Guardian Prize 29,374 / Brockwell

48 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,374 / Brockwell”

1. Failed on TOWHEE. It’s alright to say “the wordplay was very clear” once you have the answer, but I found it opaque. Thanks, Brockwell and duncan.

2. Thanks duncanshiell for such a detailed and well presented blog. As you say, Hamlet was clearly signalled and eased the way to a finish in fairly comfortable time. The NW corner was again the last to yield and I took too long to recognise the Spoonerism. In my defence though there are plenty of metal bars that aren’t magnets and magnets that aren’t metal bars.

3. TOWHEE was my LOI, but unlike TT@1 I felt it could be inferred from the clue and letters crossing, and so I checked it in Wiki.
   NEPOTIC surprised me, as it thought the adjective was ‘nepotistic’, but both are there in the dictionary.
   Thanks, Duncan, for your very clear exposition. And thanks too to Brockwell.

4. I liked the ‘ard nut (like Terry McCann saying On yer bike Sunshine, or I’ll …). And the anagram using Laertes was pretty cool. I’d have guessed amoroso was an adjective, but my Italian is pretty rozzo. Enjoyed it, thanks both,, now for this week’s … kettle’s on …

5. I have towhees in my yard. They hop around and scratch the ground, and one of their songs is an unmistakable “to-WHEE.” Nice blog on a fun puzzle.

6. GOSH, I really enjoyed this puzzle. Although I’m quite familiar with the play, it seemed to me that a knowledge of it was not required. Like gif@4, I liked the long anagram – very neat – and TUNDRA made me laugh because I spent quite some time trying to make sense of ‘?ood??’.

   Thank you, Brockwell, for a most enjoyable puzzle and duncanshiell, for a colourfully clear blog.

7. I think we’ve had ‘towhee’ before as it was familiar. Seeing Dr Who in the midst of the Shakespearean tragedy was amusing. Is there nowhere the Time Lord won’t go?

8. TOWHEE was one of my last in too; while I’m an American, I’m no ornithologist. Aside from the five or six obvious ones that they teach you in school, I call birds things like “that little brown one over there.” I followed the directions with the crossing letters in place, said, “that sounds like a bird,” googled it, and lo! it was.

   I liked the way the theme was obvious without being intrusive, and Brockwell managed to use it in all sorts of clever ways. Both Gertrude and Claudius were other notable people with those names, for example. The surface reading of PROPULSION deserves particular praise.

   Not all rustics are hillbillies (and perhaps vice versa–I’ve met some people from rural Appalachia who are pretty smart and urbane), so there might have been an indication of a definition by example in that one.

9. Oh, and add to duncanshiell’s list of Hamlet characters the Ghost in the clue for GOSH.

   Of course, missing from the puzzle is the character who, when asked how he felt about underwear made of lamé, said that he was against brass jockstraps, but was….(10)

10. I thought this was fun although it took me two goes.

    My favourites were: ABRUPT, AMOROSA, DOSING

    Thanks both

11. Unfortunately, Hamlet is one of the few well-known Shakespeare plays I have neither read nor watched. Nevertheless, many of the names are well known, so it did not present a huge barrier. I did worry for some time over ELSINORE, and the obscure (to me, but not Cineraria) TOWHEE caused equal uncertainty

    I also felt at certain stages I was not on the same wavelength as the setter, but I got there.

    Favourites were RUSTICISM (clever use of Curtis Strange), SOUTHEASTERLY (schoolboy humour, but I liked the surface) and AMOROSO

    Thanks Brockwell and duncanshiell

12. TassieTim@1 brings up a good point. I always smile when I see mention of an obscure word followed by “but the wordplay was very clear”. Isn’t the wordplay supposed to be clear?

13. Loved it! I’m no Shakespeare expert, but all of the clues that required a little knowledge of Hamlet (most didn’t) were all very gettable.

    [Now here’s a little bit of theme-related tech trivia from the early days of search engines. First understand that search engines keep what’s called an inverted index of the text collection of interest: for every word, a list of all the locations, i.e. documents/pages and offsets, where the word occurs. For the most common 100 or so words in the language, such as “the”, “of”, and “and”, collectively known as stop-words, these lists used not to be generated because they took up too much precious disk space. When these words occurred in queries they were ignored. Punch line: so imagine the chagrin of someone looking for “To be or not to be”. Empty results! Likewise “The Who”. Good thing storage is cheap nowadays.]

14. Tough going and a dnf for me. I ended up revealing TOWHEE and TUNDRA and guessed that 8a must be the Spanish for 11 (which I had to look up). I only knew AMOROSO as a musical adjective, not as a noun. The Hamlet theme was useful for identifying the state of DENMARK and the castle of ELSINORE. Favourites DESPERADO and SOUTHEASTERLY.

    [ There’s a wonderful family called STEIN.
    There’s Gert, and there’s Ep, and there’s Ein.
    Gert’s poems are bunk,
    Ep’s sculptures are junk,
    And no one can understand Ein.]

15. mrpenney@9 magnetised?
    gladys@14. Thanks for the laugh.

16. Cineraria@5. Thanks for the info that TOWHEE is onomatopoeic. I was really chuffed to solve this clue, looked it up and confirmed, but didn’t go far enough to see why it was called that. My brain had the word divided as TOW HEE.

17. TOWHEE in 20d seems an odd choice given that there was a ‘near thematic’ option to clue SOPHIE, the Queen of DENMARK in Shakespeare’s time.

    Enjoyed this one, thanks to Brockwell and duncan.

18. It’s all about the birds, Jay. 🙂
    Calls of an Eastern Towhee.

19. [ PDM EYES ONLY – it is for tin bras , which has been clued in that style before. }

20. Thanks for the blog , I do like the style of this setter , very neat clues and clever wordplay but I did find the theme annoying and intrusive. It was the sixth in seven days in the Guardian and it becomes very tiresome.
    TOWHEE is new to me , I did think the wordplay was clear but it was nearly my last in so I had the letters to help, I did not cold solve it.
    MAGNET, I had the same views as Biggles@2 for the definition but Chambers does give cover for the setter.

21. Quite tough but the theme was helpful.

    New for me NEPOTIC; ONCE = eleven in Spanish; TOWHEE bird; AMOROSO = sweetheart/lover.

    Thanks, both.

22. [Oh yes, Roz@19. I remember Fortinbras now. Shakespeare not my strength, although mrpenney was giving me a nudge.
    In the meantime I’ve found out that the first sports bra, Jogbra, was made my sewing together 2 jockstraps in the 70s. True, it’s in the Smithsonian. But we won’t tell Alan Connor.]

23. Great to come here for the wit and knowledge. Hamlet not in my comfort zone but still a fine puzzle.

    The definition of NEPOTIC was so smart: my clue of the day.

    Guess I’ll have to call back later to decode the obscurities of some contributions. I managed to remember that PDM is penny drop moment. But “PDM EYES ONLY”?

24. Sorry Choldunk , PDM is Paddymelon and my post was intended just for her in case others were still puzzling over the riddle@9 .

25. I found this a very challenging, clever and enjoyable crossword. Never heard of a Tangelo before. 4 acc. made me laugh out loud. Thanks to Brockwell and duncanshiell.

26. In my youth I was a fan of Ornette Coleman, but my enjoyment was often tempered by sensing the reaction of friends to the discordance. In the same way, as I admired the clever use of the Hamlet theme, I couldn’t help but imagine Roz’s reaction.

27. Well clearly I shall get shouted down here, or cancelled or something, but I thought this was the second ridiculously easy ‘prize’ puzzle in a row. There must surely be something wrong when you can fill in a prize grid in 20 minutes?
    duncanshiell’s bogs are excellent, though.
    Still no Pangakupu …

28. I know Hamlet fairly well, and found myself right on Brockwell’s wavelength for what turned out to be a very enjoyable and relatively easy solve (I actually found it easier than last week’s Maskerade). In fact he had me at the surface for PROPULSION, and I agree with MrP @8’s ‘praiseworthy’ assessment. (Stabbed through the arras – not a nice way to go…) I got TOWHEE from the wordplay and thought it was a bird but needed to check. LOI was TANGELOS, which I thought of once I had most of the crossers, but it took far too long before I realised where ‘counter’ fitted in and felt happy writing it in. So, thanks for the fun, Brockwell, and thanks for the fine blog, duncanshiell.

29. Sorry it was too easy for Anna@27. 20 mins! Yawn! But can she spell ‘BLOG’? I thought that the puzzle was fine as my one per week effort. I needed a wordfitter to get the missing letters for TOWHEE. My favourite clue was ‘ASITCOMES’.

30. I was away from home last weekend, with no time to do the puzzle on the day, so I enjoyed it all the more on my return and it is more fresh in my memory than Prize puzzles usually are.

    The theme is very familiar to me – it’s so much easier to remember chunks of A Level Literature than what someone told me yesterday – but I agree with mrpenney’s second paragraph @8: that was just the icing on a delicious cake. Like KeithS, I echo his admiration of the superb surface of PROPULSION – and thanks to him for spotting the GHOST. 😉

    Huge thanks to Brockwell for a real treat and thanks to lucky Duncan for the blog. (And thanks, too, to paddymelon for the link. )

31. Loved the Hamlet theme. Literary-themed crosswords are probably my favourite kind. [For this reason, I have really relished Grecian/Brockwell’s Dickens series in the Indy.]
    The clues mentioned already by others, 9a ONCE and 20d TOWHEE, were new learning for me and I didn’t know the sitcom 17a AS IT COMES, so the crossers were invaluable. It also took me ages to see the ‘ARD NUT in the clue for 4a TUNDRA.
    24a DANISH BLUE was IMHO the best of all, but I had heaps of ticks including several for 19d EMPEROR which made us think beyond Hamlet’s CLAUDIUS.
    I continue to feel embarrassed on behalf of all Australians for the 3d NEPOTIC Rupert.
    Thanks to Brockwell and duncanshiell, and I appreciated the laughs I got from some other contributors’ posts above.

32. [Roz. Spectacular light shows in western parts of Oz. Severe geomagnetic storm G4 and multiple CMEs.
    gif did you see the light?]

33. Looks like I’m out on a limb, but thought BLUE was pretty vague.

    [Duncanshiell – ONCE also the Spanish foundation raising funds for visually impaired people. You’ll notice people selling lottery tickets in aid of it almost everywhere here.]

    Thanks both.

34. Entertaining puzzle. I liked the tangential use of thematic words in the clues for STEIN and EMPEROR. Ticks also for TUNDRA, PROPULSION, TANGELOS and NEPOTIC.

    My LOI was TOWHEE (mrpenney @8: the ornithologists’ informal term for such birds, difficult to tell apart from a distance, is indeed LBJ – little brown job).

    Thanks to S&B

35. Thanks Brockwell and Duncan. Had to cheat to get TOWHEE and TANGELOS.

36. [ PDM@32 yes the solar storm also brought the Northern Lights to the UK which is not common, I was doubly fortunate, we had clear skies for once and Friday is student dance night so my only late night. ]

37. Not sure about TUNDRA=habitat(@ 4a. It’s the habitat of lots of creatures and plants for sure but so is my back garden.
    Some nice surfaces. I liked 12a, “like this ends” for ES @ 17a, and Curtis Strange @ 14d. (For younger solvers and those not interested in sport Curtis Strange is a real person, a well-known golfer)
    Thanks to Brockwell and duncanshiell

38. I’m not too familiar with Brockwell, but I loved this. More please! Thank you duncanshiell for the very clear blog. mrpenney @9, lovely clue which I’d not seen before. Hard to choose favourites but AS IT COMES and DANISH BLUE were brilliant. Thanks to all. Enjoy the weekend wherever you are…

39. I found this relatively straightforward for a Prize puzzle but entertaining nonetheless.

    I liked the concise surface for ABRUPT, the wordplay for GOLIATH, and the well-hidden NEPOTIC. I had now problem with ONCE, having lived in Madrid for a while. Re DANISH BLUE, there is apparently a fish called a blue hamlet; it’s amazing what one can find on the Web.

    Thanks Brockwell and ds.

40. pdm@32: easily the best aurora I’ve seen from here in Tassie. That bird apart, I enjoyed this, Hamlet theme and all.

41. I had a lovely time with this, though I missed the sitcom till I saw in in the blog. JinA, it isn’t a particular sitcom referred to in the clue, just the word “sitcom.” mrepenney got it just right.

    Thanks ever so to Brockwell and duncanshiell.

42. A fairly breezy solve for a Prize, I thought. But I’m looking askance at the use of ‘murdered’ as an anagram indicator in PROPULSION. For me it doesn’t really work to indicate an anagram (some might also argue it’s a little distasteful…). I think maybe other words were available that would have worked with the surface meaning.

    Thanks both.

43. Rob T @42: If a singer is accused of ‘murdering’ a well known song, it implies they have made a mess of it. Works for me.

44. Many thanks to Duncan for the very thorough and accurate blog and to everyone else for taking the time to comment on here. All criticisms noted and all plaudits gratefully received. Hope to see you all here again soon. B/G

45. Gervase @43 – I hadn’t thought of that! Objection withdrawn. Thanks!

46. Thanks both.

    I’ve just realised I never finished this. Did no one else bung in ISOLDE for the (admittedly un-parsed) answer to 1A (which turns out to be….. DOSING now that I look at the blog)? And I didn’t get STEIN either. Dear me….

    Nice crozzie.

47. [Tassie Tim @40, you lucky duck!]

48. [Dr W@13: two of my favourite bands in the 1970s were called If and Man. Good luck googling them!]

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