62 comments on “Guardian Prize 28997 / Tramp”

1. Its a game of two halves, the top half went in much easier than the bottom, in particular 21 ACROSS, I got fixated on last month being January, as opposed to the actual last month, December!! Note on 20 across you missed the R out from D[esigne]R, but thanks for all the explanations.

2. Nice puzzle, nice blog. I had an almost identical experience to Eileen – including Cambodia!

   Thanks T&E

3. Many thanks Tramp and Eileen
   I certainly make no claim to be an expert, but a quick trawl of Wikipedia suggests that, for 8D STIPES, the reason that you (Eileen) had difficulty tracking down the Latin is that the word belongs to mediaeval Latin. Romans of classical times seem not to have used them in the riding sense (nor even one of them – originally it was an aid to mounting).

4. Thanks to all lucky Antipodean, Middle Eastern and US commenters in the meantime but it’s past this elderly UK lady’s (do the Math[s]) bedtime – but I have restored the designer’s R.
   Now, as our resident diarist said, and so … …

5. Thanks Eileen. This progressed quite steadily but, unlike Ant @1, I found the top half to hold out the longest. STAPES took some research and like your thought with Cambodia the crossers in 19d caused ‘residue’ to leap off the page for me. It could be what is left after a press but that’s as far as I could get. I knew what the answer to 3d had to be but would have spelt it ‘bogied’ so that held me up for a while.

6. Sleep tight Eileen. Yes, great puzzle, quite tough. Needed help with straight flushes, and bunged in fat cat with a shrug. Thanks both.

7. We had ….CE (both sides of cassette) for 8d for quite a while, before seeing the right way to interpret it. Loved OOHED, FLUKEY, PHILTRES (reading Harry Potter comes in useful sometimes), GOLDEN HANDSHAKE, PATELLA. Thanks, Tramp and Eileen.

8. Lewis and Short is a dictionary of Classical Latin. The stirrup arrived in Europe, probably from China, in early medieval or at least post-Classical Roman times, and received a name derived from a Germanic source.

9. Sorry, I missed PeterO above.

10. Thanks Tramp. I found this difficult, particularly the right hand side and I failed with five clues despite repeated attempts. Still I found much to enjoy — if one cannot get some joy from a Tramp crossword there’s no hope for you! Thanks Eileen for explaining what I couldn’t see.

11. Just to confirm what others have said, Chambers has “stapes” as LL for Low or Late Latin.
    Favourite for me was FLUKEY.

12. Like Eileen, I needed several sessions and found philtre really tough. Fortunately, I rejected Cambodia and tried again. I really wanted to put stotic in 22 across, but I knew it was probably not a word, although with stapes in the puzzle I couldn’t be sure exactly what level of vocabulary was possible. I finally finished in a burst of inspiration on Tuesday morning with vendor, Rushdie, and the elusive stolid.

13. Thanks for the explanations, Eileen. I certainly needed help with the parsing of FAT CAT, STAPES and BARBADOS. Indeed, I came here expecting to find that BARBADOS was the wrong answer – I’d put in completely unparsed just because it was a land and it fitted (and, yes, I’d gone via Cambodia too). I certainly never thought of RBS as the bank. Come to that, I thought the sides of a cassette were A and B. I wasn’t quite sure about using ‘die’ in the wordplay for RUSHDIE, but there were some splendid clues here; STRAIGHT FLUSHES was elegantly compact, and I remember liking ROE DEER and GONDOLA. Thanks, Tramp, for a great puzzle.

14. I too considered CAMBODIA, but couldn;t begin to parse it. BARBADOS I could at least parse the back and the font, RBS eluded me.
    Many chuckles especially OOHED and ROE DEER.
    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen

15. Loved the erudite conversation above on origin and era of the word STAPES. It was new to me. I’d figured it had to be an ear component but had to do some research to find it’s what I’d always called the stirrups.

    Thanks tramp for a good prize puzzle and Eileen for her usual thorough blog. I loved the definition for PHILTRES and the ROE DEER. My LOI was POTHER and it was a PDM when I finally figured the Prince was before the Spare. I’d wasted too much time on HAL before I’d entered 7d.

16. Yes this was a challenging puzzle with some interesting solutions. Many thanks to Tramp for the brain stretching – and many thanks to Eileen for a very readable and informative blog, which helped me understand a few things I hadn’t quite parsed. I enjoyed the aforementioned 9a STRAIGHT FLUSHES, as well as 21a INDECENT, 24 GOLDEN HANDSHAKE and 19d RUSHDIE. POTHER at 4a was also my last one in, CanberraGirl@15, with HAL (and WILL) having been tried earlier too. Thanks to all contributors as well; coming here to 15² always enhances my own solve when I read about others’ experiences and thoughts.

17. Good puzzle, thanks for the blog, Eileen. I had entered BOTHER at 4a, careless of how it parsed, and with the uncrossed first letter not needed for any other solution – I suppose I assumed the spare Prince was a brother, and one of the letters was spare.
    So, though I announced I had finished by the evening, really it was a DNF.
    The Shorter Oxford calls STAPES Modern Latin, first used in 1670, but derives it from Mediaeval Latin, as discussed above. The online etymology calls it invented, from the Latin ‘sta’, stand, and ‘pes’, foot . I wondered if bones might be a theme of the puzzle, but this and PATELLA were the only ones/

18. Sorry, my link to the online dictionary went wrong.

19. On Monday we thought this was going to be easy. Got stuck on 8d with an incorrect stance which was clearly not right but blocked 11Ac & 12d for the rest of the week. I should have known STAPES from school Biology. The middle ear contains three tiny bones: Hammer (malleus) — attached to the eardrum. Anvil (incus) — in the middle of the chain of bones. Stirrup (stapes) — attached to the membrane-covered opening that connects the middle ear with the inner ear (oval window). As a consequence this was frustrating and not much fun. Apart from that I knew of Royal but not STRAIGHT FLUSHES.

20. I was torn between GAMBADOS (a form of protection) and BARBADOS finally spotting RBS to conclude a very satisfying solve

    Cheers T&E

21. Another who took a few goes to complete this.

    I had POTHER in early as it’s part of my family’s idiolect, who knows where from, and STAPES, because I know those bones both in Latin (malleus, incus and stapes) and English (hammer, anvil and stirrup). AGARIC I saw on first read through but only entered the crossers until I parsed it and had some confirmation, but I love fly agarics and look out for them each autumn.

    I too couldn’t see beyond Cambodia for a while but didn’t enter it unparsed, whereas BARBADOS parsed easily, RBS is the only bank branch still on this high street, albeit as NatWest. My last in was STRAIGHT FLUSHES as that misdirection caught me.

    Thank you to Tramp and Eileen.

22. Delightful experience last Saturday with one of my favourite setters and, for once, I remember quite a bit of it a week later. Enough to recall that Cambodia never entered my head but also that I never managed to parse BOGEYED. Vague memories of the ear bones from schooldays helped with STAPES – or at least got me thinking that the def was going to be at the ‘Listener’ end of the clue. I was particularly impressed at the clueing of a 15 letter solution with just three words in STRAIGHT FLUSHES.

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen

23. I opened this puzzle this morning to see that I had only managed just under half of it last weekend and so set about finishing it. All the clues that eluded me last Saturday fell steadily today, so I must have become cleverer during the week 🙂

    GOLDEN HANDSHAKE was my favourite.

    Thanks both and happy weekend all.

24. Very tough puzzle. I needed to guess some answers unparsed to get going. Solved lower half first, NW corner last.

    New for me : STAPES.

    I could not parse 18d FAT CAT, wrongly thinking it might have something to do with VAT.

    New for me: close to the bone = INDECENT.

    Thanks, both.

25. A tough but hugely enjoyable puzzle; I remembered STAPES from O Level Biology fifty-odd years ago and PHILTRES from (probably) Ben Jonson but elsewhere there was a bit of bung and shrug (I was another who tried CAMBODIA), so the elucidation of FAT CAT and GONDOLA in particular was very welcome. Thanks Eileen and Tramp.

26. I’ve managed to lose my printout from last week but I remember I enjoyed solving this.

    I was another who flirted with CAMBODIA before getting BARBADOS. The OED gives this for STAPES: The Sicilian anatomist J. Ph. Ingrassia (died 1580), in his posthumous notes to Galen De Ossibus (1603), claims the discovery of this bone, and says that he called it stapha, but others, more solicitous about Latinity, preferred stapes or strapeda. In 1564 Eustachius ( De Auditus Organis, Opusc. Anat. 153) asserts that he made the discovery before Ingrassia did, and states that some call the ossicle staffa or stapes. So, now you know!

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

27. michelle @24: you may not be so far wrong on 18d. I also had [v]AT for “primarily avoiding tax” = a word for tax, without its first letter; I think that works just as well, though I’m guessing Tramp intended A[voiding] T[ax].
    Thanks both – this was a fun puzzle.

28. Excellent all round. I too had trouble with STAPES until it just came to me. According to my etymological dictionary it’s a medieval invented word (related to ‘stare’, to stand). The Romans didn’t have stirrups.

29. It took me a while to see how PHILTRES were “stirring drinks” [I had one of those philtres once, but I was shaken not stirred] GOLDEN HANDSHAKE and STRAIGHT FLUSHES were my favourites.

30. Agree with your assessment entirely, Eileen – Tramp on a Saturday is perfect. Difficult enough to make you work for it, but well worth the effort with many delightful PDMs, and plenty of chuckles. So many great clues but POTHER, STRAIGHT FLUSHES and OOHED were my favourites. Thanks, Tramp and Eileen.

31. Excellent puzzle and blog – thanks to both.

    I was interested in the observations made here on FAT CAT. I worked out F??CAT, and FAT CAT came immediately after that from the definition. Then I seemed to remember a quite recent discussion on this site about AT = ‘for’, and I think Tramp was the setter then.

    The clues to the two long answers were popular – with me too!

32. Started this (again this ,morning and it looked familiar-I’d printed out last week’s but it reminded me of how much I liked it

33. I recall this being good fun. STRAIGHT FLUSH was neat. Enjoyed Eileen’s blog and preamble, with which I concur, though I’d suggest that 18d is never not topical!
    Many thanks, both and all

34. A dnf for me, with the the troublesome ones much the same as other people’s here. But I did find a new way to hinder myself! I have this perplexing bad habit of reading a clue enumerated as having an answer 3,4 for example, then mark my paper copy with a division at the point that would suggest a 4,3 answer. But always a reversal of the figures. Multiple word answers eg 4,2,6 are never a problem. But for this one I managed to mark 9a as 9,6 instead of 8,7, so I was never going to get it right…
    I did think the definition of roe deer a bit of a push.
    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen for her as always interesting blogs.

35. Tough puzzle, but clever. Didn’t finish it during the week, so used a word-filler this morning to help me fill in the gaps, not all of them convincingly. Unfortunately, I had already reluctantly chosen BOTHER over HOOHAH for 4ac, so was disappointed to see the correct answer POTHER in Eileen’s blog. A new word for me, but it was my only error. My other difficulties have been described by Eileen and others above. All reasonably logical, I thought in retrospect.

36. Trying to remember what you did a week ago isn’t easy. I do know that AGARIC was my first in and I failed to parse BARTENDER, though it was obviously that. I know I considered ULT and JAN before I got DEC for last month, and had the usual troubles with FAT CAT. Hard work, but rewarding, with some clever defs. Favourites GOLDEN HANDSHAKE, OILRIGS, OOHED, INDECENT, ROE DEER (for the misdirection towards the other pronunciation of ROW).

37. Just to be different, I found the bottom half much easier than the top. I had almost all the bottom filled in as of this morning except for RUSHDIE and DRINKER, and none of the top except SATIRE and HESITATES.

    For anyone who’s interested, here’s a history of the stirrup’s travel from Asia to Europe.
    https://americanequus.com/history-of-stirrups

    I think it’s true that “last month” isn’t going to be a particular month, other than December, because the setter doesn’t know when the puzzle will appear.

    I enjoyed GOLDEN HANDSHAKE and OIL RIGS. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

38. Yes a fine puzzle which yielded over a few (but short) sessions. I thought BARBADOS (I needed your help with the parsing Eileen) was a tad inelegant in the company of such as PATELLA (up there with Rufus imo) and ABRUPT (both of these conjuring slightly seedy pen pictures for our delectation).

    Thanks to both for the entertainment.

39. Thanks to Eileen and Tramp for the blog and the puzzle. I remember little about how the solve went, but I don’t think I ever worked out the parsing of FAT CAT, so thanks for that. Ours (we have two felines, but only one is overweight) was sitting on me at the time–I do remember that.

    I thought, “of course you can’t do LA in a gondola,” as few attractions are on the water. But then I remembered Venice Beach–what a coincidence there. Of course, right now you might need a gondola–the hilly parts of SoCal just got smacked with a very rare blizzard, and as it melts there are flash-flood warnings down in LA.

    “Short skirts” can be added to the list of lift-and-separate items–that one had me misled for a while.

    [Off to take the other cat to the vet now.]

40. Thanks for the super blog and the kind comments.

    mrpenney: I’m not sure you have to be able to see LA in a gondola. The surface reading doesn’t have to tie in perfectly with the answer: in fact, it usually deliberately doesn’t.

    Neil

41. I usually find Tramp’s puzzles amusing and meticulously constructed; this was both.
    I usually find Eileen’s blogs informative and engaging; this was both.
    Thanks both.

    Re 1d, Eileen mentioned Rufus’ famous PATELLA clue. The idea has been copied frequently by other setters. I was happy to see Tramp come up with a completely different construction for this word. Nicely and humorously done.

    I tried as hard as I could to come up with a complaint about the “homophone” at 7d ROE DEER, but failed. 😉 In the process I was reminded that the arachnid that inhabits male deer and transmits lime disease is a “roe tick”. I’ll get my coat.

42. Okay, I give up. What was Rufus’s PATELLA clue?

43. Valentine, Eileen recited it in her blog for 1d. It was “Two girls, one on each knee.”

44. cellomaniac @41 – I agree wholeheartedly re 1dn but I’m not entirely sure about the other part of your comment. Are you taking us down the dreaded rhotic road – one much-travelled here for me?
    If so, I think I’m reaching for my dressing gown (see me @4), rather than my coat, just now.
    Thank to everyone, including Tramp, as ever, for comments. It seems that most enjoyed it as much as I did.

45. Eileen@44, yes, I was attempting a gentle dig at the “homophone police”, and I couldn’t resist the roe tick idea. Like your late husband I am a rhotic speaker, but I have often argued on these pages that both rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciations should be acceptable fodder for cryptic clues. Surely we have all heard the dreaded “r”-words pronounced both ways often enough.

    I have suggested before that we should stop using the term “homophone”, and replace it with “aural wordplay”. I would love it if others would adopt this term, in the hope of putting an end to the complaints. (When I see one, I don’t know whether to say oh dear or oh deah, not again.)

46. cellomaniac @ 45 (should you see this)

    I’ve been arguing for several that they should just be called puns, but my forehead is very battered as that brick wall just won’t give way…

47. Simon@46, agreed, but we should keep trying.

    I used to argue for pun as well, but I came to think that “aural wordplay” is a more general term, and it highlights the play component of what we are enjoying. To put it in senryu form:
    Homophone police,
    Making mountains of molehills –
    Think “aural wordplay”.

48. Cellomaniac @45

    I’d gone to bed by the time your comment appeared – and I must have already been half-asleep, because – oh deer! – I’d completely missed your rhotic joke but, thanks to you, I’ve started my day with a smile on my face.

    I promise that, from now on, I will promote the use of ‘aural wordplay’.

49. Cellomaniac@45: my observation is that in every case where there is a question of rhotic vs non-rhotic pronunciation in an answer, the non-rhotic version is favoured. I don’t think I”ve ever come across an exception to this, but would be glad to see one.

50. Belated thanks to Tramp and Eileen.
    Cheated to get PHILTRES and STAPES and failed to parse BOTHER. To avoid attracting the attention of the Plain English Campaign, perhaps there is a much shorter, low-brow word that means exactly the same as “aural wordplay” (see simons and cellomaniac @46 and @47).

51. …..”slip of the ear”…..?

52. ….or a “Noah”? (…”no r”…)
    [I’ll stop now]

53. As others have mentioned it sometimes taxes the memory to think back a whole week when a prize blog appears. I do remember having several tea tray moments and many smiles while attacking this puzzle. It was a beaut as was the blog. Many thanks to T and E.

54. poc@49, perhaps that is because the non-rhotic pronunciation is the one that doesn’t correspond to the written form of the word (and is therefore a mispronunciation ); ). By analogy, it is more fun to spell “Featherstonehaugh” and ask someone to pronounce it than to say “Fanshaw” and ask someone to spell it. (As a child I loved the word “ghoti”.)

55. Me@54, there was supposed to be a ); emoji after “mispronunciation”.

56. cellomaniac@54: I don’t think such wordplay is intended as a mispronunciation per se. The fact remains that non-rhoticism is an additional hurdle for we rhotic solvers.

57. cellomaniac@54. You are the only other person I know who knows ‘ghoti’.
    GH as in cough, O as in women, and TI as in nation.
    Are we talking about the same FISH?

58. paddymelon @57
    Of course we are! I’ve known that one too – for too many years to count.

59. Remember ghoti too, as well as “The harbour of Fowey is a beautiful spot. It is there I enjoy to sail in a yacht. To sail in a yot round a mark or a bowey; what a beautiful spacht is the harbour of Fuoy”. And then there is “I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough, etc., etc. What a language!

60. Great puzzle, great blog.

    I didn’t twig what SPARE was alluding to until some time after solving it. I don’t think prince needed a capital, did it?

    I remembered STAPES from ‘O’-level Biology. Also tried to parse Cambodia unsuccessfully before getting more crossers. Had to look up philtres.

    It’s a bit late now, but in 1dn the ‘a’ is (as explained) part of the wordplay, not the def, so the underlining has over-extended. In 13dn, you’ve forgotten to underline the def at all.

61. Thanks, Tony Collman @60 – only caught your late comment by chance, when clearing out my Trash folder, where, for some reason, comments on my blog are sent!
    For the sake of the archive, I’ve amended my careless errors – amazed to have got away with them for a whole week.

62. Eileen, glad you found me in the bin as I was sure you would want to perfect your post for the archive. (You should get this comment next time you’re having a clear out, I suppose?)

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