Guardian Prize 28,386 by Picaroon

57 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,386 by Picaroon”

1. Was it just me, or could 1 Down also have been T for Taxi on mostly lube (grease), giving the answer and definition as TUBE a line, as in the London Underground, which is what I put in, until I realised 1 Across was Legacy and the penny dropped!

   As you said, tricky definitions especially IDES, my LOI, but most enjoyable.

   Thanks all.

2. Thanks to Picaroon and bridgesong. The note about 4 across was corrected later in the week but not before I struggled with the clue. I did not know ESTOPPEL or POLYGONUM and took forever to figure out BILLETS.

3. I never saw the misprinted clue at 4 across, but I had no trouble with the corrected clue (described as being at ‘4 down’ and dated 21 AD).
   After solving eight clues I was stuck, hoping to get the hornblower at 11a to give me more crossers. After a long pause I got it, and the rest of the puzzle went cracking on from there. I thought it was an excellent set of clues, full of misleading indications to trip me up.
   I made the same observation as bridgesong about Uber, who I know describe themselves as ‘booking agents’ as well as ‘a software company’ – but not a taxi service!
   I liked the way the setter took advantage of juxtaposed words inside words, wuch as CANT ICE in CANTICLE and APPOINT MEN in APPOINTMENT. That and some other kinds of misdirection here and there made this a moderately tough but very enjoyable solve. ELLA FITZGERALD was my favourite clue.
   Thanks to Picaroon and bridgesong.

4. Another day, another tribute to POSTMARK ! When PM said on last Saturday’s blog that he got distracted into starting Picaroon’s puzzle, I wondered if he had a particular clue in mind. 😉

   I agree with bridgesong about all the fun and inventive definitions: the ‘slap on the lid’, the ‘number of churchgoers’, ‘of fish’ (brilliant!), and of course the Scatter and the Hornblower.

   Many thanks Picaroon and bridgesong.

   [· @2: intriguing moniker. Less is more, I guess.]

5. Ant @1. Nice bit of inventive solving there! In my experience setters do not use ‘mostly’ when they want you to take the first letter off a word, only when it’s the last letter. So it works for UBE(r) but not for (t)UBE.

   With a week having passed since solving this, I retain almost nothing of the solving experience, but I seem to recall that it was fairly smooth. There were plenty of witty definitions and misleading devices, as we have come to expect from Picaroon. Favourites were ‘slap on lid’ for EYELINER and the condemnation of the electorate in the clue for BRAINS.

   Thanks to Picaroon and bridgesong.

6. Even having got the trumpeter, it was still a groan/ttray waking up to scatter…clever. Vaguely remembered estoppal, and canticle, but polygonum was a newie…all well clued and gettable though. [Giacomo reminded me of Mrs ginf, who called him and Verdi Jack Pooch and Joe Green]. All enjoyable, thanks Picaroon and bridgesong.

7. You learn here: for me it was that scat comes from the Greek for dung and also means jazz improvisation with nonsense syllables, past masters being 11 and 21A. The latter was last in, a musical family member explaining the term.

8. Fun puzzle to solve once I got going. Took me a while to get started on this but was helped by LOUIS ARMSTRONG. Solved the NW corner last.

   New: ESTOPPEL, POLYGONUM.

   Favourites: OILIEST, AESTHETE, ELLA FITZGERALD (took me a while to understand this one), CANTICLE (loi).

   I parsed 15d as AG plus AG in rev of RA RA.

   Thanks, Picaroon and bridgesong.

   * I solved SPRUCE UP before they attempted to fix the error online (referring to wrong clue in special instructions). The revised clues makes sense now 🙂

9. That would have been worth it just for the frisson of sudden understanding when I finally realised that the FITZGERALD was ELLA! But the rest of it was fun too; I particularly liked IDES, POSTMARKING, the Hornblower, and CANTICLE, and I learned POLYGONUM and ESTOPPEL. CANTICLE was my LOI, baffling me for a while until I understood the wordplay, then leaving me unsure of the definition. My first thought, I’m sorry to say, was the Picaroon didn’t care for the canticle and thought it numbed churchgoers… Then I realisation dawned, I put the completed work down, and went to listen to Ella’s scatty Berlin version of Mack The Knife, where she forgets the words. Thanks Picaroon and bridgesong.

10. Thanks bridgesong. Nothing much to add to the erudite comment already expressed; it took me a while to resolve ‘scatty’ and ‘canticle’ too. For 11a I just thought ‘Arm’ was synonymous with ‘Corps’ as in an arm of the Services but your interpretation is tidier.

11. Super crossword and thank you for the blog, still waiting for our paperboy for today. I completely missed the problem with 4ac, just straight in without checking the r or the p.

12. Much enjoyed … even though I mucked up. Somehow put POLYGONAL and EELIEST in, leading to LIVING HELL as the uproar at home. UM indeed. But some fabulous clueing for CANTICLE, the “scatter” and many others. AGREED? Many thanks to Picaroon and bridgesong.

13. Had fun with this. There was some very clever misdirection as has been said, particularly SCATTER. I had FITZGERALD for ages and wasted much time searching for novelists other than Scott, Zelda and Penelope before the light dawned. Plenty of others to like as well.
    It’s been a good week all in all. I rarely get to comment as the crossword is an all-day, dipping in and out feast for me, and by the time I come here it’s all been said. Do I aspire to join the one hour club? Of course I do!

14. I started on the Down clues first, and so had enough crossings to see ELLA FITZGERALD quickly, but could not parse it or identify the definition for quite a time. Eventually realised how ‘scatter’ worked – very clever, but has anybody actually found a dictionary which defines ‘scatter’ as a singer of scat?

    As to BRUTUS and Caesar, the IDES of March are this Monday (15th), so perhaps these were meant as topical clues.

    Although some took a dim view of comments being made about this puzzle in last week’s blog, I was grateful as, doing the puzzle in the paper, I got SPRUCE UP but could not make the anagram fit, and was alerted to the (dodgy) correction online, so was reassured I was right. So thanks to many of you, as well as bridgesong and Picaroon now.

15. Very much enjoyed this, particularly the moment when the penny dropped over scatter = ELLA FITZGERALD.
    Spent a while before solving LUBE; I was stuck trying to work out something based on cab, the only synonym for taxi that came to mind. Clearly ‘to take an uber’ has passed into the language, just as to ‘hoover the floor’.
    Thanks to Picaroon and Bridgesong, particularly for clearing up ‘number of congregation’ which I didn’t get. Another groan!

16. Worth the effort just for ELLA FITZGERALD. Not too difficult but CANTICLE held out for far too long. I also solved SPRUCE with the error, so yet again my parsing skills were exposed.

    Ta Picaroon & bridgesong

17. [essexboy @4 & . @2: if it is a new moniker, I see the point]

18. Thanks Picaroon and bridgesong
    I don’t remember much about this, except that it was surprisingly straightforward for a Picaroon. However, those here unfamiliar with the Polygonum genus might be interested that a popular garden variety is Polygonum superbum – careful how you pronounce the spcific!

19. If, as trishincharente says, it’s all been said – and that post was over an hour ago – then here comes some repetition. As eb observed, I did get distracted last Saturday. Began writing a post and, for some reason, just when the query had been raised about peach=cracker, I looked at the Prize. FOI LUBE (or TUBE) resolved by LEGACY and then, in no time at all, I was staring at me own handle. There was a minor outbreak of sensitivity regarding comment on the current Prize, so there was no way I was going to make even a tangential comment until today!

    And it was the peach/cracker one expects from Picaroon. I’m not sure I’d class an interlocking BRUTUS and IDES as a mini theme – but then ELLA/LOUIS clearly is a thing. And I thought both the latter were superbly clued. ‘Hornblower’ certainly hinted at a musician but ‘scatter’ gave me no clue at all until it resolved and I was doffing my cap at the unexpected – and brilliant – definition. If it’s not a word, in that sense, it should be.

    Back to trish’s observation, there’s not a huge amount to add to nominations of favourites. All those I enjoyed in what seemed a fairly straightforward and yet highly enjoyable puzzle have been highlighted by bridgesong or others. BRAINS, SPOILSPORT, EYELINER got my big ticks, along with the sublimely defined OFFISH which, in any other circumstances, would have been my COD.

    Thanks Picaroon and bridgesong

20. I can clarify that the poster identified as . @2 is a regular poster who normally uses a nickname which I cannot now recall. I suspect an error rather than a deliberate attempt to adopt a new identity.

21. I was surprised when I went for another blank only to realise we had completed it.

    Spent a while after, trying to find more relating to the 2 mini themes mentioned by bridgesong

    Great stuff.

    Muffin @18: thanks for the additional info.

22. Very entertaining, especially with Louis, Ella and PostMark paying tribute to three great cultural icons.

    Thanks to Picaroon and bridgesong

23. Legend has it that the specific, or varietal, name referred to by Muffin (18) was also applied to a Rosa superbum – Gina Lollabrigida!

24. Thanks Picaroon for a super puzzle and Bridgesong for explaining it so well.

    The 2 jazz musicians were brilliantly clued — I am not certain but perhaps they played together (certainly were contemporary?) Must go and find out

    A few other words were pretty obscure – I bashed the dictionary to find ESTOPPEL (who knows Opel as a car nowadays?)

    Apologies for the plethora of comments under my name last week, this was caused by the comment apparently not appearing on first entry, I then tried again (and again, and again). When I went away after about 40 minutes, only 1 version of my comment had appeared. When I revisited the next morning there were about 10 (in my shame I did not hang around to enumerate).

25. Forgot to add how much I enjoyed a super puzzle, with severaL smikes of self-satisfaction when several pennies dropped. Thanks to setter an blogger.

26. EpeeSharkey @24: does that mean we’re only getting the one contribution from you this week? Shame. Re your Ella/Louis query, the answer is they did quite a bit together. This is a useful review and this comes from wikipedia.

27. A great puzzle, which gets my stamp of approval (which I shall now think of as a PostMark of approval). Any scatter who can make a jazz classic out of “A tisket, a tasket, I lost my yellow basket” has to be some kind of genius.

28. By the way. Has Everyman started a trend for paired clues? We had a pair yesterday as well.

29. Fiendishly clever. Didn’t see Ella for ages despite having had Louis for some time. Had the start letter first so spent ages trying to think of novelists called Eric. Also grateful for the heads up re the faulty clue.

30. PM@19 Just to clarify, my comments we’re really about the weekday blogs, where I always arrive very late, not today’s , where I feel there’s still plenty of scope. Goodness, we’re only on 30-odd, so please don’t stop yet. I always really enjoy reading your contributions.

31. A week is a long time to remember the details of a very worthy Prize – thanks Picaroon. The hornblower and the scatter were lovely, but the biggest tea tray of all was for the slap on the lid which was my last one in.

32. [trish @30: Don’t worry about me stopping! Whether planned or not, the varying times that blogs appear, depending on the blogger, mean that most parts of the world do get their chance to be early posters. Saturdays and PeterO blogs give the Americans a rare chance to post early, the Australasians get in early most weekdays and Eileen, bless her, occasionally gives us in Europe the chance to bag the worm. I don’t mind reading a bit of repetition if it’s praise for something clever or a frustration shared with previous posters. (Which is different from someone posting as a revelation something that appeared earlier in the day.) I love the fact that posters are frequently contributing something new or making meaningful contribution to a thread right towards the end of the blog. It’s most often a challenge for our contributors from the Americas – who, imo, do a pretty good job at rising to it.]

33. Mr Womble @29: I think you might? enjoy yesterday’s blog on Nutmeg’s puzzle from @32 onwards, if you have time to trawl.

34. What a brilliant clue 25a AESTHETE was! I think it might make it into my personal hall of fame.

    Many thanks Picaroon and bridgesong.

35. [In addition to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s 3 albums of duets referred to by PostMark@26, there is also the wonderful Basin Street Blues, where Ella sings and then impersonates Louis’s voice. It was posted on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxotcFALP8k apparently saying that it actually is Louis singing, but the comments correct this.]

36. Good Prize crossword with some interesting definitions.

    I ticked ELLA FITZGERALD (for the scatter), AGREED and CANTICLE.

    Thanks Picaroon and bridgesong.

37. Thanks to Picaroon and bridgesong for an enjoyable craunch.

    My admiration for this was tempered only by consideration of whether OFFISH could stand alone as a definition for “rather cold” – I mean I get it but can’t separate it from stand-OFFISH. Is it just me? Can anyone (back of hand on brow) assuage my angst? Did Ms Bennett find Mr D’Arcy “OFFISH” at any point? I wish it would work because it would then make a great clue – I suspect/hope that the word may have an idiomatic life beyond my ken.

    [Congrats on the name-check PM – a buzz hopefully and one for the scrap-book?]

38. Alphalpha @37: I can confirm that Chambers has OFFISH as “aloof in manner”.

39. Many thanks indeed to bridgesong for the wonderful blog.

    I’d just like to apologise again for the erroneous letter in the anagram fodder for 4 across. I do hope that this didn’t cause too many dire imprecations to be muttered over the Saturday breakfast table.

    @Alphalpha, Collins also gives offish = aloof, but says that the word was first encountered between 1825 and 1835, so I fear Mr Darcy was a decade or so too early to have been thus described!

40. Thanks bridgesong and Picaroon. I was lazy and didn’t check spelling of Opel so had estoppal and didn’t properly parse POLYGONUM so misspelt that too. Really loved the misdirection of scatter and hornblower. Only query is whether eccentric=nuts. In my parlance they don’t overlap.

41. Nothing really to add to the praise for this puzzle and blog, except to say that I’m with Lord Jim @34 re AESTHETE: it went straight into my little book.

42. I really enjoyed this, not least for a memory. I had the enormous pleasure of seeing a double bill, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, on a warm summer evening in the beautiful ruins of Baalbeck, Lebanon, about 50 years ago (eek!). Of course, as a finale, they performed together. Absolutely magical.

43. Picaroon @39 Excellent to see you dropping in, and please don’t feel the need to apologise again. After reading the comment by sjshart @14, I went back to last week’s blog, having been, in response to Michelle of this parish, the party who drew general attention to your apology and emendation posted on the G’s previous Friday cryptic blog, where Saturday and Sabbatical matters are cabalistically discussed. There I found that I and others had had our knuckles rapped by the blog police for drawing attention to what was at that time an ongoing issue of concern to solvers such as sjshart. The order to keep our comments back until today was, in that context, especially pointless, I felt.

44. Spooner’s catflap @43. I tend to agree with you. What you posted @43 was simply a report of the correction and apology, and I can’t see a problem with that; and michelle’s original query @12 was also very circumspectly written. I thought that last Saturday’s blogger, while being correct when reiterating site policy with regard to crosswords that have an embargo agreed, failed to address the particular issue with the clue for 4a, which had by that time long been acknowledged on the Guardian website as being faulty. The downside of saying that it’s ok to refer to a clear error in a clue is that it might encourage people to start asking whether there is an error when in fact there isn’t one – which would inevitably lead to a discussion of the clue and how it works.

45. [Spooner’s catflap @43 – how weird that your comment this week has the same comment number as your comment on the same subject in last Saturday’s blog!]

46. This was superb. We were puzzled by Spruce up, as ‘run’ didn’t create P, but shrugged … thinking, it’s just one of those weird crossword abbreviations. Picaroon broke us those, have just had to look up to see the answers Spoilsport and Canticle. Number of churchgoers, totally brilliant misdirection, had us utterly fooled, and I spent days going through the alphabet and writing out lists of possibilities here… Spoilsport, oh you misery! Nice to hear misery used of a person in that way, again superb misdirection. Much hard labour and much brilliant discovery, thanks Picaroon.

47. and PS to Alfalfa, ‘offish’ certainly can mean rather cold. It’s archaic now, but only by one generation. My mother frequently used it, as in “I thought she was a bit offish”, meaning exactly that, standoffish and cold, distant, aloof.

48. A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle from Picaroon as ever. I echo the praise for such turns of phrase as “slap on the lid”. I misparsed “a corps”, taking a corps to be an ‘arm’ of a larger body, so thanks @bridgesong for explaining what I missed.

    Re 1dn, LUBE, there may have been doubt (until the question was settled by the courts recently) about whether or not Uber is a taxi company (it is), but ‘an Uber’ is definitely a taxi (or rather, perhaps, a minicab, to split hairs).

    Interesting that no one has mentioned the partially indirect anagram in 2dn GIACOMO (you have to resolve “loves” to OO as part of the fodder). Not that shocking to find in the Guardian, and it obviously didn’t stand in the way of anyone solving it, but there is at least one commenter here who I know doesn’t consider wordplay like that to be completely fair.

    In 15dn, AGAR-AGAR, the word order interesting is. Normal order to express the meaning in the wordplay would be: ‘ra-ra, overturned, skirts silver’, not “silver ra-ra skirts overturned”. Of course, we are used to a degree of ‘poetic’ word ordering in clues, but this is pushing it a bit, isn’t it? Btw, @bridgesong, the parsing didn’t make it explicit, in case anyone needed it, that “skirts” is the containment indicator. .

    PostMark@19, (re “scatter”) “If it’s not a word, in that sense, it should be.” If you look up ‘-er’ in the dictionary, you’ll find that you can make an agent noun from any verb like that.

    In 20dn, the surface only makes sense if you know that “piscine” is the French for ‘swimming-pool’. If you didn’t know that and looked it up, you would probably get the answer very quickly but be puzzled as to what the surface meaning was supposed to be. I thought it was funny that at Collins online while there was only one British pronunciation given (?p?sa?n), there are apparently four possible ways for Americans to pronounce it (?paisin, ?p?sain, -in, -?n). (Not sure if the special characters will come out. If not, follow the link).

    [muffin @18, good point about superbum. I heard recently on the radio that the Italian subsidiary of PowerGen operated for quite a while as PowerGen Italia.]

49. @Tony Collman, I agree about 15 down: “silver ra-ra skirts overturned” implies (AG in RARA) all reversed, whereas what we really should have here is “silver ra-ra overturned skirts” to show that only RARA is reversed. Poetic licence, as you say, but I was adamant that this was going to be a puzzle with ra-ra skirts!

50. Tony C @48/Picaroon @49

    I thought it worked equally well, whether ‘silver’ is included in the overturning or not.

    If it is, we have (R-Ag-ARA) overturned, which is ARAGAR.

    If it isn’t, we have Ag in the middle of (RARA) overturned, i.e. AR-Ag-AR, which is still ARAGAR.

51. @essexboy, looking again, you’re quite right. No poetic licence is needed since we can, as you rightly say, see the AG as also being “overturned”, as in your first reading of the clue. (The omission of the relative pronoun “that” from the clue between “silver” and “ra-ra” is perfectly standard English syntax (as in “a dish people eat”), and in no way unusual word order.)

52. Nice one, essexboy. I think Tony Collman’s difficulty with the reversal may have arisen from seeing RA-RA as having two parts which need to be placed equally around AG, but this is not necessary.

53. This was one of the most enjoyable puzzles in a long time, so thanks Picaroon (and bridgesong for the excellent blog). Too many ticks to list, most of which have already been praised.

    Keith @9, if I remember correctly, Ella’s Mack the Knife (I urge everyone who hasn’t heard it to do so) includes a line where she imitates Louis Armstrong, so, another connection between 11a and 21a. That performance is a hoot from start to finish.

    grantinfreo@6, Mrs ginf’s fun with Jack Pooch and Joe Green reminded me that, in the US in the 60’s and 70’s there was a very busy studio violinist/violist named Emmanuel Vardi. That’s what he called himself, except when he played on a jazz recording, when he was listed as Manny Green.

54. Essexboy @50, you’ve convinced me. Ironic that Picaroon envisaged the construction the same way I had, which makes it seem very clumsy. He probably thought of your reading when setting the clue then forgot and got misled by me.

    Picaroon, there very little that can’t be improved with a ra-ra skirt, is there? Thanks for all the fun. I’d like to say I’m sorry for misleading you, as expressed above, but hey! – misleading is what you do so skillfully all the time!

55. I was a bit puzzled by Ella, never having heard of scat. That will be because I dislike Jazz, and avoid it as much as possible, no doubt incurring the disapproval of many.

56. [ Monkey, anyone who disapproves of your musical tastes is saying more about themselves than you? I’m a jazz fan, but I wouldn’t dream of dissing someone because they don’t like what I like. And I would not expect to be disapproved of because I dislike Wagner operas. ]

57. I should thank those, including Picaroon, who came back to me about OFFISH – appreciated.

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