Guardian Prize 27,782 by Paul

41 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,782 by Paul”

1. Thanks PeeDee.  TORYGRAPH, never heard of it, suggested itself early on (via par-rot reversed, conventional stuff) but the G bothered and still remains a mystery.  Tick though for its deft surface, ditto TEDIOUS and GRAUNIAD.  Lot of frowning to make the far-from-STRAIGHTFORWARD work. Good-oh, Paul.

2. Good to know it wasn’t just me that found this “downright tough” PeeDee. ANAGRAM was Paul at his best – inventive and witty. I’d never heard of SERE and wouldn’t have equated SHABBY with FRUMPISH but I did like the word play. As for 8d I had CORE BODY and MEAN before I came up with ROOM, and although MEAN was discounted once MOTTO went in the others were still possibles. I also ticked GRAUNIAD and enjoyed the challenge overall so thanks to Paul and PeeDee.

3. Good one. Especially liked 16a tedious – outside appearing to be part of instruction, when it is actually material for anagram!

   To PeeDee (ta parsing) on 15d, suggest Mae West a better known movie star. Very good this clue, was caught up on Sofia for a while thinking Sofia stew (little known Balkan delicacy) accommodated the ‘west’, until vie for struggle connected with the Mostar.

   22a and 10a write-ins. Thought Telegraph rather partisan, until Graun provided the R crosser, and the impartiality (and complete parsing of 9a shown).

   Good’o Paul, keep ’em coming.

4. … impartiality restored, that should be,

5. In 9A, the ‘rubbish’ is GROT – remember Reginald Perrin? I cannot find record of Kayne West as a movie star – he seems to have done everything else – but Mae West certainly was.

   Paul at his best. Thanks both.

6. Felt it wasn’t completely fair to have non-existent words in a crossword: of course my last two in were the newspapers. Maybe next week we’ll have
   3a. What word am I thinking of? (9)

    

7. My favourites were ANAGRAM + GRAUNIAD.

   I could not fully parse 19a or 9 TORYGRAPH apart from TOR, Y + RAP – not sure about the G + H bits.

   New word: RAGGA

   Thanks Paul and PeeDee

   chinoz@3 – yes, I agree that it would  Mae West @ 15d.

   Thanks, PeterO@5 – I never heard of GROT for ‘rubbish’ before.

8. There are several movie stars called West – Dominic, Timothy (and his family), etc. Though I would think Mae is the one best known.

9. Thanks PeeDee. When I  see Paul named as the setter I never know whether it is going to be a canter or a serious challenge and that is part of his charm for me. This one was definitely toward the latter end of the scale I’m sure, I found only a few at the first pass and had to work hard at the rest. Like others, 9a and 2d were my LOsI; I could see 9a had to end in graph and contain y but it took a while to come up with the correct answer which was completely new to me. This facilitated 2d which had been baffling me. Maybe I’m missing something but I still have doubts about ‘choice from over there’ and ‘one of those things’, unless it is an Americanism.

10. I feel like this was a learning curve for me with very little completed unlike yesterday’s offering from the same setter which I was delighted to have completed much more easily. Failed to get some crucial crossers and even with Mrs
    “The Ball”’s help DNF.

    Thanks to Paul for both this and yesterday’s: keep them coming. Also to PeeDee for the excellent blog.

    Ultimately I have to say it was a really worthy Prize offering and even the gripe about GRAUNIAD and TORYGRAPH clues seem a little harsh as the clueing was more than fair and both raised a smile.

    @Biggles A, I think it is not so much an expression as a straight definition.

    Happy weekend all

11. Oops! – Kayne West is a singer not a movie star.  I should have looked him up in Wikipedia first.  Mae West makes regular appearances in puzzles and in previous comment sections I have read “Mae West” being criticised as dated.  I thought I would go with someone more modern this time (and failed).

    Thanks for pointing out the ROT/GROT error. will fix that asap.

12. An enjoyable solve though I agree it was fairly challenging.

    I didn’t find the long ones so easy to get this time.  Was wanting to put in BODY TEMPERATURE as a standard, rather than ROOM, which is surely a variable (?)  Then failed to twig STRAIGHTFORWARD for ages, despite guessing there was -GHT- in it.

    Loved the GRAUNIAD, which I got early on, having got the U of ACUTEST.  Then TORYGRAPH was a natural follow-on.  Both excellent clues.  Ditto for ANAGRAM.  And there were several others.

    Didn’t know FLAT-TOP or RAGGA but got them from the wordplay.

    LOI was MOVIE STAR.  Sorry, if I’m the only person on the planet who didn’t know the name but guessed it from the crossers.  Again, held up by wanting the town to be Novi Sad.

    All in all, a good puzzle.

    Thanks to Paul and PeeDee.

13. Anna – in science and engineering ROOM TEMPERATURE is a standard temperature that the lab is heated to, so that experiments don’t vary between labs.  I think the actual temperature is dependent on the discipline involved.

14. To  PeeDee @13

    Thanks for that explanation.  I didn’t know that.  It makes sense, though.  Do they standardise ambient air pressure too?

15. Hi Anna, I don’t know about air pressure.  I just remember that when I was a student in Chemistry “room temperature” was defined to be 18 degrees centigrade.  I expect it has all changed by now.

    I think it one of those notional standards like “sea-level” for adjustments to air pressure. The sea isn’t actually level.

    I think the results have to be compensated for the actual air pressure and temperature in your lab at the time, which will vary a little. “Room temperature” and “sea level” represent conditions in a notional standard laboratory.

16. Wow, thanks PeeDee.  I loved chemistry at school and it was hit and miss whether to do sciences or languages in the sixth form.  Chose languages and never regretted it.  Retired now.  But still interested in all things scientific.  And as to astronomy, well don’t get me started ….

17. No reference so far to the spoiler delivered in the current Private Eye, published midweek. Clue + solution for TORYGRAPH, under the heading DOG EAT DOG. But they didn’t mention, or maybe just didn’t notice, the complementary intersecting GRAUNIAD. Thanks to Paul and to Peedee.

18. Thanks PeeDee and Paul – enjoyed this and thought it had the right level of weirdness for a prize which lacked cross-references, themes and other ways to make it more challenging. Torygraph and Grauniad raised smiles but are a bit parochial perhaps – and my PE did not arrive until Thursday, so long after it might have spoiled the game, but still a fair point Queenbarrow.

    On the science front, I remember learning both “room temperature” and “standard temperature and pressure”, the latter (0C and 100kPa) being the preferred norm. Room temperature varied from place to place and use to use it seemed. Just to confuse matters, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC, the ones who set international standards) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, the US equivalent of our standards lab, the NPL) use different standards, with NIST adopting “normal temperature and pressure” of 20C and normal atmospheric pressure (slightly over 100kPa). The whole business of standards and metrology, which I worked in for a short while, is a nightmare of historic practices, national pride and stubbornness.

    Good fun – and another prize to crack on with today.

19. I parsed rubbish in 9AC  as “rot”. therefore TOR….Was wondering where the G came from! Thanks to both Paul and PeeDee,

20. Agree with all the above. TORYGRAPH and GRAUNIAD last ones in and like Jeff @19 couldn’t find the G but enjoyed them both. Liked SONNET and OXTAIL SOUP too.
    Good challenge and needed the parsing help today. Thanks Paul and PeeDee.

21. I found this a real challenge and was very pleased to get there in the end. ‘Grauniad’ and ‘Torygraph’ are Private Eye’s nicknames for those newspapers, so perhaps a little unfair on those not familiar with them, especially as ROT comes a lot more easily to mind than GROT (I myself didn’t understand where the G came from till reading this post). The fact that those two intersected also made it more difficult.

    Does TEDIOUS (16a) mean “grey”? Or just “dull”?

    @Biggles A, I don’t understand your query about ONE OF THOSE THINGS and “choice from over there”. “It’s just one of those things” is a much-used expression for something that can’t be helped and if you were selecting an item from a display, you might well point and say “(I want) one of <i>those</i> things”.

     

22. That’s interesting. You can’t do your own HTML markup here, it seems. I should have used the tools to produce “one of those things”.

23. Oh, and btw, it’s Kanye, not Kayne.

24. Thanks to PeeDee and Paul

    I suppose Paul was obliged to be less scathing with regard to his own doorstep (they are both guilty of equal and opposite grot imo), but I enjoyed those clues immensely.

    It’s been a week but I remember thinking – “this is the hardest, and the best, Paul I’ve ever done”.

    12,14/20 were gems, and there were many others challenging for honours.

25. Tony @23 – I would quite like to forget the whole West thing ever happened.

26. @Biggles A,

    Apologies for an over-hasty comment. I meant, of course,if you were selecting one item of many from a distance (‘over there’, not ‘just here’) you might ask for ONE OF THOSE (not these) THINGS. Perhaps you were taking “over there” as ‘across the Pond’, indicating an Americanism?

27. Bodge@6 Thingummy?

28. There was a pub in Weybridge called The Grotto, known to friends as The Athlete’s Foot. Even knowing this I failed to parse the “G” in 9a.
    Thanks to Paul and PeeDee

29. Thanks Ed the Ball and Tony. Yes, I was trying to read more into it than is there and failed to see the obvious. Woods and trees. I couldn’t get the song ‘Just one of those things’ out of my head and looked in vain for a musical connection though I did learn that Over Here was a Broadway show.

30. All fab. Great puzzle, great blog. Ta.

31. A hard puzzle.  I couldn’t finish it until yesterday when I could use the check button.  GRAUNIAD was of course familiar from this site, but TORYGRAPH was a never-heard-of, though it did make sense when I once saw it.  It also defeated me because I’m a member of the never-heard-of GROT club.  Even crossing GRAUNIAD, I was looking for a real word.

    But it was fun, and I enjoyed it.  Thanks, Paul, and thanks PeeDee for the helpful blog.

    I’d plump for the EASTERNER being from Eastern Europe, since in the US a Georgian is generally called a Southerner.

    7d — the definition is “music player.”

    17d — how does “lagging” mean “containing”?

32. Valentine – lagging is wrapping for example the lagging on a hot water tank, it encloses the item it insulates or protects.

33. Anna@ 14: Do they standardise ambient air pressure too?

    I think thezed has answered but in simple terms, there is a standard pressure at sea level which is 1 Bar (which = 100KPa that thezed mentions).

    Rest has been said re  difficulty

    PeeDee: just a suggestion for your solution to 12a – it looks like you are saying an anagram of ‘OF THOSE THINGS’. Perhaps recapitalise the OF?

34. de-capitalise I mean

35. pex: I have changed that now, it reads better I think.

36. Re the standard temperature/pressure thing – I think my comment @13 is misleading.

    The procedure for a process might state that if you add chemical X to chemical Y then you will get Z (another chemical, an explosion, or whatever).  The unwritten assumption is that this is going on in a normal environment not inside a blast furnace or at the top of Everest.  The room temperature standard says what “normal” means for this procedure, it doesn’t say anything about your own actual laboratory.

37. It does read better, thanks. (wish I had thought to say ‘Kan ye change it’ [sorry]

38. Downright tough indeed! Such that I didn’t finish it. But thank you Paul, as ever, and thank you Peedee. 12 downright fiendish!

39. There is a reader’s letter in the latest issue of Private Eye (no. 1495, p. 21) complaining about the spoiler mentioned by quenbarrow @17.

40. Nobody mentioned that 3 x quatrain plus couplet gives 14, the lines in a sonnet

41. Timmy, that’s the definition of a SONNET. That’s why those words are underlined. Sonnets have 14 lines because they’re composed of three quatrains and a couplet.

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