Guardian Prize 29,691 / Brendan

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Brendan in the Prize slot – what a treat! – and my second in a row to blog.

A lovely set of clues, with no problems at all in the solving or parsing departments. My favourites, for various reasons, were ARARAT, WALKABOUTS, SYMMETRICAL, WOMBAT, HATHAWAY and EGALITARIANISM.

So far, so good – but this is Brendan, whose puzzles invariably have at least two extra layers. Ay, there’s the rub – or, rather, the start of the fun. SYMMETRICAL shouted out in the middle row and so I began methodically, I thought, by writing out a list of all the symmetrically opposite entries, which didn’t seem to produce anything profitable, although TOMATO/TOMTIT and TATTOO/TWO-WAY looked rather interesting: I had noticed during the solve that some letters (notably A and T) occurred quite frequently. If I’d stared at those a bit longer, I might have got there a lot earlier. At this point on Saturday, I followed the time-honoured and invariably vindicated tradition of crossword solvers – with the Prize bonus of having some extra time – and laid it aside, ‘to do something else’, hoping for the penny to drop.

(On and off, I’d been mulling over the clever anagram at 8dn. I’m one who lays great store by surfaces and often encourage solvers to return to them, for the joy of finding hidden extras. This is one instance where it really paid off. The surface of 8dn seemed to offer more than anagram fodder and I suspected a significance in ‘all-round balance’ and ‘around a line’.)

Solvers of a more mathematical bent than me (and that will be most of you) will be wondering what took me so long and are allowed to smile. It was a couple of days later that I had one of those 3.00 am experiences. I woke with a vivid picture of TOMATO and TOMTIT, as they appear in the grid and an avalanche of pennies dropped: all the down entries, except the aforementioned 8dn, contained only letters which were vertically symmetrical – and the middle column was the line of symmetry. (‘Seeking all-round balance, I rig a neat arrangement round a line’.) How brilliant is that? – a real Archimedes moment for me.

If there is anything more going on – which would not really surprise me – I’d be delighted to know, of course but I’m chuffed to have got this far: anything less, I think, could have been a resigning issue.

Huge thanks to Brendan for a brilliant puzzle: I thoroughly enjoyed the solve and the subsequent chase.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

 

Across

5 Landing-place for rescue craft with full complement of mates (6)
ARARAT
Having seen the definition, I spent some minutes looking for wordplay in the second part of the clue, before realising that the whole clue is the definition: Noah’s ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, with all the pairs aboard unharmed!

6 Empty small container into large container (6)
VACANT
CAN (small container) in VAT (large container)

9 Have deep understanding of female leading most of party in house (6)
FATHOM
F (female) + AT HOM[e] (party in house)

10 I’m eating frantically? Deliberately slow down (4,4)
GAIN TIME
An anagram frantically) of I’M EATING – the definition seemed rather like a contradiction but the dictionary definition is ‘to obtain extra time by a delay or postponement’: I’m guessing it could also refer to delaying tactics in football but I’m no expert

11 Watch that is found in car (4)
VIEW
IE (id est – that is) in VW (car)

12 Steps taken by royalty and a bishop in quitting protests (10)
WALKABOUTS
A B (a bishop) in WALK-OUTS (‘quitting protests’)

13 Return writing including my revised article showing result of reflection (11)
SYMMETRICAL
A reversal (return) of MS (writing) round MY + an anagram (revised) of ARTICLE

18 Exercise for troops, English, in month after Waterloo (5-5)
ROUTE MARCH
ROUT (Waterloo, which can mean any crushing defeat – as in ‘to meet one’s Waterloo’ + E (English) + MARCH (month)

21 Dance outfit with identical halves, though not 13 (4)
TUTU
Identical halves but not SYMMETRICAL (13ac)

22 Body tissues doctor turned over put in layers (8)
STROMATA
A reversal (turned over) of MO (doctor) in STRATA (layers) – the plural of STROMA (see here)

23 Animal in our original environment, area with reduced temperature (6)
WOMBAT
WOMB (our original environment) + A (area) + T (abbreviation (reduced) for temperature)

24 Unhappy indication of nervousness about fundraiser (6)
TRAGIC
TIC (indication of nervousness) round RAG (student fundraiser)

25 Other instruments replacing sitars (6)
SISTRA
An anagram (replacing) of SITARS

 

Down

1 In country dance, become friendlier with a writer’s partner (8)
HATHAWAY
HAY (country dance)  round THAW (become friendlier) + A

2 Who may put out pile of fodder? (6)
HAYMOW
An anagram (put out) of WHO MAY – a new word for me

3 Served up repeatedly one kind of meat or fish (4-4)
MAHI-MAHI
A reversal (served up) of I HAM (one type of meat) repeatedly

4 Personal decoration in military display (6)
TATTOO
Double definition

5 Loss of control in vehicle covered by motoring organization (6)
ATAXIA
AA (Automobile Association – motoring organisation) round TAXI (vehicle)

7 A motto represented in bright shade of red (6)
TOMATO
A anagram (re-presented) of A MOTTO

8 Seeking all-round balance, I rig a neat arrangement around a line (11)
EGALITARIAN
An anagram (arrangement) of I RIG A NEAT round A L (a line)

14 Four thousand and three articles I recollected? Good heavens! (5,3)
MAMMA MIA!
An anagram (re-collected) of MMMM (four thousand) + AAA (three articles) + I

15 Robotic workforce which singularly includes 7 (8)
AUTOMATA
The singular of AUTOMATA is automaton, which includes TOMATO (7dn)

16 Fail to include covering time after time for bird (6)
TOMTIT
T (time) + OMIT (fail to include) round T (time)

17 A measure of power – nothing upset capital (6)
OTTAWA
A reversal (upset) of A WATT (a measure of power) + O (nothing)

19 Kind of radio to evaluate, roughly speaking (3-3)
TWO-WAY
Sounds like (roughly speaking!) ‘to weigh’ (to evaluate)

20 Fruit a couple of Romans found in this state (6)
HAWAII
HAW Fruit of the hawthorn) + A + I I (a couple of Roman numerals)

50 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,691 / Brendan”

  1. Thanks Eileen, I did wonder if something was afoot. I slowly solved this all week, and found it delightful subtle. You missed out an A in the passing of HATHAWAY and included it in the definition BTW (with A)

  3. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I am a mathematician, but I still don’t understand the vertical symmetry you refer too. Could you elucidate further?

    Thanks also Brendan

    [Today’s prize I did a few weeks ago, when it appeared instead of the Easter Maskarade – at least I think it is the same one]

  4. All that symmetry passed me by, but I enjoyed the solve. If I had seen that, I might have worked out what sort of TIT it was earlier. Eileen, you have part of the explanation in the clue for SYMMETRICAL. Dave@3, each letter in all the downs is SYMMETRICAL along the vertical axis (except in EGALITARIAN). Thanks for all the extra dimensions to the crossie, Eileen, and to Brendan for the challenge.

  5. Thanks, TassieTim. I thought that Brendan meant the letters in TOMATO and TOMTIT were somehow associated, (“around a line” – the middle) but I see now what is meant is that each letter, for example X, is a reflection of itself about its vertical axis, for all the down letters There is no connection between the words ATAXIA and OTTAWA, which is what I thought initially that Brendan meant.

    Surely “round a line” refers to the vertical axis of symmetry within each letter, therefore.

  6. Dave Ellison @3 – I’ve been struggling to find words to answer your query!

    I vaguely remembered lines of symmetry from primary school, so I went to BBC Bite-size for explanation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z8nw4xs#zw3tvj6, which confirmed what I remembered, regarding lines of symmetry in letters of the alphabet.

    As I think you know, I’m not a mathematician – I just managed to matriculate for University entrance. It seemed to me that Brendan was suggesting that the central column in the crossword was a line of symmetry but I was probably just being fanciful and shouldn’t have mentioned it.

    Thanks for the reassurance, Tassie Tim: Brendan has, in fact used all the vertically symmetrical letters in the down clues, except V, which appears in two acrosses.

    I stayed up to catch the early comments but it’s well past my bedtime, so I’m going to call it a day now until the morning. I think I’m probably in for a rough ride!

  7. Dave Ellison @5 – I’m afraid I’m too tired to get my head round your second comment, which appeared while I was struggling to post mine (I kept being told it was a duplicate.)

  8. Brilliant Brendan! Thanks Eileen and Dave for sussing the symmetry, which passed by both of my cerebral hemisheres. Enjoyed it nonetheless. Got haymow by association with the old drinking song Barley Mow, while sistra, a nho, was just juggle the grist. Nice image of Marvellous Meryl and Dame Julie having a giggle in 14d. All good fun, thanks all, now for today’s.

  9. I was looking for word-level or semantic symmetries, so thank you for that, Eileen – your blogs are always a joy to read.

    When I saw “Return writing” (13a) my thoughts leapt to boustrophedonic writing, which goes left-right then right-left in alternate rows. That would be a great word for an answer for some future puzzle, methinks (and it’s 15 letters!). Not here, though, of course. (Apparently, boustrophedon has occurred previously, I just saw.)

  10. My faves: ARARAT, WALKABOUTS, TUTU, HATHAWAY, AUTOMATA and TWO-WAY.
    Lovely puzzle. Quite enjoyable.
    Great blog. Good intro.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

  11. Beautiful! I’m another who thought “There must be something going on with symmetry in this puzzle but I’m not sure what.” Thanks for the explanation Eileen and thanks Brendan!

    To spell out the constraint, the down answers (except EGALITARIAN) only use the letters AHIMOTUVWXY.

    Minor note about the blog: I think that for 20d HAWAII the A from the clue needs to be added to the parsing?

  12. I loved this puzzle for the solve itself. 5a ARARAT was my firm favourite. I mulled over the import of the two central words, SYMMETRICAL and EGALITARIAN all week, but I really couldn’t work out what was going on. I did notice that there were a lot of As and Ts in the down solutions, with some repetitions like TOM in answers like 7d TOMATO and 16d TOMTIT. I also thought there might be some mirroring of parts of the down clues, and so tried turning some of the Ms and Ws upside down to test that theory. But I didn’t manage to see what clever Eileen found. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who missed seeing the full brilliance Brendan displayed in setting this puzzle!
    Thanks to both Eileen and Brendan – a great crossword and a terrific blog! As a bear of little brain I always feel lucky to be able to come here to get the full picture, as well as enjoying reading about how other solvers went.

  13. JIA@12 But I didn’t manage to see what clever Eileen found.

    Where are my manners? I was struggling like you to find what was going on, so a big thanks to Eileen for this.

  14. Thanks Eileen, I had spotted the vertical symmetry but not that the wording in the clue for 8d could serve almost as a special instruction for the puzzle. Great spot.

    Matt@11 lists all the letters with the property of vertical symmetry but in fact only 10 are use here (V is not used). It would have been possible use V in e.g. OTTAVA but perhaps that’s a little obscure.

    Excellent puzzle, thanks to Brendan and Eileen

  15. I really enjoyed this and ARARAT was also my favourite – lovely clue

    Also liked: SYMMETRICAL, WOMBAT, MAMMA MIA, HAWAII

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

  16. Not much to add. Similar favourites to KVa@10

    Thanks Brendan for an enjoyable puzzle that had a twist while keeping the obscure word count within limits. Thanks Eileen for the great blog

  17. Well done Eileen. And how clever of Brendan to come up with this. I’ve seen clues where the shape of the letter forms part of the wordplay, but never a whole crossword!

    I took all week to do this, to the point that I only just went back and discovered I’d not finished it.
    I found some quite difficult, eg ROUTE-MARCH, and STROMATA, but of course they parse beautifully.

    Being parochial, I liked WOMBAT and WALKABOUTS, one of my first ones in.

    People may be interested to know that WALKABOUT/S in the sense of the clue here, may not be heard much any more. ”Walkabout” has a special meaning to our First Nations Peoples.

    From the Sydney Morning Herald 11 Sept 2024.
    In their first visit to Australia as King and Queen, Charles and Camilla will drop the term “walkabout” to describe encounters with the public, as Buckingham Palace strips the term from the royal itinerary to avoid offending Indigenous communities.

  18. Thanks for the blog , Brendan often uses the central cross of this type of grid to mean something , perhaps he starts with this central idea .
    I am not usually keen on cryptic definitions but ARARAT shows how they can be brilliant . Very few obscure words considering the letter restrictions for the Down clues , two for me , and they were very fairly clued .
    I am still thinking about GAIN TIME , slowing down means your own personal clock ticks faster , is that gaining time ?

  19. [Dave Ellison@3. Yes, today’s Kite Prize is the one that appeared briefly at Easter, before it was taken down, after I’d finished it! Fortunately I still had Brendan to complete and this lovely blog to enjoy.)

  20. [ PDM@17 , the 1971 film WALKABOUT involves a teenage First Nation boy on his Walkabout saving two lost white children . ]

  21. There is always something going on with a Brendan puzzle, but I could not see what it was. It seemed likely to have something to do with SYMMETRICAL across the middle, but after staring at the completed grid for some time all I managed to notice was a few repeated letter patterns (MA, WA, OM and so on) and they didn’t seem to be arranged symmetrically. So I was left puzzled.

    In retrospect this was very clever. I wonder what proportion of solvers twigged it? From the comments so far it seems to be a minority.

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

  22. My car reg is vertically symmetrical (the numbers are 1 and 0) and I was once told by a more enthusiastic car person than I that such number plates are used in car ads so that they still “work” in the mirror. It’s not always the case but it happens enough times for it to be a thing.
    I sort of got the theme and now have it confirmed by the excellent blog.
    Great work as always both.
    Thanks.

  24. How clever are you all? Well done and thank you Eileen. My note-to-self from last week was “Rescue vessels/craft always seem to be arks.” I’m clearly breathing less rareified air, on Little Ararat maybe? (Mt. Ararat has two major volcanic cones, Little Ararat’s peak being 1241m lower.)

    Unhindered by the search for supersymmetry, I solved this before breakfast. I liked WALKABOUTS. We read the book Walkabout at school and the teacher decided to show us the film featuring (all of) Jenny Agutter. That type of thing makes an impression at 12.

    (I too completed today’s Kite at Easter but it still took 15 minutes to refill today.)

    Thanks all and thanks Brendan. I will look out for hidden dimensions in future.

  25. [ Martin@24 the LHC has wasted 17 years and most of the Particle Physics budget searching for supersymmetry , the only good thing is that all the supersymmetry theorists have finally shut their big mouths . ]

  27. Lovely stuff – thanks very much Eileen! The symmetry thing was totally over my head, aside from being dimly aware of a lot of As and Ts, so I’m grateful to you for the 3am inspiration. And thanks to Brendan for a most enjoyable tussle.

  28. Another who thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle but didn’t notice the symmetrical cleverness. Actually, I have my paper copy in front of me, and I see I write Y asymmetrically, so obviously I’d never spot it – that’s my excuse, anyway. ARARAT was my first in – I wasn’t expecting such a detailed cryptic definition, but it just clicked at once. HATHAWAY was my last in – it leapt out once I had the crossers, but it was only some time later that I saw the parsing. I thought ‘deep understanding’ was neat for FATHOM, and I liked MAMMA MIA. Thanks, Brendan and Eileen.

  29. What an achievement! I echo Riz about cryptic definitions and ARARAT. As EGALITARIAN is the exception in the down clues, I wondered if it referred to something else in the across clues, but I can’t see it if there is.

  30. Thanks, everyone for the comments and for generally understanding what I was trying to say @6 – matt w @11, Jay @14 (good spot for the possible use of V! and Roz for being gentle with me ;-). Also Dr WhatsOn @9 for the mention of boustrophedonic writing – I’ve always loved the etymology – and Forest Fan @22 for the interesting fact.

    I’m glad that others appreciated ARARAT, too. I’ll restore the lost A in HAWAII, matt – a casualty of the transposing!

  31. Eileen, the clue in your blog for 13a SYMMETRICAL needs some attention – some extraneous words have snuck in.

  32. Well done Brendan for the idea/execution and Eileen for interpreting it. I solved the puzzle fairly smoothly and swiftly last Saturday but, apart from knowing there was Something Going On, I ended the week none the wiser. It seems many of us spotted the similarity in letters and some words; hats off to the other solvers who cracked this. I failed at the last with another puzzle recently where I failed to spot that an M was being turned upside down to create a W: I realise that is one of my (many) weaknesses – I’m OK with linguistic twists and turns but regularly fail to consider the possibilities of physical manipulation of letters/words. Which is why I didn’t spot the actual symmetry. Very neat indeed.

    Thanks both

  33. I totally missed seeing any theme to the puzzle.

    Favourites: MAMMA MIA, WOMBAT.

    I wasn’t sure how to parse 15d automata.

    New for me: STROMATA, SISTRA.

    Thanks, both.

  35. Petert@29 I noticed that all the solutions, apart from 13a and 8d, have an even (egalitarian) number of letters but I am probably overthinking it!

  36. There’s also a nice little symmetrical pattern involving the A and T extreme corner entries, linking with the central T in SYMMETRICAL to form an X shape. Lines of symmetry following the two diagonals in X.

  38. Thanks Eileen for the brilliant blog and elucidation of such an ingenious puzzle. Frustrating for me since both EGALITARIAN and SYMMETRICAL came quickly along with most of the NE corner, The excellently clued ARARAT and WALKABOUT both eluded me, so I ended up with significant gaps, though I greatly enjoyed the challenge.
    “Challenged” would be an appropriate euphemism for my spacial intelligence. I would never have spotted the significance of the two key clues, and remain in awe of both Brendan for the sheer magnificence of 17d (surely one of the great all-time clues), and of Eileen for recognising it. Thanks again to both

  39. I both enjoy and don’t enjoy Brendan’s work. I really enjoyed solving some lovely clues. But this is Brendan – so there will be extra layers of super-clever stuff designed to make those who see it gasp and applaud the setter’s brilliance – and the rest of us feel intellectually inferior. Count me among the stupid, as usual, and congratulations to those who saw the symmetrical ingenuity.

    (Eileen, you can see that not identifying this week’s McGuffin wouldn’t have been a resigning issue – many people didn’t. )

  40. The only symmetry (or egalitarianism?) I could see was that each answer shared at least three letters with its symmetrical partner – this works with the acrosses also, except for TUTU and VIEW, which rhyme, at least. Not a solid enough connexion for a Brendan puzzle, so well done Eileen! and hats off, as usual, to Brendan!

    This sparked a 50-some-year-old memory of a puzzle involving a children’s party where poor Rebecca was dismayed that when she looked in a mirror, her name-tag was unreadable but her friend Timothy’s had not changed at all! (the answer being that the names were printed, rather ridiculously, vertically on the name-tags)

  41. I parsed 1a sllghtly differently. I thought that the “full complement of mates” referred the fact that, according to Genesis 6.13-22, there were pairs of all animals. To be precise, 7 pairs of all clean animals and 1 pair of all the unclean – must have been a large vessel.
    gladys@39
    I think you’re being a bit hard on Brendan. He has told us that fitting in themes makes setting more fun for him. I don’t think he’s necessarily looking to make us gasp and applaud his brilliance.
    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen

  42. @41 Pino. I like the shock dénouement in Gen 8:20 where Noah burns a load of clean beasts and birds as an offering. It’s a bit “director’s cut.”

  43. Yes, I think I owe Brendan an apology: just got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.

    Pino@41: The clean beasts were the species that Noah and family were permitted to eat – so they needed extra for supplies and sacrifices as well as the breeding stock.

  44. Gladys we all do it sometimes , Friday evening for me after a busy week I am always ratty ‘

    [ Martin@26 , I can never resist having a go at supersymmetry , it has done so much damage . It is lucky I do not do email , there are at least 10 people I would email every day asking if they have found their squarks and sleptons . ]

  45. I may be a bit dense, but where does the AU come from in 15d? Or is the clue simply “a word meaning ‘robotic workforce’ that, in its singular form, includes the word TOMATO”? All kudos to Eileen for the blog and for spotting the theme, and to Brendan for the challenge.

  46. I’m another who enjoyed this, despite remaining blissfully unaware of all the clever symmetrical stuff.
    My faves were ARARAT, ATAXIA and the surface to VIEW.
    Many thanks Eileen for the detailed and interesting blog, especially for helping with the parsing to HATHAWAY, which was beyond me (I’d got Hay, but couldn’t see how t, h, a, w & a had any connection with becoming friendlier. Blindingly obvious now you’ve pointed it out.)
    Thank you Brendan for the challenge.

  47. ElaeanorK @ 45 – Yes! 😉

    Wellbeck @ 46, I spent a few minutes playing around with ‘warm’!

  48. A brilliant puzzle. I enjoyed it very much as a crossword anyway, with three particular favourites (ARARAT, VACANT and WOMBAT), but I never suspected, let alone saw, the remarkable execution of such an original idea.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen, and all who have shared their experiences of this puzzle.

  49. I agree with Roz about GAIN TIME.

    As for WALKABOUT

    At the ages of elevens and twelves,
    We’d grown out of pixies and elves,
    But seeing all of the lady Agutter,
    Sent all of us all of aflutter.

  50. I got stuck with half a dozen unsolved last weekend and couldn’t get any more despite returning to it a couple of times later in the week. I should have got F AT HOM(E), which would have helped unlock that corner, and as a vegan I have a bit of a blind spot for meat and edible fish, so MAHI MAHI was another fail.

    My search for symmetry didn’t get any further than the grid reflection mentioned by Woody@36, so kudos to Eileen and whoever else spotted what Brendan had done.

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