They say that ‘all good things come to those who wait‘ and, after nearly four years and 46 Saturday Prize Grauniad blogs, I finally get to be on duty for an Easter Bank Holiday special! In recent years this has become pretty much the exclusive domain of Maskarade, who specialises in thematic jumbos/double grids, often with ‘jigsaw’ clues…and this one is no exception…
The ‘special instructions’ state that:
“The ten numbered clues are normal; others are presented in alphabetical order of answers. The 26 remaining across entries include one each of the letter-pairs AA, AB to AY, AZ; each pair is omitted in wordplay. The same applies in the remaining down entries with the letter-pairs AA, BA to YA, ZA.”
So, those numbered clues should give us a framework to start the jigsaw with, a bit like the straight-edged pieces in a real jigsaw defining the outer frame.
It took me a little while to work out the rest – the AA, AB, AC, BA, BC terminology looking at first to me like some sort of mathematical set theory notation, but once I had my head around it there was nothing to do but crack on with the ‘framework’ and try to generate as many jigsaw pieces as I could.
As always with a jigsaw, albeit one larger than most, I like to jot down the groupings of word lengths with ‘_’s, so 4s _ _ _ _, 5s _ _ _ _ _, etc., either round the edges, or on a separate scribble-sheet, and fill them in as I go along – checking for any smaller group(s) that might give a way in. Here there are only two 11s and four 13s, and they all seem to cross the framework clues in multiple places, so they should be a good place to start.
On my first pass or two or three through the numbered clues, I managed to get all but STOWAWAYS, which fell later, and this helped to fit in KALEIDOSCOPES and BERTIE AHERN, and lay the crossing foundations for a few other 13s and the other 11.
In my first pass through the thematic clues, I confidently put ANNA down for the first AN from ‘amANda’, plus NA – come on, hands up all those who did that as well! After a few more passes I realised that it would be useful to write down all 52 combinations of letters, to help in crossing them off – which later showed me the error of my ways with ANNA (ANYA) when ULNA had to use the NA.
Some time passed!
My parents, who first got me into doing the Grauniad cryptics 40-odd years ago, had come down for the Easter weekend, and I had made sure they had two printed copies delivered with their morning cup of tea. (Luckily I did this late enough not to get the Kite puzzle that was originally posted on the G website!)
We aren’t particularly collaborative solvers, so we spent quite a lot of Saturday, and Sunday morning, sitting in our own corners of the lounge scribbling away, with the odd groan, sigh or appreciative ‘a-ha!’ punctuating the concentrated silence.
However, their imminent departure on the Sunday prompted a flurry of constructing the metaphorical Venn diagram of our solution sets and sharing/explaining those others hadn’t got, and we ended up with a combined set of answers just short of a generous handful, mainly of the 4s, 6s, and 8s dotted around the four corners.
They (whoever they are) also say that ‘all good things come to an end‘, and over the rest of the long weekend I had a couple of further solo sessions and wheedled out the last few, including MAXIXE, CORYZA, NAZARD, SHAPE, LARVA…
There were a couple that required a bit of specialised General Knowledge (or Wiki-oogling, in the absence of knowledge!), like QAWRA, the SHAPE acronym and GABRIELI. BERTIE AHERN, PELOPONNESIAN, SAAB and SAVILE ROW were probably less specialised (for me at least). And it helped that as a family we had all visited Madagascar at Christmas, so LEMURIDAE were stored in pretty recent collective and photographic memory.
I could only find NAZARD as NASARD in my various Chambers/Collins, but it was confirmable via Merriam-Webster, which suggests NASARD is actually less common.
My father had a quibble with the enumeration of N’EST-CE PAS as (4-2,3), but 1’3 might have given it away too easily, and I think the convention is not to include apostrophes in enumerations(?).
To sum up, I think this ticks all the boxes for a Grauniad Easter Prize Special – it was published in the Grauniad, at Easter, is a Prize puzzle and was certainly special!
As always, Maskarade’s specials can be a bit ‘marmitey’ – there will be some below who loved it, and some who didn’t like it (hopefully more of the former than the latter) and many shades in between.
I am certainly in the enjoyed/loved it camp, so my thanks to Maskarade…I am off to scan the blogging schedule and the calendars of the next few years, to see when I might coincide with Easter Saturday again!
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Letter pair | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1A | SUSPENSE DRAMA | Gripping production represented as pure madness (8,5)
anag, i.e. re-presented, of AS PURE MADNESS |
|
| 4A | TRAVERSES | Passes over revolutionary paintings and poetry (9)
TRA (art, painting, revolved) + VERSES (poetry) |
|
| 7A | STOWAWAYS | Illegal passengers remove vehicle on board (9)
S_S (steamship) boarded by TOW AWAY (remove vehicle) |
|
| 8A | ENGINE DRIVERS | Former employees of Virgin sneered rudely (6,7)
anag, i.e. rudely, of VIRGIN SNEERED |
|
| Down | |||
| Clue No | Letter pair | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing, letter pair in BOLD |
| 1D | SOLEMN SILENCE | Islesmen left once, awfully quiet (6,7)
anag, i.e. awfully, of ISLESMEN + L (left) + ONCE |
|
| 2D | ADVANCE GUARDS | A democrat vice-president with drug, as ordered for leading parties (7,6)
A + D (Democrat) + VANCE (JD, current US VP) + GUARDS (anag, i.e. ordered, of DRUG AS) |
|
| 3D | PRECENTOR | Choirmaster is so missed in Poets’ Corner, sadly (9)
subtractive anagram, i.e. sadly, of P( |
|
| 4D | TESTATORS | They will! (9)
CD – TESTATORS will their estate to their heirs! |
|
| 5D | SIGHTSEES | Tours ugly buildings around Ely, say (9)
SIGHT_S (ugly buildings) around SEE (Ely, example of a bishopric, or see) |
|
| 6D | NORTH WIND | Ninth word changed when it will bring snow (5,4)
anag, i.e. changed, of NINTH WORD |
|
| Jigsaw Pieces | |||
| Clue No | Letter pair | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| * | YA | ANYA | Amanda takes this girl to heart (4)
AN (heart of amANda) + YA [not ANNA, as NA is taken by ULNA!] |
| * | AQ | AQUARIUS | Sign that Ukraine’s smallest state’s American (8)
AQ + UA (Ukraine, International Vehicle Registration) + RI Rhode Island, smallest US state) + US American) [Sign of the Zodiac] |
| * | EA | AREA | Most of the war zone (4)
AR (most of wAR) + EA |
| * | AT | AT A STROKE | In a single action takes or replaces (2,1,6)
AT + A STROKE (anag, or re-placed, of TAKES OR) |
| * | AV | AVATAR | Sci-fi film in Arabic (6)
AV + AT (in) + AR (Arabic) |
| * | BA | BATTLE | Conflict totalled regular losses (6)
BA + TTLE (regular letters, i.e. the other letters lost, of ‘ToTaLlEd’ |
| * | AH | BERTIE AHERN | Tribe ne’er attacked Taoiseach (6,5)
BERTIE __ERN (anag, i.e. attacked, of TRIBE NEER) around AH |
| * | CA | CALLS OUT | Poor soul in Lithuania arranges engineer’s visit (5,3)
CA + L_T (Lithuania) around LS_OU (anag, i.e. poor, of SOULS) |
| * | AA | CANAAN | Man-eater only half himself in biblical land (6)
CAN_N (half of cannibal, or man-eater) around AA |
| * | AR | CHARON | Central heating working for ferryman (6)
CH (central heating) + AR + ON (working) |
| * | AY | CLAY | Small amount of petrol for court’s surface (4)
CL (centilitre, small amount of liquid, e.g. petrol) + AY |
| * | ZA | CORYZA | Cold in the head in country’s outer parts (6)
CO+RY (outer parts of COuntRY) + ZA |
| * | DA | DAUBS | Splodges with touches of ultramarine, blue and scarlet (5)
DA + UBS (first letters, or touches, of ‘Ultramarine Blue and Scarlet’ |
| * | RA | DRAFT | First version of leading daily newspaper (5)
D (leading letter of Daily) + RA + FT (Financial Times, newspaper) |
| * | LA | ELATED | Neatherds now and then ecstatic (6)
E_TED (alternate letters, i.e. now and again, of ‘nEaThErDs’) around LA |
| * | MA | ENIGMA | Foreigners heartbroken – a puzzle (6)
ENIG (anag, i.e. broken, of the heart of ‘forEIGNers’) + MA |
| * | XA | EXAM | I object turning up for test (4)
E_M (me, I as the object of a sentence, turning up) around XA |
| * | FA | FAERIE | Enchanting place’s lake (6)
FA + ERIE (a lake in North America) [as per PWB’s comment below – ‘faerie’ as a noun, not an adjective] |
| * | GA | FAIRGAME | No cheating at hoop-la market, note (8)
FAIR (market) + ME (note, Anglicised mi, in sol-fa notation) around GA [two definitions? no cheating = a fair game. hoop-la is a game at a fair…] |
| * | AB | GABRIELI | Grieg and Liszt both cut to some extent for Italian composer (8)
G__RIE (Grieg, cut short) around AB, plus LI (Liszt, cut shorter!) |
| * | WA | GALWAY | The French left boat in city in Eire (6)
GAL( |
| * | AO | GAOL | Girl’s outside Newgate? (4)
G_L (outside letters of GIRL) around AO |
| * | AF | GRAF | Top of German rankings for her! (4)
GR (top letters of German Rankings) + AF |
| * | HA | HARRIDAN | Bossy type hastened around, free (8)
HA + R_AN (hastened) around RID (free) |
| * | TA | HOSTAS | Shade plants are hopeless outside (6)
HOS_S (outside letters of HOpeleSS) around TA |
| * | JA | JAWING | Scolding fan or footballer (6)
JA + WING (fan/aileron, or footballer) |
| * | KA | KALEIDOSCOPES | 500 solo pieces arranged for optical toys (13)
KA + LEIDOSCOPES(anag, i.e. arrangement, of D – 500, Roman numeral – and SOLO PIECES |
| * | VA | LARVA | Lubovitch was a god at home in Rome (5)
LAR (Lar Lubovitch) + VA [larvae, more usual plural?] |
| * | AE | LEMURIDAE | Mule roaming with free Madagascan primates (9)
LEMU (anag, i.e. roaming, of MULE) + RID (free) + AE |
| * | AI | LIVE RAIL | Merseyside bird left electrified track (4,4)
LIVE_R (liver bird, Merseyside icon) + AI + L (left) |
| * | AJ | MAJOR GENERALS | In Germany, tomorrow, laser treatment for officers (5,8)
M__OR_GEN (tomorrow morning, manana, in German) around AJ, plus ERALS (anag, i.e. treatment, of LASER) |
| * | AX | MAXIXE | Unending miscellaneous dance (6)
M__IXE( |
| * | AZ | NAZARD | Stop medicinal plant, once (6)
N__ARD (aromatic plant, formerly used in medicine) around AZ |
| * | PA | N’EST-CE PAS | Tyneside pagan groups are upset in France, aren’t they? (4-2,3)
N’E (the North East of England, typified as Tyneside) + ST_CE__S (sects, or pagan groups, reversed, or upset) around PA |
| * | AW | OVERDRAWN | It’s too much with daughter and US nurse being strapped for cash (9)
OVER (too much) + D (daughter) + R__N (Registered Nurse, US abbreviation) around AW |
| * | AS | PASTEL COLOURS | Delicate shades Purcell’s too bothered about (6,7)
P__TEL COLOURS (anag, i.e. bothered, of PURCELLS TOO) around AS |
| * | IA | PELOPONNESIAN | Greek worried three Northern people so (13)
PELOPONNES__N (anag, i.e. worried, of NNN, three times Northern, and PEOPLE SO, around IA |
| * | AL | PEN PAL | Canadian province no place for correspondent (3,3)
PE (Prince Edward Island, Canadian Province) + N_P (no place of publication) + AL |
| * | OA | PROA | Small price for boat (4)
PR (abbreviation, i.e. small, of price) + OA |
| * | AC | PROTRACT | Lengthen out present doctorate now and then (8)
PR (abbreviation of present) + OTR__T (alternate letters, i.e. now and then, of dOcToRaTe) around AC |
| * | QA | QAWRA | War-torn resort near Bugibba (5)
QA + WRA (anag, i.e. town, of WAR) [town/resort area on Malta, near Bugibba!] |
| * | AD | RADISH | Former PM chopped vegetable (6)
R__ISH( |
| * | AA | SAAB | Leading Swedish-built car (4)
S__B (leading letters of Swedish Built) around AA |
| * | SA | SAVILE ROW | Mean difference of opinion at fashionable thoroughfare (6,3)
SA + VILE (mean) + ROW (difference of opinion) |
| * | AP | SHAPE | Female at Nato HQ in Mons (5)
SH__E (female) around AP [NATO HQ – Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe – in Mons!] |
| * | AM | SQUEAMISH | During masque I shudder, feeling nauseous (9)
SQUE__ISH (hidden word in, i.e. during, ‘maSQUE I SHudder’) around AM |
| * | UA | STATUARY | Small fact about your sculpture (8)
STAT (abbreviation, i.e. small, of statistic, or fact) + RY (yr, your, about), around UA |
| * | AK | SWEEPSTAKES | Gambling prizes are places with seats back around end of aisle (11)
SE__TS (places) + P_EWS (places with seats) all ‘back’ to give SWE_PST__ES, around E (end of aislE) and AK |
| * | AU | TAUPE | French mole returning during September (5)
T__PE (reversed hidden letters in sEPTember) around AU |
| * | NA | ULNA | Centre of the bull is bone (4)
( |
| * | AN | VANITY | Six toys oddly on US dressing table (6)
V__I (six, Roman numerals) + TY (odd letters of ToYs), around AN |
| * | AG | WAGE | Three and a half days’ pay? (4)
W__E( |
I don’t understand LARVA. A Roman household god was a Lar, nearly always pl Lares.
I enjoyed the challenge. I got most of it, but missed out on the SE corner. I had Gran for the lady, and failed completely on Maxixe. I must have gone wrong somewhere else therefore. But my paper was a bit of a mess in the end. Memo to self: a pencil with a rubber next bank holiday special.
I got there in the end but with some questions. How can FAIRGAME be one word, enumerated (8)? And, as Zoot@1 points out, the Roman god and Lubovitch both seem to point to LAR, with no definition for LARVA. Anyway, I hope someone will enlighten us! But, quibbles aside, it was an enjoyable way to spend the Easter weekend – and beyond.
Thanks to Maskarade and mc_rapper67
Not going to tell you my journey because, well, you know, but I will say that it took me several days to finish. When I did I was uncharacteristically not happy, because of the LAR-VA issue. I had concluded it was an error, and coming here, so far, it still seems that way. Maybe future posters will shed some light, but I’m not holding my breath.
Thanks Maskarade and mc_rapper67, for a great blog.
Good fun. Masterful setting, as always!
Thanks for the blog and the grid , very clear and a mammoth effort . I like cold-solving and jigsaws and latent letters of wordplay plus a beautiful Saturday on the beach so pretty perfect for me .
The large central box plus the arms of a “cross” helped to put many in . The corners were tricky with just 4 , 6 and 8 to sort out . The two Z clues were nearly last in and fortunately had to cross in the end . The VA of LARVA was my last thing , I suspect Roman gods are similar to the names of fonts or Indie bands .
MC , Maskarade has done all ths Specials since Araucaria , three a year so it triples your chances .
I love such special puzzles. Got the numbered clues and a few of the others too quickly. Over the next three days, I managed to crack several more and the grid started filling up nicely. But the size of the grid and number of clues deflated my enthusiasm and I gave up out of sheer fatigue, preferring to focus on more recent and smaller puzzles.
Even though partly solved, I loved the puzzle. Many thanks to Maskerade for the fine (and large) effort. Your blog cleared up so many cobwebs – thanks, mc_rapper67! Like others, i am yet to understand LARVA.
I wonder if Maskarade has confused his Lares with his Larvae from Roman mythology? Enjoyable in parts – put me in the Marmite gang…
Pleased to say that I completed it but share the comments about LARVA. Nor could I parse WAGE. I continue to marvel at Maskerade’s skill in creating these masterpieces.
I always love the extra challenge of a bank holiday special and this was no exception. But I also took issue with LARVA and FAIRGAME.
Thanks mc_rapper67 for explaining AVATAR. I had this down as my TA answer (Avar for arabic around TA) until HOSTAS made that impossible!
Thanks for the blog Mc Rapper – it must have been a challenge to compile, never mind the solve in the first place.
We filled in the grid, and I’m quite pleased to find we only got two wrong – bunged in COAT (for CLAY) and NAZIRS (for NAZARD) -although ticking off the two-letter pairs should help, many of the words have ambiguous combinations (like ANYA/ANNA, to say nothing of AVATAR), so we were scraping the barrel towards the end.
I’m another querying LARVA, and N’EST CE PAS, but my niggle was that I thought this meant ‘isn’t it’ not ‘aren’t they’, but my French is mauvais.
Thanks for all the comments so far – it is a working day so I will not have much chance to respond to things until later.
I should have commented on LARVA more – I am also more familiar with LARES (AR in Lar’s brother LES Lubovitch?!), but in the end it had to be VA. I eventually found LARVAE (usually plural, singular LARVA) as Roman ghosts rather than gods, so the quibbles above are reasonably founded.
I didn’t get FAIRGAME – my father got that one, and I struggled with the parsing generally.
But, as Meatloaf once said, ‘two (quibbles) out of 62 ain’t bad‘?
As for the ‘Marmite gang’, The Other Mark at #8, technically we are all in the Marmite gang – ‘you either love it or you hate it’! Probably a bit too binary to be used as a metaphor here, as I included shades in between love and hate… (Other yeast-based spreads are available (;+>)
Superbly constructed, I really enjoyed it.
A few notes…
The ANYA v ANNA option was tricky and held out until the end. Diligent note taking was required.
NAZARD with a Z is unusual and not given in dictionaries but confirmed online as a variation of ‘nasard’ (which is in Chambers).
PROA and AREA having the same 2nd and 4th letters also made things tricky towards the end.
I thought FAIR GAME should be 4,4 rather than 8.
I thought “centre of the bull” would be more grammatically precise as “centre of bull”.
Superb effort on the blog, thanks mc!
Welcome, mc_rapper67, to the Maskarade Bank Holiday Special bloggers’ club! Excellent blog, particularly the animated grid.
I had the same experience as most of those who have posted, having to correct ANNA to ANYA late on, and not understanding LARVA. It seems to me that Maskarade has mistakenly included two pieces of wordplay and omitted the definition in that clue. I am surprised that the editor didn’t pick that up. And clearly FAIR GAME should be enumerated (4,4).
I echo the reservations about LAR(VA/ES) which also befuddled me. I pressed on regardless and got the central horizontal and vertical bands but didn’t manage all of the corners. Some real obscurities here (MAXIXE, NAZARD, …), doubtless forced upon Maskarade by the grid and his own self-imposed rules.
Isn’t faerie the “Enchanting place” with “Erie” being the lake?
thanks, bridgesong at #14 – do I get a tie, or a badge? Where do I pay my subs?!
PWB at #16 – a point well made… I was thinking of FAERIE as an adjective, rather than an individual fairy, which would have needed something like ‘enchanted being’ – but on looking closer in Chambers it is also a noun for ‘fairyland’ generally. Fairy-nuff, I have updated the parsing accordingly…
I really enjoyed that. It took me a good while, but there was plenty to keep me occupied into this week.
Also, there was the satisfaction of fitting the damn things in the right places.
Ultimately I missed HOSTAS, FAIRGAME and PROA (the last mainly because I had put AREA where PROA should have gone).
A good Easter challenge overall.
I also put AREA in the wrong place to begin with until I couldn’t get CANAAN/ANYA to fit.
As much as I like a bigger puzzle I tend to forget missed clues, especially now I use a tablet, as such I forgot that I hadn’t solved NAZ_R_
I agree FAIRGAME should be 4,4 and can’t find anything that uses LARVA as clued.
Surely no coincidence Maskarade has all those A’s in his name. Knew I’d never complete and duly failed but not spectacularly and absolutely loved the puzzle. For ages I thought top German was GITA (my mother’s name) having thought ANYA (my beloved) was most likely to be the YA. Never got HOSTAS so my FAERIE and BATTLE spent a lot of time switching floors so to speak. I never think of JAWING as scolding. I promise to change my ways. Never would have SHAPE without the elimination process, what a crazy acronym. As a pedantic note NAZARD isn’t in the Scrabble dictionary which delights in absurd Z words (including Pizzazz which is unplayable due to one Z, two blanks). Also thanks to all the bloggers, I read the site a lot but comment rarely as by 5pm it’s hardly worth my commenting. And a big thanks to MC as I can’t imagine how long it took to blog that little lot. And MSKRDE too
I’m in the “definitely enjoyed this” crowd. Very pleased to have finished it, only my second complete solve of one of the bumper holiday crosswords…
I got, but could not parse, AVATTAR.
I also had the ANNA/ANYA issue early on and ended up printing a clean copy after getting ULNA and PROA in the wrong places.
Agree with MrBeaver @11 about N’EST-CE PAS translating as ‘it’ and not ‘they’ . Still don’t understand how ‘fan’ is ‘wing’ in JAWING…
But don’t read this wing, I thoroughly enjoyed this one (after failing miserably one the last Christmas one). Thanks Maskarade and mc_rapper67.
We were looking forward to a Maskarade bank holiday special, so a little disappointed by getting a Kite instead. But all became well when I bought the paper version, and then managed to locate the pdf version to print off three copies.
We made reasonable progress on the Saturday, but ended in a bit of a mess in wanting to reuse some of the missing letter combinations
So on Sunday we made a fresh start with the third copy of the puzzle.
Fairgame had to be the correct answer, so no hold up there. But Larva, as the LOI was more in hope than expectation.
Enjoyed this tremendously, but then we are both big marmite fans
Many thanks to mc_rapper for the blog and Maskarade for the jigsaw puzzle
@mc_rapper67, is there a tiny typo in the CALLS OUT explanation – the ending S on SOULS in the phrase below should not be there? Should be SOUL?
CA + L_T (Lithuania) around LS_OU (anag, i.e. poor, of SOULS)
I actually finished this on the Saturday so obviously I liked it 🙂. Let me be proud of this it isn’t a common occurrence.
I checked up that nazard existed as a word . I knew ‘ Nard ‘ Coryza I got because of that crosser.
Larva was obviously the answer but I also quibble about it.
I always photocopy these grids and have pencil and sheets of paper to cross off the letters ( as with alphabetical ones) it was a tricky grid I also put area in wrongly initially.
MC@17 you should never join any club that will have you as a member .
That was a fun monster. I was reluctant to conclude that the LARVA clue was a mistake but I couldn’t see how it would work properly.
New Words:
– Maxixe
– Nazard
– Qawra
– Precentor
– Coryza
– Hostas
As a rule I love the jigsaws, but rarely finish one of these Maskerade masterpieces as I get bored of trawling the web for obscure words. However, there weren’t too many in this one and I made it in the end. Such a clever puzzle, getting (as I found it) harder towards the end as one reached the furthest corners of the grid and had to work out and place the 4-letter answers. And the AZ/ZA device was a great addition, helping with orientation.
But I screwed up and put ANNA, realising half way through that it couldn’t be right, but forgetting by the end. I’m cross with myself for not double checking. I also thought FAIRGAME should’ve been 4,4.
But hats off to Maskerade for a clever puzzle. Goodness knows how long it took to construct. And thank you to mc_rapper67 for the write-up.
Mr Beaver@11 and Team USA@21 While “N’EST-CE PAS” literally means “isn’t it?”, the French use it for any tag question irrespective of the verb or pronoun preceding it. “Aren’t they”, “don’t you”, “hasn’t she”, and so on, can all be translated as “n’est-ce pas”.
A great thematic puzzle. I got stuck in the top and bottom left corners towards the end after I had carelessly put AREA where PROA should have gone, but it all came good eventually. I got LARVA in the only way possible, which was to see what letter pair was left over after using up all the 51 others, and it turned out to be VA. I very much liked the clues to MAJOR GENERALS and N’EST-CE PAS.
Many thanks to both Maskarade and mc_ rapper.
Chapeau to you, mc-rapper, but once again I am thankful for not having a printer, because, given my slightly obsessive nature, I would have spent n inordinate amount of the rest of my life on this.
Thanks for the blog, mc. I enjoyed reading your account of the solve, of your (not-so?) collaborative experience with your parents and comparing it to my own time plugging away at this.
My experience was also a familial one which I appreciate more and more lately with my twenty something kids. They are both getting into the art of the crossword and having fun with all the idiosyncratic language of this cryptic world (anagrind, unch, down lights etc). Apart from Hostas (which I don’t like nearly as much as slugs and snails do) my list of new words was similar to that of George@26.
We enjoyed the extra element to the puzzle that Maskarade injected and his ingenuity in compiling the crossword with the chosen device can only be admired. Typically there were a few obscure answers and GK but I thought the accessibility of the special instructions was a good compensation.
Thanks to mc and to Maskarade for a great challenge for a four-day weekend type of puzzle.
Did the Easter Prize only to discover it wasn’t. Kite, that is. Found the real one in the paper, but, having read the instructions, couldn’t be arsed, as they say – it looked too big to be enjoyable.
However, I am pleased most people here enjoyed it, and what a gargantuan effort by mc_rapper
Judge@28 – Thanks for clearing up n’est-ce pas, didn’t know that it could be used for all those phrases…
I really loved the prolonged challenge of this amazing puzzle. Part of my drive to complete was to find out whether the puzzle got easier towards the end. It sort of did. In the end I failed on NAZARD … not knowing the word or the NARD word used in the cryptic. I also lost the plot slightly and bunged in ENYA rather than ANYA.
Great thanks, Maskarade. Also thanks to mc_rapper67 for explaining the bits of parsing I missed … not least for GALWAY.
So much ingenuity in the clueing. My favourites were HARRIDAN and RADISH.
Just saw this blog had finally appeared. Well done mc_rapper67 – always an enjoyable blog, and the animated solution is fun to watch. I did finish this, but it took a lot of time and several sheets of scrap paper, with lists of the words by length, cross-checked against all 52 combinations, general doodling for anagrams etc, not to mention three copies of the puzzle itself, one for the clues and two of the grid printed at larger scale. Two of the grid because I started filling it in with only about half the clues solved and, although my tentative ‘Hail Mary’ placements were mostly right, and ended up giving me most of the remaining answers, I found I had VANITY in twice and nowhere to put CANAAN. I could parse everything except LARVA and AVATAR, but both had to be right. Thanks, mc, for explaining AVATAR, and as for LARVA, well… I enjoyed the challenge, and it was satisfying to finally get it completed, but I’m not sure I’d have started it if I’d realised just how long it would take me.
(Incidentally, having put in that much effort, I considered sending it in to have a shot at the prize, something I’ve not done for years, butI see the Guardian still only accepts post and fax. Isn’t that a bit behind the (lowercase) times?)
Like many, I came a cropper on LARVA, thinking LARES must be the right answer – but I was also semi-convinced LEMURINES had to be the crosser, so those two stayed unfinished.
Have never heard of MAXIXE, NAZARD & JAWING – three more that defeated me.
Lacking these, there were several I couldn’t confidently put into place, and although your animated grid is very impressive mc_r, the blasted solutions keep disappearing whilst I’m looking for them! Ne’er mind – I’ll spot them eventually.
My final tally was 53 out of 62, which is better than I normally manage. Many thanks for a splendid blog, and thank you Maskarade for the challenge
As a (lapsed) organist, I’m surprised that NAZARD didn’t come up as the standard spelling. I can’t remember ever seeing NASARD on an instrument, but it was a long time ago.
Just saw the blog now.
I didn’t fall into the ANNA trap, since I noticed that it could also be ANYA or even ANJA, so it was almost at the end before I could confidently place ANYA, AREA, and PROA. My last two in were, surprise surprise, the two with errors, LARVA and FAIR GAME. I came here hoping I was wrong about that, but now it seems that everyone concurs. We needed something like “Maybe a mealworm was revered in Roman households (5).”
Add me to the fans of this – it kept me going very enjoyably for a long time without ever getting really stuck, helped by making a list of all the pairs (AA, AB, BA, CA etc) and crossing them off as I got them. Like others above I initially put ‘area’ and ‘proa’ in the wrong places which held me up for a bit; penultimate one in was ‘nazard’, found after digging out ‘nard’ and then googling, while the last was (as for many) ‘larva’, entered with reluctance for the same reasons – no definition, but it couldn’t be anything else. Agree about ‘fair game’, too.
Thanks to Maskarade, mc-rapper67 and all. Loved doing this, took all week, very absorbing. Still unsure why ‘wing’ =fan……….
Jess (if you’re still reading) – Chambers as always is your friend! In my online dictionary, ‘A fan or vane’ is definition no. 9 for ‘wing’ (out of 28) – and yes, I did have to check it to make sure it was right.
Judge@28 – I agree – there’s a derived joke in comedy where French (and indeed Welsh) people say ‘isn’t it’ in all cases where English would have ‘aren’t they’ etc.
A DNF for me but I was pleased to have got quite far.
Thanks Maskarade and MC rapper for your gargantuan efforts.
Zoviet France@20 – ‘pizzazz’ would be playable with a Dutch set, which has more Zs!
A great tussle, if anyone is still reading. I was defeated by my LOI NAZARD, because I knew neither that NARD was a medicinal plant nor that a NAZARD is a stop on an organ, so I was reduced to scanning Chambers for something that might fit. The only possibility was NAZIRS, which doesn’t remotely work, but I decided it had to be that and obviously Maskarade had found some workplay that was beyond me. Only to find that it wasn’t that, and Maskarade had found some wordplay that was beyond me.
So sorry, Sarah@41, but Chambers is not always your friend 🙂
Great fun though, and I’ll take a one clue defeat from a word which is not in Chambers, even as “see nasard”.
I share all the comments about LARVA btw. I always do assume with Maskarade that there will be a few I cannot parse and just have to enter if “it has to be that”, and this was one.
Thanks for the continuing comments, although I feel this may have finally run its course!
More quibbles on LARVA and FAIRGAME/FAIR GAME, but not many others…apart from maybe NAZARD/NASARD. I also nearly tripped over PROA/AREA, but managed to hold off until the ambiguity disappeared.
Top Marx to Roz at #25 – wise advice!
And apologies to Wellbeck at #36 for the speed of the animation – 4 seconds is usually OK for a normal 15×15, but I probably should have slowed it down a bit.
Onwards and upwards!
Belatedly I join in the applause for the magnificent feat of setting which Maskarade achieved.
IMHO, Homer has not nodded with LARVA.
Wikipedia tells us:
“The lemures were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead in Roman religion, sometimes used interchangeably with the term larvae (from Latin larva, ‘mask’)”.
So a LARVA could indeed be a (hostile) god which needed to be placated.
KeithS @35 : I imagine the restriction to post and fax serves to keep the number of entries down, but who knows? I did a quick search and it turns out there are ways to send faxes directly from an iPad, so maybe I’ll consider that next time.
I am in awe of the cleverness of both setter and blogger. Only got part way myself but I swear it was due to lack of time and a house guest for two weeks. Aside from the larva and fair game quibbles, mine would be with pen pal. Having lived in Canada for 50 years I can honestly say I’ve never heard the province called anything other than PEI but I bunged in the answer anyway. I guess the “no place” must have been doing double duty.