Guardian Prize 28,877 / Maskarade

77 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,877 / Maskarade”

1. I controversy here I think. Over a bit too quickly. For a change all parsed.

   Thanks Maskarade and Eileen

2. …? No controversy obvs

3. For me, there are two indicators of a puzzle’s difficulty: the number of answers found in the first pass without considering crossers, and the total time to completion. These signs are not always in sync, but today they both indicated a puzzle on the gentler side. Confirmed by some comments on this week’s Nutmeg.

   Somehow even the old counties came readily to mind, must have lodged in my memory when I was young enough to remember things (nowadays I can’t usually remember what I had for breakfast the day before).

   I liked MOSQUITO for the misdirection.

   Regarding SCOFFED, I think it is more accurate to say “Laughed at” = “scoffed at”, so laughed = scoffed, not quite what the clue requires. Maybe someone can find a context where the relevant substitution works.

4. Many a year since hearing of Mr Heyerdahl and his raft. And ditto the movie Kes, so 7d was a bit of a ‘what the …?’ And the old Welsh county needed most crossers to get the spelling right. But yes, generally a friendly solve, thanks EnM. Now for today’s…

5. Thanks Eileen. A pleasant sojourn but one that left me feeling vaguely cheated in that it was over rather too soon. I never did glean though that ‘kind of wooden’ = teaky and in my experience the pronunciation of tiki is ticky. I was held up briefly by the f in what I’m old enough to remember as Caernarvonshire.

6. Thanks Eileen. Qualms over the setter quickly faded as 1D and a few crossers went straight in. Only at the end was online help first useful to confirm the 2D anagram, and then essential for the final Masaraderie in Lincolnshire.

7. Maskaraderie

8. Really did not enjoy this at all; it felt like a giant slap in the face to any solver outside the UK. It wasn’t just the arcane UK GK needed to solve it, it was the crucial positioning of those clues in the grid. I spent more time researching on Google and Wikipedia than I did on filling out the other clues, and that’s not why I do these puzzles.

9. This was a weird one. Four almost impossible down clues: I’d heard of only one of them. And all the across clues were a little bit too easy. Maybe that was the intention to make it possible to get the down clues. I was left unsatisfied.

10. Thank you Eileen, a sterling effort, two to blog in a week when you’re recovering from Covid, as you mentioned yesterday. Best wishes for your recovery.

    I don’t mind not having the required GK, but found I mostly didn’t need it, only for confirmation.
    In fact I thought Maskarade might have set an exercise in wordplay, with the answer a bonus, having a bit of fun with us.

    The only one that caused me a bit of trouble was ISTRIA. Had to go through the possible anagram combinations.

    Attempting to parse SWITCHED-ON, I fell into the trap of thinking that the 4 in Radio 4 was a cross-reference to clue 4, OLD MAID = WITCH!
    Favourites KON-TIKI and DOWNSTAIRS.

11. Definitely a puzzle aimed squarely at the Brits.

12. When I saw it was Maskarade I expected it to be too difficult but as others have said, it was easier than usual and I enjoyed it.

    My favourites included: MOSQUITO, KON-TIKI, SOMERSET, HARASSMENT, DOWNSTAIRS

    Thanks Maskarade and Eileen

13. Just missed 17d, but pretty easy for a prize. At least it lets a poor solver like me to feel pleased with himself for half an hour!
    Thanks both.

14. GregFromOz @8 – my sympathies as some of the answers took some dredging out for this firmly based UK solver.
    I suppose it is the risk you run doing a crossword in a UK paper, I’m sure I would have the same issues if I attempted a crossword in an Aussie paper.

15. Thanks Eileen, useful blog with cross references, no sign of the brain fog you mentioned yesterday. (I have been in isolation too.)
    You need to enter the solution at 21d (LEEK).
    As a Briton of some seniority, I enjoyed looking for the obsolete counties, but understand the problem for our friends in Oz and the US.
    At 18a, I am more familiar with ‘below stairs’ to refer to the servants, rather than DOWNSTAIRS. Any views?

16. Yes I agree re level of difficulty – not the kind of tricksy Maskarade I have come to expect and the solutions went in quite neatly for me, with the left hand side yielding more quickly than the right. I liked a lot of it, though as Eileen suggested in her preamble, and other solvers have said, I was also somewhat handicapped by the lack of local knowledge. Not complaining, par for the course when I choose to do a British crosswords. I had to double check the shires/UK place-names to be sure they existed after I solved them from word play and occasional vague remembering. I enjoyed several clues already mentioned but also liked 15a SCOFFED (despite your legitimate comment on that one, Dr. WhatsOn@3) and 23a STARVE.
    Thanks to Maskarade and Eileen. I didn’t really understand how 7d PARTS OF KESTEVEN worked so appreciated the clear explanation and extra information provided in the blog for that one (as well as the historical background Eileen kindly provided for several other of the clues). [I am very sorry to learn you have been unwell with COVID, Eileen, and hope you are on the mend. ]

17. Thanks Eileen, perfect summary, and Gute Besserung to you and anyone else suffering at the moment (plenty of nasty bugs flying about here, not just Covid). Sjhart@15 I agree but the to series Upstairs Downstairs was pretty popular (enough for me to solve despite never having seen it) and perhaps that one clear reference is enough? Thanks Maskarade, must dig out the Easter special that I am still pondering!

18. Sjshart@15. Some of us remember a TV series from the 70s called ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, where the downstairs was about the domestic staff.
    Speaking as a Brit, I’d be more than a little cheesed off if a British newspaper crossword was full of overseas GK.

19. Sorry that should be sjshart. [grantinfreo thanks for link Thursday, I see the Thermos resemblance!]

20. Eileen is the very soul of diplomacy.
    My written comment on the puzzle was: simplistic and disappointing.
    It was even easier than the next day’s Everyman, and that was hardly difficult.
    Oh well, it *was* followed by a week of super puzzles, I suppose.

21. Thank you, sjshart @15 – LEEK inserted now. Just as I posted the blog, I noticed that, somehow, the last clue had dropped out and I stuck it in in haste, omitting the answer!

    I initially had the same thoughts about DOWNSTAIRS, being more familiar with ‘below stairs’ but I was reminded of the classic TV programme that Crispy mentions and found that Chambers gives ‘in the servants’ quarters’ as one definition of DOWNSTAIRS.

    [I hope you’re recovering. 😉 ]

22. Thank you, Anna @20.

23. Sorry, Gazzh @17 – I see you mentioned the programme first.

24. I solved this in a good Quiptic or Everyman time for me, even having to check the PARTS OF KESTEVEN, so reckoned it was on the very easy side for a Prize.

    Dr WhatsOn @3, I read the other meaning of SCOFFED as referring to eating – scoffing food is roughly the same as stuffing one’s face, just old fashioned.

    Whoever was concerned about the F in the spelling of CAERNARFON, that spelling is Welsh and what’s on the signs there.

    Thank you for the blog Eileen and to Maskerade for the puzzle.

25. Doesn’t the Guardian have Australian and American editions? I’ve followed interesting links and stories before now and found myself deep in the Australian edition/section. If do, it may mean it needs to be a little less parochial in the crossword setting.

26. Gazzh – our posts must have crossed in the ether

27. Not sure that being a Brit was particularly helpful in solving these obscure Counties but the wordplay was fun. MOSQUITO was my favourite.

    Ta Maskarade and as ever Eileen.

28. As others have said, I found this easier than the following day’s Everyman. The first time I’ve finished the Prize in one session in fact. But I’m not complaining as I enjoyed the mini-theme and felt clever for once.

29. Not enough to constitute a theme, Eileen? SOMERSET, ROSS AND CROMARTY, CAERNARFONSHIRE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, PARTS OF KESTEVEN, KINROSS certainly felt like a theme to me 🙂 .

    I really enjoyed this. Personally I don’t mind some obscure general knowledge in a Prize puzzle, prompting a bit of research by the solver. My favourite was MOSQUITO as mentioned by others. Just as the word “my” now immediately makes me think COR, the word “low” has a similar Pavlovian effect with MOO leaping into my mind.

    Many thanks Maskarade and Eileen.

30. As well as the former Scottish county, ROSS AND CROMARTY are a firm of publishers in Josphine Tey’s To Love and Be Wise. This is not relevant to the clue, of course, but having read the book half a dozen times it was easily dislodged from the memory banks.

    I was intrigued to find that there is no explanation for why the PARTS OF KESTEVEN are so called.

    Thanks to Maskarade and Eileen.

31. Very enjoyable but over too quickly for a prize.
    I consider myself a dogged and persistent rather than fluent solver. However this kept me very well entertained but for barely half an hour, whereas I am still wrestling with Picaroon’s clever and hilarious puzzle from Thursday, which I can thoroughly recommend to those who may have missed it.
    I did learn that I would have been mispronouncing ‘dolour’ for my whole life had I ever had occasion to use it.
    Thanks to Maskarade and best wishes for a speedy recovery to Eiileen. I’m a great admirer of your work on this blog and pleased to surmise than you may be a denizen of Notts, where I spent most of my professional life in what is one of the most hospitable parts of the country.

32. The four long answers made this whole puzzle straightforward – easy, even. As a Brit of a certain age, I knew the old county names, and I realised, of course, that non-Brits would most likely have some looking up to do.

    I still enjoyed taking this to a finish, and I liked the clues to MOSQUITO and DOWNSTAIRS.

    Thanks to both Eileen and Maskarade.

33. OK, Lord Jim @29, I’ll buy that. 😉 I initially thought ‘old county’ but there weren’t enough; I didn’t register that KINROSS was a county, as well as a borough; I discounted SOMERSET, since it wasn’t clued as a county but, of course, that doesn’t mean it can’t be part of a theme, though it seems rather odd, since Gloucestershire was.

    sheffield hatter @30 – I spent some time last weekend researching the PARTS OF KESTEVEN, because I too was intrigued by the derivation but could find no explanation. I’ve just had another go, without success, I’m afraid.

    lenmasterman @31 – I don’t think I’ve ever articulated ‘dolour’, either, but presumed that was how it was pronounced – but, by analogy with ‘colour’ …
    I’m proud to say it’s Leicestershire, not Nottinghamshire and I’m coming along quite nicely, thank you, apart from these few bits of brain fog – which I don’t think are all due to COVID 🙂

34. Yes, this was relatively straightforward apart from the rather (to me) obscure PARTS OF KESTEVEN. Certainly easier than yesterday’s Imogen, which I failed to finish (although I had other distractions then).

    I liked MOSQUITO for the surface where ‘low’ was well incorporated.

    Thanks Maskarade and Eileen (hope you are now recovering well).

35. lensmasterman@31, Eileen@33
    I too had my doubts about 9a so I checked in Chambers. There is only one phonetic spelling for dollar and the same is the first for dolour. That’s how I would have pronounced it had the occasion arisen.
    I was glad that Covid hasn’t taken much out of you, Eileen. I ws similarly lucky when I had it a few months ago, though, come to think of it, it was probably down to the jabs more than luck.

36. I found this easier and more enjoyable than I was expecting at first, based on difficulty I’ve had with some of Maskarade’s bank holiday specials. All the long county names except PARTS OF KESTEVEN were lodged somewhere in my brain, even if the spelling of CAERNARFONSHIRE needed teasing out. “Old division of Lancashire” made the obscure one easy to look up. (I’m disappointed no one has come up with an explanation of the strange name.) Surprised and disappointed, though, to see Maskarade apparently using “first television” for T.

    None of the Americans seem to have complained about 9ac, DOLOUR, but presumably, they write it ‘dolor’ and (depending on their particular dialect, perhaps?) pronounce it “doe lore”? (Too busy complaining about the old British counties, maybe, or just used to homophones that don’t seem to match their pronunciation?)

    11ac, MOSQUITO, was very clever in the way words were used as different parts of speech and with different meanings in the clue. Much easier if you’ve come across ‘low’ for MOO before, I suppose.

    In 5dn, IDES, I think “regular” is being (wrongly) used, cryptically, to mean ‘regularly’.

    I thought 14dn, CROSSBEAMS, was brilliant.

    The cryptic grammar in 21dn, LEEK doesn’t seem to quite work, although it wasn’t hard to get to the answer.

37. Hi Tony @36

    Re PARTS OF KESTEVEN: as I said @33, I tried hard to find the derivation, both last Saturday and today. The link that I gave in the blog starts, ‘Kesteven is one of the three parts of Lincolnshire. It is also known as Parts of Kesteven, which has never been properly explained (my emphasis).

    ‘Surprised and disappointed, though, to see Maskarade apparently using “first television” for T.’
    I deliberately didn’t comment on that, feeling sure that someone would come down on it like a ton of bricks, as they used to and I’m surprised that it has taken until now. (Actually, I don’t think we’ve seen an example very recently.)

    I’m inclined to agree with you about 5 and 21dn.

38. Generally Maskarade/Gozo produces some of the most clever masterworks in the crossword world but this was a disappointment to me. This seemed easy to those who knew the material and tedious to those who didn’t; neither of these situations is ideal. There were clues that were satisfying, however, such as MOSQUITO, SOMERSET, and CROSSBEAMS. Thanks to both.

39. As well as being a part of Lincolnshire, Kesteven in turn is divided into two parts, North Kesteven and South Kesteven. (Says I as I surface dripping from a dive into the Wikipedia and Britannica sites.) So Kesteven is the sum of its parts.

    Eileen, I have only registered now, after yesterday’s and today’s blogs, what a fine and careful search you do for explanatory links, which are both educational and entertaining. You make reading the blog a real joy.

40. The three parts of Lincolnshire are equivalent to the three ridings of Yorkshire. But why is each one ‘parts’ in the plural? I suggest it is because they constitute the old areas of the county which form Kesteven, Holland and Lindsey, ie they are the relevant ‘parts’ of Lincolnshire which formed the three divisions. Any better explanation?

41. Old counties or parts thereof are not my specialty either, but with the exception of 2d CAERNARFONSHIRE it was easy to figure them out from the wordplay and then confirm with Google. For 2d I just googled old counties in Wales and found it. Ross and Cromarty rang a bell from reading about single malt distilleries in western Scotland (and also, as with sheffield hatter@30, from Josephine Tey, one of my favourite authors).

    Thanks to the commentators on the Nutmeg puzzle who recommended this one – I normally avoid Maskarade, but this was very approachable, and fun. Favourites were 11a MOSQUITO and 16a KON-TIKI.

    Thanks, Maskarade for the fun, and Eileen for the delightful blog.

42. I thought I’d try looking up Parts of Kesteven in my OED (I have the full version in compact form, meaning one almost needs an electron microscope to read it!) It actually gives PoK as an example of sense 13 of “part”, with examples going back to 1400. The definition is:

    A portion of a country or territory or of the world; region, quarter. (Usually in pl.; often with a vague collective rather than plural sense.)

    Hope this sheds some light.

43. Thank you, Valentine @39. I really enjoy that part of blogging – it’s a poor day when the only thing to look up is a definition or two in Chambers et al.

    Speaking of which – and parts – Bravo, Dr. WhatsOn! and many thanks. I had searched Chambers for some such definition but didn’t get round to consulting my 50yr-old SOED, where I have just found exactly the same definition, without examples but giving it as ‘late M.E’. Hurrah!

44. Managed to get all the long ones, including the very odd PARTS OF KESTEVEN, so it all went in fairly easily. Re KON-TIKI (please excuse anecdote): I worked in a London bookshop about 55 years ago, and as I was closing up late in the evening, a dapper middle-aged gentleman said he’d like to buy a book in the window. I asked whether he could come back tomorrow, as I’d closed up and it was getting late. He said “Never mind, I’m having dinner with my publisher and I’ll ask him to order it.” “Who is your publisher?” “John Murray.” “What kind of books do you write?” “Travel books – you may have heard of Kon-Tiki.”

45. drofle @44 – thanks for sharing that!

    ‘Kon-Tiki’ was one of the most borrowed books in my school library in the 50s – before space travel! Quite strange to think of now.
    From Wikipedia: ‘The book was first published in Norway on 2 November 1948, and sold out in 15 days. By 1961, the book had been translated into at least 55 languages. According to a 2013 movie about the expedition the book as been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 50 million copies.’

46. cellomaniac@41 A quick search revealed 3 whisky distilleries in Ross & Cromarty: Glenmorangie and the less well known Dalmore and Balblair. There may be others but I can’t think of any. I have never tasted Balblair.
    I retrieved the crossword from my waste paper bin this afternoon as I didn’t feel like trying Paul. I enjoyed it but it was quite easy.

47. Yeah, this puzzle was a massive Googlathon for this US solver, which meant it wasn’t quite the walk in the park that others seem to have found it. I too went down a long rabbithole after the solve, reading up on the Parts of Kesteven, and the Parts of Lincolnshire more generally. It’s funny–we hear about the Ridings of Yorkshire often enough over here, but never their similar neighbors to the south.

    And yes, as speculated above, in my dialect I do pronounce DOLOUR with a long O in the first syllable, but I may have been saying it wrong all this time. I just analogized from the obviously related name Dolores. It’s not a word I often have occasion to articulate. (Relatedly, I know that name is a specialized form of Mary–Our Lady of Sorrows, specifically–but why would anyone name a child something so doleful?)

48. The first time since Rufus used to turn up on Mondays when (almost) every clue has gone straight in, following our usual practice of cross clues then down clues. The exception was 10 ac, but that went in with 1 dn. The obscurest county was 7 dn, but there were plenty of cossers and I can vaguely remember it from the days of tracing GB in the atlas.
    Not a prize puzzle.
    fandj

49. Thanks Maskarade and Eileen
    MOSQUITO was a great clue, but the rest was far too easy for a Prize, for an Englishman at least!

50. Tony @36, Eileen @37 But it’s not ‘first television’, it’s ‘first televised’: first is an adverb here in the surface, and this makes it easier to read it as such in the cryptic reading. We don’t sniff at other adverbial letter selection indicators: ‘firstly televised’ would be accepted without comment, if it worked in the surface. But it’s a different matter when first is used adjectivally, such as when it modifies a noun (your ‘first television’, for instance). Although even then there may on occasions be the opportunity to read a superficial adjective as a cryptic adverb. But it would be a cruel (and brave!) setter who required this of us I think…

51. As to DOLLAR and dolour, Shakespeare puns on this – Tempest 2.1.19 and elsewhere- so in his time the pronunciation was presumably much the same.

52. Great story drofle@44. Some ‘travel’ book!

53. Gobbo @50
    You make a good point about ‘first televised’, and whereas (like others) I jibbed at that use of ‘first’ in the wordplay while solving I now see how it works, correctly in my view, in the wordplay as well as the surface.

54. jelyroll@46
    I remember hearing at third hand the story of a visit by Princess Margaret to the Glenmorangie distillery at the end of which she was asked if she would like a drink. Showing the manners for which she was famous, she replied, “Have you got a (Famous) Grouse?”

55. Thank you, Gobbo and Alan B. I’m now reading the clue correctly, I think.

56. This was fun, but demonstrated once again the problem with themed puzzles: once you spot the theme (which in this case was right there in the surfaces), the puzzle becomes markedly easier. A good themed puzzle can still be a delight, but I look for more of a challenge in Prize puzzles and I think those should generally not be themed as the theme provides too much help.

    This particular theme was hard for me as a non-Brit, and I was reduced several times to making guesses based on anagram fodder and then checking against Wikipedia. I got there in the end but this isn’t a very enjoyable way to finish a puzzle.

    On the UK-specific nature of the theme, despite my grumbling above, this aspect didn’t bother me. It’s a British newspaper and I’ve long had to accommodate myself British spellings that don’t naturally occur to me as a resident of the US. Also, something I would generally regard as a defect — the fact that most of the themed clues involved anagrams — could be seen as compensation for the somewhat parochial nature of the “general” knowledge required.

    All in all an enjoyable puzzle with some lovely surfaces. Thanks to Maskarade and Eileen. (Hope you’re feeling better, Eileen!)

57. Eileen@37, thanks for pointing out that detail from the page you linked (which I’m afraid I didn’t click on, initially). Also, for supporting my thoughts on certain weaknesses. I do find we tend to think alike about such things, but perhaps that’s because so many of my thoughts are based on things I’ve read by you.

58. mrpenney@47, thanks for confirming my guess as to how an American might pronounce Dolores. In fact, the use of that long O always amuses me for some reason, as does the long I, used, for example, in Iraq and Iran. I don’t think you’ve been pronouncing it “wrong”, as you suspect: it seems perfectly normally for at least some American accents. Otoh, you may have been mispronouncing Dolores, going by what you say. Afaik, everyone over here (or me, at least) pronounces the first O as a schwa. Maybe that’s not the case for most Americans, though?

59. Oops! Of course, I meant, in my first sentence, “how an American might pronounce dolo(u)r”.

60. Gobbo@50, you raise a spirited and superficially persuasive justification of “first televised (sic)” for T and you seem to have won over both Eileen and Alan B (another person whose thoughts on cryptic cluing tend to coincide with my own). However, although I would have happily accepted “initially televised” I find it hard to read “first” as meaning “the first letter of”. Consulting Chambers, I read that first, used as an adverb, means “before anyone or anything else: for the first time”. By contrast, initial is given as an adjective meaning “beginning: of, at or serving as the beginning: original” and although the derivative adverb, initially is not explicitly defined, it’s clear that ‘initially televised’ can easily be read as indicating T, more especially as the noun, initial of course means “the letter beginning a word”. I think the surface still works with ‘initially televised’, although it’s more natural with ‘first’. However, I think that where there is conflict between accurate wordplay and smooth surface, a setter should give priority to the cryptic grammar.

    I don’t agree, either, that a word that can function as both an adverb and an adjective should necessarily serve the same purpose in both surface and wordplay, as you seem to suggest, any more than, for example, the the word ‘fly’ in the clue for MOSQUITO should be bound to either it’s verbal or nominal meaning for both.

61. TC @60 I hoped to provoke a contrary response, and was slightly disappointed that Eileen and Alan B rolled over. I too felt a bit cheated by what looked like a clumsy T selection. But it’s always worth trying to dig setters out of holes.
    An adverbial first is almost as clumsy as an adjectival one, in that we have to think hard to make it mean what we need it to mean, since the superficial adverbial meaning is different from the cryptic one: the surface here has to be ‘for the first time’, as you say, but cryptically we need it to be ‘firstly’ (‘first this, then that’, maybe). I’m not sure if this step is more far-fetched than the crosswordy whimsical initially, even if it is more awkward to read. Maybe we’re immune to the difficulty of tricks that are commonplace though.
    In any case, I’m more comfortable with your reading of the clue (and for that matter how first works adverbially) than I am with my defence of it.

    I’d thought I’d been clear enough that even though we are on the lookout for PoS shifts in crossword clues, it might be ambitious of a setter to attempt this on top of another awkwardness.

62. Gobbo @60
    I maintain that ‘first’, meaning ‘firstly’ in the cryptic grammar of the clue, is a fair indication of the first letter of the verb that followed it. I would not call it clumsy.

63. Sorry: Gobbo @61 (not 60).

64. Sorry Alan B! Not sufficiently clear. First (adj) – clumsy because ungrammatical. First (adv) – not as clumsy, but still awkward because not entirely natural. But strictly speaking probably fair.

65. Gobbo
    Thanks for your response – a fair comment.

66. Gobbo@61, firstly, I think you’re right to go to the defence of setters here when they might have been wronged. I have also done that from time to time. Not all of them even read these comments (I understand Araucaria never did), and of those that do, some have a set policy of not commenting themselves (Paul, for example).

    As for the substantive issue, I think (adverbial) ‘first’ and ‘firstly’ have different meanings.

    Consider this clue:

    Beer first put on television in Yorkshire location (8)

    Here, ‘first’ is used as an adverb both in the surface and in the wordplay, with a different meaning in each: cryptically, it’s ‘before anything else’; in the surface it’s ‘for the first time’. I don’t think ‘firstly’ would sound quite right for either of those uses; perhaps for the cryptic use, depending on your dialect/idiolect.

67. AIREDALE (ALE, first AIRED)

68. And here’s me thinking that Maskarade was having fun. I had fun, solving unknown answers from wordplay.
    I think this blog shows how solvers go about solving, what the thrill is, whether you focus on the end result, and want to know what it is, or you enjoy putting all the lego bricks together, and see what you come up with.

    In my experience, and as MRIs have shown, solving is usually a flick in the brain from wordplay to def and back again, but I liked this exercise. Many of the answers may as well have been in Sanskrit for me.

69. Paddymelon

    “as MRIs have shown, solving is usually a flick in the brain from wordplay to def and back again”

    That sounds interesting. Any more details, please?

70. [Hi Tony Collman@69.
    David Astle, Australian cryptic crossword setter, closest in style to the Guardian setters, only more rule-breaking, joined researchers from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, and subjected himself to an FMRI study of his brain while solving crosswords. He was a scrabble whiz and a word nerd from youth, and has an interest in the neuroscience of solving.

    Apparently the study was a world first. The link below doesn’t give the results, just a bit of background. I’ve tried to find the results on the Florey site, but to no avail. The video of the lectures following the study is no longer available.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-05/brain-activity-during-crossword-puzzles-tracked-in-study/10336960

    You might also be interested in the University of Buckingham study (not brain imaging) into crack cryptic solvers. This was posted some years ago on fifteensquared. The top solvers were from a science background, as our 15sq community seems to reflect.

    There is a link to the full research at the bottom of this article.

    https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/news/its-not-just-about-the-words-cryptic-crossword-solvers-tend-to-be-scientists/

71. Paddymelon, many thanks for that. I think if I’d been the guinea pig, with only nine seconds to solve each clue, they’d have been lucky to record the output from a single ‘aha moment’. Having said that, I did manage to solve one of the four sample clues quickly; this one:

    What we eat during Lent? (4,4)

    (Answer in the article.)

    I’m very skeptical about this statement:

    “”From a medical and clinical point of view, the more we understand about how the brain works in health, the more it can help us understand how it’s going wrong in various diseases,” Associate Professor Abbott said.

    “There may well be clinical utility down the track if it turns out there are conditions or diseases where there is some impairment in this problem-solving ability.

    “Maybe we can devise a functional MRI test that might have some diagnostic or prognostic benefit.”

    I think a lot of science is driven by pure curiosity, with vague suggestions of possible utility thought up mainly to justify funding.

    I was aware of and followed the other study which, as you say was publicised on 15² (and which, iirc, canvassed for participants here).

72. And there’s another study that David Astle put me on to, which you may also be aware of.
    I heard DA explaining that they deliberately inserted post 1953 events in crosswords specifically compiled for HM which appeared to stay in his memory after doing the crossword.

    There are several articles if you search H. M. or Henry Molaison, brain and crosswords.

    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/this-is-your-brain-on-crosswords/

    The paragraph below is from the article linked:

    Consider H.M., the most famous memory patient of the twentieth century. A 1953 operation to remove his hippocampus left H.M. with nearly perfect anterograde amnesia, meaning he could form short- but not long-term recollections, rendering him the ideal subject for memory studies. H.M. also loved crossword puzzles. A 2004 study led by Duke scientist Brian Skotko proved that even though H.M. couldn’t consciously lay down new tracks in long-term memory, when he did the same crossword over and over, he improved at clues he shouldn’t have been able to know how to solve (because they referred to post-1953 events). H.M. didn’t know why he knew these answers, but he knew that he knew them. Crosswords reveal something going on in this space between the short-term working memory and long-term permanent recollections.

73. [Know what you mean T.C about the 9 sec solve, several hundred times in a row!
    As a postscript, I’ve recently had to have a 3 hour cognitive assessment and 2 hour physical assessment, because my workplace thought I wasn’t ”up to speed” and maybe ”confused”. I’m nearly 70. My processing speed, the lowest score, was ”average”. I’m pretty happy with that! The other cognitive tests amazed the psychologist and doctor, in the highest percentiles ACROSS ALL AGE GROUPS. (Sorry about the caps, but I think this warrants it.} They both commended me on my hobby of doing cryptic crosswords. Result. I resigned. Don’t want to work with these 30 something ”managers” who don’t recognise or value anything, except speed.]

74. Paddymelon
    Thanks again for an interesting article. In the “tale of two grandfathers”, I wonder whether the author considered that, actually, the difference in their lifestyles that possibly accounts for the difference in their health outcomes might be not the puzzles but, just as easily (?), Murray’s “coffee with lots of sugar“?

    I also wonder whether “A 1953 operation to remove his hippocampus left H.M. with nearly perfect anterograde amnesia” is an example of curiosity-driven science? What possible therapeutic effect was expected from removing the hippocampus, if any, I wonder?

    Congratulations on your retirement. Time to start setting some crosswords using those outstanding cognitive abilities?

75. [If you’re still around Tony, HM had very severe epilepsy. As you’d know, they did horrible brain surgeries on people, right up to the 80s, for much less than that, with supposedly good intentions. But I know a person, now in his late 30s, who had very scary brain surgery for epilepsy at about 20, don’t know what exactly, and it really gave him a life. ]

76. Paddymelon, thanks for the further info about HM.

    Frontal lobotomies became very popular in the forties and fifties for a variety of conditions, apparently, but are almost never carried out now.

    “In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine.”

    Said to be a quote from The Lobotomist,, as cited at Freeman’s Wikipedia, but the link leads to a PBS apology page due to the site currently undergoing a makeover.

77. For those outside the UK who may have felt that this required too much UK-specific knowledge: it may help to know that some of us Brits solving this puzzle had not heard of these obscure old place names either. I myself found it an enjoyable Google to track those down (including a pleasant stare at Google Maps to find Kinross).

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