Guardian Prize 27,734 by Brendan

65 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,734 by Brendan”

1. Thanks to PeeDee and Brendan

   cf 5d Or indeed anywhere in this puzzle.

2. And note that the puzzle is in fact a lipogram, with no e in either answers or definitions. Added to that, the answers are a pangram, with every letter except e represented.

3. Not a single E in the solutions, and not a single E in the clues either. Brendan, I take my hat off to you.

4. I got that there were no Es in the solutions – I hadn’t realised there were none in the clues either – amazing. Maybe I’ll have more to say when I look back at my paper copy, but in the meantime deep respect to Brendan and thanks to PeeDee.

5. Wow. One great benefit of solving x-word then looking at this blog is the humility engendered.

   Solved this crossword pretty quickly (for me) and thought “Meh, some okay clues but a few a bit ropey”

   Then I read this blog+comments; the *xc*ll*nc* of the constructional achievement is revealed, as is the ingenuity of Brendan and the acuity of commentators. To be set I sharp relief against one’s own stupidity.

   Bows in admiration before Brendan, raises hat to PeeDee and other commentators. Retires quiety to nosh on Humble Pie.

6. I hadn’t heard of a lipogram and got the solution without being able to parse the clue. But now I get it. Nice one Brendan. And thank you Peedee for the explanation.

7. Just realised that there isn’t a single e in the entire thing. I am amazed and, like Epee Sharkey, humbled. How is that even possible?!

8. Chapau!

9. So, PeeDee, did you think of trying to do the blog sans Es? 19a would have been a helluva challenge!
   Thanks, both.

10. Thanks PD and Br*ndan. What an amazing crossword.

11. Thanks PeeDee. Add me to the list of those who figured there was no ‘e’ in the answers but quite failed to recognise its absence in the clues. Quite remarkable. LOI was 3d, not because I didn’t know the answer but because I couldn’t explain it; I’m still not entirely happy, rust (iron oxide) = fungal growth?

12. Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee. I was late getting to LIPOGRAM (my LOI) because I had started with saw-aphorism rather than SUM but when I got rid of the W as a crosser and factored in cogito ergo I finished and, like others, admired the absence of Es.

13. Generally I don’t like themes or similar in crosswords (other than Christmas specials and the like). But this was so well done that I have to join others in congratulating Brendan! I’m another who saw the lack of Es in the answers, but didn’t realise until coming here that there were none in clues either.
    Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.

14. Biggles A: various moulds on plants are reddish-brown and are known as rusts.

15. Like WK@4 et al, I only saw that there were no Es in the solutions!!!! And then I thought I was very clever when I spotted the E-less pangram too. But what a treat to read the blog and see Brendan’s incredible feat as regards the clues. Epee@5 et al, yes I too feel humbled. (Never assume you are as clever as/cleverer than the setter” is my new aphorism!) Favourite was STYX at 25d, my LOI, and I did like learning about LIPOGRAMs! [Thanks WK also for your lovely PM yesterday. Really chuffed that email and forum colleagues have missed my missives. Despite floods and fires our road trip has been a wonderful experience, and the nautical adventures in Tasmania have been a lot of fun.] JinA from the Public Library in Hobart.

16. What an achievement to do this and have fantastic clues as well. It seems Brendan took his cue from Georges Perec, whose e-less novel La Disparition was translated as A VOID by Gilbert Adair but could also have been called VANISHING…

     

    Thanks to Brendan and P–D–

17. beaulieu @ 14. Thank you. Of course, myrtle rust has been in the news recently too.

18. I’d just like to add my unbounded appreciation of Brendan’s achievement to the paean of praise from everyone else. As it happens, I had noticed that the entire puzzle, clues and all, was a lipogram – but only because I’d been given a clue by looking at the closing comments on The Guardian’s puzzle for last Friday. Sometimes interest in the Saturday Prize, which is often the most fascinating puzzle of the week, becomes dissipated over time and I’ve found that the only serious feedback to be found is from those hardcore solvers on the G site – the ones who appear to polish off the toughest challenges in half an hour or so and then have to tack their Saturday comments onto Friday’s walk in the park.
    (Good to hear the Tassie fires didn’t get to you, JinA!(

19. Off topic
    I have just posted a Comment under General Discussion. Grateful if any setter can give info/advice.

20. A couple of things not mentioned so far. Translations of “La Disparition” as well as “A Void” included “A Vanishing” and “Omissions” (see 24, 26,29 ac). Georges Perec was a member of the Oulipo group (hidden in first row).

21. Wow! I doff my lid, I truly do. But I had to visit this blog to twig just how brilliant this was. Now I know why, on finishing, I saw so many unfamiliar words – including lipogram, naturally. That is simply stunning, a fantastic job. Congratulations B!

22. Well I’d never heard of a lipogram but it’s a word I won’t forget now!  The whole missing ‘e’ thing had completely passed me by – I was just happy to solve the puzzle getting past a few words new to me like PATCHOULI.  The whole value of this blog is obvious today so thanks PeeDee and congratulations Brendan on a triumph.

23. Brian@20 – thanks for that info – even more wow factor to this puzzle!

24. Chameleon @16, Brian Greer @20: thanks for pointing out this additional cleverness. I vaguely knew somone once wrote a novel with no Es in it, but not the related facts you point out.

25. The lack of E’s has been well discussed.  And, as someone else said:

    Chapeau !

    I didn’t understand 26 ac.  Do now.

    Not too sure about the function of ‘as’ in 14 ac?

    Great puzzle, though.  Kept me smiling during a hectic week (moving house).

    Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.

26. Chameleon@16 – sorry for not acknowledging your post. Even with your capitals I didn’t twig you were highlighting solutions in the puzzle.

27. I’ve just looked at what I wrote last weekend. “Spent most of the time thinking this is tough but not very enjoyable until the unknown LIPOGRAM ousted the obviously right but unparsed SAW and made me eat my words.” SUM was then loi and my favourite.

28. Love how Brendan’s puzzles continue to reveal their intricacies long after solving the grid. Thanks to those who have pointed out the Perec references. I also note that the solutions contain “vanishing point” – or in other words “disappearing E” if we read E as a point of the compass. I don’t often post on here but this puzzle is such a work of beauty! Thank you Brendan!

29. Wow^2 , just awoke from slumbers to find the messages from Chameleon @16 & Brian Greer @20 — this puzzle seems now to be in a different realm.

    To include 3 variations of the title of Perec’s novel is one thing — to have the name of his literary group as a hidden word Nina is mind-blowing.

    Perhaps the most extraordinary thing is the puzzle is still entirely solvable, even by dunces such as I, without any awareness of the lipogramist M. Perec (I have read one of his other works (Life, a User’s Manual) which is  excellent, and was dimly aware of his e-less work but had no idea it constituted a lipogram or about any of the translations or the OULiPO …

    Is there an Oscar for crosswords? Surely Brendan deserves some kind of prize for this?

30. Fairly easy to solve, but the lipogram makes it a tour de force. There have been two previous puzzles that omitted the letter E from the solutions, one by Brendan (in which I was the only vowel) and one by Araucaria, but neither did the same with the clues and neither used all of the other letters. Got the Perec references but missed the hidden OULIPO.

    Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.

31. I don’t often get time to do the Guardian Saturday crossword, and if I do attempt it, I rarely finish it.  Last week, I got totally bogged down in the Indie crossword and failed to finish that, but had a look at this one and surprised myself by finishing it very quickly.

    However, I knew what a lipogram was, I’ve actually read the Perec/Adair A void, but I totally failed to spot that feature of this puzzle.

    Those with memories of the old radio show Many A Slip might remember a round called the Many-a-Slipogram in which Roy Plomley would read out a piece of prose which he said was missing a given letter and the players had to buzz whenever that letter appeared.

32. Thanks for the blog, PeeDee.

    There is nothing I can add to  the awestruck appreciation of this puzzle – as John S says @20, Brendan’s puzzles are so often the gift that goes on giving – except to thank Brendan for dropping in @20 to reveal the final cherry on the top of the icing on the cake, as well as providing a truly unforgettable puzzle.

33. I meant to mention also that Perec was also a crossword constructor who published two books of crosswords. See “Thoughts on the Art and Technique of Crossing Words” (https://believermag.com/thoughts-on-the-art-and-technique-of-crossing-word/)

34. I meant John S at 28, of course – my apologies.

35. I always remember learning that e is the most common letter in English from the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”.

    Absolutely brilliant crossword.  Thank you Brendan.

36. by gum!

37. A beauty, Brendan, at so many levels.
    Thanks too to Per Dee

38. Thanks to Brendan and PeeDee. Most of which needed to be said has been said. My experience the same as Donald @22 (solved but missed the rest), and my sentiments the same as Eileen @32. Nothing more to said apart from thanks to Brendan for adding to my learning and PeeDee for the enlightenment.

39. What Eileen said @32

     

40. All been said. Brendan- respect!!!

41. I’m with the dunces…easy solve but realising nothing, nada, rien, even after flicking through wiki on lipograms. Wizardly setting!

42. A tour de force.  Definitely one to keep.  I am sure M. Perec would have added his “chap*au!”

     

43. Absolutely brilliant, especially after reading the comments of Chameleon @16 and Brian Greer (Brendan) @20 !

    Thank you Brendan and PeeDee.

     

     

44. I did this and on seeing 5D realised we were on for one. And then I read the clues again and saw just how clever it was. I’d seen this once before with the cleverest ever (in my view) Times Quick Crossword authored by a setter under the name of NOEL. Luckily he dropped by the blog to explain as nobody had spotted understood what was going on. As with this crossword the completed grid and clues were a liprogram. And there was even a nina across the middle of IPOGRAM in the unchecked letters! – well as there was no L,. it couldn’t be the answer to a clue, as here. That was mightily impressive, but to do it with a 15×15… and a vowel… is astonishing! Many thanks Brendan for a cruciverbal work of art.

45. I was wondering if papa and mamma(l) in the clues had any significance.  The words papa and maman occur in La Disparition,  both Perec’s parents perished in WW11 (his father on the battlefield and his mother in Auschwitz) and the missing es are thought to symbolize their ‘disappearance’ since he cannot write père or mère. 

    Also it is thought that the phrase sans e (without e) sounds like sans eux (without them), an encrypted reference to loss.

46. After solving the anagram of LIPOGRAM, I didn’t recognise the word, even though I’d met it before. I was thinking it must be a type of medical chart connected with fats (lipo-) so wondered about the definition. On consulting Chambers, I remembered having read all about Perec and lipograms as a result of reading Alan Connor’s excellent blogpost on the Guardian (which, incidentally, reproduces an excellent photo of Prec) about the graphic novel, Fun . I then twigged that the clue was a lipogram and thought “how brilliant”. Oh dear! How little I had really appreciated the brilliance of this wonder!

    I really must train myself not to be satisfied with simply filling in the letters in the little boxes; it would have been so much more fun to have discovered the secrets of this grid by myself, beautiful as it was to see them revealed here. A shame really that Brendan had to come on to give the full sp — but not as much of a shame as if he hadn’t. Definitely one for the file of ‘special crosswords’.

    Thanks Brendan and thanks Peedee as well as those others who showed me what I’d missed.

     

47. I am in awe of Brendan, really miss his puzzles in the DT on a Sunday.

48. Or even the Sunday Telegraph!!

49. Thanks to PeeDee and Brendan.  I remember being slightly surprised to finish this and finish it comparatively quickly, considering the last time I attempted a Brendan (on a Monday !!) I gave up after two hours and three clues.     However like so many others I failed to appreciate the fact that the entire crossword was a lipogram until I read it on AnyAnswers !  Excellent setting, kudos to Brendan.

50. Thanks also, Brian Greer @33 for the link to Perec on crosswords. I think the beginning of that was quoted in Paolo Bacilieri’s Fun, because I remember the mention of the contrast between the two parts of the setter’s art:

    “The construction of a crossword consists of two operations that are quite different and in the end perfectly independent of each other: the first is the filling of the diagram; the second is the search for definitions.”

    … though of course in your puzzle the fill constrains the ‘definitions’ (clues), so they are not perfectly independent.

51. (If people want to see the same trick in reverse, try googling Perec’s LES REVENENTS, translated as THE EXETER TEXT: JEWELS, SECRETS, SEX, translated by Ian Monk or – as the title page in the edition I read at uni puts it – RENDERER- E.N.MENK.)

    Also, here’s a crossword by Qaos which only uses the letter E in all clues and all solutions. http://www.qaos-crosswords.com/crosswords/2007/qaos_xword_11.jpg

52. Just want to add my approbation for this fab bit of work. I thought it was wondrous.

53. It was only when I got LIPOGRAM, about three-quarters of the way to completion, that I noticed the absence of ‘E’ from every solution I put in, and thus it continued to the end. I had to come here to realise that Brendan had also achieved the amazing feat of doing the same thing to all the clues.
    I am in awe. I didn’t notice any ‘strained’ clues that might have resulted from creating the lipogram, and in fact I had big ticks against SUM and STYX, my favourite clues.
    Many thanks to Brendan and PeeDee.

54. Chameleon@51

    That Qaos link gives a 403 (Access denied) error.

    Alan @53

    I notice you don’t mention the features referred to in Brendan’s comment @20. Perhaps you have not had time to read the comments and reach a more complete appreciation of the puzzle? Also, I recommend reading his link to the translation of Perec’s essay on crosswords, as mentioned in my comment above @50.

55. .. or rather, reading the translation at his link

56. @ Tony 54, That’s odd. It’s crossword #11 from 2007 on the archive crosswords section of Qaos’ personal site.

57. Wow! One for the keeper file.

    And on a something completely different note, 19d made me think of Mr. and Mrs. Brian Norris’ Ford Popular.

    Thanks Brendan, PeeDee and commentators for the brilliance.

58. I don’t often comment here and I’m very late to it, but I couldn’t resist saying something about the extraordinary, wonderful brilliance of this. I didn’t even notice when solving it (hence the lateness of the comment), which I think is the most brilliant thing of all. Chapeau, Brendan. chapeau.

59. Absolutely magnificent!

60. Chameleon @56,

    Maybe Qaos hasn’t kept up his subs to the hosting service? It’s actually marked as “forbidden”:

    “This is the 403 error page of the web hosting service provider Awardspace.com. The 403 error page indicates that access to the requested web page is strictly forbidden.

    This might happen due to one/few of the following reasons:

    – the access to the requested web page was disabled by Awardspace.com;

    – the requested web page was removed due to a Terms of Service violation;

    – there is a broken link at the requested website or the URL was mistyped.”

    Perhaps if it appeared in the Guardian it can been found in their archive. Otoh, it seems unlikely it would be in a personal location too, if that was the case? Are you sure you have the link right? Do you not get a 403 by following it?

61. I must say this crossword was amazing.  Now I must try to submit (or post) a contribution that also contains no [you-know-what].  It’s not straightforward to do so – just you try it.  And that’s my last word on this topic.

    Alan B [how lucky I am!]

62. Tony @54/60, Chameleon @51, try this version: http://www.qaos-crosswords.com/crosswords/2007/qaos_xword_11.jpg

63. … having said which the original link now seems to be working too, so forget that!

64. Beery hiker, that’s the same link. Don’t understand why it works for you (and Chameleon?), but not me.

65. Alan, that’s to say “lucky” that your tag only has consonants and A’s in it (in contrast to this crossword’s author), I’m hazarding?

    (Yay! Did it! Now for that book …)

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