Guardian Prize 26,723 / Puck

54 comments on “Guardian Prize 26,723 / Puck”

1. Thanks Eileen, you’ve said it all. Having unnecessarily been warned in last week’s comments that this was a stinker I approached it with some trepidation and this was justifiable; I found it hard but clever. 11 was my entry to the theme too, confirmed by 26, 8 and K being the last letter of COCK.

   13 was my LOI; it had to be OVATION of course but I had to stare at it for a long time. It didn’t help that OVER sounds like ovah rather than ovay. There must be a gap in my education because I still can’t reconcile PANTS with AWFUL.

2. Thanks Eileen

   Glad you liked this crossword, as did I.
   A bit naughty of Puck to define K as he did (in the Cinephile way but not really).
   However, 26,8 was clear enough to justify the theme.
   I am afraid 17ac’s FRETS was one I couldn’t parse – bit of a stretch, I think.
   And in 22ac (RED FLAG) I do not see any connection with a song.
   Ten years ago the lovely Dido sang about a ‘White Flag’ but a red one?

   Good Saturday workout.

3. Yes, great puzzle. Several times I hit a brick wall, but the quality of the clues that I had already solved kept bringing me back – knowing that there was more gold to dig out.

4. Found this quite difficult…getting cocktail and rusty nail early on did not help with what k was. Didn’t get topless either and so related clues remained unsolved. Thanks Eileen, for laying it bare. Now I wonder why I couldn’t get many gettable ones. My elation seeing Puck’s name turned into frustration trying to fit in godson into 24d.
   Well….entirely my inadequacy! Thanks, Puck.

5. Thanks to Puck and Eileen. I got COCKTAIL early on but struggled a bit to get BUCK’S FIZZ, RUSTY NAIL, and SALTY DOG (I guess my experience with cocktails is limited). I needed help parsing TOPLESS but I caught on to what was needed to get AWFUL etc. GRAECISE was new to me but the anagram was clear. All in all, a very enjoyable solve.

6. Thanks Eileen and Puck. I managed to fill the grid, but needed the blog for a couple of wordplays.

   Sil @2

   The Red Flag to the tune of “O Tannenbaum”.

7. Thanks Eileen, including for the pomfrets in 17A. 11A revealed the theme soonish and the Ks followed quickly except for SALTY DOG, new to me. Had trouble recalling the 15A group by their initials and getting the capon/cock connection in 26, 8. Yet it was great fun: thanks Puck.

8. Thanks Puck and Eileen
   I wonder how much of a minority I’m in for knowing the group and thus being able to parse TOPLESS? Pretty obscure, I thought.

9. Another perfect example of a Prize puzzle.

   I was lucky (or perhaps unlucky) enough to see 11A almost immediately. The anagram indication was obvious and reading “after game with hookers” correctly gave the RU start. This gave the game away as Puck had cleverly used the cryptic conceit of “K” = “Cocktail”.

   After that the cocktails were fairly straightforward as even I, a confirmed beer drinker, had heard of them all.

   I partucularly liked 10,13,, 15 &25A and 2, 6.& &D. I’m currently revisiting the puzzle (Sunday 9:00 am) still trying to parse 17A but I’m sure the light will dawn! (It dawned at 9:08 am. “Hallelujah appositely playing on Radio 3 ).

   Great cluing and a nice “theme” which at least served a purpose and entertained.

   Puck back on top form.

   Thanks to Eileen and Puck.

   P.S. muffin, I also think that your comment on this puzzle in last week’s blog was content free. But sometimes any kind of a comment from a regular contributor can contain information as knowledge of his/her likes/dislikes and areas of expertise can unwittingly pass on information to other regulars posters.

   The worst thing is of course that any kind of comment can prompt a reply and in the worse case start a discussion on the puzzle. My post was more to try and stop people doing this. And hence I have not posted this in last week’s blog.

   It’s probably an “age thing” but I personally didn’t think that ELP was too obscure. They were a “super group” for many years after all. Something of a “sell out” to me at the time which betrayed their “Nice”, “King Crimson” and “Atomic Rooster” ethos. (Crap music to boot!!)

10. Sorry &D above should be 7D. (Obviously 🙂 )

11. Biggles’ demur about 13ac is understandable. The word OVA is (more or less) a homophone of OVER. It turns into something rhyming with ‘day’ – and its stress changes when it becomes part of OVATION. But setters do this sort of thing from time to time, innit!

12. BNTO @9
    Point taken. I won’t do it again.

13. Very difficult and a puzzle I thought I wouldn’t solve but eventually managed. Puck led me into a false sense of security with a couple of write-ins- CAP ON,CIGAR and UHLAN- and then I hit a brick wall and then I proceeded very slowly by taking the odd punt e.g. INSULARITY-which gave me RUSTY NAIL,and FORCIBLE-brilliant once I’d got it. COCKTAIL was one of the last ones only yielding once I’d got three of the cocktails. TOPLESS fell without my realizing that ELP was the band in question. Incidentally, the late John Peel described hearing that late and unlamented band as the realization that something had gone terribly wrong. I agree. As for the puzzle: a worthy prize even if it made my head hurt.
    Thanks Puck.

    P.S. I’m amazed that there are those who are unaware of the RED FLAG

14. I failed to complete this, despite getting the theme pretty early on, via Rusty Nail. Some very challenging clues in the N half.

    Still do not understand 15A – how is Busted a definition for topless ? Or how toss is a synonym for Rock & Roll ? and group = ELP, surely it needs a more precise indicator prog rock super-group ? I actually solved some of the subsidiary clues [c]offer and [c]andy without ever getting near 15 itself !

    Considered Britannia for 10A but the wordplay and complicated definition foxed me.

    File under Very Hard !

15. Eoin @14
    I took “Rock and roll” as TOSS (and turn), and “Busted” as showing ones bust, as one would if TOPLESS.

16. We used to sing a parody of The red flag that started “The people’s flag is palest pink, we’re not as left wing as you think.”

    Apparently we got the words wrong – the correct version (together with other left wing songs) is here.

17. Excellent puzzle that I nearly abandoned several times, telling myself that it just wasn’t very interesting. How wrong could I be and I’m glad that I persevered. My entry into the theme was the anagram of NSULARITY (11, drunk) which led to RUSTY NAIL which I had to look up. Yes, cocktail for K was a bit cheeky but certainly gettable.

    A lot of clues were difficult to parse and I couldn’t understand FRETS or OVATION, but managed the rest. Probably my favourite was FORCIBLE.

    Muffin, you are not alone : I used to love Fanfare for the Common Man and remember Nice doing America ?.

    Brendan : I might be getting to like you if you are a prog rock fan. Please say something to annoy me again.

    Peter Aspinwall : I used to love John Peel in his Perfumed Garden days but after punk arrived, he abandoned all his previous musical tastes, so I don’t really think that his opinions had any credence. As to ELP : like them them or loath them, you cannot deny their musicianship.

    Thanks to Eileen and a special thankyou to Puck.

18. A very puckish puzzle and a super blog, thanks to both Puck and Eileen.

    I got off to a fine start last Saturday with CAPON and BRITANNIA, then ACER going in, then things slowed down and finally ground to a halt. Managed to finish this morning with the help of the check button, but several answers were not fully parsed.

    The allusive RUSTY NAIL clue was terrific.

19. Thanks Puck and Eileen

    Love this guy’s work – but note to self “Read the bloody Special Instructions” !! Three of my last four in were GIBSON, BUCK’S FIZZ and SOUR – when it finally dropped about the use of the K’s in clues even though I had worked out earlier that cocktail = K – go figure !

    Only began this today over breakfast and coffee at a cafe – after one hour it was still less than half done – two more shorter sessions after helped get it cleared, apart from some parsing. Had to go and mow the lawns to have a rest !!!

    As Eileen mentioned – lovely surfaces, some really dinky wordplays that needed a bit of work to unravel them and two brilliantly contrived themes that didn’t step on each other. Was especially wrapped to work out the TOPLESS clue and relived some old memories with “Fanfare” playing along during the final parsing check run through !!

20. Re Toss, think of a ship in a rough see. SOED has

    II verb intrans.
    9† Be in mental agitation; be disquieted. Only in 16.
    10
    a Move about restlessly. Now freq. in toss and turn. m16.
    b Be flung about; be kept in motion. l16.

    So “rock and roll”.

    RE busted

    If someone is toples one can see their bust. So they are “busted”.

21. Brendan

    See muffin @15.

22. Actually, as Eileen has indicated, the def. is “busted apparently” rather than just “busted”.

23. Sorry Eileen!

    Started typing the reply and was then was interrupted by SWMBO! I continued my response once my duties were complete. Muffin must hve responed in the interim.

    Although it looks like my answer is identical to muffin’s, mine is in fact much clearer. 😉

24. BNTO @23
    ……….but longer! 🙂

25. Smashing puzzle with much to appreciate. Many thanks Puck & Eileen.

26. This is my first post to fifteensquared, though I have been looking at the comments for a few years. I am not a prolific crossword solver nor particularly fast. I try to do the Guardian Prize every week and complete it 9/10 times. I enjoyed the challenges in this puzzle with some really good clues and surface reading. I could not parse a couple of the clues including 11Ac, so thank you to Eileen the elucidation.

    What has prompted me to post on this puzzle and I am surprised nobody else has explicitly commented is the Rubric and 26,8Dn. Either I am missing something or my mathematical background makes me look at it differently. In all the other K clues is substituted by COCKTAIL. I had solved all of these before 26,8 and recognised K= COCK-tail. The rubric “K has the same meaning throughout” implies that all the clues should be treated *exactly* the same. So “The definitive K 9 18” needs to be read as “The definitive COCKTAIL 9 18”; as it turns out the 9 & 18 are replaced by the clue solutions as well. My gripe is that COCKTAIL cannot be the solution to the clue as it contains the word.

    This cost me a couple of hours as I refused to accept COCKTAIL as the solution and it delayed me getting some of the intersecting clues.

    Am I just being too precise?

    Thank you Puck despite the gripe. And thanks for fifteensquared. It is one of my first websites to visit on Saturday morning.

27. Tigger @ 26

    “COCKTAIL cannot be the solution to the clue as it contains the word.”

    I never thought I’d see a confluence of cruciverbalism and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Congratulations! [No, I’m not taking the p***, I really do mean it] 🙂

28. Hi Tigger

    Welcome to the comments slot!

    I haven’t been ignoring your query – I’ve been out all afternoon. I took 26,8 as being the [definitive] clue to the letter K itself, each of the other answers being an example of a cocktail, not a definition. But then you’re right: K does not, strictly, have the same ‘meaning’ throughout. I’m completely fazed by Simon’s response, I’m afraid. Perhaps he can be of further help? 😉

29. K is the tail of COCK, but…

30. “Any logical system complex enough to include arithmetic must include true statements that are unprovable” (as I recall). Not quite sure of the relevance to 26,8 – perhaps he was thinking of self-referential statements or definitions (of which the classic is “PIN number”).

31. I nearly gave up after only getting two answers on the firat pass, then no additional ones for a long time. I was slow getting the cocktail theme, perhaps because I don’t drink alcohol. The interlinking of some of the clues didn’t help. I did eventually get all the answers but I couldn’t parse TOPLESS or ALLERGY. I still don’t understand why “shades of” indicates the first and last letters of GreY. Although I recognised the anagram fodder for GRAECISE, I had to wait for all the crossers, then google to check guesses.

    I did enjoy it though, even though I struggled, and Prize puzzles should be tough. My favourite is DOGGED, closely followed by BRITANNIA and RUSTY NAIL.

    Thanks to Puck and Eileen.

32. Davy @17
    John Peel and his Perfumed Garden helped me through my A levels. 🙂

33. “,,,perhaps he was thinking of self-referential statements or definitions (of which the classic is “PIN number”).”

    Ah, now that’s something I do recognise: we’ve had lengthy discussions here about that sort of thing back in Araucaria’s day.

34. Or the Russell paradox, “Does the set of all sets contain itself” See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox for a fuller explanation.

    I am not sure of the direct relevance of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. When I first tried to explain the issue in an email to my son, who also does the Guardian prize crossword and has a mathematical background, I found it very difficult. I understand Puck’s potential problem in trying to draft a suitable clue. With the given Rubric, as soon as you include K in the clue it needs to be expanded, so Muffin’s, comment re self-referential statements is pertinent.

35. Hi jennyk @31

    ‘I still don’t understand why “shades of” indicates the first and last letters of GreY.’

    That made me think, too, and I meant to pursue it but it’s something that slipped my mind between solve and blog. Such is my confidence in the integrity of Puck’s clues that I just let it go. You’ve prompted me to look up meanings of ‘shade’: Chambers has ‘screen’, which will do me – especially considering the great surface!

36. Tigger @26 – does the rubric really imply that K is to be used in exactly the same way? It just says it has the same meaning. What we need is a definitive definition of the meaning of meaning.

    Thanks for the blog Eileen. You said everything I thought about this brilliant puzzle. Puck’s ingenuity and variety are extraordinary.

    (On the Red Flag, I can’t be the only one of my generation that has to shout “power to the people” at the end of it.)

37. jennyk @32

    We must be about the same age then !. I can’t believe JP’s radio London programme was nearly 50 years ago.
    I used to listen to it with my treasured little red transistor radio clamped to my ear underneath the bed covers.
    I quite often used to listen till 2am even though it was school next day. I couldn’t stop listening in case I missed something. I can still feel the sheer exhilaration of hearing great music for the first time. Songs such as Not so sweet Martha Lorraine, Tales of brave Ulysses and Lucy in the sky. Happy days.

    PS I know I spelt loathe wrongly in 17. Did you spot it ?.

38. K has the same meaning throughout, being a definition for the word. Replacing it with another, eg ‘mixed drink’, might help. Obvious and pre-known indicators for other words should not be confused with being that particular word.

    Seem to remember ELP being a favourite of compilers.

39. Eileen @35
    Sorry, that still really doesn’t work for me. My paper copy of Chambers is in a box somewhere, but Chambers online only mentions “screen” in definition 4a, “a device, eg a screen, used as a shield from direct heat, light, etc.” Other dictionaries give similar definitions for “shade” as a noun (and equivalent ones for the verb) but always in the context of shading from something. What are the G and Y shading in that clue, and from what?

    However, I really don’t want to keep quibbling about it because I agree it is a lovely surface. 🙂

40. [Davy @37: Yes, midnight to 2am, usually while doing homework sitting up in bed. I was lucky in that I was taking my A levels at technical college (as they were called in those far-off days) so we didn’t have to keep school hours, just turn up for the actual lessons and get the work done each week. I discovered so many acts through those shows.]

41. jennyk @39, might ‘shades’ work if they were regarded as sunglasses, they do bend to the sides?

42. Late to this, but I’d like to add another voice to the praise for this worthy prize. Most of it passed my train test, but it did take a lot of thought. A couple of the cocktails were unfamiliar to me, as was GRAECISE, my last in which almost defeated me – RUSTY NAIL was my entry point to the theme.

    Thanks to Puck and Eileen

43. Hello again, been out for a few hours so haven’t seen the comments or been able to reply.

    In very simple terms, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem states that there can be no ‘theory of everything’ as the theorem itself would itself be part of the theory, which it can’t be, because it would have to contain itself, and to contain it, by definition it needs to be larger, hence my comment on the suggestion that COCKTAIL cannot be the solution as the clue contains the answer.

    I thiught that opened the door to a spot of cross-disciplinary fun.

    Ref GY as shades of grey, my understanding is that GY is a generic term for grey in colour charts, which are then broken down and given names that are comprehensible only to pointyheads in marketing. Other shades of opinion may be available.

44. Simon S @43
    Ah, that sounds a more plausible explanation for GY. It satisfies me, anyway, unless Puck comes along with a different justification. Thanks!

45. My take on “shades of grey” was based on the meaning listed in the SOED as:

    b A secluded spot or corner. Usu. in pl. Now poet. or rhet. e17.

    So the “secluded” letterss of GREY are G and Y.

    I’m also not sure about Simon S’s simplification of Goedel’s Incompletess Theorem. There are two of them and neither really says what Simon S infers. In fact I think you are paraphrasing one of Russel’s paradoxes of set theory which have already been mentioned.

    The “great” man was busy tinkering with Mathematical Philosophy. (in fact I think he may even have written a book about it 😉 ) He was bored with the “New Mathematics” and decided to burst the bubble of the bright new advocates of “Set Theory” who often talked about “sets” which contained themselves. One of his statements was:

    “Consider the set of all sets which don’t contain themselves. If they don’t contain themselves then they do contain themselves. However if they don’t contain themselves then they do contain themselves. 🙂

    Of course I could be wrong as Goedel’s 1st Incompleteness Theoerem does state that in any consistent axiomatic system there will be true statements than can never be proved within the system. Perhaps Simon S statement is one of those in the consistent axiomatic system of crosswords.

46. Last in FRETS because I appear to be the only person here who didn’t know that pomfrets were fish.

47. Got caught out by 13a (hand over primarily into money) and entered PASSION (1 inside pass on) so couldn’t complete 2d or 17a. Surprised no-one else seemed to fall into this trap!

48. I must admit I do enjoy a cock’s tail. A cocktail on the other hand does not exist and isn’t a thing, so I can’t drink one.

49. Thanks all.

    It took me far too long to get TOPLESS (well it has turned chilly) which held me up with 3, 17 and 20.

    I got into the theme fairly early having GIBSON, SOUR and GIMLET as all probables needing a link. And then spent too long wondering why K = COCKTAIL until my doh moment.

    So all in all, an excellent puzzle. So thanks again.

50. For those who’d like to delve further into Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and self-reference in general, I heartily recommend Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It’s possibly the only textbook I’ve ever read that’s both erudite and hilarious.

51. Blaise @50
    Seconded; that’s where I came across Godel.

52. Blaise & muffin: thirded & ditto

53. Late to the party as always, but wanted to add my thanks to Puck for a thoroughly enjoyable, challenging puzzle!

54. Britannia ruled over seas, not overseas. It’s plain illiteracy and unacceptable.

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