An truly epic puzzle – epic to set, epic to solve and an epic to blog. Thanks Maskarade!
The instructions were:
The clues are listed in alphabetical order of their solutions, which should be entered jigsaw-wise in the grid, as they may fit. In each pair of solutions beginning with the same letter one will fit a theme, not further defined in the clue.
So, I thought, lets solve the clues and then see where they fit. Not so fast – these clues are difficult! I got the theme of plants with YARROW but only managed to solve a small handful and couldn’t fit any of them into the grid. It was clear that without the aid of some crossing letters I wasn’t going to solve this.
To try and give some clarity to the rest of the puzzle I made a table listing the clues for each letter count :
1 2 3 U X 4 5 E F 6 A E H I K M M N O O B T V Y Y Z 7 G J K L Q R W Z 8 A B B D D F G I L N P P T V W X 9 C S 10 11 C Q S U 12 H J
My first idea was to look for double-headers in the grid, an across/down clue pair starting in the same cell (possible solutions highlighted in red). I got BUDDLEIA/BRAKE VAN and along with ALFRESCO these all fitted nicely into the top right corner. The crossing letters gave me enough help to finish that corner. Normally this would be enough to carry on, but because of the shape of the grid I reached a dead end once the corner was filled.
Looking at the table it became clear that EF, CS, HJ and CQSU were the clues I had to focus on to make further progress. I got FROME and ELAPS and there was only one way these would fit. I could then enter LAVENDER which gave a crossing letter of V which is uncommon, so I guessed this crossed UNBELIEVERS.
I had solved both OXALIS and ONAPAR and whichever one crossed with FROME would put an A as the second letter of a 12 letter word, beginning with either or H or J. JA was enough of a help to get JACOBS LADDER which I pencilled in lightly. This gave enough crossing letters to get ELODEA and to figure out YARROW and YESMEN must be the 6 letter entries across and down the middle.
After that I was on my way. Even though the number of possible combinations started to dwindle as the clues got used up I don’t think solving and placing the remaining entries ever got easy.
For me this this was a really great bank holiday puzzle, one of the best. It took a lot of time and effort to solve and felt very satisfying indeed. I could imagine that for solvers new to alphabeticals the tricky clues and difficult grid might mean there was no bank holiday enjoyment at all, just a stare at an empty grid. I hope this was not the case for many people.
Thanks again Maskarade – a spectacular puzzle!
ALFRESCO : SERF (slave) reversed (backed) inside COAL anagram=distributed
ARALIA : AustRALIA (down under) with jUST (removing top) removed (leaving) – a woodland plant
BRAKE VAN : BRA (support) with (to) KNAVE* anagram=capricious
BUDDLEIA : BUDDAh (spiritual leader) with H (husband) missing (leaves) holding LEI (garland) – a large flowering plant also known as the butterfly bush
CHRIST PLANT : CHRIS (lad) T (the, northern dialect) PLANT (factory) – the crown of thorns plant
CONQUERED : CON (prisoner) QUERiED (questioned) missing (without being present) I (one)
DAFFODIL : DAFFy (crazy, almost) LIDO (swimming pool) reversed (about) – a last, plant everyone will have heard of!
DEVILETS : LIVED (were) reversed (raised) on SET* anagram=new
ELAPS : ELAPSe (slip away) truncated (endlessly) – a genus of venemous snakes
ELODEA : EA (fenland drainage channel) contains (surrounding) LODE (open ditch)- a genus of aquatic plants
FOXGLOVE : FOX (baffle) then L (Liberal) in (embraced by) Michael GOVE (senior Tory politician) – wild plant
FROME : FROMagE (cheese, French) with AG (silver) removed
GLOXINIA : OX (steer) in inside AILING* anagram=unfortunately – genus of South American plants
GUYENNE : GUY pENNEd (inside of) – region of pre-revolutionary France
HEMP AGRIMONY : (A RHYMING POEM)* anagram=re-written – a lovely anagram for a herbaceous plant
HOARSE : HOAR (frost) on (over) SE (South East, the Home Counties)
IBERIS : tIBER (river) missing T (time) IS (exists) – genus of the candytuft plant
IN CHARGE : INCH (measure) and GEAR* anagram=change
JACOBS LADDER : JOBS (tasks) contains (involving) A Class (touch of, first letter of) LADDER with (that has a) LADDER (snag, in tights)- on of several flowering plants of the genus Polemonium
JAPHETH : anagram (odd) of HiT tHE JAckPot missing (off) TO TICK – son of Noah, brother to Ham
KEELIE : I (one) in KEELE (a University)
KING CUP : KIN (relatives) with (receiving) G (grand) CUP (trophy) – the buttercup or marsh marigold
LAVENDER : LAVER (seaweed) contains (eating) END (finish) – plants from the mint family
LEERIER : L R (left right, both sides) contains (outside) EERIE (strange)
MAMMEE : ME (note, of scale) about EMMA (a novel) reversed (return) – one of several tropical fruit trees
MANDIR : MAN DIR (managing director) briefly=abbreviation – a Hindu or Jain temple
NATTER : Jean-Marc NATTiER, painter of “Portrait of a Lady in Blue” with I missing (left)
NENUPHAR : anagram (out of sorts) of NEHRU and NAP
ON A PAR : sounds like (heard) “honour Parr”, show respect to Henry’s Queen
OXALIS : cOX (helmsman, topless) A (one) with LIS (lily) – genus of the wood-sorrel
PETITON : PEON (poor farm labourer) holding TITI (type of monkey)
PURSLANE : PURSe (money, short) on LANE (highway)
QUITCH GRASS : QUIT (depart) GRASS (marijuana) contsining (consumed) CH (child) – also known as couch grass
QUONDAM : QUOD (prison) holding N (nationalist) then AM (till noon) – at an earlier time
RAMSON : ? – wild garlic. I’m stuck on this. The best I can come up with is that that ‘apparently’ has something to do with apparent=heir apparent, so a male son of a female sheep? According to Chambers apparent=heir is Shakespearean, which makes it a bit obscure, and the state of being an heir apparent is ‘apparency’.
REDNECK : RED (anarchist) with NECK (audacity)
SAXIFRAGE : SAX (small instrument, saxophone abbreviated) IF (provided that) RAGE (to party, Australian) – London Pride and other rockery plants
STRINGENTLY : anagram (unusually) of ISN’T and R (right) with GENTLY (tenderly)
TEASEL : ThEy AnSwEr (odd letters of) with Labour (leader, first letter of) – weed with prickly stem and seed head
TERMINUS : a TERM IN the US (a transatlantic expression) – Waterloo Railway Station
UDO : U (address to a Burmese person) DO (party) – Japanese Aralia (see A above). I’m so glad that Maskarade chose not to cross reference these clues!
UNBELIEVERS : (IN BLUE VERSE)* anagram=represented. Another nice poetical anagram (see H above).
VARESE : found reversed (back) in maltESE RAVine – Edgard Varese, French experimental composer
VERONICA : CARNIVOrE* anagram=wild missing (away) R=runs – speedwell, bird’s eye or gypsyweed
WHEEPLE : WHEEL (circle) containing (around) Pillar (top letter of) then covE (end letter of)
WOODBINE : WOO (seek support) then (IN BED)* anagram=rollicking – honeysuckle or Virginia creeper
XAN : X (cross) with A Newspaperman (leading letter of) – Xan Brooks is an associate editor of The Guardian newspaper. Normally one would baulk at the name of such an obscure person (please forgive me Xan) as a solution, but in the circumstances I think Maskarade is forgiven!
XANTHIUM : X (cross) then (HIT MAN)* anagram=confused containing U (film rating) – genus of spiny plants from Asia
YARROW : ARROW (pointer) following jettY (end letter of) – common names include gordaldo, nosebleed plant, old man’s pepper, devil’s nettle, sanguinary, milfoil, soldier’s woundwort, thousand-leaf, and thousand-seal
YES-MEN : YEMEN (arab state) including S (section)
ZENANAS : NANA (grandma) in (enters) ZESt (enthusiasm) missing T=time
ZINNIA : AI (the A1, aka the Great North Road) reversed (turning) after Z (last) INN (pub) – a grassland flower from America
Thanks PeeDee. The “annotated solution” explains RAMSON as RAM/SON, which isn’t much help.
Incidentally, the setter’s nickname is Maskarade.
Thanks PeeDee and Maskarade – quite an effort on both parts!
I think you’re right about ramson. Male=ram and ewe=heir apparent (until a male offspring appears).
It’s unusual to see this as a singular noun – wild garlic is usually known as ramsons.
With respect, those are very helpful methods. Which ones actually helped depended partly on which clues one could solve initially. For example, there were only two 12-letter lights, but it took me a very long time to get HEMP AGRIMONY so that didn’t help much at the start. Other hints are that of the 9-letter words only CONQUERED would fit in the south-west corner without leaving a Q in an impossible position. There were three 6-letter answers beginning with the same letters (M, Y and O) but other crosses eventually narrowed this down to Y. I agree, an excellent puzzle.
I really, really enjoyed this. It took me a lot of the day and no work got done but I thought it was great and so clever.
I’ve only known Wild Garlic as ramsons before and can’t add anything to the parsing. Guyenne had me fooled for a long time and I learned a lot about draining the fens!
But excellent, thanks to both setter and blogger.
Ps you’ve omitted the answer for the X flower in the blog.
Prodigious work from setter and blogger.
I started this on the Bank Holiday. My birthday. After getting two of the themed answers I found it very easy …
… to give up on. Sorry.
Thanks to PeeDee for the blog.
I found this initially hard work. Once I had solved a reasonable number of clues I started fitting them into the grid. Luckily I had both 12-letter answers. I found that HEMP AGRIMONY plus some of its crossers would only go in one place – so that also positioned JACOBS LADDER. I had three of the 11-letter answers – Q, S and U – and some of their crossers so those three went in next. That also gave me the position of C(6,6). Then I had some hard work in positioning but I got there in the end.
PeeDee I noted a typo in your blog. For LEERIER you put ERRIE instead of EERIE.
For MAMMEE you had EMMA in your description
Apologies: I added, erroneously, a partial statement about MAMMEE. Please ignore it.
Very happy to have finished this. What a marathon?! Thanks all.
This was a terrific and enjoyable tour de force. I attempted it on the train unaided last Saturday and just over half the answers, some of them a little questionable and enough to ill most of the middle section of the grid. Went back to it on Sunday morning armed with the dictionary and was surprised by how easily the last few went in, though I probably spent at least 4 hours on it in total. Some of the plants and a few of the others (GUYENNE, ELAPS, MANDIR, KEELIE) were new to me.
I didn’t start in the NE because it took me far too long to see BUDDLEIA. Also caused myself some trouble by entering OXALIS and ON A PAR the wrong way round, which I realised much later when I was trying to find somewhere to put VARESE and ZINNIA.
Thanks to Maskarade for the challenge and PeeDee for the excellent blog. I can’t offer any enlightenment on RAMSON, which confused me too, though the answer had to be right.
N.B.!!
I know we don’t even mention the current Prize crossword here but for those who maybe buy the paper only on Saturday, I’ve just opened mine and found yesterday’s Qaos crossword on the Puzzle Page.
The correct version is here: http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/prize/26352
[I’m fuming.]
A great puzzle, finished with a lot of online help, and an excellent blog. I too guessed that RANSOM (and NATTER) were right, but without much confidence.
Thanks Maskarade (and PeeDee!). I found this very difficult at first but then things began to fall into place despite some words that were unfamiliar to me. But I think I was a little lucky in that my heuristic approach to completing the jigsaw worked first time. Still don’t get RAMSON even though I was 100% sure it was correct
Re Ramson, I thought it was that the male (son) was under the ram, like a ewe.
Thanks Andrew @1. I have corrected the typos.
A difficult challenge which in the end just defeated me.
I’d quickly found the theme and had found a goodly percentage of the answers. I used similar methods as PeeDee to start getting stuff into the grid to get some crossers for the unsolved clues.
What held me up for almost the whole week was the 5 letter E. The 2 5s where obvious to work on and I had FROME in the grid as it couldn’t go in the other place. It took me until Thursday to decide on ELAPS although I still haven’t found a confirmation for this on the web. ELIPIDAE and ELIPID yes but no ELIP!!!
I ended up with the whole grid completed bar about 6 clues. Just ran out of time.
I gave up last night because unfortunatlely I had GARONNE (this was a foolish and erroneous mix of GONE=historic and A RON=fellow (terrible I know)) which I saw wouldn’t fit.
anywhere 🙁 )
Nice to have a real challenge for the Bank Holiday.
Thanks to PeeDee and Maskerade
Thanks to Masquerade for a very challenging puzzle. I fell apart because I got Bogeyman for Brakevan. Hmm
Thanks for the excellent blog.
I spent quite a lot of time on this. But with over 1/3 of the solutions I still couldn’t fit a single one in the grid with any confidence. I knew that most of the plants would be unfamiliar and that without any crossing letters I had no chance… so I gave up.
Congratulations to those who slogged it out to the end.
@bntoo
Elaps /??laps/
noun
An American genus of snakes, also called Micrurus, the coral snake
Sometimes applied to a S African genus, also called Homorelaps, the garter-snake
ORIGIN: A form of ellops
Chambers on line
I agree that this was a tour de force of setting and blogging. I needed aids to get quite a few of the plants and I still had one wrong, my only error. I had an unparsed EXOGEN rather than the correct ELODEA, although I don’t think I’d have been able to parse it either if I had found it. Ho hum.
I got elodea wrong, but that was my fault for grabbing the first obscure plant that fitted the crossers without fitting it to the clue.
A wonderful (and long-lasting) entertainment, worthy of the great Araucaria!
Thank you Maskarade and PeeDee.
Thanks for the excellent blog, PD.
My, this was a struggle. My way in was FROME which couldn’t go anywhere else, but then realized like many others that this grid is essentially 4 little corners plus some no-man’s-land in the middle.
I can’t recall another crossword where I had not heard of so many of the answers.
SW corner proved a real struggle through idiotically opting for GILLENIA instead of GLOXINIA (both have an ailing anagram and are plants I’d never heard of).
Thank you Maskarade for wasting my Bank Holiday so enjoyably!
Nice weekend, all.
My sincere apologies to Maskarade for misspelling his name. I only hope he is a late riser.
alm3 @18
Doooh!!!
Thanks.
Just about the only place I didn’t like besdides my dusty large Chambers volume buried in the bookshelf!
Tried Internet searches, SOED which I have in WordWeb Pro, dictionary.com etc
Great crossword. My experience and approach roughly followed PeeDee’s, to whom thanks.
Eileen@13 I was looking forward to doing the Prize on the train to Edinburgh this morning – what a disappointment. Finished the Killer Sudoku and read the paper so what to do on the way back?
Thanks to setter, blogger and other contributors.
I found this a tough but enjoyable challenge; impossible (for me) without recourse to refererence materials.
Some every obscure words in both the themed and unthemed parts and a very clever grid – in the Araucaria alpha jigsaws, usually the secret was to find the double letter and everything else fell into place. Here solving the double letter B in the NE corner did almost nothing for the remainder – fiendish. PeeDee – I think your method was spot-on – I ended by doing something similar but not nearly so thoroughly.
I am still not certain even after reading the learned comments here about ELODEA (my LOI, and it took ages longer than the rest). Neither of my dictionaries (Longmans, Collins) give EA at all or give the ‘ditch’ meaning of LODE. In fact Wikipedia support almost the opposite definitions : e.g. LODE : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lode_%28disambiguation%29 …seems to be the Fenland drainage and EA : https://www.wordnik.com/words/ea may be the ditch and ‘surrounding’ in this case could be parsed to mean ‘surrounded by’.
Also not sure about RAMSON, though I had popped that in – another plant name not heard of before !
ARALIA – tough, as I kept thinking Just beheaded would be fAIR
DAFFODIL – really liked ! FOXGLOVE – liked – could it have been even better by using ‘former Tory minister’ instead of ‘baffle’ for the first 3 letters ?
Thanks Maskarade and PeeDee
Although I filled the grid it turns out that I had a couple of wrong answers.
I have a query on the parsing of the S flower: “SAXIFRAGE : SAX (small instrument, saxophone abbreviated) IF (provided that) RAVE (to party, Australian” doesn’t work – is a RAGE a party in Oz?
Eileen @ 10: after the recent graun cockups with the online crossword, it makes a change for them to do similar in the hard copy 🙂
Simon @26 – yes, it should be RAGE not RAVE.
Epee @25 – Chambers (my hardback copy) gives:
ea – a drainage channel in the fens (from French eau – water)
lode – an open ditch (from OE lad – a course)
DuncT @2 – thanks, the explanation of RAMSON has has almost clicked with me
An heir is someone who is first in line to succeed and cannot be displaced by subsequent children.
An heir apparent is currently first in line, but who may be displaced by subsequent children.
So: a RAM SON (male) would be an heir, whereas a EWE SON (ewe daughter? female) would be an heir apparent (only apparently).
Hi Dave Ellison @24
My sincerest sympathies – exactly the same thing happened to me several years ago on a journey to Suffolk.
And Simon S @26 – as I said, it’s not the first time. The difference is that, if you’re doing the puzzle online, it’s usually corrected during the day – AND I have paid £2.50 for my paper! As I said above, it’s hardest on the people who buy the paper only on Saturday and won’t even know there is a problem.
It really is beyond a joke.
Eileen @29 – “it’s hardest on people who only buy the paper only on Saturday won’t know there is a problem”. Presumably if they don’t know anything is wrong then they won’t actually have a problem? These are the people who the error is least hard upon.
PS I quite agree with your sentiments really, I just can’t help being pedantic. I need to get out more!
@PeeDee unless they enter the prize competition with the wrong crossword!
Hi PeeDee
I realised as soon as I’d posted that I’d been ambiguous. Thanks, almw3 for the clarification – that’s exactly what I meant!
Wow, what a work-out!
I spent all morning when I should have been doing other things. I completed all but three answers, all in the SW corner. I had DEVILETS but not yet WOODBINE and TERMINUS, nor PETITION. At that stage, DEVILETS fitted where PETITION should go – as it had two letters that agreed and I did not notice the other option just alongside.
I then spent two more hours trying to solve the remaining clues – which was no longer possible. I had got into deeper trouble by finding a nearly acceptable answer for the TERMINUS clue which fitted into where WOODBINE should be. I had of course gone back to check other clues to see where I gone wrong, and I still did not notice my error with DEVILETS. And so eventually I gave up, frustrated.
This morning’s solution has made me smile to see what I had done. Some Saturdays, Fifteensquared makes my day!
After a lot of effort I finished it only to discover today that I had one wrong – Mandir.
I had madder but thought it was unlikely (I have visited Madurai which is full of temples so thought it was one of them).
Eileen @ 29
I don’t disagree with you at all, and hear what you say. I just find it ironic that after so many online foul-ups, yes eventually corrected, the graun can even foul up the paper, which was its origin – though I guess these days it’s ‘staffed’ by hi-tech whizz-kids and interns… 😉
Re Ramson again
I made one suggestion @13 (son (male) being “covered” or mounted by a ram, hence being like a ewe), but on reflection I think Maskarade might just mean there’s a Ram with a son – so apparently a male mother (or ewe). The position of the words in the down light could even make it a bit dingbatty (the son appearing under the ewe/ram). A little loose, as maybe is acknowledged by “apparently”, but simple at least – and no need to imagine sheep inheriting (property? titles? the throne?) from each other!
Herb @ 36
The sheep shall inherit the earth?
I’ll get mi coat…
PeeDee @28.
I thought it was the heir presumptive who was currently presumed to be the heir but who could be displaced, while the heir apparent was the definite one?
I found this extremely difficult. Not least because I’d never heard of a good number of the plants. I got the theme quite quickly with VERONICA but to get the rest I needed a combination of the Web and guesswork. I agree very much with PD. I needed guesswork for some of the others too-NATTER,ELAPS.I did it in stages otherwise I would have spent the entire day on it.
Very satisfying once it was finally finished though.
Incidentally anyone looking to complete today’s prize puzzle in the paper will find yesterdays QAOS has been reprinted. Guardian,what are you doing?
David @38 – yes, you are right, it is not a subject I know much about. I really couldn’t say whether this sheds any additional light on the matter.
Peter & Eileen – out of interest, did they also print the solutions to the QAOS puzzle in the same Saturday paper?
No, PeeDee – it was the solution to Thursday’s Pasquale.
In the early days of the Graun online the cheat button was enabled on at least one prize puzzle. The Indy has made a few mistakes too. These things happen.
On the whole I liked this puzzle although the grid made entering the answers a bit of a chore.
Trying to justify EA for anyone without Chambers or the OED or the SOED would seem to be impossible, OneLook’s results don’t give it. Fair enough if it explicitly states in the rubric that Chambers is necessary as with most barred puzzles, a Graun Prize, not so much.
As for RAMSON, oddest clue I’ve seen for ages. It would be interesting if the setter explained it.
Many thanks to setter & blogger for a great puzzle & wonderful effort which was very satisfying to finish.
I reckon I used crossing letters to solve only 15 of the 52 answers which is radically different to the usual daily exercise where I focus on using the letters I have in the grid.
Great puzzle. Made a good start with Bridgesong but didn’t finish it in one session. He cracked the remainder solo and they sustained and entertained me for the rest of the week. Plenty of obscure words, ELAPS for example, but that’s fair enough for a Holiday prze. Thanks Peedee for your excellent blog and clear explanations.
Could the clue for RAMSON parse as EWE = A PARENT rather than all the stuff about heirs? Either way it is a very compact, iterative clue.
Incidentally, I only buy the Grauniad on Saturdays and am blissfully ignorant of the apparent (sic !) cock up about solutions printed prematurely.
If anyone was concerned about my entertaining myself on my journey back from Edinburgh, I did manage to do half of the prize puzzle on line. The train had wi-fi, but my battery ran out.
Eileen and others. The paper was not fit for purpose, so presumably we could get our money back?
It’s not the first time they have published the same crossword twice.
Pun wasn’t intended, but wish it had been!
I only had until Sunday night to try to finish this, with work preventing any effort after that. So I didn’t get very close to finishing. I’d have been a bit stuffed anyway, having settled on ‘Garonne’, like B(NTO).
Try to settle on ‘ramson’ for certain was driving me to distraction. I was even toying with RAM = male; ‘Ewe, apparently’ = [sounds like] ‘you’ = SON (as in “on me ‘ead, son”. But then I decided that it was too sexist for the Graun . . .
Dave @ 46 it took me a long while to see it but when I did it was real LOL
Thanks for the blog, PeeDee, although for some reason the whole grid didn’t display on my iPad. And thanks for explaining Aralia: I couldn’t decide between that and AROLLA. I also hadn’t heard of Nattier the painter, although the answer seemed obvious from the definition.
Timon and I both feel that to use RED for anarchist is both lazy and inaccurate, politically speaking. Apart from that I applaud Maskarade’s achievement.
As far as today’s fiasco is concerned, I shall be blogging the Paul puzzle which can be found at the link supplied by Eileen; I too was shocked to open my paper and find a puzzle which seemed more than vaguely familiar.
A brilliant crossword and very clear explanations by PeeDee. However, I spent the whole of 3 days doing it plus another afternoon checking it (thus unable to help husband who was dealing with a flooded bathroom!). This was because there were 29 words of which I had never heard.
Yes, I did finish it, with all the reasons, & all correct. I now challenge someone to set an equally clever crossword which passes the train test; i.e. all words in everyday use.
Only found out by chance that today’s crossword is the wrong one having spent time getting 3 of the solutions.
I didn’t quite finish and needed a lot of help from the web and reference books but enjoyed the challenge nevertheless. I thought ramson was probably correct but would never have understood why and I didn’t get mandir or udo so had a little unsolved cluster.
Reminded me of Araucaria – a slow start but with progress coming sporadically and often enough to encourage coming back to the puzzle repeatedly. A worthy Bank Holiday puzzle.
bridgesong @49 – I wondered about red at the time too, so I looked it up in Chambers : “a revolutionary or person who features sweeping changes variously applied to radical, republican , anarchist, socialist, communist etc “
Thanks PeeDee,
I wasn’t going to comment but I changed my mind. I really enjoyed this puzzle after nearly shredding it several times.
It was just so difficult to make progress and frustrating when an answer was finally put in and it didn’t help at all.
Annoyingly the two 12 letter solutions which I had quite early, didn’t result in a single starting letter. Aarrgghh !.
My entry into the puzzle was FROME and I thought immediately the the other five letter answer was ELAPS but couldn’t find
any information to corroborate this. I eventually found it in my Chambers. I didn’t quite complete this puzzle and failed
on six clues in the SW. I should have got GLOXINIA but I was obsessed with Glisinia which I thought might be a variation
of Glicinia and did not see the relevance of ‘steer’. I didn’t know Peon, Titi or Quod which didn’t help.
My approach to solving was pretty much the same as yours but it would have been nice to have a couple of starting letters.
It’s also easy to lose track of which letters remain unless you are very methodical. Thanks Maskarade and I just might complete
your next puzzle.
On the printing error – I too was expecting to do this week’s prize on the train, so once I was on my delayed train I had to resort to actually reading the paper, but like Eileen I was fuming, and even considered filling the grid with a suitable comment and entering it as a solution before deciding not to waste a stamp!
I see they have fixed it by printing the prize puzzle above today’s crossword and extending the deadline. More mysteriously they have also printed the “right” Sudoku – I can’t believe many people would remember much about a Sudoku after solving it…
This was a wonderful solve – and great to have an alphabetical back: let’s hope we have many more. If the New Statesman can do it regularly, so can the Guardian.
Uncannily, my solve was exactly the same as your first three paragraphs – thank you PeeDee.
How kind of Marienkaefer to refer to my Alphabetical puzzles in the New Statesman. I am so pleased that at least one solver enjoys them! Look out for another in the next week or two.
So maskarade comes in, does an advert, COMPLETELY ignores all the confusion about ramson, and saunters off?
Thanks Maskarade and PeeDee
Well this one sat unloved in a pile for a very long time !! Was able to do it over a couple of days and must say that I enjoyed it a lot – although it did take a very good deal of those two days !!!
YES-MEN was my first answer that I actually got and was also one of the early entries into the grid as one of the few candidates that had the same letter of a 6-letter word.
Strangely, ELAPS was one of the easier ones for me having read a book called “The Snake Charmer”, an interesting account of the work of Dr. Joe Slowinski, an expert who searched for new varieties of snakes (and who unfortunately had a bad encounter with a krait in Burma that brought it all to an end) – but it did enlighten me about the Elaps snakes.
The one that I had trouble with was ELODEA, having no idea about the EA or the LODE (which also drains fens according to my old SOED) definitions.
Hardest to get a start in, were the SW and NE corners which had lots of 8-letter words that needed to be juggled in to them without too much help from crossing letters.
It was very satisfying to be able to write the last one into the grid.