Guardian Prize 29,332 / Brummie

52 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,332 / Brummie”

1. We’ll, I had TEENEY for 20d, thinking “that’s an unusual spelling. I don’t see that it is any worse than TEENSY. Other than that, I quite enjoyed this. PISCES was… interesting. Thanks, Brummie and Eileen.

2. Posted at midnight (past my bedtime), stayed up to catch any glaring errors – none noted so far – so off to bed now.

3. Child hood and nation wide are a bit groanish, but I quite liked ’em. Semi-made-up words, like teens-y, are quite fun too. Seen a bit of Ro with-a-w an when the kids were young, but him playing the ‘Chariots …’ theme at the London Olympics was a hoot. Thanks Brum’n’Eileen, now for a coffee and today’s.

4. Sweet dreams Eileen. See you on your morrow perhaps.

5. Eileen basically summed it up for me.

   TEENSY could have been clued as “… 16 year old not having a say”, to remove the whimsicality. Just a thought.

   Thanks B&E, and extra thanks to Eileen for spelling out her likes and dislikes instead of just listing clue-ids.

6. Thanks Brummie for the very enjoyable puzzle!
   Thanks Eileen for your detailed and neat blog!
   Loved SALVAGE (excellent def: that’s tautological!?), SPINDRIFT (Yes Eileen! I get the drift. Yet…) and TEENSY (whimsical defs are fun!).

7. Sleep well, Eileen

   Like TT@1, I also had TEENEY and wondered about the spelling

   I should keep notes as I find it difficult to remember a puzzle from a week ago. Few of the surfaces seemed to make any sense as stand-alone phrases, so this seemed rather routine without much “ah!” type enjoyment. There also seemed a few too many words I do not know. My favourites were those with nice surfaces – APOLOGIA, CHILDHOOD, ENDANGER and PISCES. I will not include SPINDRIFT. It has a nice surface but the word is obscure

   Thanks Eileen for a great blog and thanks Brummie for the puzzle

8. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen. This was enjoyable but seemed to me a little lightweight for a Prize puzzle.

   The equation of “nation” with “race” is problematic, to put it mildly.

   (Side note: Clarence is said to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey, not a vat.)

9. Thanks Eileen. A pleasant and satisfying interlude I thought even if it was over a little too quickly. Have to admit SALVAGE was LOI, the crossing letters had led me astray into ‘sullage’ which I found was waste water but couldn’t develop it any further. EGLANTINE also features in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where, according to Oberon, Titania sleeps on a bank ‘with sweet- musk roses, and with eglantine’. Thyme, oxlips, violet and woodbine also get a mention.

10. I am more familiar with SPINDRIFT in snow and as Eileen says drift and coast are not really synonyms, but I put it in anyway as I could not see what else it could be. TEENSY is a word I hear used, although I would say teeny(-weeny), but some people put an s in.
    I seem to remember this coming as a relief after a series of difficult solves, but don’t quote me.
    I’m currently stuck on the NE corner of today’s prize, with just the one clue solved there and I’m not sure about that one!

11. Sorry, thanks to Eileen and Brummie. No manners.

12. I had TEENIE which stopped me getting the sweet wine.

13. I think the GM might stand for genetically modified.

    I also found this a bit easier (certainly easier than the Rosa Klebb).

    My favourites included: ROAN, EGLANTINE (a word I haven’t seen for a long time), APOLOGIA, WELLNESS

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen

14. Agree with Fiona@13 that GM in 1 reads as Genetically Modified to make sense of the surface. And agree with others that it was a fairly straightforward prize. Good to see EGLANTINE and APOLOGIA, plus LABYRINTHINE. I did wonder if there was some poetic work behind some of the answers to constitute a theme, as there is a certain Victorian flavour, but someone would have come up with it by now, I guess. Thanks to Brummie and Eileen (hope you’ve caught up on your sleep this morning).

15. Fiona@13
    SORGHUM
    GM: Good spot!

16. Enjoyable puzzle.

    Favourites: PISCES, APOLOGIA, YARDSTICK, EGLANTINE.

    New for me: SPINDRIFT, MALMSEY; SARK island (for 27ac).

    Thanks, both.

17. Like Biggles@9, I went for ‘sullage’, so in the end I DNF. Otherwise a pleasant and not too hard puzzle.
    At 5d I don’t have a problem with coast and drift. If you let a car roll in neutral, it is coasting, so is out of control, ie it drifts. (Not approved of by driving instructors.)
    Many thanks, Eileen.

18. 8 DOWN. I had it as BE SET, as in put an AN in anagram of DANGER, otherwise you are missing a letter?

    Also you need to swap COAST with drift in your explanation, sorry!

    PISCES was good, and made me laugh out loud, and ESCRITOIRE was a tricky anagram!

    Thanks B&E

19. SPINDRIFT
    A lovely word.
    When I lived in Shetland, it featured quite a lot in local poetry.

    Shö’s a laand whaar winter’s souchin
    Trowe da spöndrift an da squaal,
    An de smorin mooricaavie
    fills da nort-wind’s oobin waal.

    (John Peterson – ‘Shetland’)

    I hope I may be allowed to suggest an ‘ear-worm’ which is a piece of beautiful Shetland poetry. You can find it it here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuX2_j99MsY

    Getting all misty-eyed now for my days in Yell.

20. Thanks to Eileen for the thorough and interesting blog. I appreciated the explanation of the parsing of SARAWAK at 27a, as I didn’t know SARK for small island.
    I hadn’t heard of seahorses being called HIPPOCAMPI (3d) but that was all it could be given the crossers and the brain reference.
    Isn’t ESCRITOIRE (22a) an exquisite word?
    Like Antonknee@18, I had a laugh out loud moment with 19d PISCES.
    I found the clue for 24d GNAW clunky, but maybe Whirl is a brand name in the UK?
    Thanks to Brummie for lots of good clues though.

21. Antonknee @18 – thanks for pointing out the typo in 8dn:
    AN (one) in (beset by) an anagram (fluidity) of GENDER, which I will amend now.

    Thank you for the earworm (and beautiful pictures) Anna.

    Julie @20 – I didn’t think to give a link to Sark: it’s one of the Channel Islands, so very close to home! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sark

    See here https://decider.com/2020/11/27/great-british-baking-show-what-are-walnut-whirls/ for ‘Whirls’. 😉

22. SARAWAK
    SARK
    Rescue vessel finding fellow on island (5,3)
    A week ago in FT

23. Thanks Eileen and Brummie—DNF this one so was eagerly awaiting this blog to find my answers. Agreed with @8 that I find the cluing of Race as ‘nation’ to be pretty distasteful, but aside from that only had minor quibbles!

    Did not get SARAWAK, MALMSEY, and SPRINDRIFT mostly because they’re all new words to me, which I generally see as being all part of the fun of it.

24. Thank you Eileen, and agree with Dr. WhatsOn@5 about the way you write in full the clues in your comments. Saves a lot of toing and froing.
    LABYRINTHINE. ‘stuffed’ means ‘stuffed’ in my vernacular. But I see it is also UK, Ireland, and New Zealand Broken, not functional; in trouble, in a situation from which one is unlikely to recover.
    As
    SORGHUM very clever, with the Genetically Modified grass. The whole surface was a hoot. Hours spent with GM grass. As Eileen said, possibly General Manager grass (informant?)

    JiA@20. I did know both those hippocampi but I found this which is interesting.
    https://uselessetymology.com/2017/11/24/the-etymology-of-hippocampus/

25. Crunched through this v quickly by the standards of both the setter and the slot. HIPPOCAMPI a very fine dd and SORGHUM is excellent.

26. Thinking back to it now, it was a nice stroll – certainly compared with midweek Jack.
    However, I have a character trait that I like to make lists. My list of anagrinds grew by seven, so I thought that was quite impressive.
    Thanks E&B
    PS Fully agreed with Anna that SPINDRIFT goes into the lovely word list.

27. I actually use SORGHUM flour for GF baking, the best results come from mixing different flours for different recipes (one mix is SORGHUM, tapioca and almond flour), so was annoyed with myself for not getting that immediately.

    Another who started with teenie, corrected to TEENEY, when MALMSEY wouldn’t fit, so a dnf.

    Thank you to Eileen and Brummie.

28. I think the only time I’ve come across SPINDRIFT is in P G Wodehouse – it’s the title of an earnest book written by Florence Craye who is constantly trying to improve Bertie Wooster and to whom he accidentally becomes engaged at one point, if I remember correctly.

    I enjoyed this. Many thanks Brummie and Eileen.

29. Lord Jim@27: doesn’t poor Bertie go into the bookshop looking for a book by Spinoza, but can’t quite remember the chap’s name and gets sold Florence Craye’s turgid modern novel Spindrift instead? So of course, being Bertie, he ends up unwillingly engaged to the author…

    Eglantine/sweetbriar has a lovely green-apple scent, produced not by the flowers but the leaves.

30. I didn’t start this until 10.00pm after the rugby on Saturday and wasn’t sure that I would finish it before bedtime. As it turned out I needn’t have worried.
    SPINDRIFT I remembered from Kipling’s Last Chantey “stinging, ringing spindrift and the fulmar flying free” – a very long time ago.
    27a I think “small” may be a misdirection designed to make us look for S + a 3-letter island. It helped me by giving the first letter which made it easier to drag up SARAWAK.
    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

31. Yes, it seemed not too difficult for a Prize puzzle.

    Secretaire fitted nicely into the space for 22 but of course it didn’t parse. GM grass to me was also genetically-modified grass.

    My double tick went to VASCULAR for the allusive surface. And no worries about drifting here.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen, and to PM @23 for the interesting hippocampus link.

32. I’m quite happy with “drift”. Maybe Brummie had been listening to the Coasters and the Drifters?

33. “I could captain you if you’d crew for me,
    Follow white flecked spindrift — float on a moonkissed sea.”
    Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull)

34. Thanks Brummie and Eileen. I made a list of all the words I could think of for 17a (not including ROAN, nho). And settled on TOWN. ie Horse anagrinding “not with” in the hope that there was a town called Atkinson somewhere in the world. Is there?

35. Yes, I did look up ‘hippocampus’ and was surprised to find what was to me a new and very different meaning: a sea-horse.

    In the clue to GNAW, I noted that the word was in the centre of ‘Design a whirl’.

    Thanks Brummie and Eileen.

36. KVa@22 Parse, please?

    Does RHEUM make anybody else think of Inspector Clouseau?

    SORGHUM came over her from Africa, probably brought by enslaved people, and is a staple in the American South, or at least sorghum syrup is. My cousin brought me a jar of it she came across in her travels. It has been sitting in my pantry for years, but I did once find a recipe that called for it, and it wasn’t bad. Don’t remember what it was now. Maybe I’ll look up some more recipes.

37. Oh, and — shame on me! — thanks to Brummie for an easy ride and to Eileen for her usual pleasant accompaniment with its delightful digressions.

38. Thanks Brummie. I found this more challenging than many commenters so far and I needed outside help for LABYRINTHINE, ESCRITOIRE, EGLANTINE, and SARAWAK. My favourite clues were CHILDHOOD, EXASPERATION, VASCULAR, and PISCES. Thanks Eileen for the informative (as always) blog.

39. Relatively gentle puzzle with rather a lot of beautiful words: LABYRINTHINE, ESCRITOIRE, EGLANTINE, HIPPOCAMPI, SPINDRIFT – and nothing too out-of-the-way (pace Martyn @7!).

    I parsed 1ac as ‘Hours spent with genetically modified Cannabis sativa’ 🙂 SORGHUM is one of the most important cereal crops, produced in greater quantity than oats or rye; it was first domesticated in Africa. It is interesting how Neolithic peoples in different parts of the world independently discovered how to cultivate local species of grasses and became farmers.

    Thanks to Brummie and Eileen

40. Valentine@35
    Solution: NOAHS ARK
    Mentioned the clue mainly for SARK (I thought I had come across SARK before in a Guardian puzzle
    or two but couldn’t get a hand on any). Never mind the ‘fellow=NOAH’ bit wasn’t received all that well.

41. As usual with the prize puzzles I draw a blank at first reading but then somehow the penny drops and eventually I finish it. I read 1a as Genetically Modified. Favourite was EGLANTINE, which conjures up visions of a summer’s day in a beautiful garden.

42. LOI Salvage. Was unconvinced salvage was ‘refuse to be kept’ as refuse was more associated with rubbish in my eyes. Also if L is latitude what’s longitude ?

43. Good question – I wondered about that myself. I can only say that Chambers gives L for latitude and length, Collins only length.

44. oed.com has the three L’s: ‘NOUN 1867– (See quot. 1867).
    1867 The three L’s were formerly vaunted by seamen who despised the use of nautical astronomy; viz. lead, latitude, and look-out…
    Dr. or Captain Halley added the fourth L—the greatly desired longitude. W. H. Smyth & E. Belcher, Sailor’s Word-book at L‘

45. Eileen@42. I’m sure we’ve discussed latitude and longitude both starting with L before – or perhaps you missed that episode. Chambers has lon. or long. for the latter’s abbreviation. I suppose it’s appropriate that the word has a longer than average abbreviation. 😉 (Chambers has lat. as an alternative to the single letter abbreviation – I guess lat. is what Collins advises since it doesn’t approve of letter ell – so lat. 53°22′ N, lon. 1°27′ W, for example.)

46. Thanks, both.
    Sorry, sheffield hatter, I don’t remember any previous discussion – but, of course, I take your word for it: my memory is very selective these days. 😉

47. One of my last in was SALVAGE, as I failed to equate “refuse” with that answer. I accept that it’s near enough (thanks for your dictionary quote, Eileen), but I have always thought of SALVAGE (the noun) as something potentially useful, but requiring some effort to get back (salvaging or saving?), rather than something deliberately thrown away and then retrieved for re-use. Oh well.

    I have subsequently disappeared for a few minutes down a dictionary wormhole.

    SALVAGE comes from Latin salvare (via salvagium) according to Chambers. The French for salvage is sauvetage. There was another SALVAGE, once used by the likes of Spenser and Shakespeare, the meaning of which was savage. Well known phrases related to SALVAGE would include sauve qui peut and salvator mundi.

    Savage comes from Old French salvage which was from Latin silva (a wood). Two words meet in a Guardian crossword clue, one originally from Latin for a wood, the other from Latin for to save, and both at one time were spelt SALVAGE.

48. If there is a strong wind blowing on the Derwent, I see SPINDRIFT from my window quite commonly.

49. [Eileen @46: Memory becomes selective as we age partly because we have so much more in our heads. It’s like an attic in an old house — more and more things accumulate so it takes longer to find stuff. From where I sit you’re doing quite well.]

50. Thanks, Tony @49. 😉

51. I had trouble finding this blog. It is listed as 29,322 when it should be 29,332.

52. My apologies for the typo – corrected now.

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