Guardian Prize Puzzle 26,184 by Pasquale

by

This themed puzzle lacked definitions for six solutions, but the wordplay meant that there was no difficulty in working them out.

The theme was the novels of Arnold Bennett set in the Potteries.  I cannot tell which particular novel Pasquale had in mind, perhaps “Anna of the Five Towns”, but whichever it was, 20 down should have been omitted.  Although there are six towns in the conurbation, apparently Bennett felt that “five towns” was more euphonious, and he therefore made no reference to Fenton in any of the novels set in the Potteries.

It has been many years since I read any Arnold Bennett, but I had retained enough to enable me to work out all the themed answers once Fenton (paradoxically) provided me with the key to the theme.  The puzzle itself proved an enjoyable way to pass the time on a Eurostar train from London to Paris, although I did a little more research  for the purposes of the blog later once I had internet access.  There were rather too many anagrams for my taste, although I suppose that they helped to balance the difficulty posed by the themed clues.  Although there were some very nice surfaces, I am surprised by the number of quibbles that I have had to raise, over definitions mainly.  Perhaps Pasquale was using a different dictionary to me?

Across
9 CAUSALITY Agency to make something happen when a country lass (no fool) enters London? (9)
A USA L(ass) in CITY.
10,12 STOKE-ON-TRENT Satisfactory note about money obtained from property on street (5-2-5)
ST(reet), OK,  *NOTE,  RENT.  Presumably “about” is the anagram indicator.  As this is one of the themed answers, there is no definition.  Stoke, although now the name for the whole conurbation, is one of the six component towns.
11 ABSOLVE Only half competent, you, not finishing, may offer excuse (7)
AB(le), SOLVE(rs).
12   See 10
13 CHARY Cautious, making love without sex? (5)
CHAR(it)Y, using the word in its Biblical sense.
14 POTTERIES Queen in bind in mad area associated with 4 21 across (9)
ER in TIE in POTS.  I can’t find POTS (presumably for POTTY) with this meaning in Chambers.
16 POLICE INSPECTOR Nice coppers to lie, almost fooling their senior officer (6,9)
*(NICE COPPERS TO LI(e)).
19 DEFORESTS Turns into barren areas of deserts, possibly (9)
*(OF DESERTS).
21 TOWNS More than one place has to be found after road junction (5)
T (-junction), OWNS (has).
22 LONGTON Fielder in the deep catches Kent’s tail-ender (7)
T in LONG-ON.  One of the Five Towns (as Longshaw) featured in Arnold Bennett’s novels.
23 BURSLEM Slumber is disturbed (7)
*SLUMBER.  Another of the Five Towns, rendered as Bursley in the novels.
24 CROWN Size of paper hat (5)
Double definition, although strictly speaking a crown is either a circular head ornament worn e.g. by royalty, or part of the head which is covered by a hat.
25 SLOGANEER Promoter of product making one’s lager fantastic (9)
*(ONE’S LAGER).
Down
1 SCRATCH PAD Damage home computer memory (7,3)
A simple charade, but the definition seems a little loose, as (according to Chambers) this term refers to “a facility on a mobile phone that enables the user to record information in the phone’s memory during a call”.
2 TUNSTALL Lots of wine on bench at market? (8)
TUN, STALL.  Another of the Five Towns, rendered as Turnhill in the novels.
3 HANLEY River, one flowing out into dried grass (6)
HAN, LEY.  The river Han is a major river in South Korea.  However, none of the definitions of “ley” that I can find refer to “dried” grass.  The closest seems to be “arable land under grass or pasture”.  It’s yet another of the Five Towns, Hanbridge in the novels. No, as rhotician points out, it’s Nile (less I) in Hay.  Doh!
4 FIVE Cardinal’s expression of disgust about Vatican City (4)
V in FIE.  Cardinal (number) is the definition.
5 HYPOSTASIS Philosophical reality that could excite sophist, say (10)
*(SOPHIST, SAY).
6 ISOTHERE Line on map in this other empire (8)
Hidden in “this other empire”.
7 BOLETI At foot of tree trunk note fungi (6)
BOLE, TI.
8 SEXT Church officer not operating in ecclesiastical office (4)
SEXT(on).  It’s one of the hours of the Divine Office, originally held at the sixth hour.
14 PRISSINESS Is wrongdoing admitted by newspapers being goody-goody? (10)
IS SIN in PRESS.
15 STRESS MARK Man under pressure to make contribution to phonetic dictionary (6,4)
MARK under STRESS.  The definition is “contribution to phonetic dictionary”.  A lovely clue.
17 CAROTENE What may be converted to vitamin A, one trace dissolving (8)
*(ONE TRACE).
18 TOWELLED Kicked around a watery hole, maybe — must get dried (8)
WELL in TOED.
20 FENTON Heartless criminal takes in holy books (6)
NT in FE(l)ON.  The sixth(!) of the Five Towns, but omitted by Bennett.
21 TARTAR Someone feared two strike-breakers turning up (6)
RAT, RAT (reversed).
22 LOCK Jam in cupboard, a third gone (4)
LOCK(er).
23 BROW What may be furrowed, like soil mostly? (4)
BROW(n).

*anagram

29 comments on “Guardian Prize Puzzle 26,184 by Pasquale”

  2. Thanks bridgesong and particularly for explaining how six towns came to be five. It had left me puzzled.

    In 1d I find in reference to a microprocessor, scratchpad refers to a special high-speed memory circuit used to hold small items of data for rapid retrieval so I guess it is fair enough. I saw 3d rhotician’s way.

  3. Thanks bridgesong. Spotted the theme soon enough but did in the end have to google the last of them, HANLEY – only because CHARY seemed unparseable until now. Loved 10, 12 when the light dawned. Tossed up wrongly between ‘bolemi’ and the correct answer for 7d. Quite good fun for an hour.

  4. Many thanks Bridgesong & Pasquale.

    STOKE-ON-TRENT was my first entry and the rest soon followed although I had to look up the other Towns.

    The Don never disappoints!

  7. An enjoyable puzzle from the Don, but like molonglo@3 I was torn between “BOLETI” and “bolemi” for 7dn because they both fit the wordplay and the answer isn’t a comment word, IMHO. I had to use aids to find out which of them was correct, and under competition conditions I would have gone for the other one.

    I had no problems with the themed clues because the wordplay was clear for all of them except 14ac where you can count me as another who wasn’t sure about pots=mad, although the answer was obvious enough.

  8. Thanks for explaining CHARY, I didn’t grok that one.

    Tough week for a googless solve. Had to make a few guesses from the wordplay and hope for the best.

    I was also doubtful about ISOTHERE for a long time, since it just looks odd to me.

  10. I remember finding this quite difficult (done on trains before and after a walk with no reference material). I spent some time looking for anagrams of slumber before seeing the theme (which I also got from STOKE-ON-TRENT). I did eventually remember all of the 5 towns, TUNSTALL took longest. Hanley is familiar because the main Stoke bus station is there, Burslem is familiar from Port Vale, and Longton from train journeys. SEXT (other than its modern usage), ISOTHERE, BOLETI and CAROTINE were all unfamiliar, and I guessed wrongly on both SEXT and BOLETI (and forgot to look them up later) so I can’t claim to have finished it. An enjoyable challenge as always from the Don.

    Thanks to Pasquale and bridgesong

  11. A really absorbing puzzle. The theme emerged slowly enough and came together nicely, once POTTERIES fell. POTS for mad was vaguely familiar to me, so I’m surprised it’s not in the dictionaries as an alternative to POTTY.
    17 is a very clever clue, as the conversion of CAROTENE to VITAMIN A involves the breaking (dissolving) of a relatively minor part, the central double bond. Lovely &lit (or partial &lit, I suppose)
    I was prompted to go straight online to buy one of the novels, The Old Wives’ Tale, to rectify my ignorance of Bennett’s work and I’m glad I did – quite good so far.

    Thanks for the blog, bridgesong, and for the puzzle, Pasquale.

  12. phitonelly @ 11
    Read “The Card” (if you can get hold of it) – one of the funniest books in the English language.

  13. Yes, I got S-o-T early on too, which made the theme clues easy.

    Interesting re the Five Towns: I seem to remember road signs in the area say that rather than six, so the novel clearly had a lasting effect.

    I recall doing a job at Keele University. On a warm summer’s day two colleagues and I were taking a lunchtime pint outside an adjacent pub. A besunglassed and bejewelled Arab gentleman in an open top Merc came down the drive opposite, to join the road. He had little English but we understood he wanted the nearby M6. We all turned, faced the motorway, and gestured with both hands. He set off in the opposite direction. My now sadly late friend paused then observed dryly: “He’s heading for the Five Towns….he’ll be fluent by the time he gets out of there…”.

    There’s seldom a puzzle which doesn’t bring back a memory.

    Thanks Pasquale, bridgesong and all.

  14. [[@muffin
    Will do. Thanks for the tip. And thanks for the nugget about Stoke-on-Trent vs Stoke-upon-Trent, a subtlety that had passed me by.]]

  16. Thanks, Pasquale and bridgesong.

    This was very entertaining.I soon saw the theme and like others, must read one of the novels. I vaguely remember powerful TV adaptations of Clayhanger etc.in B & W from many years ago.

    CHARY made me smile as did BOLETI (We used to annoy our father with making croci the plural of crocus etc!)

    SEXT was familiar but ISOTHERE looked odd till I spotted that it was a hidden word.

    Giovanna xx

  17. The theme is not Bennett’s novels , but the Potteries. Geographical rather than literary general knowledge. The link with Bennett is incidental.
    That’s why it was necessary to include Fenton for completeness.

    23a cannot be solved from wordplay alone. Without the general knowledge BERSLUM is as plausible as BURSLEM.

  18. Rhotician @17: well, not quite. This is what it says on the annotated solution, which I’ve only just checked: * Theme: Arnold Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns (ie the Potteries: Stoke and its five other main city areas)

  20. Thanks Pasquale & bridgesong

    Re 14ac POTTERIES, I had it as ER in TIE in mad SPOT* = AREA – country spot / country area seemed close enough for me.

    Any takers?

  21. Me @ 20 (firing too fast again)…

    … the definition thus being “associated with 4 21 across”, POTTERIES being the pot banks themselves rather than the generic term for the area.

  23. bridgesong @18; I wonder who wrote the annotated solution. Neither Bennett nor Anna appear in the clues or the solutions. Nor do the five fictitious towns. It may well be that Pasquale was inspired by Bennett but I still think the “theme” is best described as the six towns of the POTTERIES, all of which appear as solutions. FIVE and TOWNS are separately clued and only referred to as 4 21 across in the preamble and in 14ac as help in identifying the “theme”.

    It’s curious that this puzzle aroused no negative comment of the sort that the previous Prize, Imogen’s Austen heroines, did. Both have themes based on not very General Knowledge, leading to proper names, which cannot be checked by way of a dictionary. Published as Prizes there is no check button so if you want to check then you have to Google which is likely to reveal the theme and give you the related answers before you have even read the clues, which rather spoils the fun and almost amounts to cheating.

  24. Rhotician @23, I take your point and can only appeal to Pasquale himself to resolve the issue. Don, are you there?

    On your second point, yes, it is a little curious, but perhaps it as I suggested, because for the most part the themed answers were easy to deduce from the wordplay and crossing letters (pace your comment at 17). But I don’t regard using Google (or almost any other resource) as cheating: it’s not an exam!

  26. Made no headway with the theme, frustratingly, so couldn’t make a dent in this at all. Didn’t enjoy it as a result, but that’s obviously not to say it was a bad puzzle.
    Fared much better yesterday.

  27. Late posting as I have been away.

    Once 4 and 21 down were solved, which was only a couple of minutes this became a little too obvious. Then we were looking where to fit in the “six” towns which was quite straightforward.

    The rest were either quite easy or gettable clues to obscure words, HYPOSTASIS, ISOTHERE etc.

    However it’s an interesting discussion re “cheating”. Of course Rhotician’s definition of “Use of the ‘Cheat’ button” is the only valid one here.

    As i have said before a crossword is an empty grid which we have to fill with intersecting words in the identical way the setter initially did. Any restrictions on methods to do this are purely “self-defined” by the solver. The setter, very kindly, also gives us some helpful clues. I don’t believe there are any other defined “rules”.

    In this case I was familiar with what the “Five Towns” were but beyond Stoke had no idea of their identities. Therefore my choices were to try and deduce town names from the clues or look them up. As I was certain that I wouldn’t recognise any of these towns this was a no-brainer.

    Not particularly challenging or entertaining for me.

    Thanks to bridgsong and Pasquale

  28. 23: rhotician:

    I agree with every word of your first paragraph.

    In it, haven’t you perhaps satisfied the curiosity expressed in your second?

    I think the place names of significant areas, of one’s home country are reasonable general knowledge for everyone, though the works/characters of one novelist perhaps not?

  29. Thanks Pasquale and bridgesong

    Only found the empty printout of this one today and it took up an enjoyable couple of hours on our shortest day :).

    It was a puzzle in two halves for me – with the right hand side falling first and with it the theme. I got 10,12 and then read the Special instructions after working out that 23 had to be BURSLEM after grumbling to myself that there wasn’t a definition. I resisted the urge to look up the POTTERIES and just get a list of the other towns – and glad that I did as TUNSTALL and HANLEY were my last two in.

    I had left POTS unparsed (more by forgetfulness than anything else) but think that Simon S @20 has the right approach.

    Good fun as always from the Don – even four months on :).

Comments are closed.