Guardian Prize 27,968 / Crucible

30 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,968 / Crucible”

1. I’m pretty sure you meant to write ACHE instead of ITCH @13across

2. I enjoyed this lots although it was over a bit quick. Thank you Crucible. And thank you Eileen for clarifying a few things. 2d was a new word for me. I think my favourite (because it made me laugh) was 3D. I too appreciated the theme although I would question if 19 and 23 were part of it, being real places as opposed to mythical beings but, hey, who’s counting?

3. And ME (writer) in PROMETHEUS.

4. Thanks Eileen and Crucible.
   Needed parsing for19a..didn’t know ESSO for fuel.
   Surely, you meant blogger Andrew…

5. Thanks Crucible and Eileen. I enjoyed this and found it educational; I knew that My Fair Lady came from Pygmalion but I didn’t know the mythology. I don’t know where ilippu @ 4 lives but in New Zealand, and I think Australia, Standard Oil (Esso) only use the Mobil brand

6. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen. I had no luck with last week’s prize puzzle, but I found this one accessible – and very enjoyable. Like Eileen I particularly liked CYCLOPS once I got it.

7. Thank you, Ant, g larsen and ilippu – careless errors corrected now.

8. Thanks Eileen. I enjoyed this even if it was over quite quickly. After some very difficult Prizes in recent weeks involving rather doubtful synonyms it was a pleasure to encounter one that wasn’t the cause of too much mental anguish. I’m not saying they should all be like this, only that an example is welcome from time to time.

9. I found this fun but boy, was it over quickly! There’s a point where themes flip from “helpful” to “too helpful”, and this one crossed it, at least for me. That said, I do appreciate that people generally have other things to do at the weekend!

10. brownphel@5
    USA. I know of Esso as an oil company;didn’t make the connection; Esso brand name no longer used here since 1972. Only EXXON-MOBIL.

11. I was hoping Eileen would be the blogger for this one as I know we share a love of all things classical. And I was not disappointed.

    It was a super puzzle with delights at every turn. Our friend has a second-hand sailing boat called GALATEA and I did a lot of research for her into her boat name as she did not know the Pygmalion myth. For that reason it was my favourite clue.

    What a beautiful word 16a MYTHOLOGISATION is!

    Aside from the theme clues though, I really liked being reminded of Tommy at 9a  – a great ROCK OPERA!!! I saw lots of instruments used by The Who when I went to an exhibition at The Met in July.

    Funnily enough, the only question mark I had was against OBSTACLE at 17d – not sure now if I thought it was a dodgy homophone or if I thought it might have read more smoothly as “come to grips with”. Also, I still don’t fully understand the DJ part of the clue for 7d ADJOIN.

    With many thanks to Crucible and Eileen – excellent puzzle and excellent blog!

     

12. I got CYCLOPS once I had enough crossers, and I remember thinking “how on earth does a setter spot that if you take Aeneid out of encyclopaedia you end up with Cyclops?” Loved that. And PROMETHEUS.
    (Julie@11: a DJ is a dinner jacket, aka tuxedo.) A very enjoyable puzzle, thanks Crucible and thanks, Eileen.

13. JinA@11 and Eileen, I wondered if the dodgy homophone in 17d OBSTACLE was less dodgy if you take the definition of’ get to grips with’ as tickle rather than tackle. Bit of a stretch maybe but that was how I generously justified it.

    A very enjoyable and, for non classicists, educational puzzle from Crucible. I know a couple of contributors – especially DrWhatsOn@9 – have said it was too quick but I am quite happy with a less formidable challenge as the prize crossword from time to time. Of course being theme blind for a while helped here.

    Thanks to Crucible for the challenge and to Eileen for the enthusiastic blog.

    Happy (hopefully at least partly dry) weekend to all!

14. A fairly straightforward puzzle this week, completed quite rapidly, notwithstanding the fact that I got misled for a while by inserting EYEWASH instead of HOGWASH, which became apparent when I worked out LEGEND.

    Nice to see the classical theme, although is it not so long since we had another puzzle with a similar theme?

    Nothing stood out as brilliant.  I did however, quite like CACHE and RENAL.

    At the same time there were only minor quibbles.  Some of the surface readings were a little odd – 22 ac, for example?  Though others, like 14 dn as Eileen points out, were brilliant.

    Bluebottle I felt was a little bit too old-fashioned not to be indicated as such.

    And I wasn’t too happy with Esso for ‘fuel’ in 19 ac.

    But nonetheless thanks to Crucible and to Eileen.

15. Thanks very much to KeithS@12 for explaining dinner jacket – none so blind as she who cannot see – I actually thought that your DJs (deejays) in the UK must be very dressy if they are characterised by wearing tuxedos!!!

    Still not sure about your suggestion though I appreciate the thought, Ed@13. Chambers certainly defines to tackle as to “get to grips with” alongside “come to grips with”. To my Aussie ears your homophone of “tickle’ sounds more accurate, but I do think Crucible meant tackle. This might be heresy but after seeing lots of to-ing and fro-ing here on the forum regarding sound-alikes, I have now concluded that I am going to concede plenty of latitude in that area – if it sounds close enough, to me it’s going to be good enough. I have always enjoyed “punny” homophones, and, occasional pedant that I am, I think life is too short to get too worried.

16. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    Re 17, ‘get to grips with’ as ‘tackle’ is fine, I think. If you tackle a problem you get to grips with it. And it also reflects the current laws of rugby, where a tackler has to make use of their arms to wrap around/grip the person tackled.

17. Simon S @16 – It wasn’t the meaning of ‘tackle’ that I was questioning – I just expected complaints about it sounding like the ‘tacle’ in obstacle. Thanks, JinA, for your  commonsense contribution. 😉

18. Julie@15 your attitude to homophones is spot on, when they’re too obvious or to correct, where is the amusement?Hopefully my suggestion, unchecked with Chambers, was an enjoyable one too if ultimately wrong.

    Simon@16, it’s too soon to mention rugby ha ha!

19. Thanks Eileen @ 17 – it’s late in the day where I am, so a misreading.

    Mind you, I’ve posted many times along the lines of “forget homophones, see them as puns” – if you can see what the setter’s getting at, they’re fine, even if you wouldn’t pronounce them that way yourself.

20. I enjoyed this and saw the theme so no complaints from me! It was quite easy – certainly easier than the Vlad we had earlier this week- but there’s no reason why the Prize should be harder than the daily puzzles.
    I didn’t know that RHEA was Hera’s mother so I learnt something as well!
    Thanks Crucible.

21. As a matter of principle, I’m in favor of granting setters great latitude in homophone clues, on the asame grounds as JinA @15, and yet I confess that I grumbled a bit about 17d. But a puzzle whose greatest flaw is a slightly dodgy (but amusing) homophone is an excellent puzzle!

    I didn’t know the slang meaning of “bluebottle”, and I once again forgot about DJ.

    I loved the &lit for HERA at 4d, and I agree that CYCLOPS (12a) is a marvelous construction.

     

22. This was a lot easier than recent Prizes, despite the ancient mythology theme. I found a lot went in at first pass, even though I had to check that HYDRA is, as suspected, the name of a constellation and to Google Pygmalion to discover the reason Shaw’s play was so called (still not entirely clear on that — is it that Prof Higgins sort of ‘sculpted’ the new, posh Eliza?). I also had to Google ‘Rhea’ to confirm that she was the mother of Hera (no idea who either is though and don’t particularly care). Happily, most, if not all, of the other classical references were familiar to me (from crosswords mostly, where not from seeing Jason and the Argonauts as a kid).

    I thought 4d was the best clue. Surely HERA is “literally” Rhea’s product because the word can be produced from the letters (litera, L.) of ‘Rhea’ — as well as literally (really) being her product (offspring). The Cyclops anagram subtraction was clever and it was great that the anagram subtracted was of the thematic Aeneid and that the rermaining letters didn’t have to be reorganised to give the answer, but (@KeithS) setters find more unbelievable subtractions.

    In 14a I failed to think of that sort of pale, so couldn’t parse it, so thanks for the explanation, Eileen. I’m not sure that PD is an abbreviation in itself, is it, rather than just part of such names as NYPD and LAPD which we’re familiar with from American cop shows?

    In 2d, I’m sure it’s T[alk] (“beginning to talk”) that supplies the T. “Beginning to” = T doesn’t really work (although some setters seem to think it does), and even if it did, what is “talk” doing in that case?

    Like others, I wondered at first why you seem to question tackle = get to grips with in 17d, but then realised you were questioning the homophony. It hadn’t even occured to me that OBSTACLE uses a schwa where ‘tackle’ has a stronger vowel. ‘Tickle’ is really no better, btw (@Ed The Ball), as that doesn’t use schwa either. Of course there’s also the fact that the stress doesn’t match, but I think JinA’s attitude to homophones is probably the right one.

    In the parsing of 10a, ‘h’ needs capitalising as part of the lurker, btw.

     

23. Over too quickly, as others said. No lookups other than Anagram Solver for 16a. I found a bit of tension in 12a because that giant is in a work by 21a, not the Aeneid. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

24. Thanks Crucible and Eileen. I saw there was a theme but was not one I’m familiar with so if anything more of a hindrance for me. I had a similar experience with Crucible’s last prize puzzle (I have to confess Qaos’ recent themes have been more up my street!) but credit to Crucible’s precision as I still managed to finish in spite of this. Bluebottle I didn’t know so 3d the only one I couldn’t parse

25. Failed on 3 in nw. I might have got galatea but I didn’t think of trying ate instead of eat. That might have given me bottle and scilicet; never heard of that though apparently it is related to videlicet, or viz.

26. Hi Howard March @25 – yes, scilicet [abbreviated to sc in texts] from the Latin sci[re] licet [it is permitted to know] has pretty much the same meaning as videlicet [abbreviated to viz, as you say] from vide[re] licet [it is permitted to see].

    Tony @ 22, if you’re still there [I was occupied for most of yesterday] – I was glad that someone picked up on ‘literally’ in 4dn: I was tempted to add that it could also be said to be ‘literarily’ so. You might know Hera [wife – and sister – of Zeus] as her Roman equivalent Juno [wife – and sister – of Jupiter].

    I queried PD myself – it’s in Chambers as [literally] ‘[US]abbrev.]: Police Department.

    I totally agree with you re 2dn: I was anticipating possible discussion.

    For the archive, I’ll correct 10ac – thank you for pointing out the error.

27. To late for anyone to see, but I have difficulty with objections to clues such as 17d on the grounds that they are not true homophones. My question is this: in 17d, why does the indicator “reportedly” have to mean homophone (= sounds the same as)? If you take “reportedly” to mean “sounds like”, or “sounds similar to”, then there is no problem with dialects, rhotic or non-rhotic, etc., and we can all enjoy the fun of the wordplay – play being the operative word.

    This was a fun puzzle to play with. Favourites included HERA and the oft-praised CYCLOPS. Thanks to Crucible and the always illuminating Eileen.

28. …even too late to get my spelling correct.

29. Cheers, Eileen. Thanks for the helpful pointer re Juno; however, I’m no more an ancient Roman than I am an ancient Greek (though admittedly I did study Latin — language, not mythology!)

    Thanks also for fully explaining the abbreviations, sc and viz, both of which I mentally transform to ‘namely’ when I see them in texts. I hadn’t realised they are abbreviations of compounded forms. I don’t think there is any connotation of permission as they are used in English, is there?

    I looked in my old Chambers (7th Ed., 1986) for PD, but it wasn’t there. I’ve just tried to check Collins online but it seems their web server is down(!) at the moment.

30. Collins is back up now, and, sure enough, it has:

    PD in British

    abbreviation for (in the US) Police Department

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