Guardian Prize 29,619 / Arachne

59 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,619 / Arachne”

1. Thanks Eileen. I agree, a most enjoyable mixture of degrees of difficulty and clever devices. It might have been even better with fewer anagrams but they did smooth the way. It was that NW corner again that was the last to yield, mainly because I’d pencilled in ‘specious’ at 1a and flirted with ‘dreamed up’ for 11a, both for no good reason that I can now explain. Still not convinced though that ‘cycling’ can mean transposition. Not sure either what ‘suppressed’ is doing in 21a other than making the clue more readable.

2. Thanks Eileen. I also echo your praise for the puzzle. I did find it difficult in parts. Like BigglesA@1, the NW corner in particular took time. In the end shared your trouble of having too many ticks.

   I have whittled the number down and I will name OWE, RESIGNED (which I thought absolutely brilliant), DYNAMO, DIGRESSES, XIRXES, and SODIUM as favourites.

   I could not parse TOSS, so I was in no position to like or dislike it. I also needed your help to find the clod in DOLCE VITA (talking of which is native really the same as hereditary?). I wished there had been a better way than an anagram to clue an obscure word such as OROGENESIS.

   All in all, it took a few visits but it was highly enjoyable and full of very appealing clues.

   Thanks Arachne and Eileen.

3. Super stuff from Sarah! Enjoyed. Favourite clue was RESIGNED.

4. I really struggled with the four short clues PRY, OWE, TOSS and AKIN, until I had more crossers, which made them all the more enjoyable once solved.

   Excellent puzzle, thanks A and E

5. My faves: TRUMPED-UP, NEURON, PRY, AKIN and TOSS.
   Thanks Arachne and Eileen.

6. Arachne on the same day as her alter ego in the FT. Such smooth clues. Favourites for me were XERXES and BOOMERANGS.

7. This was a delight, chewier than her other Saturday appearance, but satisfying to solve.

   Martyn @2 for native, the phrase “his native wit” means the intelligence he was born with, so hereditary.

   Thank you Eileen and Arachne.

8. Can’t think why anyone wouldn’t like TOSS, Eileen, a great clue to (nearly) end with after lots of others. Many tas AnE.

9. A puzzle and blog featuring two of my favourite women from Crosswordland! I concur with the delight at solving an Arachne grid as expressed by Eileen and others. On reviewing my solve, I also had lots of ticks but I particularly liked 15a ISSUES and 14d BOOMERANGS (naturally)! Thanks for a lovely Prize Puzzle to Arachne and thanks for the entire blog to Eileen. In particular, as for some other solvers, I needed help to understand 24d TOSS.

10. Thanks Arachne for a superb crossword as I expected it to be. Every clue was excellent; I ticked ten (but any ten would have made a good list) SPURIOUS, DYNAMO, DRILLERS, ISSUES, IMPALA, NEURON, XERXES, AKIN, RAISON D’ETRE, and BOOMERANGS. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

11. Indeed, we were most fortunate last Saturday with a double from this setter. Double tops, for sure. Lovely to encounter Arachne in a Prize and I concur with everything Eileen has said in her preamble. And, like others here, I find I have too many ticks to list them all. Trying hard to whittle it down, I end up with SPURIOUS for the club sandwiches; DYNAMO for the almost unnoticeable reverse hidden indicator; TENNER precisely because it is a chestnut, beautifully done; STUBBORN for ‘dropped’; XERXES, another slightly chestnutty idea but so smoothly done; CAR BOOT SALE and RASION D’ETRE for the silky anagrams; BOOMERANGS for the surface and TOSS for the adulterated ‘squash’.

    Thanks Arachne and Eileen

12. So many really neat clues! Everyone seems to have liked this as much as I did. There may have been a number of anagrams, but I’m not going to complain about that when Arachne was so inventive in her choice of anagrinds – ‘clobber’, ‘fluid’, ‘engineering’, ‘bruised’ etc. I enjoyed them all. Like Antonknee@4 it was the short answers like PRY that gave me the most trouble; AKIN was my LOI, and only parsed somewhat after the event. I did not know OROGENESIS, and it didn’t help that all the crossers were vowels, but I got there after a couple of tries. Thanks, Arachne, and thanks Eileen.

13. Thanks Arachne and Eileen
    Very enjoyable.
    I’m in the “didn’t like TOSS” camp, though. It was LOI, and I thought “squash, not Scotch” was a very long winded way to clue a single letter.

14. As a relative beginner to the cryptic crossword world (I get maybe half the Prize in a good week), it’s always nice when I enjoy learning the answers as much as getting them myself, as I did today. A lovely crossword, BOOMERANGS and XERXES particularly pleased me and DYNAMO was devilishly hidden.

15. I really enjoyed that, but I misguidedly went for PUY for 2D.
    “Stuck up” gave me an anagram of UP for PU, and then “your nose” gave me a Y as the nose (ie first letter) of YOUR.
    The definition of “pea reportedly” led me to PUY as a type of pea or lentil (I do look at the Saturday Food supplement you see).
    It was my LOI and I think I was keen to wave it through and get it done!

    Thank you Eileen for your enlightening commentary.

16. Loved all the IDIOMs getting Lift and Separated: club sandwiches, waifs and strays, gender-fluid Paper clips, and mountains out of molehills. Liked TOSS, too.
    [My LOi was 11a *****ED-UP – I’d left it blank all week in protest. Surely Arachne could have drummed up a different clue.] Thanks A&E.

17. Tough and enjoyable. Hoping to see Arachne regularly from now on.

    New for me: OROGENESIS; FORINT.

    Favourites: BOOMERANGS, TOSS, IMPALA, STUBBORN (loi).

18. My first Prize (both tried and completed, albeit not without recourse to a thesaurus) so I at least appreciated the anagrams. I thought it was super. Got stuck with DREAMED UP for a bit as opposed to the reference to the orange twonk, which slowed things down and meant REALM was my LOI.

    Thanks Eileen, thanks Arachne.

19. An absolute delight of a crossword from Arachne, nice to see her getting a share of the prize slots and part of me wishes I did the FT daily too to benefit from her Rosa Klebb offerings as well as her Guardian puzzles.

    I wonder if other solvers let their clue-parsing heads supersede the instinct to read and enjoy the surfaces of the clues. I feel that I am often guilty of not appreciating – sometimes not even noticing – the surfaces so reading the blog today, I fully revisited all the clues (not just my only unparsed XERXES which I can really tick now I’ve seen it). There were so many good surfaces in this one.

    We were doubly fortunate today as Eileen was our blogger too with a lovely considered blog as ever. Thanks to you and happy weekend to all.

20. EdTheBall @19

    I just can’t understand solvers (and some setters!) who pay no heed to surfaces. Arachne’s are always an absolute delight, honed to perfection and well worth revisiting, thus doubling the pleasure.

21. EdTheBall@19. Hear hear hear.

22. Woody @15 – we also put in puy for 2D, parsed the same as you, though we puzzled over why “reportedly” was needed for the surface

23. I was another with DREAMED UP and like Woody@15 I also had PUY. It took me ages to realise that the first one was wrong, because ‘top’ =DREAM seems to work. Anyone who solved REALM on their first pass through the clues will be raising their eyebrows at this, no doubt. 😕

    The fantastically smooth and well honed surface of the clue for BOOMERANGS, like that for PUY, totally defeated me. (The crossing letters would also fit CORMORANTS 🤔 and I just couldn’t unsee this.) So a frustrating incompletion for me, and doubly so because I correctly anticipated the praise that would be heaped on the setter today. 🙄

    Thanks to Arachne and Eileen as always.

24. As already said it was a real treat to have a Rosa Klebb and Arachne on a Saturday with lots of time to enjoy them. I found this puzzle much harder than the Rosa Klebb and went back to it several times during the week each time solving a few more.

    Lots of great clues and surfaces. I too like good surfaces and several here did their job – thoroughly misleading me.

    Thanks Arachne and Eileen

25. Fun, but I struggled in places. Needed a wordfinder for OROGENESIS (new to me), needed all the crossers for ADDUCE (also new), and couldn’t parse ISSUES or TRUMPED UP. I liked TOSS, though all the short ones gave me trouble: well done to Woody@15 for a convincing justification of his answer to 2d.

    Favourites (a selection) NEURON, XERXES, DOLCE VITA, RESIGNED, CAR BOOT SALE, BOOMERANGS (I think I suffer from Boomer Angst).

    [Sir Humphrey Davy
    Abominated gravy.
    He lived in the odium
    Of having discovered SODIUM.]

26. Another PUY here.

    I pencilled in ADDUCE but couldn’t convince myself that it matched the definition. I’ve never seen ‘instance’ used as a verb (though I now see it is Chambers).

    Those aside, this was an excellent puzzle.

27. An absolute cracker – as Arachne’s creations always are. Brilliant clues, clever surfaces.
    My faves were ISSUES and XERXES, with DOLCE VITA a close runner-up.
    Many thanks Eileen and Arachne

28. Another PUY here, though it never felt quite right.

    Many thanks all.

29. Interesting to know others went for PUY at 2d.
    Logoch@22, as for the “reportedly” I was hoping “puy” might be pronounced as “pea”, as I have never heard anyone say it. In my small circle the talk is more likely to be on the relative merits of mushy peas or garden peas with fish and chips.

30. There’s a semi-voiced W in the pronunciation of PUY – pwee, almost.
    I thought the unindicated YR abbreviation wasn’t entirely fair, though I did get PRY.

31. Unlike FrankieG@16, I think it is always useful to be reminded that Trumped-up means invented in the current climate. Like sheffield hatter@23, I struggled to get cormorants out of my head & only later in the week did increasing angst give me the returns I was after.

32. I echo all the praise above, and this was Arachne on top form.

    I liked the club sandwiches for SPURIOUS, the cycling trick in TRUMPED UP (aren’t we all?), the waifs and strays of DIGRESSES, XEROXES, (where it was not ‘sex rex’ reversed as I thought at the beginning), the pea stuck up your nose for PRY, the clobber anagram for CAR BOOT SALE, the returning BOOMERANGS, and the shy drunk in TOSS.

    Thanks Arachne and Eileen.

33. A delightful Prize and blog. My favourites were BOOMERANG, ISSUES, DOLCE VITA, RESIGNED and SODIUM. Robi @32, I like ‘sex rex’ and wonder if XERXES has been clued that way before. Many thanks Arachne – hopefully many more to come, and Eileen – for the explanations, as you said @20, it doubles the pleasure to take a second look at the surfaces.

    PS I was another DREAMED UP for a while but the right answer is sadly topical.

34. Thanks for the blog , I agree with all the praise for the clues , brilliant overall so time for a minor quibble .
    For DIGRESSES the G and S have been separated and perhaps this should be indicated .

35. Roz @34

    RE DIGRESSES: I know ‘backs’ is needed for the surface but, for me, the fact that it is plural suggests that we treat the last letter of each of the two words individually.

36. I would say whenever we take last , or first , letters of consecutive words and then put something around , the letters stay consecutive unless we are told otherwise .

37. Thanks A@E for a real delight of a puzzle and blog. Took me three passes to get there, held up like others by dream instead of trump for a while. BOOMERANGS was the pick of a great bunch for me.

38. Me @35 – I’ve just realised that I meant to write, ‘that we may treat’, rather than to imply that we should.

39. I had the same thought as Roz@36 when solving DIGRESSES, but I thought the process was clear enough to be fair. Much as Eileen has said @38.

40. I loved BOOMERANG, what a great clue. I know a lot of angsty boomers. NHO of CAR BOOT SALE, and I missed the anagram indicator, so entered Car Port Sale instead (thinking of the U.S. “garage sale”). Thanks Eileen and Arachne.

41. 22A. I don’t understand how the “lift and separate” works – what is the indicator for that? The surface suggests GS is contained in an anagram of DESIRES.

    While I got the answer, the parsing is not very convincing. Appreciate your thoughts.

42. Hi Shafar

    ‘Lift and separate’ is a device whereby a setter aims to mislead us by using words that are usually linked together (here in 22ac ‘waifs and strays’) but they play different roles in the clue.

    See here
    https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/12/lift-and-separate.html
    for a fuller explanation and some good examples

43. I found this puzzle more difficult than past Arachnes, but thoroughly delightful. I particularly liked DYNAMO, XERXES, DOLCE VITA, CAR BOOT SALE, and RAISON D’ETRE, but there were many others I could name.

    I failed to complete it successfully, having had to cheat on 2dn (PRY) and 6dn (AKIN). Needless to say, both failures are my fault, not Arachne’s.

    I wondered whether NEURON should have had an American-spelling indicator. As an American myself, I was under the impression that you lot spelled it NEURONE. (My data on this comes largely from articles about Stephen Hawking that mention his motor neurone disease.) But Google Ngram says that you have both spellings, with NEURON being the more common, so I guess I was wrong about that.

    I confess I can’t see how to get from “dropped” to BORN in 25ac. In some metaphorical contexts, I can just about equate “dropped” to “was born” (e.g., a musician saying that an album dropped on a certain date), but that’s the closest I can come.

44. Ted@43. I think that farm animals are said to “drop” (give birth to) their lambs, calves and foals. (Not their chicks, though. 😜)

45. Ted @43

    Chambers – ‘Drop: (of an animal) to give birth to’ – but I’ve seen /heard it used informally / facetiously to apply to humans.

    sheffield hatter @44 🙂

46. @Eileen, I get that part, but trying to understand what indicates separating GS and not embedding them together.

47. Shafar – we seem to be talking about two different things here: the separation of ‘waifs and strays’, which I referred to in the blog and expanded on at @42 and the point introduced by Roz @34 re the separation of G and S – see my responses @ 35 and 38.

    I’m very sorry but I really can’t think of anything more to add here.

48. Always a treat to see an Arachne and I did get to the tape – eventually! I thought SET-TOP BOX is a bit dated now – don’t modern TVs (unlike the antique that still adorns our living room) generally have all the recording stuff in their innards?

    No matter – can’t really nominate a ‘like’ here because they’re all equally superb. I have to pick out BOOMERANGS because that gives me an excuse to repeat the hoary old joke:

    Guy walking on the beach sees an old lamp half-buried in the sand. He picks it up, rubs it, and of course out pops the inevitable Genie.
    “I can grant you one wish.”
    “No thanks! I’ve heard all about you lot granting wishes. They always come back to bite you.”
    “Alright, I promise: whatever wish I grant: It’ll never come back to bite you.”
    “So – make me a boomerang with teeth…”

    Sorry about that. I’ll call a taxi.

    Thanks to Arachne. and Eileen

49. We have a parrot, or he has us, and we like him to deposit the frequent outputs from his digestive system onto a quality broadsheet. To that end, back in the golden age of more frequent paper Guardian purchasing, a pile of old issues was built up.

    Since taking an amateurish interest in stabbing at the cryptics, as a bedtime/interrupted sleep distraction, I’ve been filtering them out of the parrot paper pile and Having A Go. I then often look them up on this blog.

    As the parrot paper pile included many editions from months even years back the comments here were always closed.

    This week however I entered a mild state of shock at finding I had completed a puzzle that had not even been blogged yet!

    I may have caught up with the modern world just in time for its demise so feel I should waste no time in getting on and posting a – this – comment.

    So: I almost got to the end of this really excellent and satisfying Arachnid puzzle but fell at the last fence and stuck in ‘pay’ for no good reason at 2 down (after being lost in the wilderness for a while with ‘dreamed up’ and other consequent mystifications in this corner). I should also come clean perhaps that I didn’t parse ISSUES. ‘Review’ just didn’t suggest a backwards reading, whilst I have fond memories of ginks drinking pink ink, I think. The midnight mucus buildup may not have helped m’lud. The last penny that dropped gratifyingly was SPURIOUS which takes the biscuit AFAIAC, if that’s a valid acronym.

50. ps I too enjoyed the sex rex

51. Re the ‘lift-and-separate’ discussion: I’ve always assumed it referred to clues where a single word has to be split up for the wordplay to work (as in one of the classic examples “weekend” to denote the letter “k”). Some editors allow that sort of clue – others don’t.

    Eileen’s interpretation – where a familiar phrase is split up – is what I’d merely call ‘misdirection’. Sorry for being at odds here!

52. Laccaria @51 I was about to look up clarification of this terminology – your angle makes more/sense here.

53. Laccaria @51 I would just call it a clue but I never read the clues just each word with suspicion . However , Lift and Separate is for TWO words as used on here , somebody invented this term for TWO words so they have first dibs on naming it .

54. Laccaria and Spoonbender – I can only refer you to the link I gave @ 42 to what I have always taken to be the definitive explanation, with examples.

55. Thanks Eileen 54. I was on my way there for clarification when Laccaria’s comment popped in and stirred my slight discomfort. I’m happy for the term to mean whatever it’s accepted to mean by the powers that be! In retrospect my unease was from a sense that it ought to refer to two things found right next to each other that get the treatment. And the word ‘and’ therefore seemed to be already splitting things apart, or making a threesome perhaps. If it just means separating out some ingredients of a familiar phrase then it’s softer but still works as a descriptive term of course.

56. Thanks for the explanations of “drop” for BORN, sheffield hatter and Eileen. To summarize, I guess that we can say that a (typically non-human) mother has “born a child” or has “dropped a child”. I’ll buy that.

    Laccaria @48 — I don’t remember the details of how televisions are set up in the UK, but in the US it’s still common for those who subscribe to cable television to have a set-top box to connect the television set to the cable TV provider. I think that the set-top box’s functions can’t generally be incorporated into the television set’s innards because its workings depend on the cable TV provider and probably involve proprietary software that the TV set manufacturer doesn’t have access to.

57. Ted @56 – I think perhaps rather “the child was born / dropped”.

    I bought a new TV set (plus a set-top box!) just before Christmas. 😉

58. I wouldn’t normally comment so late, but I enjoyed my struggle with this puzzle for the reasons nicely summarised by Eileen’s second para. Sadly I made one error with PUY which did seem a bit iffy. Some consolation in finding that Woody and many others made the same error.

59. Again too late to comment, but I have to say something about good surfaces, which I consider to be essential to a well-constructed crossword. (You could say I’m a superficial person.)

    As Eileen says@20, setters who pay no heed to surfaces are discounting one of the great pleasures of cryptic crosswords – wit and humour. And as sheffield hatter@23 and Fiona@24 have noted, a really good surface adds to the misdirection in the clue. Arachne is especially good at this, and my favourite example is 14d BOOMERANG.

    Thanks, Arachne and Eileen, for the typically exceptional (I like oxymorons) puzzle and blog.

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