It’s taken ages to write this post and I’ve run out of time tonight, so it’s not quite as I’d like it, but I’ll tidy this up on Saturday morning…
The pairs of clues referred to in the rubric were of car manufacturer + model. These were:
- FORD ZODIAC
- HILLMAN IMP
- OPEL KADETT
- SKODA YETI
I’ve clearly misclassified a manufacturer as a model, because I counted fourteen manufacturers: The thirteen car manufacturers were: CITROEN, DEVON, FORD, HILLMAN, JOWETT, LOTUS, MORRIS, NISSAN, OPEL, PEUGEOT, ROVER, SKODA, TALBOT, WOLSELEY
… and twelve thirteen models of car: ALLEGRO, BEETLE, DEVON, E-TYPE, GALANT, IMP, KADETT, QASHQAI, UNO, VELOX, XSARA, YETI, ZODIAC.
… but I don’t know much about cars, so I’m sure I’ve made some obvious mistake!
The completed grid we came up with was:
And, possibly of marginal interest, we tend to write out the answers grouped by length of word and with the letters in columns you can read down, to help with positioning the answers in the grid.
In the case of this puzzle, we added a “+” for each answer excess to the number of grid entries of that length to keep track of which might need to be paired with other answers to fill the grid.
A1. Could be Cooper’s group inside with ribbons (5,5)
ALICE BANDS
ALICE’S = “Could be Cooper’s” referring to Alice Cooper around BAND = “group”. (“with” is the link word here, which I don’t like…)
Definition: “ribbons”
A2. Miserere composer cut old movement (7)
ALLEGRO
ALLEGR[i] = “Miserere composer cut” + O = “old”
Definition: “movement” (in music) – also a themed clue, sine there’s an Austin Allegro
A3. We may be involved with saga about matches on the road (4,5)
AWAY GAMES
(WE MAY SAGA)* – the cryptic grammar doesn’t quite work here, I think – “be” doesn’t make sense in “[anagram fodder] be involved with [more anagram fodder]”
Definition: “matches on the road”
B1. Mallet for Stalky’s friend for sort of drive (6)
BEETLE
Triple definition: “Mallet” (Chambers says: “A heavy wooden mallet used for driving wedges, crushing or beating down paving stones, or the like”), “Stalky’s friend” (apparently this refers to a Rudyard Kipling novel Stalky & Co.) and “sort of drive” referring to a Beetle drive, a social occasion where many rounds of the game “Beetle” are played. This is also a thematic clue, referring to the iconic Volkswagen Beetle
B2. Charm escort around college (7)
BEWITCH
BE WITH = “escort” around C = “college”
Definition: “Charm”
C1. Far out — for certain, adrift (7)
CITROËN
An anagram of FOR CERTAIN but without FAR
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Citroën
C2. Serving up some ripe Romano cheese, lovingly (3,5)
CON AMORE
Hidden reversed in “[rip]E ROMANO C[heese]”
Definition: “lovingly” (used as a musical term, which I guess makes it fine in a crossword)
C3. Catch one prize for crew member (2-5)
CO-PILOT
COP = “catch” + I = “one” + LOT = “prize”
Definition: “crew member”
D1. Holiday area from in France and Germany (5)
DEVON
DE = “from in France” + VON = “from in […] Germany”
Definition: “Holiday area”, also I think this is the themed clue for D, referring to Devon Motorworks – my weak car knowledge might mean I’m missing something more obvious… Thanks to Alan B for pointing out that there was an Austin Devon which makes my count of manufacturers and models come out right.
D2. Vague Greenlander turning tail, close to decrease (10)
DIMINUTION
DIM = “Vague” + INUIT = “Greenlander” with the last two letters swapped (“turning tail”) + ON = “close to”
Definition: “decrease”
E1. Rapturous state commander-in-chief ordered (8)
ECSTATIC
(STATE CIC)* – the CIC in the anagram fodder is from “commander-in-chief”
Definition: “Rapturous”
E2. Some crotchety pensioner (1-4)
E-TYPE
Hidden in [crotch]ETY PE[nsioner]
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Jaguar E-Type
F1. Crossing out middle of preface (4)
FORD
FO[rewo]RD = “preface” without the middle (“Crossing out middle of”)
Definition: You could say “Crossing”, but this is also a themed clue so I thought of the definition as missing so that “Crossing out” could be the removal indicator, not just “out”. The themed answer refers, of course, to the car manufacturer Ford
F2. All the stops pulled out, getting drunk with music maker (4,5)
FULL ORGAN
FULL = “drunk” + ORGAN = “music maker” – unless I’m missing something this seems a bit uninspired: both because of the cryptic part dividing on the word boundaries and the straighforward
Definition: “All the stops pulled out” – Chambers defines FULL ORGAN as: “The organ, or great organ, with all or most of the stops in use”
G1. Heartless dashing young fellow or young female worker (6)
GALANT
There are two cryptic parts here: (a) GAL[l]ANT = “Heartless dashing young fellow” and (b) GAL = “young female” + ANT = “worker”
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Mitsubishi Galant
G2. Sounds like something fishy in wooded glen (5)
GHYLL
Sounds like “gill”, which might be “something fishy”
Definition: “wooded glen”
H1. Spa treatment from male advertising to many on time (4,7)
HEAD MASSAGE
HE = “male” + AD = “advertising” + MASS = “many” + AGE = “time”
Definition: “Spa treatment”
H2. One of the Covenanters, but not one from the plains? (7)
HILLMAN
I don’t understand why HILLMAN would be “One of the Covenanters”, despite quite a bit of searching. Update: Caesario points out that one of the definitions of “hillmen” in Chambers is “The Covenanters generally”
Definition: “not one from the plains?” (i.e. a “hill man”) – also this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Hillman
I1. I am beginning to preen and mend feathers (3)
IMP
I’M = “I am” + P[reen] = “beginning to preen”
Definition: “mend feathers” – this is quite obscure – as a verb, one of Chambers’ definitions of “imp” is “To engraft (a hawk or falcon’s wing or tail) with new feathers in order to repair broken feathers or improve flight (falconry)”. This is also a themed clue, referring to the Hillman Imp
I2. Peaceful girl, alluring one, topless at end of promenade (5)
IRENE
[s]IREN = “alluring one, topless” + [promenad]E = “end of promenade”
Definition: “Peaceful girl”
J1. There’s a note about the rain (6)
JOWETT
JOT = “note” around WET = “rain”
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Jowett
J2. More than half the court seen on Passion Sunday (6)
JUDICA
JUDICA[ture] = “More than half the court” – at least, JUDICATURE = “court” is in the dictionary!
Definition: “Passion Sunday”
K1. Knight accepts revised date (6)
KADETT
KT = “Knight” around (DATE)*
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Opel Kadett
K2. Sets make King and I production a great musical (4,2,4)
KISS ME KATE
(SETS MAKE K I)*
Definition: “a great musical”
L1. Position inducing indolence (5)
LOTUS
“inducing indolence” refers to the story of the lotus-eaters, who were indolent due to consuming lotus plants.
Definition: “Position” – referring to the Lotus position. Also, this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Lotus
L2. Rude hallo I might produce? (10)
LOUDHAILER
(RUDE HALLO I)*
Definition: the whole clue (a semi-&lit)
M1. Was wrong putting sheaves by motorway (7)
MISTOOK
STOOK = “sheaves” by MI (M1) = “motorway”
Definition: “Was wrong”
M2. Farah off with English — that’s dull (8)
MONOTONE
MO = “Farah” (referring to Mo Farah + NOT ON = “off” + E = “English”
Definition: “that’s dull”
M3. Folk dance boy suggests (6)
MORRIS
Referring to MORRIS being a boy’s name and the Morris Dance
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Morris
N1. Exotic maturation at US swimming pool (10)
NATATORIUM
(MATURATION)*
Definition: “US swimming pool” – “US” because this is an American term for a swimming pool, according to the dictionary.
N2. Notes swapped in hut (6)
NISSAN
NISSEN = “hut” but with [musical] “Notes swapped”, meaning substitue A for E
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Nissan
O1. Somewhat hopeless (4)
OPEL
This was my way into the theme: hidden in [h]OPE[less]
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Opel
O2. East German touring plant in West Yorkshire town (6)
OSSETT
OST = “East German” (OST is the German word for “East”) around SET = “plant” (as a verb)
Definition: “West Yorkshire town”
P1. Well done to the Greeks, getting inside deep hole in limestone country (7)
PEUGEOT
EUGE = “Well done to the Greeks” (I’d never heard of this, but Chambers says “Well!, well done! ORIGIN: Gr euge”) in POT = “deep hole in limestone country” (this is literally one of the definitions in Chambers – it’s where we get “pothole” from, apparently)
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Peugeot
P2. Constant price set for Caroline? (6,5)
PIRATE RADIO
PI = “Constant” + RATE = “price” + SET = “radio”
Definition: “Caroline?” – this refers to the pirate radio station Radio Caroline
Q1. His involvement with two question and answer forms (7)
QASHQAI
(HIS QA QA)*
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Nissan Qashqai
Q2. Ancient chariot at court? Capital! (8)
QUADRIGA
QUAD = “court” + CAPITAL = “Riga”
Definition: “Ancient chariot”
R1. Stop! Badly hurt in Cornish town (7)
REDRUTH
RED = “Stop!” + (HURT)*
Definition: “Cornish town”
R2. Lunar explorer — one from Blackburn? (5)
ROVER
“one from Blackburn?” refers to the football team Blackburn Rovers
Definition: “Lunar explorer” – also this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Rover
S1. He’s prepared to learn nautical skills at Home Counties race course, donning uniform (3,5)
SEA SCOUT
SE = “Home Counties” + ASCOT = “race course” around U = “uniform” (from the NATO alphabet). “donning” to indicate inclusion seems a bit iffy to me…
Definition:
S2. Seating that is backed by little chap with pastries left out for Henry (4,6)
SIDE CHAIRS
SID = “little chap” (i.e. it’s an short version of the name) + ECLAIRS = “pastries” but with L = “left” taken out and replaced with H = “Henry”
Definition: “Seating that is backed”
S3. Start to shoot with short camera (5)
SKODA
S[hoot] = “Start to shoot” + KODA[k] = “short camera”
Definition: Missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Skoda
T1. Old hound — little fellow — about a pound (6)
TALBOT
TOT = “little fellow” around A = “a” + LB = “pound”
Definition: “Old hound” – also this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Talbot
T2. Rush all over the place, smashing a tabouret (4,5)
TEAR ABOUT
(A TABOURET)*
Definition: “Rush all over the place”
U1. They ignored poor, unhealthy old cavalryman (5)
UHLAN
Anagram of UNHEALTHY without the letters of THEY
Definition: “old cavalryman”
U2. Turns on regularly (3)
UNO
[t]U[r]N[s] O[n] = “Turns on regularly”
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Fiat Uno
V1. Very wrong about pop group (5)
VELOX
V = “Very” + X = “wrong” around ELO = “pop group”
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Vauxhall Velox
V2. Loudly call number, if there’s time, during election (10)
VOCIFERATE
VOTE = “election” around C = “number” + IF + ERA = “time”
Definition: “Loudly call”
W1. Audible lament is very large (5)
WHALE
Sounds like “wail” or “lament”
Definition: “very large” – the part of speech seems wrong here, unless it’s an unindicated definition-by-example
W2. Upset, sickly looking, having eaten sausage skins (8)
WOLSELEY
YELLOW = “sickly” reversed around S[ausag]E = “sausage skins”
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the car manufacturer Wolseley
X1. African ground squirrels, unknown, certain to return (5)
XERUS
X = “unknown” followed by SURE = “certain” reversed
Definition: “African ground squirrels”
X2. Surfeit, reportedly, to an artist (5)
XSARA
XS sounds like excess = “Surfeit” + A RA = “an artist”
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Citroën Xsara
Y1. Flower is some eye-opener (3)
YEO
Hidden in [e]YE-O[pener]
Definition: “Flower”, as in one of the rivers called “Yeo”
Y2. Openers from Yorkshire entertain the Indians (4)
YETI
Initial letters of Y[orkshire] E[ntertain] T[he] I[ndians]
Definition: missing – this is a themed clue, referring to the Škoda Yeti
Z1. Signs of the cross with acid all over the place (6)
ZODIAC
ZO = “cross” – a zo is “a kind of hybrid domestic cattle [..] said to be a cross between the male yak and the common horned cow” + (ACID)*
Definition: “Signs” – also this is a themed clue, referring to the Ford Zodiac, I guess
Z2. Wild dog that’s masked on film (5)
ZORRO
Double definition: “Wild dog” and [someone] that’s masked on film
Thanks to mhl for the blog.
Tidying: in C1 you should omit FAR from the anagram fodder.
Thanks, mhl. Will you be putting up the filled grid later? I got all but GHYLL (never heard of it, anyway) and WOLSELEY, but I must have filled the grid wrong, as I apparently needed GH_A_ and W_A_E_E_. Amazingly, everything else fitted, so I’m keen to see the solution. I didn’t realise I needed a W- car (/manufacturer) as the WHALE is a car (which I thought might explain the non-concordance). Here’s a photo:
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/the-whale-car-designed-by-the-french-designer-paul-arzens-news-photo/595449726#the-whale-car-designed-by-the-french-designer-paul-arzens-in-paris-in-picture-id595449726
Fancy, eh?
I didn’t really parse PEUGOT properly, though I noted EU (Gr., good, well) and pot (as possibly cognate with pothole), so that and the fit with checkers was enough for me.
mhl
I think I can bring the make/model counts into line by naming DEVON as a model not a make. There was an Austin Devon in the old days (the fifties?).
I did very badly on this one. I spotted ALLEGRI -> ALLEGRO then several others including FORD but I failed to realise that I was seeing members of the two 13-member groups in the preamble. I now see from this blog that there are manufacturers that I’ve never heard of!
Another tidying note: for N1 Maturation is the right number of letters so you do not need to add AT.
Alan B @3: my first car was an Austin Cambridge so I could see Devon as a model.
mhl, Alan@3, chas@5
I also knew DEVON as an Austin model – just looked on Wikipedia, where it says the Devon was produced from 1947 to 1952, then replaced by the Austin Somerset, to which it bore a strong resemblance. My first car, in 1966, was an Austin A30, smaller than the Devon or Somerset – I had to part with it (to a car breaker) when I drove through a puddle, which then splashed up through the car floor into the passenger foot-well. They don’t make them like that anymore.
mhl
I took preface at F1 to be “foreword”
I had a feeling there was a British model called the Devon, but couldn’t remember the manufacturer. Slightly confusing, because it’s defined (“holiday area)”, contrary to the preamble (but so are other themed answers).
[@Magor: Lucky you. My first car was an Austin A35. In 1973, I think, so not new!]
@mhl
In A2 ALLEGRO, “movement” is the anagrind, isn’t it? I don’t know much about classical music, but is an allegro a movement, or just an instruction to play fast?
In H1 HEAD MASSAGE, many = MASS, I think. (You haven’t accounted for the ASS)
S2 SIDE CHAIRS? I’m not sure what these are or why they are “backed” (sic, not just “back”, btw)
[@Magor
Oh, actually, not lucky. I thought I read you had an A40. The A35, as you probably know was the same as the A30 to look at, but with a full width rear window.]
Ah! Looking at my grid, I now realise I had U1, UHLAN, where G2, GHYLL, should go — hence my difficulty with the latter (and W2, WOLSLEY). Sloppy solving. (Re Tony@2)
Re Z1, there was a Ford Zodiac as distinct from Ford Zephyr Zodiac. My father had one (Mk. II, I think) which he hated. Among its features was windscreen wipers operated by manifold vacuum (Wikipedia explains this), which meant they stopped working whenever the driver accelerated. This made overtaking in rain quite entertaining.
When I downloaded and printed the puzzle last Saturday morning, I found that I had last Christmas’s. By the time this was sorted out, I had lost interest in doing it.
Thanks to Maskarade for an enjoyable solve.
Thanks to mhl for the blog. As always, it is helpful to people like me who often read this page, but rarely comment. I managed to fill in the grid so was chuffed with that, but had ‘SEDE CHAIRS’ for S2, which I convinced myself fitted on the basis of ‘DES’ backwards, and a lookup to discover the SEDE is a well known brand. I guess the ‘backed’ here refers to positioning chairs around a room, as for a dance.
@Tony – yes, Allegro (or any other speed indication like ‘Largo’ or ‘Andante’) can be taken to mean the movement itself. Think of ‘Largo from the New World Symphony’ or ‘unable to play my Allegro’ from the Flanders and Swann song, ‘Ill Wind’.
Phew, thanks everyone for pointing out my typos, or things I wrote up wrong in my rush. I’ve added a scan of our completed grid as well, as Tony requested.
Thanks mhl. And a special plaudit to Maskarade for a splendid morning’s workout. I don’ think lack of knowledge about the cars should have inhibited anyone, although some on-line checking post-solve might have given confidence. The clues are meticulous, as always, and lead to the answers unerringly. (I confess that when the theme is geographic I always flinch – you see I was away the day my school did geography – but if Maskarade (in any of his guises) has set the puzzle, I know I am in good hands.)
On a personal note, having to call to mind horrid old relics like the Austin Devon or the Vauxhall Velox (in all its forms) was compensated for by being reminded of the Bradford firm of Jowett, whose inspirational Javelin model was for me the high point of the Festival of Britain in 1951.
There were quite a lot of things I failed to understand.
To give two at the start. Alice Bands: this is a straight one, and presumably the definition is “with ribbons”. But shouldn’t it be “thing with ribbons”; or better just “ribbons”. “With” seems to be getting in the way.
Allegro. You take Allegri; knock off a letter because it’s “cut”; stick on an o for old; and lo and behold, you have a movement. That’s surely a conventional and complete definition and wordplay clue, so although it’s a car the suspicion lurked that it was a red herring; which then made me worry that Alice Band probably was wrong because it isn’t fully clued.
Some of the clues are really nice but I’d welcome a bit more tightness in this kind of crossword.
mhl;
Chambers gives ‘Scottish covenanters’ under HILLMEN
Far too hard for me to finish. Got lots of solutions but not enough to fit anything in the grid with any confidence; so no crossing letters to help.
Did I misunderstand the rubric (again)? It says that the themed clues have no definition, but some of them do.
It didn’t take long to deduce the theme, but not knowing [old] cars I was always going to struggle on this one… and the mechanism of the 4 joined clues scuppered my numerical analysis at the start.
Thanks to:
mhl for excellent blog which struck many chords with me, particularly distinguishing models and makes – Devon and Talbot being the main ambiguities.
Maskarade for a elegantly crafted puzzle, well up to standard for a holiday special.
Bridgesong for jointly tackling it (and completing the fill).
I was convinced that C1 had to be CORTINA and was cursing the compiler and editor for not spotting the mistake in the fodder. This held me up for a while.
But thanks to Maskarade for an entertaining twist to this type of puzzle and mhl for the blog.
Can someone explain for me the point of this in the rubric:
The thematic D clue is for an across solution?
I completed 99% of it, but was misled(?) by the rubric into thinking all of the makes needed to be paired with a model. And I could see that there were some fully clued makes and models which were therefore not part of the theme. But it left me with Etype, which was not fully clued, and therefore thematic, making me fairly certain that Jaguar had to be there. In the end I thought it was too much effort to connect the makes and models and check out all the associations – I don’t like having to have lots of extra paper for lists!
But am I right then that apart from the paired four, the makes and models were independent of each other?
Thanks to Maskarade and mhl for an excellent blog.
I was onto the theme straight away via Opel, but gosh it was tough thereafter. Unusual to have three letter clues for the first to put in the grid.
Hillman + Imp are both worth of azed!
One question. The rubric said that the theme clues had no further definition, but some of them did and “Beetle” had three in all. And why single out “Devon” as an across clue? Am I missing something obvious here?
Sorry, “worthy” of azed.
timr @21
Marienkaefer @22
There were two locations in the grid (one across and one down) – ?E?O? – and two solutions that would fit – DEVON & VELOX – so the indication in the preamble that D was an across entry was necessary to enable a unique solution.
@22 Mareinkaefer
Thanks you have clarified my thinking. That’s what confused me.
I thought if they were further defined, they were not thematic, and therefore did not require a partner and if they were thematic the make and model should match. And that’s why I was confused by Etype. I am still confused…..
@24 Gaufrid
Thanks, that makes sense, but not of much consequence unless someone wanted to win the prize I guess!!
I failed on a couple here. Annoyingly, both correct answers look blindingly obvious now. I had DEMON- which I thought I remembered as a car- and VENOM – which is a heavy metal group so sort of pop.
Otherwise, I didn’t do at all badly. I worked in the motor trade many years ago- before I went to university in fact- so my knowledge of cars is homebound. HILLMAN IMP and FORD ZODIAC are about my limit. Mrs PA is rather more conversant so we got there.
Quite a nice puzzle though. I liked GHYLL and BEETLE.
Thanks Maskarade
It annoys me a bit too, since it’s so easy to clarify, but my impression is that in the Guardian cryptic crossword whenever you see “have no further definition” you should understand that to mean “may have no further definition”. I don’t know why it doesn’t just say that.
Phew! I had Devon down as a make and Sunbeam Talbot as a model. I also got stuck on Almeira instead of Allegro. Oops!
Oh and belated thanks to mhl for titan effort!!
timr @29 – your original comment, with exactly the same questions as mine, had not appeared when I posted. And I had Jaguar for ages!
Which I now see should be Nissan Almera. Double oops!
Thanks mhl.
Thanks for the grid, mhl. I didn’t need it myself in the end (see Tony@10), but I’m sure others appreciated it, as it doesn’t appear on the Guardian’s site, I don’t think. Also interesting to see your working marks which reveal you mark up slightly differently from me (I also put word lengths on the edges of the grid, but all round, symmetrically).
Don’t know what I was thinking with my remark about movement, as it’s not an anagram!
I agree with you (@27) that “may be undefined” would have been better.
Thanks, also, Donald@13. Your mentioning “largo” reminded me that we played “the largo from Handel’s Xerxes” at my mum’s funeral last year, so I should have known all along.
r_c_a_d@18
I thought the combined clues would make it too difficult, but once you see there are no 4-letter lights, and only two with 3 letters, you can quite quickly work out what needs pairing.
Caesario@17
My 1988 Chambers gives “hill’folk, hill’men […] the Scottish sect of Cameronians: the Covenanters generally”. However (despiting reading up about Covenanters, in vain,) I got it mainly by knowing that I needed HILLMAN to link with IMP, confirmed by “not one from the plains”
Cholecyst@20
I had CORTINA written down for a long time and thought I’d screwed up the fill when it didn’t fit in, before looking more carefully at the clue.
Once again I am staggered at Maskarade’s brilliance in creating this themed double alphabetic, especially with its lovely extra twist.
There was a car manufacturer called Devon Motors in California. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devon_Motorworks
XCD: yeah, that was what I had originally (you can see it in the crossed out text), but changed it when someone pointed out that the Austin Devon existed so that then the 13 models / 13 manufacturers totals came out right.
A bit late to the party – I’ve been out since early morning – so not much to add, apart from thanks to mhl [and partner] for a splendid blog and Maskarade for a brilliant and absorbing puzzle. I can’t believe I was so interested in it when it was all about cars!
Put me down as another who couldn’t get Cortina out of her head, long after it proved impossible.
Thank you Makarade and mhl.
What I managed to finish of this was enjoyable, I might try to finish it at a later time. I liked the clue for JOWETT.
Conrad @15, my father took on the agency for Jowett cars and Bradford vans in Wellington, to try to save the old family foundry, so of course we had a Jowett Javelin. He chose these rather than Volkswagen since he wanted to support British industry – he went bankrupt while his friend in Auckland who took on the Volkswagen agency became a millionaire.
I found this hard as I know very little about cars.
However, having gone through mhl’s comprehensive blog I realise what an awful lot of work
Maskarade put into compiling this. Thank you both.
Once I had worked out how the 4 special cases should work, this turned out to be surprisingly straightforward despite my sketchy knowledge of the theme – the hardest part was getting the jigsaw started. Some easy entry points meant I was able to see the theme very early. An entertaining challenge, and another masterly gridfill.
Thanks to Maskarade and mhl
Thanks this was really a great puzzle with a novel theme ! . Sadly for my chances of the prize I wrote in GHILL, not GYYLL !
To help in filling the grid I made a Excel table, with 26 rows A-Z and columns headed 3 – 11 for length of solution and with a space to transfer over Marque or Model for each letter. Then transferred in each solution as solved. Thankfully there were not too many of the same word length for same starting letter (J,X, C).
This made it easy to see what clues were left and also what might go where in the grid.
Thanks Maskarade and mhl !
After a a couple of sessions and a bit I actually had all the answers to the clues barring Judica.
However I didn’t proceed as I really couldn’t be arsed going through the process of fitting them in to the grid.
This is possibly due to the fact that our boat has no room or real need for a printer so a visit to a local library was required to gain access to one. (Internet cafes with printers have become like “hens teeth” in most areas nowadays!)
I think the other reason for my lassitude was the lack of motivation. Does anyone else find these “Maskarade” puzzles as exceedingly dull as I do. Gone are the days when I used to look forward to Araucaria’s Bank Holiday puzzles which were satisfying and full of humour. This is sadly no longer true of the current offerings. 🙁
I don’t know much about the theme and so I made liberal use of Google to confirm suspicions. I found the grid-filling quite a challenge, but the puzzle was remarkably addictive once you got going.
I was a bit irked by the fact that some of the themers were defined and others not, more or less at random, despite the special instructions. This definitely slowed me up. For example, I took a long time to figure out the long D as I was expecting it to be a car/carmaker and not to have a definition. This didn’t stop me ploughing on, but it made it a longer solve than it needed to have been.
Overall, though, I enjoyed it. Thanks, Maskarade and mhl for the comprehensive blog.
A bit late to the blog, but I found this quite a challenge and got into trouble with some wrong early guesses. I see nobody else seems to have fallen into the trap that held me up longest – on my first pass through, having realised at E-TYPE that the theme was cars, I reached P, couldn’t parse either, but 6,5, starting with a constant PI, just had to be PIERCE ARROW (which I suppose should have been hyphenated, but it just seemed so obvious). That made it rather hard to get the grid to work, when I started on it still with a scattering of clues unsolved (including the other P, which was an obscure clue). It took a long time for that penny to drop, but it was clear something big had to be wrong.
Having to combine answers made this even more complicated than usual, and I too had FORDCORTINA, and at one point had to write down the distribution of answer lengths in the grid and compare them with what I’d got to see where I must have gone wrong.
Still, it made it all the more satisfying to actually complete it! Thanks for what must have been a huge effort, Maskerade, and thanks for the correspondingly complex blog, mhl – particularly the parsing of Peugeot, which was quite beyond me.
Talbot is also on both sides of the ledger as the Talbot car (French) was bought by Rootes in the 1930s. That led to Sunbeam Talbots later.
Many thanks to Maskarade for an intriguing way to fritter away more than an Easter break. I never quite got the grid to work though – my fault.
BNTO @40
You asked whether anyone else finds this and other similar Maskarade puzzles dull. Well, I think I would have found it dull if I had managed to solve 100% of the clues with no help except the initial letter. I could only get 75% (42 out of 56 clues) for that first phase – more than I expected to get – and I derived most of my enjoyment from partial completion of the jigsaw and then solving the remaining clues, as with all the other Maskarade alphabeticals that I have completed. You evidently needed more of a challenge!
I confess that I find alphabeticals a bit of a turn-off – so much so that after doing a few clues I moved on to something else. Having said that, I have enjoyed (and completed) some of Maskarade’s puzzles in the past.
I have taken to doing these crosswords on an Excel spreadsheet. I set the conditional formatting to black out the cell when I type in a semicolon. Then I colour in the uncrossed cells by length and list the possible answers also in order of length, similarly color-coded. Further conditional formatting removes the colored background when I type in the answer and greys out the item from my list of answers. It makes it very easy to see what you need in a given place.
Muffin @ 12: LOL. What a b…..
RogerBear @ 46: I use a spreadsheet to sort words and their lengths as required. Unsolved clues will just have the first letter in the cell (and the number of letters in the adjacent cell). Your system sounds a lot more sophisticated and I may try it if I can work out what or how you do it.
SO chuffed that I finished it. Citroen last to go in as, like Eileen, got stuck with Cortina. Lots of models didn’t know and ghyll took ages to find until I got the h from qashdai. Long live Google and Chambers! Really enjoyed the challenge. Great puzzle Maskarade
A superb puzzle. I’m just not on a wavelength with those who do d jigsaws boring or untraditional. I get an extra thrill from the logical challenge of fitting answers together, and there’s always a key way in to get started.
And the cluing for this type of puzzle is nearly always pure and not too convoluted, making the initial solving a good exercise.
So many thanks, both to setter and blogger.
Chalk me up as another fan, very addictive once we got going. Stepdad’s knowledge of older cars helped as we finished early Saturday evening, a first for us on Maskarade’s holiday challenges. Thanks mhl for the blog which has cleared up a few queries, and to Maskarade of course.
I also thought at first that each manufacturer had to be paired with a model, but UNO and FORD could not be anything else which put paid to that theory.
The process of counting lights was an enjoyable extra puzzle, and revealed very clearly what clue-lengths had to be matched, and with that done, the three-letter lights and corners starting with the same letter gave strong starting points. I almost had a crisis with 80% or so of the grid filled, when it seemed I could not follow the rule for the thematic D clue. However, I hadn’t realised that DEVON was thematic and not its unsolved partner (this is one problem with the themed clues having “bonus” definitions).
FULL ORGAN seemed rather unsatisfying but otherwise great clues, and plenty that was new to me in clues and solutions. This and my first few tries at Azed puzzles mean I’m getting good use out of my new Chambers phone app.
These ones very addictive- out with the grid paper etc. I thought Full Organ was Full Cream ( it fits!) (ref to Cream the band), as had not heard the term Full Organ before – rather good – bit like the full Monty but with added vox humana….also got held up on Cortina/Citroen.
I came late to this discussion because I waited until I’d seen the solution in today’s Guardian before finally throwing in the towel. I thought it was a superb puzzle, nonetheless.
My only beef is the unanswered criticism that some of the themed solutions had definitions in their clues. In my book, it’s not good enough to say that we should interpret “..with no further definition in its clue..” as meaning “may have no further definition in its clue”. They do not mean the same thing.
Like several other contributors here, I excluded several solutions, including DEVON, from the themed lists because their clues contained a definition.
Surely an apology is due for this misleading error in the rubric.
I really enjoyed working through the clues. After 40+ years, at last a theme which didn’t require me to bury myself in Google or Wikipedia!! I also read the rubric in the way that Maskarade probably intended, in that no clue contained “car maker” or “car model” and didn’t really notice some had other definition parts until I read it here.
But (and it’s a big butt) I found I needed to solve virtually every clue before attempting to assemble the jigsaw. Why ? Because yet again we had a grid where so many initial letters were hidden. Also a high proportion of the crossers were vowels, which I suppose is inevitable when trying to assemble a crossword of this magnitude. I got there, but gosh what a mental workout !
BNTO. You are not alone, the theme was obvious and the clues solveable but the tedious task of fitting them to the grid meant another Bank Holiday ruined by this setter.
I was held up for a long time arranging the grid by insisting on making the five-letter V word VOLVO. There does in fact appear to be an obscure band called OVLO which would make the clue work.