Guardian Prize 26,974 by Maskarade

100 comments on “Guardian Prize 26,974 by Maskarade”

1. Sweet holy mother of Jesus, this puzzle was hard. I spent pretty much the whole weekend doing it. Even then, the Austrian valley eluded me entirely, SCUTS and TANGHIN were BIFD in by a friend I asked for help, and several of the others towards the end were solved only with aggressive Googling.

   As with bridgesong, LAUGH-IN was my first in, a total write-in. (Another famous alumna of the show was Lily Tomlin.) I was surprised to see this entry, since television, especially comedy, hasn’t criss-crossed the Atlantic to the same extent that other bits of mass culture have.

   I was honestly kind of shocked that Tuvalu never showed up.

2. I thought Maskerade really hit his straps with this one. It must have been a daunting challenge to fill Araucaria’s shoes but this one really shone. You could almost imagine it being nearly as good without the letter-sequence requirement. The surfaces were especially good and you could hardly see the joins at all.

   Full marks from me.

   BTW – we (ie Mrs Bradford and I) did eventually get there – over a few sessions – a real slow burner. Surely that is the intention of bank holiday puzzles – in case it rains – or the torridity drives you indoors – or floating around on a lilo in your swimming pool – depending on circumstance and location.

3. I read the “Special Instructions” and decided not to bother with this. There are places for “tricksy” puzzles of this type, but I don’t think the main crossword in a daily paper, even as a Bank Holiday Prize, is one of them.

   (I had a very busy weekend anyway, so probably wouldn’t have had time for a normal Prize either!)

4. I thought this was Maskarade’s best so far. No problems following the instructions and DEFROCK was the first of a number of easier starters. Yes there were some very obscure solutions and I did take a long time and many web searches to complete it – DEFEREGGEN was especially elusive but there are some great clues particularly for the short ones and the grid fill is a work of art. So exactly what a holiday special should be.
   Thanks to Maskarade and bridgesong

5. I have just spent 15 minutes composing a comment, and on using “Preview Comment” tried to correct MASKERADE by deleting the E in the Preview Comment only to find my entire script disappeared.

   You will just have to imagine what I said as I don’t have the time to redo it!

   Thanks MASKARADE, bridgesong and partners.

6. Thanks to Maskarade and bridgesong. This took me a while to get going – not least to understand the rather convoluted way the instructions were written – but after a couple of write ins, and realising that there would be only a limited number of threesomes (ie mainly around e, i, o and u) it yielded steadily over the weekend. Good bank holiday fun.

7. Too hard for us. A pity, as I like this device – I remember Araucaria using a similar idea once (can’t remember the details, only Cherie LunGHI :))
   LAUGH-IN was also first-in for us, but two days later we’d only entered a handful and quit.
   Looking at some of the answers, I can only salute those who persevered…
   but thanks for the blog – a titanic effort!

   (Dave @5. If you’re using a Windows machine, Ctrl-Z might have rescued your comments)

8. Gosh, what a feat! Spent a long time stating at this – like a magic eye puzzle – until the construction started to come into focus, and then it proved a very satisfying challenge. Yes, we had to Google some of the more obscure words, but given the task the compiler had set himself (and us!), it did not seem unreasonable. Great respect to Maskerade for the achievement, and thanks to bridgesong for the blog.

9. This really was a super puzzle. The concise clueing, à la Maskarade, was highly reminiscent of the double alphabetical special from this setter that I enjoyed so much over the Easter holiday.

   I hadn’t heard of 9 of the answers, but that was to be expected in a puzzle like this. One of those 9 was LAUGH-IN, which I have noted was the FOI of two of you, at least. 22d SCUTS was the only answer I failed to parse properly, so thanks to bridgesong for that and for the excellent preamble and blog.

   My favourite clues/ansers were three 9-letter ones which left real words after the subtraction – very neat:
   10a MACDERMOT minus CDE leaves MARMOT.
   14d COSTUMERS minus STU leaves COMERS.
   48a SOMNOLENT minus MNO leaves SOLENT.

   There were 32 subtractions to be made from 54 answers – a stupendous achievement by the setter.

   I thought a name like 50a RIJKSMUSEUM might appear because IJK is common in Dutch names and other words. I liked this one because that museum is one of my top two favourite museums in the world (not that I’ve been to a great many).

   I also liked mrpenney’s comment about Tuvalu. How did this not make it into the puzzle?!

   Many thanks to Maskarade for an excellent holiday special.

10. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed doing a puzzle so much for a long time, even though I failed to quite complete it – the Austrian valley defeated long searching.

    I agree with BH@4; it’s just what a long week-end break calls for.

    For 22 Bridgesong attributes ‘sc’ to sculptors and artists; I think it is more frequently used to indicate engravers who engrave other artists’ work.

    Admiration for the compiler as I worked through it was matched by that for the blogger, presumably struggling like me. Thanks to both.

11. This was a great puzzle so thanks Maskarade and Bridges ong for your sterling work. I failed to finish far too many obscure words for me and completely messed up by putting edelweiss in 2 down thinking it was a high Austrian alpine.

12. This took me longer than that day’s Listener puzzle, and I doubt I’d have finished it at all without extensive use of solving aids and Internet searches (like others the Austrian valley held me up quite a while). It got easier as answers went in as it was possible to look for potential three-letter sequences and although I’ll admit I’d had enough by the end, I am full of admiration at the work that must have gone into constructing this. Maskarade really went the extra mile here and hats off to him.

    Someone on the recent long thread said that the clues were sloppy. I disagree. A puzzle like this demands tight clueing and that’s what we got. There were a few short connecting words between the two halves of some of the clues that didn’t belong to either part, but I suppose this is inevitable if long and meaningless strings of words are to be avoided.

    It’s coincidental and perhaps unfortunate for Maskarade that this coincided with the letters complaining about difficulty, but of course that doesn’t detract from a superb achievement.

13. A remarkable tour de force, and a very stiff challenge for solvers – a great show of defiance (unintended of course) to the ‘crosswords are getting harder’ brigade. ( I don’t think they are, by the way).

    It’s a testament to the excellence of the clueing that I didn’t make any mistakes on the way.

    Some of the obscurities had to be worked out by trial and error or the internet; I had a (possibly unique) headstart in getting one of them as I remembered Lord Trefgarne as Minister for Shipping when I worked on shipping policy in the 1980s.

    As has been said, a really excellent puzzle for a Bank Holiday. The only downside was that it kept me indoors when I should have been out enjoying the unusual BH sunshine!

14. A fantastic puzzle that I was determined to finish. Worked on it over the weekend, took a break on the Monday, and completed it on the Tuesday. AGAMEMNON went straight in, this led to a search on the internet for the Persian city, which was pretty certain to be ECBATANA with an A as its fourth letter and its CBA sequence. FRONDESCE was a new, or forgotten, word, but it ties in with “floresce”, and TANGHIN, SCRYNE, GYMNOPEDIES and DEFEREGGEN were all new and the last in.

    I kept looking for HIJACK, HIJINKS or HIJAB, and also for AFGHAN.

    Thank you Maskarade and bridgesong

15. I have no doubt at all over Maskerade’s accomplishment is constructing this crossword. I bow to those who solved it and accept their assurances over its merits. As a regular and average Guardian cryptic fan, my gripe s that it was deemed to be a Bank Holiday crossword – as someone says above, this was not the place for it. My guess is that most who buy the G with a view to having a crossword experience which fits in to the demands of family life will have felt cheated – I did and my little group of fellow solvers felt that too. Puzzles that take 90 words to have their rules delineated are more than crosswords. And they are more than double crosswords. Get real editor please.

16. Well, I thought it was brilliant with clues as concise as feasible. Finished it eventually over three days bar the Austrian valley. Hats off and thanks to Maskarade and Bridgesong.

17. Flippin’ ‘eck! This was certainly a challenge, and one that beat me. I managed to do about two thirds of it over the Saturday and Sunday, and was pleased with myself for getting that much. But by then I was grinding to a halt, and didn’t have the will or stamina to go back to it later.

    Great respect to Maskarade for compiling such an intricate puzzle. I note the differing views as to whether it was too hard. I have mixed feelings. The special instructions seemed daunting at first, but were in fact fine when you got the hang of them. But for me there were just too many obscurities here: TREFGARNE, FRONDESCE, TANGHIN, MONOPRIX, SCRYNE, DEFEREGGEN, Valerie Le Vaillant, Rififi, tann, kupfer…

18. Respect and thanks to Maskerade for constructing such a tour de force, and to Bridgesong for doing the lions’ share of the solving (and all the blogging!).
    It’s regretable that some find this level too hard or inappropriate but there is a very long tradition of these in the Grauniad on holidays – I remember tackling them with my father some 50 years ago -and it’s only a few times a year. For me the enjoyment is much more in trying to solve every clue, admiring the craft and wit of the setter, than in completing it, though that is an undeniable bonus. Keep them coming, please, editor.
    As for “Tuvalu”, where would it go in the grid and what’s your clue?

19. Thanks, all for your comments. No doubt the debate about whether or not it was too hard will continue.

    I should have pointed out that FILM NOIR is even cleverer than I had first realised, because Rififi is a black and white film (or more properly, noir et blanc) and If….. is in colour. I do of course know that film noir is used by cineastes to refer to a certain genre of film, but I still think the clue is clever.

20. Hearty congratulations and thanks to setter and blogger. I do agree with JimS above about the number of obscurities, although these were perhaps unavoidable given the taxing nature of Maskarade’s self-imposed strictures.

    I’ll admit that my first response on reading the instructions, was “sod that; life’s too short for this”. But I’m now feeling very smug that I finished it – and over a mere couple of days.

21. Am I alone in thinking that there are excellent setters, Paul. Screw, Vlad for example who are capable of providing difficult, fair, and accessible crosswords which would fill the Bank Holiday slot.Surely this would be preferable to expecting regular solvers, and Guardian purchasers , to slog their way through this contrived, self indulgent nonsense.

22. bridgesong @19

    It gets better. Rififi (1955) is a film noir, according to Wikipedia. What a masterful clue – and it only works in this way if you take out LMNO!

23. Well,it’s hardly worth repeating that this was hard and probably impossible without the use of various electronic aids- +, in my case, Mrs PA! For me the cleverness of the puzzle only emerged when I was about half way through. FOI was DRAB and then the NW corner but I didn’t complete the puzzle until Tuesday morning. It’s easy to sound smug once the puzzle is completed and I suppose I do, but had you encountered me on Sunday afternoon it was an entirely different story.
    I’d never heard of TREFGARNE or DEFEREGGEN or MONOPRIX for that matter but eventually found them and I see no reason why words like these shouldn’t be used. I do understand why some people gave up. Some years ago I might have done so. I’m far too bloody minded to do so now.
    Thanks Maskarade.

24. Timon@18
    As I have said, I have tackled the G crossword for over 50 years. Bank Holiday specials have always been a highlight and anticipated with enthusiasm. I can admit that usually they have defeated me but the effort and challenge has been worthwhile. But now we have gone from innovation and increased size to as is stated above ‘self-indulgent nonsense’ . I should earlier have thanked the blogger for the Herculean effort and now having read the solutions I see little that makes me smile or want to kick myself.
    I too read the intro and said ‘sod this’, literally so, and elsewhere I have described this as a GCHQ training exercise – it may be technically brilliant but it is not what I look for from the G on a BH weekend. I see nothing but an arid narrative created from alphabetical coincidences. The thought as someone suggests here that Maskarade is now a tradition on BHs is depressing. Sure there is a place for everyone’s taste but, editor, please listen to everyone’s voice. As things stand and for the first time for 50+ years the cryptic crossword is way 13down the list of the reasons I subscribe to my beloved newspaper.

25. The normal programmes aren’t on the telly and the Guardian has a special crossword – it must be a bank holiday.

    I thought this was tremendous. It took a long time and a lot of reference material, but surely that’s what these puzzles have always been about? They’re supposed to be a different challenge from the daily norm.

    Many thanks to Maskerade and bridgesong.

    p.s. Tuvalu wasn’t the only potential missing country, I was expecting Afghanistan to make an appearance.

26. Almost finished this. Failed to get ‘SCUTS’ and while it had to be ‘CAPONE’ I couldn’t see why; as ever it’s the hidden answers that I fail to spot. On balance, I approve of this puzzle – a good challenge that was just right for a long bank holiday weekend, when I happened to be travelling solo a lot. I only found the linking words that weren’t part of either clue a touch annoying, particularly the preponderance of ‘having’.

27. Timon @18 and others
    I don’t remember a BH puzzle that needed half a page of special instructions. Araucaria’s speciality was the double crossword, in which clues had to be split somewhere to give the two solutions – explained ina sentence or two!

28. Once i got the hang of it a terrific puzzle. Foi Agamemnon which revealed the awkward instructions. Frustratingly left with Tanghin as the only unsolved

29. I managed 13 answers after going back to the puzzle several times every day. What a relief when bridgesong’s blog appeared. I do like a challenge for the Bank Holiday but found that this clever puzzle was too difficult.

30. I don’t think the special instructions were any more complicated than many of Araucaria’s – I think the length was determined by the need to eliminate any ambiguity. I didn’t find the concept at all hard to grasp, admittedly some of the solutions are pretty obscure but I don’t remember many previous prize puzzles that could be solved without checking anything. It is inevitable that we all miss Araucaria, who was unique and irreplaceable, but I think some of you are being very harsh to Maskarade, who has tried very hard to fill the void. I am glad I am not the only one here who enjoyed the challenge.

31. Sorry, in my previous comment, “many previous prize puzzles” should have been “many previous holiday specials” – obviously there have been a few prizes that were close to being write-ins.

32. I did eventually finish this, but if anyone did so without online tools I salute you! In particular 32ac which had obscure words (sc. unknown to me) in both wordplay and solution.
    Otherwise, all’s fair in a Bank Holiday Prize – the rubric needed to be that long to explain clearly a fairly simple device, spoilt somewhat by BACK UP though. A bug rather than a feature I feel.
    Thanks bridgesong, especially for the parsing of LONGFELLOW, where the only/lone substitution eluded me. Thanks Maskarade for the workout.

33. Beery hiker@31

    If I am one of those accused of being harsh, I think that unfair. I have gone out of my way to compliment M on what was clearly a very accomplished puzzle in a certain genre. My concern is with an editorial decision which seems to suggest M is now the BH traditional setter. The G has several brilliant setters who could accomplish this task and I would welcome variety.

34. I must agree with L.B.T. @21

    I got about half way through this “chore” but finally decided I had better things to do with my time than unravel this puzzle. Overall the cluing was just dull as was the solving. No “aha” moments at all just another one down 50 or so to go!!!!

    Yet again Maskarade bores us with his efforts. To compare this favourably with the bank holiday entertainments of Araucaria is nonsense!

    Please, please ask one of our more inventive setters to come up with the next BH puzzle. (Or even Mr Ed why not try solving one of the puzzles you choose yourself before unleashing them on us. However that would involve reading them first!)

    This really was self indulgent nonsense.

35. I wonder if anyone saw the piece in the I on Thursday into psychological research into crossword fans? Interesting but not very revealing although I intend to try to track down the academic paper itself. I am reminded of this by all this correspondence. For man years a friend and I often tackled the BH puzzles together and many prize ones as well. Sadly not so much so these days.

    But we have very different minds – he was/is a logical thinker, a very capable engineer by training. I am very much more intuitive, in search of grand narratives and generalisations. I M an arts grad,he a scientist.

    Now I wonder whether this is relevant here. For me, Arau was an exponent of both genres (that balance was part of his genius) To repeat a term I used recently. Bunthorne was an out and out intuitive for me but whenever I arrived at the solution by what appeared to be guesswork, my friend would not enter the solution without the nuts and bolts becoming apparent to him. Similarly I could rank some of today’s setters. I am not saying that every setter is one or the other,but rather the solver’s mental set will engage easier with some rather than others.

    The disappointment I faced on Saturday was that I saw no way in through my intuitive route. I was presented with a huge psychological barrier of technical instructions before I could begin which themselves were not compatible with my own solving technique and preference.

    I think a really good crossword is accessible to a range of solving techniques and not just one.

    Does this ring any bells with anyone?

36. Ken

    Very well said. I know exactly what you mean by intuitive solvers and problem-solving (or ‘code-breaking’) solvers. My friend is one (the former) and I am the other!

    Here’s a link to the full study report that you referred to. (On the page you will see where it says Download Article.) I read it myself 4 months ago and was so impressed that I volunteered to be a guinea pig for further research, and duly took part in July, giving the research team some structured feedback.

37. @KenWales 33
    I think you need to re-read some of your earlier comments, particularly the ones in which you endorse the- to my mind, ludicrous- description of Maskarade’s puzzle as “self-indulgent nonsense” and your request to the crossword editor to “get real”. For one who has been solving crosswords in “your beloved newspaper for more than 50 years”, you seem to struggle to express that love in your posts on this thread.

38. bridgesong and others

    It’s clear to all that this special crossword has had a mixed reception from the solving community. One would expect the usual range of opinions on the quality of the crossword, and, as it’s ‘doubly special’ (1- clues are combined; 2- you have to manipulate more than half of the solutions in order to check them against the wordplay), one would also expect, and we got, a range of comments on that aspect as well.

    However, the complexity of the special instructions seems to have made an inordinate difference to the experience and enjoyment of even many regular solvers, who knew that this was going to be a ‘Bank Holiday’ special and would no doubt be both big and, to some extent, complex. There may have been as many instances of people who gave up because of the instructions than because the clues were too difficult or not to their liking.

    It’s a pity. Instructions that take 90 words are not necessarily complex, but in this case I think the setter was forced to go to much greater length than he would have liked in order to deal with the exceptions. I venture to say that the instructions could have been written in a better way – not necessarily shorter, but clearer.

    The rule that the two parts of a clue are in the same order as the solutions was not even told to us (as bridgesong pointed out in the preamble). This made me wonder at first if I wanted to make the effort to get into this puzzle. I decided in the end that the parts of each clue would surely be in the right order and proceeded on this assumption.

    As we know, the basis of each special clue was the occurrence of a sequence like ‘DEF’ (consecutive letters in the alphabet). The trouble was that there were variations on this: it can be reversed (‘FED’), it can be a quartet (‘LMNO’), in one instance it is mixed (‘BAC’), and in one instance the alphabet is cyclic (‘AZY’).

    All of this, along with the fact that the wordplay in the special clues applied to the solution without the trio or quartet, had to be explained. It must have been a hard task to make the instructions readable, clear and complete, but I maintain it was possible to do so.

    Having learned something very recently, I wonder whether the crossword editor called a conference at some point to find ways of saving space on the special instructions. Perhaps not.

39. Well, I thought this was an extraordinary achievement…. And Maskarade’s setting was pretty impressive too! The special instructions were not especially complicated in my view, and surely, at least all of the clues that did not have missing letters should have been equally accessible to intuitive and logical setters, not to mention at least some of the shorter solutions – stub, pong, or well-fed for example. It took me several sittings to get through this, and I surely wouldn’t have got to the end without google, but I thought it was worth it, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

40. Baerchen@37

    Thank you. I have taken your advice and reread my comments on this and other threads and in the G itself. What I discern is my deeply held passion for the G crossword as a daily mental workout which to varying degrees delights and frustrates me but ultimately presents an inclusive challenge. That is the G itself for me. If I use or endorse rather excessive phrases to emphasise my passion it is probably because I am from a part of the world where open speaking is seen as a strength and possibly I wear a chip on my shoulder which is to do with the best way to obtain a reaction. But I hope I am always respectful of the views of others. To those ends, I value all the contributions which appear on this site, including yours. Are you enjoying Boatman?

41. Ken Wales @35, having accused you of being ‘a bit rude’ on the recent thread about Guardian crosswords level of difficulty ‘I Haven’t a Clue’, I’d like to apologise for overstepping a line there (and sorry to anyone else for using the r word) and I’d also like to thank you for your interesting and insightful comment about intuitive/ logical approaches above @35. I am very much the logical sort (when it comes to crosswords, that is).

    Brilliant puzzle from Maskerade – curiously the Austrian valley was almost my FOI – takes all sorts I suppose!
    Keep’em coming Maskerade – I for one have now come to look forward to bank holidays in good part because they will bring us one of your puzzles.

42. Cornick@41

    Thank you. No problem.

43. I really enjoyed this, thanks to both Maskarade and Bridgesong.

    Interesting comment by Ken W and article by Alan Browne. I wrote A-Z along the top of the page and then reading along looking at likely 3-letter sequences many of the answers jumped out, explanations of why came later.

    I try to embrace both intuitive and logical thinking, I don’t see it as an either/or capability. My memory of studying pure mathematics at university was that I ground away at a problem using logic, not getting anywhere, and then a completed solution magically popped into my head seemingly out of nowhere. The same seems to happen with trick crossword clues. For me neither technique is going to get there on its own.

    Sometimes a belief that one can’t do something can be bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

44. PeeDee @43

    Absolutely – it’s not either/or. One needs both, But I know where my talent is and where it isn’t.

    Problem-solving expertise is of course more than about logical thinking. It also encompasses what is sometimes called lateral thinking – finding a different perspective on a problem. Intuition, though, is more about rapid recall, from a large knowledge base, of objects, ideas and words that relate to something.

    Oh to have both in abundance! Some people do.

45. Mr Beaver@7

    Thanks for your suggestion, but I don’t think it seems to do the job on my Windows XP machine.

    At the time, I did try the back button, but that didn’t help. Playing around since, I see the forward button would have done the job! Ah, well, you live and sometimes learn.

46. Thanks Maskarade and bridgesong

    I thought that this was a tremendous puzzle. It was tough, at the time I thought it a slog but as I got nearer to the finishing line, and subsequently, I came to enjoy more and more Maskarade’s skill in setting such a convoluted puzzle, and making it solvable, albeit with more than usual recourse to external aids.

    In my view, comments about it being out of place, too difficult, nonsense and the like say more about the commenters skills and expectations, and the limits thereof.

    Maskarade, let’s have more please! We all need a challenge, and to be jolted out of our comfort zones from time to time. After all, there are only 3 bank holiday specials in about 310 crosswords per year (and that’s just in the graun).

47. Hear, hear, Simon S.

48. Simon @46

    I disagree (unusually!). If you want to do this type of crossword, you can do the Listener, Enigmatic Variations, Azed etc.. A daily puzzle oughtn’t to need all these instructions.

    Yes, I didn’t even try it, so I don’t know exactly how obscure it was; however I still think that it was inappropriate.

    I have enjoyed lots of BH puzzles, several from Maskarade, but I found this offputting.

49. This is, I admit, a kind of crossword I normally would bin – not because it’s bad (how would I know?) but because I often do not have the energy for the extra step. Mea culpa.
    Last Saturday, two pairs of eyes were looking at it (which makes a difference) and within the hour we got about 10 solutions – not that many!
    On Monday, after a quick Rufus, we took it up again in a Cambridge cafe and, believe or not, we solved all but two.
    Very satisfying – that said, it took about another four hours …..

    Some solutions had to be checked and only one was wrong (3d – well done, you Cornick! – our entry, FEDEREGGEN, sounds more Austrian than DEFEREGGEN. Perhaps, you had a skiing holiday there, my friend – one of your first ones in?)
    Apart from that one, the couple 22d/32ac stumped us.
    32ac I found through the Internet but after that we left 22d blank.

    Incredible achievement of Maskarade, perhaps his best ever.
    There are certain elements in his style (e.g. link words) that I do not like very much, and re 39ac: can there be more than one Zodiac?
    But, magnifico.

    One final remark.
    RIJKSMUSEUM has, as Alan Browne rightly says, IJK in it (like many Dutch words).
    But, in that language, IJ is one character with both the I and th J having a dot on top of it.
    IJ is treated the same as Y (which is called Y-Grec), meaning in crossword puzzles it will only occupy one square.
    The English talk about Johan Cruyff, the Dutch talk about Johan Cruijff, still it’s (5,6) in either case.

    Thanks, bridgesong & Maskarade.

50. I thought the Special Instructions were not crystal clear; I am sure an example (as, I think, Araucaria used to include occasionally) would have helped many of the dismayed solvers get started.

    For example, something along the lines of: “Clan’s rodent” is MARMOT + CDE gives the solution MACDERMOT to be entered, as defined by Clan.

51. Sil @49

    Thanks for the education! I lived in the Netherlands for a while, and although I knew that ‘IJssel’ (for example) was written in that way, I never saw a Dutch crossword and didn’t realise that ‘IJ’ was in reality a single letter.

    It is still the case, though, that when Dutch names like Wijk are printed in English we don’t have a digraph – we print Wijk with four letters. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me that RIJKSMUSEUM should only have 10 letters in an English crossword!

52. muffin @ 48

    I hear what you say, but my point was precisely that it *wasn’t* a daily puzzle, it was a bank holiday special, and as such was, rightly in my view, something (well) out of the ordinary.

    Others are fully entitled to have and express their views. But to dismiss the puzzle, and the setter’s achievement, out of hand (I’m not saying that you did this) is, I think both inappropriate and extremely rude.

    I would like to see some of the negative commenters’ attempts at producing a standard puzzle, let alone a 21×21 with added curlicues.

53. Dave @50

    I agree. An example or two would have worked wonders for people’s comprehension of the unavoidably complex instructions.

    But … space is at a premium, apparently. Helpful examples might have taken up too much.

54. No, I am indeed not.
    RIJKSMUSEUM should contain 11 letters in an English crossword, unless you write it as RYKSMUSEUM which you do not.
    In a Dutch puzzle (yes, there are Dutch puzzles, even cryptic ones!) it would have been 10 letters.
    BTW, when I say ‘IJ is one character with both the I and the J having a dot on top of it’ I am only talking about lower case: Rijksmuseum.
    It looks like 11 characters, doesn’t it? Yet, it’s 10.

55. Sil, thanks.

56. Bravo indeed to Maskarade and to Bridgesong.

    I persevered in small doses right through the week and eventually had all but 5 or 6 in. The really obscure ‘Trefgarne’ and ‘Defereggen’ defeated me and I also missed out on ‘Snuffs Out’ because I confused the dividing line between the 2 halves of the clue and thought ‘extinguishes’ was the definition part for ‘Stub’. I didn’t get ‘Pieces Out’ and still don’t ! It seems one of the few not very satisfactory clues. Never mind, there was much to enjoy here, even if I did spend a lot of time looking out for HIJack or HIJabs.

    I really welcome a ‘special’ on a B/H, no problem with the idea at all. This one seemed especially difficult, in part because of the exceptions. This meant most of the time one wasn’t sure what the solution might be :

    – either a ‘normal’
    – or containing a trio,
    – or containing a trio in reverse
    – two special cases containing a quartet (neither of these were reversed – that could have been stated)
    – one special case around the alphabet (not specified forward or reverse)
    – one special case of a trio with jumbled letters

    For me the solving only started to get easier once the special cases were out of the way. I think it would have been a kindness of the solver to have specified where these were located e.g. 6Dn and 16Ac contain quartets in forward direction, 34 Ac contains a jumbled trio, 24Dn contains a trio ‘around the alphabet’.

    The intrinsic difficulty of the crossword would be maintained and an ‘in’ would be given to people struggling with the idea. Another idea might be to have listed all the trios/quartets [CDE, MNO, LMN, NOP STU etc I think there are only about 8 or 10 of these] (forward direction only) and simply say either one or both solutions of each clue will contain one of these either forward or backwards.

    But that is to carp ! Again thanks to setter and blogger, for considerable enjoyment.

57. Ken Wales, I’m with you on this. I have been successfully solving the Guardian crossword for nearly 40 years on and off, but this….. I had to read the instructions three times before I got even a vague inkling of what they meant. I then failed to solve a single clue, and looking through the blog I don’t understand that either, and a lot of the answers are words I have never heard of. Very dispiriting, and disappointing too. I used to really look forward to Auracaria’s holiday specials, and was always disappointed when he came up with one of his jigsaw ones because I couldn’t do them either. Obviously I have the wrong kind if brain. After the bank holiday effort I have decided I have, like Pooh, very little brain at all.

58. Sorry, wrong kind OF brain. Fat fingers as well.

59. Simon S at 46

    Well, thank you. I suppose it is inevitable that a discussion of this sort should lead to the riposte that some of us with problems are displaying our incompetence or lack of ability/application.

    My point is that we are all different and yet of equal value. A basic tenet of the G I suggest. So why does each BH these days need to be a gruelling steeplechase over a marathon distance? As I have tried to suggest cryptic setters fall into different genres and I rejoice in that. So please editor gives us more variety.

    After all, if competence and ability is the issue, even the IOC now run a Paralympics!

    Many of you have encouraged M to ‘keep ’em coming’ and strangely so do I. In his/her own genre clearly this is brilliant setter. But why not offer M a more regular slot and give others an occasional BH slot.

    Incidentally in response to the challenge above how does one become a G cryptic setter – is this a closed circle and, if not, how does one break into it? Perhaps there are some future geniuses out there who would like to know.

60. Meg @ 57

    Thank you for your comments and, in this case, support.

    It goes to strengthen my thesis hat you don’t get on with jigsaws – because I love them! But have you noticed how the jigsaw has evolved – some would say progressed – so that double- starters ( no doubt there is a more technical phrase) -are regularly avoided in grid design?

    I keep wanting to stress that my concern is the assertion of the original blogger (a hero in his or her rite) that M is now the traditional BH setter. Why?

61. Its all been said in better ways that I could say but . . .

    Whilst this was a brilliant achievement by M, there were too many contrivances and extreme obscurities. Even the experts Bridgesong et al were DEFeated and needed help from others.

    I really think crosswords should be solvable without extensive use of the internet

    BTW, fiRST in for me was AgameMNOn

62. I’m glad that the blog has generated an interesting if inconclusive discussion. I certainly couldn’t have solved the puzzle without the use of the internet (not to mention my Chambers dictionary app). I think that’s acceptable for a Bank Holiday puzzle, when solvers may be expected to have a little more time to devote to the puzzle.

    I’m sorry that some people were put off by the instructions. I agree that an example would have made things clearer. And yes, some of the answers are, inevitably, obscure. But that’s what a dictionary is for! SCUTS, for example (where initially I didn’t see the letter sequence, and consequently couldn’t make sense of the clue) is not a word I’ve come across before.

    What particularly saddens me is Meg’s comment @57 to the effect that she couldn’t understand the blog. If so, then I have failed in my purpose. Have I been too concise? (Try having a look at the annotated solution on the Guardian website; now that’s concise!). Please, Meg, if you’re still there, give me an example and I’ll try and make it clearer.

63. Fear not, Bridgesong, this is an excellent blog which explains the puzzle clearly and accurately. If I understood it anyone should be able to, and failure to do so is not your fault at all.

64. Sorry Bridgesong. Having not understood the instructions I hadn’t realised that you had to ADD the consecutive letters to achieve the answer. That’s why I didn’t understand the blog. I just couldn’t see where you were coming from at all. My fault, not yours, as Cruciverbophile kindly points out. I did say I was a bear of very little brain. Now I get it I can understand the blog.I hadn’t intended to denigrate your efforts, far from it.

65. bridgesong @62

    Like cruciverbophile, I thought your blog was fine – but yes, it was concise. (I haven’t looked up the Guardian’s blog for comparison.) For checking my interpretation of the clues against yours, the ‘/’ you inserted at the start of the second part of each clue was very helpful.

    It may be that the unfamiliar format that you more or less had to adopt, whereby the second answer-word had no clue against it on that line, was off-putting for some.

    Where Meg and others definitely have a point concerns the instructions, which were certainly dense, in one sense of the word if not both. Some people pick up even complex instructions very quickly with examples, but not so without them.

    Finally, as you pointed out yourself, there was no indication that the parts of the clue were in the order of the solutions. Although I followed the instructions without difficulty, the omission of this guidance made me wonder at first whether it would be safe to make that assumption.

    Concerning SCUTS (which has been mentioned a lot!): this came very late for me, even though I knew the word. I had defined COMERS as ‘those who show’ and wondered how on earth ‘promise’ contributed to the second part of the clue! It finally dawned on me that ‘comers’ can mean ‘those who show’ or ‘those who show promise’ – they are different things.

66. Ps The other thing I hadn’t understood from the instructions was that the clues were in two parts, each part having its own solution. I assumed that the clues were all of a piece but that they had two alternative solutions. I understand now because I have spotted the meaning of the forward slashes in the blog halfway through the clues.
    My excuse is that I’m in the middle of a house purchase and consequently have rather a lot on my mind.

67. Meg @64, thank you for your reassurance. Alan @ 65, you’re right it was a bit of a challenge to format the blog with the clues split between two solutions: I may not have achieved the best result.

    So far as COMERS is concerned, Chambers (on which I rely heavily) has as its second meaning: “A person who shows promise (informal)”. Once I saw that, I had no doubt about the division in the clue.

68. Well now. I think it time I made an admission in the light of some of the more recent comments. It is this:

    Other than for checking spellings, I have never – in all those 50 years+ I keep banging on about – used a dictionary, thesaurus or the Internet. I have on occasions resorted to crossword lists but that is all.. I have a solving rate over the last few years of about 12% in terms of completed puzzlesand probably about 65% for clues themselves.. I am not sure whether under these conditions that level of success indicates my competence or otherwise!
    Up to now, to continue my Olympics metaphor, I have regarded these aids as drugs! Very Puritan of me I guess but I suppose I have always seen crosswords as tests of my knowledge and intuition and not my research skills.
    So now, I have now taken the advice and downloaded Chambers dict and thes and will give them a trial for a few days.

    Where that leaves me and my cause in the grand scheme of things I will leave it to others to decide. As they say, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!

69. Sil – thanks for the info on Rijksmusem, very interesting. The same used to be common in English, AE or OE written as a single letter for example. This is becoming less common now, though one does still see it done occasionally.

    It makes me wonder how you would use this in a crossword. Technically these ligatures are just another character in an extended alphabet, most fonts already have them so no problem there. Word counts would be one issue. There must be other issues around acceptable clueing. For example, would O + E be acceptable wordplay for &#140, or would it be like cluing M as N + N because nn looks like m?

70. I didn’t think this too hard – just too hard for me!
    I realise there are much better solvers out there who presumably find many Grauniad crosswords too easy.
    I was disappointed at not being able to tackle this, but don’t blame the paper, the editor, or the setter. As long as they’re not all like this, though!

71. Ken – the Internet is here and here to stay. Wishing it would just go away and that crosswords would stay the same seems to be at the root of many of your frustrations. We are now 16 years into the 21st century. Resolutely living in the past is heroic, but isn’t going to bring you much happiness.

    As you said yourself in one of your earlier posts, I don’t mean to offend. I intend to be plain spoken not rude.

72. Mr Beaver (and Meg) – you comments gives me pause for thought. The stronger solvers do have to solve puzzles that are too easy for them, however this does not necessarily exclude them from enjoying the puzzle. There is more to puzzles than difficulty.

    On the other hand a puzzle that a weaker solver just cannot start at all really is excluded. The situation is not symmetrical, the two situations do not balance each other out. Not something that I had really appreciated before.

    I’m not suggesting all Guardian puzzles should be solveable by everyone, just that the ideal balance point is not exactly in the middle.

73. Ken @68

    I enjoyed your comment – and your ‘admission’!

    I also use crossword aids as little as possible. I nearly always tackle the daily cryptics in print, and try to complete them without aids. Once or perhaps twice a week (out of the 4 or 5) I succeed. When I need external help I use a word finder, dictionary or crossword list, and favour the print versions of the latter two.

    The Maskarade was of course something else, and I have probably got ‘screen eyes’ as a result. It was a super puzzle, though, as I have commented already on this page.

    By the way, did the link I gave you way back @36 work for you?

74. Alan Browne @ 73

    Yes it did – thank you very much. Sorry I didn’t say so earlier. Have not read it yet – this evening perhaps.

    PeeDee @73 and 74

    Oh, I don’t want the Internet to go away: I rely on it daily especially for news and sport and perhaps in excess to the wrath of my family. Include too my addiction to this site which until this week has been entirely passive. But I have not as yet seen it as an essential element of my crossword armoury. Perhaps I need to revisit that and see what happens to my happiness!

    I thought your next comment was spot on – it is exactly one of the things I have been trying to say.

75. PeeDee at 72. I agree with that, however I’m not sure I would classify myself as a weak solver. I usually finish the crossword within an hour and only occasionally have to resort to the blog. Also I do them from the paper so don’t have recourse to the check button, but then I do use an electronic little helper.
    What gets me is that on occasions such as bank holidays one can be slammed with a puzzle that is so much harder that you really need two brains to attempt it. (I suspect that many of the bloggers actually do have two brains, so it’s ideal for them.) The discrepancy is huge and perhaps the levels of difficulty need to be somehow evened out. Even, (excepting in my case the jigsaw ones), Auracaria’s most fiendish offerings were at least interesting and entertaining to try.
    I don’t agree by the way that the crosswords in general have got harder. Rather the reverse. I came back to the Guardian after a few years of the Times and found them actually a bit easier than before.

76. Hi Ken, I must own up a little – I do try to solve all cryptics with only a paper dictionary for aid. If I need to I use Internet to finish but regard this as a lesser achievement than getting it all first time. Ironically the first time solves, the successes, are the ones in which I don’t learn anything.

77. Sorry Meg, I didn’t mean to belittle your solving ability, only that you mentioned not being able to start. That is the bit that got me thinking.

    You do not strike me as someone who has no aptitude for puzzles; nor do you appear to have a missing second brain. You seem pretty smart to me.

    Re-reading my post @72 there is much gibberish in there: “you comments gives me…” and in the second paragraph I mean it is the solver that is excluded, not the puzzle.

78. Thanks PeeDee. Still got only one brain though. Thank God. I have enough trouble with the one I’ve got. Going to shut up now before Gaufrid tells me off.

79. I have read the comments on here with increasing amazement.

    Just compare this puzzle to almost any equivalent Listener puzzle. (i.e.one that has words as solutions). This one comes a very poor second to them all.

    First of all the abundance of esoteric answers. (lazy setting)

    Second, the special instructions are all over the place (it’s 3 consecutive letters, oh wait sometimes there are four and oh just a minute sometime they’re actually not consecutive!!! Errrgh. Lazy again.)

    Third, pedestrian cluing.

    Fourth, it’s dull.

    I suspect the main reason is that the Listener has a crosword editor.

80. BNTO

    Leaving aside what you say about the clueing (‘pedestrian’) and the crossword as a whole (‘dull’ and ‘self-indulgent nonsense’), which are just your opinions, what you say about the special instructions and the esoteric answers is fair criticism.

    There was a higher than usual quota of words and names that were unknown to most people. For me it was 9 (out of 54): one sixth of the total. This ratio is unacceptable for a daily puzzle in my book, but not, I feel, for a BH special.

    The special instructions could have been better worded, and were at fault in one respect as discussed on this page, but, as your colourful put-down illustrated so vividly, the greater problem was the level of complexity that many solvers felt the crossword could have done without.

    I suspect that the setter, having stuck firmly (and admirably) to his own rule that at least one of every pair of answers would be a special one, i.e. subject to a subtraction, found himself with a tricky pair of words in the middle (HAZY and BACK-UP), forcing him to allow two more exceptions to the rule about the trios and quartets. Perhaps the rule about ‘at least one answer’ need not have been a rule, but it’s all very well being wise after the event – I think the setter succeeded in producing an amazingly good crossword (whose clues by the way I found to be concise and well-crafted – not dull or pedestrian).

    Finally, I don’t think any Guardian blocked-grid puzzle, even a special one, can be compared with the barred-grid Listener puzzles, all of which are ‘special’ and often have a level of complexity that one is not even fully informed of at the start. The two are a world apart.

81. Earlier on in this, for me, fascinating discussion someone asked what was meant by the phrase (Guardian) ‘crossword community ‘. The many contributions here have changed my understanding of what my response to that question would be. Clearly whatever the community is, there are divisions within it. That is natural but my understanding of the divisions has changed over the weekend.

    Initially, I would have aid the dividing was between nostalgics, a little like me perhaps, and innovators. Then I tried to understand what was going on through psychological types, or learning styles if you wish.

    I now am seeing the fracture as being between those who want to participate and those who want to conquer. Between those who are satisfied to know or ask how the mountain impacts upon them and those who won’t rest till they are at the summit. That needs refinement but you know what I mean.

    I really have valued the insights the contributors have made to this discussion. And especially those who appear to feel as I do that an inclusive newspaper needs an inclusive crossword profile. Occasionally that may mean a special which represents a crossword Everest. I just would prefer it if that didn’t occur every Bank Holiday!

82. Ken @81

    Well said – what an excellent analysis and what an apt word (Everest) for the summit of the (Guardian) range of crosswords throughout and the year. (For my part, by the way, I would like the Everests to keep coming on BH weekends. I rarely get time for the Saturday crossword, and I’ll have to miss the latest one too – the Boatman, but somehow I manage to make time for the special ones.)

    I used to be more the conquering sort, but now I’m much more simply a participant who loves solving crosswords, and I think the Guardian crosswords and the Guardian pool of setters are the best. When I stop enjoying a crossword I stop doing it, even when I am (probably) not defeated by it, and I understand from a discussion with one of the co-authors of the academic study report (referred to on this blog) that I am in a minority of the solver population in having this attitude towards solving.

83. me @82
    In my first para: ‘throughout and the year’ should obviously read ‘throughout the year’.

84. The instructions for this incredible piece of work frightened me off till sometime midweek when I finally bit the bullet and found LAUGH-IN as a write-in. I kept niggling at it on and off,refusing to look at the solution till this morning (Mon, 5 Sept), when I finally admitted defeat with 20 solutions to go (why ever didn’t I think of googling up a map of ancient Persia?!). I’m mightily impressed with Maskerade’s skill in constructing this and find it hardly surprising there were many unusual words and one or two deviations from the standard “3 consecutive letters” principle.

    Bridgesong: Isn’t “out” in 51 indicating the anagram?

85. Is the parsing for LONGFELLOW correct? There seem to be too many Ls. Perhaps “being only cut” is supposed to yield ON ly). If so then “being” seems a bit extraneous.

86. KD at 85. The annotated solution gives :-

    5,6 Longfellow L(ine)L(ine)/LOW
    film noir [LMNO] in RIFIFI minus IF (anag)

    This is closer to explaining the clue but still doesn’t seem to correspond to “Poet’s lines about being only cut on poor” which to me doesn’t make any apparent sense anyway.

87. 86 didn’t come out right. Part of the annotated solution has been interpreted and hence disappeared.

    Here’s the link : https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/2016/sep/02/annotated-solutions-for-prize-26974

88. Tony @ 84: you are of course right, I’d failed to spot that there wasn’t an anagram indicator.
    KD and Davy: the annotated solution must of course be correct.

89. Ken @81 – I like your mountaineering analogy, it fits well. There must of course be those who enjoy both types of day out.

    I would suggest maybe Ben Nevis rather than Everest. The Everests of the cryptic puzzle world lay beyond the Guardian range entirely.

90. Well it took me most of the week in between the others, but enjoyed it more than most. What a feat Maskarade! Have to admit gave up towards the end. I’d never have got Gymnopedies or the Austrian valley in a million years. Missed zodiac and tanghin tooThank you Maskarade and Bridgesong

91. I think BNTO is our new Hedgehoggy!!

    I fall into the thumbs-up camp here, having taken a solid week-long crack at this puzzle and coming within 5 entries of completion. Thought it was a tremendous challenge. Would have been even better if Maskarade had managed to span the entire alphabet with the three- and four-letter insertions, ha ha.

    I must confess to a certain amount of eye-rolling at the vigour of the debate herein. C’mon people – it’s just a crossword, for Pete’s sake!

92. Philbo @91

    In jest. Who is Pete?

    Actually, it is not just a crossword – it is the G’s August BH double. And we are told this is now a tradition. That was the problem

    Bit like saying Schoenberg just wrote tunes!

    But seriously I for one am almost over it.

93. Thanks Bridgesong for an amazing blog and respect to Maskerade for setting.

    This is the puzzle that made me realise trying to do both the FT and Guardian on a daily basis is a waste of my time.

    It took an hour and three visits to get a foothold (with RIJKSMUSEUM for heavens sake!) and the a dozen more visits with 6 clues unsolved.

    For me it was a grind from start till when I finally gave up with sadly little pleasure.

    Congratulations and respect to all of you that saw it through. But that’s it from me on the Guardian!

94. Actually Ken, Schoenberg wrote some rather good tunes – Verklärte Nacht, Pelleas and Melisande and Gurre-Lieder (the first half) for example. Though admittedly Pierrot Lunaire is unlikely to feature on a classical pops album!

95. Thanks – I will explore a little deeper.

96. Hmmm will anyone read this… OK sorry I’m not going to read all the comments – I loved this – it was a real challenge as a Bank Holiday crossword should be – it took me and Suzee the entire weekend – don’t think we would have finished it without Suzee’s inspirational MacDermot – we were on holiday in Torquay at the time incidentally – more like this for holidays please (I’m not sure Suzee agrees though :-))

97. Very late – but feel I must thank bridgesong for completing this heavyweight blog so exemplarily.
    Your kind efforts are sincerely appreciated.

98. I had the parsing for Longfellow as LL (lines) around (about) ON (only cut) LOW (poor). In your parsing there are four L’s.

99. Woody @98 (only six months later!): I think your parsing is absolutely right. See also the discussion at 85/86.

100. Thanks Masquerade and bridgesong (nearly a full year on!)

     I found this very tough. Not only was it not started until 9 months after publication, but it took an elapsed month to get out with the allocated time that I give to Guardian puzzles these days.

     I think that CONMAN may have been the first of the themed solutions that I got, closely followed by LAUGH-IN which a friend who is not a usual solver was able to get for me. And so the struggle continued by grabbing an hour here, a few minutes there throughout a lot of June 2017 to finally get to the last couple – GYMOPEDIES (which I could not parse and because I had erroneously had one of the 4 letter answers as MONOPRIX (forgetting about the Q) – so missed it here and hadn’t heard of that definition of GYP) and COSTUMERS (which I also could’t parse getting tricked by both parts of this clue having 3 letter runs).

     Others where I failed to parse correctly REDCAPS (again caught out with both parts of the clue requiring letter groups), FALSE (going with F as the note instead of FA and struggling to find the ALSE college – although there was an Agriculture Leadership and Science Education that passed for me) and didn’t know SC was an abbreviation of sculpsit.

     I had gone with the Woody@98 and others version of the parsing of LONGFELLOW, except that I only took off the Y and was still struggling with one L too many.

     A terrific holiday puzzle which chewed up many hours of leisure time and I was extremely satisfied to get the grid correctly filled out even if all of the parsing was not quite worked through. I wonder in what year I’ll get to the next one which is due out next month !!!!

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