It’s Philistine in the Prize slot for the Saturday before Christmas.
Our crossword editor has kept us guessing all week, one way or another. The Prize puzzle on the Saturday before Christmas (and other Bank Holidays) has traditionally, for a number of years, been a Maskarade Jumbo crossword. At the August Bank Holiday this year, we were surprised to find an Enigmatist puzzle in the Prize slot, with a Jumbo in the printed paper, which was not available online. There was no explanation for this and it was unclear whether this was a temporary departure from the usual pattern – or even a mistake – and so I wasn’t at all sure what to expect last Saturday.
It turned out to be a puzzle from one of my favourite setters – so no complaints from me – along with, in a special Puzzles Supplement to the paper, a cryptic puzzle from Ludwig, which was not available online and not scheduled to be blogged here.
During the week, there was unofficial word that there would be a Jumbo puzzle in the paper on Saturday 27th, which, as I write, on Friday 26th evening, is obviously not available yet. Meanwhile, this morning, we had a surprise appearance by Enigmatist (who had also provided the Independent and FT puzzles, on a common theme) which should have gone some way to satisfying those who had been disappointed at not finding a stiffer challenge last weekend.
Back to the job in hand: I thoroughly enjoyed, as expected, Philistine’s puzzle last Saturday, mostly straightforward, apart from, for me, the parsing of the pesky 10ac, which I had to keep returning to and nibbling away at throughout the week, ending in near despair by yesterday evening. After a very enjoyable and lively family day on Christmas Day, I had a quiet day today to turn my thoughts back to this clue that had been left hanging all week, as I tried various ways of interpreting the wordplay – lower case l or upper case I? – or perhaps different lengths of dashes? – or even (I’m sorry to say this) always the possibility of a Guardian typographical error, mumbling possibilities to myself and rejecting them all in turn. From the beginning, I suspected a ‘lift and separate’, one of Philistine’s favourite devices (mine, too) but I just couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I woke up this morning saying to myself, for the umpteenth time, ‘Why the capital O?’ and then the crash of pennies dropping could surely be heard throughout Crosswordland. (As so often, so obvious when light finally dawns.)
Lots of lovely clues, with great surfaces, especially 9ac OVERWHELM, 14ac CURMUDGEON, 24ac NO LET-UP, the two splendid anagrams at 1dn TOTALITARIANISM and 8dn MORNING SICKNESS, the characteristic misdirection in 2dn HELPLESS, 5dn EMBLEM, 7dn IMPEDE, 15dn GESTATING, and 17dn VALHALLA.
There’s also a Nina – THE NEW IMMIGRANTS – in the top and bottom rows, which I found as a band but I’m not sure of the significance.
My thanks to Philistine for the puzzle and best wishes for a very happy (better) new year to all.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
9 Whoever confused sources of lake, marsh or swamp (9)
OVERWHELM
An anagram (confused) of WHOEVER + L[ake] + M[arsh]
10 Lover – or lOver? (5)
ROMEO
See above: of course, it’s ‘lover with a capital O’ : ROME (capital) + O – Oh!! 🙁
11 Like a range of medicine (7)
ASPIRIN
AS (like) + PIRIN (a mountain range in Bulgaria)
12 Learnt about the origin of neon light (7)
LANTERN
An anagram (about) of LEARNT + N[eon]
13 Inside of Tibet, ten species of goat (4)
IBEX
Inside letters of tIBE]t + X (ten)
14 Cantankerous person’s dog gone berserk round wet ground (10)
CURMUDGEON
CUR (dog) + an anagram (berserk) of GONE round MUD (wet ground) – an excellent construction and surface (and a lovely word, as is ‘cantankerous’, too)
16 Harsh return of historical period eating suet pudding (7)
AUSTERE
A reversal (return) of ERA (historical period) round an anagram (pudding) of SUET
17 6 + 3 spectators (7)
VIEWERS
VI (6) + EWERS (answer to 3dn)
19 Voracious in a bestial way (10)
INSATIABLE
An anagram (way) of IN A BESTIAL
22 Some of Homer’s work is in the picture (4)
EPIC
Contained in thE PICture
24 With this, endlessly opulent style (2,3-2)
NO LET-UP
An anagram (style) of OPULENT
25 Where to find lots of uniform-wearing action (7)
AUCTION
U (uniform) in ACTION
26 One’s simple transgression over a short time (5)
SIMON
SIN (transgression) round MO[ment (a short time)
The simple lad who met a pieman going to the fair, in the nursery rhyme
27 Sensitive reactions when showrooms demoted chief (9)
ALLERGIES
gALLERIES (showrooms, with the g moved further along the answer – demoted )
Down
1 To talk endlessly with a martini is cocktail tyranny (15)
TOTALITARAIANISM
TO + TAL[k] + an anagram (cocktail) of A MARTINI IS
2 Please lash out, as going weak (8)
HELPLESS
A typically Philistine clue: an anagram (out) of PLE[as]E LASH minus as (a + a, i.e. the letter a twice – not ‘as’!)
As PostMark pointed out @10, I made rather a mess of explaining this.
A better way (thanks William @28):
PLE[a]SE L[a]SH minus as (a + a, i.e. the letter a twice – not ‘as’!)?
3 Drain top to bottom pitchers (5)
EWERS
[s]EWER (drain) with the first letter moved to the end
4 Light switched in principle, but no entry! (4,4)
NEON TUBE
A neatly hidden reversal (switched) in principlE BUT NO ENtry
5 Sign of new mobile home leaving Ohio (6)
EMBLEM
An anagram (new) of MoBiLE hoME minus ohio
6 Redo clue for ‘perpetrator’ (9)
WRONGDOER
A reverse anagram: REDO is an anagram (wrong) of DOER
7 Peed off with writer’s block (6)
IMPEDE
I’M (writer’s) + an anagram (off) of PEED
8 Spoilt men rinsing socks? That’s expecting trouble (7,8)
MORNING SICKNESS
An anagram (spoilt) of MEN RINSING SOCKS) – great surface and definition (top favourite – but ugh!)
15 Developing cholesterol treatment in scrambled egg (9)
GESTATING
STATIN (cholesterol treatment) in an anagram (scrambled) of EGG – I can identify, much more recently, with this one, too!
17 Now and then viable God rises to welcome fallen warriors here (8)
VALHALLA
Alternate letters (now and then) of ViAble + a reversal (rises, in a down clue) of ALLAH
18 Graphic and sexy chapter, essentially legal (8)
EXPLICIT
Middle letters (essentially) of sEXy chaPter + LICIT (legal)
20 I am sadly returning this sausage (6)
SALAMI
A reversal (returning) of I’M (I am) + ALAS (sadly)
21 Turn up with listener in support of computer programme (6)
APPEAR
APP (computer programme) + EAR (listener)
23 My foray into Sierra Nevada at first produced disdain (5)
SCORN
COR (my) in Sierra Nevada
Very entertaining crossword and thanks Eileen for the brilliant blog and putting me out of my misery with ROMEO, baffled me all week as well. I definitely didn’t find it straightforward and it took a lot of visits. MORNING SICKNESS was by far the standout and HELPLESS was a close second. Tiny typo in the home bit of EMBLEM. I saw the Nina but checking on Spotify, I can’t see any song titles, so maybe it has a wider significance, which I can’t see either.
Ta Philistine & Eileen.
I thought ROMEO might be ROME (L = Latin) + O (over), but “capital O” was probably what was intended. No clue what THE NEW IMMIGRANTS is about.
Thanks Philistine for an enjoyable crossword with my favourites being IBEX, ALLERGIES, EMBLEM, MORNING SICKNESS (liked the definition), and EXPLICIT. I couldn’t parse ROMEO or NEON TUBE. I spotted the Nina, The New Immigrants, a London band.
https://www.thenewimmigrants.org/
Thanks Eileen for the super blog. Happy New Year.
Loved ROMEO, NO LET-UP, HELPLESS and MORNING SICKNESS.
INSATIABLE
How does ‘way’ work as an anagrind?
WRONGDOER
redo clue=clue for redo?
Nice puzzle. Super blog.
Thanks Philistine and Eileen.
KVa @4: I had the same question about ‘way’ as an anagrind. I understand ‘way-out’ or ‘wayward’ but ‘way’ by itself doesn’t make sense unless you see ‘in a bestial way’ as a combination of anagrind & fodder’. Partial &lit?
Delightful puzzle. Clever and funny clues. LOI 4d NEON TUBE, well hidden. The long downs were both great — 1d TOTALITARIANISM (“cocktail tyranny”) and 8d MORNING SICKNESS (“men rinsing socks” and “expecting trouble”). 20 SALAMI was funny. 19a INSATIABLE, great surface combined with a great anagram (parsed as suggested by TS@5)
I couldn’t parse 10a ROMEO either — dastardly! I suppose the wordplay could just be “O”?
A big thank you to both!
Trusting everyone has had happy times during the Christmas season so far, and well wishes to all for 2026.
I really enjoyed this puzzle from Philistine, my first success for a while as I haven’t been doing as many puzzles in the past couple of months. Hopefully I can lift my game in the new year!
Couldn’t agree more with Eileen’s favourites and several mentioned by others, but I do have to add 25a AUCTION and 26a SIMON, both of which were a bit easier for this ageing brain of mine while fun at the same time.
It took me a while to see how ROMEO at 10a worked but I also had a flash of insight (a little like the one Eileen describes) when it was one of my only remaining “unsolveds” [It was reassuring that I haven’t “lost it” altogether.]
Thank you to Philistine for a fine and satisfying puzzle and to Eileen for her usual thorough and engaging blog.
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, having to kick myself a few times on returning to clues I didn’t twig on my first (or second!) pass. Getting the two long ones quite early on obviously helped, but SCORN and NEON TUBE (both of them very neat clues) took longer than they should have. I eventually got ROMEO as parsed above.
Thanks to Philistine, and to Eileen for an excellent blog.
A delightfully tricky puzzle with great surfaces and a very entertaining blog.
The most challenging clues for me were the subtractions of HELPLESS and EMBLEM and finding the hidden reversal in NEON TUBE (a guess and retro parse).
I loved the long anagrams MORNING SICKNESS (favourite) and TOTALITARIANISM.
Other likes include the neat NO LET-UP and of course, HELPLESS, worth the battle.
I couldn’t parse ROMEO or ASPIRIN (nho Pirin Range).
Thanks to Philistine and Eileen.
Eileen, I think your parse for HELPLESS needs a tweak. You have noted that it is a subtraction of multiple A’s yet your explanation is showing the deletion of ‘AS’ which leaves you with one too many A’s and one too few S’s.
Thanks both
A very enjoyable puzzle, not difficult but I missed the Nina and failed to parse ROMEO, which is a magnificent clue. Thanks Philistine for the fun and Eileen for a great blog!
Thanks Eileen. A clever mix of the not too hard to get us started and the ones that took quite a bit more consideration. With all the crossers in place I became fixated with “grenadier” for 6d and was relieved to see the error of my ways when it was the LOI. For once I did see the nina and look forward to somebody more enlightened than me explaining it.
I remember enjoying this but can no longer recall the solving process itself! I know I appreciated the two long ones, CURMUDGEON, and the cute IBEX. I was less enthused by “way” as an anagrind, but no doubt someone will come up with something.
I failed on WRONGDOER; just couldn’t pad the checkers, and anyway was fixated on the parse being the other way around (redo as def, solution giving clue for perpetrator). And NEON TUBE was a desperately close-run thing, with the two-word solution, multi-word fodder and unpromising indicator all making for a very unlikely and hence well-hidden hidden.
For ROMEO, I confess I hand-waved “lOver” as per Cineraria@2, which kind of works – but I’ve no doubt that the intended parse is that given by Eileen. Which results in a clue that does also kind of work… but I’m not convinced it strictly works. The (lovely) underlying idea is “Lover with a capital O”, and I would have thought that the natural clue for it, Dingbats style, would simply be “lOver? (5)” – but of course that would require an unusual decapitalization of the initial letter of the clue, with the danger that solvers read the lowercase L as capital i (albeit that the website puzzle which I solve by uses a font face which distinguishes those). I wonder whether the editor or indeed the setter rejected this simpler clue for that reason.
Oh, and HELPLESS was very clever and had me first indignant (c.f. PM@10) and then red-faced and chuckling.
Thanks both!
Nice quick puzzle, but plenty of very satisfying tricks.
My favourites were ROMEO and WRONGDOER.
ROMEO
AP#13
Mig#6 has an interesting take. Just clue it as O.
O lover!
WRONGDOER
Would ‘Perpetrator’s clue for redo’ have worked better?
Thank you Philistine for an enjoyable challenge which fell into my usual pattern of leaving 2 unfilled and several parsing issues. Can’t believe I didn’t spot NEON TUBE. I was completely flummoxed but there it was right in front of me. Very clever.
Like everyone else I couldn’t figure out ROMEO and to be honest I’m still a bit unsure even though I see that it’s clever. I kept reading it as ten ver or 1 Over. It does rather depend on you reading it exactly as ‘lover with a capital O’ which is not a given. But perhaps I’m grumpy because I didn’t spot it!
Can’t believe I didn’t parse VIEWERS. There is no hope for me!
Thank you for the explanations.
Enjoyed this very much. Also baffled by ROMEO and didn’t spot that NEON TUBE was hidden……
My two favourites were: CURMUDGEON (as said – a lovely word) and HELPLESS (spotted the “two a’s” for once)
Thanks Philistine and Eileen
I failed to solve 10ac, 4d, 6d, 7d and I could not parse 11ac except for AS=like (never heard of PIRIN mountains).
I received a lot of enjoyment from this puzzle, and felt this was Philistine at his best.
Getting the two long anagrams (great anagrams, btw) got me off to a good start. I made steady progress until the last few, which needed a second visit despite having most of the crossers. WRONGDOER was my last one in – I understood the clue, but it just took time to find the answer.
I liked many clues. I ticked OVERWHELM, CURMUDGEON (what a great word too!), VALHALLA, IMPEDE, and AUCTION (so simple and elegant!). I could have ticked many more. Despite the discussion so far, I do not see a parsing for ROMEO that I understand.
Thanks Philistine and Eileen
PostMark @10
I did get myself into a bit of a pickle over HELPLESS – the result of my over-careful avoidance of the use of the apostrophe in this context. I’m grateful that you – and others, apparently – were able to see what I was trying to convey. 😉
As for ‘way’ as an anagram indicator, of course we want it to be ‘in a way’ but that doesn’t quite work, does it? A pity.
Typo in EMBLEM now fixed, thanks, AlanC @1.
Thanks for the blog, Eileen. Like you I was a little puzzled by the Nina.
In fact the Ludwig that appeared in the printed paper (with the solution on the next page) is also available online: it is on the Guardian app, anyway.
KVa@15 (and Mig@6), yeah that’s nice too and would be a middle ground; the lifting of the O from the surface still requires extra thought there. Better than an explicit “Lover with a capital O!” which is too easy to do the idea justice (tho still not a write-in), and whose surface is any case isn’t very sensical, unlike one of my dad’s old favourite utterances about some of his offspring’s musical tastes: rap with a capital C.
To take up Eileen’s comment about the customary holiday Jumbo, today’s Prize has Special Instructions stating that the print edition has a Maskarade jumbo. I feel defrauded once again.
Helpless and Romeo bothered me until this blog, forgot about as being multiple letter a, so big thanks for the explanations.
Thanks Philistine and Eileen. Finished, but with a couple unparsed including the tricky ROMEO.
Thanks to Philistine and Eileen. A fun puzzle with an interesting Nina – I wonder what Philistine’s connection is?
[Poc#23 – I’m guessing that like me you are a paid-up Guardian subscriber. It seems extraordinary to be penalised for going paperless these days, particularly by an organisation that professes to be so environmentally aware.]
I didn’t spot the nina – and wouldn’t have understood it anyway – liked VIEWERS and HELPLESS and the surface for LANTERN. Thank you Eileen for explaining ROMEO, and thanks Philistine for the fun.
[DuncT@26 regarding your comment to Poc@23: I couldn’t agree more!
However, given the Guardian’s habitual misprints and admin hiccups, it may simply be a mistake. In addition, the Guardian’s online set-up is very far from infallible, and I doubt that the crossword is a high priority…]
Thanks for very useful Blog Eileen.
I was stuck on 2d trying to get somewhere without “as”. Your explanation is perfect but might it not be safer to write:
PLE[a]SE L[a]SH minus as (a + a, i.e. the letter a twice – not ‘as’!)?
Just a thought…
Thank you for that, William @28. You’re quite right of course. When I responded @20 this morning to PostMark’s comment @10, I was trying to do several things at once and meant to come back to it – and forgot! I’ll clarify it now.
Poc#23 I could see the jumbo crossword using the Guardian Editions app today ( but presumably this is just a rendition of the printed version ). Annoyingly, it includes the answers on the same page just below. I prefer to have a week or more before these are revealed.
I only spotted today that I had missed doing this one when it came out. I worked from the easier (for me) RHS towards the left. The long anagrams for MORNING SICKNESS and TOTALITARIANISM were very pleasing, as everyone else has said. Much more good stuff, too.
But a DNF, as I couldn’t see that hidden in plain sight NEON TUBE, nor did I spot it from the crossers and going up and down the alphabet. So thanks Eileen for putting me right on that ( a proper “Doh” moment on reading the answer… I should have seen it but there you go) and for clarifying the parsing of HELPLESS. I was beginning to persuade myself it was a typo…should have known better!
And thanks to Philistine for a nice bit of fun in what Mrs TheSheep has taken to calling “the merryneum”.
I managed to convince myself that 10ac was a combination of ‘or’ with ‘me’=I and O but the reversal isn’t clued.
Naomi@32 I was working on that theory too, with “Over” as the reversal indicator. Doesn’t quite work, of course
I eventually parsed 2D when I realised that it wasn’t as (rhymes with has) but as (rhymes with haze)!
ROMEO was my last one in; it had to be the answer. After about an hour of staring at it, followed by a very loud groan, it finally went in.
Great fun!
[ Eileen,
I’m a week behind on my crosswords, so have only now finished this typically delightful Philistine puzzle.
Nothing to add to your excellent blog , except to join in your fondness for the word curmudgeon. When I retired from my day job, I had business cards made that gave my new occupation as “Professional idler and curmudgeon-at-large.” ]