Guardian Prize 27,980 by Philistine

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An interesting mixture of easy and difficult clues for this week’s prize puzzle.

I think that this is the fourth time that Philistine has featured in the prize slot this year, and each time it has coincided with my turn to blog.  No complaints from me!  Although many of the clues fell at the first pass, there were sufficient tricky ones to keep us occupied and it was not until some time later that I finally parsed 3 down.  There is a reference in the grid to a well-known novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez: One hundred years of solitude.

 

Across
8 THANK YOU  We are obliged to break out to capture accessory (5,3)
“Thank you” said Timon on reading the clue: and it proved to be correct.  HANKY in *OUT.
9  XENON Love being turned over after kiss — it’s a gas! (5)
X (kiss), NONE (love) (rev).
10   See 2
11  RAZOR-SHARP Cutter’s instrument is very cutting (5-5)
RAZOR’S HARP.
12  HIPPOS Animals in some hardship, possibly (6)
Hidden in “hardship possibly”.
14  ENDANGER Extreme indignation risk (8)
END (an end is an extreme) ANGER.
15  EMBRACE Central assembly couple have a hug (7)
Central letters of assEMbly, BRACE.
17, 20 YEARS OF SOLITUDE Do-it-yourself sea trip is a long and lonely time (5,2,8)
*(DO IT YOURSELF SEA).
20   See 17
22   See 6
23   See 6
24, 24 down  LOVELORN Heartbroken part in screen role voluntarily rejected (8)
Cleverly hidden and reversed in “screen role voluntarily”.
25  LINKS Cat in conversation chain (5)
Sounds like “lynx”.
26  DEMERARA Sweet thing in extremely delicate meringue skirt (8)
First and last (“extremes”) of DelicatE MeringuE RARA (skirt).
Down
1  CHROMIUM Brag aloud, quiet about one’s element (8)
Sounds like “crow”, I in MUM.
2, 10  ANTELOPE Beast‘s antler cut and twisted at the end, almost gaping (8)
*ANTLE(r), OPE(n).
3  CYPRUS Where to find knickers here, one could say (6)
The answer had to be Cyprus (“here”) but the dreadful pun on Nicosia eluded us for some time.
4  PUZZLES Irregular pulse stopped by snoring, of which this is an example (7)
ZZ (snoring) in *PULSE.
5  OXBRIDGE Where to study cattle crossing? (8)
A very simple charade of OX BRIDGE.
6, 22 across, 23  ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS Many people from Croatia in this movie (3,7,3,3,10)
Cryptic definition; I wasted some time looking for films involving people who Split…
7  UNTRUE False U-turn maybe supported by Spain (6)
*UTURN, E.
13  PARLIAMENT Fox trapped by mother owls? (10)
LIAM (Fox) (former Tory MP and minister) in PARENT.  The collective name for a group of owls is a parliament.
16  COURTESY Nice gesture to go out with? In a way, yes (8)
COURT (go out with), *YES.
18  OMNIVORE Drunk Romeo slurping up French wine is not a discriminating consumer (8)
VIN (rev) in *ROMEO.
19  VERANDA Over and above part section of house (7)
Another hidden clue, which we didn’t see first time round: “Over and above”.
21  ORACLE Nothing clear about this prediction (6)
O (nothing) *CLEAR: the oracle’s predictions were famously obscure.
22  ASSUME Pretend to be like birds heading north (6)
AS EMUS (rev).
24   See 24 across

*anagram

37 comments on “Guardian Prize 27,980 by Philistine”

  2. Thanks, bridgesong. Great fun as ever from Philistine. Given the (very) mini-theme of ONE HUNDRED and the inclusion in the grid of THANK YOU and PUZZLES, I wondered whether this was his 100th (or even perhaps 101) puzzle in the Guardian. There used to be an archive where you could research but it seems to have disappeared from the site.

  5. Maybe the confusion came from the underlining in 3d, although to be fair there doesn’t seem to be a clean split between definition and wordplay. I would not include “knickers here” in the definition, because it is clearly wordplay. The best I can think of is that “where” (i.e. a place) is the definition, and the whole clue is wordplay. I’m not suggesting the clue is wrong in any way, it just doesn’t fit the common breakdown.

  6. NeilW @2: A search on this site gives a total of 99 Fifteensquared blogs (including this one) for Philistine puzzles, dating back to 2011.  I suspect you’re right, and either I’ve miscounted or one’s been missed somewhere along the line.

  7. Thanks to Philistine and bridgesong. I too had trouble spotting the well hidden VERANDA but getting both the DALMATIANS and SOLITUDE solutions helped get me going. Looking at 3d from the US I thought the answer was linked somehow to the much quoted Boris J. comment about Brexit meaning more knickers would be sold in Cyprus.

  9. Thanks bridgesong. Raced through with only the NW outstanding. Second wind left only the unparsable 3D. Googled “Cyprus knickers” on Sunday and voilà, yerss.

  10. Well – good grief! This was all over in 35 minutes EXCEPT 2 and 19dn. I stared at them both for the rest of the week and still didn’t get them. Felt very dumb when I read this. Thanks Bridgesong for the enlightenment and thanks Philistine for the head-scratch.

  11. Thought of Cyprus for 3d but couldn’t make it parse to save my life (and now I see why), so a dnf. Otherwise no clue in particular stood out for me, but not a clunker in the bunch. Thanks to Philistine and Bridgesong.

  12. Ditto 3d, Cyprus was the only real candidate (not hydras, hydros, lycras, or a lingerie shop called Bybras), but I didn’t have the wit to see the homophone, d’oh. Otherwise yes, plain sailing, although again the tin ear a bit slow to get chro/brag. Crosswords are such fun, you have to lovem, thanks P and B.

  13. CYPRUS was my last in too, penciled in lightly just because it was a ‘where’ and it fitted the crossers. Then, thinking about Cyprus later, the penny dropped and there was quite a groan. I really should have got that; I’ve been there – I remember visiting, it must have been early in the seventies, a bit before the Turkish invasion, and being driven into Nicosia as part of a convoy from the North of the island escorted by UN peacekeeping forces. Considering how that’s stuck in my mind, I felt I should have spotted the pun much sooner. (Didn’t someone say recently homophones should be seen as puns?) Nice work, Philistine, and thanks, bridgesong.

  14. Thanks Philistine and bridgesong – excellent puzzle, with 3 being suitably groanworthy.

    KeithS @ 13: i regularly argue on here that calling homophones puns gives the setter far more leeway, and avoids the endless “that’s not how I pronounce it” debate. Deaf ears, usually.

  15. NeilW @2 and Quirister @5: thanks for pointing out the apparent significance of this puzzle. There’s no mention of it on The Guardian’s own crossword page that I can see, nor is it included in the annotated solution.  But I agree that it’s likely to be more than just a coincidence.

  16. Thanks for the blog. 3D also my LOI and without being able to parse. Love the centenary theory. Wondering if his 100, years of solitude, is also a reference to the compilers task. Or maybe he’s just a fan of Marquez!

  20. Bridgesong@18 – I guess you’d need to believe Philistine was adding the final E in row 10 for it to make sense.

  21. One or two good clues.  I liked THANK YOU, LINKS and ORACLE.  But on the whole I found this puzzle far too easy – more suited to the Monday slot than to a prize Saturday.

    Having said that, I did have parsing problems with one clue – CYPRUS.  Thanks for the explanation – as you say, a truly awful pun!  I don’t know if I’m more annoyed with Philistine for setting it, or myself for not getting it.

    (Almost) all over far too quickly.

    Nevertheless thanks to Philistine and to bridgesong.

  22. Solved quite quickly on Saturday, apart from 3d. By Thursday I decided I couldn’t wait and for the first time in my life entered the crossers in a word search site and up came CYPRUS. Fair cop. My problem was that, having thought like grantinfreo @12 of BY BRAS, which would have been a nice clue had it been a real place, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
    Thanks to Philistine and bridgesong.

  23. Thanks bridgesong
    If this does mark Philistine’s century then here’s hoping for another hundred of the same quality.
    I think the nina in row nine probably is intended, but surely there’s not another in row one!

  24. I’m with Jaydee@10 in taking far too long to get ANTELOPE and I’ve just realised I didn’t finish it as I had written DALMATIONS not IANS which meant I didn’t see the well hidden VERANDA. It was only after saying “it must be Cyprus” and then reading the clue out to MrsW that she said “Nicosia” – a fun pun. I found it a very enjoyable and not too easy puzzle – thanks to Philistine and Bridgesong.

  25. Just completely failed to “see” VERANDA so a DNF. CYPRUS did take a while but entered fully parsed. Liked the Marquez ref and thanks for the added context. Well done Philistine ! Ad multos cruciverbus!

    Thanks to Bridgesong for the lucid explanation and to all the learned contributions from others.

  27. A further indication for 3dn – pre-Euro the currency of Cyprus was sometimes referred to as the pound, or “nicker”. That was good enough for me, having missed the Nicosia reference.

  28. I enjoyed the Dalmatians and the rest — had trouble with ANTELOPE, though.  Thanks, Philistine and bridgesong.

    What does RARA have to do with skirt?

  29. Like many we struggled with 3 down, Yorkshire Lass was for CYPRUS, I, like grantinfreo@12, came up with BYBRAS but, it not proving to be the name of an exotic place, we went with the island. Didn’t see the parsing ’til we came here, aargh! Otherwise very do-able and good fun. Didn’t spot the hundredth x-word possibility – bravo Philistine if that is right. And to DonnyBoy for spotting the nina which, as usual, had completely escaped us. Thanks to setter and parser.

  31. Was I the only one who got Oxenford, archaic name for Oxford? That stuffed three across clues for quite some time.

  32. 2 shy for me which may be an all time best…including 3D which I just didn’t connect with … as a post script I posed the clue (via written format) to a Cypriot friend without crossers…his first guess was ‘prison’ , which in retrospect may be a better answer as it doesn’t require here to do double duty…anyway I probably stand alone with my next comment but I’m hoping this is standard of difficulty for future prizes!!

  33. Well by my reckoning Quirister is right – this is Philistine’s 99th Guardian puzzle. Maybe he’s getting his celebration out of the way early, or the editor miscounted…

  34. Hello, first time here, though I’m always a-lurking looking for answers to the Guardian’s Quiptics. An exceptionally useful resource!

    I was most surprised to be able to fill in about half of a Guardian Prize crossword, so I must be doing something right.  Anyway – can anyone explain why 2, 10 ANTELOPE was split into two? “ANTE LOPE” isn’t a thing is it?

    I liked CYPRUS when i got here, I really did.

    CheersO,

    Caesura

  35. Welcome, Caesura, and you must indeed be doing something right!  There is a convention applied by some setters that where a grid provides two (usually) four-letter words that can fairly be combined into one, they take advantage to clue the two as one word.  Only works where both parts do indeed comprise separate words, as is the case here.  In this case of course, the word could, with equal validity, have been split into ANT and ELOPE.

  37. One final thought on the numbering – maybe Philistine is counting the joint effort which he finished, that was published as Araucaria’s final puzzle (26427)

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