Guardian Prize No 28,362 by Paul

78 comments on “Guardian Prize No 28,362 by Paul”

1. Thanks bridgesong, I found this harder than Azed’s Printer’s Devilry, which is saying something. Despite having all but 5 answers, it was luck really that I put the one 15-letter in the right place to start filling the grid. Some very hard clues I thought. Z had me convinced that the cross was our old friend the Zo, and the definitions for DIDDUMS and BUDGIE SMUGGLERS were fiendish (in the latter I was taking ‘horrors’ as an anagrind, or the definition of some monster, until I had enough crossers).
   Thanks Paul for the challenge.

2. I didn’t think I was going to be able to enter anything anywhere. To get going one needed the answers to the 7-letter clues which I didn’t have, except for one. YESHIVA was eventually my way in, and because of starting letters, it could only go at quarter past or half past the hour. Luckily, I had solved ENCIRCLE and CUISSE, and this led to half past the hour being impossible. GREENISH and MUSIQUE CONCRETE were then fairly straightforward, and the rest followed, with occasional struggles towards the end. ZONKEY, appropriately, the last one in. A very satisfying alphabetic: thanks Paul and bridgesong

3. Thank Bridgesong. I found this was very hard and took several sessions and, I’m not ashamed to say, quite a lot of help from Google. I needed all but a few answers before I could tackle the jigsaw and didn’t get all of those right so that didn’t help. I can’t see that it would be possible, except by trial and error, before the B and M clues were answered; my way in was to realise that the second letter in each was U and that QUEENITE (thanks again to Google) was the only one 8 letter word that could take the first down space. Hence NEGATE and LINGUIST. I had ‘trusties’ for the T clue thinking it rhymed near enough with ‘justice’ and ‘pumpkin’ for P thinking of Cinderella’s coach drawn (trained) by mice after midnight. Wasn’t sure about the wolf though! I think it would have been difficult enough even as a numbered crossword with the benefit of crossing letters but as a jigsaw too much like hard work. Erato was the goddess of erotic poetry if that is love!

4. The paper grid didn’t have numbers

5. A salt is what you get by reacting a metal with an acid, so ACETATE is ok – acetic acid in that case.

6. The last alphabetical jigsaw I solved was not long ago, right here, and Paul was the setter then. I found that this one needed a different approach, mainly because fewer clues were amenable to cold-solving than last time. I decided to target the 15-letter and 7-letter answers first, and solving four of those clues cold enabled me to fix the positions of all six of them in the grid and thereby help a little towards placing and solving some other clues.
   I (too!) thought some of the clues were written so as to be sure not to give anything away rather than to give pointers to the answer, which meant that the cold-solving phase took rather a long time. But many of the challenging clues were excellent and rewarding to solve. I particularly liked RHESUS (that’s hardly a challenging one, but I’m always slow to see hiddens!), XIZANG, SYZYGY (a good clue for a word that I think must be a challenge for the setter), HUMERI, FANDANGO and MUSIQUE CONCRÈTE. That last one was completely new to me, but it was my first solution: it came out of the wordplay, assisted greatly by having the initial letter, and only had to be confirmed.
   ZONKEY was my last in. It had to be that, but I didn’t find it anywhere I looked.
   Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

7. I’d like to clarify/extend one of Bridgesong’s comments. It is not the case that you need one of the 15’s to get started. What you do need for a jigsaw is a number of clues to be solved cold, but there are different ways you can do that in order to start entering answers with a minimum of trial-and error (and a maximum of logic). One way is certainly to get the 15’s, and even getting one will help.

   Another way is to note that the 7’s each contain the beginning of at least one other answer, and even if you don’t have the answers yet you know what the beginnings are of each length, so that can rule out certain entries.

   If you’ve solved a fair number (preferably all) of the 6’s and/or 8’s cold, you’ll note that in each quadrant you have several of each intersecting with each other, so you can figure out some or all of the required configurations before you enter anything.

   What makes it hard, of course, is having to solve a number of clues without crossers (but you do have the initial letter). I for one like something a bit more challenging on a weekend and this puzzle certainly fitted the bil.

8. Like others I found this a challenge; the grid was hard with only the 7 letter words giving a definite entry, there were words and phrases new to me and, unusually for Paul, some answers were difficult to parse. NEGATE I took to be where one would enter if travelling South West but I still don’t understand why PEAFOWL is ‘animal trained’. Can someone enlighten me please.

9. brownphel@8: wondered about the “train” bit too. Had to look up the Wik:
   “The peacock ‘tail’, known as a ‘train’, consists not of tail quill feathers, but highly elongated upper tail coverts”.
   May we expect COVERT in this sense before too long?

10. Even though the SE went in quite swiftly and despite PM Tony Abbot being notorious for swimming in red BUDGIESMUGGLERS (as every other cartoon of him portrayed) they were vexingly elusive. The other long one was more so, despite The Crown having featured the island – the Canaries instead kept insisting they were relevant. But it was all good, tks Paul.

11. Failed at the very end, unable to get ZONKEY. On the other hand, I was very pleased to get all the rest. This was a tricky grid for an alphabetical. Sometimes you can take a painstaking logical approach, able to justify every placement as you go, and sometimes – as I had to here – you take a Hail Mary approach fitting words where they go and being ready to backtrack if needed. Here I evidently had some inspired/lucky guessing and it paid off when I was able to guess BUDGIE SMUGGLERS from the crossers I’d built up. That sort of thing is very satisfying, which makes not seeing ZONKEY (a word I’ve never heard of) all the more irritating. Still, it was a fun challenge – thanks, Paul, thanks bridgesong.

12. This was very tough and in the end a DNF for me: just as for KeithS@11, I missed ZONKEY and had an unparsed ZINGER, I didn’t get DIDDUMS either (biffed in DILEMMA instead and tried to make an unparsed KERATOSE fit with it. I did smile at the “Horny teenager” in the latter clue once I saw the parse for KERATOID explained by bridgesong.). It took me all week to get just 14 clues but when I came back yesterday and this morning, I made some headway by taking the plunge and bunging in some of the top half, trying to use the crossers and word lengths in a logical manner and hoping for the best. [Enjoyed your description of this as the Hail Mary approach, Keith!] So the north-west was the first to be (mostly) filled in. That helped me a bit in the north-east, but the bottom half was incredibly tricksy and ultimately defeated me. New to me were MUSIQUE CONCRETE (only got it from crossers) and TATE as a sugar refiner in ACETATE (both I had to guess and check), so this one was certainly a learning experience.
    [Terribly sorry we have exported our ex-PM of BUDGIE SMUGGLERS fame to you as some kind of trade advisor. I will say no more about his suitability for the post.]
    Thanks for the mental gymnastics, Paul (I think!) and to bridgesong for sorting it all out in the end.

13. I did not do this puzzle but I have enjoyed reading the blog.

14. Ditto michelle. Tried printing this several times but for some reason only got bits and traces. Clearly a toughie, after which today’s .. Philistine I think it was…should be a doddle.

15. I have a completed and correct grid on paper, but only as a result of using every conceivable aid, including a website of answers to past clues, of which it seems Paul used many. As a result I got very little pleasure from fitting the words into the grid. I don’t like using aids but in this case it was that or give up. I have never heard of MUSIQUE CONCRETE and the number of options for islands made it impossible for me to solve from the wordplay, and the clue for the other 15 letter entry was impenetrable even though I know the phrase. Ah well, today is a new challenge.

16. I have blogged alphabeticals before, so didn’t repeat some of the advice for solvers (partly because the unusual grid rendered some of it irrelevant) but Dr WhatsOn @ 7 is correct to make the point that some cold solving of clues is always necessary. It is a slightly different challenge to a normal cryptic, but I for one enjoy the mental gymnastics needed to place the answers correctly. On the other hand, I can’t agree with Gonzo @1: Azed’s Printer’s Devilry the following day was much harder! However, thanks to Gonzo @5 for confirming that ACETATE can be defined as a salt.

    Dave Ellison @4: I did say in the blog that you should ignore the grid numbers. Unfortunately, the software tool I use to produce the blog and grid (credit to PeeDee) automatically generates grid numbers and I couldn’t find a way to remove them.

17. Like others, I got all the way except for ZONKEY, which is not in Chambers. Several others were new, but could be located by research. A good puzzle, which recalled Araucaria, though I think he would have included fewer answers which began with uncrossed letters. Paul made it all the harder by choosing this grid. But thanks, Paul (btw, in SYZYGY your description of the four axes should be YZYY, I think).

    JulieinOz@12, ‘Tate’ is usually clued as ‘gallery’, of which there are two in London and two more in England elsewhere – the galleries’ foundation was financed by the family fortune made in Tate & Lyle’s sugar, which is still the best-known brand here.

    Thanks for the commentary, bridgesong.

18. Sjshart @17: it’s my error in parsing SYZYGY, not Paul’s and I’ll correct it later.

19. bridgesong@18 – yes indeed, thank you. Apologies to Paul.

20. Zonkey?
    Sounds as bad as a Rotwoodle

21. Pretty tricky, but as usual with jigsaws it got easier once a few pieces were in place. For me the combination of YESHIVA and VERTEBRA were enough to fix MUSIQUE CONCRETE along the top, which was my entry point to the jigsaw. Took me ages to see DIDDUMS, and KERATOID was last in. Also needed most of the crossers to see BUDGIE SMUGGLERS.

22. I haven’t enjoyed a crossword so much in a long time. Thank you Paul. I found populating the grid fairly straightforward in light of only two 15 letter solutions. Held up by having a lazily parsed FLAMENCO instead of FANDANGO. Like Bridgesong, I would never have solved DIDDUMS without the crossers. I am left wondering
    a) should I tackle Azed’s Printer Devilry, which I set aside?
    b) who Paul was referring to in the nina at the start of row 15?

23. Had distinct advantage of knowing MUSIQUE CONCRETE from an ISIRTA sketch over 50 years ago. Z and D were the final struggle but such delight to have deciphered it all … well, I missed picking up the train bit in PEAFOWL. My approach to alphabeticals has always been to trust the compiler that clues will be tight and to know it will be solvable. What a superb tribute to Araucaria. Many thanks, Paul, for all the wit. A great blog too.

24. Everything went fine, I made a list A to Z, got past half way filling the answers and placed them in the grid successfully, especially helpful to have Peafowl and Ipso Jure as they give you the positions of 4 answers straightaway, and thats when the fun started. I thought the SW corner was pretty damn hard, a real mental workout. Diddums especially, but beautifully clued, and Keratoid, even though nothing else fitted, not knowing Erato, left me unsure.

    I do miss the Auracaria’s alphabeticals, so it’s great that Paul has taken the helm, I’m still waiting for a rhyming couplets version from him though!!

    Thanks to Paul and Bridgesong

25. Brought back memories of solving Araucaria puzzles more than 30 years ago with my late mother. I remember the excitement with which she ‘d tell me ‘It’s Araucaria today!’

    ZONKEY beat me on this one. It wasn’t in my dictionary (very very unusual for Paul, who I think is the fairest of the current crop of compilers when it comes to putting in obscure words as lazy puzzle finishers.) I gritted my teeth, couldn’t see further than ZONKED being a fairly contrived definition of someone who is ‘cross’, and I left it at that.

    My mother would have been ashamed of me!

    Thanks to Paul for bringing back memories, and Bridgesong for his excellent blog.

26. As a (very) retired chemist I can confirm that an acetate can be a salt as well as an ester. Lovely puzzle, though I failed on DIDDUMS and ZONKEY.

27. As others have said, a great tribute to Araucaria, whose puzzles, especially the alphabeticals, brightened up many a Saturday over the years.
    People have commented on the grid – this is the first alphabetical I can recall which does not have any shared across and down clues, giving two solutions for particular letters. That normally gave you a head start, but this time there was no way in other than by cold-solving. I was pretty successful, over repeated visits, in cracking most of the 6s and 7s (even the dreaded ZONKEY) but never quite enough to start inserting them with complete certainty as to their placing. Eventually I took a gamble and all fell into place.
    The two 15s were almost the last ones in, and I thought it wouldn’t have helped much to get them earlier as they contained no starting letters.
    Altogether a knotty but perfectly fair problem.

28. Way too hard for me. I worked out that I needed the 15-letter answers to get started but couldn’t make head or tail of either.

29. Highly enjoyable, though BUDGIE SMUGGLERS eluded me. We should have alphabetical jigsaws more often. Wifelet is a word, a coinage of the late polygamous Lord Bath – knowing this was a hindrance, not a help

30. I inwardly groan when I see it’s an alphabetical puzzle, but it was Saturday and Paul, so I got stuck into it. As others have said, it was no walkover. Laughed at BUDGIE SMUGGLERS; hadn’t heard of MUSIQUE CONCRETE; but it was very satisfying to finish after much initial head-scratching. Many thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

31. Very much worth the effort, I thought.
    I got P,F,W,U and R and very few others at first pass but at least they crossed and could only go in one place. This led to B and I was away.
    For Y I had a possible that I checked and Google helpfully asked, ” Did you mean YESHIVA? ”
    Discussing Z with my son without spoiling it I said that I had something that I had eaten on the shore of Lake Constance but couldn’t parse. I had ZANDER, a pike perch. He didn’t so much nudge as give me a great shove in the right direction so definitely not solved without help.
    Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

32. I can see what Paul is trying to do with NEGATE, but denying an entrance in the SW doesn’t necessarily mean there’s one in the NE, and vice versa. Typical gated towns can have gates on opposite sides. I solved the clue, so I have no skin in this game; I just don’t think it’s a very good clue. Have I missed something?

33. [gaufrid: a number of commenters’ names have + instead of spaces. I deleted my + on my second entry and seems to be ok now]

    bridgesong@16 – Sorry, I thought you must be referring to the on-line grid.

34. Thanks Paul and Bridgesong.

    I love alphabeticals. This one was a real toughie. I couldn’t make the Paul Zoom that evening – probably just as well as it took much of Sunday to finish.

    Diddums was brilliant.

35. I do like alphabeticals but this one was tough to get started because of the grid. I didn’t know either of the 15s, so concentrated on the 7s. Luckily, I got YESHIVA, which intersected with GREENISH, and that led on to greater things.

    LOI was ZONKEY, which had me fooled for ages.

    Thanks Paul for the fun, and bridgsong for putting it all into perspective.

36. Found this an utter delight.
    I did give some thought to NEGATE: isn’t it just that if you are to the SW of a gate, it is to your NE?

37. James @36…but if the gate is called the NE GATE, you are to the SW of it when you are inside the city. So it would be an exit rather than an entrance.

38. Yes, that worried me too. But if you take NE gate as a description rather than the name of the gate then it doesn’t matter if you are inside or outside. It could even be a blazing saddles gate.

39. Brilliant puzzle. Alphabeticals often fall over quite easily, but this one was a real challenge

40. sheffield hatter@32,37
    I couldn’t work NEGATE out satisfactorily either. In addition to your points, if Paul is saying that denying an entrance in the SW means there is one in the NE he is making “deny” do double duty.

41. Pino @40. Double duty for ‘deny’ could be covered by the question mark. My main problem is that if you give a name (or just a description) to a gate, it implies that there is more than one. (In a castle or fort with just one gate, it’s referred to as just the gate.) Denying the existence of an ‘entrance from the SW’ doesn’t lead to the inevitable existence of any particular other gate.

42. I’m entranced by Gategate.

43. Penfold – I think you need to be shown the exit. Have you got your coat?

44. What about this: ‘Want journalist from the SW?’ as a clue for NEED? The wordplay works the same; anything we are to the SW of can be described as a NE thing. But in our heads, gates are linked very strongly with directions, and if with directions, then with cities. So we can’t help importing a city into the clue. There is actually no city, and there is no need for one. Nor is there any need for deny to be anything more than the definition. The word entrance also makes us want to create an imaginary place, but we only need to treat entrance as a synonym of gate (like ed for journalist) not as a real thing.

45. For N @37 Sheffield Hatter and @38 James, for NE Mr K and I thought of a south westerly blowing towards north east and the clue being in two parts, the entrance and a direction. But as we mostly solve by thinking of possible words for the definition this parsing suited our answer!

46. James & joleroi: A wind blowing from the SW might well pass through a gate that is to the NE, but it can’t then be a NE GATE if it’s an entrance. And the idea of a NE ED is an intriguing one, but ‘journalist from the SW’ would be Cornish rather than a Tynesider, surely.

47. Thanks bridgesong and Paul. I needed more time than I gave this this week and it was ultimately a completely blank DNF! MUSIQUE CONCRETE, QUEENITE and ZONKEY all new to me.

48. sheffield hatter, ha, I see there is a fatal flaw in my example. In fact, a flaw in any similar example, as whatever thing goes after the NE you can always choose to see the NE as an intrinsic characteristic of that thing rather than as a characteristic that only exists relative to the observer, as I think it should be understood.
    So I will play a bit longer, and return to gates: imagine an infinite grid of square fields bounded by fences with a gate in the middle of every side of every field, the grid being oriented at 45 degrees to the vertical on a map. Because the grid is infinite, any description of one particular gate as SW, NW, NE, SE can only be relative. If you stand in the middle of any field, there will be a SWGATE, a NWGATE, a NEGATE and a SEGATE. Looking from the SW, the gate must be the NEGATE. It is only an NEGATE relative to you, and would be a SWGATE if you passed through it. Its NEness is not innate. Of course my infinite grid of fields is just as imaginary as your city, but if you take away my grid (or your city) just leaving the gate, the gate still has a position relative to the observer.

49. James: I congratulate you on your thought experiment. It seems to me that you haven’t overcome the difficulty that the NE GATE that exists in every one of those infinite fields is an exit rather than an entrance. Once you consider it as an entrance it ceases to be NE and becomes SW. You say that its NE-ness is not innate, but – granting that for the sake of argument – I would say that it is predicated on its use as an exit rather than an entrance. The NE GATE makes a perfectly fine exit from your archetypical field, but as soon as your intention of using it to enter the next field becomes known, it can only be a SW GATE. (In terms of the clue, Paul is using the gate as an entrance from the SW, which disqualifies it from being a NE GATE.)

50. Unlike pretty much everyone else, MUSIQUE CONCRETE was my second-to-last one solved. I’d never heard of Mustique, and I’ve usually heard the musical form referred to in English as concrete music. My way into the grid was the combination of YESHIVA and VERTEBRA–the former had to be an across, which told you where the latter had to go. I suppose it could have been on the left rather than the right, but I guessed correctly.

    DIDDUMS was the last; it took me a while to realize how “there?” could be its definition.

    Surprised no one has yet raised the quibble that Erato isn’t “love” exactly, or even particularly closely.

51. [James and sheffield hatter
    It’s all very well the pair of you leaning over the gate, debating whether it’s a NE gate or a SW gate, an entrance or an exit, but it’s not getting an infinite number of cows milked.]

52. Mrpenney@50: as it happens, while solving, I initially refused to accept that KERATOID was correct, precisely for the reason you give. But it was obviously the right answer, so I allowed myself to be overruled by Timon, who did not share my doubts. I now see that ERATO does not appear in the fairly lengthy list of synonyms for LOVE in Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary, so Paul is somewhat out on a limb in choosing to use it. As I said in the blog, Erato is the muse of love, which isn’t the same thing.

53. The grid was a bit fearsome for an alphabetical. I think I started by guessing where YESHIVA was because it then located VERTEBRA nicely. I now realise this only gave me a 50/50 shot of being right, but I got lucky first time! (Wiggers @22, I took the Nina to be an exclamation arising from wrongly filling the grid the first time 🙂 ). For some reason, I entered JUNGLE instead of JUNGLY, so annoyingly, it’s an DNF for me. I also tried to invent the ludicrous QUYETITE for the Spanish royalist before seeing the light.
    Lots of fun. Thanks Paul and bridgesong.
    By way of further entertainment, here’s how to make nice crystals of one acetate salt, namely sodium acetate.

54. Technically a DNF, as I was another with an unparsed ZONKED. I was surprised DIDDUMS wasn’t in Chambers. But with enough cold-solves (3 of the 4 7-letter answers) and MUSIQUE CONCRETE (another DNK) started to fill the grid in.

55. mrpenny and bridegesong, re: KERATOID. I think the whole phrase “teenager possibly getting to grips with love” can be reimagined as “teenager possibly embracing Erato”, rather than finding synonyms for each part separately.

56. [Penfold @51. James imagined the fields, I just went along with it. No one said anything about cows. It must have been you who imagined them, so you milk them – imaginarily, of course.]

57. I’m interested that nobody has commented on a peafowl being defined as “animal”. Of course that would be where it sat-within the Linnaean system of Animal, Vegetable or Mineral, but the same classification would apply to a spider or a codfish. I’d think of them as an insect and a fish, and of the peahen as a bird – and “trained bird” would have worked in the clue. Would anyone normally refer to a peahen as an animal?

58. We almost gave up on this, but made it in the end – quite a feeling of triumph…
    The 7- and 15-letters were clearly a good place to start, but we only managed two of the former and neither of the latter until late on.
    Eventually I deduced that MUSIQUE CONCRETE couldn’t go in the bottom, but then I found it couldn’t go in the top either!
    Eventually twigged that it was CUISSE, not CORIUM (also armour, thanks to Mrs Bradford) which enabled progress to be resumed. We had also confidently written FLAMENCO (well, it nearly works!) to start with.

59. sheffield hatter, it should not be surprising that Penfold cannot imagine a field without cows. It is nominative determinism in action.
    Your point about entrances does not trouble me. Every gate is an entrance. The NE gate is the entrance to your NE. You choose to regard the gates as they relate to another thing. I choose to regard them as they relate to me. I only do so because that way the clue makes perfect sense. Your way it doesn’t, as you admit. Otherwise, I am completely with you on the subject of gates.

60. James. This has been very entertaining, but I don’t think we’re ever going to agree. Shall we call it a draw?

61. Good idea, before we get barred.

62. Thanks Paul – this was certainly a multi-day puzzle for me. Eventually got there by googling all sorts of combinations find ZONKEY. Cold solving everything was a slog.
    Another ACETATE note. Acetate is always the last half of the name – if the first half comes from an alcohol (methyl, ethyl…) the substance is an ester and smelly. But, if the first half is a metal the substance is a salt. That second half always comes from an acid.
    Thank you for the explanations bridgesong.

63. SH @60 and James@59. If you were in a city looking at the NE gate you would have to acknowledge both that you are to the SW of it and that it could serve as an entrance (but with lockdown certainly not as an exit). An honourable draw perhaps. For what it’s worth your exchange has had the outcome of reconciling this doubter to the staunchness of the clue.
    I don’t possess dictionaries as many do (I mean – there is one somewhere) so I tend to duck alphabeticals: all those Q, X and Z words – but I enjoyed that a (few) cursory scan(s) gave the solution of 9 clues. Apart from that I found merit in that it is a pangram (no-one seems to have picked up on this).
    The only Auraucaria crossword I did while he lived was, I think, his last one where he announced that he was in palliative care. Bless.

64. Alphalpha – I have to point out that an alphabetical jigsaw using all 26 letters of the alphabet is – by definition, if you think about it – a pangram. Which is why I didn’t mention it.

65. Alphalpha @63 – It would be hard to find an alphabetical puzzle that isn’t a pangram, unless I’m misunderstanding you!

66. mrpenney@50 and bridgesong@52. I did @ 3, and pointed out that Erato is not the Muse of love but of erotic poetry. I find her name means ‘lovely’ or ‘beloved’ from the Greek ‘eratos’.

67. I’ve refrained from commenting this far, but – aarrgh ! Nothing has changed since the previous one of these a month or so ago. This was a real slog which required much googling and perhaps a smidgin of cheating to complete. Paul seems still of the opinion that an alphabetic jigsaw requires numerous obscure words and a decidedly nasty grid (of which the Guardian has many, to be fair) in order to be up to scratch. I continue to disagree !!

68. Biggles A @ 66: you did, although both Chambers and Wikipedia say that she is the muse of (lyric) love poetry, with no mention of eroticism.

69. Thanks again bridgesong. A very fine distinction, the adjectives are synonymous I find. The OED defines erotic as ‘Of or pertaining to the passion of love; concerned with or treating of love; amatory.’ and shows that the present connotation of smuttiness has only emerged in about the last century. That’s an aside though, the point at issue here is that raised by mrpenney – Erato isn’t “love” exactly, or even particularly closely.

70. Zander = pikeperch = cross? (possibly. Discuss

71. Ferryman @70: I thought of that as well, but where’s the wordplay?

72. I didn’t know the Horny answer so had Kevadore. Kevin is Harry Enfield’s teenager (I highly recommend the sketch). The final “e” then confirmed dilemma although I had no idea why it was dilemma. No clue re the armour. Thanks Paul and bridgesong.

73. bridgesong @ 71
    As I said @31 I too initially had ZANDER but didn’t enter it because I couldn’t parse it.

74. I regret the time i wasted trying to solve this. I accept Paul probably remembers how Araucaria set better than I do, but that’s nothing like the sort of thing I remember. I can’t even remember what made me think of it, but I looked for DIDDUMS in Chambers this morning. It wasn’t there (old copy before anyone corrects), but it was in Collins. I was actually thinking it would be a good word to put in a puzzle. Synchronicity is too. Boo-hoo! Altogether now …

75. A late comment, but just wanted to agree with those who really enjoyed this puzzle. It was tricky, and I made one false start and had to rub out my entries and start again, but got there in the end. More than one answer made me really smile, and I really appreciated that in these rather bleak wintry lockdown times. Thank you Paul, and also Bridgesong.

76. Bridgesong@16,
    If it’s Crossword Compiler you’re using to create the answer grid, place the cursor on a square with a number on it then press ALT-ENTER. A box will open on the screen. On the right, there are two tick boxes: “No across clue” and “no down clue”. Tick both (or at least either which applies) and accept the edit. That’s it. Cyclops taught me that on the relevant page of this site, so you can thank him, ultimately.

77. Tony Collman @76: thanks, but I use PD’s proprietary software, so I don’t know if that would work. If I remember, next time I get to blog an alphabetical, I’ll give it a try!

78. Very late here but this was too hard for me. I got quite a few clues cold, including MUSIQUE CONCRETE but not enough to start the grid. So that was that. Very disappointed as I love these alphabetical jigsaws.

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