A puzzle to mark a 50th anniversary from Pasquale this week.
The 50th anniversary was of course of England’s victory in the 1966 World Cup, which was exactly 50 years to the day when the puzzle appeared. When I saw a reference in the special instructions to the fact that there were eleven solutions of a kind which were undefined, I immediately guessed the theme and it did not take long to verify it. This did unfortunately make the puzzle much easier than normal and we completed it in under 45 minutes. My only real doubt was whether Charlton would in fact appear twice, or whether Ramsey might be included instead. That doubt was soon resolved.
I have highlighted the members of the England team in the grid and it is a remarkable achievement to have included them all without having resort to particularly obscure words to fill the gaps. Well, one or two perhaps, but no more than would be expected from Pasquale!
There are one or two minor queries in the blog but overall it proved to be an enjoyable solve. Many thanks, Pasquale.
| Across | ||
| 1 | CHARLTON | American dance English society shunned (8) |
| CHARL(ES)TON. | ||
| 5 | BALL | Leaving Oxford college, I look back (4) |
| BALL(I OL). | ||
| 8 | DECARB | Remove black stuff from vehicle sunk in bottom of river after reversing (6) |
| CAR in BED(rev). | ||
| 9 | ENCHANTS | Delights offered by girl heading off with workers (8) |
| (W)ENCH ANTS. | ||
| 11 | WILSON | Orchestra in triumph (6) |
| LSO in WIN. | ||
| 12 | TAHITIAN | Islander, one in brown, given initial thanks and greeting (8) |
| A HI T(hanks) in T I AN (one in brown). This parsing doesn’t adequately account for one of the As: anyone have a better one? | ||
| 13 | BANKS | Harmless explosive containers, 50 fired (5) |
| B(L)ANKS. | ||
| 14 | NEEDLE | Something required not so much, not half creating anger (6) |
| NEED LE(SS). | ||
| 16 | SEPTUM | Sort of barrier when children start school with hesitation (6) |
| SEPT(ember) UM. | ||
| 18 | HURST | Short day, beginning to end (5) |
| THURS with the first letter moved to the end. | ||
| 21 | GET ALONG | Manage to survive? That seems unlikely! (3,5) |
| Double definition, although the second sense only appears in phrases such as “get along with you”. | ||
| 22 | PETERS | Worries when first son does a bunk (6) |
| PE(S)TERS. | ||
| 24 | DOMINEER | Bully — this person’s impeding performer (8) |
| MINE in DOER. | ||
| 25 | STILES | Ways to get a mention (6) |
| Sounds like “styles”. | ||
| 26 | HUNT | Any number being sheltered? (4) |
| N in HUT. | ||
| 27 | CHARLTON | Officer conveyed by underground transporter (8) |
| LT in CHARON – the boatman who ferried souls across the Styx. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | CLERIC | Religious leader creating new circle (6) |
| *CIRCLE. | ||
| 2 | AMASS | Gather in the morning on a ship (5) |
| AM A SS. | ||
| 3 | LEBANON | The French prohibition operating in a Mediterranean country (7) |
| LE BAN ON. | ||
| 4 | ORESTES | Nothing stays still with energy in old play (7) |
| E in O RESTS. It’s by Homer, among others. | ||
| 6 | APARTMENT | Cunning fellows squatting in a gym — somewhere to live (9) |
| ART MEN in A PT. | ||
| 7 | LETHALLY | Left the wounded friend with fatal consequences (8) |
| L *THE ALLY. | ||
| 10 | COHEN | One of the others at the women’s party? (5) |
| CO (others as in & co) HEN. | ||
| 13 | BATTALION | Fighting unit to strike bellicose male, reservists brought in (9) |
| TA in BAT LION. | ||
| 15 | BEHEMOTH | Monster insects (two of them) hard to catch (8) |
| H in BEE, MOTH. | ||
| 17 | MOORE | Yesteryear’s chancellor with nothing to hide (5) |
| O in (Sir Thomas) MORE. | ||
| 18 | HOGARTH | Artist in courtyard overlooked by house (7) |
| HO GARTH (which can mean a courtyard). | ||
| 19 | REPOSER | About to join exhibitionist as one needing to get on with the rest? (7) |
| RE POSER. Presumably the question mark is there to acknowledge that the word is one that doesn’t appear in Chambers. | ||
| 20 | ORCEIN | Dye that’s yellow, awfully nice (6) |
| OR (gold, or yellow) *NICE. | ||
| 23 | TWIST | Pervert who was encouraged to pick pockets? (5) |
| Cryptic definition, referring to Oliver Twist. | ||
*anagram
Thanks bridgesong. I’d never have got there if I hadn’t in desperation Googled WILSON,COHEN and BALL but then, armed with the other names, it fell into place quite readily. GARTH as a courtyard was new to me.
I think in 12a the initial thanks is Ta.
I solved this without realising what the anniversary was until the second Charlton appeared. Probably the last football match I watched voluntarily. Impressive construction. Thank you.
Across the water, this took a little longer since, until I had three of the theme answers in, I had no idea what the theme was.
On 12, “initial thanks” is TA put on the answer first.
Oops, hit the submit button in error. So the final parsing of 12 is TA + HI + T(I)AN.
Thanks bridgesong and Pasquale
I read 12A TAHITIAN as ‘initial’ giving the order of a charade rather than an initial letter: TA (‘thanks’) plus HI (‘greeting’) plus TIAN – with the second T – an envelope (‘in’) of I (‘one’) in TAN (‘brown’).
Oh, and I parsed the CO in 10 as the prefix “one of the others”, e.g., co-producer is one of the other producers. So a co-hen would be one of the other hens.
Oh dear..this one was a disaster for me.. missed out on stiles and the second Charlton .. and I thought the theme was British artists (there are painters by all these names to confuse the issue) – (not being familiar with the world cup stuff though google did throw it up)
We seem to be in agreement over 12A.
In 4D ORESTES, he appears in a number of Greek plays, most notably the Oresteia cycle by Aeschylus, but he is the eponymous character in the Orestes by Eurypides.
Sorry, Euripides.
I wouldn’t have been able to name the side in order, but didn’t have many problems with the theme, in fact I spent longest sorting out the SW corner after the themers were in. All quite enjoyable.
Thanks to Pasquale and bridgesong
Thanks Pasquale and bridgesong
Very clever, but unsatisfactory, particularly as a Prize. My first “undefined” was WILSON, which didn’t give much away, but after my second, COHEN, the rest became pretty much a write-in, with only SEPTUM resisting for a while.
Thanks, all, for putting me right over 12a. It was the word “initial ” that threw me.
Yes, thanks to being able to google CHARLTON, COHEN and BANKS, I got the whole team to work with, like Biggles A@1; otherwise I would have had zero hope of latching onto the theme and other player clues.
Thanks to Pasquale and bridgesong. It was good to get it out even with online help, but a bit weird to be exploring this theme fifty years away from the event and on the other side of the world!
Julie’s Google skills must be better than mine because I wound up with what must have been the whole squad, about 18 names. That coupled with several other unknowns, HOGARTH, ORCEIN among them, means that this took me much longer than usual, but I got there eventually. Cannot say I enjoyed it mightily. But thanks to Pasquale and Bridgesong, my turn will come.
Thanks for the blog, bridgesong and Pasquale for the puzzle.
After Skitnica’s brilliant offering in the FT on Friday and his alter ego Jambazi’s in the Indy on Saturday, as bridgesong says, the ‘eleven’ in the ‘special instructions’ here was pretty much a giveaway but I thought Pasquale did well to include all the players in the grid. I particularly liked the symmetry of the second CHARLTON – great clue! – which made me smile.
Then Scorpion in the IoS managed to include the names of all the players with an alternative definition, which I thought was a more impressive achievement and so, of the four, for me, Pasquale didn’t quite make the podium.
Perhaps we can forget about it now for the next fifty years. 😉
Surely a half decent ed (or even setter) would have realised that this particular anniversary would have been much heralded in the media!
Even if this particular fact had been anticipated and discounted the briefest consideration would have suggested that making “eleven” of the clues “not further” defined part of the Special Instructions would make this puzzle the most generous giveaway since Christmas.
So basically the special instructions shouted that the names of the most famous English football team in history appeared as answers to eleven of the clues.
Coupled with the fact that at least 5 of the other clues were write-ins this wasn’t much of a challenge.
Yet another disappointing weekend puzzle. Well done ed. (Are you there? Of course not, still on your holliers!)
Dear BNTO,
Could you please explain what the word “holliers” mean. I have looked in the dictionary and cannot find it.
I know that you are so clever and don’t ever ever make mistakes so please enlighten us lesser mortals who can only bask in your glow. Thank you so much.
My loathing of football is well documented but even I managed this quite quickly
which is surprising given that the first one I got was WILSON and he was
the only team member I’d never heard of. I did pause over the second CHARLTON but both were so clearly clued that they had to be right.
I quite enjoyed this actually.
Thanks Pasquale.
Thank you Pasquale and bridgesong.
I was on the alert after Skitnica’s puzzle in the FT on the Friday, and the “eleven solutions of a kind” gave the game away, as it did for bridgesong.
I was not certain that CHARLTON would be entered twice, kept looking for Ramsey, and spent an age juggling around with PETERS, STILES and ORCEIN at the bottom right having THANATOS at 27a…
Thanks Pasquale and bridgesong. At first I thought the 11 might be a cheeky misdirection, but the moment Wilson went in I realised it wasn’t, and the only question mark was whether Charlton would appear twice. Good fun though.
Enjoyed this one. It was indeed relatively easy, and I wouldn’t want them all pitched at this level. But whereas some contributors on this site seem to do a crossword every day, I suspect there are more of us who only fit in the Saturday puzzle(s) and we are in the market for a thematic every now and then.
The theme was fun. I didn’t myself spark on the (big) hint given by 11, and when we solved Wilson we immediately thought of politics. But then Cohen made it obvious.
For those of us who buy the paper, the Review section had an article which conveniently listed all the names, which made the crossword a lot easier.
Anyway, why are we celebrating fifty years of failure?
Dear Davy @17
It must be awful being so thick 😉
The use of the word is a pathetic attempt at parody brought on by the fact that our Ed is apparently AWOL.
Thanks bridgesong and Pasquale.
With Wilson in as the first of theme answers, looked for Prime Ministers, Presidents and settled for F1 drivers with some of the same names; then I was on a wild goose chase, and gave up 🙁
As with so many others not doomed by my birth to relive the glory of a fifty-year-old triumph, I had to google after I had my first three players. In my case, that was Wilson, Ball, and the first Charlton. And as with so many others, armed thus with the other eight names, this went very quickly.
As a general rule, a puzzle with a theme that’s a fairly small closed set (e.g., muses, planets, U.S. Presidents, works of Oscar Wilde, just to pick some examples I’ve seen) makes for an easier solve, since it makes it too easy to reverse-engineer the clues: you wind up looking for clues that fit the answers, not the other way around.
On the other hand, finding the various members of the closed set in the puzzle can be rather satisfying, particularly if the setter has (as here) managed to fit every member of the set in.
I didn’t know last weekend that it was the anniversary of that World Cup final, but CHARLTON at 1a was my first answer so the theme became obvious. I was familiar with quite a few of the names but not all of them, so I looked for the team list online. The other CHARLTON (27a) was my last themed answer, but only after I had spent quite a while looking for somewhere to place “Ramsey” as, like bridgesong and others, I thought the eleventh name might be the manager’s. (HO)GARTH as an open space was new to me.
Yes, it was fairly easy for a Prize crossword, but we already know that the policy seems to be to have a mix of difficulty levels even for the Prize. It’s not actually generous, of course, as the paper does not give away any more prizes when the puzzle is easier. Personally, Saturdays are often my busiest days, as happened last weekend, so I appreciated this one and found it entertaining. Perhaps setters on other sites did produce ‘better’ puzzles, I wouldn’t know, but as this was the only one I did their achievements didn’t make any difference to my enjoyment.
Thanks, Pasquale and bridgesong.
Jenny K @26
“Perhaps setters on other sites did produce ‘better’ puzzles, I wouldn’t know, but as this was the only one I did their achievements didn’t make any difference to my enjoyment.”
Fair comment. 😉
I don’t understand why some solvers, faced with a themed puzzle, “go online” to find a list of the possible answers. Isn’t the idea of the puzzle to try to solve it using brain power? If I can’t solve it that way, I might eventually resort to Google, but I consider myself to have been defeated and take no pleasure in completing the grid.
Of course, this one was dead easy anyway, because like some others above, just getting WILSON was enough for me to be able to write down the other ten players. But suppose I’d failed to remember STILES, I would rather have left that light blank (supposing I failed to solve the wordplay) than Google the eleventh player.
Even when the theme is more obscure (for me) I would rather struggle on for several days trying to solve the clues, and it is remarkable what this process sometimes dredges up from the sludge in the bottom of my mind. Sometimes even a right answer that I didn’t know I knew.
Is this just me?
To Sheffield Hatter @28. I was one who Googled the team members (although not very successfully). I wouldn’t usually do this but my reasoning here was that the great majority of the target audience know most or all of the names and so the puzzle is pitched at that level. Having a list of the players is merely leveling the playing field, an appropriate metaphor I suppose.
@BNTO
why not save time by creating a template reading “sack Hugh now” and simply press “post” every day? I like the puzzles in the Graun, largely because the setters are encouraged to play a few shots, if I may use a cricketing term. The paper has a wide stable of setters offering a broad range of degrees of difficulty and not all of them stick to the criteria used by, say, The Times – or even The Indy.
This is what Rumsfeld would have called a “known known”.
I feel for Pasquale in this case, and was reminded of the story in which Jeeves hatches a plan to free Tuppy Glossop from the clutches of a diva who has agreed to sing at an East End poorhouse. He organises several singers to sing “Sonny Boy” one after another, and by the time the (unsuspecting) primadonna hits the stage to sing it, the crowd has had a bellyful and pelts her with rotten veg.
I still enjoyed the puzzle though; thanks to S&B
Wise words, Little Bear. It’s a shame that Pasquale’s World Cup puzzle was rather overshadowed by Skitnica’s phenomenal effort from the day before, but it was still enjoyable in its own right. If this had been the first (or only) WC puzzle to appear last weekend, the theme would probably have been less obvious to many – barring of course certain individuals who are so clever that they find most puzzles too easy (or say they do).
Which collection does the Jeeves story appear in? I’d rather like to get hold of a copy.
[@31
“Jeeves and The Song of Songs” from “Very Good, Jeeves”]
Thanks. Will check it out.
Thanks Bridgesong and Pasquale.
An OK puzzle for me with some new words – GARTH meaning courtyard and ORCEIN being a type of dye.
Not as entertaining as Skitnica’s FT offering and a bit of a giveaway for those like me too young to remember the whole starting line-up without reference to outside aids and who therefore consulted Mr Google (I don’t recall ever hearing the names of Ramon Wilson and Roger Hunt).
Overall just another reminder of England’s perpetual under-performance in it’s supposedly national sport.
I have read the comments here and elsewhere with interest. I suspected that soemone else would use this theme, but was obviously disappointed to be trumped a day early. I was hoping that those who didn’t know about football would try to work the team members out rather than just Google (hoping that there were some solvers rather than quick-fixers out there). I also realsied I was taking a risk that some with good memories would get answers without working out the clues, and while this may be a weakness it may also help those solvers who are (sometimes rather condescendingly) spoken of as operating ‘at entry level’. Such solvers, of course, may be under-represented on websites.
Pasquale @35
“Such solvers, of course, may be under-represented on websites.”
A valid point, Pasquale. I doubt that posters here are a good cross-section of Guardian solvers.
Those of us who remembered some or all of the names, came across them in the other puzzles on this theme or googled for them still had get the crossers or parse the relevant clues to work out where to put most of them, so they weren’t entirely write-ins.
Thanks all
The solution Charlton plus the word eleven gave this away much too easily for a Saturday!
Thanks all
The solution Charlton plus the word eleven gave this away much too easily for a Saturday!!
This is a very late comment and may in fact never be seen by anyone !
I just posted to say that in the post today I received Secrets of the Setters and Guardian Style Guide, along with a short but pleasant letter from a lady called Sheila Pulham informing me that “of the correct entries submitted, yours was selected”.
I have been solving Guardian Prize Crosswords and sending them in since about 1991, so after 25 years, I guess my turn came up !
So I will always remember with great pleasure this themed crossword, even if I am too young and born in the wrong place (Ireland, 1964) to have any direct knowledge of the 1966 ’11’.
Some clues are filling in the grid… they think it’s all over …. it is now !
Thanks Pasquale, thanks bridgesong, thanks Guardian Crossword.
Eoin, just a reassurance that the blogger gets to read every post. Well done on your prize!
Thanks Pasquale and bridgesong
Bridgesong, an even later post than Eoin as I work through older Guardian puzzles – I do the current FT ones.
Anyway, even if I had of done it at the time from down here, the rubric would have given nothing away and I’d actually gone down the PM path until finding a couple of other non-PMs and like others I worked with a Google list to help with these – still missed the last CHARLTON at 27a until realising that I’d only written in 10 of the 11 – had originally gone with SHERATON and unsuccessfully spent time looking for a carriage of that name until realising that there was a ‘repeat’ involved.
Enjoyed the puzzle and it was good to read the Wiki entries of each of the players – interesting that they all had to find a ‘real job’ after they’d retired from the sport – can’t imagine Ronaldo, Messi, etc having to do that these days !!!