Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 28,691 by Paul (26 February 2022)

61 comments on “Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 28,691 by Paul (26 February 2022)”

1. Total agreement with this hilarious blog. Great puzzle and nothing worth adding to mc_rapper67 (though I just did).

2. Lots of fun, thanks Paul and mc_r. The beautifully measured pass passed me by completely, but I was monumentally distressed that the truncated bog was not MORass. Dems de breaks!

3. I thought this was an excellent Saturday puzzle that took longer, and caused me more head-scratching, than most. My last answer in was SLIDE RULE, which I didn’t fully ‘get’ until some time after I had entered it. I thought Paul showed great imagination not only with the variety of wordplay in evidence here but also in his choice of words (and names) such as JIM-JAMS and KIM JONG-UN.

   Thanks to Paul, and to mc_rapper67 for the entertaining blog.

4. Very enjoyable Saturday morning, courtesy of my favourite setter. I particularly liked the surfaces for TRAITORS GATE, SLIDE RULE, BRIGHTON PIER and THE MOVIES., and the sporting mini-theme. Thanks to Paul and rapper.

5. Thanks mc_rapper67. I found it hard to get started and progress was spasmodic. 17d was LOI and I would never have got there without in desperation Googling South American volcanoes. I’ve never heard of a slide rule pass either but the crossers and the first three words made the answer clear. I’ve still got several of the things somewhere. Paradoxically perhaps, they only ever gave an approximate measure. Never did connect ‘bomb’ and ‘mint’ so thanks for that.

6. Nice puzzle, challenging but not too hard. I was temporarily held up by DUMPER TRUCK, since for the last several decades all I’ve heard was dump truck.
   [To AlanB@yesterday: that’s all right, I have an association with a well-known h-less entity too.]

7. I really enjoyed this. It took me almost the whole week (interspersed with a rain bomb!). Lots of fun, all the way. Thank you, Paul for the entertainment and mc_r a blog that does it justice.

8. We have a commentator here (Oz footy), known for his coinages, whose version of sly drool is ‘centimetre perfect’. Yes, fun puzzle from Paul, ta, and superwitty blog from rapper, ta too. Jim-jams is neat now I see it, bunged it in at the time. Had to look up BAME to get the gist of that one, and ditto the NK leader, a bung without seeing mojo. So not too diligent a solve here in Freo, but that’s me.

9. … and like Biggles A, had too google S Am volcanos for 17d …

10. It had to be KIM JONG-UN (or perhaps his dad) just from the enumeration, but I failed completely to see the parsing. JIM-JAMS was another where the parsing passed me by completely. And I too confess to having to Google for South American volcanoes. So not the easiest of solves for me, but it was fun. I owned a slide rule, briefly, but then calculators arrived and I never looked back. (And the reference to the pass left me puzzled too.). Thanks for explaining all the things I’d missed, mc_rapper67, and thanks too to Paul.

11. Managed to get most of the bottom half quite quickly, then slowed and took me a long time to complete the top half

    Liked: SPOILER ALERT, TRAITORS GATE, DUMPER TRUCK.
    GEE-GEE made me laugh. Liked the surface of KIM JONG-UN

    Thanks Paul and mc_rapper67

12. Thanks mc etc. Had to google south american volcanoes and also the exquisitely UK-specific BAME.otherwise straightforward. A chuckle for the query tagged on to the DPRK leader.

13. I’ve always had mixed feelings about this setter – Paul’s profligacy promotes the promulgation of palpably problematic puzzles. But this one was a gem. Clever wordplay combined with trenchant surfaces (25a KIM JONG-UN), and for me a clue for the all-time album – 22a JIM-JAMS. The humour and imaginative surfaces provided much to delight throughout the crossword.

    And mc_rapper67 was up to the challenge with an equally witty blog. Your creatively constructed theme was a real treat.

    Thanks Paul and mc for an evening of pure pleasure.

14. Well, I once worked for a few years as a volcanologist, and I had to search SA volcanoes: not the most well known of them, I would say. It was a while ago, but I think I got through this OK over several sittings – not the most annoying of Pauls. I do remember the WHITEBOARD/WARSAW pair was the last, and I kicked myself when they fell, and they were both very gettable. Thanks, Paul and mc_rapper67.

15. thanks mc_rapper67. I loved the homophone in SLIDE RULE. Neither being mathematical nor sporty I had no idea about the beautifully-measured bit.

    Like others I googled S. American volcanoes, only at the very end, because I didn’t think that Paul would set a googleable definition. South American peoples or animals was where I was heading, and at that stage there was still the possibility of a pangram with those languages having lots of Xs, and Zs.

    I hope Paul has his SPOILER ALERT turned on, with the KIM JONG-UN clue, and the unfortunately timely clue of the ‘border closed off by capricious soviet’ in THE MOVIES, it’s NO JOKE.
    There’s also a ‘sustained campaign’ in WARSAW, and ‘dictator’ in NOSE, and ‘confrontational encounter’ in HEAD TO HEAD.

    What about ‘personage found shortly’ in STAR? Much has been written and about LMS and VP. And the recent
    public dressing down of a department head turning him into a ‘speechless’ one (MIMIC) who ‘quivers when speaking (SHEIKS). I wonder if the tone was set in 1A, TRAITOR’S GATE, in a prominent position on the grid, with pretty graphic wordplay.

    My favourites were the cutesy JIM-JAMS, and SPOILER ALERT, clever.

16. paddymelon@15!

    WOW!!!

    My favs: SLIDE RULE and JIM JAMS

17. liked NOSE too!

    ‘for a dictator’ as a homophone indicator is smart stuff.

18. Thanks for the blog , COTAPAXI was new to me but the clue was very clear so fair enough. REINSURED and NO JOKE were clever clues. Paul often seems to use the same words as me.

19. My sort of puzzle. No gimmicks. Happy.
    Thanks Paul and mc_rapper67.

20. I remember COTOPAXI coming up a few years ago – no doubt an archivist can track down the date and setter. No problem for those who read this catchy poem by W.J. Turner in school.
    https://www.bartleby.com/103/158.html
    Perhaps we’ll see CHIMBORAZO or POPOCATAPETL before long.

21. paddymelon @15 points out something I’ve commented upon occasionally over the last couple of weeks – the number of references that appear to touch upon current events in Eastern Europe. None of it will be intentional but it’s hard to escape.

    As others have said, it’s nice to encounter a Paul without theme, complex interdependent devices and smut. I enjoy all of those – often all at once – but it’s good to see something straightforward occasionally. Not that the clues in themselves were straightforward. Far from it and several took serious teasing out.
    I’m proud to announce that I didn’t Google until after entering COTOPAXI: I thought the only South American volcano I’d heard of was Mexico’s Popacatepetl but somewhere deep down the Ecuadorean mountain rang a faint bell and I think the crossers must have helped as I still can’t make much sense of the wordplay.

    Thanks Paul and mc for the witty rap

22. Quenbarrow @20: we crossed. I wonder how many other (non-vulcanologist) blogs will feature the name Popocatepetl twice before 8am on a Saturday morning?

23. Lovely stuff. A slide-rule pass of a crossword. Thanks, Paul. Lots of chuckles, not least at NO JOKE. JIM-JAMS was a cracker. My main oversight was to miss “screws” as an anagram indicator in … OVERSIGHT. Another to add to the mental list.

    Great blog too, mc_rapper. I understand and value the underline in your handle. Not sure the underlines in the parsing help all that much. It’s usually fairly obvious that a word has been split in the solution. COAX = “flatter” is not the most obvious synonym. Might someone be scratching their head about what co-ax (cable) has to do with anything? But I’m only a Saturday jack.

24. Found it , Chifonie August 26 2019 , I even wrote down the clue which is very similar. COTAPAXi as Queenbarrow @ 20 said has been in a few years ago.

25. [ Popacatepetl is prominent in Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry . It is of course North American , MrPostMark @21 ]

26. Found this one very straightforward, which is a nice change for me as I’ve barely got halfway through most of the Graun prizes this year!

    Also had to Google for Cotopaxi. I’d have been OK if it had been the other volcano mentioned due to singing scales of “Popocatepetl, copper-plated kettle” as a vocal warmup exercise in a past life 🙂

    Thanks mc_rapper67 for your clear explanations as always, and due explaining SLIDE RULE where I could not understand the definition.

    Favourites for me were TRAITORS GATE and KIM JONG-UN.

27. Did anyone else have to learn this poem at school? Can’t say I liked it, but it burned the names of those volcanoes into my memory.

    Alas, the traitors’ heads on spikes were displayed over the gate of London Bridge, not the TRAITORS GATE of the Tower of London.

28. RH side and lower half were easier for me.

    New: COTOPAXI, LESSER ANTILLES.

    I did not fully parse 15ac, 24ac (could not see past LOSS in BOM), 25ac KIM JONG UN apart from KIN around something.

    Thanks, both.

29. JIM-JAMS was my favourite, but SLIDE RULE was good too. [Roz I am intrigued to know whether you often talk about Brighton Pier and Benin or Slide Rules and Whiteboards]

30. “Slide rule pass” is often heard on Match of the Day on BBC, or in football reports in the Guardian and others, but to me (having used a slide rule) it betrays an ignorance of what the SLIDE RULE was used for. Such a pass is ‘measured’, as the clue says, but a slide rule does not have millimetres on it!

    COTOPAXI was my first thought on reading ‘South American volcano’ in the clue, but it took me a while to convince myself, as ‘flatter’=>COAX is a bit of a reach for me.

    A “vanilla” crossword, as mc_rapper says, but when used sparingly this can be a subtle and pleasing flavour. Thanks to setter and blogger.

31. Annoyingly the guardian’s own solution for 12 ac is 6 letters. Those of us who use the app don’t get a ?.

32. Should have read tick at the end

33. On Paul’s wavelength for this & didn’t need all week to complete as is the norm. Couldn’t parse 15,24 or 26 A – all involving synonym truncation – so thanks to mc_rapper67 for explanations. Ms Womble also remembered the ‘volcanic’ poem but I had to rely on the parsing.

34. Good point Sheffield Hatter@ 30 , I have never used a slide rule but I have seen them, they are for calculation not measurement.
    [ Petert@29 I do say and use WHITEBOARDS a lot but I was not thinking of that, it was other things which l will not mention. I think Paul must be a similar age to me ]

35. In the online version, if you reveal 3dn, you get T?S?R !!

36. As a child I recall my mother reeling off the volcanos “Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Popacatapetl” as something she had learned at school. You never know when these things will come in handy.

37. Thanks both and I needed help with a lot of parsing today, thanks to the interplanetary (for me) leaps from BOM(b) to ‘mint’, G-UN to ‘murderer’ and R-AN TILL to ‘fled farm’ (this last I should have seen but got stuck on ‘farm’ being ANT(h)ILL from which ‘houses’ (h) had fled). No complaints really – I enjoyed the struggle and only finished the puzzle this morning.

38. Very good from Paul. I now know one more South American volcano than I did before. Thanks to Google for that one; thanks also to mc_rapper for a very entertaining and well explained blog.

    Google does help with the obscurities; I wonder how we solvers coped in the dark ages. Then again maybe without Google, setters couldn’t find so many obscurities to put in their puzzles in the first place.

    I briefly used a SLIDE RULE at school, for arithmetic as I recall, not for measuring; then log tables were issued and the rule slid no more. Some of us loved maths; some of us hated it. There was a lot of division.

    But the football reporter’s cliche can still apply to a pass which has been accurately calculated if not measured. Best current example is Harry Kane whose work calls to mind that of Glenn Hoddle, the pass master.

39. I found this quite difficult but Paul on form, I thought.

    I didn’t know SLIDE RULE pass – [when I was doing my Ph.D. I had a race with a colleague to calculate something with her using a SLIDE RULE and me using log tables – of course, I lost, and then I bought a SLIDE RULE].

    I liked JIM-JAMS with the nice use of onesie, COTOPAXI for the use of coax, (Chambers: 1.To persuade by fondling or flattery ), and GEE-GEE for the horse with a bigger heart.

    Thanks Paul and mc_rapper67.

40. I recall the slide rule I had donkeys years ago also being marked with metric and imperial measurements, so you could also use it to measure.

41. I still have the plastic slide-rule I used back in the 60’s (I haven’t used it since, I just can’t throw anything away). It has a dozen scales on both surfaces, but in the middle of the slidey part is a linear scale marked in inches and fractions thereof. Not very convenient for measurement, but it can be done. I also have my father’s old sliderule (same reason, must be a real antique, made from wood and ivory) and it has a ruler on each edge, one in inches and the other in centimetres, and clearly intended for measurement. However, that must be a bonus function, since the rulers do not participate in the sliderule’s main operation.

42. [It just occurred to me that brilliant old tech like the slide rule has been overtaken in the smart phone era, so I wondered if anyone has come up with a slide rule app, to turn your phone into a virtual slide rule. Checked the App Store and sure enough, there is! I don’t know if it’s any good as I can’t remember how to use a slide rule, and I don’t want to spend 89p.]

43. Thanks mc_rapper67, great summary. I was convinced the volcano ended in ….CAPI so ended up having to Google it (would never have got coax = flatter) and am now amazed and amused at how many people know it thanks to a rhyme learned at school or at mother’s knee, one of the many delights of this site. The puzzle gave me plenty of entertainment for which many thanks Paul.

44. Entertaining blog with clear explanations of several unparsed clues.

    Nice to have a straightforward crossword for a change.

    When I was doing A-level maths, our maths teacher, who was cool enough to ride a Ducati bike, brought in a slide rule (and log tables). He explained how to use them. We looked on with some bemusement before going back to our calculators.

    gladys@27 thanks for the poem link; what an obscure thing to have to memorise but just goes to show no learning is wasted 😉

    pdm@15, 1961B@38 😀

    Thanks Paul & mc_rapper

45. quenbarrow @ 20 At the top right, under the calendar, is a site search: pop COTOPAXI in there and you will find all references to it. Andrew blogged both occurrences (the other was Araucaria Feb 2010 #24,924 – but it is in the days clues were not given in the blogs – I may have a go at this crossword later)

46. We all had to have a slide rule for maths at school and got used to using it – it was white and red I remember. Then came log tables – much easier.

47. Sounds like you must be closer in age to my daughter pdp11 @ 44. When we watched the Apollo13 film with her and astronauts and mission control were trying to calculate stuff to get them out of their predicament her question was “Why don’t they use their calculators?”
    My A-levels were done with log tables. I still have some. I don’t think I used a SLIDE RULE until university. Don’t know what happened to that

48. My experience differs from some others, the log tables came first and the slide rule appeared later. It was frowned upon then as making calculations and the reasoning process too easy. I remember having to annotate in test papers answers derived with the use of the slide rule as an explanation for inaccuracies. Hate to think what my maths teachers would have said about electronics and calculators. I’m surprised that Fiona Anne @ 46 should have found log tables easier, more accurate certainly but much slower as Robi @ 39 found.

49. [Crossbar @47 🙂 Last year, I listened to the BBC podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon. Season 2 was about Apollo 13. I didn’t know the story. It’s extraordinary. Those guys were magicians! I’ve read that we have more computing power in our mobile phones than NASA had to get to the Moon. And yet no one has gone back since 1972.]

50. Sorry, only just came to read your blog mc_ but couldn’t leave Blanchflower@38 hanging without somebody acknowledging the ‘division’ joke. Groan.
    Cotopaxi aside (thanks to the atlas) we found it on the easier side but thanks Paul for much fun.

51. Thanks VicTim @50.
    I’m here all week.

52. I guess SLIDE RULE PASS is a thing; presumably because the player delivering it is supposed to have calculated precisely where it needed to go. A slide rule, however, didn’t measure anything, it brilliantly exploited logarithms to allow multiplication to be turned into addition. As others have said, a lost technology, which was incredibly useful in its day but will never be revived because nobody will ever need to revive it. I suspect that if you invited an A-level maths student to do manual extraction of square roots you’d get some pretty funny looks, too.
    (Reminds me of my first office job, in 1973, which was also of course in the days before electronic calculators. During the Three-Day Week we simply kept going courtesy of shorthand, manual typewriters, and a young man who’d been in the Scouts and was accordingly very adept with Tilley lamps.)
    Paul in good form; the homophone SLY DROOL is excellently absurd, LESSER ANTILLES is beautifully put together, and NO JOKE is one of several which enjoyably supply just a little of Paul’s trademark smut.
    Thanks, both.

53. [NeilH @52 during the 3 day week I was working at the Head Office of a shipping company, on very early computers. We were allowed to carry on normally, shipping being exempt.

    I remember doing a statistics exam at university where we used mechanical calculators which made a ringing noise whenever any sum went negative, as well as all the whirring when you turned the handle. Really helped concentration. 😀 ]

54. Thanks for all the comments and feedback – looks like this was generally well received, although COTOPAXI may have been a step too far for some people’s GK, if they hadn’t learned it at their mother’s knee? I vaguely knew/remembered it – and I did know ‘coax flatter’ – but had to check it after entering it from the wordplay/crossers…

    I’m afraid ‘sly drools’ were just before my time – I was the Casio kid in the late 70s/early 80s, when I also remember my father doing lots of complicated things with a Texas Instruments device, no bigger than a large calculator, and using lots of little magnetic strips for recording his algorithms…

    [Anyway, we seem to have segued away from the puzzle in hand to a little trip down memory lane…is this what the cruciverbal old people’s home will be like?!]

    paddymelon at #15 – yes, I did wonder about the ‘capricious Soviet’ closing off the border at 1D – that situation had been bubbling under for a few weeks, so maybe influenced Paul there. And I did wonder if my ‘monologue’ could centre around that and the ‘sustained campaign’ against Warsaw in 7D (heaven forbid it reaches that far…) – but I thought it would be a little heavy for the main blog. (Works as a cameo in the comments though!)

    Alphalpha at #37 – I also got a little stuck at 8D/2D thinking ‘ANTHILL’ might be a farm run by ants…

    1961Blanchflower at #38 – I remember – in the early-to-mid 90s – going to the local library in my lunch hour to trawl through dictionaries/encyclopaedias/atlases/ODQ/other reference to try and fill the gaps in the previous weekend’s solves…long before the ubiquity of Go-ogle (other search engines are available..). I also flinch at the amount I spent on stamps for prize puzzle entries, in those days before electronic submissions!

55. I still go to the library to look things up if I need to and I am back to using stamps again for Everyman and Azed, not the Guardian because the prize is rubbish.

56. [Roz @55. I agree about the Guardian prize. I used to do & post the Prize for decades when dictionaries were the reward. I managed 3 prizes in about 35 years. These were distributed amongst the family. When I was working I only did the Prize and it often took all week.]

57. I was another one who had to go-ogle COTOPAXI. A shame, because the wordplay is really so gettable. Didn’t know about ‘slide-rule passes’, either but got it from the highly amusing homophone.

    The wordplay in 22ac, JIM-JAMS; 24ac, BLOSSOM and 25ac KIM JONG UN amongst many others was very clever. 8dn, LESSER (ANTILLES) was particularly beautifully constructed and 5dn, GEE-GEE used refreshingly unusual wordplay.

    [Log tables definitely came before slide rules when I was at school, as the former were supplied and the latter had to be bought. When I went on to uni, we were expected to have our own slide rules and they could be taken into exams. Electronic calculators could not, however, as only one student had one, bought for him by his company-director dad for £200. That was about a year’s rent for digs at that time.

    We heard recently from Roz, on another page, that students no longer snigger at the word ‘bonk’. I wonder if ‘nookie’ would get any reaction these days?]

    Mc:
    In 19ac, HEAD-TO-HEAD, I think ‘seeking’ is not part of the def, as indicated, but a link word, as in: ‘the solution you are seeking could be defined as a ‘confrontational encounter’.

    In 4d, REINSURED — you forgot to write, in your usual (slightly topsy-turvy?) style: “bum, i.e. anagram of”.

    What an outrageous homophone in 12ac! When I say SHEIKHS, I pronounce the kh as the Arabic letter ‘kha’ it represents. I see you’ve only said it could sound like ‘shakes’, but only if you’re pronouncing it wrong, surely?

    Btw, I really appreciate how you’ve handled multi-part solutions. There was a blogger who used to really irritate me by only writing the part-solutions next to the clue number for the light it occupied. Can’t remember what happened to him 🙂

58. Oops! Of course, I meant to write “anagram of, i.e., bum”. The way I wrote it was the way that seems to make more sense to me, in that “anagram of” is the clarification of “bum”. Not that it really matters much (and probably not worth all these words!)

59. Tony @57 and mc_rapper
    I too like the way the multi-part solutions have been handled in this blog.

60. [ Crossbar@56 I won a very nice Collins dictionary once, second time it was just rubbish Guardian books, when I was learning I would spend all week on a Bunthorne and still not finish. Azed and Everyman give book token prizes which are perfect. ]

61. Thanks for the feedback Tony Collman at #57 – forensic as ever!
    I have updated the parsing of 4D to include the anagrind, in my inimitable style…. With 19A – I take your point, but head-to-head can also be an adjective, so if two people are ‘going head-to-head’, then they might be ‘seeking a confrontational encounter’? Let’s split the difference on that one…
    NB. Glad you and Alan B like the multi-part clues – I will try to remember to keep them that way…
    Roz and Crossbar at #55/56 – I agree with the comments on the quality of the Grauniad Prize – they must have a pile of remaindered copies of that book at the back of the office! However, there is still the kudos…not that I can remember the last time I was picked out of the hat there. My multi-function printer has a Fax capability, which I have only ever used to submit the Grauniad/Everyman…works out about 20p a shot, rather than the upcoming 95p for a first-class stamp…

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