Guardian Prize 28,356 by Tramp

34 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,356 by Tramp”

1. Thanks PeeDee. I think 13d is an anagram of IN IN FEAR and the ultimate letters of THING and WILL. This was a game of two halves for me, the right and the left side. The right side filled up steadily but apart from SURFER and COFFER, my FOIs, the left side remained stubbornly unyielding. Looking back on it I had several of the answers quite early on but was unable to explain them and got there in the end only after much longer than usual. 11a reminds me of a piece of schooldays autograph book doggerel: ‘Your teeth are like stars he said and he was right, for her teeth like stars came out at night’.

2. It seems a while since I picked up a puzzle by this setter, and it was a pleasure to get to grips with this one. I found it quite tough, having to work through it quadrant by quadrant. finding several fine clues along the way.

   I particularly liked the following for their clever constructions and good surfaces: EYESIGHT, COFFER, PAINKILLER, NUMERALS, FAST FOOD and WAITER.

   (In 13d FINGERNAIL I think the anagram fodder is IN IN FEAR plus GL – the last letters of THING and WILL.)

   Thanks to Tramp for an enjoyable puzzle and PeeDee for the clear and concise blog.

3. (Apologies for the accidental repetition of the explanation of the FINGERNAIL clue.)

4. Thanks to Tramp and PeeDee . DOOLALLY and ELATED gave me trouble and I could not parse FAST FOOD.

5. An enjoyable outing with Tramp. I must admit to thinking about FETISH at 25a for a while until I concluded it must be the much tamer but still “saucy” RELISH! I really liked 9a FOETAL, 11a FALSE TEETH (loved the doggerel, Biggles A@1), 14a ERECTORS (amusing image), 15a DONKEY, 17a MYRIAD (despite the golden arches branding), 20a SEVEREST, 3d SURFER (already mentioned above), 5d PEDESTRIAN (my favourite!) 18d DOOLALLY (my second favourite) and 22d CHROMA. That’s a lot of likes, and in fact there were none I didn’t like! Thanks to Tramp and PeeDee.

6. Agreed the SW corner was the severest, a bit of a pain, biting my nails, but elated to finally finish with relish!

7. Yep, nice Saturday amble from Tramp, not too hard, similar likes to JinA and others. Chroma meaning colour quality/intensity was one thing I didn’t know, though no problem given the clear clue and the familiar root chrom- . Enjoyable, thanks Tramp and PeeDee.

8. PS PeeDee, you left the ‘left’ bit out of doolally.

9. My only note of note from last week was that STUN seemed unnecessarily contrived, and the “with” was “without” meaning. I think that also means I enjoyed the rest.

10. Put OCHRE in at 22d and allowed myself to assume that OCE was a technical term relating to deep sleep

11. Amusing puzzle, but I DNF correctly, as CHROMA was new to me and I guessed Chrome. So thanks, PeeDee, for explaining.
    You delicately mention a reproductive organ at 14a, but ERECTORS are also spinal muscles. (Minor point, you have misspelled RECTORS in parsing it.)
    ‘Get chewed’ was a clever anagrind for FINGERNAIL.

12. 7a, DAB needs reversing. Thanks for the hints. Tricky puzzle

13. This was a lovely puzzle with so many cleverly constructed clues. My favourites were similar to those of Julie@5 and unlike Dr WhatsOn@9 I loved the clue for STUN which was
    just about LOI. If I had to choose one favourite I would go for PAINKILLER.

    There were a few penny drop moments giving crucial crossing lettters to keep the momentum going.

    Good to see Tramp in this slot and thanks PeeDee for the blog.

14. Like PeeDee and Ant @6 (chapeau for the tour du quartier), I was stuck in the SW; in fact I only finished it this morning – amazing what fresh eyes can do!

    I think the reason, for me at any rate, is that I fell into every single trap that Tramp had set. For midnight I was expecting G; ‘swallowing a tablet’, with the crossers _I_L_, convinced me that I was looking for A PILL inside something else; for 13dn I noticed that fear + thing + L gave me 10 letters for the anagram fodder, so that must be it; and for 20ac I was sure it was S + a three-letter word for ‘ultimate’ + TEST (challenge).

    I agree with PeeDee; deviousness is definitely the word. Many thanks to him and Tramp, and especially to JinA @5 for her illuminating Confessions of a Kinky Cruciverbalist.

15. I’ve checked back over the last few Tramps as I had a nagging feeling that I had been critical or that I hadn’t enjoyed them so much. It must have been further back in time as I see I posted positively about the last two and this was a joy last Saturday. Just what it should be – devious, yes, but fully satisfying and a smooth run from start to finish. DOOLALLY possibly my favourite though the first two in, BADMOUTH and FOETAL set the high standard for what was to follow. PEDESTRIAN is a lovely anagram and chewed a splendid anagrind for FINGERNAIL.

    All that said, RELISH is certainly a bit of a chestnut and I appear to be the first to dislike McDonalds = M. It’s not an abbreviation or signalled as an initial letter and, tbh, even though it’s one of the world’s most famous brands and, yes, identified by an M, the reference to “golden arches” almost de-emphasises the M. Other brands out there are signalled by single letters: would we be willing to accept Facebook to clue ‘f’ or tumblr for ‘t’?

    Thanks Tramp and PeeDee

16. Oh dear, I’ve got mistakes all over this blog! I will fix them shortly.

17. A dnf for me, but I was only a FINGERNAIL’S width away. The whole crossword was a bit chewy for me, but, looking back, it was my PEDESTRIAN brain rather than any unfairness on TRAMP’S part.

18. Good Prize crossword with chewy clues.

    I particularly liked MYRIAD, PAINKILLER and FINGERNAIL. I somehow managed to put in ELECTORS for 14 and wondered how they lifted organs, doh!

    Thanks Tramp and PeeDee.

19. Much enjoyed though struggled at end with 24a and 24b slow to drop, though fine clues. I mucked up by getting HALTER (alter is also not new, sort of) instead of HOLDER. Many thanks, Tramp. I loved DOOLALLY.

20. A lot of bear traps in the SW corner, and I fell into most of them. It was obvious that SEVEREST had to start with S and end in EST, but finding the middle… Like essexboy I was looking for a PILL in the middle of PAINKILLER, and a G (mid niGht) instead of LATE in ELATED. I searched in vain for “awfully” boring a president to give “American”. And so on and so forth. I did like FINGERNAIL and FALSE TEETH , though I was always taught to spell the badger’s home with two Ts.

21. essexboy@14
    I was misdirected as you were by midniGht and TEST. At 23a I misdirected myself in a different way. I got the ILLER but was looking for “rose” to indicate a reversal of something(wrongly in an across clue) that I failed to find because it wasn’t there.
    Just the right sort of puzzle – hard but fair and several smiles. Favourite, when I at last worked it out, was the &litt 13d.
    Thanks to Tramp and PeeDee.

22. Thanks PeeDee and Tramp. I was also held up in the SW and ELATED was LOI having spent ages convinced midnight = G

23. Thanks Tramp, that was in the “just right” category for me. Favourites included MYRIAD (nice surface), ERECTORS ( I prefer the smutty version), and DOOLALLY, a new word for me. Like others, I did have some problem in the SW corner with 13 and 20 but managed to get those with a bit of cheating. Thanks PeeDee for the blog.

24. Most believe that a badgers home is a SETT…not set. Surprised no one mentioned that.

25. Hi Paul, Chambers gives both spellings SET and SETT meaning a badger’s burrow and various other meanings.

26. Thanks Tramp, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Th e spelling of SET threw me though as I was sure it was SETT. Of course a dictionary check showed my misunderstanding.
    Thanks for the blog PeeDee.
    Loved PEDESTRIAN and FALSE TEETH, once I got my sets straight.

27. Like Postmark@15, I’m not that keen on McDonalds for M. I’ve seen it before so wasn’t fazed by it once I’d turned ‘dairy’ round and realized an M would give me the answer I needed. I don’t think Facebook for F would please me, either, but FB is a very common abbreviation for it these days, whether or not it has reached the dictionaries. Not sure how useful it is to have a way of cluing FB, otoh.

    I also mentally queried ‘set’ with a single T, but found it as an alternative in the dictionary.

    11ac FALSE TEETH was funny and 12ac COFFER neat.

28. When I was a kid we had a series of twisted compliments, such as “Your teeth are like stars … they come out at night.” The only other one I can recall now is “Your breath is like roses … Four Roses.” (A brand of whiskey.)

    “Iller” makes me think about comparative forms of adjectives. I read somewhere, I think in a grammar of English for French speakers, that in English adjectives of one or two syllables took -er and -est (fatter, fattest) and longer ones took “more” and “most” (more beautiful, most beautiful). It seemed mostly but not completely right then and occasionally I run across an exception. This would seem to be one. Has anyone ever heard somebody say “I’m feeling iller now than before,” or anything like it?

29. Favourites: OMEN, PEDESTRIAN, FLAT, CHROMA, FINGERNAIL, PAINKILLER.
    New: DOOLALLY.
    Thanks, Tramp and PeeDee.

30. Valentine@28,

    Come to that, has anyone ever heard somebody say “I’m feeling more ill now than before,” or anything like it? I think most people would say “feeling worse”.

    It’s not just single-syllable adjectives that form comparatives with ‘-er’. I think whenever it’s simpler or easier, we tend to make an ‘-er’ comparative. (See what I did there?). Incidentally, I see a lot of instances now where people use the ‘more’ form even when there is a well-used ‘-er’ form. Is it, I wonder, part of English grammar being regularised by users, as also when people form past tenses for irregular verbs with ‘-ed’, e.g. “broadcasted”?

31. I found this very difficult, but over and over, just as I was getting frustrated, a penny would drop and I’d make a bit more progress. Staggering across the finish line, with a not-fully-parsed FAST FOOD, was very satisfying.

    I wondered about the definition for ERECTORS, although, uncharacteristically for me, the schoolboy interpretation didn’t leap to mind. Thanks to sjshart for the explanation.

32. [ Tony Colman@28, here’s my pet peeve of the day. The one that really bugs me is that when people wanted to add emphasis to “fuller”, but “more fuller” doesn’t work, they started saying “more fulsome”, thus destroying a useful word that used to mean to something completely different. ]

33. Doolally of course from Deolali in India, a transit camp for British soldiers with what we now know as PTSD. The standard phrase being Doolally Tap with Tap meaning fever in Sanskrit.

    Thanks to Tramp and PeeDee

34. Thanks for that, Atlanta Dave. Very interesting.

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