Guardian Prize 28,506 by Crucible

59 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,506 by Crucible”

1. Thanks bridgesong. The ‘old’ in 15 is needed for the O.
   I think the definition for ICE CREAM is ok, not much else comes in scoops. Lots of food all round.
   Thanks Crucible.

2. Enjoyable puzzle. Liked POLENTA, LEGUMINOUS, ARMLET, SWEET BASIL, ALLOTMENT (which took a while as I had misspelled ABATTOIR as ABBATOIR), and BOO-BOO (loi).

   New BOCK = a strong, dark German beer; BULLY = corned/pickled beef.

   Thanks, both.

3. Collins online has r. for rare, not sure of the context but it’s appeared before.

4. At a glance I saw this was a ‘four-sector’ puzzle, and not usually my type. But the two LHS sectors went in at first pass, in fact as quickly as I could write the answers. ‘Aha’, I said, at least the whole thing will be over in minutes – but I spoke much too soon – both the RHS sectors needed several iterations. Having finally cracked LEGUMINOUS at top (not a word I use much in daily conversation), I moved down a sector and finished the puzzle with the also obscure-to-me BOCK. Thanks Crucible, for the (as-it-turned-out) worthy challenge.
   PS: Do other puzzlers have favored grid types?

5. @rodshaw, until you mentioned it, I have been solving puzzles for >25 years without even noticing the grid layout!

   Now you mention it I think I see what you mean. Certainly getting AGRICULTURIST opens up crossers in all corners.
   Like bridgesong, especially liked ABATTOIR and ARMLET.
   Quite a few I got but without parsing, so thanks bridgesong (and Timon, I didn’t know aftershave = astringent !) for the explanation.

   And Crucible for the cruciverbalism.

6. epeesharkey@5. I’ve been doing cryptics for seventy years (yes, really), and after a while you have almost every grid type held in a sort of mental bank — and I do a groan at some, based on experience.
   (just between ourselves, and speaking as an old setter) the more extreme the sectors, the easier it is to set puzzles. Today’s prize is another four-sector, and recently a very difficult cryptic had three sectors (NE, diagonal, SW & quite new-to-me) which really enhanced the difficulty.
   One of the reasons I have a very favored setter is that his grids are always delightful, but I’m not sure I could succinctly define ‘delightful’.

7. Not much to say about the puzzle itself – I enjoyed it and had no quibbles. I was amused, though, at Chambers definition of “bank” (7d), per Bridgesong, since ones perspective of whether it slopes upward or downward depends on where one’s standing.

8. Thanks bridgesong. Like rodshaw the NW corner went in easily for me and the SE corner held me up at the end. With the initial U I knew early on that 21d had to be UTRECHT but couldn’t see why mainly because I’d never heard of echt = genuine. I had the same problem with the Scots vomit (the imagination boggles) and ice = dispatch.

9. I was tickled by the positioning of EXCRETE as the last clue. Like a progressive dinner (remember them?) going down the RHS. ICECREAM, AFTERS, BOCK and then a trip to the loo.

10. The obvious theme made solving easier but I still missed BULLY and BOCK. Favourites were NYMPH and AGRICULTURIST. Thanks to both.

11. I enjoyed this although there were a couple I couldn’t parse. Didn’t notice the theme although I too have an ALLOTMENT.

    Favourites LEGUMINOUS, ARMLET, ICE CREAM, TUBER

    Thanks Crucible and bridgesong

12. Surprised by the def. in 4d. Polenta is, I think, cornmeal, added to flour in a cornbread recipe, but I’m not sure it could be termed ‘dough’ in its own right.

13. Thanks for explaining AFTERS, bridgesong/Timon. I really could not see that, although it was hard to think the answer could be anything else. I was surprised BOCK was clued as German but echt, which I didn’t think was English wasn’t. (I see the spellchecker has just redlines echt, but it is in Chambers.) Thanks, Crucible.

14. Aphid @12: I had a similar thought about polenta. I usually think of it as a cornmeal mush, a substitute for rice or mashed potatoes when serving a meat with gravy. However, it can be processed longer until it is dough-like; it’s then formed into a loaf, sliced, and then fried. The OED does list “dough” as one of its descriptors of polenta.

15. I’m surprised no-one has yet thought to include LEGUMINOUS with the theme given that it describes all members of the pea family and I certainly have them on my ALLOTMENT. (Where they grow UPWARDS, of course, and form a delightful accompaniment to GOULASH and POLENTA. I love paddymelon’s suggestions @9 as to the progression of the meal and its denouement.). And my other half would suggest the veg patch is sufficiently unkempt to provide cover for a STEGOSAUR – but that is stretching the theme too far. We have enough problems with pigeons and deer.

    Tony Santucci @14 and Aphid@12 (Sorry Aphid – NOT a great pseudonym when we are talking allotments!): polenta chips are quite delicious but I find them a bit too much of a faff to prepare I’m afraid. I’ll often order them if they’re on a menu as a nice alternative to potato.

    One of those nice steady Saturday solves (no damnation by faint praise intended) that don’t leave me feeling I’ve been through the wringer. For which many thanks to Crucible and to bridgesong for the helpful blog.

16. Thanks for the blog, 24Ac and 6D were clever, otherwise pretty humdrum for a Saturday.
    Gonzo @1 you are normally so accurate and sort out many problems, I think the O is from goat unless my brain is not working yet.
    Nice to see the use of ALPHA, this designation is occasionally wrong, most famously for Orion.

17. [ Rodshaw @4 , I do like this sort of grid with the long central down word. Generally I prefer grids when the across clues start on the first line. There are two grids I do not like in particular, one has a lot of 8 and 6 in each corner and just four 10 answers joining the very separate corners ( a recent Enigmatist ) . The other has a lot of 5 and 3 entries , very messy. ]

18. Gonzo @1: thanks, I had indeed omitted the O. Roz@16: we’re referring to ALLOTMENT, not STEGOSAUR.

19. Thanks, bridgesong. MEN for workers will hopefully be allowed as a synonym for a while yet. Many thanks Crucible. What a lovely loosely themed food, drink and horticulture puzzle … with lots appearing in the clueing as well as the solutions. Brilliant. This tenor is still struggling to understand the “like a new bass” bit of UNBOWED. Many thanks, Timon, for parsing the great AFTERS.

20. Ah. Penny dropped. A bass musical instrument is played without a bow.

21. But why is “new” in the cryptic clue to UNBOWED? For misdirection?

22. Choldunk @20&21: I think bass is the shortened name for the double bass which IS played with a bow but a new one won’t have been so is UNBOWED

23. Choldunk: I interpreted the clue to mean that a new instrument could be one to which a bow has not yet been applied, hence unbowed.

24. [ Thank you bridgesong, sorry Gonzo, I have woken up now ]
    Choldunk I took bass as the classical ( double ) bass, played with a bow, a NEW one is still unbowed.

25. [ I retain my record as the world’s slowest typist ]

26. Do the last four comments qualify as a string quartet? Roz – you’re only slow typing because your fingers haven’t yet warmed up from their dip in the (Irish?) sea! 😀

27. paddymelon@9, if you start at the top of the right side with a serving of cabbage, the trip to the loo becomes all the more urgent.

    I thought the theme was more specific than horticulture (a word that always makes me think of Dorothy Parker). All the references are to items commonly found in ALLOTMENT gardens.

    Thanks Crucible for the fun, and bridgesong for the parsing of BOCK and AFTERS, which then became my favourite clue.

28. I am wondering whether the R in STEGOSAUR is restaurant shorthand for the cooking of steaks possibly? So M would be medium and C well done (cremated)

29. Really enjoyed this one. We were thinking that 17a couldn’t ‘bully’ because we thought bully beef is salted rather than pickled. Are we missing something? My partner also said to say we did the crossword in 15 minutes but that of course would be a big lie 🙂

30. A previous discussion on the NATO spelling alphabet said that A was ALFA (and J – JULIETT), which officially they are to enable the words to be pronounced correctly in most languages. Chambers, however, does not have these spellings: just ALPHA and JULIET.

31. Jess @29: I think there’s a bit of an overlap between bully beef and corned beef. Bully (from the French boulli meaning boiled) is/was corned beef that had been boiled and set with gelatin. Corned beef has been salt cured, which is a form of pickling, and is so called because the meat was mixed with ‘corns’ of large grained rock salt.

32. [Many thanks for explaining, bridgesong and Roz. I’m bowed.
    My glacial typing is bad enough, even before the backspacing to fix typos. When will autocorrections be based on keying history and personality?!]

33. Mostly pretty straightforward, except for AFTERS, which was the only word I could think of to fit the crossers and definition, but the parsing escaped me. So thanks to Timon for helping bridgesong with that one!

    R for rare looks to me like it would be used in stamp collecting or possibly the second hand book trade.

    Bridgesong – I think perhaps your problem with the definition for ICE CREAM is that you have underlined ‘showing’ as part of it, whereas to my mind it is just a link word between the wordplay and ‘scoop maybe?’.

34. Thanks Crucible for a clever and enjoyable puzzle. AFTERS defeated me and I needed the parsing. Thanks too to bridgesong and Timon, though some of the criticisms may have been a little harsh on what seemed to me to be a very fair puzzle, and ideal for a Saturday Prize.

35. R for rare ?… I humbly propose the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST):

    https://www.rbst.org.uk/pages/faqs/category/events/tag/024%207669%206551

36. A very enjoyable Saturday puzzle with quite an abundant theme. I wanted to get the longest answer first, but I needed ASPARAGUS to help me with it, and AGRICULTURALIST then helped me with LEGUMINOUS. The kind of theme was then pretty clear.

    I got temporarily stuck in the small SE corner, and I parsed the tricky clue to AFTERS only after the grid was complete.

    Thanks to Crucible and bridgesong, and to various commenters for the interesting discussions on legumes, allotments and such.

37. Agree cellomaniac @ 27. I just couldn’t justify going from CABBAGE to LEGUMINOUS to alfalfa (?) to the AFTERS. As a butcher’s daughter I was more on the LHS, Where was the meat in the sandwich?

38. I think Shirl @ 28 could be right on rare, long time ago but have limited experience of this from part-time student jobs.
    { MrPostMark @26 I am slow because I use one finger and struggle with the shift key. What is auto-correcrtions ? or is it better I do not know ?
    The Irish Sea is part of the Atlantic Gulf Stream so surprisingly warm, even in February ]

39. Thanks Crucible and Bridgesong.
    I had to cheat a bit with this one because I bunged in HAMLET without thinking further. Also I mis-entered ALLTOMENT which completely flummoxed my attempts to spell ABBOTOIR. This comment would not work well with the dreaded autocorrect.

40. Thanks Crucible and bridgesong. I parsed everything satisfactorily except AFTERS, so thanks for the enlightenment. Completely failed to notice the theme though.

    Favourites probably ASPARAGUS and ALPHA.

    rodshaw @4 – yes, I definitely do like some grids more than others. And I do sometimes have the same groaning reaction when I see a grid I don’t like. Monday’s Paul was a particularly horrible example (seemingly designed to make a tough set of clues even harder to solve). By contrast, yesterday’s Anto was a very solver-friendly grid. Having only three crossing lights between the top and bottom half in this one from Crucible is less than ideal, but otherwise it’s fine. Today’s Picaroon is a strange one, with the 3-letter words in the middle of the grid – it would be better if they were offset rather than aligned, if you see what I mean.

41. Roz @38 – autocorrect is a “feature” of smartphones, which as the name suggests, automatically fixes typos. Purportedly. There’s a reason my friend Kim refers to it as autocorrupt.

42. [ widdersbel @40/41 the grid today is the one I mentioned earlier , a lot of 3 and 5 entries , one of my leasr favourites. I am so glad I do not have a phone to “correct ” me, it would not last long. ]

43. re 24ac… thanks for the parsing of AFTERS, that makes sense. However I found another answer that sort-of worked as a &Lit: ASTERT, an obscure word for evaded, eluded.
    Have a/voided (emptied/ ASTringent dessERT.

44. Another who couldn’t parse AFTERS but like Roz @16 nothing too exciting for a Saturday. I like your thinking paddymelon @9

    Ta Crucible & bridgesong

45. Rodshaw@4 I thought your allusion to RHS very apt, given the theme.

46. Graham@39: I did it the other way round–I entered ABBATOIR and this buffaloed me with ALLOTMENT! Entirely my fault, ABBATOIR doesn’t even work with the anagram.

    A few of these were too non-American for me to get (we don’t have ALLOTMENTs or AFTERS though I have seen both of those before, or BULLY–I guess “bully” and “cow” are both verbs here, clever). Thanks Crucible and bridgesong!

    For 13ac I thought “showing” wasn’t part of the definition but an indicator that the definition was coming, like “in” or “is” sometimes. Which made “scoop, maybe” more palatable.

47. I didn’t parse AFTERS, either. I didn’t even know aftershave was an astringent. I only really knew that word as applying to something that dries the mouth out.

    I thought ‘boke’ very obscure (unknown to me), especially for an answer which was also fairly obscure (have very vaguely heard of the beer). When I consulted the internet for a Scots word for vomit, I got ‘boak’ (for which I later found ‘boke’ is one of several alternatives).

    Aphid@12, I also though “dough” was a strange definition for POLENTA, which I wouldn’t think of describing in that way. As well as describing the cornmeal itself (in Italian, at any rate), it also describes a thick porridge made with cornmeal, but not thick enough to qualify as a dough, imo. (Reading on, I see Tony Santucci @14 has explained it.)

    Roz@38, ironic that you ask “What is auto-correcrtions (sic) ?” Maybe you need autocorrect?

    Bridgesong,18dn is a DD, surely, not a CD (although the second of the two definitions is cryptic).

    No one else has mentioned it, so I suppose it must be ok, but I thought the wordplay for 11ac, LEGUMINOUS was dubious. To me the proper word order (which wouldn’t work in the surface, of course) would be: “clear when say admitted”. “When” seems simply surplus to requirements in the actual clue.

48. Tony Collman @47. As someone who grew up in Glasgow, ‘boak’ was very familiar, but I certainly would, if unchallenged, have spelled it thus rather than in the manner required for the clue. Perhaps due to an element of onomatopoeia, the vowel, as pronounced, is longer than the vowel in ‘broke’.

49. rodshaw @6 (and various comments by Roy afterwards) thanks for the further insight into grids – something else to look out for!

    And rodshaw ~ congratulations and ad multos annos on cryptic crosswords , 70 years is pretty impressive!

50. Thanks PostMark @31. That explains it !

51. Everyone has gone home it seems.

    No matter – I enjoyed the puzzle, had Beck instead of BOCK and claim (via paddymelon@37) a namecheck (At last!: An ambition achieved! One down….) for ALPHA.

    Thanks Crucible and thanks bridgesong. (I don’t remember struggling with AFTERS – must rootle through the recycling…..)(of course in hard-copy I enter only the crossers and occasionally post-prandial solve may incorporate a lacuna).

52. Tony @47
    I had similar thoughts to yours about LEGUMINOUS. A perfect (succinct and economical) clue would not have ‘when’ inserted at all, but as you imply the surface has to have it. In the end, I decided that the word order chosen (making a decent surface) can be justified on the basis that ‘say, when admitted’ has the same meaning as ‘say admitted’, and one can even contrast it with ‘say, when added’ or ‘say, when confused’, which would indicate two other completely different wordplays. [These other examples may not read well, but I hope my point is made.]

53. Alan, I spent some time trying to think of an 8-letter word which “clear”would be an example of, in which I could insert AS (“when”) to satisfy the definition “like pulse”. That’s how the clue reads, naturally. Your reasoning about reading the clue sounds very contrived to me and really doesn’t seem (to me, at least) to follow naturally from the words as they fall in the clue. ‘Say, when admitted to clear, is like pulse’ is cryptically correct (if clumsy) and has the words “say when admitted” in the clue order, but is nonsense on the surface. Hope this makes sense; I’m a bit tired.

54. Tony: but you’ve quoted the clue incorrectly. It’s not ‘Say, when admitted to clear, is like pulse’, it’s ‘Like pulse clear, say, when admitted’ which is no more nonsensical than 99% of crossword clues!

55. I wasn’t quoting the clue when I wrote that. Keep up!

56. Very enjoyable puzzle. AFTERS defeated me: having noticed that TART can mean both “astringent” and “dessert” (and fits with the crossers), I got stuck in that rut and spent far too much time and energy trying to figure out how “have avoided” could work out to “A_” and thereby spell some (to me) previously unknown (but no doubt delicious!) species of tart. After running through the entire alphabet in that second position (“abtart”, “actart”…) I gave up. Ah well. Lovely puzzle overall!

57. Tony @55. So you were making up a different version of Crucible’s clue and then saying that it was clumsy?

    Chris B @56. I was in the same rut as you. I wonder if Crucible did that on purpose?

58. SH, my original comment on the clue is @47. Later comments are in response to AlanB’s attempt to justify it, which I found unconvincing. Various rearrangements of the words illustrated possibilities whose cryptic readings did or did not, imo, lead to the word LEGUMINOUS.

59. Bock and echt new to me and cabbage as verb.
    Good puzzle. Thanks both.

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