Guardian ‘Prize’ Crossword 28,524 / Philistine (14 August 2021)

65 comments on “Guardian ‘Prize’ Crossword 28,524 / Philistine (14 August 2021)”

1. A very fast and easy solve – enjoyed the reminder of what constitutes a decent WALDORF SALAD, but I have to give my five-groan-award for the all-time-most-contrived-yet-glaringly-obvious clue to 24A, 24D. Maybe in future this should be commemorated as the CHARCOAL trophy, to be awarded whenever appropriate.
   PS: If anybody is interested in another easy-to-solve prize-puzzle, try this 2005 offering by Araucaria at #23,424 which I dropped across yesterday – (yes, you read that correctly, by the master himself – but in this case almost every clue sparkled with style and wit)

2. ACD

   Thanks to Goliath and Gaufrid. A good workout. I pieced out and parsed the various items I did not know (e.g., SHAWARMA, LIMONCELLO) but I was slowed down because I started with paranormal rather than PEDESTRIAN.

3. Thanks Gaufrid. My only quibbles with this are that there was something of a surfeit of anagrams and that the enjoyment was over rather too quickly. I wondered about 23a, the solution is plural while the clue is singular but I can’t see how it could be better worded without a major change. Can’t say I would have known the contents of 4, 25 but admired the way they were worked into the grid

4. Like Biggles A, I wondered about ‘type of plum’ clueing the plural GREENGAGES, but I quickly came to the conclusion that because one can say ‘Greengages are a type of plum’ the clue is perfectly ok.
   I enjoyed this puzzle very much and thought it was imaginatively clued throughout. I particularly liked RESIGNED (with its two anagrams), APPLES, WALNUTS, CHARCOAL and CHUTZPAH.
   Thanks to Philistine and Gaufrid.

5. I enjoyed the food and drink. The first clue SHAWARMA is &lit (I think ! never too sure what this really means). Anyhow I really liked this one!
   Likewise the composition of the WALDORF SALAD – cunningly done, and a nice demonstration of how themes can thrive on non-specialist topics.
   As Biggles A @3, I found the enjoyment over all too quickly. But sometimes that can be nice too for a change!

   So thanks Philistine for an a la carte romp through a summertime menu, and Gaufrid for explaining it all so patiently. And to all my fellow diners, salut!

6. ARRRGH

   21A is so obvious now, I couldn’t see past the fact that MOROSE is also an anagram of ROMEO + S.

   My favourite sign in the credits was flowery twats, as that was the only complete anagram used, how they got that past the censors though…

   Thanks Philistine and Gaufrid.

7. Enjoyable solve.

   Liked: CHUTZPAH, RENEGADE (egad in rené); IRISH SEA, IDEATE, RESIGNED, PEDESTRIAN.

   New: I knew of Waldorf salad with walnuts, not cashews (4/25) but then I solved 17ac.

   Did not parse: 3d GRAPES – oh, I see now that is a good one!

   Thanks, both.

8. Enjoyed this and for the first time I managed to complete a prize without using any aids at all and managed to parse all but two (GRAPES and WALNUTS).

   Favourites were IRISH SEA, GREENGAGES, LIMONCELLO, CHIMERA, EMINENCE

   Thanks Philistine and Gaufrid

9. Great puzzle. 17 was my favourite. Like Michelle @7 I couldn’t parse GRAPES – so obvious now! I parsed 4,25 as FA World may be = Wardolf, a combination = Salad, of 22 etc = definition. Thanks Gaufrid & Philistine.

10. Good fun. I realised I’d seen the WALDORF SALAD episode enough times I could almost replay the list of ingredients from it. I do feel my LOI should really not have been SHAWARMA but I had never heard of it and it was was hidden very neatly. Thanks, Philistine, thanks, Gaufrid.

11. KeithS, were you expecting Basil to make an appearance?

12. Thank you for your positive and thorough blog, Gaufrid. I too found this a aparkling and enjoyable puzzle and I particularly savoured such beautiful words as 15a CHIMERA (which always makes me think of “shimmering”) and 1d CHUTZPAH. I smiled as the 4d15a WALDORF SALAD theme emerger – like KeithS@10, this had me harking back to the much-re-watched “Fawlty Towers” series which we also refer to “Flowery Twats” at our place, Blah@6.
    My solve unfolded quite well without aids (cf. Fiona Anne@8) though I didn’t find it easy or quick, but just the right level of difficulty to make it a pleasurable experience.
    Yummy fare! so many thanks to clever Philistine.

13. Thanks for the blog , some nice clues but I feel the theme was given away far too easily by 4D 25Ac, especially due to the famous episode of F T . This partly led to this being over far too quickly for a Saturday.

14. I like a good surface and Philistine is the master of them (see PEDESTRIAN, ELEVATOR, BEAGLES, TARRAGON, CASHEW). Nothing (in retrospect) too difficult but I had to Google SHAWARMA to confirm it existed.

    (Some quibbling on the Guardian btl thread last week from those who had plausibly solved RENEGADE as GAD in RENEE and then couldn’t reconcile her with the Frenchman.)

15. JinA @ 12

    Took me a while too – didn’t find it easy – but got there in the end which was very satisfying.

16. Could one of you lovely people explain why WALNUTS = ‘these are different’?

17. Digbydavies @16: I just took it to mean walnuts were different to cashews but maybe that’s too simple. Like Rodshaw @1, a fast solve but sparkling too

    Ta Philistine & Gaufrid

18. PT @ 11, no you only put Basil in the ratatouille…

19. Thanks AlanC @17 that’s all I could think of. Apart from that a fun solve for a FT fan.

20. Agree with rodshaw @1 on 24a/24d – almost thought it was too obvious to be the correct answer, and yet it had to be. That was my FOI, unsurprisingly.

    Biggles A @3 – I did hesitate to write in GREENGAGES for the same reason, but again decided that had to be the right answer. I think it’s fine though, as per Alan B’s reasoning. [as an aside, never mind Fawlty Towers, greengages always make me think of Lucky Jim]

    I was also thrown by 14a – again, the answer seemed obvious but I don’t remember seeing a double anagram like this before, which made me doubt myself.

    Got the WALDORF SALAD from APPLES and CELERY – didn’t need to think about parsing WALNUTS or GRAPES, which is just as well because I’d been staring at 3d for ages – the wordplay was obvious enough, I just couldn’t dig the solution out from my addled brain. Grapes! Of course! And “these are different” simply made no sense to me as a definition. Oh well!

    Favourites here probably RENEGADE, TARRAGON and BEAGLES for the neat surfaces.

    Thanks Gaufrid and Philistine.

21. As usual on a Saturday, it’s all been said – favourites picked out, etc – by the time I’ve got round to the blog, after tackling the day’s challenge.

    Just remains to say many thanks, as ever, to Philistine and Gaufrid, before going on to a second helping of Mr Brydon in today’s FT Rodriguez – we really are being spoilt!

22. I meant Buccaneer, of course.

23. I think there’s something else going on with WALNUT = ‘these are different’. The ‘wal’ bit comes from Old English wealh (foreign, hence ‘different’). The walnut was a ‘foreign nut’ because it was introduced from Gaul and Italy, unlike the native hazelnut.

    The same root can be seen in WALes and CornWALL, and also in Swiss German wälsch. D Wälschschwyz is the French-speaking part of Switzerland, seen from the perspective of German speakers.

    Many thanks Philistine and Gaufrid, great fun as always.

24. SHAWARMA was a new word for me and I’d heard of CHUTZPAH, but didn’t know what it meant. The rest was straightforward, not too easy, not too difficult. Thanks to Philistine and Gaufrid.

25. Thanks Philistine and Gaufrid.
    A satisfying solve, especially when you make up words and find out afterwards they actually already exist (eg IDEATE)!

26. Thanks essexboy @23, lovely bit of scholarly etymology…dyu think Phil was across that? Maybe. And ten consecutive consonants, is that a record or wot?!

27. I solved this entire crossword including finding the Waldorf Salad melange novel and fun.
    Never knew of or saw the WATERY FOWLS theme until some of the later comments in the blog. I rem laughing at FT as a callow youth (I was about 10 or 12 when it came out), but I’m not that attached to know individual episodes or whatnot.

    Makes this a great example – you can appreciate the crossword while knowing nothing about the theme.

    And indeed thanks to essexboy @23 very interesting derivation for the wal-nut!

28. ginf @26: yep, pretty sure it was deliberate on Philistine’s part. He is a gifted linguist (among other talents) and often includes linguistic bits and pieces in his puzzles. This is from his ‘meet the setter’ interview:

    It’s interesting that cryptic puzzles seem to be confined to Britain and her areas of former influence. I believe that other languages can adapt to the cryptic crossword. German and Arabic would be hopeless, but French is ideally suited, especially for charade and homonym clues. One day I’ll have a go at compiling one in French.

    [Ten consecutive consonants in Wälschschwyz… well yes, if we hold to y being a consonant. In Schwyzertütsch, traditionally, y is used for the ‘ee’ vowel sound. It’s not quite so many in standard German Welschschweiz, although 8 is still quite impressive. Same number as Angstschweiß, which is my usual reaction to seeing a Vlad 😉 ]

29. Ta for the link eb @28, yeah have read that interview before, but had forgotten the linguistic content [prob at the time too shocked at thinking that Miss P and Kermit had got up to anything like that 😉 ]

30. Wonderful erudition from MrEssexboy @23 and 28. I love learning a bit about languages, they are my weakest area. I am still going to disagree about 17AC only because I am so stubborn, “these are different ” because they are walnuts and not cashew nuts.

    I have discussed crosswords in other languages with various people who know a lot more than me. The general consensus seems to be that English is by far the most suitable.

31. Gaufrid I think the definition of 10, 2 is “steer clear” rather than “steer clear of,” since the answer is STAY AWAY, not “stay away from.”

    Graham@25 When you assemble a word you didn’t know from the wordplay and then find that it’s really a word, Eileen has given us a lovely name for it, from a time when that happened to her. It’s a jorum (word Eileen assembled from the wordplay and then found was real.)

    Thanks to both Philistine for an enjoyable puzzle and Gaufrid for the explanations.

32. [Roz @30: we always think our own language is the best 😉 I agree with Philistine’s suggestion that French is great for charades and homophones (and double entendres – I can certainly imagine a Miss Piggy clue in French!)

    Here’s a favourite (homophonic) charade:
    Mon premier est une étendue d’eau ; mon second est le cri qu’on pousse quand on a perdu 10 francs (this was in pre-euro days) ; mon troisième est très étroit. Mon tout est une institution très célèbre.]

33. Thanks, Valentine @31. 😉

    I’m amazed to see that JORUM goes back six years – to a Puck alphabetical puzzle I blogged.
    The clue was “Endless task, getting drink for punchbowl”
    JORUM
    JO[b] [task] + RUM [drink] [Collins: ‘prob. after Jorum, who brought vessels of silver, gold and brass to King David [II Samuel 8:10]’

    I later came up with this definition: “an unlikely-sounding answer obtained by building the word from its component parts, with the help of crossers, with a sigh of surprised satisfaction on finding that the word does exist”, which I’ve been chuffed to see one or two other folk using.

34. Perhaps we do think of our own language, but people talk about a lack of different endings for the vast majority of nouns and verbs. The “mongrel” nature of English, just the number of Scottish words is widely used by Azed. The large number of words with a huge variety of meanings , sometimes meanings that are directly opposite.

35. I’ve been doing Quiptics and Everymans (Everymen?) for a while now. Last week I couldn’t get anywhere with the prize, but completed it this week, so I’m glad that the difficulty varies. I was also helped by memories of Fawlty Towers!

36. essexboy @23 – good knowledge! And yes, that has to be what Philistine was thinking, otherwise the choice of wording in the clue is just a bit odd.

37. I have seen very few episodes of Fawlty Towers, but the Waldorf salad one happened to be one of them. I can still see Basil fulminating about it — but then, he always fulminates, so what’s so special about that?

    I think “jorum” is becoming a term of art on this website. It was a jorum of my own that indirectly led me here. Back when the Times puzzle used to appear in the NY Daily News (Murdoch paper, so had free access) I may have been the only person who did it from the Daily News copy. I assembled a word from the cryptic bits that looked like nothing I’d ever seen, so I googled it, and found a) that it was some kind of china and b) that there was a site called Times for the Times that blogged the Times puzzle, and there was my word. Going there led me to fifteensquared, the NYDN stopped carrying the Times puzzle, and here I’ve been ever since.

38. And how did I discover that the Daily News carried the Times puzzle? Not from reading it, but because once somebody across from me on the subway was holding a copy with the crossword folded around back, and the grid with lots of black spaces looks very different from the mostly white grid of a non-cryptic American style. So I immediately bought a copy and there it was. Then I discovered I could get it in Hartford and didn’t have to leave it for my occasional trips to New York City!

39. [Valentine @37/38:
    New York (East Side) trip surprisingly results in unintended but happy discovery (11) ]

40. Hi again, Valentine – more Serendipity. 😉

    I owe my own discovery of 15², as I’ve recounted before, to a misspelling, thirteen years ago, of the Brontë sisters’ brother in this puzzle as Brarontemwell (now corrected, I see on the Guardian’s own website archive!)
    I googled “Bramwell, ronte” and it came up with Shirley’s comment.

    essexboy @39 – absolutely brilliant! I just refreshed before posting (I’ve spent a lot of time delving in archives!) – please believe me that I’d typed my first sentence already!

41. Of course, that should have been Bramwell.

42. Essexboy
    J’adore la charade. Pour que ca marche chez nous, il faudrait avoir l’indicateur homophonique pour treize et trois!

43. Philistine1 et Eileen @40: merci!

    Ben: I missed your post @35 earlier – congratulations! I remember your cry of pain on last week’s blog, so I’m glad this week was a more comfortable experience.

44. Thanks Philistine for a fun crossword. I especially enjoyed LIMONCELLO and CASHEW; I needed a look-up for CHUTZPAH and GREENGAGES. Thanks Gaufrid for the blog.

45. thanks Essexboy @43. I might have to quit while I’m ahead!

46. essexboy @39: that is excellent. But a few days ago (General Discussion @66) you were saying you would bar all indirectness in anagrams. Have you had a change of heart? 🙂

47. [Lord Jim @46 – no, I’m just a complete (and possibly congenital) hypocrite 😉
    I’m fully expecting flagellation.]

48. essexboy – I’ve just looked up your comment.

    You couldn’t have dug yourself a deeper hole but bravo for
    keeping digging – I love it!

49. Lord Jim @46 (and essexboy & Eileen). To be fair, @66 on GD essexboy did say “Of course there will always be times when a setter breaks the ‘rules’ for the sake of a brilliant clue, in which case the flagellation inflicted should not be too severe.” But as I pointed out shortly afterwards, there are no “rules” – it’s just a matter of perceived fairness. Nothing remotely unfair about ‘New York (East Side) trip surprisingly’ so we can put away the cat.

50. Another one where I ran opposite to most on what I found hard—CHUTZPAH and SHAWARMA are commonplace in my milieu, (there’s even a building/public art piece New Yorkers have pejoratively nicknamed “the Shawarma”), but I’d never heard of GREENGAGE(S) plums, or that use of CHIMERA. Also, no one else seems bothered that MOOSE have antlers, not horns…?

    Anyway a fun one; I loved BEAGLES, and GRAPES once Gaufrid explained it to me. Thanks Gaufrid and Philistine!

51. Didn’t know Fuji apples and didn’t see or know SHAWARMA. Enjoyed the theme.
    Thanks both.

52. Checked back into the party to find more jorum chat. I suddenly wondered what such a thing looked like, so I googled it and clicked “images.” I recommend it, though I still haven’t much idea of what an actual jorum looked like. There are a lot of interesting pictures from the Jorum Studio in Scotland, whoever they are, and a picture of a lady who could be singing Wagnerian soprano roles on the cover of a book called “Mrs. Atomic Partlett’s Jorum of Tea.” I mean, who coulda guessed?

    I’m afraid nobody will see this, which, given Mrs. Atomic P, is a pity.

53. Lord Jim @ 46 I was too polite to point out MrEssexboy breaking his own rules.
    Perhaps he has decided to align himself with my views. I did not need to frown at his splendid clue since it satisfies my own conditions.

54. essexboy @ numerous. Happy discovery! As a linguist by training, I’m impressed by your contributions. Philistine’s playfulness with language is greatly appealing.

    Re: the consonants/vowels/semi-vowels. One of our jokes as teachers of English to speakers of languages other than English, was how do you spell ‘fish’? Answer: ghoti.

    I feel sorry for adult learners of English as second language. It’s so unfortunate it’s become a lingua franca, one of the worst in the world because of all of its influences and lack of correspondence between symbol and sound.

    If it’s not labouring the joke and (if I haven’t missed something in posts above) could you please give the solution to your post @ 32:
    “Mon premier est une étendue d’eau ; mon second est le cri qu’on pousse quand on a perdu 10 francs (this was in pre-euro days) ; mon troisième est très étroit. Mon tout est une institution très célèbre.”

    Or at least the letter count and in which language? Even with Philistine’s comment about the (missing) homophone indicator, I’m still stuck at some profanity in second position. 🙂

55. Just catching up with the rest of the blog 24 hours on looks like I missed a fascinating day of diversions.

    Jorum is a great word to have been repurposed, I suspect we’ve all had such moments.

    PM@54 the answer is is French (2,7,9). Philistines addition is a big help to the last syllable.

    EB Je l’ai beaucoup aime! Encore s’il vous plait.

    Thanks EB, Valentine, Eileen, philistine et al.

56. [Thanks Roz, pdm, Blah.

    pdm @54 – I won’t give the game away (just yet) on this page in case you or others are still working on it (using Philistine’s and Blah’s helpful hints) but the solution to the French charade is here.]

57. Splendid French clue as well but remember for a crossword you would need about thirty of these and most of them reasonably brief. I will ask the linguists again in September about crosswords in other languages.

58. [essexboy @23,28
    Thanks for that education on Schwyzertütsch. I have seen and heard that language often and used to know several words, but I had never come across ‘Wälschschwyz’ before. A very interesting diversion for me on ‘wal’ and the various places and languages in which it took root.]

59. [Alan B @58: yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I remember a tutor at university telling me that the ‘wal’ root is present, in some form or other, in all Germanic languages, and that basically it means ‘bloody foreigner’! I think he was over-simplifying for comic effect, but it certainly stuck in my mind. On Wälschschwyz, I’m sure I’ve heard it more often as two words (d wälschi Schwyz) eg in weather forecasts, but I can’t find any evidence online. Perhaps not surprising, as most of the time Swiss German is just spoken, not written down.]

60. Julie @12, I pronounced chimera as “shimmerah” (in my head) for years before I found out it’s ka?m??r? (Collins has audio if you don’t know how to read that).

    Gladys@14, there are some brilliant surfaces here, like 26ac, but others like 13dn don’t really make sense (to me, at least).

    Grantinfreo@26, as Essexboy says @28, the Y in Wälschschwyz is a vowel. Can’t be too many words with the sequence SCH twice in immediate succession, though? Or maybe there can in German?

    Essexboy@32, et la réponse est …?

    Essexboy@39, SERENDIPITY (with an accurate definition, unlike BLAH’s clue for it in GD!)

61. Julie, you definitely won’t be able to read it as 15² doesn’t render some of the IPA characters!

62. EB @56, ok, I got the answer at the link, but my French isn’t up to understanding the whole puzzle. Could you explain, please?

63. [Tony C @62 – and others who may be wondering…

    The charade I posted @32 works as follows:
    1. une étendue d’eau (an expanse of water) = lac
    2. the cry you utter when you’ve lost 10F = oh! mes dix francs!
    3. très étroit (very narrow) is a homophone of treize et trois (13 + 3) = seize (16)

    lac-oh-mes-dix-francs-seize = La Comédie-Française (the oldest active theatre company in the world, where, despite the name, there aren’t a huge number of laughs to be had – it’s very much associated with Molière and the ‘greats’ of French theatre).]

64. Thanks. I was reading étendue as entendue and thinking it must mean a homophone.

65. PS, maybe you should post the answer where you originally set the puzzle, too?

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