Guardian Prize crossword No. 29,261 by Maskarade – solution

45 comments on “Guardian Prize crossword No. 29,261 by Maskarade – solution”

1. No real problems with this but I’m just impressed with the setter fitting 26 unique consecutive triplets in there.
   Thanks Leedsclimber and Maskerade.

2. Got through this fairly quickly for a bank holiday special – finished it by Christmas Day and had to get into the Times Jumbo instead – which was Guardian Monday level and was filled even quicker ! No real issues apart from the customary Maskarade obscurities to make the grid work. However as Leedsclimber has said, going through the whole thing afterwards trying to work out why I had a “trio” left over took a while and required close attention to detail !! Thanks to Leeds climber and to Maskarade.

3. This gave me a lot of entertainment over the season for which I was very grateful. The only residual was that the rubric said that only one of the trios was inserted in alphabetical order and I found two: BYZANTIUM (YZA) and ZABAGLIONE (ZAB) (although neither could be said to be ‘classically’ alphabetical). I’ve missed something haven’t I?

   Great fun. Thanks both.

4. SARGASSO
   ‘Quite the reverse’ —-leads to ‘weeds in (The) Deep in this place’. Or does it mean ‘the weeds are floating rather than being deep below the surface’?
   Or is there more to it?

5. Congratulations Leedsclimber on completing one year of blogging! Sure you will carry on blogging and enlightening us for many more years! Best wishes.

6. Thanks Leedsclimber and Maskarade.
   Loved this, having gotten the trio trick right away.

   Typo: Maskarade.

7. I usually love the Maskarade holiday jumbos because it usually takes me a while to figure out the instructions, so I have two puzzles running in parallel. This one I only liked, because the instructions were not that obscure so I could set up the array of trios from the start, to be crossed off and/or consulted along the way. Said way only lasted a day this time, instead of the usual 3 or 4. Having said that, it was still a marvellous feat of construction, and I enjoyed the challenge.

   I was puzzled as Alphalpha@3 about the consecutive mention in the special instructions

   One of these days the Guardian’s tech people are going to figure out how to program larger format grids, plus supply a scratchpad for notes, so we don’t have to print the Jumbo out (not so easy when on the road).

   Anyway, thanks to Maskarade and Leeds like ber

8. Leedsclimber, sorry!

9. Thanks for a very neat blog. As Alphalpha@3 says the instructions were wrong yet again , but only minor and did not affect the solve. Very impressive setting, concise clues, only TARN seemed obscure but it had clear wordplay. A Paddington stare required for DIE OF FEAR and FIRE FIGHTERS although I did like Sam’s brigade.
   Doing the Across clues I did wonder how we were going to get 26 themed entries but the Downs came thick and fast.
   One minor difference , right at the end, I had Villein= COTTA(r) .

10. 2d SQUARES UP “sausage and rump regularly” – [SaUsAgE rUmP]
    10d NADIA is “cycling” DIANA – not “Anag.”
    25d SOLEMN – Dawn is “upset” – not “Anag.” – SOE<
    56d COTTA – Shortening of COTTAR
    Thanks M&L

11. This took me quite a while to work out the instructions and about a week to complete. I needed to print it onto A3 to be able to see the squares. I found it quite tricky in parts, although the ‘normal’ clues provided enough crossers initially to get the hang of clues with omitted letters. In retrospect, it was a lot of fun to solve and all made sense, apart from the discrepancy about the consecutive letters as has already been mentioned. I liked CODE – a misleading clue based on very little information.
    I marvel at the mind of Maskarade to be able to construct something like this.
    Thanks Maskarade for the torture/fun and Leedsclimber for the blog.

12. My post @9 seems a little churlish so will add more praise for the setting. Must be very difficult to cycle through three complete alphabets especially in the IJK , PQR , XYZ areas , it is all done with a very light touch and very few obscure words.

13. Initially I wasn’t enthused when I saw the instructions, but once I started (with HIS MAJESTY) and saw how it was going to work, I really rather enjoyed this. I think it helped that Maskarade’s clues seemed to be on the easier side, compared to some of his previous Prizes. Like Dr W @7 I was able to cross off the various letters as I went and actually managed to keep track and end up with them all crossed off. I got SARGASSO from the crossers but wasn’t sure if I was missing some wordplay or not. I wondered about ‘alter ago’ but decided it must be a typo, and I’m surprised I didn’t know Eos was Dawn, but got SOLEMN anyway. Particularly liked NOTABLE, ESQUIRE, INNIT, OXYGENIZE and just the way Maskarade managed to put this together. Thanks both.

14. Like Dr Watson @ 7 we find the grid so small. I wonder if the new crossword editor could sort something out before Easter?
    This was the first Maskerade that we finished, and we really enjoyed it.
    I hope his alphabeticals have now gone for ever!
    Thanks to Maskerade and Leedsclimber

15. re 35across – ‘frit’ was famously used by Thatcher

16. Re: 18 across, there’s a department that is just called ‘Tarn’, which is presumably the intended one, rather than Tarn-et-Garonne.

17. Thoroughly enjoyable and remarkably skilfully constructed puzzle from Maskerade. It seemed daunting at the outset, but once I had solved a couple of clues it all fell out surprisingly quickly. I had to print it out, of course, but I confidently filled it in using a biro rather than a pencil 🙂 . Writing out the triads and crossing them off one by one helped a lot with the last few entries.

    The clues are pretty straightforward, fortunately, and there are very few unusual words, which is a tribute to the setter’s skill. Slight amendment to Leedsclimber’s masterful blog – there is a department called Tarn-et-Garonne, but also one just called TARN – with Albi as its prefecture. I think this was my favourite clue.

    Many thanks to S&B

18. Like Keith S at #13, I was confused by ‘alter ago’ at 55A – spent ages trying to work out if it was a clever pun, rather than a valedictory editorial typo…

    As a fellow Saturday Prize blogger, I have to admit to a silent prayer of thanks that this didn’t fall on my watch…I’m sure I’ll get a ‘Special’ some time soon…well done to Leedsclimber for taking on the challenge! And thanks to Maskarade for a novel device and interesting challenge.

19. [I’m familiar with the names of départements because we used to keep the kids amused while driving through France by spotting departmental numbers on French licence plates. On one holiday we collected a complete set, apart from the two Corsican ones]

20. Thanks Leedsclimber and Maskerade. It wasn’t clear from the instructions, at first, whether the letters were consecutive in the answer or from the alphabet, but it soon became very apparent. I. too wondered about AGO in 55a and the two instances where the letters were in order. Anyway, a great christmas challenge. Thanks again.

21. This was a great puzzle for Christmas-time – challenging but fair, and I didn’t throw down my pen in frustatiion, as I did with Easter’s offering – can’t remember the setter for that one, but it was a stinker, and it took me collaboration with my friend down south to solve it. Thanks, Maskarade, and Leedsclimber for the blog.

22. As often with Maskarade a feat of setting that must have been very satisfying for him to complete. Quite how using 26 trios of 3 consecutive letters that formed a complete cyclical alphabetical sequence (if I ever worked out what it meant) was going to help a solver I wasn’t sure. However, my son told me that he had written out all the possibilities before setting off and ticked them off as they cropped up. He found it helpful towards the end. Several commenters above seem to have done the same so just me being lazy. He also found the COTTA(R) villein at 56d where I assumed like Leedsclimber that there was a COTTA(GER) to be cut shorter than usual.
    21d was new to me and I spent a while trying to fit in FREE ROLE.
    44a Back bacon is more expensive than middle or streaky in supermarkets so I assumed that LEAN was a not very close equivalent to “low grade”. Hadn’t come across LEAN BACK bacon as an entity.
    Thanks to Maskarade and Leedsclimber.

23. LEAN BACK I took the LEAN to mean low-grade , it refers to ore when mining and BACK=cut.
    As Pino@22 notes , lean back is the highest grade for bacon.
    Karen@21 it was Maskerade at Easter , she/he has done every special since Araucaria died.

24. Like Dr W.O. @ 7, I printed this up – which was followed by a lot of squinting at tiddly print, my life made ever harder by my notes covering the page as I progressed. Unlike the good Doctor, I didn’t have the sense to list the triple letters at the outset and tick them off as I went along.
    But those were problems of my own creation.
    I am, nevertheless, hugely impressed by all those who found this easy. It took me – well us, actually, since my partner and I combined forces after a day of squinting and head-scratching – a couple of days to complete this; followed by a morning’s worth of tracking down missing triples…. “well look, there aren’t that many Ws, you hunt for UVW & I’ll try for WXY”. (Which, incidentally, is how we twigged it had to be WAX MYRTLE, not Bay Myrtle. We’d never heard of either)
    We live in Tarn et Garonne, so were thrilled to get a shout-out for 18A – although, of course, we now realise Jam Roll & Gervase (16&17) must be correct.
    Hey ho.
    Thank you Leedsclimber for a marathon blog, and a 21 Gun Salute to Maskarade for the entertainment.
    (Memo to self: next time, definitely an A3 print-out!)

25. I forgot to mention that I was another who plumped for COTTA(r)

26. Thanks to Maskarade & Leedsclimber. This was the easiest of the setter’s specials by far- struggles over alphabetics and US states have stuck with me- but with all the trios listed and ticked off, starting with HIs maJesty meant its only problem was he teeny grid

27. I nearly always attempt these giant ‘holiday’ puzzles by Maskarade, and I rate this as one of the best. To implement this theme with all 26 variations of the triplets of consecutive letters was some achievement, and many of the clues were both challenging and fun to solve. When I ticked off the clues against the full set of triplets I had XYZ left over (i.e. unused), but that was only because I had not parsed OXYGENIZE properly – having tried to parse OXYGENISE (and before that OXYGENATE) instead.

    Thanks to Maskarade for this tour de force, and to Leedsclimber for the blog.

28. Thanks Leedsclimber for a mammoth effort and Roz, FrankieG and others for introducing me to the COTTAr – last one in from a wordsearch and I made the same assumption as our blogger on the wordplay. Like most people I found this more accessible than previous Maskarade specials (usually I struggle to get c 80% complete after a week or two and then somehow lose the sheet) – this was pitched just right for me, well worth the price of the paper, thanks Maskarade.

29. I thought I would give this a try although I was pretty sure it was above my level. And I really enjoyed it. In various visits in two days I got over half – nearly two thirds I think – including 16 of the triplet clues. I did mean to go back to it and see if I could fill in the big blank area in the centre of the bottom half but never got round to it.

    Thanks Maskarade and Leedsclimber

30. Like Pino’s son @24 I found it helpful to have all the permutations written down. I did this across a spreadsheet, with groups of three separated by lines, and then wrote in the clue number for each variant – just in case there were queries as I got towards the end. In fact this proved even more useful than anticipated, as the last seven or eight missing perms gave me some of the missing letters for the uncompleted lights in the grid, and acted like extra crossing letters in helping to solve the clues.

    This was the first of Maskarade’s holiday specials that I have managed to complete without looking things up, and in less than two days, which in my book makes it either easier than normal or just right up my street.

    Thanks to mask and leeds.

31. After about 40 years trying, I have finally completed a Christmas crossword! They always bring back happy memories of doing them with my father. Little did I know in 1989 that would be the last time. We used to tape them onto a board, otherwise they would disintegrate before we had finished with them.
    I was expecting the comments here about the level of this one, but it still feels satisfying.
    Thanks Maskarade and Leedsclimber.

32. The one that really threw us was 14 ac, WI currency reduced for fruit (5). We got GUILD, and there are three cues to this: (1) WI for “women’s institute”, which is surely a (sort of?) guild. (2) GUILDER, a reduced currency. And (3) according to Wikipedia, one has a “guild of trees” for fruit trees to help them. So this deflected us until the end, when we reluctantly changed to GOURD for reasons we couldn’t see.

33. For those who aren’t aware, Maskarade is the prolific Tom Johnson who also sets under other pseudonyms including Doc and Gozo. Here is his “meet the setter” which I think is from before he started setting these specials as Makarade.

34. Hello, Leedsclimber. My first time with you as blogger. I was born in Leeds in 1951.

    Greatly enjoyed this. Somewhat like ravenrider @31’s antecedents, I printed out an enlarged version (about A3) and stuck it to a piece of hardboard. Perhaps some of the typos above of the compiler’s name are explained because the name didn’t fit on the bit of paper we stuck to the board (or equivalent).

    Greatly enjoyed even though I didn’t try to exploit the cyclical triplets as intended. Managed to get the puzzle filled in relatively quickly. Had planned to go back later to check my entries. That way I might have got closer to a correct solution. Had made do with OBSCENITY for imprecation after thinking that LOOK SEE rather than LOOK YOU might be the crosser, with RELENDING rather than REFUNDING helping me complete.

    Many thanks as ever to Maskarade.
    You are a special part of the holiday season. Brilliant stuff.

35. PS ESQUIRE or Esq is just an old-fashioned courtesy title for a gent who doesn’t have another title.

36. This took me a very long time but I am glad I didn’t give up. I did enjoy spotting some of the trios along the way and then reviewing the puzzle when I was (finally) finished to track down the ones I’d missed. I quite liked 57/58a PASTORAL (unlike Leedsclimber, I didn’t mind the split across two clues), 7d RULES THE ROOST and 9d ZABAGLIONE. Huge thanks to Maskarade for the giant-sized holiday fun and to Leedsclimber (and Eileen for her assistance at the end) for the comprehensive and interesting blog.

37. Nope. Still don’t get it…

38. What a tour de force! How does Maskarade do it? I do so much look forward to his bank holiday puzzles, and this one was exceptional as well as being ideally suited to a family gathering at Christmas because clues were relatively straightforward and approachable by the more novice solvers.
    I once had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife at a Sloggers and Betters do in Cambridge – I think at the time he was the only setter present who made a living entirely from puzzles. Many thanks and congratulations to him on a really special puzzle.

39. Also, many thanks to Leedsclimber and Eileen for an excellent blog.

40. I am, like ravenrider@31, rather pleased at finally finishing one of these Christmas specials and even understanding all the wordplay. As an occasional crossword person, I really look forward to the these special puzzles, and am excited to read from Shirley @9, Karen@21 and Roz@23 (thank you!) that there is also one at Easter – I was not aware of that and will now be looking forward to it. I did find the alphabet trios made it easier than, say, the one a few years ago which used names of rivers, although in the latter stages, we were thrown for a while thinking that surely our remaining QRS and PQR had to have Q in a crossing square… (of course, we were wrong).
    Regarding 56d (COTTA) I just guessed the word somehow (not knowing it) and found the definition in the dictionary. Then I took the wordplay to be COTTA(R), which I thought was a little obscure – but I knew it because, many years ago, I had Scottish friends living in the North of England, who named their house “The Cottars” in jest… Thanks for the great puzzle Maskarade, most enjoyable, and many have said, I have no idea how one could construct such a piece!

41. Team USA@40 you may be even more pleased to learn that there are THREE specials every year. The Saturday after Good Friday and the Saturday before Christmas Day are easy to remember. The UK also has a Bank Holiday ( national day off) on the last Monday in August, the Saturday before this has a puzzle called the Bank Holiday Special. All by Maskarade , many more clues and some sort of theme.

42. Late to this party, since I didn’t think to look for the blog until this afternoon.

    I solve these jumbos by downloading the PDF, opening it in Adobe (which I have installed for work reasons), and typing onto the PDF in edit mode. It’s sub-optimal, especially when you wind up, towards the end, with a zillion overlapping text boxes everywhere. But it does mean that you can zoom in and out at will.

    Like many others, I made a list of the 26 alphabetic triplets in the margin, and crossed them off as they were found. That helped with the Q triplets in particular, since a Q basically must be followed by a U and another vowel (with apologies to Scrabble favorites like SUQ, QWERTY, QAT, QANAT, and so on).

    My last one in was TRUE LOVE KNOT, which either requires the word “token” to do double duty or requires the whole clue to be the definition, both of which are inelegant at best. Harrumph. I also queried why lean back bacon was an inferior cut–isn’t lean good? But that’s been adequately answered by Roz above.

43. Roz@41 – ah, excellent – thanks again for that info… will be looking out for that…

44. Am I the only one who had 18a as TARD (Former Army) = TAR (Navy) + D (Department)? TARD is listed in urban dictionary.com – not an exact synonym of ‘Former army’ but pretty close.

45. I’m not a crossword expert and have just finished the Christmas puzzle after nearly eight weeks of intermittent working at it. I didn’t manage to crack the consecutive letters thing and couldn’t work out how some of the answers were arrived at . Got several wrong in the end – bay myrtle for 13d oranges for 60a and cigar for 55d

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