Guardian Prize No 27,908 by Maskarade

44 comments on “Guardian Prize No 27,908 by Maskarade”

1. Thanks Bridgesong – slight typo, you’ve added an R to STAINER in 1dB.
   I’d forgotten enough German to miss the typo in SONNTAG – indeed I spent ages with MONTAG, wondering why TAG was ‘party’.
   Copious electronic help needed, I even solved some of the special clues by wordsearching the result from the crossers, subtracting a letter and checking for anagrams that fitted the clue. After working out the misleading instructions of course… wicked Maskarade.

2. Congratulations bridgesong.  This was utterly maddening, given the ambiguities in the instructions which you identify.  I spent a number of hours on this and finished about 40% before putting it aside.  The 17D error had me write in “Sonntag” since it fitted with the crosses – but the error was elsewhere in that clue.  The overall error was to have no Help line for punters to have a chance to solve in reasonable time.

3. Well this was the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on in a long time!  It was almost a scavenger hunt, and took me till Wednesday to finish, where I normally do the prize much more quickly.   Granted it was not for everyone, but it was right up my alley.  Thanks Maskarade!

   I know there were major problems with the instructions, and it took me a while and about a quarter of the solutions to get them figured out correctly.  The way I looked at it, you should treat the instructions like you would a difficult clue: keep trying different interpretations until you get it.  They were also like clues in another way – they suffered from the Guardian’s legendary problems with proof-reading/pre-testing.  Still, I loved it.  Go figure!

   Kudos too to Bridgesong for spotting the Sonntag error.

4. All it would have taken was for the setter to provide an example clue.

5. Gonzo @1: thanks for pointing out the typo. I’ve corrected it now.

6. Damn, I would have got away with this if it wasn’t for that pesky CHITARRONE! Much appreciated blog, bridgesong; I too had many gripes and reservations but overall found it an enjoyably chewy, if time-consuming, challenge, so thanks to Maskarade.

7. My experience was that of Gonzo@1. I had to make use of OneLook thesaurus (thanks to whoever pointed this one out recently) and other tools with almost all clues, taking about 15 hours in total! I got there in the end.

   Initially, having FIRES instead of FRIES at 14a B held me up finding any possible words in the top right there for a long time.

   Maybe progress would have been slightly quicker if I had realised what “alternately” meant. Thanks for that, bridgesong and the rest of the blog – quite some effort for you.

   Thanks to Maskerade again for a prodigious task – I just wish it were worth the effort for the little enjoyment I got from this.

8. Thank you Maskarade and Bridgesong.

   I enjoyed it greatly – but I do think the instructions could have been clearer without spoiling the fun.

9. I must have been about the only one who didn’t have a problem with the instructions. Been doing the Inquisitor probably helped.

   Hispaniola was the only solution I didn’t understand. Why “divided”? If I’d read Treasure Island would that have helped?

   This was a real beast of a puzzle, but as I said elsewhere at the time, it was supposed to last the weekend, not just Saturday morning.

10. That was a super work-out. All answers in, bar one (LONE PAIRS), by Friday afternoon, with satisfying, if sometimes frustrating, dips into it all week.  I thought the slight ambiguities in the instructions added just a little to the challenge – more clarification would have reduced that challenge.

    I was pleased I was not having to do the blog!  Thanks to both B & S

11. NNI @9: Hispaniola is also the name for the island comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Everyone should read Treasure Island, in my opinion.

12. Congratulations to Maskarade for putting together such a complex construction – and to anyone who managed to finish the sod!

    We spent all week on it and only got 80% there, and that with substantial help from Chambers Word Wizard!  I can’t believe anyone managed without online aids, when dealing with so many undefined anagrams.  1d in particular:  SATIRE+N has no less than 11 possible anagrams!

    Nice idea, but fell into the ‘too hard to be fun’ category us.

13. A triumph of setting by Maskarade, and of solving by Bridgesong.  Complete solution was more than I managed, with a couple of wrong guesses thrown in after several days.  I got SONTAG easily, also missing the incorrect spelling – according to Wikipedia, most people with that name use only one N, so perhaps Susan Sontag could have provided “Female American activist working during male party …”.

    The instructions were incomplete rather than incorrect – the reference to 26 alphabetical letters gave a pretty good lead.  But some answers were devilish, not least two obscure musical instruments.  Solving ANCHORITE was tough enough, and then I had to use online anagram solvers (which I consider cheating) for ANCHORITE-R, the first of which did not know the  word CHITARRONE, so I had to try a second.  In a few cases, it was necessary to work out the answer from the letters crossing it, and resolve the anagram backwards to check it fitted the clue – so getting TRADE SECRET resolved DESECRATER (an unlikely word, but it is in Chambers), and LONE PAIRS (valency electrons unshared by another atom, as I am sure we all know) resolved PERSONAL.

    But the big question is – how did Maskarade approach setting this, know the terms in chemistry, music, etc, and then work it all out?

14. Excellent blog bridgesong – thank you very much!

    The (lack of) rubric got between me and enjoying this.

    Why not  “Letters A to M are to be added to Across solutions in alphabetical order, alternating between Left and Right grids. Letters N to Z are to be added to Down solutions in like manner” ? Or indeed just tag each clue with the extra letter.

    Sorry, Dr Whatson @3 — I didn’t find trying to work out the letter sequence part of the fun.

    Some great clues in these (and some very hard ones). FORTH was my favourite, also ANORAK.

    Of the transformations RING ROAD –> RIO GRAND(E) is pretty good.

    Thanks, Maskarade for a tremendous concept and to bridgesong for brilliant exposition and to all learned contributors on here!

15. Binned after a couple of hours.

    Well done to those who persevered.

16. Took the two of us plus a visitor several days to get through this but very satisfying once done.

    Our only gripe is that having no definition given for the anagrammed word left us feeling we were guessing at times. It seems we guessed right though! 🙂

    We await the Christmas speacial with some trepidation.

    Thanks to Maskarade and Bridgesong.

17. Another astonishing tour de force from Maskarade as a holiday treat (though well done to anyone who actually completed it on the holiday). Rather fewer really obscure words than in previous such puzzles, I thought, though CHITARRONE was unknown to me.

    The instructions were ambiguous rather than misleading. It took me far too long to spot how the extra letters were to be deployed, despite getting OYEZ early on, which should have given a pointer. But no complaints – the uncertainty added to the enjoyment, and ultimate satisfaction when things clicked. We don’t need to be spoonfed!

    Despite my ancient A level German, I didn’t spot the apparent error. Thinking of Susan Sontag, perhaps.

    Many thanks to Maskarade, and to bridgesong for what must have been a fiendish blog to produce.

18. I spotted the pattern fairly on because I had the last few solutions so the jump to seeing alphabetical order wasn’t difficult. Still took me ages to finish.CHITARRONE was last in and dropped out of an old fashioned big red book search.

    Thanks to Maskarade and bridgesong

19. Congrats to bridgesong and anyone else who finished this.

    I looked at the absurdly complicated instructions and thought “it’s a Masquerade, there’s always a mistake in it”. And so there was. One for the bin.

20. I’m with Shirl

21. Having read rumblings of dissent about this puzzle on various forums I was expecting it to get monstered, so I’m glad some contributors have expressed appreciation for the incredible effort Maskarade must have gone to when setting this (admittedly flawed) puzzle.

    The misspelling of SONNTAG was unfortunate, and yes, the preamble was as clear as a tank of mud. These things should have been picked up when (if?) the puzzle was edited. I can’t see either of these issues getting past the editors of the Listener, for example.

    I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed – or even finished – this without multiple use of an electronic anagram finder. As the anagrammed answers were undefined I think one can be foegiven for using such aids. And bravo to Maskarade for ensuring that most of the anagrams had no alternatives, and the few that did were unambiguously checkable from the crossers.

    A thumbs-up from me for the puzzle itself, but I wish that such complex offerings were given more rigorous scrutiny before publication to iron out the wrinkles.

22. If fifteensquared has a Blogger of the Year Award, I think Bridgesong should get it. It’s one thing instructions being ambiguous, adds to the fun, but in this case they were just plain wrong surely: the alternating was between left and right, not across and down as stated.

    We started off exactly as Bridgesong with A3 ‘guarded’, but then also A7 ‘refutable’, thus apparently confirming the alternating across/ down hypothesis. This hit buffers pretty quickly, but it was only with the likely A12 ‘Rio Grande’ that the bright spark of the party spotted the actual ordering, whence ‘reputable’ instead. But then ‘money for kangaroo’ was surely ‘joey’, no Q possible there! By now completely distrusting everything, we threw all scruples to the wind (crossword solver/anagram solver/thesaurus you name it) and emerged on Sunday bloody but unbowed, having finally twigging Euro, and LOI the Anchorite clue. Hugely satisfying and enormous fun, even if half the troops did desert for a while in the middle…

    One thing that forcibly struck me (when repeatedly observing those great long lists of obscure auto-generated anagrams) is that the solution could hardly be unique, surely? Perhaps there was an added element of chance to win the prize (my father once told me that the Liverpool Post used to do this for its prizes in the thirties). But the genius of Maskarade seems to have insured that it was indeed unique, how did he do that?!

    Another thing: this was a PRIZE crossword, these electronic cheats are there for all to use, but uniquely in this case, frequently to little avail. If you couldn’t work out the answer from the clue, then tough.

    So our verdict: would have appreciated correct instructions and not a crossword solve as we know it Jim, but GENIUS even so. Many congratulations M and B!

23. If fifteensquared has a Blogger of the Year Award, I think Bridgesong should get it. It’s one thing instructions being ambiguous, adds to the fun, but in this case they were just plain wrong surely: the alternating was between left and right, not across and down as stated.

    We started off exactly as Bridgesong with A3 ‘guarded’, but then also A7 ‘refutable’, thus apparently confirming the alternating across/ down hypothesis. This hit buffers pretty quickly, but it was only with the likely A12 ‘Rio Grande’ that the bright spark of the party spotted the actual ordering, whence ‘reputable’ instead. But then ‘money for kangaroo’ was surely ‘joey’, no Q possible there! By now completely distrusting everything, we threw all scruples to the wind (crossword solver/anagram solver/thesaurus you name it) and emerged on Sunday bloody but unbowed, having finally twigging Euro, and LOI the Anchorite clue. Hugely satisfying and enormous fun, even if half the troops did desert for a while in the middle…

    One thing that forcibly struck me (when repeatedly observing those great long lists of obscure auto-generated anagrams) is that the solution could hardly be unique, surely? Perhaps there was an added element of chance to win the prize ( my father once told me that the Liverpool Post used to do this for its prizes). But the genius of Maskarade seems to have insured that it was indeed unique, how did he do that?!

    Another thing: this was a PRIZE crossword, these electronic cheats are there for all to use, but uniquely in this case, frequently to little avail. If you couldn’t work out the answer from the clue, then tough.

    Our verdict: not a crossword solve as we know it Jim, but GENIUS even so. Many congratulations M and B!

24. Sorry for double post mess up, someone at door…

25. Not at all sure how this happened. I just hit post, went to door, came back to spam bot complaining and then….

26. I had expected that this puzzle would provoke strong views, and I’ve not been disappointed, although perhaps there have been more positive comments than I had anticipated. It was challenging. But that’s not an issue for me, especially as it was a Bank Holiday special. I cheerfully admit to using electronic aids, especially for working out the undefined anagrams. Of course, once the pattern of additional letters became clear, working out the anagrams became much easier, given the help available from crossing answers. I recommend the Chambers Dictionary app, which includes an anagram finder. Of course, there are proper names (such as Hispaniola and Rio Grande) which don’t appear in Chambers, so you still have to have access to other resources. I find Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary very useful, particularly for the more advanced cryptics.

    Thanks to Caroline @22 (and 23) for her kind words, but if you look at some of the blogs for Inquisitor or Enigmatic Variations puzzles, their blogs are even better, and may include animation!

27. I agree with Caroline @23. The last line of the special instructions was simply wrong. Once the real letter-adding pattern had been established, the puzzle became fascinating, though, sadly, too hard for me to finish it.
    The CHITARRONE corner was a particular frustration, since the crossers were BATHERS, which I failed to solve; REPETEND, which looked far more likely as REPENTED; and FRIES, which went in as FIRES at the first attempt. Having to find an anagram of ANCHORITE + R for an undefined obscure musical instrument with a variable bunch of crossers finally did for me, and I threw in the towel.
    ARSENIC was another monster for those unfamiliar with French language and literature. Two other words (ARTEMIS and FREESIA) fitted the light and I found no way to figure out what was right.
    One aspect of the anagramming schtick was that you didn’t need to solve the clue fully to get the entered solution, so I never did find out that a BATELEUR is an African eagle. Thanks for that and for the well-written blog in general, bridgesong.
    As a comical aside, I had NOSE HAIRS for a while instead of LONE PAIRS!

    I’d agree that this puzzle suffered from a lack of editing and that spoilt the fun.  Thanks anyway, Maskarade, for the effort put in to write it.

28. Another here who gave up with the puzzle about 80% done…there were just clues I could not fathom, and by then even working backwards from likely words and anagrams seemed a little too tedious to be fun. A hugely impressive puzzle but I am in the camp that says the instructions were wrong, not misleading or ambiguous. I actually got the real way to add the letters by noting that “yeo” would take a “z” and “son(n)tag” anagrammed to “town gas” if I gave it a “w”. However, prior to that I had a fair number of answers written down with little, if anything, in the grid.

    Little side fact – “bataleur” I recalled from safaris, and the name means an acrobat or juggler in French – supposed to be something to do with the way it flies. I did rather feel I was walking a tightrope, or possibly a gangplank, with this marvellous puzzle and I wonder if the polyglot setter had that in mind as a sneaky hidden gem?

29. I didn’t manage to find enough time to finish this, even assuming I could have with there being quite a few words I didn’t know. However, I don’t think the instructions were wrong or misleading, just ambiguous to the point where one could jump to a false conclusion. “The resulting words” in the instructions made it pretty clear that the special entries were actual words. “The 26 alphabetical letters” seems to make it clear each letter of the alphabet will be used once. It’s only really the very last part of the instructions which is hard to interpret and even then the only two possibilities I seriously considered were the actual system used and one where A was added to the first Across clue, then B to the first Down clue and so on.

    I solved SONTAG, which I was sure had to be the answer as I already had Maitre d’, so I assumed that I had wrongly remembered the correct spelling of the German word. Sjshart’s suggestion of using Susan Sontag is a good one, but Maskerade probably thought he knew how to spell the German word, which just goes to show that a setter should always check everything — even the things they think they know.

    Isn’t it ironic that Shirl@19 is so dismissive of this brilliant piece of setting because of this small mistake, yet couldn’t even write her short complaint without introducing a misspelling of the setter’s name? There’s a word for that. Anyone?

    Many thanks, bridgesong, for spelling it all out.

     

     

     

30. TheZed@28, interesting what you say about the French meaning of bateleur (sic). Chambers says it’s French for ‘mountebank’, “apparently from its characteristic movements”. Not sure what the characteristic movements of a mountebank are anyway (although it derives from Italian montimbanco, meaning ‘mount on a bench’). Google Translate gives bateleur as ‘bateleur’ (the bird, presumably), but also offers acrobate forain (a show acrobat), which probably fits with ‘characteristic movements’ of an acrobatic bird?

31. … but a French Dictionary online says:

    “Ancien
    Personne qui divertit sur la place publique par ses tours d’adresse, ses bouffonneries…Synonymes : acrobate, pitre, saltimbanque, bouffon, baladin”

32. [ Saltimbanque is a splendid word, used as an insult (one of many) by that master of invective, Captain Haddock, in the Tintin story ‘Les Sept Boules de Cristal’.]

33. Thanks to bridgesong and Maskarade

    Tony @ 29

    Perhaps you’re right, but I thought Shirl @19 might have been making a rather good joke!

    I thought the final sentence of the preamble could have been omitted – perhaps it was added in attempt to be clearer, but it felt like an afterthought.

34. Dansar @ 33 You may well be right. Perhaps post 19 was a brilliant parody of the kind of posters that occasionally turn up on forums like this to show off how ignorant they are. If so, bravo. The only problem is that it might be mistaken for the real thing…

35. Bridgesong – thank you for persevering to get a complete solution. I think it was day 2 before I cheated and went to the Answerbank to see if anyone had made sense of the rubric – and even then we only got about two thirds through before losing interest. Sometimes ignorance is bliss – the misspelling of Sontag passed me by. I can see that it is a tour de force of setting and it did keep us occupied for many a happy hour so thanks to Maskarade as well.

36. Thanks to Bridgesong and to Maskarade. I’m another who cheerfully admits to liberal use of electronic aids – you ain’t gonna finish a bank holiday Maskarade without ’em so why fool yourself. Most of what I wished to say has already been said better, so I’ll confine myself to pointing out Maskarade’s peculiar genius for finding abstruse meanings of everyday words and using them in clues or solutions – EURO being a great example!

    I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating – Araucaria was an absolute genius at packing complex “special instructions” into very few words without ambiguity. All setters should learn from him !

37. Thanks to Maskarade & Bridgesong

    I finished, so must have enjoyed it as I have packed in the last few bank holiday puzzles pretty early.  I found the erroneous instruction very annoying even though it became clear quickly enough.

    The number of bells and whistles on these specials seems to be ever increasing – wasn’t it once the case that a plain [!] old alphabetical jigsaw was enough?  Occasionally people comment that a bit of variety would be nice on a bank holiday, but maybe no one but Maskarade has the will or tools for this sort of blockbuster?  Is a retreat possible or will they, like cars, carry on getting more and more bloated?

38. [@g larsen, Chambers also has ‘saltimbanco’ as an obsolete loan word from Italian (‘jump on the bench’), meaning ‘mountebank’.]

39. Very late comment, but I’m absolutely with JohnB on this. It seems to me that Maskarade is using his prodigious skills as a setter (not to mention many long years in the general puzzles-of-all-sorts trade, if I remember rightly from when I met him at an S&B do) to take the Bank Holiday puzzles into territories new. Next Bank Holiday (Christmas? Why so long?) we had all better make sure we specially invite a few crossword savvy pals to join us, otherwise we’ll have no chance. And how about a special prize to go with them, Guardian? This might turn into a national sport…

40. It’s clear that the experts loved this, and also that Maskarade is to be congratulated for the effort and ingenuity involved. I just wonder if the crossword is in the wrong place if so many people who look forward to their Saturday tussle, are denied their fun because the task is too difficult? I saw one response to criticism which said “Go back to the Daily Mail then”, which is missing the point. We do the Saturday prize because it is a challenge suited to our abilities. I humbly submit that the editor should take this into account. Don’t make the bank holiday specials so tough that you p. off 90% of the customers!

41. I thought this a superb puzzle: the kind of mind-blowing bank holiday special that turned me on to cryptics years ago. Of course I needed lots of aids to solve. But it worked for me. Suspecting that some of the 225 glitterati might be thinking otherwise increased the delight. Many thanks Maskarade.

42. I’m with Oofyprosser on this. I am not the most experienced solver but I used to look forward to the Bank Holiday specials. With this one I was confused by the instructions, managed 7A, struggled for a bit and then thought “life is too short” and gave up with some regret. Maybe we could have two levels on a Bank holiday?

43. Well I struggled but my fault as my PDF version only had one grid which made solving impossible. Once I had the second grid it made a bit more sense although I got the sequence of
    extra letters wrong. I did about eight clues in total over three days. I felt like a teenager reading Shakespeare – you know it\’s great so you struggle on and admire those who do better than you.

44. Enjoyed this hugely, but couldn’t complete. I felt that the lack of definitions should in principle be compensated for with a theme. Some of the undefined answers – oyez, beadles, veritable, reputable… made me think there could be some sort of common ground and when I solved St Jerome, I felt i had something specific to go on, & was googling around to try to find something. Anyone else looked for a theme?

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