Guardian Prize 27,208 by Puck

by

I found this tricky, it was hard work all the way through to the end.  Very enjoyable work though, thank you Puck.

I needed a little help from Wikipedia with the Teletubbies theme.  UPDATE: the theme would better be described as ANTENNAS which is written around the centre of the grid.  This neatly links the Teletubbies and the dipole clues in the top left corner and also 7dn.

completed grid
Across
1 GRADUATES Finishes with a Damien, Desmond or Douglas? (9)
cryptic definition – rhyming slang for First, 2:2 and Third degrees
9 RENEGE Default version of green energy (6)
anagram (version) oF GREEN and E (energy)
10 STOP PRESS Good person to cruelly put down late offering from 30? (4,5)
ST (saint, good person) OPPRESS (to cruelly put down)
11 NEREID Satellite dish rented out, without Sky having the deal, initially (6)
anagram (out) of DIsh RENtEd missing first letters of Sky Having The Deal – a moon of Neptune
12 DRILLABLE Like our canines, can get bored? (9)
cryptic, or maybe double definition
13 QUIVER Slight oscillation of 4 in Queens (6)
IV (four) in QU and ER (two queens).  My first attempt was SHE and R to get SHIVER.
17 ANT Intake of Peruvian tamanduas? (3)
found inside (taken in by) periviAN Tamanduas – definition is &lit
19 RABBITS Parts after Scotsman does, perhaps (7)
BITS (parts) following RAB (a Scottish man’s name) – does are female rabbits.  A well disguised definition.  UPDATE: rabbits feature in the Teletubbies, and also “rabbit ears” is a term for a V-shaped dipole antenna.
20 EMBARKS Goes off trade bans by state boards (7)
EMBARgoes (trade bans) missing GOES then KS (Kansas, state)
21 ANN Girl with a heartless sister (3)
A and NuN (sister, heartless).  The first solution that came to mind was girl A + SiS, as in “a piece of ass”, and I was a little shocked that the Guardian would print such before realising my mistake.
23 PINKIE Either half of 6’s rhyme, providing colour that is part of a hand (6)
PINKIE rhymes with both Tinky and Winky (Tinky Wink, Teletubby) and also PINK (colour) and IE (that is)
27 FUMIGATOR One to kill 17 acrosses around 4am? Tiger, with no hesitation (9)
anagram (around) of FOUR AN and TIGer missing ER (hesitation)
28 HOOVER It’s mad, backing this president! (6)
MAD backing (reversed) is DAM, the Hoover Dam for example
29 WHISTLING Like the ref, Heather closely follows game (9)
LING (heather) following WHIST (game)
30 THE SUN Enthusiastic? Missing second half, lost rag (3,3)
anagram (lost) of ENTHUSiastic missing second half – a rag is a newspaper.  The Sun is another feature of the Teletubbies, portrayed as a baby’s face at the start and end of each episode.
31 EYESHADOW Look at dog’s make-up (9)
EYE (look at) and SHADOW (dog, to follow)
Down
2 ROTARY Going round club … (6)
double definition – the Rotary Club is a club organising charitable events.  See also 4 down.
3 DIPOLE … wrongly lied about 6 … (6)
anagram (wrongly) of LIED containing (about) PO (a Teletubby) – definition bundled in with 4 down
4 AERIAL … sporting a real one (one of those looped round the middle) (6)
anagram (sporting) of A REAL I (one) – definition includes 2 down and 3 down.  UPDATE: A rotary dipole aerial is a round aerial, typically for FM reception.  Also the letters of the four 3-letter words around the centre of the grid spell ANTENNAS, so providing another definition, one of these.
5 EPSILON Letter the writer left in printer? (7)
I (the writer) L (left) inside EPSON (make of printer)
6 TELETUBBY Model fashion magazine left out — fat character recently back on TV (9)
T (Model T Ford) and ELLE (fashion magazine) missing L (left) then TUBBY (fat)
7 RECEIVERS Currents flowing round sides and top of electric fences (9)
RIVERS (currents) containing (flowing round) ElectriC (side letters of) and Electric (top letter of)
8 HEADDRESS Explosive speech in The Mitre? (9)
HE (high explosive) ADDRESS (speech)
14 DROP SHOTS Sip alcoholic drinks, some of Andy Murray’s favourites (4,5)
DROP (sip) SHOTS (alcoholic drinks)
15 ABANDONED Quit a group supported by One Direction, originally (9)
A BAND (group) on (supported by) ONE Direction (originally, first letter of)
16 DIVIDED UP I’d turned up to see dessert served up and shared out (7,2)
I’D reversed (turned up) VIDE (to see) and PUD (dessert) reversed (served up)
17 ASA Leica stated old film rating (3)
AS A (like a) sounds like (stated) Leica
18 TEN Number of lions eaten by 19, contrarily (3)
found reversed (contrarily) inside niNETeen – the number of lions (not?) eaten in the Chinese tongue-twister Lion-eating Poet in the Stone Den.  UPDATE: ten is also contained in (of) lIOns, so definition is just “number”.  I know this is Puck’s intended parsing, but I still prefer the less prosaic Chinese poet definition.
22 NAUGHTY Timeless “toy” that’s blue, like 26 (7)
NAUGHT and Y give tOY (missing time) – Noo-Noo has a minor misdemeanour each episode
24 DIPSOS Drunkards after almost 6 rounds? (6)
DIPSy (Teletubby, almost) the OS (O, something round, plural)
25 LAA-LAA City in the style of a 6 (3-3)
LA (city) A LA (in the style of)  A – one of the Teletubbies
26 NOO-NOO 12 holes for the 6s’ 28 (3-3)
NOON (12) then O O (two holes) – Noo-Noo is the Teletubbies’ housekeeper, portrayed as a vacuum cleaner

definitions are underlined

I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords.  If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.

44 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,208 by Puck”

  1. Thanks to Puck and PeeDee. I worked on this puzzle several times between Saturday and Tuesday. Last in were GRADUATES and ROTARY (once I had all the crossers). I only got the former by a Google search for the three Ds. I did not know Rab as a name and did not parse HOOVER. I did get TELETUBBY early on and relied on Wikipedia for the gory details (I knew nothing about the show). Re 3d, I read it as lied scrambled around Po (the blog says VI). For me, a big challenge but worth the effort.

  2. Thanks Pee Dee. I disagree, I didn’t like this and only persevered through sheer cussedness and by extensive recourse to Google. The Teletubbies theme is too narrow and dated, the rhyming slang for degrees too esoteric and the mini aerial theme in the NW corner too obscure. Incidentally, in 3d it is an anagram of lied containing Po, one of the Teletubbies. Also, I think DESMOND refers to TUTU, 2.2

    I never did come to terms with LIONS in 18d and still can’t see it. I did find the tongue!-twister but that didn’t help.

    Frustrating and not a fair test.

  3. Gosh this was hard. There isn’t really a definition for 2,3 and 4 down, is there? Thanks for the explanation of the Ten Lions and HOOVER. Dam!
    My parsing of 22dn was ‘Oy! Naughty!’ and ‘blue’ as in blue movie. Is Noo-Noo pronounced No-No?

  4. Nice puzzle and blog, Pee Dee and Puck.With no knowledge of teletubbies, Google was very helpful.

  5. The scholarly love a quick solve, sans aids, their unearthed amphora. Yet scholarship can also demand hard graft. So what joy, out in a lost wiki-wadi, to unearth a bright Noonoo shard, and then another, naughty! All the bits were there by Sunday and, jar in hand, I blessed the divine Puck.

  6. Thanks, PeeDee.

    I “enjoyed” this in a masochistic sort of way, taking four goes to solve the mini-puzzles in the grid, finalling finishing on Tuesday like ACD @1. Last to fall were the elliptical 2,3,4 clues – very satisfying once I saw how they fitted together.

    I don’t think you mentioned the very Puckish Nina in the centre – it was this that pointed early on to the theme and thereafter it was over to Google to grind things out.

  7. I vaguely remembered the Teletubbies but still needed google to help recall the character names.

    There were a number of clues that stumped me: 2d, 3d and 4d were beyond me and as a result I also failed on 12a as the only crosser I had was not enough to decode the cryptic definition. 17d – I should have googled British film ratings. And finally, the backwards clueing for 22d was beyond me.

    All in all, a very steep challenge. Fortunately, Paul’s prize today is much gentler.

  8. So Puck has abandoned Shakespearean references in favour of brightly coloured creatures with antenna protruding from their body parts; I’m with Biggles @2.

  10. I had a bit of a learning experience with this, but a pleasant one. 6d TELETUBBY was actually my first in, although I knew nothing about the Teletubbies except (sort of) what they looked like. So I had to look things up, but for a Saturday puzzle it was worth it.

    22d NAUGHTY was a tad naughty: ‘o’ (the letter) becomes ‘0’ (zero), which becomes ‘nothing’, which becomes ‘naught’. How many levels of indirection do you want? I have no objections to this clue, though.

    I’d never heard of the rhyming honours degrees, so 1a GRADUATES was my last in and the last to parse (i.e. to understand). When I looked it up online I found that a ‘first’ is a Geoff (for Geoff Hurst), but I can see that Damien is more up to date (and alliterative with the other two!).

    There is a subtle point in 16d DIVIDED UP: VIDE is ‘see’ (from Latin, as in vide supra) rather than ‘to see’, the ‘to’ meaning ‘next to’ (or standing as an acceptable filler word to achieve a good surface).

    I was amazed at the nina, which I saw only after reading NeilW’s comment @6.

  12. matrixmania @9

    I hope NeilW doesn’t mind if I answer your question (having acknowledged his finding of the nina in my comment @10).

    The nina ia ANTENNAS going round the central square of 3-letter words.

  13. I can claim no credit but the annotated solution puts my mind at rest over 18d. Ten is contained in L 10 ns as well as in the backward nineteen which was clear enough, nothing to do with Chinese poets.

  15. I didn’t know much about Teletubbies, but apparently – according to Wikipedia – rabbits feature prominently, too.

  16. Thanks to Puck no PeeDee. I used google just enough to fill the grid as I had no knowledge of or interest in the theme but I could still appreciate the typical Puckish ingenuity of the clues I understood.

    A few comments:
    The central Nina passed me by even thought it was referred to directly in 4dn. I didn’t understand the significance of the linked clues or the connection to the theme before. I hope the explanation for 4 dn in blog can be updated to pull those threads together.
    I am please Biggles A@13 set us straight on the wordplay for 18d, TEN. The Chinese poem always seemed like a stretch.
    To matrixmnia@7, googling British film ratings would not have helped. ASA isn’t a movie rating a la U, G,R, X etc., it is/was a rating standard for film used in cameras, and not remotely British. ASA is the acronym for the old American Standards Association, later ANSI.

  17. Yes, that was a real workout. I only finished yesterday – Friday – in the SE corner. LOI was 22 down.

  18. I really thought I wasn’t going to finish that. My first thought was ‘this is the grid from Hell, I just hope there’s an obvious theme’, but I was about two thirds of the way through before I cracked the crucial 6 down. I didn’t help myself by having SHIVER instead of QUIVER (the queens being Rider Haggard’s She and just an R; well I thought it was plausible).
    i didn’t know the Teletubbies were back on TV, but my kids liked them the first time, way back then, so some things fell into place then.
    But even then, I had three of the sub-grids filled in, but absolutely nothing at all in the top left. Curse that grid! At least PO lead quickly to DIPOLE, and led to an interesting pass through Wikipedia’s entry on dipole antennae (no, I didn’t notice the Nina) and I got there in the end, with GRADUATE unparsed – I’d never heard that rhyming slang, and with the aerial triple I thought that made for a pretty obscure quadrant.
    I reckon this week’s prize winners deserve their loot.

    Thanks Puck, that was impressive, and the same goes for the blog, PeeDee.

  19. Many thanks Puck and PeeDee. I found it a satisfying challenge and now that the nina has been highlighted, explaining 4, even more so. Having a daughter who grew up with the Teletubbies and who is now in the throes of degree final exams, I identified strongly with the theme, and 1 across!

  21. …oh, and ‘The Sun’ fits the theme too, as said solar entity with a baby’s face is another feature of Teletubbies.

  22. Well I totally missed ANTENNAS looped around the middle of the grid. I thought i had it when I googled ‘rotary dipole aerials’ and found images where they are exactly that, looped around the middle. Is this an added dimension?

  23. Thank you Puck and PeeDee.

    Solving this crossword was a real challenge but I managed to finish it last Saturday – I had to google to get the rhyming slang for 1a Hirst, TuTu and Hurd.

    The TELETUBBIES was a programme my granddaughter loved to watch here in France when she was little, so it was one British series (dubbed) that I did get to see – I remember that the voice trumpets make a WHISTLING noise.

  24. Thanks for the blog, Peedee.

    I don’t know what was the matter with me last Saturday but I made very heavy weather of the long-awaited Prize puzzle from one of my top favourite setters and needed a lot of help from the ever-dependable ‘phone-a-friend’ before I finally limped over the finishing line.

    And that was after seeing the Nina immediately [although I’ll admit I did enter ANTENNAE originally, because I didn’t understand the clue for 17dn] – I will never forget the identically positioned, curled-up ARMADILLO that I missed in this puzzle that I blogged five years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/lookup?crossword_type=cryptic&id=25615.

    I thought for ages, from 17ac, that the theme was going to be anteaters again [we’ve had several of those from Puck] and I failed to get the crucial – and surprising – 6dn without help.

    But what a lovely puzzle it turned out to be, with very clever exploitation of the theme. I watched the programme with my grandchildren and they loved it.

    Many thanks, Puck – I really enjoyed the puzzle in retrospect but you won hands down this time!

  25. I found this as hard as everyone else seems to have done but I managed to complete it on Saturday-it rained! Obviously I knew of the existence of TELETUBBIES but I’ve never seen it, and I had to resort to Mr Google- NOONOO and LAALAA indeed! I didn’t spot any NINAs but now all has been made clear, I can see what a clever puzzle it is.
    Thanks Puck

  26. Found this tricky but very entertaining. I have never seen the programme but the names were all familiar due to frequent appearances in pub quizzes. I recall one team that called themselves Noo Noo Sucks.

    Thanks to Puck and PeeDee

  27. Eileen @ 24. You shouldn’t blame yourself, that doesn’t quite work. Unless you were thinking of this:

    I’ve never seen a Jaguar,
    Nor yet an Armadill
    O dilloing in his armour,
    And I s’pose I never will.

  28. Thanks PeeDee and Puck for a cleverly intertwined crossword.

    I enjoyed this, but also found it hard to finish, especially the top left. I saw the (major) theme early on, but missed the central Nina and the other significance of the reference to it in 4d.

    Biggles @2 and brownphel @8: Theme is not entirely dated as Puck hints in 6d “recently back on TV”. Now, I would say any Shakespeare theme would be entirely dated.

  30. Eileen@29, I am glad to see you followed up. I remember that puzzle with the curled-up ARMADILLO with its tail in the alcohol very well. Like you, I didn’t see it when solving but was so impressed when it was pointed out that it became a defining moment in my developing appreciation of the setter’s art.

    I even remembered parts of the blog. Thankfully some elements of the exchange are now behind us.

  31. Thanks, HKrunner. As I said, it’s one I will never forget.

    What I had forgotten was that Puck made a couple of visits to the blog and shared some thoughts about how he’d composed the puzzle. I didn’t scroll down far enough this morning.

  32. Yes, a proper tough one, this, I thought, and I was very pleased with myself for finishing it — even though I failed to parse some wordplay and completely missed the nina and clever reference to it in 4d (a rotary dipole aerial is something I’d heard of, though, luckily). It’s only after reading this blogpost that I’ve come to realise exactly how clever it was, so thanks, PeeDee.

    I got TELETUBBY fairly early, and although I’ve never watched the program and didn’t realise it was back (or had ever gone away, frankly), I was surprised to realise I knew all the protagonists’ names (but not the spelling of Laa-laa). I thought then the theme was a bit unfair, but really it was no more obscure for me than one based on Greek mythology or opera, so I just headed over to Wikipedia to educate myself, where I learnt of Noo-noo (which gave me 28a, HOOVER, too, despite missing the wordplay. Dam!).

    Somewhere there is a four-year-old crossword genius who is totally made up.

    11a, NEREID was my LOI and I never understood the wordplay, but vaguely knew of the word (from other crosswords, I think). I didn’t enter it, though, on the basis that it’s one of Neptune’s moons, but rather after having learnt that the original meaning of “satellite” (following the Latin source) is “one that accompanies” and that the Nereids were females who often accompanied Poseidon (= Neptune, hence the moon’s name). I then decided that “dish” (attractive female) was part of the definition and eventually gave up on the wordplay.

    I had a lot of trouble with 22d, NAUGHTY, even though it was the only word I could think of that would fit. “Blue”, as in pornographic, tied in ok, and I realised Noo-noo was “naughty” in the sense that it had lots of O’s, but I couldn’t work out what “timeless toy” was all about. I only wrote it in, finally, after looking up noo-noo on the internet, where, on Urban Dictionary, I found the first entry said:

    “A peculiar lifeform masquerading as a vacuum cleaner in the somewhat disturbing childrens TV programme “teletubbies”

    and underneath, in quotes, was the phrase “Naughty Noo-noo!“. I guess this must be a catch-phrase from the program, although those here who have watched it “with their grandchildren” (yeah, right) haven’t mentioned this. I also learnt there that noo-noo is (apparently) also slang for vagina!

    I didn’t get the wordplay for 19d, TEN, either, but didn’t need it. While I’m relieved I hadn’t been expected really to know about the lion-eating poet in the stone den, I’m also really glad that PeeDee thought I did, so introducing me to this marvellous piece of Chinese wordplay. Thanks, Peedee!

    I really liked the clue for 19a, RABBIT, and might not have got it if I hadn’t recently read about another clue that used “does, possibly” for DEER.

    Shouldn’t 8d, HEADDRESS really have had “say” or similar tacked on the end, since the mitre is just an example of one?

  33. Tony – in 8dn I think the question mark at the end of the clue indicates that that a HEADDRESS is a mitre maybe, possibly, perhaps etc.

  34. Tony @32, I watched the TELETUBBIES with my granddaughter here in France, there was no problem with NOO-NOO, because ‘nounou’ in French is a child’s way of saying ‘nourice’, ‘nanny’ in English.

  35. PeeDee @33

    Yes, fair enough. Maybe I was just sore because it took me so long to get it.

    As a matter of interest, are you a scholar of Chinese or just someone (like me) who is interested in language and (unlike me) had come across the lion-eating poet? The Wikipedia link you gave doesn’t actually give the translation, but I found one here:

    http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2473#comment-78200

    (You will surely be aware of the marvellous Language Log if you are a student of Chinese)

  36. Cookie @34

    [Ok, I believe you, Cookie. I remember now that I knew the Teletubbies’ names because in the nineties I was friends with a group of students who were obsessed with them. In fact I think I can now hear in my mind the one who introduced me to the others saying “naughty Noo-noo!”. Was that, as I surmised, a catchphrase? “Méchant Nounou” doesn’t have the same ring though, does it?]

  38. Thanks again Eileen, I am indeed interested and enjoyed those comments. It was something of a comfort to see I wasn’t the only one to miss the curled up tail and, courtesy of blaise, to revisit the Just So story that leads into Rolling Down to Rio. I wonder where I was that weekend, don’t think I would have forgotten that one.

  40. Tony @35 – no I am not a scholar of Chinese. I came across the Lion-eating Poet tongue-twister accidentally couple of years ago whilst trying to find out more about the Japanese Kanji/Chinese Han character set with my younger daughter who is mad about Manga and Anime. I could not remember any details but the name stuck in my head.

    I had an interest in Chinese poetry (in translation) and the Chinese writing system and when I was younger; firstly having a Chinese girl as a flatmate for a year and then shortly afterwards having Korean girlfriend. Sadly I am hopeless at learning foreign languages and I forget languages faster then I can learn them.

  41. Well some clues were okay, but a lot weren’t, really, which made for very tough going. I don’t mind a tough puzzle, but quite often it’s poor writing that ups the difficulty in puzzles that should be more straightforward.

  42. Cheers, Peedee.

    Of couse the modern Korean system, Hangeul, is something completely different and linguistically very interesting, as “The shapes of the consonants are based on the shape the mouth made when the corresponding sound is made”.

    As someone interested in the game of Go*, I completely devoured the anime (based on the eponymous manga) Hikaru no Go, which was responsible for a massive upsurge in interest in the game by young Japanese in the nineties, when (despite being the “national game”) it was largely regarded as an old man’s pastime.

    *The only cryptic crossword I have (so far) ever devised was themed on Go and appeared in the British Go Journal #178 earlier this year. I hope to make it more widely available soon (technology permitting).

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