Guardian Prize 28,961 by Paul

90 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,961 by Paul”

1. In 25a ‘poached’ is not just there for the surface: surely it’s the containment indicator (in the sense of stealing an estate owner’s game).

2. I made such a poor start with this that I didn’t know whether (let alone when) I would break into the linked set of answers. However, when I saw that PORRIDGE would fit in the space at 16a, the word BREAKFAST (of which I had no letters at that point) suggested itself, and FULL ENGLISH soon followed.

   With ‘satede’ solved, the other riddle (‘breban gerad’) yielded more readily, and that was another breakfast option in the bag. The rest of the puzzle was like a more conventional Saturday Prize, and I savoured all the little tricks that I found in the rest of the clues. MISTER, my LOI, took a while to fathom (‘lector’ being an unusual way of introducing a sound-alike). I thought TETRAGRAM was an excellent clue.

   Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

3. Great fun – thanks both. At 14d I think you mean Chris de Burgh fans, not Chris Rea, but I had a similar thought.

4. I thought the reversed ‘ails’ has poached, i.e. captured, the ova k.

5. Thanks both, a fun puzzle.
   I thought perhaps 1919 and 1946 could be considered a holiday compared to what had gone before.

6. Quick work, hatter @1 🙂

7. I could only get ONUS on the first pass through the clues, but like Alan B @2 I saw PORRIDGE pretty soon, and this made 1a BREAKFAST obvious and opened things up nicely. The clue for LADY IN RED was apposite, even if it’s not &lit, as it is indeed a ‘direly mushy’ song!

   I thought a ‘Bronx cheer’ was a raspberry (from the rhyming slang raspberry tart) rather than a boo, but the answer was clear enough. And HOL(e) is pretty loosely defined as ‘trench briefly’ (surely a trench is rather more than just a hole?), but this was fairly obvious once the relevance of the dates was taken on board.

   Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

8. Nice one and enjoyed 5d as my mum was a Peg who loved crosswords.
   Thanks both

9. The thought I had, Quirister @3, was Now what was that singer’s name … our kids had the album and saw him live ..? Had to look it up, ah yes Chris de Burgh.

10. 5 dn – beautiful

11. Managed to get only BOOZE on first run through, but was almost completely defeated by Paul this week. Greatly enjoyed the blog for illumination, but this proved to be beyond me. Since Paul is my favourite setter and I can normally get on to his wavelength I wonder whether this was much more difficult than usual, or just down to my own limitations.

12. As to how whether, and how direly, it is mushy, bridgesong, I’m agnostic, but it’s a witty suggestion.

13. Am used to lithe and lissome but don’t think I’ve seen lithesome before.

14. hatter @7, when a fielder has muffed a catch or has fumbled, then the next time they field Aussie crowds will give an ironic cheer, which commentators invariably call a Bronx cheer. And yes, it’s definitely not a boo.

15. Enjoyed this and got through it quite quickly.

    BREAKFAST was my FOI and then I guessed FULL ENGLISH but didn’t parse it till later in a penny drop moment.

    SERIAL KILLER and PORRIDGE made me smile and I thought SAUSAGE SANDWICH was great – again I guessed it first with just two crosses in place and later realised how to parse it.

    Other favourite was TETRAGRAM – not heard that nickname in ages.

    Thanks Paul and bridgesong

16. Thanks bridgesong. My experience was much like others, a slow start but steady progress thereafter.
    I wasn’t happy with WARHOL, it couldn’t be anything else but as sheffield hatter @7 says there’s a big difference between a trench and a hole. Like Gonzo @ 5 I could only think the dates represented a holiday from wars but that’s drawing a very long bow. I’ve read somewhere there have only ever been a very small number of years when a war wasn’t going on somewhere. I’m not a fan of the nonsense words, they’re quite transparent and can only be used very occasionally.

17. Thanks to Paul and bridgesong. I took 12 Ac to be a triple definition–the artist, a WAR HOLe, and a WAR HOLiday. Commenters have made the points separately, but perhaps not together.

18. I liked this despite some problems with parsing a couple (i.e. couldn’t see the significance of the years in the clue for WARHOL at 12a), but that’s no reflection on Paul’s setting skills. I thought the little tricks with the nonsense words for breakfasts was quite clever once I managed to work out what was going on. Worth it for 1d BOOZE, 5d TETRAGRAM (Margaret being my second name) (already highlighted by some other contributors above), and 18d EPHESUS, as well as a “banging” solution to the “breban gerad” clue at 10/21 (SAUSAGE SANDWICH) which seems to have been another crowd favourite. With thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

19. Thanks Bridgesong. The post war bit in WARHOL eluded me but it’s so obvious in hindsight.
    Enjoyed doing this at breakfast time, my favourite meal of the day. Liked the parsing of BREAKFAST, which I didn’t get, another postpositioning clue, with the signposts disguised (from me, anyway).

    Liked the clue for FLANNEL, ‘cleaner bilge’. Had to look up the bilge meaning. As a cleaner, there are regional variations here, the alternatives being washer or facecloth. Paul could have clued it as bilge cleaner, but it would lose the humour.

    I’m not so fond of sedate and breban gerad. I enjoy rebussy clues, but my preference is for real words in clues like that. Maybe someone will tell me they are, but I couldn’t find them.

20. [Sorry Biggles and JiA, missed your comments about nonsense words. Should have refreshed]

21. Glad to see others made a slow start to this. After my first pass through this I had nothing even pencilled in, which is the first time in quite a while that’s happened with a Guardian cryptic. I wonderer if I was being slow or Paul was being very devious. I had wondered about PORRIDGE though, and had picked up something of a breakfast vibe from some of the other clues, but couldn’t parse it as the answer for 1ac. Finally I got in with RIDDLES and EPHESUS (which did rather confirm PORRIDGE) and then I saw what ‘breban gerad’ was about. Things went better from there, but it was still a long time before I was convinced by BREAKFAST (so I was being slow, after all). Some very nice cluing, particularly for TETRAGRAM and most of the themed clues. I couldn’t decide how I felt about the ‘wordplay’ that didn’t use real words. But then, it’s not a rule that there even has to be wordplay, just that the answer be gettable, and these were. In the end, I thought both the banger and the FULL ENGLISH clues were fair enough, but a trick best used with restraint. I.guess FOX LOVE is a warm feeling in a den, but I ddn’t think of it that way until I saw the blog, so thanks, bridgesong. And thanks, Paul, for what I found quite a challenge, at least at first.

22. I also was slowish to start having not got ‘breakfast’ but after the first pass with the K & T crossers 1ac fell which made the rest of the solve pretty speedy because all the linked answers then gave lots of crossers.

    I think people who were fans of Chris de Burgh before that song would agree it’s an &lit – it is truely dreadful compared with his other stuff, particularly up to then (it was not commercial pop at all). Only one other song troubled the UK top 40 (a couple of years later, off the back of Lady in Red probably & also rather schmaltzy) but his music sold pretty well as albums, particularly in Ireland & some parts of Europe with a more niche audience in the UK.

23. Great fun from Paul. Thank you. And super blog too. Now I see it’s my other favourite setter for the prize today. Feeling lucky!

24. [I quite liked Lady in Red.]

25. Thanks for the blog, a very traditional theme in both style and content . Fortunately the numbered clue referred to was 1 AC .
    I liked FOXGLOVE , one of my favourite plants , grow and seed themselves quite happily and never fail. A few people mentioned TETRAGRAM and the reverse of Margaret is very impressive. I think made-up words or phrases are fine but limited to one per puzzle as a maximum. My favourite from Araucaria – Cox at me ( 6,3,6 )

26. Thanks to Quirister @3 for putting me right about the singer of Lady in Red. I’ve amended the blog. Apologies to Chris Rea fans!

27. TETRAGRAM is an excellent word. I must use it – as opposed to them – more.

28. Many thanks, Paul and bridgesong. A slow burn for me but no burnt toast or troubled waters except that I missed parsing MISTER.

29. Paul, when on form, is probably my favourite setter, and I thought this one was pretty good.
    I share the general admiration for TETRAGRAM; also liked LADY IN RED (the clue, not the song!).
    Among other favourites were the two nonsense-word clues – IMO several in the same puzzle are fine, if, like here, the wordplay is different in each case – they form a sort of mini- or micro-theme. What would be tedious is if there were more than the very occasional puzzle that used such devices.
    I’m with JohnH@17 and others regarding WARHOL being a triple definition.
    Paul has a reputation for schoolboy humour, but recently it seems is using less of it – I don’t much mind either way.
    Thanks Paul and bridgesong.

30. [[Roz @25, there were a couple of Dirac comments late on, some days ago. Mine was that John Polkinhorne said watching Dirac work stuff out in real time on the blackboard was like watching Bach compose …]]

31. [ Grant@30 I have replied to this comment somewhere?? and the original comments are somewhere else ? I have lost track. The second half of my week is very busy so I do not comment or check much. ]

32. Many thanks for another fine puzzle. Like others I was slow to start (and quite slow to finish). But I’m firmly in the anti-nonsense-word camp. They almost make me angry. Apart from the fact they are ridiculous, it feels as if the setter has made it only halfway through writing the clue, as if they have given up on thinking of a surface. But I am now breathing deeply and taking a cold shower…

33. I generally like Paul’s puzzles, he’s often at or near the top of my favourite setter list, but I join the chorus of raspberries for the mid-definition of Bronx Cheer, and I’m also one of those who really doesn’t like made-up words in a clue — I’m doing a crossword, not playing Dingbats…

    (Apart from that it was great)

    Thanks both.

34. I failed to solve a single clue on first pass so I decided to just come here and read the blog. Thank you, bridgesong.

35. Roz – put me (at least) out of my misery and reveal the answer to the Araucaria clue you gave @25.

36. bridgesong @35… just Google it mate. 🙂

    Alternatively, see this Guardian article on Araucaria’s Last Puzzle

37. Just did this now, time for a croissant I think…

38. This could almost have been a strangely timely tribute to the passing of Fay Weldon,(coining Go to work on an egg, perhaps one of her lesser achievements) but for the lack of egg-related breakfast items.

39. Tim C @36 – thanks for the link, hadn’t seen that article before and found it fascinating, especially the list of his best clues at the end. Interesting how many of them were pure wordplay, no definition – which I’m sure if they appeared in a contemporary crossword blogged here, some commenters would probably grumble! 🙂

40. What a lovely fun puzzle this was, thanks, Paul. And thanks for the blog, bridgesong.

    I agree with Sheffield hatter @1 on poached – not least because the literal meaning of the word is “pocketed”. (Poached eggs are so called because the yolk is in a “pocket” of the white.)

    And I agree with beaulieu @29 re the nonsense words – good fun if used sparingly, and I don’t think we’ve seen any like that from Paul for a while, so these ones were absolutely fine by me – breban gerad the better of the two for humour value. FOXGLOVE was my favourite clue here though.

    Lenmasterman @11 – I often struggle with Paul but got on really well with this one, so I reckon it must be a wavelength thing.

41. Thanks Paul and Bridgesong. I have never heard of a Bronx cheer and after the comments above I am still not sure what it is! How did it come to mean whatever it does? Great crossword, by the way.

42. Graham @41: a Bronx cheer is defined in Chambers as a vulgar sound of disapproval, a raspberry.

43. Amusing puzzle by Paul. I enjoyed it mostly except for 19ac. Favourite solutions, ‘serial killer’ and ‘sausage sandwich.’ Like some previous bloggers, I didn’t understand Bronx cheers but Booze had to be the solution. My only quibble with 19ac. A bit of a time-waster for me. The word ‘Lector’ seems redundant for the solution ‘Mister’ and invites the alternative answer ‘Master’. The clue would make sense without ‘Lector’, but with a question mark at the end. Alan B @12:17am suggests that ‘Lector’ is “an unusual way of introducing a sound-alike”. How so?

    Thanks Bridgesong, but I disagreee about ‘GEGS’. Seems quite a clever clue to me.

44. Amusing puzzle by Paul. I enjoyed it mostly except for 19ac. Favourite solutions, ‘serial killer’ and ‘sausage sandwich.’ Like some previous bloggers, I didn’t understand Bronx cheers but Booze had to be the solution. My only quibble was with 19ac. A bit of a time-waster for me. The word ‘Lector’ seems redundant for the solution ‘Mister’ and invites the alternative answer ‘Master’. The clue would make sense without ‘Lector’, but with a question mark added at the end. Alan B @12:17am suggests that ‘Lector’ is “an unusual way of introducing a sound-alike”. How so?

    Thanks Bridgesong, but I also disagree about ‘GEGS’. Seems quite a clever clue to me.

45. I’ve always understood a Bronx cheer to be a raspberry rather than a boo, and Chambers agrees.

    Dnf as I couldn’t convince myself that MISTER was correct at 19a. Even regarding it as a pun rather than a homophone, I don’t get ‘lector’ as the indicator. Are we expected to be reading aloud?

46. Sorry about the double entry. Site posted my draft before I pressed ‘Post Comment’, then didn’t delete the draft.

47. michelle@34: welcome to what appears to be quite an exclusive club.
    You might fare better with today’s delightful but tricky Picaroon on which I managed a restorative quick start.

48. Another slow start, but ultimately all completed. I think SAUSAGE SANDWICH was my way in after a couple of across clues.

    Thank you to bridgesong and Paul.

49. JohnJB @44 – ‘lector’ = ‘reader’, so the implication is to reading aloud. As a homophone indicator it’s a tad stretchy, but I think that’s what the setter intended.

50. Last week I had about four words in. This morning I couldn’t see any more, so tried cautious use of the check button, and slowly worked my way through. I did have PORRIDGE, but didn’t make it to BREAKFAST until much farther along.

    Thanks for parsing KNOLL, bridgesong, how did I miss that?

    TETRAGRAM is brilliant! Who’d ever spell “Margaret” backwards? (Well, Paul would.)

    I fell for the South America trick again. When will I ever learn?

    Missed flannel for washcloth. In the US they are quite different sorts of fabric.

    Thanks as ever to Paul and bridgesong.

51. Thanks bridgesong. Agree on the misdirectional power of Lector which I had to look up to check (presumably they read from a lectern, which I have heard of) and even then took a while for the answer to click. “A real Bronx cheer” was the promise made with every whoopie cushion purchased from joke shops but it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine boos and jeers among the raspberries – tough crowd, Paul, but thanks.

52. Great fun, as ever from Paul. Had a real belly laugh at DISCOVERY, from memories of a French school trip many years ago where we found a French newspaper with the music charts in it. They listed ELO’s album Discovery as Disco Very, which we thought was hilarious because it kinda makes some sense for a pop record. So to find that exact device in a crossword some 45 years later, chapeau Paul!

53. Amplifying on Valentine @50: *neither* definition of FLANNEL in that clue is part of American English. So that one was my last in; sure, it was the only word that fit, but I had to do a bit of googling to explain it satisfactorily.

    Yankees tickets are so expensive these days that you probably don’t hear too many Bronx cheers in the Bronx anymore! The crowd is too genteel.

54. Sorry Bridgesong@35 I have been out all day. It is – Income tax return .

55. JohnJB @44 / RobT @49 – A lector is specifically someone who reads aloud, hence the clue breaks down as:

    For someone who reads aloud, “failed to notice a” = title

    I think it’s an excellent clue, not at all stretchy. The rhotics might disagree, but let’s not go there.

56. |f a lector “failed to notice” a miswritten homophone, who’s to know? Not even an auditor.

57. Roz @54: thanks, although I had found it in the Guardian article referred to by Tim C @36. As has been mentioned, although the wordplay is clever, there is no definition, so it is unorthodox, to put it mildly.

58. Thanks all for various explanations of a Bronx cheer.

59. I am only relying on memory but I am pretty certain another clue in the puzzle had the answer- Self assessment . And I think this clue cross-referenced the “Cox at me ” clue.

60. Widders @55 – I stand, if not corrected per se, definitely clarified and educated 🙂 I hadn’t realised that the word inherently included the ‘aloud’ element.

61. Although my last one in, I thought MISTER was fine & quite amusing. The lector read out “He missed ‘a’ beat” (A pronounced in it’s short form) and I heard “He, Mr Beat” & the audience reply “Who he”.

62. Rob T @49, Widdersbel @55. The reader (lector) would always read “failed to notice a” correctly without any confusion. A listener might mis-hear as “mister”. The misdirection has ruined a good clue. “Failed to notice a title?”

63. JohnJB@62, how does misdirection ruin a clue?

    Widdersbel@55, and others, re 19a MISTER, I, like Eileen’s late husband, am a rhotic speaker, and I had no schwabian difficulty in solving and parsing this clue. I thought it was a great clue.

    In 25a SLOVAKIA, the inclusion of poached in the clue had me looking for PEAK in the answer – another excellent misdirection.

    14a LADY IN RED was my favourite, and yes, bridgesong, I read it as an &lit.

    Thanks, Paul, bridgesong, and everyone for the fun.

64. Also, I thought 5a TETRAGRAM was a clever reversal, and a nice hidden shoutout to JinA and Nutmeg.

65. Cellomaniac @63. A flawed or clumsy misdirection causes irritating time-wasting for some solvers. This one was illogical. A sad end to an otherwise nice puzzle.

66. JohnJB @passim Are you saying that any homophone clue indicated by what’s said rather than what’s heard is suspect in some way? Because that’s a pretty tall order, and cuts down the viable indicators somewhat.

67. Gobbo @66. Well, yes. I suppose so. What is said by the reader is correct both in mind and utterance. The homophone is misheard or misunderstood by the listener. I had MISTER down as a possibility from the outset, but rejected it. The clue just didn’t make sense and still doesn’t.

68. JohnJB @67. ‘Lector’s failed to notice a title’=the words “failed to notice a” if read out could be misheard as a title. Very straightforward, in my view. The only thing that could be misleading is the mind drifting off in the direction of Hannibal Lecter, for example.

69. JohnJB @67 Makes a sort of sense, I suppose. But as finickitinesses go, it’s surely a recipe for disappointment solving.

70. JohnJB I think you raise an interesting and maybe philosophical point. Was the Rev Spooner, so beloved of setters, aware of his malaprops or were they cases of “many a slip twixt brain and lip”? You have certainly given me plenty of food for thought, thank you!

71. Bridgesong, although you’re right to say the clue “SGEG” ought (by the lights of most setters and editors today, I would guess) to have a definition, it doesn’t need an anagram indicator, because it’s not fodder. This is what’s sometimes known as a ‘reverse anagram’: SGEG is EGGS, scrambled. ‘1across sgeg?’ would have been at least as good a clue as “1across satede” (not saying much, tbh, since ‘satede’ is no more a word than ‘sgeg’).

    1ac I had BREAKFAST in mind for quite a while, especially after getting SAUSAGE SANDWICH, but just couldn’t see the charade for ages. This was one of many clues with very clever use of different meanings for words in this puzzle.

    12ac WARHOL: I took “(1919 or 1946?)” to mean ‘immediately after war’. “Trench” for HOL[e] does seem poor now, but I didn’t raise an eyebrow at the time.

    19ac Once I found a lector can refer to a monk who reads aloud at mealtimes I had no problem interpreting it as a homophone indicator. When “missed a” is read out loud, you might receive ‘mister’. Perhaps a QM would be in order. JohnJB@62 seems to say that “Failed to notice a title?” would work better. Where’s the homophone indicator there, John?

    1dn BOOZE: hadn’t heard of a ‘Bronx cheer’ (more unindicated Americana from Paul?). On investigation I discovered it refers to a sound which, although also expressing disapproval, is quite different from a boo (a ‘raspberry’, as it’s known here).. I’m sure there could have been a better way of defining the homophone (‘Drink eliciting disapproval by the sound of it’ would use a more accurate definition, with no obscure foreign idiom).

    3dn KNOLL, I was going to say I don’t think I’ve ever seen this word not preceded by ‘the grassy’, but thinking about it, I remembered the opening words of the poem recited by John Peel on Tyrranosaurus (later, just T.) Rex’s first album, My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair, But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows:

    “Kingsley Mole sat high on a windy knoll,
    Sulkily scraping blue-beat rhythms with his ground-digging paw”. Genius.

    5dn, TETRAGRAM was a corker. Some of the other clues elicited a number of TETRAGRAMs from me.

72. [Me@71 Funny how the memory plays tricks; those are all words in the poem, but separated by quite a few others.

    Anyway, you can read all the words and hear it embedded in the song Frowning Atahuallpa (My Inca Love) here.]

73. JohnJB – The lector is speaking a phrase that means “failed to notice a”, and this happens to rhyme with a word for a title. There’s no suggestion that they’re actually failing to notice this. That apostrophe-S on lector makes all the difference.

    I stand by my belief that it’s an excellent clue.

74. Widdersbel@73, it’s not a rhyme but a homophone. In a British RP accent, “missed a” sounds exactly like “mister”.

75. Speaking of rhymes for ‘mister’, I’m reminded of the limerick:

    There was a young fellow from Bicester,
    Who had the most beautiful sicester;
    Now, here’s the real story:
    In spite of the law, ‘e
    Just couldn’t resicester and kicest ‘er

    Emzi Zimiziyu

76. I think JohnJB might have made his case harder to understand by his use of the word ‘misdirection’. When talking about cryptic clues, this word is usually used in the same way as conjurers use it, meaning to cause the solver/audience’s attention to be directed away from what it needs to be aimed at (to solve the clue/perceive the sleight of hand). Hence protestations that there’s nothing wrong with using misdirection in a cryptic clue.
    I think what John actually means could perhaps be described by the phrase ‘wrong directionality’ (but only he can say for sure).

77. Vintage Paul. Took a lot of pondering and still needed bridgesong for the parsing of SLOVAKIA (but why? – just ran out of available brainpower I suppose). For no reason other than a palpable glow of satisfaction when it cracked I liked TRAIN SET. TETRAGRAM got a double tick – very rare; now to use it in conversation…

    TC@75: Hee hee. Perhaps ‘…a young micester from…’ would be an improvement?

78. Tony Collman: love the limerick, and love Alphalpha’s suggested amendment!

    I’m late in responding I know and everything I’ve wanted to praise about this crossword has already been praised, thanks everyone! But it’s bugging me that several commenters have derided HOL(e) as a definition for Trench. I’d agree, but the definition is surely WAR HOL(e), which I thought very apposite. I’m also in agreement with those who see it as a triple definition. An excellent clue in my book.

    Huge thanks as ever to Paul and bridgesong.

79. Don’t care what the reference books say, you can’t hear a raspberry in a stadium, in the Bronx or Queens, at Wembley or the MCG, so it’s an ironic cheer for me.

80. [Alphalpha @77. “Perhaps ‘…a young micester from…’ would be an improvement?” Nice idea, but putting that made up word before the reality of Bicester has been introduced leads to a stumble in reading the phrase while the eyes and brain catch hold of what is going on. The other word-variants behave much more smoothly because the paradigm of Bicester’s pronunciation has been absorbed, and we can relax enough to laugh.]

81. sh@80: That occurred to me too but, em, post post.

82. In Bicester there lives a young micester…..?

    This is my coat as you ask….. oh

83. pp: DISCOVERY deserves praise too. I enjoyed it almost as much as Fiery Jack@52.

84. Me@75, hmmm, I see I put that limerick up on this site just over a year ago, in response to a query about the pronunciation of Bicester.

85. I went away on Sunday, and so apologies for long delay in replying to Tony Collman @76 and Widdersbel@73. I saw the homophone was very obvious, which is possibly why Paul has added ‘Lector’s’ to make it a bit harder. I do say that the directionality of the misdirection is wrong. The Lector read (with eyes) ‘MISTER’ and said (with mouth) ‘MISTER. The homophone was only in the ear of the listener, and so the clue needed to end with a question mark to indicate the puzzlement of the listener.

86. John @85. “Lector” doesn’t make it harder: it is what indicates the homophone. The lector read (with eyes) “missed a” (synonymous with “failed to notice a”) and read out loud (what sounds exactly like) MISTER.

    You seem to have missed my question @71: “Where’s the homophone indicator there, John?” (referring to your suggested ‘improvement’: “Failed to notice a title?”).

87. Tony Collman @86. Sorry, but I didn’t notice your question among your other comments @71. The homophone indicator would be the question mark. The Lector reads out ‘MISSED A’. The listener might possibly confuse the sounds with ‘MISTER’, depending on the diction of the lector. A doubtful mistake. Hence the need for a question mark. I was a lector for a brief period in the 1960s, reading the scriptures at dinner time to the Jesuit teachers at my school in Liverpool. The attraction was a better meal than the standard school dinner. I didn’t do it for very long. Missed too much playtime.

88. JohnJB,

    “The homophone indicator would be the question mark.”

    I’ve never seen a homophone indicated solely by a question mark and would question the suitability of a clue that did that.

    “The listener might possibly confuse the sounds with ‘MISTER’, depending on the diction of the lector.”

    In these puzzles, you can generally assume, in the absence of other indications, that words are considered to be pronounced in British ‘Received Pronunciation‘. This is the pronunciation given in British dictionaries and may not be identical with other varieties of English as spoken in the regions and former colonies.

    “A doubtful mistake”

    John, there is no lector or listener: it’s a crossword clue and does not necessarily need to summon up a convincing picture of real life.

    Thanks for the vignette of your schooldays. Tough choice: better food or more play.

89. Tony Collman, we shall have to agree to disagree on this one. I rejected ‘MISTER’ early on. The clue only makes sense to me with a question mark. I don’t want to delve into British RP. I had enough problems with earlier in life. I’m a bit behind with the Prize crosswords as I have been away. I have only just given up on the bottom RHS of Picaroon’s 28,967 and read the official published solution. All clues bar 24d now make sense to me.

90. My first post here. Came to this one late, and actually managed to finish it eventually, which is by no means always the case with Saturday Guardians. My LOI and favourite clue was Foxglove. Love in a den, brilliant!

Comments are closed.