Guardian Prize 27,280 by Paul

54 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,280 by Paul”

1. Nicely tricky. I concur on the ant trails. I took ages to parse FRENCH RIVIERA – a real tea-tray moment.
   Thanks both.

2. Thanks PeeDee. I do think Paul’s Prize offerings are getting more difficult and I enjoyed this challenge. I figured out what 12,20 and 6,7 had to be early enough but spent quite a lot more time trying to explain them. I couldn’t dissociate the sandwich, croque monsieur, from 6,7. I knew 18 had to be TAURINE but it was a new word to me and when I Googled it I had to persist in order to get past the primary definition of an animo acid.

3. Thanks to Paul and PeeDee. I was very slow getting started, but once I got (and eventually parsed) FRENCH RIVIERA things fell into place. I knew OCHE from previous puzzles but needed help parsing STORY (though the solution was clear from the crossers). LOI were TAURINE and PIGEONHOLE. Very enjoyable.

   In the gloss on 16Ac there is an I to make Gil(i) instead of an L for Gil(l).

4. Thanks Paul and PeeDee. Yep, this was a challenge. I failed on Saturday but next morning revealed the ‘insane’ bit of 12,20 and the puzzle unravelled. Thanks for explaining how 1A, 2S and 16A work: the answers were obvious. Big ticks for (HI)STORY and TAURINE.

5. In 13a, is TURN AT the container for CO? And how can I derive ‘turn at’ from ‘go towards’? I couldn’t parse it a week ago, still confused today 🙁 (Learning not quibbling: any help appreciated). Thanks PeeDee for elucidating several others I couldn’t understand!

6. I stared at this for a long time before getting the NW and SE quarters. Then I stared at it for a long time failing to parse French Riviera. Then I lost it. BNTO should be pleased but I found it just too difficult to complete.

7. Thanks both. I found this very hard to parse and agree with Biggles A that Paul’s are getting more difficult. Just a small pedantic point (but don’t we have to be pedants to enjoy this particular game?!) – in 22a, the (French) pronunciation of Cannes is ‘can’, not ‘cans’, which fits nicely with the singular ‘it’.

8. Thanks Paul and Peedee
   I enjoyed this. I got FRENCH RIVIERA from the definition and related clues, but didn’t manage to parse it – thanks for that.

9. Some easy clues but these were more than made up for by the rest.

   Paul gives a masterclass in brilliantly devious wordplay. He can still do it when he chooses.

   I particularly liked the French river with an island in it. (some might say 🙂 ) . However there were many others.

   Bravo

10. Thanks both
    As Adi @5 has hinted, you have a little typo in 13a – CO in TURN AT not turn to
    I read as TURN AT = go (e.g. I want my turn at that game) with “towards” as surface

11. Typos fixed now. Thanks all.

    Miranda – I should definitely have spotted the singular can in 22ac. I’m quite embarrassed about missing that one!

    ACD @3 re 16ac – the I in my explanation is actually a lower case L. Letter Ls in subtractions are always a problem as they are either misleading if I use lower case or inconsistent with the rest of the blog if I use upper case.

12. Adi @5 – I have corrected my entry for 13 across. I think TURN and AT have to be treated as separate words.

13. Thanks to Paul and PeeDee for explaining it all. A surprisingly fast one to solve for me, though I needed PD’s elegant elucidation to understand why my answers were correct!

    Couple of great definitions in there; line for missile launchers for OCHE, and bully for
    TAURINE (which was my Last One In)

    NICE (referenced in wordplay of 6d 7d) is on the French Riviera and (bit tenuous) part of the DALMATIAN coast is known as the Makarska Riviera.

14. Adi @5 and Shirl @10 re: Turn At. I split up ‘go’ and ‘towards’ and then you have a turn is a ‘go’, and at can mean ‘towards’. A nice clue I thought.
    A great puzzle overall, though I didn’t get Pigeonhole, getting stuck on Cine for the camera. Thanks PeeDee for the explanations.

15. There appears to be a problem with today’s jigsaw puzzle; we have 6 eight-letter clues, 7 seven-letter and 3 nine-letter but the grid has space for 4 eights, 8 sevens and 4 nines

16. Thanks to Paul and PeeDee for the puzzle and blog. 6,20 was one of those clues that raise a smile if you parse it but seem unfair if you don’t. Definitely solve first (in my case from the V in VEGGIE) and parse (much) later.

17. brownphel – I have temporarily hidden your comments about today’s prize puzzle. I hope you won’t be offended. I think there will be people who are reading this blog before having a go at today’s puzzle, they should be able to have a go and figure it all out for themselves, whatever they make of it.

18. I’m certainly not offended but …

19. [brownphel, you have a point, check the comment by Brigster on yesterday’s cryptic.]

20. Thank you Paul for a great puzzle and PeeDee for a super blog.

    This was a real challenge, I failed on some of the parsing and could kick myself over the “Island insane” – luckily I remembered OCHE from a recent cryptic.

21. Not much to add. I thought this was mid range Paul rather than ultra difficult. I liked PIGEON HOLE. FRENCH RIVIERA was great!
    Thanks Paul.

22. Didn’t have chance to solve this when it was published, glad I remembered about it today.
    Certainly needed Peedee’s help to parse a few – 14&23a spring to mind – and don’t recall meeting 18d before today.
    Like Biggles@2, I had a job to look beyond cheese on toast for 6/7d! Eventually, that became one of my favourites with the following three ‘down’ clues close behind.

    Thanks to Paul and to Peedee for the assistance where needed.

23. Quite a bit more challenging than many of Paul’s recent ones. I had FRENCH RIVIERA a long time before I managed to parse it. I was familiar with TAURINE (did you know it’s a major ingredient in “energy” drinks as well as cat food?) and it’s relation to Taurus, but not with bully in that sense — one from the Uxbridge English Dictionary that, I think. Most amusing!

    I would have been tempted to clue NO MORE MR NICE GUY by reference to Howard “Mr Nice” Marks — but he’s perhaps not everyone’s coup d’etat [cup of tea – see the (unpublished) Uxbridge French-English Dictionary].

24. Enjoyed this one particularly the outrageous FRENCH RIVIERA which was easier to guess than to parse. Agree that the cans homophone was a liberty too many.

    Thanks to Paul and PeeDee

25. In today’s prize (27,286) I can find only three clues with word-length 9; but find five with word-length 8. I feel sure sure there should be four of each.

    Can someone help, or am I being a bit dim?

26. I’m having the same problem, although I see seven 7s (C, F, N, U, V, X, Y) and eight 7-letter spaces, six 8s (B, B, E, J, P, Z) but only four spaces and three 9s (L, N, O) with four spaces…

27. Correction to my note above: there are six clues marked as having 8 letters (I had overlooked J), but I still find only four places in which to put them – which doesn’t help with the missing ‘9’ clue. It’s rather late – I had better give up for now!

28. Please do not discuss current prize puzzles until after the date for submission, and then only when the relevant post has been published. However, I can confirm that there is an error in the enumeration for B.

29. Thank you. On careful checking of clues and grid it wouls seem there also an other error.

30. PeeDee @ 12 (and MTB @ 14) thanks v much. Penny on and lightbulb dropped.

31. Thanks Gaufrid, and I completely agree with your rule – although I think there’s an exception to make when there’s a concrete mistake in the puzzle. Apparently B should be enumerated (7;9).

32. Please cease from discussing the current Prize puzzle on here. Whatever the reason it is against “house rules” besides being inconsiderate to other solvers!!!!

33. How is it inconsiderate to other solvers to stop them wasting time on an unsolvable puzzle, as l have been doing?

34. Pointing out a printer’s devil in the current prize crossword is hardly unfair, especially when the paper cba to correct it themselves, but if them’s the rules so be it. In any case there are other crossword sites where this information could have been speedily found this time yesterday (Saturday) , surely it would have been just as easy to look there ?

35. I, for one, very much appreciate being alerted to this here, whether or not it is an infraction of house rules, and would not have been aware of the correction any other way. It is no spoiler; on the contrary. I note the the Guardian still has B as (8,8) in its pdf download.

    @Coxy

    Can you provide an authoritative source for your “apparent” correction?

36. It would be very helpful to all the people who give their free time to maintaining this site if people follow the site rules. They are there for everybody’s benefit to keep the site the harmonious place that it is. If people start cherry-picking which rules they follow and when they chose to follow them then before long it becomes a free-for-all in here too.

    Ultimately there isn’t much anyone can do to stop people ignoring the rules other than a polite request not to do so. So this is my request.

37. Tony @34, the correction is now printed under the Prize crossword on the Guardian Site.

38. Thanks, Cookie.

    @PeeDee
    All, or most, of those reading here will be “solvers of the Guardian Prize”, including you and Gaufrid, so we should all be grateful the matter has been brought to our attention. Ideally, Gaufrid would have been the one to point out the problem and its correction … and also to make any (further) “call to order”, I would have thought. A judge once told me “the rules are are servants, not our masters” and if that adage applied in his court, I don’t see why it shouldn’t apply here.

39. Hello Tony,

    I am sure your judge friend is right, in his court rules are servants not masters. I am certainly in no position to disagree with this. However, your friend is paid to be a judge and presumably enjoys being one and has been trained in such matters.

    The reason I think this is not helpful is that here there are no judges. By expecting moderators to decide when comments are breaking the rules for a good reason or breaking the rules for a bad reason you are forcing role of judge onto them. You are forcing moderators into confrontations with people who don’t necessarily agree with them: “you let so-and-so break the rule yesterday, why can’t I break one today?”. I know from experience that people get upset about this sort of thing very quickly. The people who maintain this site are not judges and don’t enjoy mediating in spats between aggrieved people.

    Having simple and clear rules makes the whole process so much easier and more pleasant. OK sometimes you have to go elsewhere to post a comment, but think of that as a small contribution you could make to the health of this site. You could volunteer to get involved yourself: write a blog now and then and have a go at moderating the comments yourself. You get no pay, no training and people complain about what you do if they don’t like it. If you are interested email Gaufrid at the site email address.

40. I’m sorry, PeeDee, I didn’t realise moderation was part of your role as blogger. Playing judge is not easy, but you are entitled to use your discretion in applying the rules.I won’t say any more about the matter, but I should point out that the judge I mentioned was not a friend but was acting in his judicial capacity in a case in which I was the plaintiff.

41. May I suggest that ‘discussion’ involves the exchange of opinions, which may of course lead to argument. If that refers to a currently open puzzle then it should not take place.

    On the other hand, the statement of fact that there is an error in the presentation of a puzzle, which leads to it being technically insoluble, is, in my view, a different kettle of fish.

    It may however be preferable that such a statement is made on the General Discussion page rather than in relation to a specific prior puzzle.

    In my view, being advised of a technical error in a puzzle that for no fault of your own you can’t complete doesn’t constitute spoiling.

    Others’ views may vary, of course.

42. Simon,

    I remember an earlier bank holiday special where the letter counts looked wrong and the puzzle seemed to contain an error. In fact the letter counts were right and the people reporting the “error” had just not managed to see how the solution worked. Pointing this out did constitute a spoiler as it was saying to other solvers “you have to look here in the puzzle to see what is going on”. Whether it turns out to be an error or not, by the time we have had the statement/discussion or whatever you want to call it the cat is already out of the bag.

    That is not my main reason though. From experience when one person comments on a puzzle other people will invariably comment on it too. This may start off with one well meaning person who believes they have a solid reason and their post does not give enough information to constitute a spoiler. However, the sum of the information in all those posts amounts to much more than any one poster intended. Also other people then comment in future on the grounds “you let X comment last week”. If it is OK for you to ignore this rule why can’t someone else ignore another? What one person considers a spoiler is considered to be fair comment by someone else. Censoring one person and not another gets people very angry. Other people then jump in to defend them. How do you get the 30+ bloggers involved in this site to all make consistent judgements on what is a spoiler? Trying to manage this is not fun. People have better things to do with their lives.

    Whether the original well-meaning comment was a discussion or a statement, whether it constituted a spoiler or not a spoiler, the outcome is the same.

    My request is this: that by sticking to a clear and simple rule you are doing something to help; by insisting that you be able to flex the rule you are creating a rod for our backs.

43. Thanks for your reply PeeDee

    I may have phrased what I wrote badly. I’m not suggesting that the rule per se should be flexible in line with the blogger’s wishes, and wholeheartedly.

    However where there is a clear error in the enumeration I think it would be helpful if there were a means of informing solvers, eg on this site’s Announcements page with the notification closed for comments if that’s possible. If it’s not possible then clearly it shouldn’t appear.

    Just a personal view, of course.

44. I strongly agree with the rule that comments on prize puzzles should be banned till after the closing date (I notice that the Times site – on days when it works at all – simply has no way to submit them prematurely).
    However, there does need to be a way of publicising errors – I had abandoned attempts to solve Maskarade’s puzzle after proving there was no solution that agreed with the printed enumerations, and came to the conclusion that something tricky was going on, as mentioned by PeeDee@41.
    So armed with the correction supplied by Coxy@30 I’ll have another go!

45. Hello Simon

    I have thought about this myself too, how would you notify people of errors or allow some discussion of the current prize puzzle?

    My thoughts in no particular order are:

    1) The correct place for the errata is the Guardian’s own website, and a correction was indeed put up there
    2) It takes time to decide if there is an error or just a misunderstanding, and it takes time to decide what is the best way to resolve the situation
    3) It would be nice if people had the patience to wait for the Guardian to sort it out themselves but in reality it is unlikely that the entire solver base of the Guardian is going to be that patient
    5) The general discussion page is better than the Gaurdian blog, but may still come as a spoiler to those who read it
    6) In reality not many people read the general discussion page anyway
    7) Announcements are useful but they have to be used sparingly, and unless they are fixed at the top of the site very few people read them
    8) It takes time to decide on an appropriate announcement, just as it does for the Guardian to produce a correction. People are not that patient.
    9) A hasty and ill-considered announcement could be worse than no announcement at all
    10) For Guardian solvers an error in a prize puzzle may seem very important indeed, but fifteensquared is about much more than just the Guardian, other people wonder why a small error in one puzzle deserves a front-page announcement all to itself

    One idea could be a “corrections topic” where people can make requests for corrections and discuss them. You would enter this at your own risk, spoilers at some level would be expected here. Regard it as a place to go if you can’t figure out how to fix an error yourself and you can’t wait for the puzzle to be corrected by the puzzle’s publisher. I’m not convinced that this would actually be very useful.

    Another idea I have is that fifteensquared could have an associated facebook page linked from the site, and vice versa. This could provide an outlet for unmoderated comment, general questions, potential spoilers and people who just want to have a social chat with other fifteensquared regulars and go completely off-topic. Come to this site to read the blogs and leave pertinent comment on the puzzle in question, move across to to the facebook page for general social media. As for the “corrections topic” you visit to this at your own risk.

    I don’t use facebook myself (or any sort of social media, I let my wife handle all that) so I’m probably not the best person to foresee what intended/unintended consequences this may have. Perhaps someone from the fifteensquared community could make some informed comment on this idea?

46. The error was in fact pointed out several times on the Guardian’s blog on the Friday puzzle. There is a surprising amount of discussion of the Prize puzzle there in a site where spoilers are usually jumped on.

47. Apologies for my transgression there- and thanks PeeDee for explaining why the rule is quite so all-encompassing.
    FWIW I still think that allowing discussion of actual errors would be net beneficial to the community – this is the first place I came when I smelt a rat – but it sounds like I should switch to the Guardian blog for that. Sadly waiting for a correction isn’t viable when it takes over a day and I have precious little enough time to enjoy the puzzle!

48. I’m one of those who normally relies on the print version. I couldn’t find a correction either next to the crossword or in Corrections and Clarifications today (Monday) so without Coxy@30 I would have been stuck and I don’t think he needed to apologise @46.

49. Pino

    The correction is on this page at the Guardian website

    You can find this page by putting “Guardian Crossword 27286” into Google. For future problems you can substitute the number of the puzzle in question.

    Hope this helps.

50. Coxy – I agree that allowing discussion of *possible errors would be net beneficial to the fifteensquared community. The point I am trying to get across is that the balance tips in favour because there are a lot of viewers of the site who will get the benefit of that service and a small number of maintainers of the site who get an unpleasant task to support it.

    The common thread among all the commenters here who want us to provide a moderated comments service on current prize puzzles is that none of them seem to feel it is up to them to help provide it.

    *PS – as a light-hearted aside – if you come up with a way to discuss only actual errors rather than possible errors then please come and let me know. You will have invented a technique for seeing the future, we could make a fortune with this!

51. PeeDee@48
    Yes, but that only works if I notice the error and am sure that it’s not my mistake. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often.
    I am very grateful to you and the other bloggers for your selfless hard work. I am not good enough to volunteer.

52. To Pino @50 and other commenters in general:

    I sympathise with Pino’s predicament but we do not provide any information on puzzles until the puzzle appears in print, and in the case of prize puzzles not until the official solution has been published. This is site policy: we do not provide any comments, information, solutions, hints, grids or any text from the clues anywhere in the site.

    The primary reason for this is not because of spoilers but because of the relationship we have with the publishers. The crosswords are the publishers’ copyright material and we only reproduce this material with the goodwill of those organisations, or at least by the editors of those organisations turning a blind eye to what we do. We aim to support the publishers of crosswords not to be a problem for them. They ask us not to publish information on current prize puzzles and we willingly comply.

    The puzzles represent economic value for those organisations. If you want a copy of the puzzle go to the publishers website and they get advertising revenue. Buy a newspaper and they get revenue. Until the puzzle/solution is published visit their site and use the facilities they provide. If the Guardian has errors you do not spot then it is the Guardian that has let you down not fifteensquared. Until the solution is published it is the Guardian that is responsible for providing the corrections not fifteensquared.

    Of course not giving spoilers is important too, but that is just good manners and applies to all aspects of the site not just prize puzzles. Spoilers don’t even get a mention in the site policy.

53. As I said earlier, there are other crossword sites where such discussions do not infringe the rules. I won’t say they are numerous but they do exist and are easily found – that’s how I found out about the enumeration error before it was raised here. I only come to fifteensquared after I have completed or abandoned the puzzle – or in the case of prize puzzles, forgotten it ever existed ! Talking of which, given the Guardian’s financial problems, IMHO submitting entries for their prize puzzles sadly ceased to be worth the price of the stamp some years ago. But solving them is still just as enjoyable.

54. No need to apologise – you can’t be an expert in everything! Glad to help – I get so much help from this site, especially on parsing.

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