Guardian Prize 27,082 / Bonxie

28 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,082 / Bonxie”

1. Even though I spotted the trees early on, it still took me all week to complete this. Needed your help to parse the triple definition for STRIKE. Thanks Bonxie and Eileen.

2. Thanks Eileen. I found this hard, at least partly because the special instructions weren’t clear to me, though with hindsight they are plain enough. My way in was the same as yours, courtesy of BAY and GUM, and the way ahead then became easier. I never did satisfactorily explain USED UP and FUGUE so thanks for those. I wondered about the indefinite article at the front of ARGUMENT and thought it might just have been A RENT = CLEAVAGE. It never occurred to me that A might = about, I just assumed ABOUT meant A RENT was around GUM.

3. I cracked the trees from S(OAK)ING but couldnt find the 12th-I had just written DECADENT in without analysing it.Thanks Eileen. Lovely puzzle too.Dont see enough of Bonxie.

4. Thanks Eileen and Bonxie.

   Got the theme and device, got 6 of them.

   Got decadent, but held on to ????dent in stead of d????ent and tried in vain to parse ‘deca’ as tree :-(.

   Left SW with 6 missing trees. Cracking it was fun though..

5. Thanks to Bonxie and Eileen. I looked at this puzzle last weekend and put it aside feeling I would pass on it, but yesterday I came back and discovered the tree theme. I did fill in most of the grid but not all of my guesses were on target and with others I could not parse the solution. I did get 11 of the trees but not “cade” in DECADENT (I did remember “acer” from previous puzzles), did not know PELMET or DUP for USED UP, and kept trying to work in “imitate” rather than ITERATE. I did know ALIENIST and SLIMEBALL but did not see all the meanings of STRIKE. A major challenge for me, so thanks again to Eileen for all the clarification.

6. 22A soon enough revealed the FIG as a fruit or tree theme, and led to the other F word in 16A. That did help although there were plenty of harder ones to find like teak and last-in cade. Lot of head-scratching over Rod’s role in 10A, the Irish party (had to Google) and the parsing of REGIMES. All good, thanks Bonxie – and Eileen of course.

7. Very enjoyable. The first of the solutions relating to the theme for me was PLANETOID, so I started looking for places where tools had to be supplied. Then I thought it could be vehicles and only later did I realise trees were involved. A pity that the special instructions were so confusingly phrased: I’d suggest ‘All clues contain definitions of their solutions but twelve solutions contain related objects not included in the cryptic parts of their clues.’

8. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. You were kinder than I might have been. I thought weight for clout was a little loose, although on reflection I see that Chambers gives power as the first definition, so perhaps that’s ok. G in GRATIFIES is $1,000, not £1,000, again according to Chambers. Well done for spotting CADE, which eluded me (I was misled by the indefinite article in the clue, so was convinced it had to be DEC), and I missed the third definition in STRIKE. I thought the clues to FUGUE and BACKSPACE were excellent, but was less happy with the obscure cut of meat at 7 down. Having failed to spot the tree in DECADENT, I spent some time wondering if there was a SED tree (in the other Irish party, the UUP). I did think 2 down was particularly weak, but overall the puzzle did provide a satisfying challenge.

9. Bonnie’s puzzle fully deserved Eileen’s faultless analysis?

10. I’ve been awaiting the review for a week to help me make sense of the special instructions. I tend to leave such puzzles to one side. I feel a bit of a twit but they went straight over my head and only now make sense. The real frustration is having to hand an (almost) completed grid from last week with plenty of answers scribbled in more out of frustration than hope – SLIMEBALL, DECADENT, CLUB STEAK, FIRST AID, PELMET, SASHAYING, BAYONET….. Now I know what I’m looking for, it’s all painfully – embarrassingly – clear. At the time, I just couldn’t see how to parse the bits I was missing.

    So, top marks to Bonxie for trouncing me thoroughly this time. Humbling and grounding.

    In the circumstances, it’s unlikely I’d pick one of the ‘special’ clues as favourite. That said, even if I had cracked the code, I suspect I’d still have given top prize to the ‘non special’ but brilliant BACKSPACE.

    Thanks to Bonxie and to Eileen for lifting the veil.

11. Like Copmus, we got the theme with SOAKING, and finished with DECADENT, though we did get the tree, thanks to Mrs Bradford.

    I don’t see the problem with 2d, surely the lift-and-separate device is well established now?

    Good fun, and a pleasant surprise, as I have sometimes struggled to get on Bonxie’s wavelength.

12. Most enjoyable even if I needed to use google to find a couple of those darned trees – ACER and CADE!

    Many thanks to Bonxie and Eileen.

13. Mr Beaver @11: I don’t have a problem with the lift-and-separate device as such, it’s just that with most of the letters in the answer appearing in the clue in the right order, it was so easy that I doubted it was correct!

14. And I’m quite a fan of them, too, but I know not everyone is. 😉

15. This took me a while to get going as I misinterpreted the instructions as meaning that 12 clues had no definition. Eventually the penny dropped and I finished… with 11 trees. It then took me a while to go back over all the clues and deduce that DECADENT must have a tree in it, rather than being DEC A DENT. Finally it seemed that CADE was the only option.

    Also spent a while trying to use £1000 = GRAND or K. Don’t recall ever seeing =G.

    So overall quite a long solve. Enjoyed it though.

16. Thank you Bonxie and Eileen.

    The first clue I spotted with an undefined part was FIGHTS, which gave me FIG, the next was SLIMEBALL, which gave me LIME, and the chase for fruits was on… then, after fruitlessly searching for a team named BAYONE, decided 6d just had to be BAYONET.

    I spent an age trying to satisfactorily parse ARGUMENT, taking “about” to be RE. ALIENIST was a new word as was CADE, which had to be my last tree.

17. I don’t normally like solve first parse later which applies to clues with the special directions by their nature but, as Eileen said, once the hunt was on it was enjoyable – only in a different way from regular cluing.
    Thanks to Bonxie and Eileen

18. Thanks to Bonxie and Eileen. This was very enjoyable.

    I had the same problems as other people with DECADENT. The best I could come up with was that DEC was possibly an abbreviation for deciduous.

    Like you Eileen I really liked the triple definition for STRIKE.

19. SOAKING was the first to indicate a possible theme, and PELMET and then ARGUMENT confirmed it. Thus this was an easier solve than I had initially expected. Loved SASHAYED and SLIMEBALL. I can’t remember how I found CADE but find it I did. I don’t see the problem with STEAMED; I thought it rather a good clue.
    Thanks Bonxie.

20. I had to read the instructions a couple of times, but found them quite comprehensible in the end, even if it was a scheme I haven’t seen before. Not too difficult in the end, though ALIENIST, FUGUE (in the psychological sense), CLUB STEAK (tried to rationalise BLUE STEAK for a while, after recent use of BLUE in another puzzle) and CADE were all new to me.

    I, too, got the theme through BAY followed by GUM and also first looked for a DECA tree solving my LOI.

    I think I liked 1a best — but perhaps mostly because I enjoyed the mental image of Kate Moss sashaying. That also reminded me of an awful pun I once made up: I wanted some ketchup, but when I asked the waitress for a sachet, she just walked off, swaying her hips as she went. :-S Good basis for a future clue there, I think.

21. Another one here who spent ages trying to parse USED UP working from the UUP, and desperately googling Sed trees.

22. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Special Instructions, I feel, have to be somewhat opaque in order to prevent a rapid collapse of the puzzle. Even so, the wording is always difficult to get just right. I would query the “further” in these ones, as the trees are not defined at all in the clues.
    SASHAYING was my gateway to the device after spotting the saw/saying equivalence. I had FIRST AID and PLANETOID before this and was suitably confused at that point!
    I was also doubtful about A being an abbreviation for “about” in 25. My question is, if it’s in Chambers, why does no-one use it. I can’t ever remember seeing it before.
    Great fun, all in all. Thanks, Bonxie and Eileen.

23. This took me rather a long time but I quite enjoyed it – good job it was a weekend when nothing else was happening for me! Like others I was stuck for ages on “decadent” as I only know cade as a pet lamb or a rebel as in Jack C….., had to look it up.

    Thank you Bonxie & Eileen.

24. I, on the other hand, love special instructions, and feel a bit cheated when Saturday prize puzzles (as for example today) don’t contain any, or are not otherwise enhanced.

25. Enjoyed this one. Oddly DECADENT was my first in of the themers, which was confusing because CADE was unfamiliar so I wasted a bit of time looking for more months! No major holdups once the real theme became clear…

    Thanks to Bonxie and Eileen

26. Great enjoyment from the puzzle made even more enjoyable by Eileen’s great blog and further comments. I was about half way in before the White half of our partnership said “bay – what about trees?” And that was our PDM. Although we never did get the 12th – cade.
    I’m with others in feeling special instructions have to be slightly opaque and I look forward to puzzles with them.
    Sashaying was my favourite, and I thought 2d was clever because the answer was staring me in the face all the time but took a long time to twig.
    Thanks Bonxie – more please – and Eileen.

27. 25a, “about”, I do not trust Chambers, could Bonxie have meant A (b out)?

28. Hear hear! The poor introduction meant that I didn’t get very far with this. A shame as it looked do-able but I wasn’t expecting the common theme to form an integral part of the clue. Poor

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