me. Maybe adding ‘Setter’s favourite’ could have been fairer.
Roz@66, Sheesh! I guess a lot of learning can also be a dangerous thing. Your punchline was hilarious…
Oh sorry, I forgot to comment on this good puzzle.
I suppose that makes me a zero-way participant.
Mike B @19, I thought the same about 22a. I only accepted “saltire” as the answer because it fitted with the crossers I had, and the anagram. I would say that the flag of Scotland contains a saltire, but I would not say “the saltire” meaning the flag.
Thank you for the blog.
For 27a I had POLICE SIRENS.
When you don’t solve the first 5 across clues you know it’s going to be a tough day.
Very late commenting I know, but I think SALTIRE might be used as a metonymy for the flag, as in “The independence rally turned the park into a sea of saltires.” Although I thought of it right away, the obliqueness of the definition made me hold off entering it until I had a couple of crossers, in case I’d missed another anagram.
I got off to a fairly quick start in the northern Across this time, but soon dropped to a slower pace.
I’m even later in commenting, but here I am anyway. I found this much more difficult than the usual Monday Vulcan, and I grumbled about the parsing of quite a few, but after reading the explanations I think I was just being more than usually obtuse and grumpy.
I do dislike “first” as the indicator in 6dn, as the cryptic reading requires “firsts”. That is, I’m fine with “first to suffer” = S, but not with “first to suffer actual …” = SA… . But no doubt that’s just me, and I cheerfully concede that it’s a minor quibble.