Guardian Prize 27,262 by Brendan

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A themed puzzle from Brendan for this week’s prize.

At first glance this puzzle seemed similar to Paul’s prize puzzle last week with its hyphenated rhyming words; but here the repetitions were exact.  We had HAW-HAW, TUT-TUT and CHACHA, as well as PAIR and MIXED DOUBLES.  Intriguingly, 9 across and 24 across (which appear in symmetrical places in the grid) are anagrams of each other.  And 11 across is a double of a different kind.

I can’t remember the last time Brendan was given the prize slot, and although it wasn’t the toughest of challenges, it was very entertaining.  Let’s hope we see him again soon.

completed grid
Across
1 HAW-HAW Sound of laughter from warmonger, cut short repeatedly (3-3)
HAW(K).  I thought at first that there might be a reference to the Nazi propagandist Lord Haw-Haw but I don’t think he is the warmonger in question.
5 ESTRANGE Drive off from established place for driving practice (8)
EST(ablished) RANGE.
9 TEARIEST Attention I needed in trial, being most distressed (8)
EAR I in TEST.  The first one in for me.
10 NESTOR Wise counsellor somehow errs on no test, ignoring duplicates (6)
*(ERSONT).  Not the smoothest of surfaces.  Coincidentally Nestor (a Greek hero at Troy) cropped up in a recent Inquisitor, which helped me get this one quickly.
11 SIEGE ENGINES Seeing double, mistakenly means to invest (5,7)
*(SEEING SEEING).  A clever device coupled with a (quite fair) misleading definition meant that this was the last one in for me.  One of the more obscure or obsolete meanings of “invest” is to besiege.
13 TORI Things like doughnuts, consumed more than once by motorist, originally (4)
Hidden (twice) in “motorist originally”.  Thanks to PeterO for pointing out the double!
14 REAGENTS Over extended time, splits substances in chemical analysis (8)
AGE in RENTS.
17 RELATION Narrator’s ultimate joy is storytelling (8)
(narrato)R ELATION.
18 PAIR This couple twice said to trim fruit tree (4)
Double homophone: sounds like PARE and PEAR.  Also an indication of the theme (e.g. 1 and 26 across, as well as 20 and 22).
20 MIXED DOUBLES Use bold arrangement that gender-balanced quartet plays (5,7)
“arrangement” of *(USE BOLD).
23 CHACHA Dance music or rap endlessly reprised (6)
CHA(t).  Chambers gives this as hyphenated, which might have suited the theme better.
24 ITERATES Repeats excerpt from writer, a testimony (8)
Hidden in “writer a testimony”.  Another nod to the theme.
25 ORIENTAL Zero cost for tenants, including one from distant region (8)
I in 0 RENTAL.
26 TUT-TUT Disapproval old king briefly echoed (3-3)
King Tutankhamun is known as King Tut.
Down
2 AXES Cuts lines on graph (4)
Cryptic definition (not very cryptic!).
3 HIROSHIMA Greeting Rosalind, then mother, in Asian city (9)
A simple charade  of HI ROS, HI MA.
4 WEEDED Did some work on plot in short act, half-heartedly (6)
WEE DE(e)D.  I”m not entirely convinced that wee = short.
5 ENTREPRENEURIAL OK with risky venture — in return, earn pile, possibly, after its end (15)
(pil)E *(RETURN EARN PILE).  This is nearly an & lit clue (one where the wordplay also serves as the definition) but the first four words are needed to make sense of it.  I am irrestibly reminded of the remark attributed to George W Bush: ” The trouble with the French is that they don’t have a word for enterpreneur”.
6 TENON SAW Tool wasn’t holding one up (5,3)
ONE in WASN’T (all rev).
7 ASSAI Attack incomplete, much seen in score (5)
ASSAI(L).  It’s Italian for “very” and is used in music terminology.
8 GEOCENTRIC Eg concert I botched in relation to omission from The Planets (10)
*(EG CONCERT I).  An obvious enough anagram, but a rather imprecise definition.  Are solvers expected to know that Holst’s suite did not include a movement for the Earth (apparently because it was based on astrology, rather than astronomy)?
12 COME-HITHER Heavenly body mostly struck that woman as alluring (4-6)
COME(T) HIT HER.
15 EN PASSANT By the way, stupidly pen stupid article on time (2,7)
*PEN, ASS AN T.
16 MISDEALT Covering wood with fine spray, was careless with hands (8)
DEAL in MIST.
19 CLIENT Legal right in court for individual using lawyer? (6)
LIEN (a legal right) in CT.
21 EMCEE Person who presents medal, as spelt out (5)
Sounds like MC (Military Cross) if spoken.
22 MENU Before university, old boys getting information on courses (4)
MEN U.  I liked “old boys” for “men”.

*anagram

33 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,262 by Brendan”

  1. Thanks bridgesong.I liked MIXED DOUBLES but hadn’t picked up the connection between 9 and 24a. TORI is also hidden in moTORIst. I just thought one meaning of GEOCENTRIC is that Earth is the centre of the universe and so it could not be a planet but I like your explanation better.

  2. Thanks Brendan and bridgesong

    Of course, as Brendan says, in 13A, the answer is hidden twice in ‘moTORIsT ORIgonally’.

  3. Thankyou bridgesong for illuminating siege engines. I found Brendan’s prize doubly good.

    2D I thought was a double definition. Never heard of TORI, and missed it when in plain sight. Don’t get the ‘more than once’ part of the clue.

  4. Oh, thanks Biggles A and PeterO for ‘more than once’. So that’s another double, only in the clue this time.

  5. Thanks bridgesong. I did like all the doubles and duplicates. The long clue down the middle held me up for ages, and delayed solving last-in 5A.

  6. Thanks PeterO,
    I missed the theme, as usual, but the puzzle was no less enjoyable. Unfortunately I failed in the bottom left corner by confidently and completely mistakenly entering CAN CAN (can[e] = rap?) instead of CHA CHA. Which meant I also missed out on COME HITHER and MISDEALT. Thanks for the mental workout, Brendan.

  8. Thanks bridge song. Undefined themes are often very clever but how often do they help to complete the the crossword? Apart from 11a (I didn’t know that meaning of invest), I completed this one without noticing the doubles etc or even needing them.

  9. Not the toughest of prizes but definitely at the tougher end of his scale and as always very clever.

    Thanks to Brendan and bridgesong

  10. 23a: Being Scottish, I took this to be “CHA(p)” repeated – chap being a Scots dialect word for “knock” or “rap”, as in “I’ll chap on her door and see if she’s at home”.

  12. I spotted TORI almost at once, it was my FOI. I thought the definition was a bit too obvious: perhaps “things like” could have been left out? Maybe I’m betraying my credentials as a sometime physics student, here (and I do wish those guys at Culham would get their fingers out and deliver a working fusion power reactor before the century’s out!).

    But I hesitated for a moment because I felt sure the plural of TORUS wasn’t TORI (I’d always had it as TORUSES) – so I checked. Ah well – the OED and Chambers can’t both be wrong!

    Anyway, the wordplay is brilliant. It can’t be too often you get a hidden word twice over!

    Apart from this one minor quibble – excellent work from Brendan! Haven’t looked at today’s Paul yet – hoping for another treat!

  13. Thanks Brendan, bridgesong
    Not so tough (though tougher than today’s Paul), but hugely enjoyable. The games Brendan plays nearly always unfold during solving, which is a generous way to set, and there were some lovely constructions in this.

  14. Also, meant to say that I really liked the definition for GEOCENTRIC, even if it was a bit unusual. We had Crucible’s planet-themed puzzle a while back, with ‘THE PLANETS SUITE’ as a solution, and EARTH included as one of the themers, but no acknowledgment in the puzzle that Earth isn’t included. I saw this one as a sort of ‘correction and clarification’

  15. bridgesong

    I had no time even to start this crossword, but from my rather detached view of it I can see how cleverly Brendan has made a grid with all those themed answers. SIEGE ENGINES was a brilliant touch to add to all the cleverness.

    My main reason for posting is to point out what you may have missed. You found the anagrams TEARIEST and ITERATES in their symmetrical places, but there are also RELATION and ORIENTAL and ESTRANGE and REAGENTS, and this time it’s the pairs, not the individual answers, that occupy symmetrical places in the grid.

    If I could set crosswords like this I’d be very happy!

    By the way, Brendan clued EMCEE on 30 Sep 2016 as
    “Director of event’s initial announcement”
    and I think the later one in this prize crossword is better.

  16. A cleverer puzzle than I realised, so thanks to various for pointing the intricacies out. I could kick myself for missing the double TORI- which was my LOI. Brendan always delivers well crafted puzzles and this was no exception.
    Thanks Brendan.

  17. Thanks PeterO and Brendan.

    I remember some years ago Brendan set a puzzle where all the across clues were doubles. HOTSHOTS springs to mind as one of them.

  18. Thank you Brendan and bridgesong.

    What a fun puzzle – those anagram pairs completely escaped me, well spotted bridgesong and Alan B @15, brilliant!

    However, I did spot the two TORI – perhaps chance, but NESTOR is repeated ENGINESTORI.

    SIEGE ENGINES was also my last in.

  19. Re GEOCENTRIC. Speaking as one who’s into both music and astronomy, I think it’s been accepted for years that Holst’s Planets Suite has got nothing to do with the planets as such. Aren’t the subtitles derived from attributes of the Roman gods, rather than the planets named after them? E.g. “Mars The Bringer of War”; “Mercury the Winged Messenger”?

    Furthermore, the fact that part of Jupiter has been adopted as a hymn by the Christian church, indicates perhaps which side Holst tended towards! And we all know, ever since Galileo, that religion and astronomy make an uneasy mix!

  21. This was an entertaining solve. A couple of other things…

    If you look below Mixed Doubles – it almost spells ‘Dimerism’, the chemical term for the same molecular formula accounting for two different compounds.

    And do my eyes deceive me, or do I almost see, going across under Haw-Haw – ‘Ximenes’?

  23. Uncleskinny @21, well spotted, in rhetoric a MERISM is the combination of two contrasting words to refer to an entirety. For example, to say that someone searched everywhere, an expression is that someone “searched high and low”. That sort of ties in with the theme but I cannot find an example in the grid.

  24. Entertaining, and very clever. Actually, rather cleverer than I realised, given I missed the anagram pairs. Well done, Brendan, and thanks bridgesong.

  25. Clever puzzle, and I completely missed the paired anagrams pointed out by Bridgesong and Alan B (not to mention the “almost ninas” Uncleskinny refers to — though I’m not convinced those were intentional).

    Some quite unusual clue types here:

    10a, NESTOR — I haven’t seen this “ignoring duplicates” play before and in fact didn’t quite work it out properly but got Nestor from pattern matching (hadn’t heard of him before, either)

    11a, SIEGE ENGINES — Caught on to the device quite quickly, but had to check the BRB for invest after spotting the anag.

    18a PAIR — clever (doubly so given the pairing theme)

    Even though 6d, TENON SAW was straightforward I loved its elegant simplicity.

    @ Bridgesong

    Re 2d, AXES, I don’t think it’s a CD but a double definiton: Cuts = AXES = lines on graph

    In 20a, MIXED DOUBLES, although I too first read “arrangement” as indicating an anag of “use bold”, that would just lead to DOUBLES alone, so I decided “use bold” was wordplay for MIXED DOUBLES, defined as “arrangement that gender balanced quartet plays”.

    I agree with BIGGLES A that a GEOCENTRIC view of the universe is one that doesn’t include Earth as a planet, and the allusion to Holst’s work was simply misdirection in keeping with the surface “concert” theme.

  27. Tony @ 25: you’re probably right about 2D – it can be hard to decide the difference between a CD and a double definition – I did say it wasn’t very cryptic!

    I’m not convinced by your parsing of MIXED DOUBLES but the truth may be that the clue is clever, but not entirely sound. As for GEOCENTRIC, I agree that the reference to Holst may just be misdirection.

  30. No, I meant “did”. I’ve been reading some historical fiction recently, and “invest” = “lay siege to” is quite common in those!

  31. Re 8d

    I think Bridgesong and Tony are being a little unfair to Brendan.

    Firstly one doesn’t need to know that Holst’s Planet’s Suite doesn’t contain the Earth as the definition in relation to omission from The Planets leads one to the answer without such knowledge.

    However Brendan’s capitalisation and the fact that the anagram fodder contains “concert” makes an allusion to Holst’s most famous work. This is surely the opposite of misdirection as if one is familiar with the work this assists one in the solution!

  32. BNTO @ 1 above

    Fair point. More like “extra help” than “misdirection”, perhaps. Not sure that “accusing” Brendan of misdirection is being unfair, though; it’s what setters do!

  33. Thank you, bridgesong, I am now kicking myself for missing the theme! Fortunately, that didn’t prevent me from thoroughly enjoying the solve.
    I also have to admit to making an assumption that Lord Haw-Haw was the warmonger in question at 1a and not being sufficiently diligent to check further on the clue content.

    Thanks also to Brendan – I’m so sorry that your cleverly worked theme passed me by.

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