Guardian Prize 27,322 / Brummie

37 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,322 / Brummie”

1. Thanks Eileen. I agree, this didn’t need a great deal of time and I thought it was over rather too quickly. A few more anagrams than I would like to see though I had to admire 21,10. 3,29 was clever too. I never did account for the Bells in 22 so thanks for that, maybe there could have been a better definition. I’d completely missed the migratory ‘to’. If there is a theme then I’ll be wiping egg too.

2. Yes Eileen and Biggles – that sums it up for me as well. I’ve just looked back on the notes I made on this puzzle “straightforward, finished by 8.30am, given the xs, vs, ys have I missed something? Where’s the theme?” Eileen – well done for finding the words to express your disappointment so fairly and without rancour. There was plenty to appreciate, but not enough on balance for a prize challenge – but I presume the setter doesn’t decide when it appears unless it relates to a specific time sensitive event. I too look forward to an egg on face moment emerging from this blog.
   Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

3. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen. I missed the RR = Rolls in REGISTRAR, had to look up TUBULAR, and took a long time before piecing out VINGT-ET-UN. I regularly miss even the obvious themes, so I’m no help there. I did find this puzzle more accessible than several this past week, particularly yesterday’s Enigmatist.

4. Eileen – I think in 2d the definition is “American guy with the goods”, and the anagram is of MAESTRO and N, the idea being that STOREMAN is an American term for what British people might call a shopkeeper.

   I enjoyed this, in particular VENOM and NINCOMPOOP. But I thought it went a bit too quickly for a prize crossword. I don’t know if it’s just me, but the weekday puzzles have usually seemed harder than the Saturday ones recently.

5. I too found this straightforward, and because I never spot themes I thought I should try to find one this time – but I failed.

   Like others, I expected more of a challenge. I rarely do the Saturday puzzle, but I had time for this one and should also find plenty of time on a long-haul flight to try today’s.

   For some reason I failed to parse EMERGENT properly, but the blog has made it clear.

   Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

6. Thanks Brummie for this entertaining puzzle. And to Eileen for explaining it so well, I endorse all of your commentary.

7. Thanks, JimS @4 – I’ll amend it now. [I knew that when I solved it – that’s what sometimes happens when there’s a gap between solving and writing the blog. Of course, NA almost never = North American. 😉 ]

8. Not sure a card is weirdo (though weirdo not a word one perhaps hears all that much post primary school). And while “tubular” was a write in (“that’s gonna be tubular, isn’t it”) followed by Bells as definition. Really?

   On the easy-for-a-prize point, perhaps worth remembering that for some of us the Sat puzzles are the only ones we reliably get to do. This fell a little short of what I’d like, but some variation is fine. (In an ideal world, the crossword editors of the Guardian and FT would confer to arrange that an easy Sat puzzle in one coincided with a hard one in the other)

9. An enjoyable one – though both DERRINGER and COROT needed a sortie into Wiki to confirm (as, I guess, they did for many others)! I couldn’t parse the FEET of COLD FEET – I flatter myself I know most of the Cockney rhymers (essential for solving many cryptics) but “Dogs” eluded me. But no matter.

   Favourite? Hard to pick. NINCOMPOOP was pretty neat (you’d have to be one if you couldn’t parse the last bit!) despite the first-letter component. And the two long ones deserve a mention.

   Blemish? I notice that ICARUS can be parsed in two ways: both as Eileen sets down, and also as a ‘hidden word’. The wording of the clue obviously suggests the former, but I think this slightly weakens the clue.

   Thanks to Brummie and Eileen.

10. Utter = rank? I don’t get it. Help welcome

11. Hi Jaydee – utter and rank can both mean complete / total / absolute.

12. Thank you Brummie and Eileen.

    I was happy with this puzzle since I could solve it, and I enjoyed doing so. TUBULAR bells rang a faint recollection, but I got tied up for quite a while with the parsing.

    I found the juxtaposition of the clues for SQUARING THE CIRCLE and BOXING THE COMPASS fascinating, and wondered if the recent deciphering of Plimpton 322 could have reawoken an interest in Brummie for Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics.

13. Just to qualify what I said earlier about many of the weekday puzzles being harder than the Saturday ones recently: I would much rather have a crossword that I can actually finish, which I can’t with, for example, Maskarade’s specials. It must be very difficult for the setters and editor to cater to all levels of ability, so hats off to them.

14. Pretty much what others have said. I didn’t keep this one as I usually do so I can’t refer to what I thought at the time. I liked NINCOMPOOP which was my FOI.
    I do agree with JimS @4. All of last week’s puzzles,with the exception of Rufus,were harder than this one which makes me wonder if a relatively easy Prize is becoming policy?
    This was agreeable enough though.
    Thanks Brummie.

15. As an Aamerican, I have never once heard a shopkeeper called a STOREMAN. The latter word strikes me as ugly and awkward. Perhaps it’s an older usage?

    Meanwhile, TAXI RANK took me longer than it should have, because that’s a ridiculous thing to call a taxi stand. (Okay, fine, not ridiculous; just British. But in all seriousness, I had “taxi” in for half the solving time, waiting for a crossing letter that could tell me what the Britishism was.)

    Also on the Anglo-American front, the XENON clue doesn’t work over here because we pronounce the element with a long E.

16. Peter Aspinwall @14 – there wasn’t a Rufus puzzle last week.

17. Eileen and Peter
    I think you are at cross purposes. There wasn’t a Rufus in the week leading up to this puzzle, but there was a Rufus last Monday.
    I’m in the “too easy for a Prize” camp on this one.

18. Thanks Brummie and Eileen.
    I can’t help thinking there is something more to this, too, but I can’t see it either.
    Lots of answers share letters and sounds, eg SEXY and TAXI (round and square?); DERRINGER and REGISTRAR; COROT and COVET; OSTIA, ONSET, VENOM, SAXON and XENON. I think maybe it’s just poetry!

19. muffin @17 – surely it was the week leading up to the puzzle that Peter was talking about? – ‘last Monday’ was this week! [Why can’t I just let things go? 😉 ]

    Graham @18 – I’m afraid you’ve lost me!

20. Never finished this one. I thought I’d heard of an artist called Corum, so pencilled that in @12a. Didn’t know OSTIA, either, so of course with many blanks and a wrong crossing letter wasn’t going to get COLD FEET. Even checking the artist wouldn’t have helped as I’ve never heard “dog’s meat” for feet, only “plates (of meat)”. Incidentally, is “barking” rhyming slang for hurt, and if so, how?

21. Tony @20, perhaps that is where the “Hush Puppies” brand of shoes got their name from…

22. JimS @4 It’s news to me that STOREMAN is the American term for anything. I’ve never heard or read it anywhere. As far as I know, the American word for shopkeeper is shopkeeper.
    I thought dogs were “plates of meat,” haven’t heard “dog’s meat” before. But I do think “dogs” is American slang for “feet,” though I haven’t a clue why.

23. In a factory-remember those?- there was a place where tools and consumables that were needed intermittently were kept. It was called the stores. The person whose domain this was,usually male and grumpy,was called the storeman.

24. Cookie @21 Now, “hush puppies” actually is an American expression, specifically Southern. They’re small, savory, deep-fried balls made from cornmeal-based batter (Wikipedia). Quite tasty. I think the idea is that you toss a few to the dogs to keep them quiet.

25. Hi Tony @20 and Cookie @21

    I’m sorry for throwing in that red herring: I did it because it’s the only instance I know of the use of ‘dogs’ for feet but the barking bit isn’t rhyming slang. I’ve done a bit of googling and found the following:

    “The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that dogs as feet originated with rhyming slang:

    : :14. pl. Short for dog’s meat; feet. Rhyming slang.”

    : In the examples cited by the OED, which begin in 1924 (pace Dorgan, 1913), “dogs” are always feet, not shoes. In my youth (in rural America)I heard the phrase, “My dogs are barking,” quite often, in the meaning “My feet are hurting.”

    To back up the excellent answers above, you may be amused by this extract from the Wikipedia entry on Hush Puppy shoes:
    The Hush Puppies name and mascot were coined by the brand’s first sales manager, James Gaylord Muir. Initially, the company’s advertising agency recommended naming the product “Lasers.” Then, on a selling trip to the southeast, Mr. Muir dined with one of his regional salesmen and the meal included hush puppies, traditional fried southern cornballs. When Mr. Muir asked about the origin of the name, he was told that farmers threw hush puppies at the hounds to “quiet their barking dogs.”
    Mr. Muir saw a connection to his new product. “Barking dogs” in the vernacular of the day was an idiom for sore feet. Mr. Muir surmised his new shoes were so comfortable that they could “quiet barking dogs.” ”

    Incidentally, the trouble with rhyming slang is that the rhyming bit is omitted, so our old crossword favourite ‘china’, for friend / pal / mate comes from ‘china plate’. Similarly, feet are not dogs’ meat but simply dogs.

26. Sorry, Valentine – I spent too much time researching and we crossed. 😉

27. I’m glad we did, Eileen, your stories were well worth it!

    You grew up in rural America?

28. Thanks, Eileen. Fascinating stuff. I wonder if “barking” is short for “barking mad” in America too, as in “he’s totally barking”?

    Didn’t Alan Connor cover rhyming slang in the Guardian blog a while back, explaining — to my enlightenment — that ARIS = ARISTOTLE = BOTTLE = BOTTLE AND GLASS = ARSE? I’d always thought Aris was a coy/playful pronunciation of arse. Cor! Strike a light!

29. Valentine, I think you’re teasing: everything after “… found the following” is in quotation marks! 😉

    Thanks for that, Tony @28.

30. Thanks mrpenney @15 and Valentine @22. I’ve now had a look at Chambers which says:

    storeman, n, a storekeeper (N Am); a person who looks after stores or a storeroom

    which seems to back up Brummie’s suggestion that it is an American term, but meaning someone as in Frank’s post @23 rather than a shopkeeper. Does that make sense?

    (Many years ago, as a student, I had a holiday job working in a hospital storeroom. If memory serves I was called a storesman, but Chambers doesn’t have that at all.)

31. Eileen @19. Muffin is quite correct!

32. This is nonsense: now I really am going to let things go – as I should have done all along.

33. Eileen, I can’t untangle the quotation marks, which seemed to end things after “rhyming slang,” so I thought that after that it was you speaking as you, but I’m relieved that my worldview isn’t upset after all.

34. Sorry, Valentine – careless cut and pasting. 🙁

35. Great crossword puzzle and perfect for a prize puzzle. Thank you to Brummie and to Eileen.

36. Really? I get that about Utter. But not Rank. And neither, I notice does Chambers. If Rank does have a meaning synonymous with Utter it’s news to me. But then you do learn something every day.

37. Jaydee @36

    Chambers 12th Edition: ‘rank² – out-and-out, absolute, utter'[!]

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