Guardian Prize 29,667 / Brendan

69 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,667 / Brendan”

1. It felt like this should have been for valentines day, but ended up as the prize. I particualy liked ICONOCLAST and ALLEGRO, and spent ages trying to sort out DRAMATURGE, and SQUINTY was the last one in, which I wasn’t expecting as all the other clues in the same position were very much wedding based.

   Thanks B And E

2. I know that I am not to comment on this week’s prize, but I am very disappointed it is not an Easter special

3. Briefly held up at 12a, not expecting that word order. Catullus for me.

4. It’s well past my bedtime here, so I’ll respond to further comments on this puzzle in the morning.

5. I had the same experience as Eileen with 1d, which certainly looked like UP-FRONT as a first guess, but I wasn’t convinced – especially as it would make for an awkward-looking F in 8a. Disappointing though to see the orange one appearing in the actual answer, even though preceded by a negative.

   I struggled with ‘beauty’=DISH in 14d, as that sort of DISH is not really part of my vocabulary, so I had to get the answer and then work out the parsing.

   I was really pleased to get the Latin anagram, as I only know the language from what my mother remembered from her school days and my own interest in the origins of words. What a moment it must have been for Brendan when he spotted that VIRGIL’s original and the English translation would both fit into a grid without attracting any ire from people who don’t like long solutions dotted about all over the place. 🙂

   Thanks to Brendan and Eileen as always.

6. I couldn’t get MOTIVES, so obvious now, thanks Eileen; and also for explaining VI in VIRGIL.

   Thank’s Brendan, too

7. I’m another who tried UP-FRONT before the other answers put me right. I also had trouble, for some reason, parsing DRAMATURGE. To be fair, we all know people are mature but not sensible, and vice versa.

   I do hope we learn who got married.

8. Dave @2 It does seem to be an Easter Special

9. Thanks Eileen. An enjoyable interlude with about the right degree of difficulty for me together with some lovely surfaces. Put me down as another who spent some time trying to find room for an M in 5d, which was a new word for me, and I never did reconcile vi=sex in 21a despite long hours in the Latin classroom. sa and it, yes, but looking at it with new eyes it would have my vote as best of the day.

10. I thought 16a was curious, in that it seems to be two parts of wordplay with an elusive definition. Traverse didn’t quite work for me either in that the direction of travel appears contrary to convention.

    25a is also interesting in that it appears to be structured as definition-wordplay-2nd definition. Nothing wrong with that, just unusual.

    Thanks to both.
    We seem to a normal prize and an Easter Special today!

11. Thanks Brendan yet again for a sublime crossword. I solved this relatively quickly but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment. My favourites were LOVED ONE, AMOR VINCIT OMNIA (remarkable anagram & surface), and BRIDE. Thanks Eileen as always.

12. My FOsI were A.V.O. and VIRGIL so I thought (hoped) we were in for a Latin-themed puzzle, but alas it was not to be. Still, I really enjoyed the puzzle and another great blog. Thanks both!

13. 2d reminded me that ginf père, who himself drank little, nevertheless used to tease teetotallers by quoting the Temperance Society ladies who sang:
    Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine.
    So, yes lovely luvvie puzzle thanks to the Brum. Loved the conker-stuffed veal, the old dish in a mess and lots more. Fun. And thanks Eileen.

14. I liked the thematic biggies A V OMNIA and L C ALL. Other faves include: LOVED ONE, BRIDE, NO-TRUMP, WEDLOCK and SQUINTY.
    Fine puzzle. Great blog.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

15. UP-FRONT for 1d held me up for a long time, as my mind refused to see anything else. 5d- I instinctively felt that medic is a misdirection and looked for words relating to other theatre. Overall, it took a few visits to get everything in. Chestnuts=Conkers is a learning for me. Though I CON was the only solution (part of 13d), it took me some time to equate it with I DO. Thanks, Brendan, for the excellent puzzle, and Eileen for the illuminating blog.

16. Oops, Brendan not Brum, many apols.

17. I really enjoyed this although there were a couple I couldn’t quite parse.

    Loved: LOVE CONQUERS ALL, HEARTS, ROMEOS, DRAMATURGE, MODISHNESS, NO TRUMP

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

18. I LOVED this puzzle! After all the fun of the solve, I applied my highlighter pen to all the themed clues and my grid was a riot of colour! I really appreciated what I thought was the very deliberate but deft inclusion of NO-TRUMP at 1d, despite also being delayed by UP-FRONT for a while. Favourite clues: the entire puzzle!
    Thanks to our beloved Brendan and our endearing Eileen for this uplifting puzzle and the excellent blog respectively.
    [How lucky we were to have another Brendan yesterday as well!]

19. Hugely enjoyable, and not a tremendous challenge, although I did spend some time wondering what might have prompted such an outpouring of lovely clues. Maybe we’ll find out. I think NO-TRUMP (oh, if only!) was my last in, partly because I’m not a bridge player and was thinking of other kinds of contracts. I got LOVE CONQUERS ALL without getting the parsing – didn’t think of LOL – and then dredged up enough Latin to sort out its matching anagram. I really liked LIBRA for its clever use of sex, ALLEGRO for the way it mixed up music and cricket, and SQUINTY for its maths. Thanks to Brendan, and to Eileen.

20. Julie in Australia@18
    the very deliberate but deft inclusion of NO-TRUMP at 1d
    I like that. When it’s all about LOVE, no place for TRUMP.

21. Re: @2
    There is in the printed edition.

22. Many thanks, Eileen, in particular for explaining DRAMATURGE, which mystified me, and also BRIDE, which clearly fitted the theme, but I failed to parse. Additionally I could not see how VIRGIL related to the theme (Amores were written by Ovid), but you clarified that.
    At 7d, I would explain Libra as the origin for L as the symbol of the pound sterling, rather than bringing the pound weight into the matter.
    My thanks to Brendan for the puzzle.

23. Having said about not commenting on today’s prize, why do people then comment?

24. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
    Something odd going on today with the Prize – there seem to be two different ones.

25. I thought that this was superb.

    I only did a year of Latin, nearly sixty years ago now, but it’s still a real help, even if I have to work back to it from French or Italian these days.

    That said, I notice that setters usually give a foreign language indicator when referring to modern languages, but not to Latin? Maybe Old Etonians are the reference for what’s “English” and what’s not…

    Many thanks all.

26. There’s a proper Prize Cryptic by Kite here which doesn’t seem to be in the print edition
    And the Maskarade “special” here

    Crispy @23 probably because some people follow principles rather than rules 🙂

27. Plus they enjoy annoying those of us who hadn’t got as far as looking at today’s. And it turns out they were wrong.

28. I’ve never heard the Latin phrase in 12ac, but “my credo” suggested it might be a Latin phrase, the theme hinted that it might be a translation of 20ac, and probably most people could recognise the Latin forms of love and all. Together with the fact it was clearly an anagram and the fodder was clear, I would consider it a reasonable clue, and easily confirmed with google.
    I just could not see wedlock as my last remaining, though as is often the case it doesn’t seem hard now. I wasn’t entirely certain of dramaturge because I failed to parse it, and it seems obscure though I did find a definition. Nothing else could fit though.

29. Too good overall for me to pick out an obvious favourite.

    Great fun overall and a super commentary from Eileen.

30. I enjoyed this puzzle overall, helped by a distant memory of O-level Latin . I agree with ETU@25. There should have been a foreign language indicator for 12ac. The LOVE theme and the crossers helped me to tease out AMOR and then VINCIT from the anagram, and so I was able to solve it quite early, followed by 20ac. The rest of the puzzle was mostly straightforward except 5d. I did not know the word DRAMATURGE, but found it with with a wordfinder. Liked LOVED ONE, MATING, INTENDED, NO-TRUMP, amongst others.

31. Great puzzle and blog. Thank you.

    1. I liked how the definition for 12A was (partly) a Latin word and even remembered the principal parts (credo-credere-credidi-creditum). Incredible!

    2. 1D is my timely reminder that the rules of bridge look completely impenetrable.

32. Comments from Sheffield hatter@5 and Tony S@11 sum it up for me

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

33. Another who was stuck with UP FRONT for too long. I’m glad I was in good company.

    I took the L in Libra as standing for pound sterling. £ is just a stylised L after all.

    Crispy @23 we are commenting on last Saturday’s prize crossword.

34. Phil @33. Read comment 2.

35. Accepted ravenrider@28 and Forest Fan@31 that CREDO is a hint for Latin. I didn’t notice. Too familiar as an adopted word. A link to 21ac would have been a helpful nudge.

36. Really enjoyed this even though it was a DNF for me, I failed on NO TRUMP (knowing nothing about bridge). For 12a I wrote out the anagram fodder and realised there were no Es. That led me to suspect it wasn’t English and very quickly to Latin and from there it was clear enough given the emerging theme. Along with yesterday’s I’m beginning to like Brendan a lot. Thanks to Eileen for the very clear blog. Happy Easter to all.

37. Crispy @34 The only comments were about the appearance of a regular Prize crossword in place of an Easter special. An error by the Guardian, which has since been corrected.
    Nobody was commenting on the content of another crossword, which would have broken the rules.

38. Well I wondered how the extra Kite came about, but I did it anyway before it got cancelled. I’ll have forgotten enough by next month to enjoy it again 🙂

39. Bye all.

40. I enjoyed this. I was slow to the Latin. NO TRUMP was my last one in. “Oh for God’s sake, it was bridge!” I exclaimed to my wife. Then, two minutes later “It’s “not rump”, aargh!” At which point she reminded me that my cruciverbal exploits are no more interesting as conversation fodder than our son’s adventures in Minecraft. Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

41. I knew AMOR VINCIT OMNIA from Chaucer rather than from Latin lessons, so I never did really sort out why VI(RGIL) was sex rather than six. Anyway, a lovely (literally) crossword from Brendan.

    Favourites the two long ones, BRIDE and the definitely-not-about-cricket ALLEGRO.

    Martin@40: it’s frustrating when people around you don’t share your obsessions, which is why this site is so good to have.

42. A super crossword – one of the best. I was more successful in the bottom half at first and was lucky enough to get LOVE CONQUERS ALL quite early on, despite the lack of a definition. I already had VIRGIL, and when I saw that 12a (‘above’) began with _M_R that answer came quite quickly too. Brilliant! I knew from school Latin that word order can vary (especially in poetry), and I appreciated seeing that example from Chaucer given by Eileen in her blog in which the word order is the reverse of Virgil’s.

    The theme was a worthy and interesting one, and brilliantly executed.

    Many thanks to both Brendan and Eileen.

43. The correct answer in the crossword is AMOR VINCIT OMNIA, not the Virgil-order shown in Eileen’s blog.

44. The first clue in yesterday’s Brendan also fits the theme — he seems to be in a loving state of mind at the moment.

    This was great as always. My two stand-out favourites were VIRGIL and BRIDE, both very clever and witty. I particularly liked how, in the latter, “sound” is the homophone indicator while being a body of water in the surface. Brilliant.

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

45. Thank you Eileen. I also thought this might be a special occasion for Brendan/Brian Greer.
    From Crosswordunclued I learned that he met his wife in 1995, so maybe an anniversary, and that his pseudonym in the Independent was Virgilius.

    Amongst others, I liked SQUINTY, because I could see it, and the ‘see above’ in LCA related to AVO. Luuuvved this crossword.

46. paddymelon @45 – thanks for that: I remembered shuchi’s interesting interview with Brendan
    https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2013/03/interview-brian-greer.html a day or two
    after I’d scheduled the blog.
    (shuchi was a blogger on fifteensquared when I first discovered it. Her website is a mine of information: I’ve referred to it before, re ‘lift and separate’ and there’s an interesting interview with Gaufrid on there, too.)

47. Superb puzzle and blog. As a lifelong player of both bridge and chess I gave myself a well-deserved slap on the forehead for missing both NO TRUMP and MATING. BRIDE, SQUINTY and MOONLIT were also beyond me, but were all fairly clued. Greatly enjoyed both the lovely theme and the brilliant surfaces. Thanks to Brendan and eileen, two of my favourite contributors.

48. I’m obviously being dim but I don’t understand why ‘vi’ = sex!
    Perhaps a kind person could enlighten me.

49. Sheila @48 “sex” is the Latin word for “six” and “vi” is 6 in Roman numerals.

50. Sheila @48
    sex is Latin for six – think of sextet, sextuplet. Worth filing away – it’s cropped up more than once in crosswords.
    (Sorry, Judge – I missed yours.)

51. Loved this one! Thanks to B & E.

52. Delightful puzzle and an equally delightful blog, amor and gratias to E & B

53. I solved AVO before the English version thanks to my school motto “Labor Omnia Vincit”. My single-sex girls’ school was a playing field away from the boys’ (same motto) so not much chance of amor there.

54. Took me a while to catch on to the theme of this puzzle. Finally saw it when I solved 20ac and looked at my answers above that one, duh.

    Favourites: ICONOCLAST, ALLEGRO.

    I could not parse 11ac and the VI bit of 21ac.

55. I rationalised the sex for VI as “Vaginal Intercourse”; didn’t clock the Latin.

56. Platypuss @55, I shudder to think what you might make of a clue dealing with Artificial Intelligence

57. For those of us who never studied Latin at school, this was a bit tough and required several internet checks to elucidate likely Latin phrases.

    I don’t like to appear grumpy but it feels a bit discriminatory against those who didn’t have a private or grammar school education. (I did go to a grammar school but never studied Latin there – that was for the top stream only in the 1970s. Mrs P went to a secondary modern, not a chance of learning latin there.)

    I am not against Latin per se but I think if a setter is going to use Latin solutions there needs to be a quid pro quo with a hint we need to be thinking of ancient Romans or medieval clerics.

    Other than that, we really enjoyed it(!)

58. Benpointer@57, I went to a regular public high school in Canada in the ‘60s, and we had Latin in our curriculum. So it was not just for the Etonians. I found it incredibly useful when I ended up in law school, and also in understanding the derivations of so many English words.

    [ My favourite legal maxim, on the subject of desserts, just or otherwise, is “de minimus non curat lex”, I.e., “the law does not concern itself with trifles”. ]

    This puzzle and Eileen’s wonderful blog pleased me so much that I had about a dozen comments to make, but they have already been said by others, so I’ll just say thank you to Brendan and Eileen for making my day.

59. Cellomaniac @ 58 – thank you for that.

    Benpointer @57 – I do sympathise. I’ve always been at pains to explain here that I was extraordinarily fortunate in that my little rural Norfolk state secondary school in those days included Latin in the curriculum and so enthused me to choose it for my degree course (at Bristol, not Oxbridge). I deplore the fact that it is accessible to far fewer students these days. (Being the newest recruit to the Classics department when I returned to teaching post babies, I had to turn to other disciplines (English and History) when we went comprehensive.)

60. Having studied Latin at school and university I had no problem in parsing 21a but I thought it

61. a bit sneaky. Definitely a “solve first, parse later” clue.

62. Me@60,61.
    Sorry about the interruption – sudden invasion by grandson.
    I often solve first and parse later but there’s usually a possibility of parsing first. Here I don’t think any one would read “sex” and write VI without knowing that the answer was Virgil, a poet who wrote in Latin.
    I’m sorry to have to tell you, Eileen, that I couldn’t get on with Virgil. I preferred Horace and Juvenal in Latin and Homer for the Trojan Wars,

63. Pino @ 62

    I’ve ben surprised at the number of solvers today who haven’t picked up on sex = 6. It’s my impression that it’s been used quite a lot lately.

    []No need to be sorry – we’re all different. I enjoyed Juvenal’s Satires at university – a bit of a culture shock, considering my background – and I admire Horace, too. I must admit to being less familiar with the second half of the Aeneid but I’m still spellbound reading Books II, IV and VI and loved teaching them all, at various times. I remember one (Friday afternoon) A Level lesson spent, as a diversion, casting Aeneas and Dido for a film version of Book VI.]

64. I’ve never studied Latin or read any of the classics, but was fortunate that in my state primary school in Queensland in the late 50’s early 60’s we were taught Latin and Greek roots in English words. This probably led me to other languages later and decades of teaching English as a second language.

    My high school motto was Omnia superat diligentia (strangely, as Latin wasn’t on offer), but that’s another myth fed to children, the omnia bit anyway.

65. Thanks for the blog , very late but I never look at the blog until I have done the current Saturday puzzle , plus a Jumbo in the FT this week .
    Just had to say that WEDLOCK is utterly brilliant , MATING and NO-TRUMP close behind , three of my favourite activities .
    Pino@62 Sex = VI is actually more natural than six if you think about it .

66. My wife and I are sad enough to do the Guardian Prize when it comes out at midnight on Friday…. I had insomnia so struggled to complete it till about 4AM. The 15 by 15 Kite was tough….but in a moment that reminds me of the netherworld that brought Bobby Ewing back to life, I realize now that we imagined the whole event!! No such crossword!
    So I reached into the history section for Saturday on my Mac, and find that it has disappeared there too! Spooky!
    But how very Grundian! Sorry we put the wrong crossword out, the Kite will now be scheduled on the 17th of May. We will be waiting, hopefully an early bedtime !!

67. Terry@65. Yes, it would be surprising if it took you four hours second time around! 😁

68. Roz@65. Interesting point about the Latin word for the numeral VI. Presumably the English “six” comes from the same source as German sechs, but apparently the Roman name Sixtus also comes from “sextus”, meaning sixth, so the vowel sound seems pretty fluid.

69. Brendan is not someone I think of as my favourite setter but this was great. I didn’t parse VIRGIL but everything else was very satisfying.

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