Guardian Prize 29,045 / Picaroon

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There’s no danger of it being a spoiler to say, in the first line of the preamble, that Picaroon has presented us with a themed Prize puzzle – not too challenging but a very pleasant and interesting Saturday morning solve.

It was, of course, immediately obvious that 16dn was the key to the theme but, following my usual practice, I tackled the clues in order and it was 1dn ENVY, my first ’16’ solve, which clicked as soon as I reached that point and opened up a very enjoyable progress through the clues, in which Picaroon had cleverly exploited a number of uses of the word GREEN.

Lots of good clues, as always: I had ticks for 12ac NAIVENESS, 29ac RECYCLING, 2dn ARMANI, 3dn MARTIAL ART, 4dn GRINCH, 5dn ETHIOPIA, 6dn OBOE, 15dn TRAVEL-SICK, 19d THUNBERG and 22dn BODICE. I also liked the ‘lift and separate’ device in 10ac, 20ac, 7dn, 13dn, 25dn.

Many thanks to Picaroon for a fun puzzle.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

[I’m leaving home early in the morning for Stratford, for the annual celebration of the Bard’s birthday, with cake and Buck’s Fizz at breakfast time at the RSC. I hope our far-flung friends will have highlighted any glaring errors or omissions before 7.45 BST, as I shan’t be able to make more amendments until late afternoon.]

 

Across

9 Criminal warrant you truncated for a pest (6,3)
NORWAY RAT
An anagram (criminal) of WARRANT YO[u]
I didn’t recognise this particular pest but it turns out to be what I would just call a rat

10 Blackbirds in 16 activity (5)
BOWLS
B (black) + OWLS (birds) – bowls is played on a green

11 Brewer leaves brewery with direction for what goes in beer (5)
YEAST
[brewer]Y + EAST (direction)

12 Kind of water around promontory being 16 (9)
NAIVENESS
A reversal (around) of EVIAN (kind of water) + NESS (promontary)

13 Chaps in parties, 16s (7)
SPINACH
An anagram (parties) of CHAPS IN

14 Speaking without hesitation on gentle 16 activity (7)
PUTTING
P (gentle) + UTT[er]ING (speaking) without er (hesitation)

17 Rotter abandoning home, getting another one (5)
VILLA
VILLA[in] rotter, minus in (home) to give another home

19 Dined perhaps, delaying a possibly 16 drink (3)
TEA
ATE (dined, perhaps) with the A delayed until the end

20 Beer bottles Gloria drained? These may be in the drink (5)
ALGAE
ALE (beer) round (bottles) G[lori]A – reference to the expression ‘in the drink’, meaning any body of water

21 Dog in his hut, with spitz’s tail wagging (4-3)
SHIH-TZU
An anagram (wagging) of HIS HUT + [spit]Z

22 Train robbery (5-2)
BREAK-IN
Double definition – the first doesn’t need a hyphen

24 Socialised in hotel with old pupil, toff and qualified teacher (9)
HOBNOBBED
H (hotel) + OB (old boy/pupil) + NOB (toff) + B.ED. ( Bachelor of Education – qualified teacher)

26 Cry after sacking one famous 16 figure (5)
SHREK
SHR[i]EK (cry) minus I (one) – definitely green 

28 Famous 16 figure left, you heard, with a lot of money (5)
LUCAS
L (left + + U (you heard) + CAS[h] (a lot of money)
Caroline Lucas is a former leader of the Green Party

29 16 activity on 16 activity (9)
RECYCLING
RE (on) CYCLING (another green activity)

 

Down

1 English sailors deprived of a feeling making you 16 (4)
ENVY
E (English) + N[a]VY (sailors) minus (deprived of) a

2 A princess investing millions in Italian company (6)
ARMANI
A RANI (a princess) round M (millions)

3 Method for scrapping upturned vehicle, running a trial (7,3)
MARTIAL ART
A reversal (upturned, in a down clue) of TRAM (vehicle) + an anagram (running, as colours sometimes do in the wash) of A TRIAL – scrapping as in fighting

4 Famous 16 figure‘s smile about goal in rugby (6)
GRINCH
GRIN (smile) + C (about) + H (rugby goalpost)

5 Land in Haiti, a lot of open ground (8)
ETHIOPIA
An anagram (ground – one of my favourite indicators) of HAITI + OPE[n]

6 Instrument: gong ringing out at first (4)
OBOE
OBE (Order of the British Empire – medal / gong) round (ringing) O[ut] – I’ve seen many clues for OBOE: this must be one of the best

7 Comprehensive school’s head in distress (8)
SWEEPING
S[chool] + WEEPING (in distress)

8 Poses while eating Special K (4)
ASKS
AS (while) round S (special) K

13 Husbands heading for swingers’ bar at first (5)
SAVES
S[wingers’) after SAVE (bar)

15 Way in which vagrant lives poorly on the road (6-4)
TRAVEL-SICK
TRACK (way) round an anagram (vagrant) of LIVES

16 Alternative energy, mostly, may be so? (5)
GREEN
An anagram (may be so) of ENERG[y] &lit

18 Cool kid without current support (4-4)
LAID-BACK
LAD (kid) round I (current) + BACK (support)

19 Hunt out composer, a famous 16 figure (8)
THUNBERG
An anagram (out) of HUNT + (Alban) BERG (composer)
Hurrah for Greta!

22 Problem when refusing to wash and cut part of dress (6)
BODICE
BO (problem when refusing to wash) + DICE (cut – vegetables, for instance)

23 Famous 16 figure I’m not sure is dressed in clothing  (6)
KERMIT
ERM (I’m not sure) in KIT (clothing) – another undeniably green figure

24 Famous 16 figure’s hard luck, wanting cold bananas (4)
HULK
H (hard) + an anagram (bananas) of LU[c]K minus c (cold) – and another

25 Send packing case for outfit around America (4)
OUST
O[utfi]T round US (America)

27 Whence we get beer from cask, eg Stella (4)
KEGS
Hidden in casK EG Stella

45 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,045 / Picaroon”

  1. I couldn’t work out the hesitation but of PUTTING and had potting in for a while (on the Green baize just now).
    Very enjoyable solve.
    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

  3. I wondered which LUCAS it might be. Loved ‘Train robbery’!
    Thanks Eileen (and Picaroon for the entertainment).

  5. Thanks Eileen. Unlike you it took me some time to come to terms with 16 and the theme and I had about half of the grid completed by then. The rest followed slowly and Google had to help with LUCAS and, I have to confess, with the characters from children’s’ stories. I did finish with a sense of satisfaction.

  6. I went straight to 16d after encountering my first GREEN clue and, for once, getting the theme helped. I had BOWLING instead of PUTTING, unparsed, but then I got BOWLS, so one of them had to be wrong and it was obvious whichone.

    I did enjoy this, I was looking for HULK, but forgot about SHREK and KERMIT until I saw their clues.. I was wondering if the MEKON might make an appearance.
    I ticked too many clues to mention them all, but may I stake a claim for the humble SPINACH, maybe not so humble now the royal dwarf is claiming it for a quiche.
    Thankyou both,

  7. Thanks Picaroon for a solid prize. I got off on the wrong foot by entering “yarrow ant” instead of NORWAY RAT in 9a but I quickly saw my error. Most else went in without problem except for BOWLS and SWEEPING which required a word finder. Favourites included NAIVENESS, VILLA, BREAK-IN, and BODICE. Thanks Eileen for the blog and for explaining LUCAS and OBOE, neither of which I understood.

  8. I found this on the easier side of a Picaroon puzzle. I struggled more with his most recent crossword.

  9. Thanks, Eileen. Have a good time at the birthday party! After a few weeks off (travelling with no access to a printer so no way to make the hard copy I prefer to work with) this was quite a gentle return to the Saturday Prize. I did wonder if the green figures would turn out to be all Uk environmentalists I didn’t know, but I did know LUCAS and once I saw KERMIT I thought I was on firmer ground. Failed to parse PUTTING, I’m afraid, but it was fun trying to think of all the possibilities ‘green’ had to offer. Thanks, Picaroon.

  10. Plenty of smiles solving this. I would never have thought of that rat, but when it fell out of the anagram fodder I remembered the album “Rattus Norvegicus” and happily put it in. I’d forgotten that it was by the Stranglers though…
    Thanks for a great puzzle and blog.

  11. Excellent crossword, Pickers, and thanks for the blog, Eileen. Couldn’t parse PUTTING fully – Like Tim the Toffee I couldn’t find the hesitation.
    I vaguely remember what were really quite famous LUCAS (the car) GREEN BOXES, so I was happy with that (now incorrect) parsing…

  12. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
    I went straight to 16d and solved it readily – I’ve seen a similar clue recently. The rest was fun. I laughed out loud at KERMIT.

  13. I went straight to 16d and was surprised to see what the answer was. Like others I was very impressed by all the ways Picaroon found of using the key word.

    I really enjoyed doing this although I realised this am when I went to look at it that I had not quite finished.

    Favourites included: HOBNOBBED, VILLA, RECYCLING, SHREK, ENVY (my first *green* solve too)

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

  14. Much enjoyed for all the originality. Like others I somehow failed to parse PUTTING, even though I’d guessed hesitation would be ER.

    Was I the only one who tried a phonetic spelling of the dog in 27A and struggled to find a three-letter word ending in Z for 3D?

    Smiles everywhere in this puzzle.
    Many thanks Picaroon.

  15. Thanks, Eileen. Enjoy the Bardfest – beware the green-eyed monster which destroyed Othello.
    I enjoyed the puzzle but found it quite hard, and in fact DNF, as BODICE eluded me, and I guessed ’bedeck’, meaning ‘dress’, but which otherwise didn’t fit.
    I was doubtful about NAIVENESS as a word, but it is indeed in the dictionary, alongside the more familiar ‘naïveté’. Anyone think likewise?
    Thanks, Picaroon also.

  16. Agreed that OBOE was very well clued and I think it would have caused me a lot of problems, except that I have just started learning the oboe and therefore got it immediately.

    Disagree about the Thunberg. I don’t expect I would be allowed to say what I think of her on this site, so I’ll just say that I dislike her intensely. Intensely.

    I had never heard of LUCAS but the answer couldn’t be anything else from the wordplay.

  17. Got LUCAS but couldn’t see the green connection, for which I’m kicking myself, as Caroline is easily my favourite politician!

  18. This was good fun, without the theme being over laboured that some of the themed puzzles can be, thanks.
    I initially came up with bodock for 22 down which fitted the crossers and google told me is not part of a dress but the Osage Orange which produces a green fruit – seemed almost in line with the theme with a slight tweak to the clue.

  19. Dressmaking wins again, BODICE was a write-in for me, although by the time I got to it I had some crossers.

    Another who got ENVY as my first GREEN entry, but was solving clues in order as a first read through. Having found the HULK I was looking for SHREK and KERMIT.

    Choldunk @14, I thought that’s got to be the SHIH-TZU, how do I spell it? And looked it up.

    Thank you Picaroon and Eileen. Enjoy the party (a few years back I was such a regular groundling at The Globe the stewards thought I was one of them.)

  20. A fun crossword having gone to 16 first to get the simple but effective theme. Took forever to get BODICE. All my favourites pretty much covered by Eileen.

    Ta both.

  21. Took me a while to get 16, for some reason. Enjoyed this, and it raised a few smiles.Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

  22. Anyone else checking Google for George Lucas`s green credentials?
    In hindsight, I was led down this path by the previous cinematic green characters.
    Thanks P and E for much fun.

  24. Alton @10: I made that same connection with a very fine album that set the Stranglers somewhat apart from most of their contemporaries from the very start.

    I really enjoyed this: had I ever won a clue setting competition and, thus, been able to nominate the next word to clue, I had always planned for it to be GREEN as there is such a bewildering array of applications. So this was great fun – frankly, like all Picaroons! Once again, too many good clues to pick favourites so I shall cop out and agree with Eileen’s list. A damp and foggy day to be spending in Stratford but I hope you enjoyed it.

    Thanks both

  25. My colour blindness has been a minor handicap in many fields but has never before been a barrier to solving a cryptic.
    Like AlanC I went straight to 16, and managed a fair number of unthemed clues, but ” famous 16 figures” were a closed book to me.
    Asking my daughter if she knew any green characters from popular culture she immediately reeled off Kermit, The Hulk, Shrek, the Grinch etc, so this turned out to be a satisfying family solve, although I am unable to identify anything as green and she hasn’t the slightest interest in crosswords.
    So thanks to Picaroon for this piece of family bonding as well as his usual peerless clueing, and to Eileen for the blog. Enjoy Stratford. My treat-cum-homage this week-end is to retire into 1599 by James Shapiro, a brilliant scholarly study of a single year in Shakespeare’s life.

  26. Fairly straightforward for a Prize puzzle but very enjoyable to solve.

    I solved GREEN early on, so that made the other references a lot easier. I liked the ‘method for scrapping’ in MARTIAL ART, the ‘land in Haiti that was ETHIOPIA, the surface for SAVES, the vagrant anagrind to produce TRAVEL SICK, and the packing case for OUST.

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

  27. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen. I was going to complain that HOBKNOBED should have two Bs, but I corrected myself shortly afterwards, which makes this comment redundant. LOI was ARMANI.

  28. I’m with sjshart@15 on NAIVENESS. It may be in the dictionary and it’s a good clue, but I don’t like the word.
    And how can anyone possibly dislike Greta T!?

  29. Shanne @19. I initially spelt the dog in 21A with the sequence TZH rather than HTZ in the middle. It sounded right to me!

  30. A very well executed theme, with such varied kinds of reference to GREEN. The ones that took me longer were the fictional ones (GRINCH, HULK, KERMIT, SHREK), but they were well-known enough even for me, and I enjoyed those along with all the others. I also liked the clues to BOWLS, YEAST, ALGAE, BREAK-IN, HOBNOBBED and SWEEPING especially.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

  31. Eileen,
    In the comments on last week’s Imogen Steffen asked how he could know that “cunning” indicated an anagram and you kindly provided a link to a list of 861 anagrinds…….that didn’t include “cunning”! It didn’t include “parties” ,13a, either but it did include “running” , 3d, the other new one to me. Also in this puzzle we have two regulars, “criminal” and “ground” which I seem to remember is one of your favourites. As others have said, just about any word that indicates something out of order can be an anagrind and even some that don’t..
    Thanks to you and Picaroon.

  32. This was great fun. Amazing how many literally green characters there are, even without the Mekon as nicbach mentions.

    21a gives me an excuse to roll this one out again. I went to a zoo the other week, and the only animal they had was a little dog. It was a Shih Tzu.

    Many thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

  33. I wondered if the setter had included TRAVEL-SICK as part of the GREEN theme – I’ve seen plenty of greenish faces on Channel ferries – but then ducked out at the last minute.

    Like Mr Beaver @17, I solved LUCAS without thinking how that could be a 16d figure, which is a self-kickable offence as the MP for Brighton Pavilion is a particular favourite.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

  34. Pino @31: this might be of interest to you. Not a list of what can be used but a compilation of what has been used in published puzzles.

  35. No one’s been That Guy to point out that a break-in is not a robbery, so might as well be me. Robbery is theft accomplished by force or threat. A break-in doesn’t even have to involve theft, and doesn’t involve force either. Two distinct crimes. (A break-in isn’t necessarily a burglary either, by the way, but it almost invariably is.)

    Anyway, I also was among those who had to Google LUCAS. Putting in “green lucas” led to the unsurprising discovery that there are many people, none of them remarkable, named Lucas Green. So thanks for explaining, Eileen. That one is definitely in the “guess ya gotta be British to get it” category, though the wordplay was unambiguous so it went in anyway.

    Otherwise, this was both fun and witty, as this setter almost always is.

  36. Came here hoping that others would have found this one as difficult as I did – but clearly it wasn’t Pickers, it was me! Had to eventually reveal quite a few, mainly because I’d (liked others) missed the various indicators to anagrams – parties, ground, runs all had me foxed. Unusual for me not to be on the same wavelength as Pickers, but thanks to him and especially to Eileen for the explanations.

  38. PostMark@34
    Thank you for that. Makes you wonder how anyone had the time, energy, and resources to compile it!
    And now they’ll have to add “parties”, though they do have “partying”.

  39. Great clues and I enjoyed the way the theme was used in various ways.

    Favourites: MARTIAL ART, THUNBERG, ASKS, SPINACH, NAIVENESS (loi).

    Thanks, both.

  41. [Lord Jim @32. Groan, so true. I took my students to a visit to the zoo and the chimpanzees had that down to a fine art. ]

  42. Excellent puzzle with a beautifully worked theme. Couldn’t think of any “green figures”, but recognised them all when they fell out of the wordplay — except, embarrassingly, Caroline Lucas, who I felt I should have remembered without googling ‘Lucas green figure’.

    Graham@40, how about marry, marries, married (etc)?

  44. [ AuntRuth@28 is dismissive of Anna@16’s dislike of Greta. I can understand Anna’s dislike of a teenager who appears to claim that she knows better than everyone else and comes across occasionally as “holier than thou”. I don’t think Anna’s viewpoint should be so summarily dismissed.

    Having said that, I am definitely in the camp that admires Thunberg immensely, for who she is and what she does. ]

  45. Graham, it’s just a general spelling rule in English: when a word ends in consonant + y, you make the -s and -ed forms using ie instead of y. There are countless examples:

    Pity me: I pitied him
    Carry this for me: he carries/carried my shopping for me
    He’s a Tory: they’re Tories
    I worry about him: I’m worried about him
    Etc. etc.

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