It’s always good to see an alphabetical puzzle in the Prize slot – Paul’s second offering, I think, but it may be more – and this proved to be a satisfying challenge.
Rather different from the traditional, in that there were not two answers beginning with the same letter, to give a help with the first placing, nor any initial letters round the perimeter. However, this was amply compensated by the uniquely placed and straightforwardly clued D answer [first one in] and the L answer across the middle [although I didn’t complete this one until about half way through].
I solved as many clues as I could before trying to enter them and found that a further help was the wide range of answer lengths: with only two four-letter words, I took a leap of faith and entered PRIG in the bottom half, which quickly led to the insertion of ENGELS, IGNORANT, ANILINE and UNDERSEAL – and there was the bottom left corner practically finished.
I intended to take notes on the filling of the grid but found that, once started, the answers that I had filled themselves in very satisfyingly, so I ploughed on, hoping my initial entries were correct – which they turned out to be.
I am once more indebted to Gaufrid for the production of the completed grid : many thanks to him – and to Paul for an entertaining puzzle.
[Definitions are underlined in the clues.]
A A family from Belfast that’s poisonous (7)
ANILINE
A N[orthern] I[rish] – from Belfast – LINE [family]
B Edge clear, as possible target for criminals? (4,5)
BANK VAULT
BANK [edge] + VAULT [clear]
C Thoroughly test peevish Bohemian in audition? (10)
CROSSCHECK
CROSS [peevish] + CHECK, which sounds like – in audition – Czech [Bohemian]
D Swimming in Dead Sea till empty — so harder to float in it? (11)
DESALINATED
Anagram [swimming] of IN DEAD SEA T[il]L
E Red fish fed with brown fag ends (6)
ENGELS
[brow]N [fa]G in EELS [fish]
F French dance took off in craze: what might flamenco artiste say? (9)
FARANDOLE
RAN [took off] in FAD [craze] + OLE [what a flamenco artiste might say]
G Low-calorie option unfortunately rejected by glutton, ultimately, in desire for more (5,5)
GREEN SALAD
A reversal [rejected] of ALAS [unfortunately] + [glutto]N in GREED [desire for more]
H What has host prepared? What’s your opinion? (4,4)
HOW’S THAT?
Anagram [prepared] of WHAT and HOST
I Unaware how to address Italian soldier? Then doff cap! (8)
IGNORANT
[s]IGNOR [how to address Italian, minus initial letter – ‘cap doffed’] + ANT [soldier]
J Nut in kind of ancient religion terrorising Frenchman? (7)
JACOBIN
COB [nut] in JAIN [kind of ancient religion]
K Ruminant has successful move to make, reportedly? (4)
KUDU
Sounds like [reportedly] ‘coup’ [successful move: I have checked the pronunciation in Chambers and it is a genuine homophone – in fact it can be spelt ‘koodoo’ – not pronounced as the ku in kudos] + ‘do’ [make]
L Reading Stevenson inspired by Eliot (good or bad), before introduction to Murdoch, there she goes! (6,5,4)
LITTLE GIRLS’ ROOM
LIT [literature – reading] + RLS [Robert Louis Stevenson] in [inspired by] an anagram [bad] of ELIOT G [good] OR + M[urdoch] – with a typical Pauline definition!
M By the sound of it, one imitating leather (5)
MOCHA
Sounds like ‘mocker’ [one imitating]
N Philosopher perhaps between novel and religious text in shop (9)
NEWSAGENT
SAGE [philosopher, perhaps] between NEW [novel] and NT [New Testament – religious text]
O Beastly couple shaving heads in harmony (2,3)
ON KEY
[d]ONKEY and /or [m]ONKEY [beastly couple ‘shaving heads’]
P Mrs Grundy runs animal houses (4)
PRIG
PIG [animal] round [houses] R [runs] – Mrs Grundy is the archetypal prig
Q Phony quevice or quanny? (5)
QUACK
By analogy with ‘crevice’ or ‘cranny’
R Rifle cleared, safe to hold a gun (8)
REPEATER
R[ifl]E+ PETER [safe] round A
S Dog acts like a camel, we hear? (5)
SPITZ
Sounds like ‘spits’ – what a camel does
T Ruler in Titan losing it with a Roman emperor (6)
TRAJAN
RAJA [ruler] in T[ita]N, ‘losing it with a’
U Submarine meeting dreadful end, might this have stopped the rot? (9)
UNDERSEAL
UNDERSEA [marine] + [dreadfu]L
V A dish, Victoria initially on da throne? (8)
VINDALOO
V[ictoria] IN DA LOO – ‘on da throne’ – another typical Paul clue, which made me laugh; it also reminded me of the pretentious boarding school where I taught for one term at the beginning of my career: when the girls wished to be excused, they asked to go to the Jubilee: apparently, someone had once misunderstood a reference to a seated statue of Queen Victoria ‘on her Jubilee’
W Volvo finally pulled up with one secured nut (6)
WEIRDO
A reversal [up] of [volv]O + DREW [pulled] round I [one]
X Frog in congress, happy on back (7)
XENOPUS
A reversal [back] of UP [happy] ON in SEX [congress] – an African aquatic frog, which I have seen before [but only in crosswords]
Y North American animator travelling west around eastern capital (7)
YEREVAN
Another reversal [travelling west, in an across clue] of N [north] AVERY [American animator] round E [eastern] – I’m afraid I didn’t know this animator: I started off by googling Yenesid…
Z Bovine defenceless, wanting affection primarily, whacked (6)
ZONKED
ZO [bovine – ‘said to be a cross between the male yak and the common horned cow’ – the third answer from the crossword menagerie] + N[a]KED [defenceless, minus the first letter of Affection]; when I was writing my list of answers before trying to enter them in the grid, I first had ‘zapped’ – and couldn’t parse it, then had similar problems with ZONKED, until I had a gentle Gaufrid nudge towards the 2/4 wordplay – I must have met ZO before but it had temporarily escaped from the memory bank
Thanks Eileen. This was fun, Google needed only for X, Y, Z. The long ones got me well started (using your method) – except forthe longest of all which was one of the very last solved. Last in in fact was the very nice M/D ONKEY.
It was very nice indeed, hope for more like this.
Thanks Eileen for excellent blog and Paul for excellent puzzle. In the grid you have KUDU but in discussion KUDO. I think former is correct. I used to live near to kudu once.
Thank you for the blog, Eileen; my first and last we’re the same as yours. I thought the clue for “vindaloo” was priceless – loved the anecdote too!
Many thanks for the entertainment, Paul.
Thanks Paul and Eileen
A very friendly alphabetical, due to the unusually varied word lengths. Xenopus is a much studied animal, though more generally called a “clawed toad” (frog is OK, though).
I’m surprised that you didn’t notice who was responsible for the immortal Bugs Bunny, Eileen!
Right up my street – I love alphabeticals, especially those like this one where the grid must be partially filled in order to supply some crossers for the more challenging clues.
I had just one answer that I could enter straight away because of its length (DESALINATED, 11 letters). The 15-letter answer (L) had to wait a little while.
This was a clever puzzle, and there were several excellent clues, of which my favourite was VINDALOO.
LITTLE GIRLS ROOM was great fun, although except for the final M the wordplay played no part in solving it.
ZONKED, KUDU and YEREVAN they went in unparsed at first. I later worked out ZONKED, although I had to study a bit about Tibetan fauna to confirm it. I looked for Avery the animator but didn’t find him or her. The blog has, of course, made everything clear.
Not Paul’s best, but a highly enjoyable special crossword none the less.
Thanks to Paul and Eileen.
Thanks Eileen.
I had trajan as raja (ruler) in Tn (Titan losing ‘it with a’). I thought raj meant rule rather than ruler.
I had to enter ON KEY, there being no alternative, but it is a somewhat unusual phrase. The ‘couple’ had me fooled; a truncated donkey I saw, but never made the connection with monkey. Wasn’t Mrs Grundy an archetypal prude rather than a prig? The two aren’t quite the same.
This one almost defeated Timon and I; although we did eventually fill the grid, we couldn’t explain YEREVAN to our satisfaction, so thanks for reminding us of Tex Avery. I had heard of him, but was (fairly) misled into expecting a name that began with V. Like you, Eileen, I spent time looking for a capital called Yesnid.
I loved the characteristic clues for LITTLE GIRLS ROOM and VINDALOO.
As well as KUDO for KUDU, Eileen, you also have bovine underlined instead of whacked in the clue for ZONKED.
Re jvh @7. Yes, I think this is the correct parsing for TRAJAN.
I used to love Araucaria’s alphabetical jigsaws and have enjoyed Maskarade’s but this is the first I’ve seen from Paul. I completed this on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney and as usual found the setter’s clues perfectly formed. The only one I didn’t completely understand was L as I thought ‘lit’ meant ‘inspired’, so thank you Eilleen for the explanation. ‘Zo’ I remembered from Maskarade’s puzzle where the clue started SIGNS OF THE CROSS and the answer was ZODIAC.
Oh dear, hands up yet again.
Apologies and thanks to TimR @3, jvh@7 and bridgesong @9 for pointing out my careless errors, amended now.
Logomachist @10, the Wikipedia link that I gave begins,’Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person’ – not infallible, I know, but I have checked several thesauri, which give prig and prude as synonymous.
Thanks Paul and Eileen.
Enjoyed this Alphabetical variation. Nice to have word length as an indirect help.
I found making a little table of word length 5, 6, 7 etc with the corresponding letters in alphabetical order really speeded up the process
Really enjoyed the L clue … complicated construction simple definition
Like Brownphel @11 I used to love Araucaria’s alphabeticals – especially those where the clues were in rhyming couplets! I haven’t generally got on with alphas done by other setters. With Araucaria I could usually start filling in the grid after solving a few clues, whereas with others I’ve tended to find that I’ve solved a lot of clues individually without making any serious progress with the grid. This seems to me to take away a lot of the fun of a crossword.
But this one by Paul was great. The word lengths were a real help, and I could make steady progress with the grid and the solving at the same time.
I did have a couple left unparsed, eg ZONKED, so many thanks for the blog Eileen.
LITTLE GIRLS ROOM was excellent and funny!
thanks Paul, Eileen
I really enjoyed this.
There’s no objection to monkey/donkey really, but there is also a ‘zonkey’ which is a zebra/donkey cross, and which I thought a more Pauline candidate for ‘beastly couple’
Thanks Eileen. Like others my first was the D clue which readily went into the only 11 letter slot. I then took a chance on CROSSCHECK and the rest eventually followed. Like molonglo my LOI was ON KEY and like Eoin Sharkey I found a table of word lengths and letters was helpful. I never did come to terms with ZONKED and the only 7 letter capital beginning with Y I could find at first was Yaounde and that was no help at all.
I got through all but the NE corner of this, eventually defeated by the heat as much as by Paul. Some great clueing – I still believe though that these damned Guardian grids with all the first letters obscured add an unnecessary degree of sadism !
Very satisfying in every way, great clueing and the word lengths were certainly a help. I usually welcome Alphabeticals since cracking (or using) the numeration is almost like an extra puzzle. As Bridgesong @9 says, Avery didn’t come readily to mind but still a fair, if tough, clue.
Thanks Eileen and Paul.
Thanks Paul and Eileen
Alphabeticals are my favourite crosswords, and this one was no exception.
Several letters in today’s paper about the cryptic crossword, including one I fear which describes Fifteensquared as a “self-congratulatory group of bloggers”. Difficult to think of a less appropriate way of describing you, Eileen.
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/2017/jun/23/some-cross-words-about-cryptic-clues
I agree this was a really good way to allow entry to an alphabetical, which I’ve never seen before. I, too, was straight in with DESALINATED, but took a while to get LITTLE GIRLS ROOM (excellent, and very Pauline definition!)
Unfortunately, I’d never heard of YEREVAN, and although I had heard of Tex Avery, it wasn’t a name that came readily to mind, so with two or three others in the SE corner unsolved, having correctly analysed the clue, I tried googling YESNEID. I was rather shocked to find that that led me to a site where people shamelessly ask the WWW at large for the answers to clues, and others, for whatever motive, answer them. That was how I got YEREVAN and also REPEATER (kicked myself then for not remembering that peter is slang for safe — and prison cell) and TRAJAN. That meant I was then able to fill in the remainder. I’d thought of ON KEY earlier, but felt unsure whether that was really the same thing as “in harmony” (musicians in the house?). Crossing letters, though, convinced me it was the right answer.
Crossing letters also led me to SPITZ, which I’m not sure I’d heard of before, after earlier spending a long time trying to think what behaviour typified a camel (doh!).
Funnily enough, I’d recently read of the zo in Don Manley’s (Pasquale here) Chambers Crossword Manual in a short eulogy to his publishers’ dictionary, which gives (under zho) many variant spellings.
I hadn’t previously heard of MOCHA as a type of leather, only as coffee.
I, too, thought of “zapped” before ZONKED, which I only knew in a druggy context, so didn’t get the definition till I looked it up.
Can anyone who has solved CW Watson’s clue in the correspondence referred to by Marienkaefer, above, please provide a check letter or two:
• For the many, the quick; for the few, the cryptic: gives you one (5).
I too love alphabeticals, and this was no exception. It went fairly smoothly until only four clues were left, but I did not get back to those until this morning. For YEREVAN, I fixed on the idea that “North America” was indicating the reversed version would start with NA, so I was looking for an animator called VERY or VREY. I kicked myself quite hard when I remembered Tex Avery and realised I’d misunderstood the construction of the clue. That gave me the E which led me to ON KEY. Again, I had misread the construction, trying to divide the solution into two parts, each a ‘headless’ animal, but with the E it had to be ON KEY and I eventually realised why.
That left two in the top left. I’d considered MOCHA earlier, but my dictionary searches hadn’t found a leather-related meaning. Anyway, I don’t really think of “imitating” and “mocking” as equivalent. This morning I resorted to Googling “mocha leather” and there it was. With the O confirmed, WEIRDO jumped out at me and the solution was complete.
Many thanks to Paul and Eileen.
Hi Marienkaefer @19. Thanks for that. I’ve been out for most of the day and hadn’t opened my paper, so might have missed it until tomorrow.
I agree with every word of Charles Barr’s letter but I wonder what prompts a letter like that from Peter Wilks. ‘Anyone who has visited the blog’ surely knows that it is designed to help people like Richard Walker, as testified by many here, myself included: as a Guardian reader and solver of four decades, I have learned an enormous amount since the day, ten years ago, when I serendipitously discovered fifteensquared.
I recognise some of my comments quoted in the letter but I have never, ever, belittled Rufus – or, I hope, any other setter – whom I regard as a friend, having met him at several S and Bs and assisted with his magic tricks.
Does this letter deserve a response? [I don’t think I’m the one to write it – I’m seething.]
[Tony @21: I haven’t solved the clue – but I’m tired.]
Thanks to Paul and Eileen. I can’t explain why but I did not get to this puzzle until this morning (and I too much enjoy alphabeticals). I gave up on KUDU (I missed the KU-coup) and JACOBIN (I missed both JAIN and COB for nut) and did not parse QUACK or ZONKED – and VINDALOO was my LOI, but I much enjoyed the struggle.
Eileen @23
You ask “Does this letter deserve a response?”
It depends on what follows it – if anything does follow it. On its own it’s just a rant and can be ignored. The writer, against all reason, (1) takes the worst possible interpretation of what bloggers and commenters have said and (2) makes generalisations to suit his purpose.
Some commenters do praise ‘obscure’ clues, but others most certainly do not. What’s obscure to me might not be obscure to you, and what’s “wonderful witty misdirection” to one can be “too clever by half” to another. I read all this and more on fifteensquared!
Thanks Paul and Eileen I couldn’t parse zonked and was defeated by on key but had lots of fun getting close to the finishing line.
Eileen @23: Peter Wilks’ letter was offensively phrased and much too sweeping in its comments. But unfortunately it does contain an element of truth. There are contributors to this site (I know you’re not among them) who routinely have a go at Rufus because they think his puzzles are too easy, contain too many cryptic definitions, or whatever.
I think if you really don’t like a particular setter’s style, don’t do their puzzles. There are plenty of people who do very much appreciate Rufus.
I always enjoyed the jigsaw form, and it takes a brave setter to take it on, particularly in the Guardian. This was unusual, in that the jigsaw element was easier than solving more than a few of the clues. All quite enjoyable, but I needed to look up a few words to complete it.
Thanks to Paul and Eileen
JimS @21
I think if you really don’t like a particular setter’s style, don’t do their puzzles. There are plenty of people who do very much appreciate Rufus.
I think it very rude to instruct people not to do a puzzle because they don’t like the style of the setter. Unless I am mistaken we still live in a “free” society and are at liberty to do as we please as long as it’s legal. This would I think include solving a Rufus and then either praising its wit and invention or alternatively criticising it for its dodgy cluing and an over reliance on DDs and CDs.
Vive la difference
BNTO @29
I think you meant JimS @27; 21 was mine. (No-one solved CW Watson’s “clue”(?), then?). Perhaps you’re using your phone/tablet, which doesn’t include comment numbers?.
I don’t think he was “instructing” anyone to do or not do anything, just suggesting that, as you say, he’s not obliged to do something he doesn’t enjoy. Obviously enough people (including me) enjoy Rufus’ puzzles for them to continue being published. Btw, a free society isn’t necessarily just one where you’re free to do what’s not illegal, is it? If your freedom is unnecessarily constrained by oppressive laws then it’s not a free society.
We always enjoy an alphabetical so were really pleased to see this last Saturday. Thank you Paul.
Like many others we failed to parse ZONKED and hadn’t heard of AVERY as the animator, but Eileen, as always, makes them clear.
Tony @ 21. No we haven’t solved it!
Thank you Paul, thank you Eileen.
I concluded that O was [li]ON [don]KEY as the couple shaving heads.