Comments on: Guardian Prize Puzzle 25,388 by Biggles

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 08:14:35 +0000

Thanks rfb. Now corrected.

By: rfb

rfb — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:06:19 +0000

Very late to say this but … the number of the crossword in the heading is wrong. This made this entry hard to find! It should be 25,388 NOT 25,338.

By: Shed

Shed — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:32:54 +0000

Enigmatist is too modest to mention it but he’s the one who gets all the theme words to fit in the grid, which is the hardest bit of a puzzle like this (even with a computer to help you). Also, there were several cases where two if not all three of us came up with very similar clues so it was pretty much toss of a coin as to which one got picked.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 09:59:59 +0000

John H @ 19

Very many thanks for your comments but please don’t be too surprised if Gaufrid now tries to recruit you and Shed as bloggers.

And Good Luck to Araucaria and his quarry. They’ve probably hot footed it to some desert island. Or, at least, The Isle of Dogs.

By: John H

John H — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 09:19:29 +0000

One of the best things about a Biggles is how wrong solvers can be when assigning clues!

John (Paul) had no input to this puzzle, or its FT equivalent on the same day, though he did know that there was jiggery-pokery afoot. But he had no knowledge about the extent of the mischief: Anax (Sunday Indy), Brian Greer (aka Virgilius, Brendan et al) in the Sunday Telegraph and Paul McKenna in the Sunday Times Mephisto all had various messages for the happy couple, as you will see if you inspect the solution grids.

For a Biggles, each of us sets a complete set of clues which are judged “blind” by our checkers Jane, Jane and Linda. Responsible for bum cleft, batty grannies, shirt lifter, testes and Sex in the City was Araucaria (no, only joking, Shed), AGAIN, ARMENIA and ADDER were fittingly A’s, and I did Egham’s mind games with battered maids. Clue of the Day in my opinion was ASPIRATE from Shed, who also produced the long anagram. Mrs Halpern jnr is an artist, hence the reference to words (Mr H) and pictures (Mrs H).

On behalf of Biggles, thank you for your kind comments and see you on our next outing.

That is, if we can catch Araucaria, last seen skipping off into the night in pursuit of Mrs Halpern snr. At his age…

JEnig

By: Eileen

Eileen — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 07:57:39 +0000

Thanks, Shed, for dropping in – and for the confirmation!

By: Biggles A

Biggles A — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 03:59:37 +0000

Shed @ 16.

I know! I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind either.

By: Shed

Shed — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:47:45 +0000

Thanks to Peedee and all who commented, especially Eileen #8 for getting the smutty Latin joke – that was me – and Bryan #5 for pointing out that you didn’t need to know anything about the theme to be able to complete the puzzle. That was the idea. But hopefully a bit of extra fun for those who did, especially the happy couple (well, they were looking pretty happy when I last saw them).

Biggles A #1: there was also at some point a cover version by Telly Savalas which was even worse than the original and has been coming back to haunt me ever since we produced this thing.

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 22:06:45 +0000

Hi PeterO and Davy; not a very good (or select) prison IMO. I had no problem with the original wording.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:07:51 +0000

Davy – the misspelling is in 20dn in this week’s prize puzzle, not the one being blogged here.