Guardian Prize 29,739 / Brendan

64 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,739 / Brendan”

1. Thanks Brendan and Eileen
   I wasn’t impressed by the theme, though I did like THEMED.

2. Artful Brendan’s art gets a big fat A+, but I needed Eileen’s aid to winkle out the theme. It had to be something to do with all those A’s, but even after completing the solve I couldn’t quite see through the ‘aze.

3. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I noted that “a” for arrives is given in the ODE, referencing its use in “travel timetables” and, curiously, with a specific citation to the 0915 train to Penzance.

4. There was a kind of Sesame Street feel to this. Today’s puzzle is brought to you by the letter A. I liked PERNOD andTHEMED. I got hung up on Areg for the pre 1957 car, geong too lazy to do the Maths. Great stuff but maybe not my favourite Brendan

5. Thanks Eileen. This was hard and while with the help of Google I eventually filled in all the squares and grasped the theme I was left wondering about some answers. Didn’t make it any easier by entering ‘avenue’ for 5d (venue=meet) and I thought initially that the author in 12a was ‘I’ and that didn’t help either. ARGONAUT leapt off the page at first scan but was LOI, I’d found the Willys Aero went out of production about 1957 and toyed with ‘aeronaut’ for a while. Have to admire Brendan’s ingenuity.

6. I knew there was a theme (19d), but saw no semantic connection between some/all of the answers, no matter how hard I tried. When I saw all those As, I thought I’d confirm my suspicions with a statistical test. Every puzzle has a most-frequent letter (maybe joint), and an associated count. The number of As here exceeds said maximum count of all of the last 1,000 Prize puzzles (“special” ones excluded). So it definitely seemed intentional but somehow not terribly satisfying (the theme), although granted a nice feat of construction.

7. I couldnt get a foothold into this puzzle so thanks Eileen for blog, Im not sure that I understand the theme, When I looked at the completed grid I can see quite a few acronyms and abbreviations in the middle of the words . Some examples are MAC, CAD,IT,ET,CO,ST,EME,RN,CA,SW,NA,. ie CAD is at the centre of abracadabra. to in bestowal also fits to can stand for time out. Does this constitute the theme.

8. The idea for this theme came from the dimly remembered smallest crossword ever — 1 X 1. The clue for 1 across was about 12 indications of A, as was the clue for 1 down. Can anyone give me the reference? Private Eye?
   I’ve just emailed a guy called Christopher Combert who puts out a blog called “Wine Down”. Apart from being an oenophile he’s also into crosswords and the blog often features him doing one from the New York Times or the Guardian. So I was intrigued to come across him solving (very expertly) my recent “In black and white” puzzle.

9. Super puzzle. Excellent blog. All A’s.
   Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

   My top faves were: STAIRWELLS, ANCESTOR, BASSOS, CAESAREA, ANGSTROM and ARGONAUT.

10. In the middle of this I had the most dramatic ‘oh that’s what’s going on’ moment I can recall. The single word ANGSTROM turned a confusing, rather irritatingly odd, puzzle into an enjoyable and clever coherent whole. Over a couple of sessions I’d lightly pencilled in completely unparsed answers (ARGONAUT), I’d noticed a surfeit of unnecessary ‘a’s, I’d wondered if there was a theme until I finally got THEMED, and it didn’t really make sense. Especially the pre-1957 car. Then: ‘it must be ANGSTROM and I can see the anagram, but where on Earth is the definition?’ Followed by the most enormous ‘click!’, everything made sense, and I rattled through the rest.

    Sorry, Eileen. I seem to have repeated a lot of what you said, although my penny dropped more suddenly than yours. I too went back over it all to savour how it worked. I think the pre-1957 symbol for Argon must win some sort of most esoteric piece of GK prize. And to me A for angstrom needs that little open circle thingy above it. But an impressive theme from Brendan, and an impressive blog to explain it all.

11. Lovely puzzle. It all came together for me with just the right amount of puzzlement, which I think is often the measure of how I feel about a theme. I lost track of the number of As but there were definitely very many excellent ones.

    Also enjoyed this week’s Paul. No spoilers here, but I seldom remember to come back the next week and comment on prizes so I’ll just put it on the record as one I liked!

    For what it’s worth (not much I imagine) I’d vote for a policy change not to delay the prize blog. It’s not as if there aren’t other ways of cheating, or if the prize is really much of a prize? Or perhaps I’m overlooking something.

12. Thanks Brendan and Eileen for the brilliant crossword and illuminating blog. Spike Milligan somewhere set “a” one square crossword:
    1 Across: First letter of the alphabet
    1 Down: The indefinite article

13. Agree, KeithS @10, “A pre-1957” to clue Argon is the obliquest bit of arcanery I think I’ve ever seen. and then it was slyly attached to “car” … altogether fiendish. Well done Paul, and many tas Eileen.

14. I got the A theme and spent all week looking for alternatives to Pernod as it doesn’t have one!
    I could see Cam and Irwell so I thought waterways might be there too (with Panama Canal and the Med).
    Thanks to both.

15. I guessed the A theme, but it didn’t help me I’m afraid. Far too many obscure clues for me. But thanks for the explanations.

16. Liked BESTOWAL, thought PANAMA CANAL clever (and so many As in that name alone!), and ASCOTS. I also found the going tough in places. As always, I never saw the theme

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen

17. Thanks Eileen for the super blog.

    THEMED was a splendid clue that raised a smile when I saw it, as I’d laboured over it for ages.

    I also liked BESTOWAL and BASSOS.

18. This required some effort but I got about 80% in and parsed, noticing the vast numbers of As in general and also kind of twigged the theme when I got ENCAMP and saw that Brendon was using an A in the clue to give an expansion in the answer rather the usual inverse approach. That did help somehow with the An for A in ANCESTOR and did make me suspect that ANSWER had to be something which could be abbreviated to A – though in fact I failed to get that one and my ASCOTS remained only mentally pencilled in because I couldn’t for the life of me see what half of that clue was going on about. I certainly didn’t twig that every clue formed part of the theme! Nicely done…

    …but a quiblet regarding A for ANGSTROM as per KeithS@10; it’s Å; and although common British newspaper (and hence presumably crossword) style is to not worry too much about all these fiddly foreign squiggles it does seem a little unreasonble to use a technically inaccurate definition! Not that it held me up on that clue, of course.

    I confess I just assumed ARGON was A, and then had no idea what happened in 1957 that meant AUTo changed to car, so shrugged and carried on. Ironically another clue I couldn’t solve was THEMED; I assumed I was looking for something specifically French but alas got nowhere.

    The two long, central A-filled ones were probably my favourites. And now I can stop thinking “another bloody A to start with”!

    Thanks both!

19. My judgement proved infallible on this puzzle. Having managed to solve only a couple of clues on first read through, I thought this was well beyond my capabilities. Having read Eileen’s splendid blog, I was absolutely correct.

20. Possibly my favourite crossword that I’ve done (I’ve not been in this hobby for long!). Managed to cotton onto the theme at about the 3/4 mark and it did help with the remainder. Thought CAESAREA was on the over-obscure side perhaps? But fairly clued, and maybe that’s just me. LOI PERNOD. Loved it, thanks Brendan and Eileen, A+ puzzle and blog.

21. I failed to solve 9,22,24ac and 5,16,19d

    Of the ones I solved I couldn’t parse 12ac apart from WELLS = author, 21ac, 15d, 17d, MP bit of 20d.

    I did not see the theme.

22. A classic, magical from top to bottom with the Panama Canal linking east to west.
    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

23. I thought that there was a holy land or biblical theme going on for a while with ARARAT, CANAAN and CAESAREA. I also seem to remember that Jason rescued Andromeda from her rock in Jaffa, but like KeithS @10, ANGSTROM brought the theme home.

    I still didn’t finish. I couldn’t see GOAD. Its the pantheon isn’t it rather than the Almighty in the theatre? In other words ‘gods’ is already singular. Mind you, it adds to my holy land hypothesis and probably OK for crossword land because of the lovely misdirection. ANSWER also escaped me, as did ENCAMP despite being sure that ‘amp’ would pop up somewhere. I didn’t think of ‘enc’ for ‘enclosed’.

    It was a lot of fun, so thanks Brendan and Eileen et al

24. Thanks for the usual detailed blog, Eileen, I’d got the feeling that there was an A-theme but didn’t see that that was “all” there was to it. This was a really clever puzzle and I have definitely fallen into the *love it* camp (there seems to be a divide). I prefer my Saturday puzzles pithy like this, great job Brendan.

    I was particularly grateful to the blog for the Burns link as this had really flummoxed me in the parsing.

    khayyam@11: I vote against your proposal as I feel that it’s an integral part of the Guardian puzzle week where slow is best. It gives bloggers a bit more time to craft their blogs and maybe encourages new solvers to wait and think. It’s up to solvers whether they “cheat” but I imagine that most people submitting for the prize would only be doing so if they had not done so. As you say, it doesn’t make a huge difference but I quite like the delay, especially if it is for a
    puzzle that takes a bit more energy to solve.

25. A really enjoyable puzzle. It took us a long time to realise there was a theme, once we had 19 down became easy. We spent a lot of time trying to think what a pre-1957 car might be (a-reg?), but the argon chemical symbol suddenly jumped out at us.

    Our favourite was 19 down, which made us laugh.

    We needed help with 9 across and 5 down, but blame that on the heat melting our brains.

    Thank you Eileen and Brendan.

26. There’s always something going on with a Brendan puzzle but sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly what it is! I thought this was great — it was so impressive to include all those uses of A. Right from the start I thought the “member of legendary crew” must be ARGONAUT but I couldn’t figure out how it worked, so I’m grateful for the explanation.

    (A while back my son sent me this xkcd puzzle which perhaps takes the theme to extremes.)

    Many thanks Brendan and Eileen.

27. There’s always something extra going on with a Brendan puzzle, and as usual I finished the puzzle without ever seeing it. Thanks Eileen for sorting it all out. I hadn’t a hope of parsing ARGONAUT, but the legendary crew was clear enough. I liked ARARAT, CENTIGRADE, ANCESTOR, AT HOME, PANAMA CANAL (A man, a plan, a canal – Panama!) and PANORAMA (once clued as “an orphan has neither”, possibly by Torquemada or Ximenes).

28. I saw a suggestion that the answers all started with symbols of chemical elements. It nearly works – only 3 or 4 don’t.

29. Well worth the struggle. LOI was ASCOTS because I was slow to get ANSWER, I didn’t know they were ties and because the only part of Britain all of which I could fit in the grid (I had the O) was the IOM but its language is Manx. Once I’d solved it the Burns quote that Eileen gives quickly came to mind and completed the parsing.
    Bit of a quiblet about 21a because I’ve only ever heard that part of a theatre referred to as ” the gods”, never “gods” on its own. It didn’t stop me for long.
    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

30. Pleased to say I got all of this pretty quickly (I mention it only because it’s fairly rare for me), though couldn’t entirely parse ASCOTS. Very enjoyable.

31. Nicely knotty, no niggles and unusually for me I spotted the theme, a thing for which I never search.

    As for publishing early, you can always Revert To Draft, but that would look like capricious behaviour perhaps.

    Thanks setter, blogger, and commenters.

32. I suspected that the theme had something to do with ‘A’ from FOI 13ac. I got some of them. I didn’t get the reversed definitions of symbols, so didn’t complete some in the bottom L corner, including to my shame the two units of measurement, although I am another who would NEVER write A for Å. Thanks to Eileen for the rest. It was hard, but doable. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed it, but there was enough bait to keep me hooked through the week.

33. Angstrom has the symbol Å not A

34. copland @33
    True, but diacritical marks are always ignored in crosswords (though more commonly it’s acute accents missing).

35. Very clever and entertaining puzzle from Brendan. Thanks to Eileen for nutting it all out.
    Now I have the Corries’ version of ‘A man’s a man (for a’ that)’ as an earworm.
    THEMED was my first in, but the theme and MO revealed themselves only gradually. Once I realised what was going on, I had great help from the ‘A’ entry in the online Chambers.
    I didn’t get “god/s” as the theatrical part.
    Favourites were ANSWER, ASCOTS (tricky to parse), PERNOD, ANGSTROM, ARGONAUTS (with help from google re argon).
    Thanks both.

36. As I remember (I haven’t checked) A for argon was changed to Ar because of the ambiguity that A was also used for relative atomic mass at the time. Ironically, relative atomic mass is now Ar, though the r is a subscript.

37. Edtheball @ 24

    I also vote against khayyam @ 10 for the same reasons as you. I like to take my time over the Saturday puzzle and not feel I have to rush.

38. Fiona @37 et al
    You aren’t compelled to read the blog!

39. Muffin @38. No one is ever compelled to either read the blog or join in the discussion, but some like to do it as a community activity. In the unlikely event that the prize puzzle is blogged earlier than at present, people might feel under pressure to complete the puzzle so as not to miss out.

40. SH @39
    Sorry, I don’t understand that. You finish the puzzle (or fail to), then read the blog, yes?

41. For those that want to discuss the puzzle same day, we have a very polite and considered discussion here (that link takes you to today’s chat btw) each Saturday where no solutions are given and only hints and nudges are given for anyone struggling. It’s an option for anyone not wanting to wait a full week.

42. What a treat – a puzzle compiled by an A* setter and explained by a favourite blogger!

    Our first entry was AMOUNT, which made me suspicious of a theme, only to be hijacked by a potential biblical theme, as mentioned by Roberto@23. However, a few entries later, the intended theme became apparent, clinched by the superb, ‘unthemed’ THEMED!

    I understand Eileen’s explanation for 16d, but my own explanation was ‘per’ for ‘sign’ as in ‘signed for’ (see Wiki), ‘nod’ for ‘agreement’ giving ‘a drink’, which unfortunately unthemes it!

    Since Brendan is a statistician (like what I am), he may be interested in knowing (or know) that the theme is employed 25 times (including twice in 5a, Eileen’s explanation of 16d and obviously THEMED itself!) in the 26 clues. In addition, the letter A occurs exactly 21 times in each of the across and down answers, with a frequency of use in the grid over twice the usual usage (approx. 20% compared to 8%).

    Our favourites, in no particular order, were STAIRWELLS, PANAMA CANAL, BASSOS, ANGSTROM and, obviously, THEMED. It’s a wonder that Brendan did not manage to include TARAMASALATA!

    Thanks to B and E.

43. [Marser @42
    As a friend was having hummus in a pub lunch today, I commented that I haven’t seen taramasalata for ages. What’s happened to it?]

44. I forgot to ask – would someone explain GOAD please? Is the theatre referred to as “the Gods”? Or is it the name of a particular theatre? If it is the general use, I have been a regular theatre goer in three countries and never heard that term. Is it a UK term?

45. Martyn @44
    “The gods” are the relatively cheap seats right at the top of the auditorium. I agree that “the god” doesn’t really make sense.

46. I’m glad to see a better parsing of VACANT than I managed; V (very) with ACAT (an obscure computer language that came up in a search) around N (note).
    LOI was GOAD, I thought about the gods but also thought the clue was leading elsewhere (I almost wrangled GOAT from wordplay but no definition).
    I appreciate the respectful delay in the blog for the prize crosswords, particularly when it comes to the bank holiday specials.

47. Thanks, Eileen, you got everything I intended. Thanks also those who pointed out other connections I hadn’t thought of. Along with the central crossers, ARARAT and CANAAN (A the only vowel) were the elastic to get to the constraint I set myself. And special thanks for no serious gripes about “pre-1957”. I couldn’t find anything else to do the necessary. I thought people could conjecture the factoid, some would be interested and look it up, and most would get the answer without needing it.

48. Many thanks, Brendan – Phew!

49. I spent ages not writing in Pernod because it didn’t have an A in it!
    I liked the theme, pity about Pernod

50. Rich @46 ACAT isn’t all that obscure. It’s the system IBM developed with Stephen Hawking which enabled him to speak. I had the same parsing, but was unsure because ACAT is language-adjacent, rather than actually being a language. https://youtu.be/TXY8IKFeKZs?feature=shared. Eileen’s parsing makes much more sense.

51. To echo AP @18, the symbol for angstrom (named after Jonas Ångström) should be Å, and the “fiddly foreign squiggle” in fact makes it a different letter, with a different sound! Apart from that, the theme was good fun – thanks Brendan & Eileen

52. Thanks muffin@45 for explaining the god. I suspect the gods may be a UK colloquialism that I do not know, so I probably could not have parsed GOAD anyway

53. khayyam @ 11

    The Guardian Saturday puzzle is a prize with entry closing the following Friday.

    To blog it before entry closes would give an unfair advantage to people who are aware of this site over those who aren’t.

    As such it is a ridiculous and risible suggestion.

54. The penny dropped for me with ANGSTROM after which I surveyed the grid more closely. I loved it and was pleased to get back onto Saturday form.

55. I didn’t fully twig the theme, as I missed the subtlety of the multiple methods of getting to the letter A in the clues, but got all the answers regardless. I went down exactly the path Brendan @47 describes for the ARGONAUT and looked up the Wiki article on argon to confirm. I now think the clue’s very nifty with its misdirection to vintage cars! Sure, it depends on rather obscure knowledge, but the availability of online resources these days makes it an enjoyable experience to untangle. In short, no worries!
    I failed to remember CANAAN as a region in itself, so I thought we were dealing with an adjective describing Cana and the definition included the “in”. It’s been a while since I picked up the good book 🙂 .
    A’ in a’ (missed that subtlety too!), an enjoyable romp.
    Thanks, Brendan and Eileen for fully explaining the theme to me.

56. SimonS@53 and khayyam@11 – of course there is a place where you can get all the answers the next day after it appears latest if you really want. I’d just give up on the ‘prize’ bit tbh – I do assume an honor system amongst solvers though, so maybe I’m being overly cynical.

    Just lovely puzzle, as ever from Brendan. Was talking with folks today about Perec’s novel without the letter ‘e’ and am still remembering his themed puzzle wh eschewed I think the same letter … .

57. Thanks phitonelly@55 for clearing up another mystery for me. I could not see any post by Brendan, so I could not understand Eileen’s post @48 until you indirectly pointed out that Brendan = Brian Greer.

58. Thanks Eileen for explaining ASCOTS which was the only one I didn’t manage to get. For PERNOD, I parsed as PER (sign) + NOD (agreement) with the definition being a drink. Because PER is apparently the name of a symbol – like ampersand. But I accept that your method fits better with the A theme!
    And thanks Brendan – I loved this crossword

59. Really enjoyed this one. And, as usual, a great blog @Eileen. Didn’t get the Burns reference, so it was good to see that explanation.
    We got THEMED early on so it wasn’t long before “A” was out of the closet. But it still needed work to complete the puzzle, so the perfect Saturday treat over coffee and indulgent 🥐 – which, btw, are a joy with slices of 🍓or a raspberry or several.
    Thank you Brendan and Eileen.

60. I’ve a vague recollection that, many years ago, Araucaria set a puzzle published on 1 April in which every crosser was A. PANAMA CANAL was in either the central row or the central column. Anyone remember that? Brendan@8: I’m sure it was Private Eye but I can’t give chapter and verse. Again, a long time ago.

61. I’m probably too late (again) for anyone to see this, but there was a strange coincidence this morning. After reading the blog to find the explanation for ASCOTS, I was listening to Cerys Matthew’s on 6Music and lo and behold, someone recited that very same Robert Burns poem!

62. Tamarix @61 – thanks for that. I love it when that kind of thing happens. Similar to yours, I remember hearing Prince Charles (as he was then) reading Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ on Radio 4 before I got up and then finding it in the FT crossword later on – not quite so remarkable as yours, because it was the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth, so the whole puzzle was themed.

63. I’m surprised how often this sort of thing does happen. Usually related to questions on quiz shows, eg Uni Challenge. Which happens to be returning tonight, get the brains in gear…

64. Muffin @38,40: No one’s forced to read the blog, but there is enjoyment in participating in the discussion while it is “live” (as opposed to a few days later when people have moved on and won’t be reading and responding to comments). Saturday’s crosswords have traditionally had a different rhythm. There are people who enjoy taking a few days with it rather than solving it in one sitting on Saturday itself.

    Anyway, all of this is moot. The primary reason not to blog a crossword before the prize deadline is that it would be discourteous.

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