Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 28,931 by Brummie (3 December 2022)

46 comments on “Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 28,931 by Brummie (3 December 2022)”

1. Didn’t know MANGOSTEEN, so failed on three in bottom-right corner ( I was away from home so didn’t have my cheat books with me)

   I thought the expression was “the john” , so singular and not plural as gents is?

   Thank mc and Brummie

2. I went through a period of finding Brummie very difficult but recent puzzles have been a lot easier for me, whereas I’ve had the opposite experience with Picaroon. All my first guesses here seemed to be correct, for example ‘Cork’=plug=>GULP, so it was soon over. Luckily, I managed INSOUCIANT sans typo! And some later entries like SABOTEUR and FLESHPOT seemed to write themselves in.

   Whereas I’m still stuck on this week’s Picaroon and Fed.

   Thanks to Brummie and mc.

3. Funny MANGOSTEEN was my FOI, and got me going! LOI was INFEST. I thought this was good for a prize, it took quite a few sessions to solve. I liked GULP DOWN and MIFF!

4. [Congrats on your prize, rapper. Feels not so long since faxes were cutting edge … funny to think …]

   Wonder what the Eye is calling Charlie, Sob, son of Brenda ..?

   Anyway, don’t remember having too much trouble with this Brummie, who can be quite gnarly. Liked the drunk philosopher, the unsaintly mastiff, and the ‘Chinese’ artist who authored, inter alia, LHOQ. All good fun, ta both.

5. Socrates would have had a fit at calling a SOPHIST a philosopher! That apart, all good. Thanks, Brummie and mc…

6. Thanks mc_rapper67. A rather slow start was followed by steady and quite satisfying progress. Like the previous couple of Prizes, there was some clever misleading here to be admired. I never did quite come to terms with ‘right’ in 19d, only guessing that in context Cleopatra might come most often in juxtaposition with needle but I don’t like it much. I haven’t yet learned not to question obscure synonyms so fair = light did need a bit of a stretch of my imagination.

7. S H @2…yes I also haven’t finished Fed yet. Didn’t try this until I went to look for tomorrow’s prize…so fairly straightforward.
   Irked slightly by TUTTI as “passage” but a passage can be marked tutti. Can a passage by any Italian indication?
   Thanks Brummie and Mr Rapper

8. Shot myself in the foot with TOP-DRAWER which parsed well enough for me to think it was correct. And it certainly parsed better than FLESHPOT. So how would you use that in a sentence in the sense of high living exactly? “I like a bit of fleshpot.”?

9. Thanks, mc_rapper. Glad to hear you manage to mis-enter answers too. I held myself up for way too long by entering SABOUTER instead of SABOTEUR and then wondered why I couldn’t solve the reported rocky organisation. (PLO used to be one of the letter combination on London licence plates, and back in the 70s I drove a PLO Cortina.) Finally getting EXPLOSION at last gave me my LOI, GULP DOWN which I thought had a neat combination of two counties. I wasn’t sure about the fleshpot definition, but lots to like.here. Thanks, Brummie.

10. Made this harder than it should have been by putting *top-drawer* for 10a (tho’ wasn’t confident about the parsing of the second word) and considering *Cypriot* for 1a (although I thought that having Cypriot with a description of Greek was not very Guardian).

    So the bottom half went in quite quickly but just could not get the down clues in the NE which led me to think again about 10a. Once I realised it should be TOP-FLIGHT which I could parse I immediately got the three crossing down clues.

    Then realised that 1a was SOPHIST and so completed the NW.

    Didn’t get 20d – seems obvious now

    Some lovely clues with my favourites including: TITTLE-TATTLE (my FOI), LORIS (made me laugh), MIFF (lovely surface), ALL-INCLUSIVE (liked all-in for exhausted), RETINUE, MAGRITTE

    Thanks Brummie and mc_rapper67

11. Thank you mc_rapper67 for the blog. I only realised today when I went back to Brummie that I had several gaps in the grid, so appreciated your help. And lucky you many times over for the crossies you’ve drawn in the raffle for 15sq, and your own prize. (What was it BTW?)

    Interesting that Brummie clued TOP-FLIGHT and also used ‘top shelf’ in FLESHPOT.
    For me the whole clue for FLESHPOT could read as the answer, especially with the question mark at the end.
    ‘Top shelf’ and ‘high living’ could be synonyms, and FLESHPOT is also a synonym, from online dictionaries.
    Otherwise, what function does ‘suitable’ have? Is ‘made’ the anagrind, or ‘made suitable’? I took it as a bit of whimsy.

12. Thanks, Brummie & MC. I vaguely recall LORIS was my last in – took far too long to twig “Day”. Cunning. I like it.

    I don’t often bother submitting my entry for the Guardian but I usually do for the Eye. Never won either. Well done on the prize, MC!

13. Congratulations mc_rapper67 on winning a prize. The 1st time I ever completed an FT prize (a sublime Rosa Klebb crossword) I mailed it off and I was one of the random winners. I know your joy. In any event I loved this Brummie crossword with TITTLE-TATTLE, OUST, REPOSSESS (splendid surface), MAGRITTE, INFEST, and GENTS as favourites. Thanks all.

14. Along with others, I found this easier than the Picaroon this week, although unlike others, I had no problems with the Fed.

    TOP FLIGHT sat with just the TOP filled in for a while, until I got crossers that led me to the rest. With the Prize, if I can’t parse it, it’s not entered until I can or the crossers make it inevitable.

    Thank you to mc_rapper667 and Brummie.

15. Thanks for a great blog and congratulations on your win, your third this year I think on various puzzles . I second your recommendation of Cyclops, I have a very gentle disposition and sensitive nature and it does not offend me. Grant @4 he was Charles very briefly and is now back to being Brian.

16. Like Widdersbel I liked the Doris Day , day can be so misleading if used in a novel way. MIFF is a word I really like , TUT I use frequently and I have studied PARITY half my life so a lot of clues seemed suitable for me.
    Biggles @6 fair=light in the sense of hair colour.
    It is snowing and I am still childishly excited, we will have snow on the beach which I love but is very rare these days.

17. Much enjoyed. Many thanks Brummie. Great blog mc_rapper67. Spotted Doris Day early on and understood that LORIS was the primate but thought it the cryptic part rather than the definition for quite a while.

    Bodg(i)e @ 8: “He likes his high living/FLESHPOT”?

    Thought I was failing to spot some extra crypticism at 19d. Maybe “often found to Cleopatra’s right” a bit weak? Small margins can mean a lot. I was much encouraged after getting ALL-INCLUSIVE that Brummie hadn’t clued the CLUE bit as “this”. So on balance he got it spot on (for me)!

18. I recall this as being relatively doable for a Prize. I’m another who didn’t know that meaning of FLESHPOT but it couldn’t be anything else and Chambers educated me on that one. I remembered MANGOSTEEN from another puzzle not long ago, so crosswords are indeed useful for keeping my brain active 🙂

    Minor eyebrow raise at use of SOU without foreign language indicator in INSOUCIANT – I’m a French speaker so knew the word, but is it common enough in English to not need a ‘French’ indicator? Maybe it is, as no-one else has mentioned it yet…

    Loved TITTLE-TATTLE.

    Thanks both!

19. Liked TOP FLIGHT, MAGRITTE

    New for me: HARVEST BUG

    I could not parse:
    1d – I could not see why does SALVER = charger
    19d I guessed it was somehow related to the monument in London

    Thanks, both.

20. Very enjoyable puzzle with TOP FLIGHT and TUTTI taking the best part of a week to drop. Failed to parse GULP and particularly liked MAGRITTE and TALKATIVE. Thanks and congratulations to mc for the excellent blog and to Brummie for a stimulating Prize.

21. RobT @18: I would say that the phrase “not worth a sou” is common enough in English.

22. Sou is one of those French words that was probably more commonly used in English the past than it is now. Much like the escritoire we had the other day. It’s pretty old fashioned even in French now – come to think of it, the French often use our word penny nowadays. Much to the disgust of the Académie, no doubt.

    Roz – I’m envious. No snow on the beach here this morning, only a thick frost, and the tide was too far out for a post-parkrun swim anyway, but I’m hoping to go for a dip tomorrow morning. Good for the soul. If not the extremities.

23. Reasonably straightforward, once I had escaped the TOP-DRAWER trap, but I did not finish 1d and 9ac. Should have got 1d SALVER as ‘soother’, but not at all convinced by ‘charger’. Might have worked out 9ac LORIS if I had got L from 1d. Got TUTTI as only possible answer to 4d, but it’s not really a passage. Got MAGRITTE as only possible answer (can I call that an OPA?), so thanks mc_rapper67 for pointing out the rhyming slang.

24. Congrats mc and my LOI was also SALVER. I solved this in one go which is a rarity for me with Brummie, but this was definitely on his easy side. Same likes as others, especially GULP DOWN (nice all-Ireland feel to that clue), LORIS and TITTLE-TATTLE like Rob T @18. [Enjoy your swim Roz, if that’s what you do, I will be braving the cold at KPR tomorrow].

    Ta Brummie & mc for another splendid blog.

25. [Alan @24 yes I could maybe cope, if rugged up in thermals, with watching my team, but while admiring winter swimmers like Roz and Widders, the thought makes my heart shrink, never mind the extremities!]

26. [ Widdersbel@22 it rarely snows now and often when it does it is only inland and not on the coast, but today it is everywhere, was even snowing on the sea when I swam.
    AlanC @ 24 I swim nearly every day , only heavy rain stops me, today I cheated a little, hot water bottle for my towel. I could not sit outside in the cold watching football ]

27. I’m with those who found this fairly straightforward, and a steady solve. (I’d forgotten or possibly never known that Brummie=Cyclops, but while the latter’s clues may be a little risqué, IMO the crosswords are generally like this one in being straightforward without being over-easy.)
    DE@1 – “gents” is surely singular possive (abbrev. of “gentlemen’s lavatory”) but is used simply as a singular noun (I need to pop to the gents/John).
    I took the definition of FLESHPOT to include “suitable for” – a place that is a fleshpot would be suitable for high living.
    Thanks mc and Brummie.

28. Like Ant@3, I didn’t get started until MANGOSTEEN but kept going after that. Don’t think I have ever seen FLESHPOT in the singular before. I thought there would be more to Cleopatra’s NEEDLE than that: I hope it isn’t going to usher in a series of clues of this kind for words usually seen “to the right” (or left) of certain other words.

    Liked MIFF, BUDGE and TUTTI (even if I don’t think it’s a passage) and will have to Google HARVEST BUG to see what kind of beastie it is.

29. [Roz @26: nor inside either I suspect. I swim most mornings but indoors only. I’m as squeamish as grantinfreo @25].

30. [Roz @15 … and the Post Office will be C3PO, as beermagnet quipped … the Eye might pick up on that … ]

31. TassieTim @21, Widdersbel @22 – merci !

32. Thanks for all the comments and feedback – much appreciated as usual…apologies for late comeback, but I have been at a rugby club dinner this afternoon, and am again a little ‘tired and emotional’, as they say!

    It seems MANGOSTEEN wasn’t universally known – I didn’t mention that I wasn’t particularly familiar with it either – much preferring mangoes myself, but it was clear enough from crossers and anagram fodder.

    TOP DRAWER didn’t occur to me – I must have had crossers there already.

    On GULP DOWN, I was going to mention the juxtaposition of the Irish counties – Cork and Down – but AlanC’s description at #24 – ‘a nice all-Ireland feel’ – sums it up pretty well.

    FLESHPOT probably caused the most consternation amongst us all…and I was happy that SOU has probably been in circulation long enough not to need any indication of foreignness.

    Michelle at #19 and JohnJB at #23 – a ‘charger’ can be a ‘serving platter’, and a SALVER is a silver plate on which things are presented, so I think the double defn. is strong enough, with the surface reading leading us toward a kind of horse whisperer calming down an excitable horse…

    The prize from last week’s puzzle arrived in the post today – a book of Alex Bellos puzzles…which may end up being ‘re-gifted’, but we’ll see!

    As for those mad enough to go swimming in non-heated water at this time of year – I raise my hat to you, but I will keep it on my head, and all my other layers about me as well…I will be venturing out next Saturday morning to play sub-zero golf, but I will have at least three layers about my extremities and intremities!

33. mc I stopped sending of the Guardian when the prizes became rubbish, my last win was The Guardian Style Guide plus Secrets of the Setters. I once won a lovely Collins dictionary. At least you get the glory .
    Believe it or not, the sea temperature varies very little all year , getting out is the problem in winter , you need to be very efficient .
    Charger/salver is also known as a trencher, leading to the nice word trencherman .

34. Roz@33
    I remember solving a double Araucaria around 1980 at a guess with wild flowers (not one of my specialist subjects) as the theme and feeling so sure that few others would also succeed that I sent it in. Unusually, when the winners were announced, the number of entries was also given – 753. I decided to save the postage (10p) in future. I do occasionally feel tempted to have another go but, like you, Roz, if I were to enter it would be for the “glory” not the prize.

35. Pino I used to send it in every week without fail and I have won twice but the prizes now are not worth the effort. I still send Everyman and Azed and have won both once since January when prizes began again.
    The 1980 is before my time sadly, I would have loved it, I know all my wild flowers. You should have sent it , postage used to be so much cheaper , even in real terms.
    I see that MC is still using the fax, I read that they would be stopping in general soon.

36. Has anyone ever seen “miff” as a verb? (This will 67.miff George. Did it miff you?) I’ve only ever seen the adjective form as “miffed.”

    ginf@30 How does the Post Office become C3OP? (I get the Star Wars reference, just not the Post Office one.

    Nice puzzle, thanks to Brummie and to mc_rapper67.

37. Valentine @ 36

    It’s C3PO – Charles III = C3, Post Office = PO.

38. Excellent puzzle. Had to resort to the dictionary to find that meaning of charger. I liked NEEDLE as something found to Cleopatra’s right, despite others’ criticisms.

    Valentine@36, Simon S@37, it’s not the C3PO, because the Post Office was turned into the private company Post Office Counters Ltd in 2006 (I think it was). The Royal Mail, which actually collects and delivers the post, was privatised in 2014 and, despite (fraudulently, imo) retaining the name Royal Mail, is in no part owned by H.M. Govt. Royal Mail pillar boxes currently have EIIR (Elizabeth the Second, Queen) embossed on them and apparently they will all be replaced by ones embossed with CIIIR (Charles the Third, King), despite the lack of any connection with the royals now. What a waste of public money! It would be cheaper and more honest just to scratch EIIR off all the existing boxes.

39. [Roz@33, those are the prizes I got the time that I won. Would much rather have had the Collins, which was the prize when I started entering. Since there are usually hundreds of correct entries, the odds make it not worth the postage and I haven’t got fax, so never enter now.]

40. Me@38: “What a waste of public money!” What am I talking about? It won’t be public money but the capital of the privately-owned ‘Royal’ Mail which will be dissipated. Still, it will allow them to continue to fraudulently imply a connection to the royal family, and shouldn’t affect share-holders, as the cost will be met, if it does go ahead, by putting up the price of stamps, keeping down posties’ wages etc etc

41. Thanks mc_rapper, I heard that there have been postal strikes in the uk so maybe it was inevitable that your fax was the winner, can’t be too many still in possession of one. I enjoyed this and am indebted to you for the understanding of NEEDLE, cryptic enough for me! Valentine I don’t recall ever reading or hearing “miff” as a verb but love the word and will try to use it thus from now on. Thanks Brummie.

42. TC @ 38

    But one still talks of going to the Post Office, not Post Office Counters (Ltd).

43. Thanks for the ongoing correspondence, even if a little off topic in places…!

    For someone to be ‘miffed’, then surely someone or something must have done the ‘miffing’…maybe it usually happens too quickly to be pinned down.

    NB. For some of the other puzzles, I have my eyes on the prize – book tokens; (fountain) pens; dictionaries; £100 for the Genius and Cyclops; champagne, then prosecco, for the IQ way back; Rupert Murdoch’s cash for the Mephisto…but for the Grauniad Prize puzzle is it definitely just the kudos!

44. Simon, yes, or going to the sweet shop, which is often the same thing. Our main post office now is a counter at the back of W.H.Smith, where I live.

45. Came to this one late, and came here to see if anyone else had got stuck on another answer that fits the parsing of 21A (though not the crossers): (William) (Sa)FIRE…

46. Crosbie @45: I always worry about clues that refer to authors, since there are so many of them. Presumably only certain authors are canonical enough to be used in a clue. Proust is clearly included; whereas Boycott (author of “Geoff Boycott’s book for young cricketers” (1976) and several others) would surely not be.

    Congratulations on thinking of William Safire! If I had thought of him, I would probably have waited a bit before entering FIRE, since I think he is known more as a political commentator than an author.

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