Guardian Prize 27,776 / Crucible

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It’s a while since I blogged a Crucible puzzle and so I was pleased to see his name on this one.

I early on spotted a slip in the cluing for 3dn – fairly venial, I thought, considering the fine surface, and one that it’s possible I might not have spotted if I hadn’t been blogging – but it shouldn’t, of course, have slipped through, especially in a Prize puzzle. I met a more serious problem with 17ac, which I just could not make to work, without accommodating an impossible [for me] spelling mistake. [Of course, I may be completely wrong and there’s a totally different parsing.] At the time of writing [Wednesday] there has been nothing in the Corrections and Clarifications column in the paper [although there was an acknowledgment today of the ‘geranium’ error in yesterday’s Qaos puzzle] nor on the Guardian website. I am hoping that the annotated solution of this puzzle [I usually forget all about them] is published before this blog has to be posted on Friday evening.

I enjoyed the rest of the puzzle, which was quite straightforward, with some neat clues and surfaces and several ingenious anagrams – but, apart from the agonising over 17ac, it was over rather too quickly for me.

Many thanks to Crucible.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

{Update late Friday evening: since there have been no ‘Special Instructions’ offered during the week, I’m not really surprised at not having been able to find an annotated solution today – they seem to be posted usually at 12.00 – and I have not received a reply to my query from the Editor and so I’m looking forward to your comments.]

Further update: please see my comment @15

Across

1 Do up theatre about five in the morning (6)
REVAMP
REP [theatre] round V [five] AM [in the morning]

5 Pope briefly hosts American twice in private (4-4)
HUSH-HUSH
Initial letters [briefly] of His Holiness [the Pope] round US [American] x 2

9 OK to take drink after hitch? (6,2)
THUMBS UP
THUMB [hitch {a lift}] + SUP [drink]

10 Guide without staff or work (6)
OEUVRE
[man]OEUVRE [guide, minus man – staff, as verbs] – in the sense of ‘carefully guide or manipulate (someone or something) in order to achieve an end’

11 Initiate bold moves in weak state (12)
DEBILITATION
A nifty anagram [moves] of INITIATE BOLD

13 A worn-out old loco initially missing from station (4)
AWOL
A W[orn-out] O[ld] L[oco] – Absent WithOut Leave – in the solution, the military sense of station – a place of duty

14 Express knows about unit that makes flight easier (4,4)
NOSE CONE
NOSE [sounds like {express} knows] + C [circa – about] + ONE [unit]

17 Mike herds eastern cattle from a long time ago (8)
MESOZOIC [?]
The solution seemed obvious but I stared at it for ages, struggling to parse it: it appeared to be MIC [mike – both abbreviations of microphone] round E [eastern] + SOZO [??] which wasn’t any kind of cattle I could find – then I thought of ZO, beloved of Scrabble players, the Himalayan breed of cattle and wondered if we could possibly be expected to take MEZOZOIC as an alternative spelling, the only thing that makes any sense – except that it’s impossible: the prefix ‘meso’ means ‘between’ [cf Mesopotamia, the land ‘between the rivers’] from the Greek mesos [middle] and could not be spelled MEZO

18 Millions extracted from newspaper unions (4)
TIES
TI[m]ES [newspaper, minus m [millions]

20 Result of ten drums Thor hammered? (12)
THUNDERSTORM
A clever anagram [hammered] of TEN DRUMS THOR, Thor being the hammer-wielding god of thunder – &lit, I think

23 Fruit in perfect condition around island state (6)
HAWAII
HAW [fruit] + AI [perfect condition] round I [island]

24 Reserve the best dessert (3,5)
ICE CREAM
ICE [reserve – I initially looked askance at this but Chambers has it, next to coldness of manner, so it does work] + CREAM [the best]

25 Furtive little paddler with time to board launch (8)
STEALTHY
TEAL [little paddler] + T [time] in SHY [launch – a missile, perhaps]

26 Bet Europeans pursue tug (6)
YANKEE
E E [Europeans] after YANK [tug] – a yankee is ‘a multiple bet on four horses in four races, consisting of six doubles, four trebles and one accumulator’

Down

2 Fine choreographer tackles forerunner of foxtrot (4)
ECHO
Hidden in finE CHOreographer – Echo comes before Foxtrot in the NATO phonetic alphabet – I was a little wary of ‘tackle’ as an inclusion indicator but it works in the sense of interception or getting in the way of

3 Animal found in a Lima road, squashed (9)
ARMADILLO
I think Crucible has been dipping into Puck’s well-used box of edentates but, unfortunately, he seems to have picked up an a instead of an L, because ARMADILLO is not quite an anagram [squashed] of A LIMA ROAD – pity

4 Ignore idiot in lead over 26 (4,2)
PASS BY
ASS [idiot] in PB [chemical symbol for lead] + Y [26ac YANKEE, which is Y in the NATO phonetic alphabet]

5 Cowboy spoils gaps in school day (8,7)
HOPALONG CASSIDY
Another clever anagram [spoils] of GAPS IN SCHOOL DAY – this takes me way back to Saturday matinées when I was at primary school [it cost fourpence in old money, I think]

6 Small bed on this irritated Caledonian (8)
SCOTTISH
S [small] COT [bed] + an anagram [irritated] of THIS

7 Frequent hard worker steals uniform (5)
HAUNT
H [hard] + ANT [worker] round U [uniform] – frequent as a verb

8 Overcame stable director injecting horse (10)
SURMOUNTED
SURE [stable] D [director] round MOUNT [horse]

12 Good man holding tiny bottle loved one (10)
SWEETHEART
ST [saint – good man] round WEE [tiny] + HEART [bottle, in the sense of courage]

15 Tin protects a river craft (9)
CATAMARAN
CAN [tin] round A TAMAR [a river, which we’ve seen several times recently]

16 Author is on TV, restless about Spanish article (8)
NOVELIST
An anagram [restless] of IS ON TV [round EL [Spanish article]

19 Humour Buffalo Bill lassoing writer (6)
COMEDY
[William] CODY [Buffalo Bill] round ME [the writer of the crossword] – I don’t think this, with 5dn, constitutes a cowboy theme – but I may be missing something

21 Animal in Africa, one invading cities (5)
NYALA
A [one] in New York and Los Angeles [cities] – it’s an antelope, wouldn’t you know?

22 Philanthropist‘s thank-you note (4)
TATE
TA [thank you] + TE [note] – for Henry Tate, the sugar magnate philanthropist who founded the gallery beloved of crossword setters

47 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,776 / Crucible”

  1. My favourites were OEUVRE and ECHO.

    New words for me: YANKEE = bet, HAW = fruit.

    I could not parse 17a MIC around E + SOZO ?

    I missed seeing the error in 3d and had entered ARMADILLO assuming it was an anagram.

    Thanks Eileen and Crucible.

  2. Well I’m glad it wasn’t just me who had trouble with 17ac – Meic is used in Welsh for Mike but clearly the E must be eastern, but Sozo? Stumped me. And I’m glad it wasn’t just me who wondered where the spare L came from in 3dn. But, all was easy enough despite that apart from 10ac which kept me puzzled long after the rest was completed – once the penny dropped though I had to applaud. Likewise 7dn – loved the misdirection. Thank you Crucible and thank you Eileen.

  3. Agree 17a, but hadn’t spotted error for armadillo, just wrote it in.Liked 20a 10drums Thor, and 18 ties – neat and straightforward. Learnt a new kind of bet, added to carpet in yesterday’s Enigmatist. Thanks Eileen + Crucible.

  4. Thanks Eileen. Most of these answers just wrote themselves in and, like you, I was left to agonise over 17a for which I still have no explanation though it must be ‘mesozoic’. I just wondered if ‘so’ is an alternative spelling of ‘zo’ but can find no validation. I quite missed the problem with 3d, just wrote it in without checking.

    You were robbed in your primary school days, it only cost me threepence.

  5. In my struggles to justify MESOZOIC, I thought of Led Zeppelin IV, but then realized that was Zoso not Sozo. Too bad. Somewhere in the lost archives of the Melody Maker is a picture of me with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in 1972.

  6. Apart from armadillo (didn’t notice the error) and the unparseable mesozoic, the only other ? I had was shy for launch, a bit loose. Otherwise, as said, not too much trouble. Yankee the bet new for me too, and the antelope. Slow to remember BB as Cody, and ditto Eileen re Saturday matinees, ta for the memory, and ta Crucible.

  7. I noticed the anagram didn’t work but could see it had to be ARMADILLO and noted the error. When MESOZOIC didn’t parse, I didn’t try too hard, just wrote it in and noted a second error. Two errors don’t seem like much but it leads to a mindset that the tough nuts are “probably a mistake” which detracts from the joy of solving. The rest was neat and straightforward as Chinoz@3 put it.

    Thanks to Eileen and Crucible.

  8. I did wonder if somehow Lima could do double duty to give the extra ARMADILLO L as that would fit with the mini phonetic alphabet theme but I couldn’t really get that to work, and 17 ac I think is a mistake

  9. Thanks both.  I stumbled over the same two as others.  Can’t find ‘so’ as alternative for ‘dzo’ or ‘zho’ or ‘zo’ but did find the highly tenuous So Cow

  10. I also assumed both as mistakes in an otherwise excellent puzzle. I will return to the blog in the hope of some explanation, in the meantime many thanks to all 🙂

  11. A nice puzzle, perhaps a little on the easy side for a prize?  Everything went in swimmingly until the very last two, 3 dn and 17 ac.

    Someone spotted the error in 3 dn last week and asked about it on this blog.  i deplied that we would just ‘have to wait and see’ if it was corrected.  As Eileen says, it never was.

    Eileen has also written more-or-less word for word by thoughts on 17 ac.

    Thanks to Crucible and, of course, Eileen.

  12. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    I had some online help on MEZOZOIC, so Googled. It seems to be a valid spelling – in Hungarian!

  13. [By the way, Eileen, I wouldn’t hold your breath. The last time I remember an error in a Prize (something to do with SPAM/SPAMALOT?) they simply didn’t publish an annotated solution.]

  14. Some nice surfaces but frustrated by the (can’t see another reasonable explanation) error(s). Thanks to Crucible and Eileen for the blog – welcome reassurance I wasn’t missing something.

  15. I’m up a little later than usual this morning and have just found an email from the Editor, dated 6.45, with no comment but with the annotated solution attached, marked for publication at 12.00 yesterday. I haven’t looked to see if it’s on the website now but neither I nor Gaufrid could find it yesterday.

    Here are the explanations:

    17 Mezozoic M<E(astern)ZO/ZO>IC

    3 armadillo A LIMA ROAD (intended anag, but ‘road’ contains an A not an L)

    I have no further comment. 😉

  18. Predictably, the full OED entry for MESOZOIC does not acknowledge the MEZO- alternative even in the small print. This was a straight error and should be flagged as such. Echoes of PALAEONTOLIGIST! (Picaroon, 11 April last year). Digging back into the distant past can be tricky.

  19. I’m not surprised by the confusion and irritation. I made two silly mistakes, both unforgivable:

    17ac I clued MEZOZOIC instead of the correct MESOZOIC

    3dn is indeed a broken anagram.

    Humble apologies to all.

    PS For what it’s worth, the theme is the Scottish novelist William Boyd, whose works are referred to here and there. William Boyd was also the name of the actor who played Hopalong Cassidy.

     

  21. Many thanks for that, Crucible. Here have I been wishing I could blog one of your [Radian] literary puzzles and this one totally escaped me! I don’t know how such an eminent prize-winning author could have slipped under my radar but I’m afraid that even when I looked up his works, none of the titles rang a bell – so it’s humble apologies from me, too.

    Here’s what I found: A good man in Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Armadillo, Ordinary thunderstorms  and a short story collection, On the Yankee station. And, of course, we had NOVELIST, as well as HOPALONG CASSIDY.

  23. Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

    I have nothing to add to the comments of others about the crossword. I didn’t see the theme even though I have read several of Boyd’s books. To Eileen’s list of references I would add (Nat) TATE and perhaps (12d) SWEET Caress and Any Human HEART.

  24. Eileen @21, and Nat TATE, see here!  We have Boyd’s books scattered around the house, but the theme completely passed me by.

    Thank you for the blog, and Crucible for the puzzle and his communication @19.

  26. Crucible – thank you for clearing up the confusion and taking responsibility for something which should have been shared with the editor. The rest of the puzzle was more straightforward and my favourites have been mentioned. Thanks to Eileen as well – I can imagine you thinking “Crucible is always very precise in his clueing – I must be missing something!”

  27. lightharted @25 – welcome!

    The teal here is described as ‘a pretty little dabbling duck’. ‘Shy’ is a verb in the cryptic reading, meaning [something like]  to launch.

    WhiteKing @26 – you read my thoughts exactly. 

  28. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen. I found this generally a very steady solve. I saw the 3d alert in lasts week’s blog and therefore that raised no problems. My last two were oeuvre and unsurprising. Mesozoic which I obviously could not parse. However that did not spoil the enjoyment with the rest of the puzzle. Favourites for me were Hopalong Cassidy, haunt and thunderstorm and thanks again to Crucible and Eileen.

  29. A real shame about the mistakes. Both were in fact noted in last week’s Prize blog comments (if you stayed long enough), the MEZOZOIC error only obliquely mentioned (and confirmed by yours truly). On the other hand, the answers couldn’t really have been other than what they were. The Editor must surely bear some responsibility for letting these slip through.

    I thought the anagram in 20a (THUNDERSTORM) was wonderful (a semi&lit technically, with def ‘result, imo btw’) and also liked the NATO abbreviations and cross-reference. When I first looked at 2d, I thought C was using “forerunner” to mean the first letter of “foxtrot” and was tutting at such loose cluing. I was really pleased when I understood it.

    Had to chuckle at the clue for CATAMARAN (15d) having recently read this comment by Lizard (aka Pasquale) in a recent Guardian Crossword blogpost about rivers in clues.

  30. 3d I wondered if Crucible had invented an animal called an “armadilao” rather as Ogden Nash invented the grinch (before Dr Seuss). “I dearly love the three-toed grinch/It grows upon me inch by inch/Each home with one should be provided/The Lord did not invent it so I did”.
    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen. Now for another go at Enigmatist, more in hope than expectation.

  31. Thanks to Eileen and Crucible

    I’m currently reading a book on archaeology which makes frequent reference to the Mesolithic, but I still didn’t notice the mistake @17a, so I can quite understand  Crucible’s faux pas. I would have thought there might be a piece of software that might pick these things up though.

    I enjoyed much of this and was also (along with Eileen) thinking of Saturday morning pictures while solving 5d. I was thinking of Doris Day, but I now realise that was Calamity Jane.

    I think we might guess our ages by the price of our Saturday morning tickets. Mine was a tanner – but that was in London.

    The cinema occasionally organised competitions in the interval. One I remember well was “who can yo-yo the longest whilst standing on one leg”.

    Tell that to the kids today and they go green with envy (or perhaps with something else)!

     

  32. Dansar @ 3 – we poor provincials had no such additional refinements to our Saturday entertainment – but then we paid a bit less [apart from Biggles A ]. Thanks for shared memories – it was lovely not to have too many ‘Never heard of him’ comments. 😉

  33. Oops! in my comment @29 I of course meant: “a semi&lit technically, with def ‘result’, imo, btw”.

    I think I used to pay 6d for a Saturday film at the Community Centre in Stevenage in about 1960. I remember seeing Whistle Down the Wind and the Wizard of Oz. The bloke who ran it always spoilt it with explanations of the plot while it was running. Not sure if I saw any Hopalong Cassidy films, but he was definitely a ‘name’ in my world then and someone I was delighted to see appearing from the anagram.

  34. Two puzzles with a specialized kind of bet –YANKEE this time and carpet the other day.  That’s knowledge that’s a bit beyond general~

    24a ICE CREAM  Could ICE = reserve as a verb?  Put on ice?

    Tony, thanks for the link to Pasquale’s blog on river names in crosswords.  Pasquale goes over the most popiular short-named rivers in crosswords (though he doesn’t mention the Exe.) He mentions that “Ob” means “river” in a “Uralic macrolanguage,” whatever that may be, which makes “River Ob” redundant.  You could say that of “River Avon” (of which there are several in England, since “avon” is Welsh for “river.”  I imagine a Roman civil engineer asking a local, “And what do you call this, my good man?”  “It’s a river, you berk,” says the man, and the bureaucrat dutifully writes on his clipboard “Fluvius Avon est.”

  35. I remember having a sort of crush on Hopalong Cassidy as a small child, but I can’t think why, since I never saw him in any movies.  I lived in a tiny village in downstate New York called Mountainville, that had a general store-cum- post office-cum-gas station called Ketcham’s, and that was it for the business district.  It also had a minuscule library that would fit in an SUV and a two-room school, with one room each for grades 1-3 and 4-6, where my teacher was Mrs. Gustafson for three years until we moved.

  36. Hi Valentine @34, 35  – thanks for the stories!

    I wondered about reserve = put on ice, too. Interestingly, Crucible as Redshank in the FT on Thursday clued ICE-PICKS as “Reserve chooses tools for alpinists (3-5)” . [Please don’t comment on the definition: see that day’s blog for discussion! 😉 ]

    Tony @33, you’re about ten years behind me!

  37. @Valentine, haha, could have been a scene from Life of Brian (but for the location). Btw, Pasquale doesn’t write the blog — that’s Alan Connor — but follows and comments as Lizard. I’m TonyCollman there.

    @Eileen, actually, going by your recently-celebrated birthday, it’s about 15 years.

  39. Tony @37 Perhaps we can work the location into The Life of Brian by having some of the action be “meanwhile, back in the colonies …”

  41. Given the problems with “mesozoic” and “armadillo” do the setters themselves never explain the mistakes, if they were mistakes, or otherwise explain the parsing problem ?

    And what, pray, is meant by the acronyms “imo” and “btw” in some of the comments above ?

  43. Thank you very much for that Eileen – very much appreciated. Didn’t spot C’s comment @19/realise it was the actual “crucible” but I don’t always have as much time as I’d like to spend time on the net.

    By the way, I rather enjoyed the Hopalong Cassidy clue. Will we getting the Cisco Kid clued soon … ??!!

  44. I’m coming to this puzzle a month or so late. There are now corrected versions of both 17a and 3d, but both seem odd to me. 17a now reads

    Mike tours English zoos from a bygone age (8)

    which must be E ZOOS* in MIC, but there’s no anagrind, so the correction doesn’t seem to work either. (I don’t think “tours” can be the anagrind, because it’s needed as the containment indicator.)

    And 3d is now

    Animal found by learner driver in winding Lima road, squashed (9)

    which seems to have an extra anagrind! Surely either “winding” or “squashed” would have sufficed.

    If we could convince 3d to lend an anagrind to 17a, we’d be all set.

     

     

  45. ‘Squashed’ doesn’t look a likely anagram indicator to me. I think what might have happened here is that whoever corrected the clue bent over backwards to be fair and was indicating you have to squash together the L (very precisely clued as ‘learner driver’), ‘Lima’ and ‘road’ to form the fodder.

  46. I’m surprised at the suggestion that ‘squashed’ isn’t a likely anagram indicator. I’m quite capable of getting irked by dodgy anagrinds myself, but I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow at this one. In the original (flawed) clue, it seems clear that it was meant as an anagrind, so apparently Crucible doesn’t object to it.

  47. Good point, Ted. I accepted ‘squashed’ without thinking when I solved the original clue, but I still don’t think it’s a great indicator for an anagram.

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