Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,374 / Qaos

89 comments on “Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,374 / Qaos”

1. You can add in (Chess) SETS, Eileen. I looked in vain for CHESS itself, though. I spotted the theme about half way through – I think it was noticing BOARD and GAME close together. Then a whole lot of others I already had clicked into place. Then it helped with a few – ROOK and KNIGHT, particularly. But my favourite has to be COCONUT. I tried binary, roman numerals, slang before the penny dropped. Is there such a plant as SEA SHRUB? I wasn’t convinced I had that right until all the crossers were in. For some reason TOENAILS took me nearly as long as the rest altogether. Thanks, Qaos and Eileen.

2. Thanks Eileen. Another pleasant interlude with a few thought provokers at the end. I’d pencilled in ‘struck’ and ‘spacing’ for 19 and 24 but wasn’t happy until I found the error of my ways. I recognized some of the chess references but not enough to substantiate the theme. I find there is a Queens College, City University of New York.

3. Thanks to Qaos and Eileen. The chess items were fun as they developed, but I had trouble with the RS in WRANGLES and SEA SHRUB.

4. Yep, coconut was pretty 100ool, and wondered about sea shrub, as did TTim. Noticed the chess terms via pawn, knight, bishop etc, but I never take much notice of themes, unless forced to via eg referenced clues. Winced/grinned slightly at toenail as growth, though it is one of course. Otherwise a smooth and fun solve, ta both.

5. Favourites: BISHOP, TOENAIL, COCONUT.
   New for me: shank = an act of striking the ball with the heel of the club (for 19d).

   I only saw the theme of chess when I had completed the puzzle.

   Thanks, Qaos and Eileen.

6. It’s approaching lunch time here – I am not sitting up late for cryptic relief. There is a typo in 16ac solution – wrong partner. 1d – not sure what OR has to do with men. Solved 95% of the rest. Thanks.

7. I glanced at Qaos’s blog before attempting this, and that said something like “You will solve this puzzle in black and white.”. As soon as I entered ROOK as my FOI I thought “Chess”, and thus it proved. Many thanks to Qaos for putting in so many chess-related words and well done Eileen for finding them all; you found many more than I did !

8. aigy@6,

   OR = Other Ranks = men. A year ago I didn’t know this, but I’ve seen it so many times since that it’s engraved in my brain now !

9. Nice theme … me and Qaos will have to have a game sometime – maybe even an inter-national tourney! I’ve a feeling he and everyone else will beat me, but in defeat I will always be able to say my clue for 23d from a chess-themed Indy puzzle defeated his! 🙂

   http://www.fifteensquared.net/2017/10/24/independent-9682-hoskins/

10. Tassie Tzim @1
    In answer to your question “Is there such a plant as SEA SHRUB?”: as far as I can tell, the answer is “No!”. A sea shrub or sea fan is a kind of coral, and included in the animal kingdom.

11. That was mostly fun but I missed COCONUT and TOENAIL. I did catch the theme early and that provided some help. Favourites were SKID, EXCHANGES, and BOARD. Thanks Qaos and to Eileen for the blog — by the way it was nice seeing your comments on Wanderer’s gem in the Friday FT. I highly recommend that crossword.

12. I’m taking a bit of a risk here since I haven’t finished it yet, but it appears there is an error in today’s prize puzzle. The clue that is designated as 11,2,3 should be 11,3,2. So sorry if I’m wrong, but I’m currently 95% convinced and wanted to prevent some unnecessary anguish.

13. Dr. WhatsOn@12 re today’s Prize
    I agree with you – it should be 11,3,2 and it is correct as 10,6,4 but the actual grid makes it look like 10,2,4,4 on my screen.

14. Ta Dr. Wh and michelle, I was wondering…

15. Michelle@13 yes my grid looks that way too. I’ve done a bit more and now I’m at 100% convinced.

16. Oh dear, I wondered where the KING was (arguably the most important piece on the BOARD)!!!! Sadly, like Biggles @2, I fell into the 24a SPACING and 19d STRUCK trap and didn’t ever seee the error of my ways. Both fitted the definintions “Gap” and “Hit” respectively although I was unsure how the rest parsed. No wonder, as I was barking up the wrong trees (!) entirely. I had never heard of SHANK in relation to golf. So certainly a tricksy puzzle from Qaos. Still, I had lots of fun with the rest of the chess theme, the afroementioned 20a BOARD being my favourite too, so thanks to Qaos and Eileeen.

17. After last week’s prize, which I didn’t get to comment on but which most people seemed to think was much easier than I did, I was quite chuffed by how quickly I went through this one. I latched onto the mysterious numeric sequence at 1ac, worked out what it was in binary, felt that hadn’t helped, finally looked at the rest of the clue, saw ‘shy’, thought ‘coconut’ and saw how it all worked. And after that it all sort of flowed (at least by my standards) – although ‘shank’ as a golfing verb was new to me. That chuffed feeling took a hit when I came here and realised I’d missed the theme entirely! And me with a (very dusty) copy of Modern Chess Openings on my shelves… That aside, some nice cluing – particularly the misleading binary-notation-that-wasn’t. Thanks Qaos, thanks Eileen.

18. P.S. Meant to say there are none so blind as those who cannot see – how did I not see the KING in STRIKING? I followed in your footsteps, Eileen, and looked up some of those terms you have highlighted (25a NOVELTY, 2d WOOD, 6d PINS, 11d CLEAR and 14d RAPID). I realised it’s a very long time since I played chess. And I don’t recall those words featuring in “The Queen’s Gambit”, my most recent encounter with the game, although I do remember the time clocks which might have indicated they were playing “rapid” chess. I am still not sure whether WOOD just refers to the traditional material used to make the pieces, and although I suppose one can “CLEAR” the board of one’s opponent’s “men”, I wasn’t 100% convinced that was the reference here. But it was a most impressive inclusion of references by Qaos – and he also managed to get in two of his trademark numerical clues at 1a COCONUT and 4d NOTATION!

19. Thanks, algy @6 – corrected now.

20. I dithered about SeA SHRUB for ages until crossers made it clearly required. I was another with spacing and struck pencilled in at 19 and 24 but for once I hung in there until SHRANK popped into my head and google then confirmed I was on the right track. OPENING was my LOI and it even parsed! Theme helped me with ROOK as I was trying for -ork words!

    Thanks Qaos for a fair and friendly puzzle and Eileen for her excellent blog.

21. Thanks Qaos for an entertaining crossword; for a while I wondered whether the theme was to be birds (rook, wood owls, parakeets) but the chess terminology soon came to the fore. Thanks Eileen for the blog. I did wonder, re 7a [sorry Eileen, your favourite clue], how much longer NUT can be used to indicate teachers, as it now no longer exists, having merged with another union to form the NEU (National Education Union).

22. Like Eileen my favourite was one of Qaos’ trademark numerical clues with COCONUT which was among many in this puzzle with great surfaces and general construction.

    Like JinA@16 and Biggles@2, I was stuck for a while on both SPACING and STRUCK for a while but knew better than to pursue an unparsed path. Both of these clues were ticks for me when the pennies dropped.

    The theme, as Eileen said, was a given with QAOS who really is a superb practitioner of this genre of that art in the crossword world. What a tour de force to get quite so many theme words embedded. Also, thanks as ever to Eileen for going beyond the call of duty to root them all out in her blog

    A lovely solve for me.

    [Also in common with JinA@16, I was reminded of The Queen’s Gambit which was a lovely lockdown diversion for my wife and me recently: superb production with a fine cast and sympathetic story]

    Happy Weekend all

23. Nice one, Qaos, and many thanks, Eileen. I solved a few at first look, went to make a coffee, and on returning saw I had entered BOARD, GAME and PAWNS, so the light dawned, and most of the rest was straight forward. Thanks for explaining WIPE, which I could not parse.

    Thanks too for pointing out that Queens’ Cambridge is named after two opposing queens in combat. Qaos could have just used ‘College’ or mentioned Oxford, but that college is a single queen (apostrophe before the s), so Cambridge is particularly relevant. (There is a Queens College – no apostrophe – in Queens Borough in NY also.)

24. [michelle @5: “New for me: shank = an act of striking the ball with the heel of the club (for 19d).” I wish it was new for me, too 😀 ]

    As so often on a Saturday it has all been said by the time I’ve made my first cuppa. Stunning to get so many references into one set of solutions without the theme dominating. Chapeau to Qaos (and to Hoskins for an outrageous lol moment).

    COCONUT was so delightful, it seems a shame that it has no theme connection. Googling coconut and chess, once you’ve discarded the coconut chess pies (yes, really) does deliver this delightful little nugget.

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen

25. Thanks Eileen and Qaos, really enjoyed this, being a chess player. I have even fallen into watching commentary on games, most recently the Wijk Aan Zee tournament. Like J in A @18 I am not sure about CLEAR being intended as a chess reference, but I do think you have missed one Eileen as each horizontal row of squares on the board is called a RANK (the one closest to you is your back rank) and there it is in 19d.

26. Very pleasant solve and got the theme about halfway through from the most obvious solutions. Nowhere near as many references as Eileen, even though I used to play. I also had SETS as well TassieTim @1. I loved COCONUT and sadly I’m another only TOO familiar with shank.

    A great effort from Qaos to include so many references. Thanks Eileen for the excellent blog.

27. 19d. A RANK is a row of eight squares across the chessboard.

28. @28 Malevole. We crossed.

29. Malevole @ 25 – thanks for that. I did know about rank and file but RANK was too well hidden! I’ll pop it in now.

    As for the rest, I consulted Wikipedia’s Glossary of chess. I did look for SETS, thinking it might be a chess term but it wasn’t there. I didn’t think of the obvious ‘chess set’ – doh!

30. Thank you Eileen, loved the crossword but completely missed the theme until your blog. Everybody please try the Paul today. Paper delivered on Saturday so early finish, it is worth £3.20 just for 11 across.

31. The top row of the grid reads RWQNKP, which is almost but not quite the full set of chess pieces. I wonder if Qaos tried to get a B in place of the W?

    Thanks to Eileen and Qaos

32. Roz @30 : perhaps I need another coffee because I have been staring at a blank grid for the last 30 minutes…oh dear

33. AlanC @32. Paul is my favourite, I think I deconstruct clues in my head in the way that Paul constructs clues. I find some other setters with a different style very difficult. I must not give anything away for a week but 17 across really helped me to get started.

34. Forgot to say there is a slight mistake . 11,2,3 should read 11,3,2 .

35. Roz@33: I got 17 straightaway as soon as I looked at it again. Many thanks for your telepathic signals. No more spoiler speak

36. Excellent use of the theme. (Though you’ve identified a few more than I spotted Eileen!) 20d BISHOP was great.

    I think some people would not be happy at “leading economist” for E (8a).

    We quite often see ATE for “worried” (23d). Chambers has, for “eat”, “to upset, irritate or worry (inf)“, so fair enough. But I always find it hard to think of an example where “eat” on its own would mean “worry” (rather than in the context of a phrase like “eat away at”).

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

37. Lord Jim @36 – I had the same thought about ‘leading economist’ but decided not to comment, because I was fairly sure someone else would.

38. Lord Jim @36. I’ve raised this issue with EAT and ATE not really equating to worry and worried several times, but it appears to be a fixture, so now I just grin and bear it.

    I was stuck with STRUCK and SPACING, like quite a few others, but forgot to go back and look at them again, so a DNF for me. And I knew shank though I’ver never played golf, so no excuse. Ah well.

    Rather a lot of discussion about this week’s Saturday puzzle. I appreciate that pointing out the wrong enumeration, as a few have done, is helpful, but saying that a particular clue was your way in (see #33) is breaking the omerta, it seems to me.

39. The crossword was one of the easier ones for me, but found it enjoyable for similar reasons to the above. I particularly liked the unusual 1AC. NUT is still in Chambers as the National Union of Teachers

    I am not very good at looking for themes. So, despite playing chess for many years, I did not recognise chess terms as a theme. This despite at one point early on solving one of the chess related clues and thinking I wonder if CHECKMATE, STALEMATE or even, my favourite chess term, ZUGZWANG (A situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage.)

    Thanks to Qaos, Eileen and all the contributors.

40. I’m surprised at how many people have never heard of shanking a golf ball. In the golf unit in PE, that was pretty much all I did. I’m afraid that put me off the game for life. I liked that clue, by the way–when I see “golf” I’m wired to think, “NATO alphabet: G.” A good cryptic clue forces you to rewire your brain. [It’d be fun to see a puzzle with lots of the NATO words, but none of them standing for their letters.]

    The sea shrub was new to me, but the clue was clear. I admit to not having noticed all the chess terms, but they made it an enjoyable solve. Thanks to all.

41. SH@ 38: I sort of take your point but I have now finished what I thought was an impossible puzzle, so I for one, will walk with a skip in my step in the lovely sunshine. Thanks Roz

42. That was the most help a theme has ever been for me and the only time I have answer (ROOK) before I found the clue for it. I had SEA BRUSH for a while for the marine plant.

43. We must all bow down to the male authority figures. I must learn to keep my place.

44. [Postmark@24
    My father was a very keen golfer, but I never heard that word before. Hopefully you will not shank too many balls in future.]

45. [Tigger, I’m also a fan of the word zugzwang. It’s been adopted by game theory in general to mean a situation in which any move will worsen your position. (It’s a transferrable concept to life in general, too….)]

46. [Roz – it’s usually sh who gets it in the neck from ‘authority figures’ 😉 ]

    A very enjoyable puzzle, especially as the theme brought back memories of the legendary Fischer-Penfold encounter.

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

47. Roz@43. To be fair to sheffieldhatter, I think he would have made the same comment if you had been male.
    Saturday does seem to be turning into the new Monday but none the worse for that. Thanks to Qaos and Eileen.
    [Eileen, in your comment @74 on Matilda’s on Monday you picked up on WhiteKing’s @73 by saying that you would like to meet her. I don’t know if it helps but @62 on October 26 SimonS said he wasn’t sure but he thought she was Mrs Philistine]

48. sheffield hatter@38 I think of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape as the prime example of “eat” = worry.
    [tigger I like zugzwang too, but a challenge to write a clue for it? Fianchetto is another lovely chess word]

49. A lovely puzzle, at first I thought we were going to have “birds” yet again!

    I wonder if Qaos was thinking of The Tempest when he clued the word WRANGLES? I am not sure, but is the chess game between Ferdinand and Miranda the only one in Shakespeare’s plays? Miranda accuses Ferdinand of cheating when he makes a checkmate by discovery move and says
    Mira. Sweet lord, you play me false.
    Fer. No, my dearest love, I would not for the world.
    Mira. Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, and I would call it fair play.

    Thank you Qaos and Eileen.

50. [Petert @48: Topless rockers trouser bottomless boot, when a naughty girl starts move… I’d rather not! (8) ]

51. [essexboy @50 Congratulations. I thought the topless rockers would be in there somewhere, but I like the combination with the bottomless boot]

52. [Pino @47. Thank you for that. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a “male authority figure” before!]

53. Pino @47 – I’d heard that rumour, too, but I’ve no idea where. It was long before last October, though.

54. What’s a SEA SHRUB when it’s at home? It was the likeliest resolution of the anagram, but as far as I can tell no such plant exists.

55. just found this in Chess Mania The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1
    “Shakespeare wrote this chess scene composed of 64 words (like 64 squares on a chess board) in 8 line verse lines (8 rows and 8 files, just like a chess board). Each section is arranged in two equal parts of 32 words (like 32 pieces in a chess game).”

56. Petert @48: thank you, an excellent example (and a good film). I’ll try to remember that next time I’m inclined to query “eat” = “worry”.

57. I don’t know enough about chess to identify more than the blindingly obvious themers, but it did help a bit to know (when struggling with the SW corner) that 16d had to end in KING.

    I forget where I looked up dodgy golf shots to find SHANK, but my source said that (like the Scottish Play in the theatre) it was considered unlucky to speak its name on the course. Can any golfers here confirm this?

    Favourite clue was BISHOP.

58. Well for once the theme seemed to be staring me in the face. Fairly straight forward with my favourite being TOENAIL, which was the LOI.

    I wondered whether Qaos had thought of CHECKABLE for 11, and decided against because it would have given SOKEN (it’s in Chambers and some other dictionaries) for 16A. I did once write a simple clue for fianchetto: ‘The faction organised bishop to advance’. Not the greatest, but it did the job.

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

59. PS, thanks Cookie @55 for the interesting link.

60. [Was it Torquemada who clued TOENAIL as “limit of human understanding”?]

61. Gladys @57
    Yes, it’s usually referred to as an “unmentionable”.

62. Yes, many thanks, Cookie @55 – seems Shakespeare would have made a great crossword compiler!

    Hoskins @9 – I’ve finally got round to looking at your puzzle. It seems I missed it when it came out, since I didn’t comment but I saw you at the York meet the following day. Interesting that both puzzles have SKID as an answer – but I can’t find that in the Glossary. 😉

63. gladys @54 My Chambers gives ‘sea-shrub’ as https://seafans.net/awesome-facts-about-sea-fans/ when it’s at home.

    [essexboy @46 Ah yes, the greasy spoon showdown. Top zugzwangimg by the way.]

64. The phrase may be in Chambers, but as noted earlier, a sea fan is not a plant.

65. [AlanC @41. I’m glad you enjoyed today’s puzzle. I did too, but I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been given a hint when I didn’t ask for one.]

66. I initially put in SEA BRUSH rather than SHRUB but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t looking right with 11d starting C and ending H _ E.

67. I took SEA SHRUB as being a generic type rather than a specific plant. Sea holly (Eryngium), for instance, is a shrub that grows in sand-dunes by the sea.

68. I agree with Lord Jim@36 about “leading economist”, an example of what I call ‘dog-whistle cluing’ (the words don’t mean E, but solvers have been trained to understand E from such a phrase). Qaos has form for this sort of thing and because of that, I wasn’t going to attempt this, preferring to spend the time on some of the Araucaria-related offerings.

    However, I thought I would have a look at this blog to see if I’d been right to avoid it and seeing from the intro that there was a chess theme, thought I’d have a go anyway. I rather enjoyed it in the end and “leading economist” was the only bit that made me ‘hold my nose’, as it were. I didn’t notice all of the chess refs in fact and I’m still not too sure about WOOD and CLEAR. Is ‘pushing wood’ a term for playing chess? Seems to ring a vague bell.

    [WPetert@48, as soon as I saw your challenge, I stopped reading comments, so didn’t see Essex Boy’s effort. Predictably enough, though, I also used “topless rockers”, laughing all the time at those who complained they’d never heard of the rockers in question when referenced in the controversial Monkey Puzzle by Soup and Enigmatist.

    Best I could come up with off the cuff:

    Wu gang cunningly infiltrated by topless rockers here and there in a difficult position

    Anagram (cunningly) of ‘wu gang’ , infiltrated here and there by ZZ (topless rockers). Def: a difficult position
    ]

69. Tony Collman@68 – this is what I found from the Wikipedia glossary:

    clearance
    Removal of piece from a square, rank, file or diagonal so that another piece may use it. It often involves sacrificing the piece that unblocked the position.

    wood
    Slang for pieces. “A lot of wood came off the board” conveys that several piece exchanges occurred

70. [Tony @68: nice nod to the Chinese Sisyphus… or is the reference to Wu-Tang Clan? Clearly you don’t fear the rapper.]

71. Fine puzzle with a theme I totally missed, even though I have learned to look for one. Thanks Qaos and as ever Eileen, both for the blog and the poppings-in.

    My LOI was TOENAILS after the check button told me that 4d didn’t have a C for a hundred, and so then the very little brain came up with “A TON.”

    I’m relieved that there isn’t a chess meaning for PARAKEETS.

    Will somebody explain the topless rockers and related posts to somebody who’s apparently been living under a rock?

72. Valentine @71
    There was an American rock group called ZZ Top, most famous for their exuberant facial hair, except for Beard, who didn’t have one.

73. I think the clue for 7 should be “272 digital teachers might be kind of shy”

    (272 = 10001000 in binary arithmetic)

74. brian @73 – I made it 136 (1 x 8 + 1 x 128 = 136).

75. Eileen@69 Thanks for the explanations. So ‘pushing wood’ might well be a phrase for playing?

    As some might know, my preferred strategy board game is go, the name of which at least should be familiar to all cryptic crossword solvers.

    [Essexboy@70, nothing would induce me to whisper a single word more about the Wu gang, for fear of my life :-)]

    [Muffin@70, while it’s true that Frank Beard, the drummer in ZZTop, was the only one of the the three who didn’t usually sport a long beard, I have a copy of their EP, Stages, and in the cover photo, Frank also has a beard. Now, I tried to find a copy of that cover photo on the internet, but I find no trace of the EP, only the single, so I deduce I have a rare record in my possession.

    Valentine@71, Enjoy!]

76. Eileen, aha!

77. [Another interesting fact about ZZTop is that their guitarist, Billy Gibbons, was once said by Jimi Hendrix to be his favourite guitarist (and even Valentine has heard of Jimi, I’ll warrant).]

    https://youtu.be/RJxiCZwP_GI?t=17

78. ‘Another interesting fact about ZZTop …’ – I’m going to bed.

79. Eileen,

    For musicians, a little sleep’s best (5)

80. cookie@55 I came to this blog late, so it is possible that neither you nor anyone else will see this intervention regarding the ‘chess scene’ in The Tempest. But I have visited the link provided, and I am afraid it just will not stand up in court, because it manipulates the textual evidence to support a preemptive theory. A) there is no dramatic justification for considering the passage over when the mathematical 8×8 analysis requires it to be over; B) it is based on a possibly wilful misunderstanding of how the metrics of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse work. Frequently, this depends on the half-lines of one speaker completing the closing half-lines of the previous speaker. Here I have indented opening half lines which complete closing half-lines to make things clearer.

    As will be seen, Alonso’s response to Ferdinand completes the metrical line 8, so the word count of the first 8 lines is not 64, but 68. Also, why consider the passage to be over half-way through metrical line 8 except to plead a meretricious analysis? Dramatically, the passage goes through Ferdinand’s speech, then Alonso’s reaction, then Miranda’s famously ingenuous recognition of the other characters gathered on stage.

    This forum is famously the home to scientific and mathematical pedantry, so I hope it will in this case accommodate some Shakespearean pedantry.

    MIRANDA
    Sweet lord, you play me false. 1
    FERDINAND
    No, my dear’st love, I would not for the world. 2
    MIRANDA
    Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, 3
    And I would call it fair play.
    ALONSO
    If this prove 4
    A vision of the Island, one dear son 5
    Shall I twice lose.
    SEBASTIAN
    A most high miracle! 6
    FERDINAND
    Though the seas threaten, they are merciful; 7
    I have cursed them without cause
    ALONSO
    Now all the blessings 8
    Of a glad father compass thee about! 9
    Arise, and say how thou camest here.
    MIRANDA
    O, wonder! 10
    How many goodly creatures are there here! 11
    How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, 12
    That has such people in’t!
    PROSPERO
    ‘Tis new to thee. 13

81. [Julie @18–the presence of clocks doesn’t mean they’re playing “rapid” as just about all sit-down chess tournaments have a timer or they could take forever! What makes chess “rapid” is that the time limit is short, less than an hour per player per game. It seems as though the standard is to gain 10 seconds with every move which wasn’t possible with the chess clocks of my day! And as The Queen’s Gambit is set before my day, I don’t think they can be playing rapid.]

    Enjoyed this a lot–think 7ac was FOI and then 9ac and 1d got me the theme, which broke it open. 8ac was LOI as I didn’t think of “Toenail” as “growth.”

82. Surely a shank comes off the toe of the club, not the heel?

    Enjoyable puzzle- good work Qaos.

83. radixnephew
    A common misconception, causing the problem to get worse, as you move the club further in the wrong direction in a misguided attempt to correct it!

84. Thanks Eileen for identifying many more theme items than I managed – and others for adding to them.
    [Anyone looking for chess in literature and not happy with the Shakespeare link above might consider “The Squares of the City” by John Brunner, whose plot develops along the lines of a famous chess game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Squares_of_the_City
    There was also a book called Zugzwang that was serialised in a Sunday paper late 20th century.]
    Anyway having pondered Sea Brush but kept my powder dry, I was happy when Sea Shrub fitted the crossers and didn’t bother to check it was a thing, or I might still be stuck on it now. Thanks Qaos, COCONUT wins my entirely theoretical prize.

85. radixnephew,

    I don’t play golf, but it seems logical to me that shanking a shot involves hitting the ball with the shank, or the part of the head nearest it.

86. Well, I never. Just goes to show there’s even more ways to hit the golf ball wrong than even I discovered on my rare ventures on to the course.

87. |Spooner’s catflap @80
    FERDINAND
    Though the seas threaten, they are merciful; 7
    I have cursed them without cause. 8 ? 64 words (32 + 32) ]

88. DuncT @31
    I noticed that too. Also, I’ve never heard of a Wood Owl but I have heard of a Barn Owl…
    Thanks Qaos and Eileen
    I know. It’s Tuesday

89. Roz@43, I have to defend sheffield hatter…. I only read the Saturday prize comments, so I’ve maybe missed something , but how do you know sheffield hatter is male? I agree, by the way – info about problems with the current crossword is welcome, but anything else not. I’ve been doing these crosswords for longer than I care to remember, and often in our family, one person’s easy is another one’s dnf. ( I declare an interest here, as I am sheffield hatter’s sister-in-law and friend, and male authority figure is something they are definitely not. Oh and I couldn’t start the current prize till today, that’s why it’s Wednesday.

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