Guardian Prize 29,607 by Paul

60 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,607 by Paul”

1. Thanks bridgesong! I needed some help with the parsing of STUMPED (I’m ignorant of cricket) and LOITER (not familiar with the Birmingham accent). For a Paul puzzle, this didn’t seem too puzzling.

2. I enjoyed this one. I was convinced that 16d (Somewhat unenlightened, darkest Scandinavian) was noir.. no infrared = less light. That held me up for a while.

3. Liked CONUNDRUM, BEYOND ME, O HENRY and LOITER.
   Thanks Paul and bridgesong.

4. A most 26 and 25 7, with which we were occasionally 12 or 27; never really 8, 10, 13, 14 or 17 and it did not prove to be 20 or my wife! Thanks Paul for the 9/22/24, which was fair, well-clued and not too difficult.

   We started (with) ALL AT SEA; were unfamiliar with SCREWEYE and ESPUMOSO; found a couple of homophones a bit of a stretch; were slow to parse THROWN and CONUNDRUM (thanks to Bridgesong for ‘pray-er’) and had never heard of our LOI ‘O.HENRY’.

   Our favourite was BEYOND ME with ticks for FAZED, FLUMMOXED and AROUSAL. Thanks once again to P and B.

5. I liked deciphering your clever post, Maser@4.
   The idea of playing on “puzzle” and variations thereof for all the across clues made for a fun Prize. Thanks to Paul!
   The only one I needed help with parsing was 27a FLUMMOXED. Thanks for the helpful blog to bridgesong and Timon.
   Lots of ticks for the self-referential 7a CROSSWORD, 25a ENIGMATIC (a reminder of another Master of Crossword Setting), and 26a WEIRD.

6. Despite the keyword in the theme, I found this more accessible than the majority of Paul’s puzzles, including some of his recent weekday offerings. There were the usual groans and stretchy synonyms, of course, but all in all an enjoyable experience.

7. Loved LOITER when it clicked. I had to look up the Spanish wine, but I had all the crossers by then, so it was really just the two options and one flowed better than the other. I got SCREW EYES from the word play and crossers. I’ve fitted hundreds of them, but I can’t remember what we called them. I can’t remember parsing BEYOND ME, perhaps it was.
   Thanks for the blog and a very enjoyable puzzle.

8. I also thought this was a very enjoyable puzzle and I have waited all week to say that. It seems it might be at the easier end of Paul’s spectrum according to the blog thus far, but it was just right for me. I also appreciate that it was a ‘remarkable achievement’ to set such a puzzle or perhaps it’s just meat and drink to Paul to whom, along with bridgesong, I offer my thanks. PS: I’d have BEYOND ME as my favourite, a very clever and entertaining clue.

9. I liked this also. A few too many unusual words in the down clues for my liking, but that is often the price to pay for a themed puzzle

   I liked FLUMMOXED (such a good, chewy word!) and the great double definition in STUMPED. I thought BEYOND ME was clever too.

   Thanks Paul and bridgesong

10. I liked the theme, and the double definitions RIDDLE, POSER and FLAT.
    Pleased to solve FLUMMOXED from wordplay and some vague memory of the word lummox, possibly from my time in Britain.
    I had a little query about the bits in KERNELS too, but not really FAZED (good clue, don’t have a problem with the definition.). On looking up KERNELS there were some computing terms/ involving kernels. Don’t know if that’s what Paul had in mind about the ”bits”;

11. I see I had DAZED instead of FAZED. In retrospect, having thought of Azed, I don’t see why I didn’t go the obvious ‘F’ for female instead of ‘D’ (Daughter, or Dame, perhaps?), but I think it fits the definition. Like Crackers@2 I was delayed by entering ‘Scandi’ NOIR. There were a few I had trouble parsing, particularly O. HENRY where I couldn’t see the ‘ORY’ part at all. Thanks for cleating those up, bridgesong. Maybe because of the stretched definitions, I found this on the hard side (OK, I didn’t even get it all right!) but I did think it was worth it at the end just to look at the completed grid and read off all the across answers “CROSSWORD, STUCK, CONUNDRUM,… BEYOND ME,…WEIRD, FLUMOXED” – a complete thesaurus entry in itself. Thanks for that, Paul.

12. Thanks for the blog, THROWN and BEYOND ME were excellent clues , CROSSWORD very weak. I am not a fan of these gimmicks, the puzzle yesterday was far superior , just write some hard clues.

13. I checked KERNELS but had a vague memory of it being used this way – it’s bits as in Linux operating systems – which I have used on and off. Stuff goes wrong when KERNELs corrupt.

    I enjoyed this too, and was another who took ages to parse and enter WEIRD, but it was the only one that really held me up.

    Thank you to Paul and bridgesong.

14. I enjoyed this and was most impressed by the use of the puzzle theme in all across clues.
    Thank you bridgesong for explaining BEYOND ME – clearly that one was.
    Favourites were CONUNDRUM (the pray-er), FLUMMOXED, O HENRY and STUMPED.
    I remembered EDDA from somewhere, probably a previous crossword.
    ESPUMOSO was new for me, but after slotting the letters in with the crossers, it turned out to be a word.
    Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

15. The acrosses were all puzzling, so I started on the downs. My FOi was 2d. I confidently entered SPUMEOUS (variant of spumous). So that mucked up the
    North West Frontier for ages. And it isn’t even an anagram of SOME OPUS. D’oh! ESPUMOSO only appears at oed.com in the etymology of SPUMOSE:
    “< Latin spūmōsus (hence Italian spumoso, Spanish espumoso, Portuguese espumoso), < spūma spume n.” ‘It’s in Chambers‘ (and Collins), of course.

16. I enjoyed this. Thanks both.
    I wonder if Paul considered
    _______________ (8)*
    when setting?

    *clueless

17. Quite enjoyable, with BEYOND ME taking top honors. I think 19 works best as in the expression “kernel of truth”. Thanks both.

18. Well I enjoyed that one!

    All good fun until the SW corner held me up until Monday.

    When I finally saw BEYOND ME I took my hat off to a very satisfying clue.

    O.Henry? O Crikey- never heard of them and had to look up writers who used a single initial.

    Overall I love a Paul crossword and this was a splendid entertainment.

19. 16, FF

    With different enumeration could’ve been DREW A BLANK

    Cheers all.

20. FF @16 /Etu @19 – Don’t give him ideas!

21. FrankieG@15. I also confidently entered SPUMEOUS!. It met the definition of bubbly/frothy. Don’t remember how I came up with the anagram, which, as you say, doesn’t work. I was also then thwarted in the NW, to the point I didn’t get the obvious CROSSWORD. Had to phone a friend, Anna in Finland, who led me to the breakthrough in that corner.

22. Tough puzzle but was helped by the theme.

    New for me: ESPUMOSO, SCREW EYE; LUMMOX = dummy (for 27ac) – my last one in; and 23d loiter = lighter in Birmingham accent.

    FF@16 – haha, great clue!

23. Thanks for the blog. I thought I had completed this but turns out I had CROOKS for 1 (a crook is a fastener and crooks are “put forward” for trial) and consequently aswoon for 12 both of which seemed right to me. EDDA was LOI. Loved BEYOND ME.

24. Thoroughly enjoyed this one. An ideal Prize which only yielded (almost) for me after three visits. Apart from CROSSWORD, I thought that this was Paul at his best; a clever and appropriate theme, wittily executed and challenging but with nothing too obscure. O’ HENRY was a write in as the only US author who would fit, but an appreciation of the clue took a little longer. Did not get LIES OVER, WIERD or POSER. Thanks to Paul and bridgesong.

25. Thanks Paul and Bridgesong

    Wonderful Paul puzzle. When I saw the across clues my first thought was “wow – the complaints are going to flow!”. But other than the amazingly implemented theme, Paul’s normal quirks were minimised.

26. Minor carp on 13 ac ‘sailing’ is entirely unnecessary and clues should not have entirely redundant words

27. Croc@26 – fleet, by itself, is just the whole navy, whether it be in port or out at sea. The ‘sailing’ is needed to indicate it is indeed ALL AT SEA.

28. Thanks for the explanation for floored/flawed. In my accent (generic Northern English, having grown up in Lancashire and spent 18 years in that other place, over the Pennines) those two words are so far from a homophones that even though I got the answer, I couldn’t parse it!

29. Great fun – thanks setter and blogger. I agree 7a is slightly weak, though I’d suggest “there’s a word for that” = “there’s a name for that” might be a rationale for word = name.

30. I enjoyed this much more than yesterday’s Paul, though I don’t like the insiders-only trick of using the pseudonyms of other setters as an essential part of the wordplay for FAZED. I didn’t know ESPUMOSO, but it makes a nice change from ASTI. I also took a while to find that EDDA wasn’t NOIR.

    BEYOND ME was clever, and the giant mice were a funny thought. Floored/flawed, which works for London me, has two major sound differences in Northern accents: not just the rhotic R but the oo/aw difference, so for once I sympathise with Mike@28 – but this is Paul, and by his standards it’s quite conventional.

31. Cannot understand the parsing of 20ac. Help !!

32. Clever, puzzling puzzle. I wrote: ‘Down clues first, difficult, some dodgy definitions’.

    One has to admire the ingenuity of the Across setting and cluing. I particularly enjoyed WEIRD and CONUNDRUM.

    Thanks Paul and bridgesong.

33. Yep that works, Q @29, ta.

34. Phil@31 in crosswordland NAME=N .
    Think of MEN as ME N , where does N (name) appear ? BEYOND ME .

35. Really enjoyed this – especially the penny-drops moment when I got ‘BEYOND ME’ (after trying for ages to make it ‘search me’).
    I thought ‘painted’ as an anagram indicator was unfair as looking at ‘rose’ and ‘veil’ they certainly added up to 8 letters but I rejected them as being anagram fodder as I couldn’t see an anagram indicator.

36. p.e. @31 ‘n’ is the last letter in ‘men’ – therefore it’s beyond ‘me’.

37. Thanks Roz !

38. Like Lenmasterman@24 I got STUCK in the SW corner and was unable to unsee my first thought for 26a – that we required the back of ‘barrier’ (R) inserted in a word for ‘grid’. Had the same trouble as others with 15d – a possible anagrist but with such a dodgy potential anagrind that I discounted it.

    I never did get the definition part of KERNELS, but I seem to be not alone in that, and like Croc@26 I initially queried the functionality of ‘sailing’ but arrived quickly at the same conclusion as Larry@27. If only all Paul’s clues could be so easily resolved. THROWN=’wobbly?’ Our blogger’s solution works, but I couldn’t see it.

    Thanks to Paul and Bridgesong.

39. FF@16 et al, I seem to remember either Araucaria or Rufus using
    “(1,4,4,1,4)”
    for I DON’T HAVE A CLUE

40. It’s a pity that Paul didn’t manage to squeeze QUIZ and JIGSAW in among the other puzzles to make a pangram?

41. I couldn’t finish this, but all seems fair except one. I’m surprised that nobody has commented yet that 20 could just as well be behind me until crossers rule it out.
    Luckily it doesn’t affect much of the crossword, because only one crosser is wrong.

42. Ravenrider @41: the wordplay would work for BEHIND ME, but the definition wouldn’t.

43. Took a break from crosswords in January so really lovely to be welcomed back by this Paul special. Was trying to avoid using aids but was thrown by _H_O_N. All I could think of was SHOO-IN.

    Did anyone pencil in BUTTON for 1d? I guess the “we hear” wouldn’t have been needed. Thanks all.

44. Not surprised that O Henry (writer of short stories, often with a twist at the end, died 1910) isn’t well known in the UK, but his story THE GIFT OF THE MAGI is a Christmas classic and well worth reading. (Also THE LAST LEAF.)

45. I don’t usually join in any except the Sunday blods but had to comment on FAZED. It was great to see Jonathan C reference- his 2750th will be next month.
    I was sad that Marser @4 had never met O’HENRY. If you are of a sentimental frame of mind look up “The Gift of the Magi” which is probably his best story. The USA was a better place in the early 1900s.

46. Bridgesong @42 massive fail and red face for me.

47. Like paddymelon@21 and FrankieG@15 I first entered SPUMEOUS instead of ESPUMOSO and like Choldunk2@43 I toyed with BUTTON instead of BROOCH, but got there in the end with WEIRD as LOI, for much the same reason as bridgesong. Thanks for the blog and hats off to Paul for theming all the across answers so entertainingly.

48. You might also read “The Ransom of Red Chief,” a good chuckle.

    Thanks, Paul and bridgesong.

49. No disrespect to Mr Crowther, but I`m with Gladys @30 that clueing AZED doesn`t seem quite right/fair.
    OK, just sour grapes from me as I had originally put in IRISH. “Setters” seem always to be Irish. “Female” was Iris and “puzzle” was H from Line of Duty. (I couldn`t work out though why Iris was puzzled – and the setter would have needed a question mark. )

50. Favourites were BEYOND ME, CONUNDRUM and THROWN and I join in with the applause for the cleverness of the puzzle theme and how it was executed. Many thanks to bridgesong and Paul.

51. Managed it but with several grimaces. 1a is dreadful, the “homophones” even worse than usual (I had no idea what 23d was supposed to mean and bunged it from the definition) and no, I don’t agree that ‘painted’ masses muster as an anagrind. A pity since the rest was generally very clever.

52. I’m sorry, can I check I understand the O.Henry parsing?
    Tale is story. You take out the st (street = way) as it says “to go”, leaving Ory
    Is that right?

53. QuietEars@52 — Yes, that’s it.

    I usually get on well with Paul, but I couldn’t finish this one without cheating on a couple of clues. I thought a couple of the across clues were a bit weak viewed in isolation, but forgivable given the difficult task Paul set himself with the theme.

    My only real complaint is “painted”: I don’t think that’s even close to a reasonable anagrind.

54. I am not a fan of painted but Chambers does give cover .
    Paint= to represent deceptively. I think this is the sense of painting a false picture with words.

55. An Operating System Kernel processes data in e.g. 32-bit or 64-bit chunks. It’s a perfectly good clue, one you know that.

56. Jim @5: thanks for that explanation, but the clue treats “bits” as a synonym of “kernels”, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

57. Ted @53 thank you

58. Roz@12 a theme isn’t a gimmick, a barbed persona might be though! Loved this, and yesterday’s – Paul’s in a purple patch for sure.

59. (Friday’s I mean)

60. Anagram clues often require three steps: (1) find the anagrist, by looking for a word or words with the right number of letters, (2) solve the anagram, and (3) deduce what verb or participle must be the anagrind. “Painter” in 15d LIES OVER is an example of step 3.

    I was flummoxed in the SE corner by entering STUNNED at 17a instead of STUMPED. Stunned = puzzled, and stunned = out (knocked unconscious). I thought I was very clever to have worked that out.

    Thanks Paul for the puzzles, and bridgesong/Timon for the much-needed blog.

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