Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 29,147 by Picaroon (12 August 2023)

48 comments on “Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 29,147 by Picaroon (12 August 2023)”

1. Mmm well I got there but didn’t quite get the parsing for OSCILLATED.
   Manehi I think has conveniently ignored the ‘s of swinger’s. Is that fair?
   Anyway thanks Pixar and manehi

2. …Pixar I see is predicted text sorry Picaroon

3. thanks mc_rapper67.
   I love good surfaces and Picaroon’s are exceptional, and entertaining, a real art when combined with sufficiently intriguing wordplay, including the ”simple” charade ACTION REPLAY. I have ticks for just about every clue and enjoyed re-reading them here this morning without the distraction of the grid.

   ttt@1. No, I think the ‘s is just the link word between def and wp.

   leman in NOBLEMAN was a new word for me. Interesting etymology:
   https://www.etymonline.com/word/leman

4. …. I mean yes it’s fair.

5. As so often with Picaroon DNF so thanks to mc_rapper67 for the ones I didn’t get

   Of those I did get liked: AMENHOTEP (reminded me of the Mummy film which was fun), NOBLEMAN, IDLER, AGAINST

   Thanks both

6. paddymelon@3/4 so ‘s can be ignored..? To me it suggested the answer must be a noun because it had to belong to the swinger. Leman is the last word in the old song “the three ravens”.

7. ttt@6. I read ‘s = is , in the formula to solve the clue, rather than possessive. I think that’s why there is the question mark at the end.

8. …. On second thoughts the question mark is there because it’s a question! I’ll leave it others wiser than me to comment.

9. Thanks, Picaroon and mc_rapper67!

   paddymelon@8
   OSCILLATED
   I agree with you that the ? is there because the surface is a question.
   Second, while deconstructing the clue, the cryptic grammar allows us to take
   ‘was a swinger’ as a block indicating the def and so there is no compromise
   in reading the clue as ‘Was a swinger’ is … ‘OSCILLATED is…’
   That’s my view.

10. Enjoyed this quite a bit. Clue for OSCILLATED was a hoot, and AGAINST very clever as mc_rapper observed.

    Was glad to see PAULI, makes a change from Einstein and Newton. Maybe with the success of Oppenheimer we’ll soon see the likes of Szilard and the others. Or maybe not.

    Agree with earlier posters that the ‘s can be mentally transformed to a linking “is”. And I don’t see anything particularly fishy or punny so the question-mark is just there because the surface syntax is of a question, as paddymelon@8 said.

11. I could not completely parse FLY ON THE WALL, so thanks for the clarification. Picaroon puzzles are reliably enjoyable.

12. Thanks mc_rapper67. Another good workout which required two or three sessions. Th NW corner held out the longest for no good reason that I can now explain. Not much yielded on the first pass except that FLY ON THE WALL leapt off the page immediately but it took me much longer to see why. I did like the very clever 5a. Not too sure that the Royal Marines would be happy to describe themselves as soldiers and lump themselves in with the Army. I thought that rose hip was two words but now find it can be one.

13. Thanks Picaroon. I enjoyed most of this but failed with 3d and 14a. AGAINST, WONKA, OSCILLATED, PAULI, ANTE, and ADDS UP were all favourites. Thanks mc_rapper67 for the detailed blog.

14. Echoing Dr. WhatsOn@10, I thought OSCILLATED at 22a was hilarious. And I nodded when I read in the preamble in the blog that mc_r had plumped for 5a AGAINST as his favourite – what an economical clue surface! I agree some of the clues were difficult but overall this Prize was most enjoyable and solving the grid was ultimately very satisfying. Ticks for some other clues too viz. 13d MEDALLIONS, 16d HARASSES and 17d START OUT. The old Ancient History/Study of Religion teacher in me also thought 5d AMENHOTEP was clever – I’ve always translated “AMEN” in my head to “May it be so”, but I can see that “Let It Be” also works well.
    Picaroon’s puzzles are never a pushover for me but the challenge makes them very worthwhile, so my thanks to him, and also to mc_rapper67 for his usual excellent blog which clarified how several of the clues worked when I couldn’t fully parse them. (For instance, the blog helped me to really appreciate solutions like 1a SNOWCAP with its reference to photography and 20d ADDS UP with its reference to Attention Deficit Disorder.)
    [I very much liked hearing the story of your initial “solving in bed” process, mc_r, and learning about why you turned to the iPad rather than using your pen.]

15. Nice work from Picaroon , particularly the surfaces, as others have said, and I had a huge tick next to AGAINST. PAULI was another favourite. It took a few visits, but I made steady progress ( although I had to Google Egyptian Kings, at one point, having missed the amen / Let it be connection), before being left for a long time with just the intersecting SNOWCAP and CHANNEL HOP sitting there blank. Eventually I realised CHANNEL would fit the crossers and things dropped out from there – I’d completely failed to make the Still=photo link and only saw it after the event. Thanks for the blog, mc-rapper, which explained a couple of others I’d only partially parsed.

16. 14a was the standout clue. You had to lift-and-separate the “Observer” from “Observer article”,
    then perform the opposite (lower-and-combine?) with “Unseen” and “”Observer” to get “Unseen Observer” – FLY ON THE WALL

17. PAULI – Racking my brain trying to remember another ‘quantum whiz’ who’s come up around here recently… DIRAC, that was it.

18. PAUL DIRAC – not to be confused with PAUL DUKAS, who wrote Mickey Mouse music – both are recent TILTs for me.

19. Tough but mostly enjoyable. I got very stuck in the NW corner.

    Liked: ROSEHIP, AGAINST, SNOWCAP, WONKA.

    New for me; LEMAN = lover; physicist Pauli, Wolfgang; CHANNEL-HOP.

    Thanks, both.

20. Pauli was a quantum physicist – what popped into my head was “Pauli’s exclusion principle” with that solution, which is as quantum as this chemistry student got.

    I had to check leman was a sweetheartand take a few goes to completely solve the puzzle.

    Thanks to mc_rapper667 and Picaroon.

21. BigglesA@12 mentions FLY ON THE WALL being an early solution that jumped out – I had the opposite experience, being stuck on Philip K Dick’s Eye In The Sky, despite the shortage of letters in the fourth word. Getting NOBLEMAN helped me to get out of this rut, as then the last word had to be WALL. But LEMAN was new to me, so solving that one took me longer than it should have too.

    I impetuously wrote in VACILLATED (which fits the definition) before seeing what the outsize policemen were up to there – and OSCILLATED is a better fit for the definition anyway!

    I remember having to construct a sentence with TABLE in it during my first year of learning French. I was 11 years old and hadn’t come across the English idiom for feeling comfortable in a new situation, so my mes pieds sont sous la table was just a random effort; it amused my teacher enough that the gender of TABLE in French was a pretty easy recall, though UNE TABLE is something that I can’t recall ever having said or seen.

    Thanks to Picaroon and mc_rapper.

22. Another good one from the pirate.

23. sheffield hatter @21. How interesting. I remember in my first year of learning French we were introduced to gender of articles and told that ‘table’ (because there was one in front of us I suppose) was feminine by intuition. I didn’t see it then and have never seen it since.

24. I found this a suitably tough challenge which required regular revisits during the week. I made just one lazy mistake – AWRY (which doesn’t cover bearded) instead of AIRY. Many good clues as appreciated by earlier bloggers – AGAINST (very good), FLY ON THE WALL, PAULI (distant undergraduate memory), OSCILLATED, ROSEHIP, and more. Found a few new words for me (LEMAN, OUNCE as a cat, AMENHOTEP). I didn’t like the clue order ‘New designer stores’ for CHANNEL in 3d, but I suppose that it was just about OK. So, altogether, a good puzzle which gave me some sense of achievement.

25. Thanks mc_rapper, I didn’t know LEMAN either (it is the local name for Lake Geneva but that didn’t help) so thanks also paddymelon for the link. Another swiss connection that did help was that kids round here keep their pens and pencils in an ETUI (at least two layers required for playground cred). Sheffield_hatter while I don’t rate it in the first rank of PKD books, thanks for triggering the memory of when the eye first appears, which brought an appreciative gasp from me at the time. This took a few sittings and i concur with JohnJB’s final assessment, thanks Picaroon.

26. As for many others above OSCILLATED and FLY ON THE WALL were my favourites among many fine clues. It still surprises me how half-remembered names like AMENHOTEP and PAULI come to mind after a break.

27. LEMAN used to appear quite often in crosswords – that’s how I first met it – but it seems quite a while since we’ve seen it. Thanks for the etymology, paddymelon.

    My favourites today: 5ac AGAINST, 9ac WONKA, 10ac UNEATABLE, 14ac FLY ON THE WALL, 25ac SHOW TRIAL, 3dn CHANNEL-HOP, 5dn AMENHOTEP, 13dn MEDALLIONS, 15dn ONRUSHING and HARASSES.

    Many thanks to Picaroon for another super puzzle and to mc_rapper67 for a highly entertaining blog. (My bedlinen bears indelible evidence of early-hours solves but I now have no better half to tell me off.)

28. I really enjoyed this – yet another super puzzle from Picaroon to whom thanks.
    Like others, I found it tough with the NW corner the last to go in. I never fully parsed SNOWCAP and now feel a fool for not spotting still = snap, since snap so often comes up as a synonym for picture in crossword land. Thanks to mc_rapper67 for the blog too.

    For a long time I was stuck thinking 14a was EYE ON THE BALL and kept trying to make it fit far longer than I should have. Took ages too to see WONKA – in the end the fact that his name appeared in another puzzle probably helped.
    For the physicist I had —-i for a while, and tried to make FERMI work, thinking there can’t be two physicists that fit that pattern.
    LEMAN and ETUI new to me and also had to look up AMENHOTEP

29. Thanks both. ..LEMAN eh? Now to use it in conversation……

    [Eileen@27: It’s reassuring to know I am not alone in cluttering up the bunk with crosswords.]

30. Yes, thanks paddymelon for link to LEMAN. That was new to me and I don’t know the Three Ravens song despite being into folk music.
    Hope this doesn’t come as too big a shock to anyone, but I think they have women in the CID these days!

31. PAULI – a namecheck for my brother PaulieG celebrating his birthday – from a recent theme: “…VALENTINE…HANDY…ISLE…SINCERELY…NEED…FEED…2?”

32. The “2?” was supposed to be 2^6

33. Alphalpha @29

    It’s all down to the fact that the puzzle is published at midnight and I live in the UK, which necessitates quite a lot of solving / blogging being done in bed, either before, in between or after a bit of sleep – or a combination of all three!

34. Another enoyable Picaroon with lots of good surfaces in particular.
    [ Eileen27. Walking round some local gardens this morning I came across a dahlia “Mrs Eileen”, named after you, I assume]

35. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Pino @34 but I’ve never heard of that dahlia. Your comment led me to look it up and I found that it’s ‘a magnificent dahlia, with huge, profuse and showy vibrant orange flowers (up to 6-8 inches wide)’ – none of which endears it to me at all, I’m afraid! – but thanks for the thought. 😉

36. Eileen@35
    I’m not a great fan of dahlias either, especially those with huge and showy orange flowers.

37. I’m on the East Coast of the US, which means that the puzzle appears at 7pm my time. I take it to bed and solve as much as I can, usually most of it. It’s always a disappointment the next morning if I’ve solved it all, because an extra pleasure is looking at it again and seeing what escaped me the night before.

    Thanks Picaroon and mc_rapper67.

38. Thanks Picaroon and mc. So many unparsed, and so many obscure (to me) words and definitions. Almost finished by Friday except for AMENHOTEP. A very slow burner!

39. I had trouble with FLY ON THE WALL because I convinced myself that “knowing about everything” must be ON THE BALL and then of course couldn’t think what the first word was or how to parse any of it. So a DNF this week, but an enjoyable one.

40. AuntRuth@30 now I think of it the song is two ravens. Anyway it’s an old ballad about a knight.

41. Defeated by Picaroon on this one and completed only about half, but loved the clues I did manage, with some lovely surfaces.
    The NW corner remained obstinately empty so SEWAGE came as a breath of fresh air.
    Even so WONKA, SNOWCAP and GREEN LIGHT did not drop in spite of my having the first letter and making several revisits.
    Thoroughly enjoyable challenge nevertheless, so thanks as ever to Picaroon, and to mc_r for all of his splendid work on a tough assignment.

42. Thanks for all the comments and feedback so far – much appreciated, as usual…

    Looks like this was generally well received, although pretty tricky – but even those with DNFs were generally fairly complimentary about it!

    – I took the ‘s in ‘swinger’s’ to be a joining ‘is’ rather than a possessive.
    – I vaguely knew ‘leman’, although I’d always thought it had a French derivation (and pronounced it in a French way in my head – ‘le man’?), but it seems fairly Old English, from ‘lief man’…as per paddymelon’s link
    – Aunt Ruth at #30 – I’m sure there are women in the CID, but I don’t expect they would be pinching swingers’ bottoms! Come to think of it, male policemen shouldn’t be doing that either – I viewed that clue through a lens of an old episode of the Sweeny, or the Professionals…
    – I have to admit I pretty much wrote in FLY ON THE WALL from a couple of crossers and the ‘unseen observer’ definition…didn’t get round to parsing it until I wrote up the blog – and it took a while even then!
    – lenmasterman at #41 – I enjoyed your description of SEWAGE as a breath of fresh air – you must love the British coastline at this time of year!
    – Julie in Australia at #14 – I’ve also always thought ‘amen’ was ‘may it be so’, or ‘so be it’, and indeed Collins offers both these, but Chambers has ‘interjection: ‘so let it be’…and of course ‘Let It Be’ works well with the ‘popular record’ in the clue…

43. A super crossword, with the great skill of this setter on full display, and certainly outclassing the dahlias. I particularly liked AGAINST, WONKA, PAULI and OSCILLATED.

    Many thanks to Picaroon and mc_rapper.

44. Found this harder than the average Picaroon, but got there in the end.

    28ac Mc, are you sure the good reverend is still with us?

    Amen is a Hebrew word meaning ‘truth’ from the triliteral root A-M-N giving meanings of ‘firm, fixed, sure’. In Greek versions of the Old Testament, it is translated by the Greek for ‘so be it’.
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/amen-prayer

    The Arabs say ‘ameen’ in similar contexts which means sure or secure. Arabic is closely related to Hebrew.

    Amen was the name of the top god in ancient Egypt during a certain era (hence Amenhotep: ‘Amen is satisfied’)

    Some biblical translations have Jesus saying “Amen, I say unto you” where others give “Verily, I say unto you”. Sorry, haven’t got the reference.

45. Tony C – I believe the Ever-rend Noo-sper still walks among us…and I will say ‘Amen’ to that (;+>)

46. Mc: Ma-en, surely?

47. Seems I was the only person to enter UNHORSING (stampeding) at 15d – ah well…

48. David Goodwin at #47 – maybe the only one to admit to it? (;+>)

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