Guardian Prize 27,034 / Puck

53 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,034 / Puck”

1. Thanks Eileen. Had a similar progress through this as you, though for me the bottom right duo jumped out as H-H, and that caused a deal of confusion as I had about three-quarters of the answers early on and logical places for them to go. Puck’s cleverness was having letter-placings that often overlapped, eg the Hs in the I/J choice, and the fourth and last letters in VAPORETTOS and UNHOLINESS. Other quandaries were the Chinese city for which Google had to be called upon, the puzzling 1800s reference (I missed s=seconds), and finding a rationale for the C answer (I missed CAT=queen). Still lots of fun, so mnay thanks to our setter.

2. In my memory Araucaria would never have allowed Browbeat to be split like that, and even though I had most of the grid filled and had Browbeat ready, (one of the easier clues), I still didn’t finish and gave up……… but will be ready for this leftfield action next time!

3. Thanks to Puck and Eileen. After two false starts I got the grid lined up properly – and I caught onto BROWBEAT’s placement (and knew GODWIT), but I chose Unruliness over UNHOLINESS and was then defeated by FRAMEWORKS, HALF-HOUR and WING-FOOTED and could not parse XINTAI (the only Google item that fit the space). Definitely a challenge.

4. Thanks Eileen. I could only think that ‘once’ in the W clue took the meaning of ‘when the clue is solved’. The relationship between Swift and Defoe was way over my head though.

5. Thanks, Eileen for parsing ‘Xintai’. And the H clue had me beaten; I’m still not sure how to account for the word ‘or’. Chambers notes that ‘wing-footed’ is a poetic synonym for ‘swift’, so somewhat archaic, hence the ‘once’. The placing of brow/beat I thought a little naughty. In Venice, vaporettos are buses, not taxis.

6. Thanks Puck and Eileen

   After a good start, I too thought I had something wrong when I couldn’t fit the L in. Splitting BROWBEAT came to me very much later!

   I didn’t know KA for “spirit”, so wasn;t able to parse KRAKOW.

7. Thanks, Eileen. Timon and I enjoyed this very much and had a similar experience to you, since I had confidently entered CAVITY instead of CRATER, which led me to think I had got the grid placement completely wrong until I saw my error.
   I hadn’t appreciated the significance of Swift in the W clue, so thanks for explaining that.

8. Thank you Puck and Eileen.

   I thought at first that this alphabetical might prove to be beyond me, but no, and it was great fun. I had trouble parsing CRATER, and had to google cities in China.

   Realising that there were only two 7 letter clues, DRYNESS and MEMENTO, and that these went across the centre crossing two of the four 10 letter clues, it was easy to insert the skeleton of the crossword.

9. I thought Puck had chosen a tricky grid for this,as very few of the first letters are on crossing words. This meant you had to solve nearly all the answers before being able to place them confidently. Fortunately, I thought most of the clues were not too tough, and a lot of fun. 1800s was very clever.

   On a minor critical note, I was slightly irked by VAPORETTOS: firstly as Epeolater says, they’re buses; secondly, there’s no such word, it’s VAPORETTI. Maybe I’m being pedantic, but then plenty of people make a similar objection to ‘paninis’

10. Yes, as per Cookie, the placement of the 7 letter solutions was the key for me. (I am too dopey to notice the ‘holding up’ hint for PESTLE)

    I especially enjoyed the H, I and Z solutions, especially the surface reading for HALF HOUR. Epeolater… The OR is because halving hour gives either HO (house) or UR ( ancient city).

    XINTAI defeated me, the list of cities in China starting with is too long !

11. Thought this was a fine effort. As Eileen says the jigsaw element was more challenging than it usually is in alphabeticals, though it did occur to me quite early that BROWBEAT could be split. Still needed about two thirds of the solutions before daring to write anything in the grid.

    Thanks to Puck and Eileen

12. For me this was a most enjoyable solving experience. I managed to solve 18 clues before deciding to see if any of my answers would definitely go, or definitely not go, in certain places in the grid. Both DRYNESS and MEMENTO went in as a result, followed by VAPORETTOS, SMOLENSK and TREFOILS. (I didn’t at that stage assume that PESTLE went down.)

    This sort of puzzle is always fun when potential crossers for clues you haven’t solved yet gradually come into view, and the placement of a few of the answers is uncertain until much later. This was at the right level for me. If I had been able to solve too many clues before starting on the grid it would have been much less enjoyable.

    I was very interested to see how others worked their way into this puzzle. With 27 clues and 28 answers, I guessed at first that the ‘(4-4)’ or one of the ‘(4,4)’s would be split, but I reached a point in the partially completed grid when I had to look elsewhere for the source of the two 4-letter words in the SE corner, and BROW/BEAT was the only candidate.

    I thought HALF-HOUR was a cracking clue, one of the last four that I solved. Other favourites were BROWBEAT, DRYNESS, GODWIT, QUEENS, SMOLENSK, WING-FOOTED, YANKEE and ZERO-HOUR. XINTAI was a gem too, which I didn’t fully appreciate until after I had finished.

    Huge thanks to Puck for his skill and inventiveness, and to Eileen for the comprehensive blog.

13. Mr Beaver @9, the COED gives “pl. vaporetti /-ti/ or –os“, I guess many English-speaking tourists use the latter!

14. beery hiker @11
    I had exactly the same ratio (‘two thirds of the solutions’). I solved 18 out of 27 clues before I could (or dared to) write anything in.
    Mr Beaver @9
    I agree it was a tricky grid.

15. This was good, challenging fun. Oddly, somehow or other BROWBEAT was one of the first few that I wrote into the grid! (Counting the number of four-letter entries indicated that we’d need a split 8-letter, so either BROWBEAT or HALF-HOUR.)

    I did not correctly parse XINTAI, which I had to look up using the Wikipedia list of Chinese cities starting in X. Thanks to Eileen for that.

    Eileen, on YANKEE, your blog is missing the third way into the clue: “Comfortably in the end” = Y = Yankee in the phonetic alphabet.

16. Eileen – I read your description of how you worked through this puzzle, and it sounded almost step for step the way I went. Although it took me almost until the end to get WING-FOOTED, which meant I was staring at a grid that answers for everything bar W and H, but had nowhere to put an obviously correct answer for B. I printed off a second copy of the blank grid and refilled it from scratch, checking every line of reasoning twice, and ended up in the same place. The clang! as the penny finally dropped was considerable. Actually, two pennies, because realising what 1800s meant was another that came right at the very end.
    Thanks for the blog, and nicely done, Puck.

17. mrpenney @15

    Many thanks for that: I couldn’t account for those words and forgot to say so when writing up the blog. I’ll amend it now.

    VAPORETTOS bugged me, too [though I’d forgotten they were buses] but it was in Chambers, so I didn’t mention it. [But I knew someone would. 😉 ]

18. It struck me while solving that “taxi” occurred three times in the clues, and I began to wonder if there was a theme – Wiki gives water taxi as the first definition for a vaporetto, and if you click on it other examples are given, for instance in New York and Auckland – for me a water taxi is something else in Venice.

19. Thanks to Puck and Eileen for an entertaining puzzle and blog.
    Like Cookie @ 8 and epee @ 10, solving the two 7-letter clues and realising that there were only two of them was my key to unlocking the grid. The two Ps were my first solves but it took a long time to work out which order they went in. BROWBEAT was my first one in then I smudged it out when I realised that there were other possibilities

20. Challenging,but most enjoyable. I wanted the split word to be HH as others have said and it wasn’t until I’d started filling in the grid that it became clear that I was wrong. It wasn’t until I got HALF HOUR- a brilliant clue once I’d seen it- that everything became clear. I didn’t do this unaided as Mrs PA joins in with alphabeticals so I can’t claim total credit for the finished article.
    A lovely puzzle.
    Thanks Puck.

21. This was the first prize I’ve finished in a while and it took me a couple of days to get there. The only clue I couldn’t parse myself was C – which I’m still not particularly happy about. I mean, shouldn’t it be Qs, plural?

    Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle and I didn’t mind at all being led down the garden path in the SE corner with BROW-BEAT/HALF-HOUR. Once it became apparent the latter wouldn’t fit there it was perfectly logical to start looking at the other 8-letter answers for alliterative 4×4 splits.

    Most of the clues were top notch but I especially enjoyed the definitions in A & H and the wordplay in G & X.

22. I can only echo the praise here, the ‘1800s’ gag was a very late PDM off the back of LEFT-HOOK.
    I’m sure we can take ‘once’ with ‘tailed’ in W – ‘Defoe, once tailed’.
    Thanks Puck and Eileen( and mrpenney for the yankee).

23. Angstony @21 – I don’t understand your problem with the C answer: the answer to the Q clue is QUEENS.

24. Angstony @21
    “I mean, shouldn’t it be Qs, plural? ”

    No, the entry for Q is already plural – QUEENS.

25. The only clue I couldn’t parse myself was C – which I’m still not particularly happy about. I mean, shouldn’t it be Qs, plural?

    It is plural, it is the answer to the “Q” clue.

26. Unaccustomed as I am to posting critical comments, I have to say that I enjoyed this the least of all puzzles in the Guardian for several years! In short, I don’t really like alphabetical puzzles as the clues are often fairly easy to solve and the real challenge (particularly in grids like this one that are almost symmetrical) is to fit the answers into the grid. So it’s not so much of a verbal challenge as a logical one.

    However, I should add that I very much enjoy Puck’s usual outings.

27. We managed, perhaps to our own surprise as much as anyone else’s, to finish this and we learned a lot on the way. Like Drofle, I personally don’t like fitting the answers in,although my wife is good at this. So between the two of us we cracked it. Thanks to everyone.

28. Could someone please explain why cat is a definition by example of queen? I don’t get it.

    Thanks to Eileen for explaining the bits that I didn’t fully understand, and to Puck for a fine crossword.

29. Aaaargh! I beat my brow for at least half an hour when I read this! It defeated me, even though I had solved 17 clues (but only two of the 10s) blind. I convinced myself the second double-header must be H, which (*beats brow again*) I never solved — despite getting LEFT HOOK with the first O unexplained — and never considered BROWBEAT for the role, even though I had it. I do think it was fair enough, though, as BROW and BEAT are good in their own right.

    Thanks for the pointer to the beginner’s guide to alphabeticals. It’s very similar to the method I devised and adopted many years ago to tackle Araucaria’s. A shame the link to the completed grid is now a 404, though.

    Incidentally, I am compiling a cryptic (my first ever) for a hobby magazine and I wonder if someone could point me to any useful advice to help. I’m especially wondering about how, precisely, the question mark is used in cluing. I thought I understood it intuitively, but having it spelt out would be a boon.

30. another Andrew @28
    An adult female cat is called a queen.

    Tony @29
    Have a look a Alberich’s website ( http://www.alberichcrosswords.com/index.html ). He has written several articles about the art of setting cryptics.

31. Thanks, Gaufrid, I’ll have a look.

32. I too love alphabeticals, so I was as pleased as Eileen to see this one. It fully lived up to my expectations. I thought for a long time that the bottom left pair of 4s must be the Hs, having ruled out Ls quite early by getting LEFT HOOK. I also missed the way the second P clue hinted that it was the Down one, so my path to the correct orientation of the clues in the grid was a more tortuous one, based on those 7-letter answers. I got there in the end, though, and enjoyed the journey through some ingenious clueing.

    Many thanks, Puck and Eileen.

33. I was defeated as I only had 14 answers when I started filling in the grid – well really only 13 and a half, as by mistake I had LEFT OVER for the “L” clue, rather than LEFT HOOK…
    So by going too early to the grid I misplaced some words; erased several but then got myself all flummoxed. Despite coming back a few times subsequently I got no further.
    So for me it was both fun and frustrating.
    Thanks to Puck for a clever puzzle and to Eileen for a fascinating blog. Well done to so many clever solvers!!!! I think I agree with the suggestion that logic triumphed over intuition here or perhaps I FEEL logic triumphed????

34. Mr Beaver @9 objects to ‘vaporettos’. He compares it with ‘paninis’, which is a plural of a plural – a plural squared! How it sneaked into English rather than the perfectly acceptable ‘paninos’ is a bit of a mystery. I doubt there are many speakers ordering ‘due espressi’ in British cafes who ask for ‘two espressi’. With a notable number of exceptions, English makes the plural of nouns by suffixing ‘-(e)s’ and there is a tendency in all languages for speakers to regularise; it helps to reduce the number of rules in the grammar.

35. Thank you, Eileen, I enjoyed this as much as you apparently did.

    I ended up using 6 coloured highlighter pens to identify the various length lights and eventually ground it down.

    It allowed me to twig the BROWBEAT gag early on, and with that and the PASTEL/PESTLE combo, slowly started to grope forward.

    A magnificent example of the setter’s art…Bravo, Puck.

36. I don’t think anyone has pointed out how wily Puck has been – PeeDee’s advice which led to the Ps being placed was all very well, but Puck made sure that the four 10 letter answers would not automatically find their place.

    FRAMEWORKS could not join the Ps since none of the other 10 letter answers had an M. The other two ending in S, UNHOLINESS and VAPORETTOS, could either go down or across to join the Ps and WINGFOOTED or FRAMEWORKS could cross either of these at an O no matter where they were placed.

37. Cookie @36. Absolutely. I’ve always thought that these jigsaw type puzzles are actually quite straightforward once one understands a few basic tricks. In some ways, being given the first letter of the answers makes it somewhat easier than usual.

    In Puck’s puzzle however, almost nothing led to a definitive placement. I had to resort to all manner of null hypotheses before a single layout emerged.

    Jolly clever.

38. William @37, I think the easiest way in was by getting the two 7 letter answers and seeing which 10 letter answers could cross.

39. Great article Puck, Bravo. I was a very challenging crossword

40. Eileen @23, Gaufrid @24, and sidey @25

    Thank you all. I don’t know why that didn’t twig with me, I’m not usually so dense… honest! 🙂

41. Thanks Puck and Eileen.

    A fun puzzle that succumbed elegantly to the odd educated guesses when it came time to put pen to grid. I turned to Olympus for ‘wing-footed’, assuming that ‘Swift once’ was not a reference to Jonathan but to the now no more Hermes. Who was swift. Once.

42. Is it really OK to split BROWBEAT like that?

    I went wrong (like others above) because I did not know of this possibility. We live and learn!

    Incidentally it could have been (more fairly?) clued as (4-4) rather than (8) BROW-BEAT is in some dictionary I found.

    I wonder if the unexplained “technical problem” preventing this puzzle from being published in the usual interactive online format is related.

    A very enjoyable puzzle overall.

43. There is a moment, when completing a really good crossword, when you feel sure that umpteen others have been thinking with you. BROWBEAT was just such a one. A “Lightbulb” moment.
    Half-Hour was a horrible misdirection whether intended or not, beginning to wonder whether to unpick everything. I was lucky to avoid the Left L(?)***. It was a pleasure though not all completed in one sitting, more like a dozen.
    A lovely reminder of the late lamented.

44. Dave @42 – the Guardian crossword software has never been clever enough to handle jigsaws – if you look at the archive none of the previous ones were fully interactive either (the idea of a solution that you can’t immediately write into the grid is the big problem). Some of the previous ones were partially interactive but showed blank clues, with the real clues on a separate sheet…

45. @mrpenney 15.

    “Eileen, on YANKEE, your blog is missing the third way into the clue: “Comfortably in the end” = Y = Yankee in the phonetic alphabet.”

    YANKEE is also the answer to clue Y, so I figured that Y could represent YANKEE (by analogy to the way that in a conventional cryptic a number can refer to the solution of that clue), without recourse to the NATO alphabet (which didn’t occur to me).

46. I would have missed this puzzle if Eileen had not emailed me and prompted me to have a go. So thank you Eileen, I thought it was great.*

    I have become used to puzzles with deliberate misdirection in the clues, it no longer fools me. But this one had deliberate misdirection in the grid. I did not see that coming! Once I had thrown my first attempt away and reassessed the situation the words all went in logical order, but not where I first expected. Bravo Puck!

    I didn’t get XINTAI but guessed it must be something like that.

    *My only reservation here is this puzzle is aimed at those “in the know”, a twist on “standard” alphabeticals. Suits me down to the ground but I can imagine why not everyone would appreciate it. A bit like in-jokes: funny if you know the score, less amusing otherwise.

47. Dave Fox @42 and beery_hiker @44

    I have a web page that allows me to enter answers to alphabeticals and carte-blanche puzzles online.

    It allows me to drag-and-drop solutions onto the grid and shows where I have clashes etc. At the moment it is only roughly put together and only available privately. I will polish it up a bit and put it live so that anyone can use it. Hopefully in time for the next alphabetical.

48. I have uploaded the alphabetical grid-filler to the public server. It is not very polished but it works and if anyone wants to have a go it is here…

    http://www.crosswords.drurys.org/carte-blanche/index.html

    There are no instructions or help yet but hopefully it is straightforward to use:

    1) choose the grid size
    2) drag the black squares or bars on to the grid
    3) enter your across and down answers (as you solve them)
    4) drag your answers on to the grid

    That’s it!

    To save you work for later click the save button
    To start over again click the rest button
    To start over with a different size grid click reset and then refresh the page

    Remember to save your work as you go along!

49. Thanks for all that, PeeDee. As you know, way above my head but I know others will find it very helpful.

    I would be surprised if anyone sees this but just had to come back to say – re Epiolater @34:

    ‘Mr Beaver @9 objects to ‘vaporettos’. He compares it with ‘paninis’, which is a plural of a plural – a plural squared!’ –

    that I laughed out loud this evening, on the way home from Suffolk, to see a sign at Cambridge Services advertising PANINI’S – two mistakes in one word!!

50. Dave Dunford @ 45: The alphabet referred to in which ‘Yankee’ represents the letter ‘y’ has absolutely nothing to do with phonetics. It has various names and I know it as the International Call Sign Alphabet. It is a spoken alphabet used for reasons of safety and security to identify beyond any possibility of mistake how words are spelled – and to tell someone over the phone one’s postcode. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a written alphabet comprising several scores of characters each of which uniquely identifies one and only one speech sound; it can be used to transcribe utterances in all the languages in the world.

51. Thanks Puck and Eileen.
    Late to the party. Enjoyed this one and was delighted to place answers correctly.

    “browbeat” went in early and that helped.

    Parsing was a different matter altogether…I had 7 whys written around the grid. That’s why I came here..thanks Eileen.

52. Only just discovered this website, after getting frustrated, giving up & Googling for the answer. Annoyed with myself for failing for once, just 1 word (half hour) & two positionings (browbeat & pestle) short, but a pleasure to find many like-minded addicts. So every cloud has a silver lining. It did cross my mind early on that the two 4-letters could be an 8-letter, but the idea didn’t resurface and with H where B should be I just couldn’t finish it! But an excellent puzzle all the same – Puck made it teasingly difficult.
    I’m a second-generation addict – father was an Observer Ximenes solver, & I grew up on Everyman, then Guardian weekend. I remember as a lad sleeping on a stuck Everyman, then waking up in the middle of the night with a Eureka moment and crying out “Hypotenuse”! The clue had mentioned Pythagoras, not Archimedes, though.

53. Welcome to the site, ianb – come back soon!

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