Guardian Prize / Paul 29,213

64 comments on “Guardian Prize / Paul 29,213”

1. Thanks Eileen. My experience pretty well mirrored yours, I took a long time to fathom 5/9 despite getting SCIMITAR and CLAYMORE early on. It did occur to me later that the theme was mostly ESOTERIC STEELs which could also account for 5/9. Still not too sure about cyst = bag and moribund = in extremis but I know I should have learned by now not to question synonyms.

2. Got CLAYMORE (which I only knew to be a mine) and RAPIER early on. Thought there might be a weapon theme, then on a hunch looked up CLAYMORE to see if it could be anything like a RAPIER, and voila, so the dam was broken. Took me an embarrassingly long time, though, to figure out the “5/9 of this”. For a while, recognizing that 5/9 was the ratio of a Fahrenheit to a Celsius degree, was looking to swap Fs with Cs, in the same way we occasionally see “changing hands” or “swapping partners”, but obviously no such luck.

   Totally overthought 16d at first. Conjectured Paul might be making a pun out of UNLEADED, as in “without a lead” (leading character), by which you could interpret the “as” in the clue as “gas” without the “g” (unleaded gasoline). I think I might have been onto something, but not with the clue in-hand.

   BLUE DANUBE was a great clue: easy to guess, much trickier to see the “discovered” trick.

   All in all, I enjoyed the duel.

   Thanks Paul and Eileen

3. I got ESOTERIC first and then IN EXTREMIS and ELEPHANT which helped me to get RAPIER. Then got KELVIN which helped get KIRPAN which I had never heard of but when I looked it up I realised I was looking for swords and thought for a while that 9ac was sword but soon realised it was STEEL. And then the rest followed although ORANGE PEEL took a while.

   Loved BLUE DANUBE (which I think have seen differently clued recently) TENUOUS, SPADROON

   Thanks Paul and Eileen

4. For a long while, like Biggleswade A@1, I felt that whenever 5/11 appeared, we were looking for an example of an ESOTERIC STEEL. However, I could not see how ‘of this’ worked. It was only after musing on this for a while that I saw the crosSWORD trick. I thought this was great for a Prize crossword. I hadn’t heard of all of the swords (e.g SPADROON / KIRPAN) but felt they were all fairly clued. In 5d Eileen, a typo has crept in – it’s an anagram of CORSET IE. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

5. ….. apologies Biggles A…… ( I live quite close to Biggleswade!!)

6. Eileen, of course you were tired so missed out the clue and number for FOIL (24dn) and the def (5/9 of this) for KIRPAN (22ac).

   Also a typo in 5dn, ESOTERIC.

   I’m tired now so perhaps will comment on the puzzle later.

7. Great blog Eileen-I ignore the Qaos styled 5/9 repetitions until I parsed KIRPAN followed by GLAIVE and CLAYMORE so I assumed thye key was SWORD-SWORDFISH? No but carry on anyway-and I did until the grid was full so I thought Ah what are 4 letters BEFORE SWORD
   It was a fun solve but an ugly looking set of clues.

8. A superb puzzle and an an excellent blog.
   Thanks, Paul and Eileen!
   Liked the whole puzzle with the innovative theme and enjoyed the blog thoroughly.
   Top faves were:
   STRIMMER, SCIMITAR, SPIT and DETERMINER.

   STRIMMER
   Eileen! Like you, I also think it’s an &lit.
   Collins: A Strimmer is an electric tool used for cutting long grass or grass at the edge of a lawn.
   In a way, it’s an ‘ultimate’ grass cutter (cutter applied to blades, ultimately).

   DETERMINER
   Fooled me for a while as I thought the ‘word such as this’ was DETERMINER itself. Soon it dawned on me that the word being referred to was ‘THIS’.

9. I too solved CLAYMORE, RAPIER and STEEL and realised we were looking for swords
   It was only after finishing that I clocked the crosSWORD trick. Enjoyable crossword and thanks for the blog Eileen.

10. Thanks Eileen. The meaning of ‘this’ after the thematic fraction hit me at once, with the thought that Paul would love the two option words available. So after the 1 and 3D gettables I was on the lookout for crosses more than swords. The latter though popped up regularly; had to Google SPADROON and KIRPAN.

11. I managed to identify the theme of swords — and use it to fill in several obstinate clues — without ever working out what 5/9 had to do with it!

12. I had the same experience as molonglo. Was very lucky to catch on fairly quickly – and have to admit to looking up a list of swords after that. I was a tad disappointed that Paul didn’t use some crosses as well, which could have made it even more interesting.
    However, a fun crossword, thank you Paul. And thanks as ever, Eileen, for an interesting blog.

13. It being Paul, I thought there’d be an extra curveball and that at least one of the 5/9 answers would be a cross of some sort (or even a synonym of the adjective). Not to worry. Great fun as always. Thank you very much to the blogger and setter.

14. Like copmus@7, I got the sword theme and landed on swordfish, even though that did not make any sense. After being baffled by the 5/9 device, I was pleased to be able to complete the puzzle, and quit caring about understanding why, although crossword seems obvious now. This reminds of at least one Paul puzzle of yesteryear in which many clues were keyed to a particular name, so were impenetrable without that understanding.

15. Good fun I thought. I was also reminded of the puzzle by Brendan earlier this year (20,041) which had four pairs of “crossed swords” in the grid. I recall commenting at the time.

    I also took the &lit interpretation of “blades” to refer to blades of grass.

    Per the stats compiled by the excellent xteddy, Paul has now set 311 Guardian prize puzzles, and will, one must assume, soon surpass Araucaria’s lifetime total of 317.

16. I also looked at the 5/9 clues in bemusement until I’d solved RAPIER and STEEL from the word play, when I realised I was looking for swords, and also looked at a list to solve SPODROON, although I knew KIRPAN from learning how to teach Sikhism to primary schools.

    I should have seen the crosSWORD trick having solved an Orc’s Sword geocache, but didn’t.

    Thank you Paul and Eileen.

17. Now that I am more awake and have read the comments more closely I realise that I had not worked out the significance of the “of this” and like others thought that the 5/9 referred to ESOTERIC STEEL though I did wonder how FOIL could be esoteric. So obvious once it is pointed out.

18. I’m awake now, too: many thanks, Tony Collman for your kind words – and thanks to all others who refrained from pointing out my omissions. Somehow, the very end of the blog dropped off in translation. I’ll restore it now, along with the definition @22ac.

19. Is “ift” a word? I can’t see how any sense can be made of the surface “ift of gift”. But you might do something with “resent of present”.

20. Like others, I was expecting the swords to be interspersed with mules, rudes and so on. A great puzzle and nice to be reminded of that home-made cassis in the cellar.

21. Sorry autocorrect has made my roods rude.

22. Enjoyed this, much to my surprise as an initial scan suggested an ordeal lay in wait. Similar experience to many others – got RAPIER (which could hardly be anything else), so I guessed we were looking for swords. Didn’t work out the 5/9 thing until after I’d finished it. A Wikipedia list of swords was required for SPADROON. Thanks to Paul for the puzzle and Eileen for the blog.

23. I thought this was also Paul’s clever comment on the fact the printed version (at least) has recently started to refer to 2/22, 4/8 instead of 2, 22 or 4, 8 where an answer covers two positions in the grid.

24. Thanks Eileen. You did so well to avoid reference by anyone else to the Prize puzzle at the S&B event (wonder if you had to wear a badge to help you in that endeavour). Poor you, too, losing your draft: I feel as though that’s happened to you before!? No matter though because you’ve produced a great blog, as ever, to this neat puzzle by Paul.

    Our collective experience to the theme in particular seems to be really positive: I love a puzzle that has a theme that requires a penny drop which takes time and maybe a few extra crossers here and there.

    I think my favourite clue was PARISH albeit not the hardest clue to solve. I was similarly unimpressed with the clue for UNOPENED which I solved early but couldn’t justify and am still not convinced- agreeing with Badgerman@19’s concern with ‘ift ’ as a word: perhaps there are hidden depths to the clue?

25. Badgerman@19. We’ve had a few Pauls where he’s clued non words. Awake to that now. There is debate as to whether that’s acceptable. Each to their own.
    I got the 5/9 early, but it didn’t help with the solve. Not really up with swords.
    I came across a clue for STRIMMER not so long ago, which I had to look up at the time. It’s called a whippersnipper down here. Woke me up early this morning, as we’re preparing for a fiery summer..

26. @19 … “ift” seems to be a Shakespearean contraction of “if it”, but that doesn’t help.

    On a less grumpy note l, I very much like “It’s me” = IMIT and “Bacon sandwiches” = KE…VIN

27. Badgerman@26, Yes, saw that too, the Shakespearean ift. But as you say it doesn’t help. It’s more the wordplay.

28. I decided not to mention this in the blog – I thought someone else might suggest it – but is it possible that ESOTERIC STEEL is a hint towards ‘sword’, ‘steel’ being a metaphor / metonym for ‘sword’?
    Macbeth, Act I, scene i:
    For brave Macbeth–well he deserves that name–
    Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
    Which smoked with bloody execution,
    Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
    Till he faced the slave …

    Me @18 – I meant thanks to all who heeded my plea in the preamble and didn’t repeat any mention of my errors. It’s quite dispiriting to wake up on a Saturday blogging day to a whole string of such comments. 😉

29. Eileen @28, that’s what I took ESOTERIC STEEL to mean and just carried on with a shrug thinking “yes of course esoteric steel = sword”, completely missing the very clever (in hindsight) 5/9 of this.

30. Paddymelon@27, In an earlier Guardian Prize (can’t find it) a non-word that was complained about made perfect sense when it turned out to be a group of (?) African people that few of us had heard of. But no such revelation this time. A new thing to look out for i guess, along with “discovered”.

31. Badgerman@30. It was another Paul crossword or two that I remember with non words, but I’m not up with the ways of searching them to back this up.

32. Eileen, thank you for you dedication to the cause, at a time you were meant to be having fun. Hope that didn’t diminish your enjoyment of the York Ss&Bs,

33. Many thanks Eileen for your assiduous blog. Your solving process was similar to mine as it happens. Solving CLAYMORE and RAPIER was the pdm for deciphering 5/9 – but the possibility of ‘cross’ being a possibility never occurred. Perhaps Paul missed an opportunity there? Thanks to him too, and all at S&B last Saturday for a lovely time.

34. I was so relieved to finish this that i didnt look any further than the ESOTERIC STEEL. 5/9 of CROSSWORD makes much more sense

    A quintessential Marmite crossword? I love the stuff so no complaints here

    Cheers E&P

35. EdTheBall @24 – no, it isn’t the first time! – but this was a rather longer and more complicated blog than a weekday one and I had a (self-imposed) midnight deadline for posting.

    paddymelon @32 – not at all: I had lots of fun, thanks, as nametab @ 33 can confirm. 😉

36. Badgerman@26 A gift ift unopened remains just a gift???

37. Very tough slog even though I solved 5/9 early on. I did not get the ref to 5/9 letters of crosSWORD but I equated ESOTERIC STEEL with swords as the theme which allowed me to solve and parse the theme-related clues. I am not familiar with different types of swords so I decided to open up a page of sword types on wikipedia for assistance.

    New for me : GLAIVE, SPADROON, CLAYMORE, KIRPAN, and physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron KELVIN.

    I did not parse 25ac, 3d, 13d apart from BLUE=very rare.

    Favourites: ELEPHANT, AGAR-AGAR.

    Thanks, both.

38. I got no further than ESOTERIC STEEL, so nice to see from the blog the intended (cros)SWORD.

    I liked the Pitman in DETERMINER, the tuba in BLUE DANUBE, and the unexpected Bacon. I dislike the textspeak U for you but I guess I’m going to have to live with it.

    Thanks Paul for the excellent 5/9 idea and to Eileen for uncovering the true meaning.

39. Like others I spotted the theme very early but didn’t understand the significance of 5/9 until I had almost finished the puzzle. Typical Paul, with ingenious and amusing constructions and the occasional weird surface.

    Favourites were RAPIER, DETERMINER and the devices ‘Bacon sandwiches’ and ‘I’m it’.

    Like Eileen I first encountered (the naval Battle of) Lepanto from the Chesterton poem – I like the rollicking metre, but I could do without the Catholic apologetics. However it is now more familiar to me as a stop on the Rome metro – pronounced in Italian with the stress on the first syllable.

    Thanks to JH and Eileen (sorry I missed the S&B this time)

40. I got BOMBER first, but RAPIER was my next, and that’s how I got into the theme. That made other clues comprehensible, and enjoyed the mental exercise of filling the grid. I appreciated the fact that Paul used his key thematic phrase uniquely to mean SWORD and never CROSS – if he had not done so, it would have been an awful puzzle!

    Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I know just what you mean about the rhythm of Lepanto – I too studied the poem at school and remember some lines of it.

41. Unlike so many here, I guessed early on that “this” was CROSSWORD, but wasn’t sure whether that meant cross or sword or (more likely, I thought) both. Getting RAPIER showed me that it meant sword in at least some cases and I was a bit surprised there wasn’t even a single clue to use the other 5/9. A lot of the swords were unknown to me but I never thought of looking up a list, instead solving them all from wordplay then confirming the meaning.

    Eileen, I’m also glad no one else found it necessary to point out your sleepy omissions. I didn’t know someone had already mentioned the corset typo, as only Biggles was up as I wrote.

    Thanks for the link to the poem, which I read in full, appreciating the skilful wordsmithery. The actual meaning wasn’t that clear as I hadn’t heard of the battle, once again getting the answer from wordplay. I will have to inform myself and read it again!

42. Thanks Paul and Eileen. I didn’t know all the swords so had to check a couple on line. What a great word SPADROON is! I shall have to see if I can reintroduce it into everyday conversation.

43. Dr Whatson@2 I too tried C for F but gave up when I saw how many there were.
    There was I congratulating myself on spotting a lift and separate @22a that turned “cocktail” into K. There could well be a 5 letter pot that fitted. Confess to looking at a list of swords.
    The only famous Bacons I know are Roger and Francis (2) so had to cheat on this one too. I should have remembered KELVIN was a physicist from the blog to last week’s Prize. Now I think of it I half remember Kevin the actor being used not that long ago.
    Not helped by confidently wrting in EXHAUST at 19d until I found SPADROON while googling something similar.
    Not my finest hour then, but thanks to Paul for the rest and Eileen for the blog.

44. Graham @42: SPADROON is indeed a marvellous word, but difficult to shoehorn into most people’s conversations. Try ‘poltroon’ instead 🙂

45. Another one who thought “esoteric steel,” though in my defense I would call a glaive a bit of esoteric steel but not a sword–whatever Collins might say, it has now come to mean a polearm rather than a sword. (Perhaps only in things derived from Dungeons and Dragons but who else talks about glaives these days!)

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

46. [Gervase @44: Yes, another fine example of Spike-Milliganesquery. A little too comical to apply to some of todays current affairs, perhaps?]

47. Yet another one here who didn’t suss the “5/9 of this” trick until long after completing the puzzle. I got CLAYMORE and RAPIER so it was clear that we were looking for blades – and several of them were indeed ESOTERIC: never met KIRPAN or SPADROON before.

48. Yes the 5/9 was a puzzle for ages until RAPIER came along.
    Curiously my experience echoed that of Eileen as my partial solution went blank several times and I had to start again. Is it an iPhone issue? Surely not grauniad.
    Thanks both

49. When I got RAPIER and CLAYMORE from the wordplay I figured that whatever the 5/9 gimmick was (and I never did get that), it applied somehow to kinds of sword. But then there were kinds of sword I’ve never heard of!

    In 22ac at first I thought the K (which I got from KELVIN) was the “tail” of “cock” in a lift and separate. Only when I thought of PAN did I see I needed more in the first half.

    In 4d, it seems to me that a HEIST is a crime, not the scene of a crime.

    What a fine puzzle. (Though now that I’ve looked it up, I think a GLAIVE is more like a lance than a sword.)

    Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

50. Valentine@49 but if you are AT HEIST you are on the scene of a crime. In other words it’s at the indicates the scene and heist the crime.

51. It’s late, I know, but did anyone have any thoughts about the colon at 25ac?
    It’s there in both my paper and online version but it makes no sense to me.

52. I had an interesting little diversion once I had found the first couple of swords. Couldn’t work out what on Earth was going on there, so did a bit of googling and found that the 5th verse of the 9th surah of the Koran is the Sword Verse. So I thought that must be it, but couldn’t see how “of this” had anything to do with it, and spent far too long looking for some hidden significance. But it did lead to the most wonderful tea tray moment when the penny finally dropped.

    Also thought there must be one or two crosses somewhere, but not to be. Thoroughly enjoyable, thanks Paul and Eileen.

53. Oh wow! I actually finished this having got 1. CLAYMORE and 3. RAPIER early on and having decided that the theme had to do with swords. Still needed to refer to Mr DuckDuckGo for various types of sword (yes I know I cheat), but got there in the end. But I just could not make any sense of ‘5/9 of this’. Of what? The best I could come up with was ‘esoteric steel of this’ which didn’t really make too much sense. So thanks to Eileen for doing the heavy lifting and putting me out of my week long misery and tnanks to Paul for an inventive puzzle and I apologise for having cheated my way past it!

54. Eileen@51: Isn’t the colon in 25a just the same as all the other themed
    clues? It separates the wordplay from the “definition by example”? Or am I missing something in your question?

55. Good to hear from you, matematico @53.

    ‘Cheating’, in this game, (for that’s what it is, isn’t it?) is purely subjective. We make up our own ‘rules’ that we’re comfortable with: for instance, when blogging, I’ll sometimes use an anagram solver to save time but otherwise I enjoy working them out for myself. (Speed is most definitely not my priority – I set too much store on fine honing and surfaces of clues for that.)

    Congratulations on finishing (and, more importantly, enjoying) a quite challenging puzzle – however you got there!

56. EdTheBall @54 – I can’t really add much to what I said in the blog.
    You’re right, of course: all the other ‘theme’ clues have a colon to separate the wordplay from the definition and, once you have the answer, they make some sort of sense.
    However, in this clue, we have two uses of ‘5/9 of this’ and I can’t make any sense of ‘Losing sense of this on’, whereas, without the comma, I would have no problem at all.

57. Eileen@56, I am not sure now if you have a valid concern or not now. Maybe that’s just me. Once you substitute sword for the first “5/9 of this” I think the clue becomes syntactically the same as other clues i.e.

    Losing time, use 5/9 of this on: 5/9 of this?

    becomes

    Losing time, use sword on: 5/9 of this? for which your parsing stands:

    S(t)AB + RE (on) – SABRE (sword?)

    Unless I am still being dim, I’d like to say that I think your long shift is over and you deserve a good night’s sleep.

58. EdTheBall @57

    We seem to be at cross purposes: my concern is with surface rather than syntax.
    I’m in accord with your last paragraph: I’m going to bed now.
    Many thanks for your contributions . 😉

59. BigglesA @1:

    I, too, have my doubts about IN EXTREMIS being a synonym for MORIBUND. They both can be defined by “at the point of death”, but the first seems to me to be an adverbial phrase while the second is an adjective.

    I’ll be glad to hear from anyone who has a better grasp of these things. Usually I find Paul’s unexpected synonyms to be delightful, but this pair seems plain wrong to me.

    I loved the crosSWORD clues, by the way. I was hoping we’d have some CROSSword clues too, but am perfectly happy with what we got (especially with the ESOTERIC STEEL alternative reading).

60. Eileen@51, is it perhaps actually ellipsis dots that are wanted in 25ac (not for omission, but a dramatic pause)?

    Losing time, use 5/9 of this on … 5/9 of this?

61. Tony Collman @60

    That would do nicely, thank you!

62. Thanks Eileen and Tony @58/60, I finally got on your wavelength. It seems as though I’ve dropped into the habit of completely ignoring the surface from time to time which is the opposite of my approach when I started out with cryptics: the new approach is helpful in terms of solving but often means that I don’t appreciate the fine work that goes into creating a clever or pleasing surface in the clues.

63. I enjoy a theme that I know about and figure out. I don’t mind a theme that I don’t know about, if the puzzle doesn’t require that knowledge in order to solve it.

    But if there is a theme that I have to get in order to solve the puzzle, and I don’t see it, the puzzle is frustrating and no fun. This was one of those. (It reminded me of the ABBA song title puzzle, which I think was also one of Paul’s.)

    Ah well, no harm done, and on to the next one.

64. Parsed 13dn as Blue Dane (rare dog breed) around ub from tuba … !?

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