Guardian Prize 27,447 by Philistine

77 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,447 by Philistine”

1. Surely posted a tad too soon…

2. Thanks PeeDee, including for explaining for me the ‘essentially’ bit of 22A. Otherwise a nice run through with just a late stumble over the 22-19-13 music.

3. I failed to get 13a because it never occurred to me that “Arab” might be a horse. “Local nag” would have worked much better for me.

    

4. 12a, not 13a. Wish there was an edit function.

    

    

5. Thanks PeeDee. Isn’t 17 US+HER, not US+SHE?

6. We thoroughly enjoyed this and it took several goes to finish it – but each visit yielded a few more solutions. I had lots of ticks – 12 14 20 21a and 7 16 22d, and two that I thought were iffy 24 (too obvious wordplay) and 27d (too obvious definition – assuming you have the GK).
   The Arab horse was great misdirection and even though I’ve seen it before I had NEIGHBOUR as the answer for ages before Mrs W said “Arab is horse” and the pdm arrived. (Salsaman@3 – local nag or somesuch wouldn’t have been half as much fun for me).
   I ticked 16d more for the coincidence of this particular city appearing twice in the same week. The surface for 22d was elegant and amusing and 14a very clever construction.
   All in all an excellent challenge for the WK team so thanks to Philistine and manehi for the equally excellent blog.

7. PeeDee – I am sorry.

8. Thanks Philistine and PeeDee

   Quite easy for a Philistine. I liked the “missing S” ones. I was reluctant to enter TRAP as I couldn’t believe it was that obvious.

   Check your anagram fodder for SOLVERS, PeeDee.

9. Enjoyed many of these clues even simple ones like TWO STEP TOUCH TONE TWERP MESH were fun and I enjoyed the schoolboy French of UNCOUPLE.

   Sadly despite making excellent progress I stumbled at the last. I could clearly “see” NEIGHBOUR but failed utterly to parse it (small quibble- not convinced by local =neighbour). As a result I also failed on the rather obvious REVIEWER having early on convinced myself it ended in ROWER (competing in vessel).

   But overall excellent entertainment with some real gems. Thanks Philistine and PD for explaining so well.

10. muffin & g larsen – thank you for flagging up the errors, your help is always welcome.  Not exactly typos this time, more mental malfunctions I think.  Fixed now.

11. ant @1 – well spotted.  It was actually published just before midnight last night but WordPress sometimes decides for reasons I can’t fathom to add the date the blog was created instead.  Thanks to Gaufrid for stepping in and fixing the date this morning.

12. I enjoyed this though it was all over a bit soon. Loved 22dn and several others but was very disappointed by 24dn and 27dn especially in contrast to the likes of 12 and 7. But thank you Philistine and PeeDee (with whom I seem to share the same thinking when it comes to an “ident”)

13. Fairly straightforward for a Saturday – I suppose my first query has to be DISPARATE.  OK, not too hard a clue, but is this kind of wordplay involving a letter-substitution without indicating what letter is to be replaced with what, OK?  I’m familiar with indicators such as “swapping sides” where R has to be replaced with L, or W with E, for instance.  But this?  A bit too vague, and would cause problems with more obscure words?

    TWELVE BAR BLUES had me stumped for a while – but then I remembered!  Some like HA-HA (my FOI) and IN GOOD TIME I thought a bit on the easy side – for a Prize.

    I don’t think I parsed SOLVERS the same way as pd – I took S = Sad as one of those inexplicable first-letters, and then tried to figure out how “essentially missing” becomes an anagrind.  The middle letter of a word hasn’t ever been “essentially” before now, or has it?

    Rest was fine, thanks for Philistine and PD.

14. Thanks. A nice puzzle.

    Was there any significance to the italics in the clue for 7d? Or just another misdirection?

15. Laccaria @13 – intersting points you rise.

    I have seen “essentially” for middle letter several times over the years.  The essence of something is its heart, its core- the thing at its centre.

    As for it being OK not to mention what letter is replaced: I think that is down to personal taste.  As there are no official rules for cryptic puzzles, nor any governing body, it doesn’t make much sense to say if something is “OK” or not.  It is up to individual setters and editors to decide what goes in each puzzle, and up to individual solvers to decide if they like it or not.  I think of it like going to see a new play: there is no rulebook to consult to see if the play was “correct”.  As a member of the audience you either like what you see or you don’t.

16. I enjoyed this, although I got held up quite a while in the NE corner; it took me a while to parse my way around “(cat and (dog or cat)) and dog”, and a while after that for UNCOUPLE to leap out at me. But I liked both of them.
    I failed completely to parse DISPARATE, although I guessed it fairly quickly once I had enough crossers. I thought RATE must be ‘criticise’, and ‘d is p’ might be some decimalisation reference to a small change to small change, but that clearly didn’t work. Thanks, PeeDee for setting me straight, and thanks to Philistine.

17. I don’t understand 14a Whippet please. I understand “cat and dog”, and the definition “dog” at the end. Where does the second “cat” go?

18. Gadwall @17

    The first cat is the WHIP (as in cat o’nine tails), then “dog or cat” gives PET (pretty much as PeeDee said!)

19. Very straightforward. I have more time on a Saturday and would prefer a tougher challenge. Been quite a few easyish ones in recent months.

20. Thank you Philistine and PeeDee.

    I really enjoyed this crossword, partly because I could complete it in a reasonable time!  So many favourite clues,  I especially liked  those for UNCOUPLE, GEESE, TIMETABLE and TOUCH-TONE.

    r_c_a_d @14, I think the italics in 7d are used because it is a phrase in French, i.e. a foreign language.

21. Thanks to Philistine and PeeDee. Enjoyed this a lot and as with others found it a relatively straightforward solve. Got held up a little with disparate and touch-tone, but not for that long. Lots of nice clues but quite liked sarnie, usurer and uncouple. I notice some saying a bit easy for a prize, but my view is that, given the price of the paper, it should be accessible to the many, not just the few. That said, always a place for a toughie and holiday specials maybe a different thing. Thanks again to Philistine and PeeDee.

22. I think the editor has two options for the Prize Puzzle:

    1) make it harder as people who don’t work weekends have more time

    2) make it easier so everyone can have a go at entering the raffle and get their name in the paper

    The editor seems to cater for a bit of both, sometimes we get one thing and sometimes the other.  Seems fair to me.

23. WHIPPET a sublime clue in my opinion. Thanks to Philistine and PeeDee!

24. I agree that this was somewhat easier than usual for this setter but most enjoyable for all that. The tricksy NEIGHBOR held out the longest but turned out to be my favourite of the day. I also liked TWELVE BAR BLUES which was a gift for me and was FOI.
    Thanks Philistine.

25. I enjoyed this and while I hardly ever say a puzzle was a bit easy, I thought this one was less challenging than might be expected for a Prize Puzzle. Or perhaps I just got on Philistine’s wavelength early and stayed there?

    Yes WhiteKing@6, I also noted the 16d ANTWERP had appeared in another puzzle in  the previous week.

    I am with several others who commented that 22d19a13d TWELVE BAR BLUES was a favourite, but then I just love blues music. I also quite liked 2d, USURER.

26. JinA@25 – maybe having a love of blues in common helps explain why we often have similar responses to a puzzle? Although I suspect it’s more that we happen to have similar ways of seeing the world and approaching life, and that blues is part of our generation’s musical heritage.

27. [I used to play in a band at Uni. We had a talented mathematician on bass – unfortunatley he had a tendecy to play 11 1/2 bar blues! (rather like geography teachers being the ones who get lost)]

28. I wasn’t very find of threat DISPARATE worked but other than that enjoyable. UNCOUPLE was nice.

29. muffin @ 18
    Thank you. I was only emboldened to ask after reading PeeDee’s kind offer of help, but I feel mildly rebuked.

30. Sorry if I gave offence, Gadwall.

31. [btw you’re one of my favourite ducks!]

32. Hi Gadwall,

    The clue breaks into three parts: Cat and dog or cat and dog. These correspond to WHIP and PET and the definition “dog”.

33. Gadwall @29

    It’s the ex-teachers curse. There’s a lot of them on here so get used to it. They just need bringing down to earth every now and then! 🙂

    My wife’s en ex “head” so I actually feel mildly rebuked most of the time. 😉

34. Thanks to Philistine and PeeDee. Like others I found this one easier than expected but still very enjoyable. SARNIE was new to me but I did catch on to disparage-DISPARATE.

35. lurkio @33

    ex-teachers’…  🙂

36. Peedee @15, I note your point about my saying, “is <something> OK?”  Perhaps I should have made it clearer by saying “…OK with the rest of you?”  For any clue, there are bound to be some solvers who like it, and some who don’t.  But if the majority of solvers DISPARAGE a particular clue, then that clue is probably “not OK” – eh?

37. I thought the clue for DISPARATE was a bit iffy, Laccaria.

38. I enjoyed this, particularly 14a, WHIPPET, 20a, GEESE and 7d UNCOUPLE, which were all very inventive. 16d etc was a nice lightbulb moment, too.

    I think “local Arab” is an expression meaning “someone who knows the locale well” (in contrast to the speaker, a relative stranger to the area) although I can’t google up any support for the belief. (Perhaps if Philistine is one of those who reads the reviews, he might say if that’s what he had in mind?). That made it harder to separate the two words in parsing and it was a while before Arab=horse clicked.

    Laccaria,
    I think “essentially” as wp for central letter(s) (21a, SOLVERS) is pretty standard fare. I didn’t find 9a, DISPARATE difficult, having already thought of DISPARAgE as a word which fit the crossers I had. I think I have seen unspecified letter substitutions before, but more often at the head of the word (“with change of leader”, etc). [Please visit GD page re our extended conversation last week, btw]

39. Laccaria @36: quite so, there will be a majority opinion on most things.  For me I think it still comes down to personal taste and editorial policy.  If the editor removes everything that isn’t the majority viewpoint then the end result just ends up bland. The result isn’t so much a puzzle that everyone likes but something that no-one actively dislikes.  Is that where the Guardian puzzle should be?  Something that sticks firmly to the middle of the road?  The easy listening of crosswords?

40. muffin, PeeDee and Lurkio @ 30 – 33
    Thank you again. Feel much better now……..

41. Gadwall – glad you feel better. I’ve been active here for a year or so and my experience is that it is very rare that contributors intend to rebuke or cast slight on people. It is in the nature of (short) written contributions that they are interpreted by the receiver by how they feel and come without any of the nuances that accompany face to face interactions. My take is that is is best to assume benign intent – and that is especially true of muffin who is a prolific poster.

42. I thought it was a great puzzle, though I went with DISPARAGE instead of DISPARATE. So I obviously had trouble parsing out that one. The WHIPPET clue was quite clever, IMHO. A little confusing at first, but clever. SARNIE was a new word for me, but I forget if it was my LOI. How did PeeDee manage to get four definitions out of SIREN? I can clearly see it means both a “warning” and one of those mythical women on the rocks who sang to distract sailors, but what else could there be? It probably needed a little more wordplay, like, for example, just off the top of my head:
    Warning: Lost control of reins!(5) or Father having given last warning(5) or
    Almost bloody wrong about warning?(5)
    As for MESH, I think an even better clue would be a hidden clue involving the Game Show Network. Again, just off the top of my head. But I still think it was a great puzzle just the same. One of Philistine’s best! Keep ’em coming!

43. Is HA-HA really a wall? I always think of it as a ditch. My small Chambers says it may often contain a fence, but still…. So maybe a barrier rather than a wall?

    Thanks to Philistine and PeeDee for puzzle and blog.

44. Tony@38 – I’ve now answered your post on the GD page as requested.

    Peedee @39 – yes I agree that there’s nothing wrong with there being the occasional clue which is ‘liked’ by only a minority of solvers.  And I’m the last one to wish all crosswords to be ‘bland’ and ‘run-of-the-mill’.  But, possibly, there are solvers who do expect just that.  How to strike a balance?  There are some setters (Boatman and Enigmatist come to mind here) who are, I suspect, actively boycotted by a handful solvers.  A shame!

    Crossbar @43 – in reality I have no idea what a HA-HA is – certainly there is none in our postage-stamp of a garden – time to do a Google search I think!  I know of the word only in crosswordland – where it gets used rather a lot!

45. ….and this, apparently, is a typical HA-HA.

46. Well that certainly has a large wall-like element to it, Laccaria#45. Rather impressive. In my imagination there was no brick or stonework involved.

47. Crossbar @43 – I remember ha-has as a child as there were some in the park near where we lived.  They worked by being asymetrical, one side of the ditch was gently sloped and the other side had a vertical brick wall.  Animals can’t get over the wall but the wall was not blocking the view of the landscape.  Unless you were really close you couldn’t see there was any sort of barrier there at all.

48. Ah – I now see that Lacccaria has already posted a picture of exactly that. Look how close the chap had to get to see it! I think Laccara must be reading my mind.

49. Philosophical questions about a ha-ha. What next? 🙂

    Is a ha-ha a wall?

    It’s a wall hidden in a ditch so that when one looks out over one’s 5000 acres one’s view isn’t spoilt by a wall but oiks can’t wander into the country mansion grounds.

    So a ha-ha functions as a wall but it’s actually a wall and a ditch. Think we’re back to our synecdoche discussion. 😉

    Also I can’t imagine anyone boycotting Enigmatist but I am sure Boatman features on many solvers’ blacklist.  (Enigmatist is always fair but often difficult whereas Boatman’s attempts to “stretch the envelope” are often done without thought for the solver who doesn’t have the advantage of knowing the clue’s answer as the setter does.)

50. PeeDee@48 and Laccaria@45. I think I’ve only ever stood on the inside (wall) side of one, at some stately home or other, and from there you can’t really see the wall. At least not without some danger of falling in!

51. Lurkio @ 49: I think the ha-ha was to keep cows/sheep/deer as a pleasant pastoral background to your view, and to stop them eating your ornamental flowers and defecating on your lawn. Wandering oiks would be shot by your gamekeepers.

52. Thanks Philistine and PeeDee. With reference to PeeDee’s comment about the editor’s options regarding the prize puzzles; I personally gave up submitting entries for the prize puzzles about three years ago, because I no longer considered the prizes on offer to be worth the price of the stamp. Is it just me, or do others share this view ?

53. JohnB: Yes, particularly given the odds of being drawn out. I have wondered how many entries are submitted.

    I’m another one who didn’t like 9A although it had to be that.

    Very pleased to have been able to finish before Monday morning so I’ve no complaints about this being a tad easier than some might wish.

54. JohnB : back in the old days the Guardian used to use the Prize Puzzle entry as a marketing tool.  One had to answer a couple of simple marketing questions along with the submission.  I imagine the editor was under some pressure to up the number of submissions he received, difficult puzzles were not welcome.

55. A £50 cash prize would increase submissions i reckon!

56. Back in the old days, before retirement, I only tackled the Prize puzzle regularly, not having time for the others. Usually finished it by Sunday night, but sometimes it took all week. And then I would send it off. I would be very annoyed if it was a dnf. In the space of about 15 years I won 3 dictionaries. Was I particularly lucky?

    Dictionaries always seemed an odd prize as I would expect any solver to have a decent one anyway, but I never minded an additional one. They were all different – not just the editions. I lost interest in the prizes when they changed from dictionaries to other books.

    I don’t remember any marketing questions PeeDee@54.

57. Does anyone know how many entries are submitted? And what about the Genius?

58. Pat@42,

    I also wondered about Peedee’s “four [+] definitions”. I only saw the two indicated and it seems a perfectly good DD with no need for wp. I don’t understand your last two clues, btw.

    Laccaria,
    Thanks for the photo. I also only knew of ha-has from crosswords and had “ditch” in mind as the def.

    Joh B et al,
    Shouldn’t this discussion of prizes be on the GD page? I stopped entering after I finally won a Guardian Style Guide and Hugh Stephenson’s book on how to do crosswords, Secrets of the Setters, after considering how much I must have spent on postage over the years compared to the value of the prize.

    Btw, forgot to say, TWERP amused me as it’s not a word I’ve heard used for years but has a marvellously dismissive ring to it.

59. Thanks to both setter and blogger.  With others I struggled over disparage/disparate.  However, looking up ‘minimal’ in the OED, I find that it does have a strictly appropriate meaning:

    Phonetics. Of a pair or (less commonly) a set of forms: differing in only one irreducible phonological segment. Also: relating to or involving such a difference.
    1939   Amer. Speech 14 122   Words can be distinguished by the minimal opposition of vowel nasality and [n].
    1942   C. F. Hockett in Language 18 7   The term ‘contrastive pair’, meaning any pair between which there are differences in a context of similarity, any pair usable for the listing of features, is used here instead of the traditional term ‘minimal pair’.
    1950   D. Jones Phoneme vi. 15   When a distinction between two sequences occurring in a language is such that any lesser degree of distinction would be inadequate for clearly differentiating words in that language, the distinction is termed a ‘minimal one’… Minimal distinctions are very commonly effected by the addition or subtraction of a phoneme.
    1961   H. A. Gleason Introd. Descr. Ling. (ed. 2) i. 16   In calling bill and pill a minimal pair we assume that they differ by only one phoneme.
    1992   P. Roach Introducing Phonetics 122   Vowels..may be ‘nasalized’..—this effect is phonemically contrastive in French, where we find minimal pairs très..and train.

60. Re 11ac – I couldn’t decide if this was a CD or DD and what to underline for the definition(s)

    My initial candidates were:

    Warning,

    Warning of danger,

    danger to sailors,

    Warning of danger to sailors

61. Crossbar @ 57: re the number of prize entries submitted, I have a vague memory that at the HS/Boatman/Paul gathering in Brighton in January last year, HS implied that there were about 2500 entries for a prize. Memory may be playing tricks, though.

62. Geof

    T and G aren’t a minmal pair in the linguistic sense, as there is more than one difference in how the sounds are produced. An example of a minimal pair is P and B, where they are produced in exactly the same way (both labial plosives) except that B is voiced (the vocal chords are vibrated).

    The difference between DISPARATE and DISPARAGE is minimal because there’s only one letter different.

    PeeDee,
    I think your interpretation of 11a was correct as blogged: DD, warning & danger to sailors

63. Tony@62

    I guess I am not sure anyways because of the stress, and there’s not much at stake :-), but here’s some minimal pairs in a wider sense: https://notendur.hi.is/peturk/KENNSLA/02/TOP/Minimal%20pairs.html.

64. WHIPPET – best clue ever……

65. Thanks Simon S@61 🙂

66. PeeDee: I remember the marketing questions as being how many times per week you bought the paper, nothing before that springs instantly to mind . I was never a regular entrant for the Saturday puzzles although I did submit some; however I regularly submitted entries for the bank holiday specials and never won a thing. This was in the days when the only aids available were a dictionary, a thesaurus and a Pears Cyclopedia – I wouldn’t bother entering now as it’s so much easier to cheat your way to completion if you’ve a mind to do so.

67. Geof@63,

    Yes, also the vowels are pronounced differently. They’re only minimally different in writing. Got ‘Not Found’ from your link. Maybe that’%20′ was something else when you wrote it?

68. Tony @67.  Yes, the %20 is some kind of ‘feature’ of copy/paste but I can’t pull it up without a more complicated search.

    Here’s a cite from it for my reading of the term:

    take/steak
    Yes, a minimal pair!
    –
    This is a minimal pair because s and “nothing” are different. This means than minimal pairs can also be made if one of the “sounds” is actually zero!

69. The first clue involved an anagram of REINS(“lost control of”), the second was SIRE+N(father as a verb+N in given), and the third was SIN(wrong as a noun) around RE(RED, for bloody, with no D).

70. Tony @62 – Such a shame.  I thought for a while that Philistine had come up with a really clever clue indeed.  I suppose “minimal” in a phonetic might still work cryptically as an indication to change the sound, in the same way that anagram indicators indicate changing letters even though the may not technically mean precisely that. I will go with that as it results in an interesting explanation, even if it was not what Philistine originally intended.

    Re 11 ac – yes, that is correct, I mention the alternatives out of interest.  When writing a blog it is normally so obvious what to underline as the definition I do it on autopilot.  This time I was struck by how many alternatives I had.  At first it seemed that almost random combination of words would indicate siren.  An unusual situation.

71. JohnB @66 – yes, that was the question.  I can’t remember if there were others questions at other times, perhaps not.  The reason this event was significant to me is that it provoked me into realising that the Prize Puzzle wasn’t any sort of genuine competition at all, it was just a raffle.  It was provided by the paper to engage punters, boost sales and gather readers’ names and addresses.  Nothing to do with testing your skill as a solver at all.

    I don’t know why this idea had never occurred to be earlier, I think I am just a bit naive.

72. Patrick @42 – I like those clues, are you a setter yourself?  If not I think you should become one ASAP!

73. Geof@68,
    Thanks for that. I’ll try navigating from the main page of the site you referred to. Rereading your OED quotes, I notice the 1950 D.Jones quote says:

    “Minimal distinctions are very commonly effected by the addition or subtraction of a phoneme.”

    (as in take/steak),so maybe my understanding of minimal pairs was too restrictive. In language teaching, they’re important because the students’ first language may not have the distinction (such as p/b for Arabs or l/r for Japanese), so you get them to practise saying, e.g. “bout, pout” or “rock, lock”.

    Pat@68
    Thanks. Very clever, as always.

    Simon S@61 & PeeDee,
    There was also a box to tick if you didn’t want junkmail.

    @PeeDee
    You can find hundreds of Patrick J. Berry’s clues in comments to the Guardian’s crossword blog. I have also encouraged him to set crosswords.

74. As a matter of fact I have a backlog of my own cryptic ideas that I currently send in to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!, a puzzle site out of Minnesota. But so far I’ve gotten mixed reviews. It is kind of hard to get Americans interested in cryptic crosswords. I don’t know why. Tony did suggest I send in some examples of my work to Big Dave’s Rookie Corner, but I have cold feet about it. Maybe I’m still worried an American trying his hand at these puzzles could get criticized more harshly than anyone else who’s already submitted their ideas. Then again, I haven’t really had time, what with babysitting my nieces lately. Mia Kate loves coming over here and reading from her “Dork Diaries” book series, and I have to admit they are quite hilarious! But I will seriously consider sending in an idea to Big Dave this week. I will say most of my puzzles are not exactly timely, as I created most of them while our desktop computer and printer were still working properly. I do remember without even having to search that one of them included cryptic clues for the names BARACK OBAMA, JOE BIDEN, JOHN McCAIN and SARAH PALIN(obviously from around or after 2008). Surprisingly the Vice Presidential nominees were far easier to use than the Presidential ones! I really should contact Big Dave this week now that I have the time. Next week I have a doctor’s appointment, and then we’re all going to Florida for Spring Break. I do appreciate all the positive feedback regarding my clues, but I have to admit it’s been my experience that it’s much easier to solve cryptic clues than to create them. And then there’s trying to come up with a halfway decent grid. With any luck you will be seeing some examples of my finished creations on the Big Dave site, but for now might I suggest you check out recent past editions of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! to see my work.

75. Pat.

    A couple of points about submitting to Big Dave:

    o Only send one puzzle. As you’ve not appeared there before it will go to the top of the queue and will be published within a couple of weeks or so

    o Choose one of your easier puzzles: there is a core group of solvers who will try, and comment on, your puzzle, but they might not give as much time to it as to one from a setter they know.

    o You’ll also get a review from pro setter Prolixic. He (and the regular solving crowd) are pretty much straight up and down Ximeneans* and will criticise such practices as nounal anagram indicators, “vertical” indications in across clues and so on. Check out the blogs for a couple of existing Rookie puzzles to get an idea of what to expect – there’s a button to go to the review of each puzzle at the bottom of the puzzle page).

    o If you’re shy about having your work criticised by a bunch of strangers (although BD’s solvers are a very polite, if picky crowd), Alberich (also a fairly strict Ximenean) might be a better first shot. He will edit your work (in consultation with you) and won’t put it up till he’s satisfied with it himself (submissions to BD are put up as is). There is no public commenting on Alberich’s site either, which is a two-edged sword, as feedback can be helpful if you’re not too sensitive about the odd brickbat.

    Based on what I’ve seen of your cluing, you should go down well with either of those outlets. Regarding grids, it’s safest to use one that is used in one or more of the British nationals. Good luck!

    *I imagine you’re familiar enough with British cryptics to know what this means, but if not Alberich has a page or two on Ximenean cluing.

76. Just want to say thank you – your solutions make cryptics accessible and fascinating to me. I usually manage a handful then I let fifteen squared do the rest of the across clues and I finish off the down ones with that extra helping hand. Thank you 🙂

77. You are most welcome Sarapie

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