Guardian Prize 28,267 by Paul

65 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,267 by Paul”

1. Thank you Paul for another fun puzzle. Took me a bit longer than Bridgesong and Timon, but I really enjoyed it. Favourite was 23 – I spent far too long worrying about anagrams of Eric, so when the penny dryI laughed out loud

2. Thanks to Paul and bridgesong. I made steady progress here but got stalled in the upper right corner, partly because I started with Trapp as the musical family. Once I got RIBALD I switched to AMATI and then got PASTRAMI, neither of which I parsed.

3. That’s penny dropped

4. Thanks bridgesong. This was consistent with my recent experience of Paul prize crosswords. The first pass yielded little or nothing and gave rise to some despair but after I had made a start progress was then steady along the way to my LOI, 9a. I had made this corner difficult for myself by fixating on TRAPP early on without any supporting logic. I’m not sure that DECLINE = STAGNATE but I am sure that a suitable reference source will be found.

5. I left it a bit late to finish this and couldn’t get the 24s, either down or across. (I haven’t come across ‘dirt bike’ before.) However, I enjoyed everything else and liked the very neat ‘subtraction’ clues involving the biscuits Garibaldi, Amaretti (plural) and Macaroon.

   FRATERNISE was my favourite clue, with its clever use of ‘hobnob’. It also had ‘winger’, which I’m sure we are seeing more of now: one has to know whether it’s a bird or an insect (or of course neither, but here it was a bird).

   I would just highlight three other clues that I enjoyed the most: SMALL ADS, WHISKERY and PASTRAMI.

   Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

6. Being an expat, I was wondering which biscuitty delicacies might have been invented since I left, and was tempted to prowl the online aisles of well-known supermarkets to see the current popular brands.  It turns out I had worried in vain, and I ended up finishing this puzzle faster than most Pauls.

   I did actually start looking for GARIBALDI (memories of tea-times past), but saw there were no 9-letter answers. Rolled my eyes when I came to 7d.

7. Agreed FRATERNISE was definitely the best biscuit in the tin!

8. Bodycheetah must have been stoked to see the abundance of biscuits here. I was initially dismayed, especially by the four bakery-themed clues in the northeast corner, since Brits and Yanks so often call such items by different names. In the end, only BATH OLIVER turned out to be unfamiliar, and it yielded after a few crossers and confirmation by google. Lots to like, including the linkage of DEEP RED = MAROON = STRAND, the cleverness of EXECRATE, and the neat conciseness of OPPOSITION. Like Biggles A @4, I do question the definition of STAGNATE as ‘decline,’ but I’m sure someone will put me right. Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

9. Too much has gone on this week and I made no notes, but vaguely remember a gentle enough solve. We’ve had ret for soak before, but I doubt if I remembered and subtracted it from amaretti, but I do remember subtracting the chartered accountant from the macaroon. Otoh, bath oliver was a definite nho, so just do what it says. Anyway, a nice, politely sweet theme for a Paul, thanks both.

10. Great little theme and neat puzzle. Thanks to some crossword clue in the deep past when BATH OLIVER stumped me, I was okay this time with 6d. I liked some of the clues already mentioned by others, but I was actually a bit “iffy” about the surface of 23a FRATERNISE, even though I knew the French word for strawberry and also vaguely knew that a hobnob is a biscuit. I needed help with the full parses for several clues and had to come here to see the second meaning of 22a STRAND once it was linked with 12a MAROON, as I had only solved it from the crossers and “fibre”. I understand the definition for 13d OPPOSITION but unfortunately I still can’t see the wordplay. I hadn’t heard of a Garabaldi biscuit (the fodder ! for 7d RIBALD), but that one makes sense now.

    Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

11. JinA: 13d you have to split ‘workplace’ in two.
    Fun puzzle, thanks Paul and bridgesong.

12. Didn’t like 9 much. A word I’d never heard of, with another word I’d never heard of removed, giving a third word I’d never heard of! Apart from that, a nice solve.

13. Food and music are Paul’s fortes, not mine: 9A was last in despite AMATI cropping up often ( luckily Brummie had ret=soak in July). Tick for penultimate in, PASTRAMI. 25 and 26A were a slick delusion.

14. Delusion not delusion.

15. wretched tablet – delusion is the last word

16. Biscuits aren’t really my cup of tea, so to speak, but I was pleased I remembered the Bath Oliver. And there weren’t actually that many clues that needed you to know biscuit names, since many were included directly in the wordplay. However, one where you did was AMATI, well outside my musical knowledge, and ‘ret’ for soak was beyond me, even though the biscuit itself is one I have heard of. I see what Bodge @12 meant. I only managed to find the answer, after some unhelpful Googling for musical families, from the word search in Chambers, which surprised me by having the word, but it’s there because it’s used for the violins the family made. So I’m scoring that a DNF, regrettably. Other than that, thanks for the workout, Paul, and thanks too to bridgesong.

17. That was fun. Thank you Paul. Another one here who got hung up on the von Trapp family. Never heard of the Amati family, so thanks for the explanation Bridgesong. In 22d Nice is also a biscuit.

18. A clever one, thanks to Paul, and now to bridgesong.

    As to ‘squashed fly’ (at 1 and 7), one dictionary which includes it is the online Wiktionary.  It defines ‘fly biscuit’ as a Garibaldi, with ‘squashed fly’ and ‘dead fly’ as synonyms.  But ‘squashed fly’ is the only one familiar to me (as, it seems, to bridgesong).

    I have always assumed PASTRAMI is served in thin slices because it uses beef for the Jewish equivalent of ham, which is not kosher to eat.  Can anyone clarify  this?

    I also spent time with the (von) Trapp family and Eric for Cantona, but got there eventually. I then wondered why Cantona was the Frenchman chosen, but clearly it is the surface reference to ‘winger’, as a footballer as well as a bird.

    WHISKERY was clever in the way it made use of the ‘e’ in spelling the drink, as American whiskies such as bourbon do.  In Britain, ‘whisky’ usually omits it.

    I wonder if any of our friends in the US have problems with the theme of biscuit generally, as ‘biscuit’ means something completely different there (they think our use of the word is crackers)?  Any views, DrW, DaveinNC or anyone else?

19. I knew AMATI but not ret or amaretti, so I couldn’t get 9a until I had the crossers. We don’t see many of those biscuits in Canada, so the theme didn’t help much, but the clues were well constructed so the theme didn’t hurt either. And 26,25 happens to be my favourite beer, so all in all a pleasurable solve. Thanks Paul and bridgesong for the educational fun.

20. Crossed with sjhart@16, so missed his query about biscuits in North America. I can only speak for myself but I think of biscuit as a generic word that covers crackers and cookies. Anyone else?

21. Of course, the squashed flies from 1D are baked into the Garibaldi biscuits at 7D.

22. Just noticed that Bridgesong already covered the squashed flies thing. Apologies. I feel really crumby now.

23. Enjoyed this puzzle.

    Was held up by spelling Amaretti in my head with an O instead of the second A – I should know better.  What could I have been thinking about ?

    I felt that 1d would have read better as ‘with fly squashed’.  But am I to understand that ‘squashed fly’ is a name for a biscuit ?  We used to call garibaldis ‘squashed fly biscuits’.

    I was wondering if a gnat and a fly are the same thing – apparently gnats are a subset of flies, so it’s OK.

    I usually enjoy a Paul puzzle but, as someone else (Eileen?) said recently, his surfaces can be 16d-able.

    Oh, and I was always fond of telling my students that the French fraise can also mean a neck-ruff, as worn in Elizabethan dramas.

    Thanks to Paul and to bridgesong.

24. I’m another who wallowed in a world of von Trapps and Erics for a while – which must delight Paul since misdirection was so clearly the intent.  I fall for the “Cantona’s strawberry, Nancy’s bread, Merkel’s with…” trick every time!

    Plenty of previous posts have highlighted my ticked solutions and Alan B @5 has noted my top three (along with FRATERNISE) – WHISKERY for the clever Bourbon double use, SMALL ADS which came from a slow and patient assemblage of parts, and PASTRAMI for its tightness.

    I join Biggles A @4 and DaveinNC @8 in querying the equation of stagnate and decline.  The pedant in me screams out that they are different – one implies a descent whilst the other suggests an – unhappy – stability.  However, when I think of civilisations that have famously stagnated (ancient Rome comes most readily to mind), that stagnation – the cessation of growth – is also described as decline.

    Prompted by a recent post somewhere about repeat occurrences of less usual words, am I the only one to have noticed a fair number of ogres and ogresses in recent times?

    Thanks Paul and bridgesong

25. Penfold @22: bugs me when that happens

    Anna @23: you’re going to need those Venn diagrams again.  Flies is certainly the larger generic but gnats is also one – there are many varieties of gnat – and I’ve been bitten by most of them!  But they equate well enough for the clue.

26. Another delightful Paul puzzle which I nibbled away at fairly consistently to completion. Anyone who can get the phrase ‘Cantona’s strawberry hobnob’ so successfully into a clue has to be hugely admired – seemed fitting for a quirky genius of a footballer. 9a was by LOI – got Amaretti and hence AMATI but never heard of ret.

    Thanks Bridgesong for the blog and to Paul for an offering that left me wanting another one.

27. Thought this was a cracker. Only got a few crumbs on Saturday night but managed to crunch through the rest of it on Sunday morning.

    Thanks Paul

28. [Pedro @27: excelling yourself in the bad pun field.  You’ll be joining those in front of sheffield hatter’s firing squad if you’re not careful.

    Perhaps we should invent a modified acronym for the ones that stumped us in this one: Didn’t Understand, Not Known.]

29. Just noticed TEA lurking in the top right corner. To go with all the biscuits!

30. Thanks for the blog, Bridgesong (and Timon) and Paul for the fun puzzle.

    I agree with all the praise for FRATERNISE – a neat change from Nice or Nancy and a clever use of hobknob and the TERN in the middle reminded me of Cantona’s mystical quotation about the seagulls following the trawler …

    I had no problem with STAGNATE: it means to become stagnant, which is a process and, for me, equates to decline.

    Anna @23 – I can’t actually confirm that I said it – but I could have. 😉  Since you mention it, after staring long and hard at 26ac and making absolutely nothing of it, I did apply that word to what I eventually concluded must be a homophone (suspect) of ‘guineas’, being what barristers charge – but then Bar would have needed a capital letter, wouldn’t it? Thanks, Bridgesong for the enlightenment – so simple, really.

    [PostMark – I wonder if you have seen comments 77 and 86, in reply to your 73 on yesterday’s Vlad puzzle?]

31. [Eileen @30: I did, thanks.  I saw up to Vlad’s appearance late last night but felt it was too late to post and then glanced again early this morning but ahead of Bertandjoyce’s post.  It’s a small world (I’m not sure if you were aware that the restaurant has branches in both Leicester and Leamington?  Hence my comment.)  Maybe, post Covid, you’ll get a chance to organise another.]

32. Ret for soak was new to me. I was trying to convince myself that amawetti were an alternative biscuit. 22d doesn’t bring out the biscuit in NICE . I was always puzzled by Nice biscuits as a child, because so many other biscuits seemed nice as well. Only much later did I learn that the name came from the French town.

33. As bridgesong says, it’s remarkable that ‘squashed fly biscuit’ hasn’t made it into dictionaries. I was never sure (when reading the Swallows and Amazons books where I first came across it) if the term meant Garibaldi biscuits, or if it encompassed any biscuits made with currants. These online images suggest the latter.

    Chapeau to Paul for use of the words ‘strawberry hobnob’ in a 7d way. First rate cluing.

    [PostMark @28. The firing squad has been suffering from overwork and is having a well deserved rest today.]

34. Thanks Paul and Bridegesong for the parsing of Guinness. We had ADAMS for the family from the crossers so were scouring google for a Macadams buiscuit or similar. when the final I dropped in realised we were dealing with Amaretti but ignorant of RET without the dictionary’s help (ditto on Dante’s birthplace, having ruled out our only other Italian authors Levi and Ferrante). Like others FRATERNISE a favourite and early in, having finally learnt to associate proper names of European neighbours with a racking of the brain for a translation.

35. [PostMark @ 28: Yes, I can never resist a (bad) pun or 2. I used to read and appreciate Sh H’s posts but they got too long so the f.s. reference lost on me I’m afraid]

36. [Pedro @35. It was in General Discussion – PostMark had recommended a puzzle in the Independent, and essexboy and I commented. #30 or thereabouts.]

37. [Thanks Sh H. I’ll check it out]

     

     

38. [Anna @23

    Concerning the spelling of AMARETTI (A vs. O): when thoughts turn to biscuits who knows what will happen?

    I knew ‘squashed fly’ too for garibaldi biscuits, but I thought it was a family thing.  I used to love them, but I find them too sweet now.]

39. I had hoped to find my favourite Speculoos, whose last syllable offers obvious opportunities for Paul’s talents.

40. [sshart@18:  this may be peculiar to me (no jokes please!) but having lived in both the US and UK for many years, I understand both forms of English, but sometimes given a word out of context I need a moment to remember which meaning is which.   That can actually help in doing cryptics since it can sometimes defeat intended misdirections.]

41. I really enjoyed this one – especially (though I too was stuck on Eric) FRATERNISE, and the linked MAROON etc. Thank you Paul  & bridgesong.

    [PostMark@73 yesterday, your suspicion is correct… I am not in Alabama…]

42. [Pauline in Brum @41 and our US based commenters: Purely out of curiosity, do we know whether Birmingham, Alabama ever shortened to Brum or is that a solely British thing?]

43. We had “ret” for soak in a Guardian crossword quite recently. Unfortunately a site search here turned up almost exclusively puzzles set by Ferret!

    [sshart @18 and Dr.W @40 – The Irish call it “whiskey” as well.]

44. A bit late to the party today, so nothing of substance to add – except to say a big thank you to Paul and bridgesong for another great puzzle and blog.

    [And I’d also like to thank previous commenters for a very enjoyable thread.

    trishincharente @29:  thank you for the TEA !  I usually scour the grid for ninas, so I don’t know how I missed that one.

    Petert @32:  ‘amawetti’ had me chuckling all the way to the biscuit tin…

    Anna @23 / Alan B @38:  re ‘amOretti’… the mind boggles… perhaps you were thinking of Edmund Spenser, or perhaps little Cupids, or perhaps beer?

    Speaking of which –

    Cellomaniac @19:  another fan of the black stuff here; clearly great minds drink alike 🙂 ]

45. Just here to celebrate a bit; I’ve been working these puzzles for years but rarely finish completely and if I do it usually takes days – hence I get here long after everyone has left the building.  This was the first time I finished in one sitting.  One highlight was working out “bath oliver” from the clue and finding it really is a biscuit – who knew?  Never did work out the parsing of Guiness, so thanks for that.  ‘ret’ was definitely NTM also.

    Re 42: PostMark, ‘Brum’ for ‘Birmingham’ isn’t something I’ve ever heard here in the US.  My impression is that most people stress both the first and last syllables and make the latter rhyme with Sam, so at best you’d get “Bram,” but considering that it’s in a part of the country known for drawing things out when speaking, I think even that’s unlikely.

46. Minor notices sons poaching duck: that’s not right (5,3)

     

    I don’t accept ‘poaching’ as a container indicator. I guess we’re supposed to picture the letters S and S concealing a duck between them. It’s the sort of cliquey clue that only crossword solvers would get.

     

47. [KenB @45: arguably a non essential post but just to say thanks for a response to my query. And, of course, to acknowledge your signal achievement today! ]

48. David S @ 46

    “dont accept ” made me raise a quizzical eyebrow.  Do you mean you didnt solve the clue or just didnt like the construction.  To my mind, it’s rather neat and imaginative. Poachers steal, conceal and pocket, would any of these be preferable?

    Thanks, of course, to Paul and Bridgesong (esp. for the pastry!)

49. Thanks Paul and bridgesong. Too tough for me but that’s not a criticism, this is a “Prize” after all. One (relative newbies) question – what is/isn’t allowable as an ‘indirect’? I know indirect anagrams are considered unfair, but didn’t know until now that indirect ‘hiddens’ like ribald are in play? Anything other rules of thumb I should know in this regard?

50. I had the same thought as Stuart @49 regarding RIBALD: “Indirect hidden” clues seem to me to be a bit unfair to the solver, in the same way that indirect anagrams are.

    I think that the reason indirect anagrams are forbidden is that they allow too much scope and are hence unfair to the solver: The instruction “Think of a word that means X, and then take an arbitrary rearrangement of its letters” leaves such a large universe of possibilities that it doesn’t give sufficient guidance to the solver. The instruction “Take a word that means X, and then extract an unspecified chunk from it” is not quite as vague, but still too vague to be satisfying.

    With more guidance about how much to remove, or what to remove, there’d be no problem. For instance, 9ac (AMATI) is of the form “Take a word that means X, and remove a word that means Y from it,” which seems to me much more satisfying.

     

51. Thanks, all, for your comments and an interesting discussion.  I was particularly intrigued to see the references to the blog for yesterday’s puzzle by Vlad since I am another who lives in Leamington Spa (although as it happens, I’ve only been to the Leicester branch of the restaurant mentioned!).

    Stuart @49: indirect anagrams are something of an exception to the rule, as other ways of manipulating (e.g.  by removal of letters) a word the solver has to deduce are deemed to be perfectly fair, even by setters such as Azed, who follow Ximenean principles (which Paul makes no claim to do).  Indirect hidden clues of this type are relatively rare, probably because they can be difficult to solve without some help (as was available here, from the theme).  I have never understood why indirect anagrams are universally viewed as unfair: it seems to be a convention that has become firmly embedded in cryptic crosswords.

52. Stuart @49. We’ve had indirect subtractions, reversals, insertions, enclosures, substitutions, moving the first letter to last (and vice versa), moving a specified letter up or down, or to the east or the west, beheadings, curtailings – you name it – anything seems to be allowed except anagrams!

    To be fair to Paul, in this instance he did put a query on the end of the clue to signify that he was doing something a little out of the ordinary!

53. [Ted’s explanation of why indirect anagrams are, in general, avoided is correct — specifically the “large universe of possibilities”.

    The number of permutations of n letters is n! (‘factorial n’) = n(n-1)(n-2) …. 1. This rapidly gets very large as n increases, and these possibilities are just for one of perhaps many possible synonyms. However, if there is realistically only one possible synonym, and/or that is a very short word, indirect anagrams can be acceptable. In fact, I think Paul had one recently, though I can’t remember what it was. Anyone?]

    I’m glad someone explained that ‘squashed fly’ is a nickname for Garibaldis, since bridgesong didn’t.

54. Tony @53: I didn’t think I needed to explain that “squashed fly” refers to Garibaldi biscuits, but it is implied in my entry at 7 down.

55. Just wondering,- in the absence of any response to my comment @30 re 26ac – was there anyone else at all who even contemplated my explanation, disregarding, of course, the heinous non-capitalisation of Bar?

56. Hi Eileen

    Sorry, I saw it exactly as bridgesong did – INN inside GUESS, with the definition from the previous clue answer (though I admit that it took some time to register!).

57. Thanks, muffin @56: yes, of course, you and bridgesong are right, as I acknowledged above .I just thought there might have been a bit of response / repartee on my obviously outrageously wrong answer (.But I’m not offended.)

     

58. [Hi again Eileen – there’s a member of our golf club – a really nice chap – who plays extremely slowly. He’s a retired solicitor – I suspect that his slow play is a result of a lifetime of being paid by the hour!]

59. muffin – when I was briefly called upon to teach the non-substantive half of the A Level Law syllabus (fascinating stuff like how laws are made /changed, roles of magistrates / juries, legal aid, judicial review, difference between solicitors and barristers) I don’t recall any mention of solicitors being paid in guineas, though I liked your story. 😉

     

     

     

60. Bridgesong@54, yes, once I understood, I guessed that was how it seemed to you, but in fact I just wondered what you were on about and why you wanted “squashed fly” to be in the dictionary. Perhaps I was just being thick? It seems to me that you not only didn’t spell out what you understood ‘squashed fly’ to mean, but also made plain that I wouldn’t get any enlightenment by turning to the dictionaries!

    [My big brother had an unfortunate incident as a child where he really did find a squashed fly in a biscuit or cake (or so he said), and thereafter refused to eat anything that had currants in. Of course he was teased about it (by me) every time. I can’t say whether the offending item was or was not a Garibaldi biscuit.]

61. [Eileen: although I qualified as a solicitor as long ago as 1972, I don’t remember that our bills were denominated in guineas.  But I do recall a remark in one of the Henry Cecil stories concerning a barrister’s return to chambers after the war, to be told by his clerk that “we now get the shillings in the guineas, Sir”.]

62. Way late to the game here, but sjshart asked re US thoughts on this one… definitely quite a challenge! Biscuit=cracker/wafer/cookie wasn’t so much an issue… have done enough xwords (both US & UK) over enough years to know that reference. And the theme was readily apparent from the clues, though I feared early on that UK specific biscuit refs might pose some issues. Sure enough, biscuit Britishisms like rusk, garibaldi, and bath oliver were the real hurdles for me, with the latter two being my last guesses in; bath oliver was a particular parsing challenge since wash=bath is itself a Britishism (here we only say bathe), and I just had to take a stab and hope for the best. Also had guessed that squashed fly must be another UK biscuit ref, though knowing so wasn’t necessary to solve 1d. All in all, was quite chuffed (borrowing another UK term 🙂 ) to have completed this one, even if a good bit at the end was just guesswork.

    Props to setter, blogger, and commenters!

63. Thanks to Bridgesong and Paul !  I’ll confine myself to saying thatv I compeleted this in a single sitting in bed on the Saturday night, and without any references other than to check that SYRINGA was an actual word.  Enjoyed the theme of biscuits – thankfully not the sort of biscuits beloved of the late, lamented Father Jack Hackett.

64. 26 … is this not an ellipsis, Bridgesong?

65. Monkey @64: yes, well spotted, I’ve corrected it now

     

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