Guardian Prize 27,788 by Philistine

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An exceptionally witty and entertaining puzzle from Philistine whose mini-theme introduced us to a new word.

The new word (new to us, at any rate) was “mondegreen”, a term coined to describe the common situation that arises when mishearing lyrics of a song.  It derives from a Scottish ballad which includes the phrase “laid him on the green”, misheard as Lady Mondegreen.  Perhaps the most famous example is from the Jimmy Hendrix song “Purple Haze”, the mondegreen version of which is included in the puzzle.

Timon and I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, although it was over all too soon.  Many thanks, Philistine, for the musical education.

completed grid
Across
1 OVERARM In back room, rare vodka highball served thus? (7)
Hidden and reversed in “room rare vodka”.  I suppose, if you think of Tom Cruise’s character in Cocktail, this might qualify as an & lit clue.
5 SPLODGE Stay after passport centre makes a bit of a mess (7)
LODGE after (pas)SP(ort).
9 SICKO This way acceptable to back sadistic pervert (5)
SIC KO (rev).
10 ROCK DUETS Deck tours guided by Meat Loaf, Cher, Jagger and Bowie? (4,5)
*(DECK TOURS).  Examples can be found here and here.
11 DESTROYING Wrecking old city besieged by poor design (10)
TROY in *DESIGN.
12   See 2
14 SPINAL COLUMN It’s essential to back newspaper feature after plan is redrafted (6,6)
*(PLAN IS) COLUMN.  The third use of “back” in the puzzle so far, but each time with a different sense.
18 INEXACTITUDE Adieu, extinct bats! There’s something wrong (12)
*(ADIEU EXTINCT).
21 SOH Note abbreviated sense of humour (3)
Double definition.
22 DISENGAGED Signed off, old and detached (10)
*SIGNED, AGED.
25 HALTINGLY How a lady starts getting excited, with hesitation (9)
Initial letters of How A Lady, TINGLY.
26, 4 EARL O’ MORAY In advance, securing room to manoeuvre a murder victim (4,1,5)
*(ROOM) A in EARLY.  This is from the original lyric which gave rise to the mondegreen concept.
27 SLIPS ON Don’s trip with boy (5,2)
A charade of SLIP SON.  The apostrophe is misleading.
28 TANNERY Hides from this attempt to imprison queen (7)
ANNE in TRY.  The obvious parsing involved ER, but there are other queens in crosswordland…
Down
1 ONSIDE Edison contrived a legal position for play (6)
*EDISON.
2, 17, 16, 12 EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THIS GUY  13 following Hendrix, an apology for manly affection? (6,2,5,1,4,4,3)
Perhaps the most famous example of a mondegreen, the original lyric was of course “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”.
3 APOCRYPHAL Doubtful this could make Carol happy (10)
*(CAROL HAPPY).
4   See 26
5 SECOND LOT Support an old Sodomite’s offering early in auction (6,3)
SECOND (support) LOT (who came from Sodom).
6, 13 LADY MONDEGREEN Legendary demon upset one who reportedly perished with the 26 4 (4,10)
*(LEGENDARY DEMON).
7 DREDGE UP Dared to drop a clue for eg ‘exhume something unpleasant‘ (6,2)
D(a)RED EG(rev).  I think that this is (in part) self-referential, in that the reversal of EG is to be found in the answer (“up”) and not in the clue.
8 ESSAYING Trying volatile gases to suppress the female principle (8)
YIN (female principle) in *GASES.
13   See 6
15 NOTHING ON With which one is naked and free (7,2)
Double definition &lit?  I’m never entirely sure if clues like this with no real wordplay can qualify as an & lit clue or not.
16   See 2
17   See 2
19 AGORAE Your mate regularly seen chasing silver markets (6)
AG (silver) ORAE (regular letters in yOuR mAtE).
20 IDIOCY Folly of designer cut when cold outside (6)
DIO(r) (designer) in ICY.
23 EGYPT Country messing with one genotype? (5)
Subtractive anagram: EGYPT plus ONE = GENOTYPE.
24 MISS Do not hit girl! (4)
Double definition.  This made us chuckle.

*anagram

58 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,788 by Philistine”

  1. I apologise for the slightly delayed appearance of this blog; I thought I had scheduled it to appear at just after midnight as usual, but apparently not.

  2. Thanks bridgesong.  Getting MONDEGREEN early fouled up the multiple-word answers for me: ignorant of the true ones I leaned towards the outlandish options of “excuse me while I mind this boy’ and ‘ears of mercy.’  With a go on Google for the first I got the actual Hendrix and a quick finish. Bravo Philistine.

  3. Thanks Philistine and bridgesong

    Great fun, though easy for a Prize and for a Philistine. It helped that I knew about mondegreens.

    Hendrix actually sings “Scuse me”, not “Excuse me”, though.

  4. Surprisingly, I found this a walk in the park, because for once I was familiar with the theme (both the song and the phenomenon). In fact, as soon as I saw Hendrix and (6,2,5,1,4,4,3) I knew the answer, without even reading the rest of the clue. Then following the breadcrumbs to the connected clues I had a good chunk filled in, and the rest followed.

    I read 15d as a standard double definition, since feeling free is not for all people a consequence of being naked, so can’t be part of the same definition.

    Thanks Philistine and Bridgesong.

  5. A nice conceit with the mondegreen and Hendrix link.

    Sadly however if one saw the Lady Mondegreen quickly, as I did, the Hendrix answer and Earl o’ Moray soon fell into place. Together with the easier clues this meant that the puzzle was all but finished after the first pass.

    A tad disappointing for a prize puzzle.

    Muffin, I think you’re missing the point of a mondegreen. As the clue is indicated as a mondegreen what Jimi actually sang is irrelevant.

  6. For me the best Prize for ages, so many thanks Philistine. And a great blog from Bridgesong. My Lady Mondegreen mishap was when I went around for ages at University singing “want an Umbrella” for Guantanamera after hearing The Sandpiper’s version of the Cuban paean to a girl from Guantanamo.

  7. Yes, great fun. Many thanks all. Am I alone/unnecessarily tedious in thinking don’s (with apostrophe) as a definition for slips on is a failing?

  8. I always enjoy it when I learn something new from a crossword, and I knew of neither the Earl O’ Moray nor his misheard lover, and MONDEGREEN was my LOI, although I did manage to work out both. Google then explained what had been going on. Relatively easy, but very good fun. I managed to confuse myself about how DREDGE UP worked, although it was obviously right. Much appreciated, Philistine, and thanks for the blog, bridgesong.

  9. I knew the Hendrix example (like Dr WhatsOn I got it immediately from the enumeration) and I knew they were called mondegreens. What I didn’t know about was the ballad that was the original source of the term, so the Earl o’Moray gave me some trouble – and googling him told me why it was LADY Mondegreen. A very rewarding little theme.
    Isn’t the definition of OVERARM “high ball served thus?”

  10. Thanks bridgesong. Like others I found this mainly straightforward but ground to a halt until 26,4 emerged and then, thanks to Google, 6,13, which I had never heard of. The crossing letters had convinced me that 13 had to be ‘gay’ which made it my LOI .

    Not sure I follow your explanation of 7d but note it wouldn’t have worked for an across clue.

  12. Great, neat theme around mondegreens, but agree that once identified that was a lot of the xword done. Found 7d awkward, and wrestled with the wrong end of 8d for a while trying to parse misogyny.

    No trouble with 27a slips on – you really have to ignore any punctuation. Enjoyed 28a tannery, good misdirect. Not so keen on negative terms such as 9a, but see the difficulties of finding a word to fit the crossers.

    Many other mondes lurking about I’m sure – “weigh a pie”, for Judy Garland’s ‘Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high’ comes to mind. But like Spoonerisms, many of them apocryphal or of recent invention.

    Thanks Philistine & Bridgesong.

  13. No major complaints but I didn’t enjoy this puzzle because I know nothing about rock music or song lyrics, misheard or otherwise.  I got the word EXCUSE from the crossers, guessed ‘gay’ instead of GUY and googled the rest.

    I agree with Mike @7.  The apostrophe in 27 ac is problematic.  As it is the definiton part of the clue and the answer is a verb in the 3rd person singular, I would want ‘dons’ without the apostrophe.  But then, of course, the surface would make no sense.  So I suppose Philistine put in the apostrophe to make the surface read more neatly.  But the apostrophe doesn’t work, even if you take it as a plain genitive or ‘is’ or ‘has’.  I just don’t think the clue works.

    I know that the latinised form AGORAE is in the dictionaries but it should really be ‘agorai’ as a Greek nominative plural.

    Thanks to Philistine and Bridgesong.

  14. I went through life for many years wondering what ‘we’re on the min’ meant in the Gendarme Song.
    Took a long time to work this out, but once I discovered what a windscreen is enjoyed it retrospectively.
    ps My machine thinks it knows better than me. For windscreen read MONDEGREEN.

  15. I do it with my daughter and she got the Hendrix clue straightaway so we had a flying start. Good to see the links to the duets as I thought meat loaf was a duet of meatloaf and Cher was a reference to sonny and Cher. Enjoyable

  16. A new word to me, Hendrix and a Child Ballad – great stuff, even if it was over quickly. Thanks to setter and blogger.

  17. Thanks to bridgesong for the blog, Philistine for extending my vocabulary and Google for the explanation. I often learn new words from doing the crossword and invariably forget them the very next day, but I think that I will remember mondegreen

  18. Thanks, Bridgesong [and Timon] – and Philistine, for an utterly delightful puzzle, which I loved from start to finish, which, as others have said, came all too quickly.

    And thank you S Panza @6 for the smile and the earworm – one of my favourite songs long ago.

  19. A music journo recently said that Hendrix was the Da Vinci of rock guitarists. And I reckon Leonardo would’ve been a crossword setter (as well as…) in this era. Anyway, yes, easier than a couple of this week’s, but great fun. We’ve had a mondegreen-related discussion before, I seem to vaguely remember (tho it could have been in the Times, which I do on weekends). Even so, neither the Hendrix nor the mondegreen jumped out as it did for some, so the solve was satisfying. And I did raise an eyebrow at Don’s, briefly. Lovely puzzle Philistine and thanks Bridgesong.

  20. I agree that once you get MONDEGREEN the puzzle becomes pretty easy,but, as I’d never heard of it I spent longer on this than most of you did. An example of a mondegreen that I remember was the version of Down the line by Jerry Lee Lewis in which the couplet ‘She’ll be cool can’t do no wrong,she’ll be cool and twice as gone’ was rendered as ‘ Shiver me cool,shiver me long,shiver me cool and twice as gone’ I still think the mondegreen is better,nonsensical though it is!
    Nice puzzle.
    Thanks Philistine.

  21. In contrast to many who commented through the week, my solving order was “Lady Mondegreen” then straight to the Earl O’Moray through familiarity with the origin of the term. Hendrix I knew nothing of so ended up having to google the lyric – not sure there is any way to get this otherwise, though I suppose with all the crossers in you could have a stab. Maybe that’s cheating but GK is trivial when you know it and impossible when you don’t…

  22. This was a lot of fun and very enjoyable. I loved learning about the Earl o’ Moray and Lady Mondegreen:

    They have slain the Earl o’ Moray

    And layd him on the green.

    as well as learning about mondegreens in general such as the Jimi Hendrix one in the puzzle.

    ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song “Purple Haze” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience: “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”).

    My favourites were NOTHING ON, SOH as well as 2/17/16/12

    Thank you Philistine and blogger.

    NB. I also found this very amusing mondegreen:

    – There’s a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival: “There’s a bad moon on the rise”).

  23. Much as Bridgesong said in the intro – thoroughly enjoyable and over too quickly. I’d never heard of a MONDEGREEN but knew the Hendrix lyric and thanks to the clueing and crossers deduced it and google led to the meaning and origins. Like brownphel I think I’ll remember mondegreen and am grateful to Philistine for the opportunity to find out about it, and for the rest of the excellent puzzle. Thanks also to Bridgesong for the blog.

  24. A most enjoyable puzzle, my only quibble being that Mondegreen was anagrammed rather than being a solvable cryptic. Consequently, once all the crosses were filled, if, like me, the term was unknown, there was no option other than Google to put the remaining letters in the right spaces. However, since it is rare for me to finish a crossword without some help from the internet or a dictionary, this is a very minor quibble.

  25. Apart from the mondegreen, there is also the “eggcorn”

    ex-patriot instead of expatriate[7]
    mating name instead of maiden name[8]
    on the spurt of the moment instead of on the spur of the moment[3]
    preying mantis instead of praying mantis[9]
    for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes[10]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

     

    Thanks to both Pho;outdone and bridge song!

     

  27. Thanks to Philistine and bridgesong. Nothing much new here, loved the puzzle and it was generally a very steady solve. I did know the Hendrix bit, but did not know the lady and earl link. Too many nice clues to pick out any in particular (apart from the obvious 2etc) and thanks again to Phiistine and bridgesong.

  28. As no one has mentioned it I thought I would and perhaps it has no consequence. Surely it is an extension of Chinese Whispers. The one I learnt during the war was:

    Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance!

    Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance!

  29. Thanks to Philistine and bridgesong. At first I was stumped by EARL O MORAY but then spotted LADY that led me to MONTEGREEN.

  30. Thanks to all and to Bridgesong for the kind comments. As for that apostrophe, just to say that it was a gatecrasher that came late to the party uninvited. It was not there when the puzzle was prepared, and I apologise for its unwanted appearance.

  31. Philistine, many thanks for dropping in. It’s something of a relief to learn that the apostrophe (presumably in 27 across) was not just misleading but should not have been there at all.

  32. It seems to be becoming a new tradition to have a misprint in the Prize puzzle. Perhaps the editor feels the puzzles aren’t hard enough as they are? Thanks Philistine for clearing up and for the excellent puzzle.

  33. Being unfamiliar both with MONDEGREEN and Jimi Hendrix lyrics, this was a really fun solve for me.
    The concept is familiar enough from hymn singing in assemberly as a child: Gladly the cross-eyed bear, for example..

  34. I enjoyed this so thanks to Philistine and bridgesong but I did have afew quibbles. 5d Lot is the only person from Sodom who I could remember, apart from his unfortunate wife, and the answer was never going to identify a performer of acts of sodomy so simple enough but is SECOND LOT a standard term?
    I happened to have come across the mondegreen in the past year but a bit tough on those who hadn’t? I didn’t know that it had become a term of art.
    The same with the Hendrix which I worked out before I solved 13d without realising that it wasn’t the genuine lyric. All I know about Hendrix is that he was a great rock guitarist who lived in a house once occupied by Handel, composer of Messiah with the recitative “Come for tea. Come for tea, my people”?

  35. Being a big fan of JIMI (not “Jimmy”, @bridgesong!!) Hendrix, as soon as I glanced at the printout his name jumped out at me and when I saw the enumeration I immediately knew the answer and that this was a puzzle themed on mondegreens, which I had learned about a few years ago (my most persistent personal example being “wrapped up like a douche” in Blinded by the Light). I still had trouble remembering “The Earl o’ Moray” but resisted calling up the Wikipedia page where I knew the poem was cited and worked it out from the wordplay.

    muffin@3, yes, its “‘Scuse me”. Alex@5, the mondegreen is in the last words: “”scuse” is not misheard, only “the sky”.

    @bridgesong,

    It’s JIMI, not “Jimmy” (bears repeating).

    7d isn’t self-referential: it’s saying EG UP is a possible clue for ‘eg’.

    15d is a (fairly) straight double definition: if you’ve ‘nothing on’, it can mean you’re free (no obligations to attend to) or naked (no clothes on).

    Philistine@30, was, then, the original clue “Dons'” etc, which seems better? “Dons” with no apostrophe at all makes nonsense of the surface, doesn’t it?

    I agree with gladys@9 that “highball served thus” defines OVERARM (1a).

  36. Oops! Of course, I meant “7d isn’t self-referential: it’s saying ‘EG UP’ is a possible clue for ‘ge’”.

  38. This was the fastest prize solve ever for my wife and I, and all the more exhilarating for it. We were teenagers in the 1960s so we immediately got The Kissing of the Guy (Sky) from the letter counts. We also knew all about mondegreens and live in Earl o’ Moray territory so that contributed to the record speed.

    So many thanks to all, but special, super-abundant thanks to Job for solving the mystery of “We’re on the min”. I well recall that chorus from childhood but never knew what it meant and I had googled in vain to find out. A song about working for a government department was the best explanation I could come up with. So, a lifelong mondegreen has been laid to rest.

  39. A Prize-worthy puzzle and thoroughly enjoyable.  I only vaguely knew about Mondegreens (from crosswords), so it was nice to find out the origin and have it exemplified in the Hendrix song.  I was familiar with the lyric, but had not thought much about it and hadn’t realised it was a classic Mondegreen.  I thought other commenters would bring along their own favourite examples and I particularly like Michelle’s “There’s a bathroom on the right” and chinoz’s “weigh a pie”.

    Good of Philistine to drop in to clear up “Don’s”.  It stuck out as a blemish while solving.  It doesn’t surprise me that it’s the result of an editing SNAFU (sadly).  Tony@35 – I think the surface works with “trip” as a verb, as in “dance”.

    All good fun.  Thanks for a very satisfying solve, Philistine and bridgesong, for the blog.

  40. It’s interesting that reactions to this puzzle vary depending on whether you had heard of mondegreens or not. I had, so this took me only half an hour, comfortably my fastest Prize solve yet. “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” went in right away, and the reference to Lady Mondegreen meant that a third of the grid was filled before I even started to sweat.

    My all-time favorite mondegreen is there is a bathroom on the right.

    This puzzle was responsible for me learning the unfortunate fact that Cher and Meat Loaf once did a song together. Philistine, no thanks for that, but the rest of the puzzle more than made up for it.

  44. (a) I am really happy that Philistine distanced himself from 27ac.  The clue actually did remind me of Boatman once using “its” when he meant “it’s” [or the other way round]. For me, the ultimate case for totally disagreeing with chinoz @12 when he says “you really have to ignore any punctuation”. That’s often true but not always, in my opinion.

    (b) I am one of those who found this less of a doddle than many of you. I had not heard of ‘mondegreen’ before and the three (themed) entries covered about a third of the grid. I think, as a non-Brit who loved English music, most of my younger days must have been one big mondegreen ….  🙂

    Many thanks to bridgesong & Philistine.

  45. Then there’s the little girl who called her astigmatic teddy after the hymn “Gladly, my little cross-eyed bear”.

  46. There are also plenty of classical mondegreens: ‘e di pensier’ from Rigoletto will forever be ‘elephant’s ear’ once you have heard it.

    A very good puzzle, whose solving was pretty quick as I knew about both mondegreens and the Earl o’ Moray, That great adapter of folk songs, Percy Grainger, produced a particularly intense version of his ballad.

    Thanks blogger and setter.

  48. Tried to find the blog yesterday but then the weekend got away from me, so I am coming very very late to the party, and just hoping you two at least get feedback, Philistine and bridgesong, as I absolutely loved this puzzle. Lots of ticks for the MONDEGREEN-related clues. I did chuckle a lot at the posts above, with some great examples of mondegreens and eggcorns. And I laughed out loud when I revisited the rock duets (many years after they first appeared), with Jagger and Bowie having such fun camping it up, and Cher and Meat Loaf parodying Olivia Neutron Bomb and John Revolta doing “You’re the One that I Want”. Loads of fun! Many thanks to setter, blogger and posters.

  49. 9a I got stuck on “so” meaning “in this way,” surrounding the middle of the word, so missed “sic.”  Anybody else?

    This didn’t come at all quickly for me.  I knew about mondegreens and the Earl of Moray, but hadn’t a clue about the Hendrix lyric.  And even the mondegreens came after a long time and a bit of cheating, leading to Earl o Moray, leading to mondegreen.  I eventually put the Hendrix clue together because it sort of fit the definition, but it didn’t sound like anything somebody would say, and I didn’t register that it was another mondegreen.  I do better with Scots ballads than rock.

    My father thought as a child that the Lord’s prayer said, “Give us this day our jelly bread.”  A Sylvia Wright said in the delightful appended article, better than the original.  (By the way, “jelly” is not the American word for jam.)

    Gstar or Job or somebody, could you explain “on the min”?

     

  50. Enjoyed this one a lot. Oddly EARL O’MORAY was the first themer I got, but it wasn’t until MONDEGREEN jumped out of the fodder that I understood what was going on. The Hendrix clue was next. Fairly easy for a prize but no complaints from me…

  51. @Valentine

    “it didn’t sound like anything somebody would say”

    The original Purple Haze lyric, “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”, seems even less likely — if you don’t know that Purple Haze was a ‘brand name’ for some LSD.

  52. Tony @51  To me, the kiss the sky does sound like something somebody would say, if in a poetic mood.  Beats “kiss this guy” which is neither plausible nor poetic..

     

  53. Thanks to bridgesong and Philistine

    I solved this, like most here I’m sure, quite quickly last Saturday, but I’m still not sure what I think about it as a puzzle.

    I knew of Mondegreens, and I love Jimi, so a good part of the puzzle was a write in, but if, as some here, I knew of neither, then it would have been frustrating.

    I think the setter acknowledges with his rather give away intro to 2 etc down.

    I would say though that, even then, Hendrix would not have apologised for kissing a guy, though he may have politely begged indulgence while he did so.

  54. like valentine@49, had little idea of the original (knew there was such a number as Purple Haze as it had come up in Magpie puzzles & elsewhere, but not that it had lyrics) so guessed correctly from checkers and enumeration – on the other hand the mondegreen was well-known.

    The gendarmes sing ‘we run them in !’

  56. Hi Valentine … when I was a wee kid there was a song occasionally on the “wireless” in which the line “we’re on the min” was repeated umpteen times. I had no idea what the song was called. As the decades passed I sometimes wondered what the heck they had been singing about. Was it about people who worked for a government ministry? When Google eventually appeared I attempted to search it but with no success. Then last Saturday … fanfare of trumpets … Job mentioned it and said it was from a piece called The Gendarmes Song. I immediately googled it and discovered, as peterM says above, the line is actually “we run them in”. That particular mondegreen had me fooled for 65 years.

  57. I’ve got lots of mondegreens, my favourite is “Help me Brian” rather than “Help me Rhonda” (before I knew the actual correct title). Seems weird but listen and you’ll see what I mean!

  58. I also got the “Purple Haze” reference right away. I’ve actually owned three different books of misheard lyrics. It’s a fascinating subject. My favorite is “Bingo Jed Had A Light On” for the Steve Miller Band’s “(Big Old)Jet Airliner”. Amazing what some people think they’re hearing sung! Of course, there’s also “There’s A Bathroom On The Right” instead of “Bad Moon On The Rise”(from Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Risin'”). Here’s to you, Lady Mondegreen(almost sounds like Simon and Garfunkel, doesn’t it?)!

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