Guardian Prize 28,709 / Philistine

73 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,709 / Philistine”

1. Enjoyed this. Got THE straightaway, then VLAD which led me to IMPALER. Next one in was GREAT and I was off in search of names to match (and I remembered that PETER was an old word for a safe which I had learned from contributors here after it appeared in an earlier crossword).

   Liked INGLENOOK, THATAWAY (made me laugh) DARN and UNREADY.

   Thanks Philistine and Eileen

2. I thought this was a lot of fun, and not as tough as a typical Prize – also great blog, Eileen. Getting “THE GREAT” early helped a lot, especially as most of the “great” people had longish names hence lots of crossers. Was looking out for Alfred, but SOL.

   I suspect NULLIPARA might give some people problems, but the “para” root does show up in other more familiar contexts. Parent for one. You also might see things in women’s medical records (I used to work with them in a previous life) like “grav. 3, para 2” meaning pregnant 3 times, gave birth twice.

3. Thanks Eileen. This was well constructed and I enjoyed it. It didn’t take too long but I had to resort to Google to confirm the mother of Sphinx (I knew the Australian) and nullipara. LOI was 7d, I was fixated on ‘knit’ and ‘knot’. At the risk of betraying my ignorance I have to admit the precision of one hospital is lost on me.

4. Lots of fun, especially (as others have noticed) given that GREAT and THE went in early. VLAD? Where’s IMPALER? IVAN? Where’s TERRIBLE? ETHELRED? etc. Dr WhatsOn @2 – I was trying to shoehorn NULLIGRAVID into 24a, as that does mean ‘never expecting’. NULLIPARA is ‘never gave birth’ – as your example shows, the two are not equivalent if there are miscarriages. Biggles A @3 Hathaway has two Hs, but you only leave one there in the construction. Mother of Sphinx new to me too, but ECHIDNA occured to me when I first read the clue,, so I just waited for crosser confirmation. Thanks, Philistine and Eileen.

5. Oh… look who the setter is for today’s…

6. I wish we saw more of Philistine. The theme wasn’t heavy-handed (educational, for me) and words I’d never of (such as NULLIPARA) were nicely clued.

   I am one of the fules who had always wondered (but never checked) what encounter Ethelred had not prepared for. Now I know (thanks for the link). Wikipedia puts it succinctly: the unready (=poorly advised) is a pun on the name Ethelred (=well advised). Who’d have thunk it, people were cruel before social media came along.

   Thanks Philistine and Eileen The Well-preserved.

7. Thanks Philistine for an entertaining crossword. I knew solving 19 17 first would make this puzzle easier to crack and I was right for the most part but I missed ECHIDNA and needed a word finder for NULLIPARA and the humourous THATAWAY. My favourites included BABOONS, UNREADY (loved the letter “y” being clued “Why, for crying out loud”), and TERRIBLE. Thanks Eileen for your blog.

8. I really enjoyed that one : there was just enough work to get the key middle words. NULLIPARA was new to me as was the mythological ECHIDNA.

   Thanks Philistine and Eileen

9. Yep, fun puzzle, thanks Phil, and great blog Eileen. As a kid I remember my parents saying someone had been caught tickling the peter, and I knew about the paras and gravidas from my Uncle Harry, a G & O (now 90). Theme reminded me of Greats at Oxford, and that Alexander was taught by Aristotle. Like pdp 11 @6, another fule here learning that Unready is a play on Aethelred = wise counsellor. Hey ho, never too old to become slightly less foolish. Thanks again both.

10. … fulish..

11. The reference to other clues helped me to get TERRIBLE and UNREADY. I didn’t know ECHIDNA was the Sphinx’s mother (possibly) but I have seen one in the wild as well as the other monotreme, the Platypus. I also learned the etymology of the name…..
    I Liked STEPUP for the reversal, UNIT COST for sending me down a few rabbit holes and DARN for its elegant simplicity.

12. Fun working through some of the more interesting rulers in history. My first theme answer (after the easy THE) was actually UNREADY, which suggested what this might be about and set me looking for an ETHELRED. I feel I’d heard the bit about his merely being ill-advised before, but I’d forgotten it, so thanks for the reminder, Eileen – and for the rest of the blog, of course. Then there had to be a GREAT, and then it was fairly plain sailing until a long delay before finally cracking the wordplay for NULLIPARA, a word I had never heard of. I particularly enjoyed THATAWAY. Thanks, Philistine.

13. A very nice set of clues and a well-assembled challenge which I remember enjoying last week. Some lol moments as well as some chewy clueing. And didn’t the mini theme work well? VENTILATED is a superb anagram, well hidden and the lift and separate to get IDEM was very clever. I also liked the closeness of IVAN and TERRIBLE; if you can’t be a GREAT, be a TERRIBLE (Thanks for the link, Eileen: the precis says it all – During his reign, he acquired vast amounts of land through ruthless means, creating a centrally controlled government. Nothing changes does it?).

    I have two queries – what is the wordplay for the aforementioned TERRIBLE? Shouldn’t there be some sort of ‘with this’ in the clue? And, whilst I gave a tick to THATAWAY for combination of surface plus the amusing solution, Shakespeare’s wife leaving one hospital simply does not say to me remove an H. I know what the setter wants me to do but I’m not convinced he’s told me. The first query caused more trouble during the solve than the second.

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

14. Thanks for the blog. MrPostMark@13 you are quite right about both clues, we know what to do and the answer but neither really works.
    TERRIBLE is a compound anagram, Azed uses them a lot but does them properly . Dreadful Isis , THIS can somehow be irresistible.
    THATAWAY , leaving is used to mean “leaving out” or removing. I cannot find support for this in Chambers.

15. “We are relocating the entire city [to create a new one, i.e. a new word] but we are leaving one hospital [i.e. not including it in the new word]”.

16. … like one song to the tune of another (ISIHAC – probably lost on overseas and many UK solvers …

17. ) missing …

18. What a fun puzzle! As mentioned earlier, it must have been easy as I managed to fully solve it on my own (to my surprise). Thank you, Philistine!

    My only (minor, nit-picking) quibble is with the NULLIPARA definition: you can have been pregnant (expecting) but still nullipara if your pregnancy never got to the stage of viability. However, the clue did indicate something to do with pregnancy, which made the clue solvable.

    And, thank you, Eileen, for the blog. I love the little educational links you always throw in.

19. Tim Phillips @15 – you just beat me to it.
    It’s by no means the first time that there has been discussion about this use of ‘leaving’ and I have often commented that we have to think of it as ‘leaving behind’.

20. Lots of smiles and not too many barren periods of progress. The VENTILATED clue was so well put together and, sadly, still so “on trend”. Great thanks Philistine, and Eileen for explaining a couple I couldn’t parse.

    THATAWAY gave me a joy that I can’t quite account for. Did “he went thataway” feature in the intro to some TV serial of my youth?

21. Tassie Tim @4 and Calgal @18 – sadly, you are, of course, all too correct about NULLIPARA: I should have spotted that – but it was such a great surface that I missed it.

22. @Eileen, I agree, that’s why I said it was nit-picking.

23. Thanks Philistine and Eileen
    Great fun. I confess that I solved IMPALER from VLAD rather than its clue.
    Thanks for the Nigel Molesworth reference, Eileen. Years ago I was in correspondence with a Guardian writer who had used “as any fule kno”, breaking the sad news that only one other teacher in the Common Room recognised the reference!

24. So, a theme. Or should I say THE theme.

    I’m afraid as soon as the general idea became clear (VLAD THE IMPALER) I put in all the other rulers, the GREAT and the not so great, from the crossers with scant regard for the clues.

    THATAWAY made me smile, and I didn’t know ECHIDNA was the Sphinx’s mum.

    Short and sweet. Thanks Philistine and Eileen.

    (btw Eileen, I think you mean THATAWAY, not getaway in your opening remarks. Predictive text strikes again. )

25. [muffin @23 – even here in deepest, darkest Tasmania, we know our Molesworth. Mind you, my uncle was a mate of Ronald Searle’s on the Burma Railway – he subsequently went to England and had a long career as a Punch cartoonist.]

26. Thanks, Crossbar @24 – amended now.

27. Having known someone described as an “elderly primagravida” (first baby at 40) I knew the gravida set of medical terms but the para versions were new. Fairly clued so not too hard.

    Good fun, as Philistine usually is: loved THATAWAY and UNIT COST and the Y of UNREADY, for crying out loud!

    Once it became clear what the theme was, it was a bit too easy to just look for the other half of the “x the y” formula, or for other probable candidates, but that didn’t diminish the enjoyment.

28. [TassieTim@25: Molesworth gets everywhere – “chiz chiz” shows up in a 1960s letter to his auntie from the teenage Keith Richards, quoted in his autobiography.]

29. Liked IMPALER, UNREADY, UNAGED, THATAWAY (loi).
    New: NULLIPARA; ECHIDNA being the mother of the Greek Sphinx; supermajors = the world’s six or seven largest publicly traded oil and gas companies.

    Thanks, both.

30. [gladys @27 I’m sure I was described as a geriatric primagravida, and I was 35 at the time! Many years ago now. ]

31. Our lovely local hero, the late Sue Townsend, named her original diarist Nigel Mole but the name was changed to avoid confusion – see here

32. So it will soon be Putin The Terrible.

33. Another pleasant crossword from Philistine.

    Surely, in 6 it’s IVAN with the first letter demoted to give vain. I particularly liked VENTILATED for the good anagram and topicality, and ETHELRED for the three-legged structure (I left my umbrella on the train.)

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen.

34. Thanks, Robi – sorted.

35. Like Tassie Tim @4 “I was trying to shoehorn NULLIGRAVID into 24a”, which held me up until I thought of DEGA(S) tipped over in the Beaujolais nouveau, when PARA became obvious.

    I really don’t see the problem that Mark and Roz have (see #13 & #14) with the clues for TERRIBLE and THATAWAY. If the clues don’t work, as they aver, how have we all managed to solve (and apparently enjoy) them?

    ‘Dreadful Isis can somehow be irresistible’= [word meaning ‘dreadful’]+ ISIS=(irresistible)*. There really is no need to insert ‘this’, as Roz suggests.

    ‘Shakespeare’s wife leaving one hospital after a short time: where did she go?’ works as Eileen has elucidated @19, ‘leave’ should be read as ‘leave behind’, i.e. Ms Hathaway has gone (‘where did she go?’) but left one H from her name behind. To quote Eileen’s blog, “sheer cheek – and precision”!

    Thanks to Eileen for the blog, and to Philistine for an entertaining solve.

36. I thought this was a classic, with an interesting mini-theme and many clever and subtle points in the clues. NULLIPARA was new to me – I liked the descriptive definition very much. And there was a longer descriptive definition for VENTILATED, contrasting with (for example) the succinct ‘stakeholder’ to define IMPALER and ‘safe’ to define PETER, the latter becoming (I think) better known with repeated use.

    UNIT COST was my last in and was a favourite, along with the clues I have already mentioned.

    Thanks to both Philistine and Eileen.

37. [When our firstborn was on the way, my wife was described as an ‘elderly primagravida’ at 28! (he’s now over 40).]

38. sheffield hatter @35 – you’ve reminded me that I didn’t respond to Mark and Roz’s other quibble (re TERRIBLE). I read it exactly as you did – thanks.)

39. [ TassieTim and gladys – after a quick Google, I see that the actual medical term is primigravida geriatrica and applies to first pregnancies over the age of 35]

40. Tim Phillips @15/16/17, Eileen @19 & hatter @35: many thanks. I think the visualised ‘behind’ (as it were!) certainly helps with getting my head around the subtraction, though it feels a little more awkward than some of the other indications I’ve met, and I am very happy to acknowledge that I didn’t read TERRIBLE in the right way. Of course it works and my faith in humanity, Vlad and my own weaknesses is confirmed.

    hatter – I only asked for elucidation earlier. I was able to solve but didn’t get the parsing so asked questions about clues, noting what I didn’t understand. I didn’t say anything about enjoyment other than in my very positive first para.

41. My mother, an SRN, enlightened a neighbour who had been puzzled for years at being described as “an elderly primate” when she misheard “elderly primip.”

42. Thank you Eileen, especially for the extra background on Ethelred, Sphinx, BP etc. I don’t know Molesworth but appreciate the reminder of Adrian Mole, I can still broadly recall the description of his school trip which was remarkably similar to our annual outings.

    I had the same thoughts as PM@13 (initially) and Roz@14 that 5d was missing some direction – sheffield hatter@35 to your point on the fact that we all got the answer anyway – can you imagine a clue parsing DEF + Anagram of solution, but without an anagrind? If the defn and crossers are friendly then we would probably solve it and then spot the solution is an anagram but wouldn’t we complain that there was no instruction to form the anagram? And what happens if next time it is not so obvious? I suppose I am just wanting to stamp down hard on this early, because who knows what these setters will try to get away with next?

    Sorry for the lengthy post, enjoyed the puzzle a lot and UNIT COST was the highlight for me, thanks Philistine.

43. Just because a clue is easy and the answer is obvious does not make it a good clue. A bad easy clue is still a bad clue.
    Terrible has dreadful doing double duty plus the worst of indirect anagrams.

44. I really enjoyed most of this, but I think echidna was an unfair clue; a double definition where both are obscure. I googled ‘Sphinx’s mother’ and got a different answer. Otherwise very enjoyable and thanks to Philistine and Eileen.

45. Roz @43 – I don’t understand ‘dreadful doing double duty’ (the anagram indicator is ‘can somehow be’) and I think it’s a subtractive, rather than an indirect anagram.

46. Thanks for the blog Eileen, and to Philistine for a cracking fun crossword.

    The compound anagram for TERRIBLE worked for me, and that was my favourite clue. Among many enjoyable ones.

    DARN reminded me of my son telling me not so long ago that when he was very small and heard Eleanor Rigby for the first time, the mental picture it conjured up for him was of Fr Mackenzie standing in front of his sock drawer and cursing.

47. Widdersbel: my son when he was a child thought that Father McKenzie had murdered Eleanor Rigby. It is actually quite a plausible interpretation of the lyrics. Why did she die in the church? That she “was buried along with her name” could suggest an unmarked grave… But ok, that’s probably not what Paul McCartney intended.

    I enjoyed this puzzle and particularly liked the idea of having THE as a stand-alone answer (as well as providing the key to the theme).

    Many thanks Philistine and Eileen.

48. Eileen @45. I agree once more with you that ‘dreadful’ is not doing double duty for the reason you give. In my book, doing double duty is not a fault in a clue anyway, it’s just another bit of deception by the compiler. As with all such devices, our only complaint can be that we find it unfair.

    And as you say, the anagram is subtractive. So, doing the clue in reverse (as I did), take the letters of ‘Isis’ out of ‘irresistible’, leaving RRETIBLE, which ‘can somehow be’ TERRIBLE. 🙂 Easy, witty and (dare I say – yes I do) precise!

49. Many thanks, sheffield hatter – I’m in total agreement (still) with you, too. I don’t know why I didn’t include TERRIBLE in my list of ticks!
    But it’s late: RIP this dead horse.

50. Mark @40. (Sorry for the delay in responding – I’ve been out since just before you posted.) My mention of enjoyment wasn’t intended as any sort of dig at you (or Roz, for that matter). I was just vaugely summarising the general feeling among commenters. And I apologise for reading your “two queries” as criticisms of the clues, as a more careful reading confirms that you were seeking help with understanding the parsing.

    You say that you thought including ‘with this’ might have helped you solve the TERRIBLE clue with less trouble. When I was solving this clue, I saw the subtractive anagram straight away. To me, it’s is all about being on the setter’s wavelength (or not) – like my difficulty with some Spoonerisms, homophones and cryptic definitions. Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don’t. More often the latter.

    How does including ‘with this’ actually help? I’m not clear that it does. Would you put it at the end? ‘Isis can somehow be irresistible with this?’ Just adding it to the existing clue would leave us with a definition at both ends, it seems to me. Or what Roz @14 says Azed would have done, which seems to me to just spoil the surface without adding anything. (Sorry for banging on about this, after you’ve said you now see how the clue works!)

    With the dropped hospital clue, you say “I’m not convinced (the setter)’s told me (what to do)”. Having seen this device, or something similar, before, I felt on first reading the clue that it was all about taking an H out of the name of Shakespeare’s wife. What else could it be? We’ve had discussions on here before about ‘leave’ also meaning ‘leave behind’, have we not? The two ways of using ‘leave’ appear in successive clues: in 18d ‘urge’=EGG has ‘to leave three l(egg)ed’ before being restructured; and in 19d Ms Hathaway is ‘leaving’ one H when she goes, taking the other letters of her name with her. Unlike Robi @33 with that umbrella – I used to do that myself, until I vowed never to buy another DARN umbrella.

    I’m glad that your faith in humanity has been restored, and hope that I’m included in that. 🙂

51. [Sorry, Eileen! I’ll stop flogging the poor animal now.]

52. I think we crossed, sheffield hatter!

53. Eileen — and all these years I thought the last line of Ophelia’s speech was describing a careful oboe player!

    Thanks to Philistine for the puzzle and Eileen for the accompaniment.

54. Valentine – I love it!
    My daughter played the oboe – a lovely instrument – in her schooldays. I remember the reeds needed careful recking. 😉

55. ‘Careful recking’ is a tautology.

    It really is time for bed: I’ve just remembered I must advance my clocks!

56. hatter @50: no probs 😀 (Sorry for banging on about this, after you’ve said you now see how the clue works!) … you said it!

57. I hesitate to speak for Roz (and I’m sure she will let me know if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick 😉 ) but I think the ‘double duty’ she refers to in her post @43 is not because ‘dreadful’ is needed as an anagrind in 5dn – as Eileen points out @45, it isn’t – but because it functions as both (a) definition and (b) part of the wordplay. (And the clue isn’t an &lit.)

    As (b) wordplay, the logic is to find a synonym for ‘dreadful’, add it to the anagram fodder (hence Roz’s reference to ‘indirect’), and jumble in order to get ‘irresistible’. The suggested addition of ‘this’ or ‘with this’ would refer the solver to the solution, rather like including a clue number as part of the anagrist for another clue, and so eliminate the double duty as well as providing a hint to the solver of what’s going on.

    Of course, most people will have solved the clue, as I did, by thinking “I’ve got IVAN, now where’s TERRIBLE?” and then justifying ‘backwards’, as per sh @48 – in effect turning a compound anagram into a subtractive one – but without a subtraction indicator.

58. Really good fun. Hilariously, when I first read 17ac, I actually asked myself whether there might be a word TAGRE I didn’t know, meaning ‘massive”. Thought I would press on and check later if necessary, only to kick myself when (having got THE straight away) I solved the anagram for ALEXANDER!

    UNIT COST was very deceptive and took quite some mulling over. 3dn, VENTILATED was a clever public health message as clue that made you think.

59. Re TERRIBLE: the foregoing discussion all assumes that CAN is merely a modal verb. But might it not in fact be the directive to drop ISIS from IRRESISTIBLE, somehow?

60. Sorry for minimal response yesterday but beach weather in March can never be wasted.
    Thanks Tim@15 , I will buy it, I think you are taking leaving as abandoning.
    MrEssexboy@57 you are quite correct about my thoughts on the double duty and the extra substitution needed before the anagram, but as I say to my students – “If I really need to explain this there is no point me explaining ” .

61. Great puzzle, great blog, great comments.
    Strange that all those famous people shared the same second name!
    Thanks to Philistine, Eileen and Contributors.

62. Essex boy@57, in fact, I’m pretty sure I got TERRIBLE first and, having sussed the theme, sought the clue for IVAN (which I had failed to solve earlier).

    The way you’ve described solving the clue makes it sound difficult, but why can’t you take the same approach as Sheffield Hatter above: i.e. remove the letters of ‘Isis’ from ‘irresistible’, to leave what you know must be an anagram of a word meaning ‘dreadful’. Roz@43 calls this an indirect anagram, which I don’t agree with but if it is, I don’t see that adding the word ‘this’ relieves that in any way.

    Btw, I did note that it was Isis (the god) who Philistine suggested could be irresistible, not ISIS (the would-be caliphate), which I feel wouldn’t have gone down well here.

63. Thanks for the support, Tony. It can’t be an indirect anagram, as the letters forming the solution are all there in the clue.

    Thanks also to essexboy for carefully explaining about the”double duty” of ‘dreadful’. In my view it only forms part of the wordplay *because* it is also the definition! Therefore it is pointless and curmudgeonly to complain that it is performing double duty, since that is the trick that makes it a good clue. 🙂 (For the avoidance of doubt, it’s not you, essexboy, that I’m suggesting is curmudgeonly!)

    I know I said I wasn’t going to bang on about this clue any more, but that was yesterday!

64. Oh, my word! Since my comment @55, later last night, I haven’t logged on (involved in lovely Mothering Sunday (sic) things till now), so I’m amazed to see the discussion is continuing!

    I’m torn between sympathy for this poor defunct equine and my innate dog-with-a-bone stubbornness – but, once again, I have to wholeheartedly support sheffield hatter @63. Crucially, ” It can’t be an indirect anagram, as the letters forming the solution are all there in the clue.“

65. Come on, Eileen — just leave it now! They’re not worth it! 🙂

    Nice to see the Hamlet again, btw. I kept a copy of that from last time and pasted it in to a word game I’m playing in support of my choice of ‘rede’ for a move therein.

66. Eileen, commendations to your daughter. The oboe is all too often known as the ill wind that nobody blows good.

67. I have, Tony – thanks. Glad you enjoyed the Hamlet.

    Thanks for that, Valentine. I remember when she first brought the oboe home, at the age of eight or nine – long years ago, when schools provided free tuition and a trial loan of the instrument before commitment – and proudly assembled it. We waited and watched for several minutes, as her face grew redder and redder until she finally produced a single sound. I really admired her perseverance – she got quite good!

68. [Eileen @67 I remember those days too. Our daughter brought a ‘cello home, and she’s pretty good at that too. Bit more difficult to carry around than an oboe 😀 Her school’s music teacher used to cycle round with one on her back ! ]

69. Hi Crossbar, if you’re still there – my son chose the double bass!

70. [You win, Eileen ? ]

71. 😉 not ?8

72. I give up

73. I was called an elderly primagravida aged 27!
    In 1973…

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