Guardian Prize 27,944 / Boatman

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I suspect I’m not the only one to have wondered why puzzle 27,943, published on Friday, October 4th, themed on a race to be run on Sunday 6th, was not scheduled for Saturday 5th, especially as it was set by Enigmatist and therefore eminently suited for the Prize slot and so I was even more than usually intrigued as to whose puzzle I would be blogging on Saturday.

I opened my paper and found a Boatman puzzle, with ‘Special Instructions: seven solutions, not defined, are linked in this 50th anniversary puzzle’. I knew this was Monty Python’s Golden Jubilee year and had been reminded that this was the actual date when I heard about it on Radio 4 before I got up, so I hoped this would turn out to be the anniversary in question – and so it was.

Once the theme was confirmed at 23dn, 18dn, 24ac, 12ac, it was pretty much, for me, a great fan, a case of locating then parsing the members of the team – with one rather big disappointment [see below at 14dn].

There’s a reference to a classic sketch in the clue for 9ac and another in SPAM [EAT?] down the right hand side but I can’t see anything else. [Edit: Argh!  I did see the Spanish Inquisition at 17dn – thanks, g larsen @2 – when I solved the puzzle, then somehow managed to overlook it when I came to write up the blog, a day later.]

Thanks for the puzzle, Boatman – my apologies if I’ve missed something [else].

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1 Giving a lift from college with family in car heading towards London (7,2)
JACKING UP
C [college] + KIN [family] in JAG [car] + UP [heading towards London]

6 TV company takes in university youngsters (4)
CUBS
CBS [TV company] round U [university]

8 I had an accident with nail gun in the groin (8)
INGUINAL
An anagram [had an accident] of I + NAIL GUN

9 Learned about a dead (at first unhappy) parrot (4,2)
READ UP
RE [about] + A + first letters [at first] of D [ead] U[nhappy] P[arrot] –

10 The way things are, not even a T-shirt fits (2,2,2)
AS IT IS
Odd letters of A t ShIrT fItS

11 ‘No rest for the wicked’, I moan, after besetting sin (8)
INSOMNIA
An anagram [wicked] of I MOAN, after an anagram [besetting] of SIN – ‘for the’ seems redundant in the wordplay

12 Show about America becoming American (6)
CIRCUS
CIRCa [about] with the a [America] becoming US [American]

15 Greek character goes by bike — you say this must be changed (8)
MUTANDUM
MU [Greek character] + TANDUM [sounds like – you say – tandem [bike]

16 March sung by a politician in theatrical style (4,4)
HIGH CAMP
HIGH C [sounds like – sung? – ‘hike’ {march}] + A MP [a politician]

19 Deli item left for hotel (6)
CLEESE
C[h]EESE [deli item, with h [hotel] replaced by L [left]

21 It looks like our security service’s repressed and dissipated (8)
MISSPENT
I first had MI [our security service]’S + PENT [repressed] but we had an extra S to account for and I couldn’t see what ‘it looks like’ was doing. In consultation with Gaufrid, we decided that we have to imagine a scribbled 5 looking like an S, so we have MI5’S [our security service’s] + PENT [repressed] : I quite liked this, because just the other day I had a bit of a problem getting my tickets out of the machine at the station for the York S and B, because I’d scrawled the code [a combination of letters and numbers] in my diary and did mistake a 5 for an S – or vice versa

22 Ionised matter engineered as lamp (6)
PLASMA
An anagram [engineered] of AS LAMP

24 Fellow making things up going on air (6)
FLYING
F [fellow] + LYING [making things up]

25 Rothko finally using a mixture of it plain (3,5)
OIL PAINT
[rothk]O + an anagram [mixture] of IT PLAIN – I hadn’t heard of this artist – I think it might be an attempt at an &lit: I wasn’t sure what to underline as the definition

26 One widely admired vocally (4)
IDLE
Sounds like ‘idol’ [one widely admired]

27 Complaint from hollow, dozy guard about leader of escape (9)
DYSENTERY
D[oz]Y [‘hollow’] + SENTRY [guard] round E[scape]

Down

1 Boatman’s led with a knave (5)
JONES
ONE’S [Boatman’s] after J [Jack – knave – in cards]

2 Bitter, unending campaign meets habitual reaction (7)
CAUSTIC
CAUS[e] [campaign] + TIC [habitual reaction]

3 In refrain: Nessun Dorma (5)
INNES
Hidden in refraIN NESsun Dorma – but ‘Dorma’ is redundant in the wordplay

4 Send off to get free hospitality? Quite the reverse (7)
GILLIAM
Hidden reversal in MAIL [send off] + LIG [to get free hospitality]

5 Hanging on first article one included in funny script (9)
PARASITIC
A [first {letter of} Article] in an anagram [funny] of SCRIPT round A [one] – some people won’t like ‘first article’

6 A person pursuing another of the same sex (7)
CHAPMAN
CHAP + MAN

7 Specialised shops with a couple of bills for Spooner (9)
BOUTIQUES
Two beaks [a couple of bills]

13 Noted agreement in the US: review aid and tie in with end of quarrel (9)
INITIALED
An anagram [review] of AID and TIE IN with [quarre]L – the American spelling, hence ‘in the US’

14 Salvaged point and got even with current leader going ahead (9)
SCAVENGED
S [point] + AVENGED [got even] with C[urrent] going ahead
If only there hadn’t been a definition or a superfluous ‘point and got’ and the crossers hadn’t completely ruled it out – a lot of ‘ifs’, I know, but – I’d have made a case here for the missing Carol CLEVELAND: C[urrent] leader going ahead of LEVEL [even] + AND [with] – for me, a more obvious choice for the seventh undefined solution – see the last paragraph here – than 3dn, which I think is a flawed clue, anyway

17 Opposed by many people, the Spanish Inquisition’s first rising (7)
HOSTILE
HOST [many people] + a reversal [rising] of EL [the Spanish] + I[nquisition]

18 Phoney hypnotists? No, it’s fatal to be embraced by them! (7)
PYTHONS
An anagram [phoney] of HYPNOT[ist]S, minus [no] ‘it’s’

20 Boatman’s officer accepts a new start after drug discharge (7)
EMANATE
E [drug] + MATE [Boatman’s officer] round A N[ew]

22 It’s clear one is advanced (5)
PALIN
PLAIN [clear] with the A [one] moved up [advanced]

23 Don Carlo, say? (5)
MONTY
Sounds like [say] Monte [Carlo] – Monty Don is a TV presenter

 

50 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,944 / Boatman”

  1. Thanks Eileen.The theme emerged quite early on and justified insertion of 12a and 23d which I never did otherwise explain to my own satisfaction. I couldn’t get ‘picking up’ out of my head for 1a and that slowed me down. ‘Lig’ and ‘inguinal’ were new to me and needed Google confirmation.I think 25a has to be &lit, I find the artist painted mostly in oils.

    Unlike you I didn’t like 21a much but I’m sure you are right in that 5 can look like S. Are you not missing an I in your analysis of 5d? I suppose a=first, a=article and i=one but I don’t like that much either.

  2. Thanks Eileen – there’s another theme reference in the clue to 17dn – clearly you weren’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition. ( Nor, apparently, was Biggles @1, whose namesake was one of the cardinals).

  3. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen. Because of the theme I got JONES (but did not parse it) and GILLIAM (though like Biggles A I had to look up Lig – and also INGUINAL).

  4. I’m with Eileen about the missing CLEVELAND–I was looking for her everywhere! And many thanks for the parsing of MISSPENT.

  5. Frankly, I was disappointed with this one – don’t get me wrong, it is a fine puzzle, but after I got Chapman I realized the theme was MPFC and not Apollo 11, and the grid practically filled itself in.

    Eileen’s second crack at 21a was my interpretation too. Although normally used of entire words, the term “homograph” comes to mind.

    I’m not sure I’m totally on board with 3d being flawed, though. I don’t know if there is a “rule” that when a word is to be found “in” a phrase, it has to touch every word in the phrase, although that is very common. Undoubtedly having extra words can be inelegant, but because Nessun Dorma is a title, here it seems to work. Anyway, after solving it I couldn’t get “as much imagination as a caravan site” out of my head.

    Thanks.

  6. Yes, the themers were write-ins, Idle being the giveaway for me, though the rest were a bit slower, and I looked up ingulian (goolies?) for 8ac and saw inguinal, so a dnf. Like Biggles A, I’m not happy with 12ac, but then I’m ok with Monty Don (lovely bloke, sadly late) and ‘say Montecarlo’ in 23d. The two beaks Spoonerism was fun, and the parrot in 9ac being both dead and unhappy was most apposite. A 50th anniversary well worth celebrating, thanks Boatman and Eileen.

  7. Being a fan, I enjoyed the theme of this puzzle.
    My favourite was CIRCUS (loi).
    I was not sure how to parse 21 MISSPENT – it seemed to have an extra ’s’ in it, but now I see that I should read that as a 5.
    I saw 3d as being hidden INNES but I never knew of Neil Innes’ association with Monty Python so I failed to parse it.
    Never heard of Monty Don. I thought it referred to a homonym of Monte Carlo!
    Thanks Boatman and Eileen.

  8. Ah so many great memories of this Madcap Monty Python lot came flooding back as this puzzle unfolded.

    I didn’t spot SPAM in the Nina, and was so distracted by the dead parrot reference so didn’t ever parse 9a READ UP properly.

    Like Biggles A@1 and acd@3, I was unfamiliar with 8a IGUANAL and the word LIG in 4d GILLIAM.

    My favourite was 26a IDLE for its simplicity – and how could I have forget that mother’s voice? And I have just been reading a book by Monty Don about Nigel, his golden retriever – so was able to get that British reference in 23d through another coincidence!

    Thanks to Eileen for a great blog (I especially enjoyed the Carol Cleveland article) and of course to Boatman for such a fun work-out.

  9. [grantinfreo@6, I am pretty sure Monty Don is still alive as I looked him up after I had finished the book about dogs (and gardens.]

  10. [Actually yes JinA, you’re right now that I think about it, I think he had something serious, a heart attack maybe, and recovered. Apols to Monty for greatly exaggerating his demise!]

  11. Enjoyed this but like Eileen was wondering what happenened to Cleveland. Bit of a poor omission in an otherwise excellent puzzle. I even wrote a clue for her but having seen Eileen’s briliant spot of a possible clue anyway (14d) won’t add it here.
    Thanks to Boatman for a great puzzle amd Eileen for the blog.

  12. Thanks both.

    I found it the easiest Prize xword for a while, and agree with most of the plaudits and criticisms above.

    The clue for 6d seems like a somewhat personal reference to Chapman’s well-known sexuality.

    I liked 7d, and wondered if the “specialised shops” might include a cheese shop and a pet shop.

  13. You’re right, of course, Biggles A @1 about 5dn. I remember having problems with this and still didn’t get it right – and still can’t really see how it works. Any offers?

    Dr Whatson @5: I agree that ‘inelegant’ is a more appropriate word than ‘flawed’ for 3dn. I don’t usually comment on this particular ‘rule’, though others quite often do. I admit to being rather more critical of Boatman’s cluing than some other setters’, since he holds Masterclasses for aspiring setters, and so I tend not to comment on his puzzles, unless I’m down to blog them.

    Burnbake @11 – I’d be interested to see your clue for Cleveland: mine, of course, was entirely and impossibly facetious.

    g larsen @2 – please see my amendment to the preamble. I’m mortified.

  14. I too had been reading about the Monty Python anniversary just before I came to the crossword, so knew the theme immediately and was able to fill in the Pythons more-or-less straightaway.

    I did not find much else too demanding in this puzzle though I did have trouble parsing CIRCUS.  Thanks for explanation.  Lig is new to me, too.

    First article.  I just saw all the articles in alphabetic order (a, an, the) and A is the first one.

    Over all too quickly really, so a bit disappointing for that reason.

    Thanks to Boatman and to Eileen.

  15. Dear Eileen, I’ve never fallen out of a tall building but had all 7 pythons including Cleveland among my first 10 answers or so. However it was soon apparent Cleveland wasn’t there. Talk about livid. Can one seriously get so worked up about a crossword. Well, started off nice, but now it’s getting silly. Innes, great Bonzo but no Python in my mind. A real travesty with apologies to Boatman for an otherwise fine…..aaaarghh

  16. I really enjoyed the puzzle also being a fan and thanks to Eileen for the link and reference to Carol Cleveland. It would have been nice to see the gender balance evened up (as ever!?!). I am another who came here for clarification on the parsing of misspent. I also had put in an unparsed ‘mutinous’ instead of ‘mutandum’ at 15a which was new to me. I therefore did not have the letters for the NINA that was mentioned. I enjoyed spotting the undefined clues and thought we had plenty of other good ones.

    Re: Monty Don (especially for GinF and JinA). I can confirm that Monty is alive and well and is still the presenter of a weekly Gardening programme on BBC2. He has the most relaxed delivery of virtually any presenter I can think of. His gardening techniques are equally chilled as are his lovely dogs, Nigel and Nell.

    Thanks for great puzzle Boatman

  17. Re 5d – I took it as I=first (as in King Charles I), then a=article and a=one. Still not a great clue, but at least  it works for me.

  19. 5d PARASITIC

    Mine was A – first letter of the alphabet etc

    Plus A for article

    Plus I for one

    All mixed with SCRIPT

    Or has that been said?

  20. I tried fitting Cleveland into 14D too, reckoning she counted as a possible 7th Python, if not Connie Booth, much though I like Neil Innes.

  21. [Ed the Ball@16:

    That is good news indeed, I feel I know Nigel and Nell and the garden well since reading the book.]

  22. My first thought was that this was going to be about ABBEY ROAD which has recently been rereleased, but once I got CHAPMAN the penny dropped. Mind you,I needed the theme to get JONES,INNES and GILLIAM.
    I remember that,when I was at University,we formed a MP Appreciation Society in order to get a Union grant. Having got it,we spent the money on a few pints and a trip to see the first Python film. The society then disbanded.
    Thanks Boatman.

  23. A very enjoyable anniversary puzzle.  17d HOSTILE was probably my favourite – clever how the Spanish Inquisition is worked in.  Of the non-themers, I really liked 11a INSOMNIA.

    It was good to see the traditional dual use of “Boatman” at 1d and 20d – once for I/me/one and once for a mariner.

    Many thanks Boatman and Eileen.

  24. [Dear Burnbake@11 – if you are still around, yes please share your clue for Carol Cleveland with us. JinA and others.

    Mr Apricot@15, I did enjoy your crazy rant of a post. I was wondering if you had paid for an argument?]

  25. [Great story, Peter Aspinwall@22. It reminded me that in the Pythonesque spirit, we all did quite rogueish things (is that the right adjective?) when we were young. Vale the MP Appreciation Society!]

  26. Mr Boatman put a clue to CLEVELAND as a teaser on Twitter the day before the puzzle arrived: “Endlessly witty lady’s opening also somewhere in the northeast (9)”. I think he said he tried but couldn’t fit it in at the end. Anyway, I enjoyed it.

     

    Thanks to Eileen and Boatman

  27. What, siphoning public money, Peter Aspinwall? Like the Eye is forever accusing the pollies and their mates of doing? Ah well, at least it went to cultural enhancement and not to the Caymans.

  28. Fairly easy to work out the theme, as Monty Python was the obvious anniversary that day, but some clues were quite a challenge, even looking for the stars’ names I was convinced 16A (4,4) would be Eric Idle, and wasted much time trying to see why, until I found him elsewhere.
    As to 3D, surely INNES sleeps (DORMA, in Italian) ‘in refrain Nessun ‘.
    MISSPENT was my LOI, and like others I had trouble following it, finally getting it only through the letters crossing.

  29. An incidental detail that’s neither here nor there re the deli item at 19a: Cheese was Cleese’s family name until his father changed it out of embarrassment.

  30. Thanks Eileen and Boatman. What a lovely puzzle – a quick Google confirmed who/what was celebrating a 50th anniversary, and filling the grid brought back a host of pleasant memories. Hugely enjoyable!

    It did lead me to wonder what the Pythons made of a Scotsman actually winning Wimbledon 40-odd years later (and not being called Angus Podgorny) ???

  31. Thanks JinA @24 for confirming I’ve been crazy 50 years at least. And sorry I’m tardy replying. That was never 5 minutes just now. I find it amazing the MP team were by and large successful and so diverse post-Python.

  32. Eileen@13 and Julie in Australia@24 here it is..Quite easy but I quite liked the surface. Never attempted to write a clue before:

    Family group outside left first lady and started disappearing (9)

    In line with Boatman’s puzzle it was not defined.

  34. Like someone posted earlier i bunged in MUTINOUS rather than MUTANDUM for 15a so overall a dnf.

    Found the MP theme a bit early, I’m too young (55!) to have been around and never found them all that funny. But definitely recognised as a significant cultural artefact.

    The 25A Rothko clue was my favourite, as pointed out earlier it has claims to be being &slit, for anyone not familiar with his transcendent paintings , it is worth a journey to Tate Mod to see them.

  35. Thanks, all, for the comments – glad to see I was not too way out.

    It’s quite unusual, I think, not to have had at least one comment from Boatman today. I’d have been interested to hear his thoughts on Carol Cleveland [I don’t do twitter, Skinny @26]. 

    Epee Sharkey @34 – one of the benefits of being that bit older! I treasure memories of allowing my small A Level class in the ’70s the first five minutes of first lesson on Thursday [I think it was] five minutes of discussion of the previous night’s episode. I’m sure it helped us all to work harder. 😉 [I’m not great at identifying &lits but I really don’t think 25ac is one].

  36. I was never a fan but as just about everyone else was I couldn’t help but know their names (apart from INNES that I got from the wordplay before spotting the theme). CHAPMAN was my FOI from the wordplay but I was some way in before I spotted the theme having earlier ruled out, in order that they occurred to me, the translator of Homer so much admired by Keats, Herbert, legendary Arsenal manager, a mediaeval tradesman not, when I looked it up, one of Chaucer’s pilgrims, and Percy, England cricket captain and great slipfielder. None had an anniversary.
    Thanks to Boatman and Eileen.

  38. You are right, Biggles. You had already given the correct parse for PARASITIC first up, but then others seemed to be debating it again.
    Thank you, Nila Palin. “Blessed are the cheesemakers” takes on a whole new meaning.
    Mr Apricot ??

  43. Thanks Boatman and Eileen

    Sorry, I didn’t enjoy this (though I did go up a dead end of Abbey Road to start with, as did Peter Aspinwall).

    Sadly, INGUINAL was one of my first entries….

  44. Sorry to be late (busy weekend). Just dropped in to defend 25ac. The ‘it’ of the clue is the OIL PAINT, which, in his later work, Rothko did, in a sense, use a mixture of, plain. I didn’t really know much about Rothko when I solved except that he was a painter, but that was enough for me to decide I had the answer right.

    I also liked the MI5 clue.

  45. Luckily I had read about the anniversary in question in the Grauniad a day or two before. I quickly spotted that 6+1 names of the Pythons were needed, struggled to remember the names of the two Terrys, and then took an unforgivably long time after finding monty and circus to realise that pythons and, nearly loi, flying should also be present.

  46. Many thanks, Eileen and all, if belatedly so – we’ve been away for a few days. I was definitely disappointed not to be able to give a place to Carol CLEVELAND, but it is as Skinny @26 says, there simply wasn’t a way to get MONTY, PYTHONS, FLYING, CIRCUS and eight contributors’ names into a grid together. You may like to know that I tried eight different grids from the Guardian library before I realised that I’d exhausted all the possible arrangements – placing a nine-letter solution like CLEVELAND constrains a relatively large part of the grid, and sometimes there’s just no way to do it. I might have got away with splitting it into CLEVE + LAND, expecting some disgruntlement over the use of a dialect word, but then that would have meant finding places for 13 theme words – in other words, either three or four in each quadrant of the grid. As “associate Pythons”, Cleveland and Innes have slightly different claims to be included – Cleveland had a more regular presence as a performer, but Innes’s contributions to the Pythons’ material (in addition to his well-known songs, he also co-wrote some of the sketches) to my mind give him the stronger claim to be the “seventh Python”, so he took the final slot in the grid. I almost always use an introductory posting on Twitter to provide a home for theme clues that didn’t make it into the final puzzle, so I was able to honour Cleveland’s name in a small way there – she’ll also have her place in print, should I complete my next set of puzzles with enough energy left to make a sequel to The First 50 …

  47. Thank you, Boatman @46. It’s possible that few will have since your comment but, because, as I think you know, bloggers receive emails of all comments on their blog, it seems only courteous for me to reply.

    You’ve given a totally justifiable reason for not including Carol Cleveland in the grid and, to my shame, I think I might not have noted her omission – we’re so used to the Python team being listed as CHAPMAN, CLEESE, GILLIAM, GRAHAM, IDLE and PALIN – had you not included INNES, instead. The easier option might have been to omit both. 😉  [As I indicated above, I don’t do Twitter.]

    [Since posting the blog, following up a niggle in my head, I’ve discovered that I actually blogged an early Tramp puzzle on this theme http://www.fifteensquared.net/2012/03/23/guardian-25591-tramp/ ]

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