Guardian Prize 28,805 / Nutmeg

44 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,805 / Nutmeg”

1. I have to say this was a very quick finish for a prize. Nothing controversial
   Thanks both.

2. Thanks Eileen. Another good and enjoyable workout I agree. I also agree with you that 17a is most probably an &lit. If I’m not stating the obvious I thought CROWN PRINCESS could be explained in its context as an heiress, maybe TOP is superfluous or just misleading. I’m still not convinced about from ‘time to time’ equalling alternate letters.

3. I think I solved Harley Street via ‘here” doubling as the def, because to be a true &lit, a feeling of discontent by (in?) the lady would need to be mandatory, which it isn’t. Something like that 🙂 .
   Meanwhile, cantab was a nho tho obvs, liked the two ‘on’s in ‘on ones own’, and the coinciding apes, and the embracing couples. Bird of passage is a phrase one ought to have met but don’t think I have. Lots to like as ever from Nutmeg and ta as ever to Eileen.

4. A very nice puzzle with lots of great clues, not as hard as some of the weekday ones, but that’s the norm these days for the prize.

   HARLEY STREET was excellent. Yes the whole clue is both definition and wordplay, so an &lit (or CAD) as far as I’m concerned.

   In CARPI, I think maybe “of which human has two” is part of the definition, as the wordplay is just “fish one”. Very clever.

   And in fact after the mention of “human” at 11a, are the surfaces of 12a and 13a alluding to our evolution, or am I just being fanciful?

   Many thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

5. [Serious question: was Bojo hanging on so he and Carrie could have their big Chequers bash? 😉 ]

6. Took a while. Had tarsi for 11ac at first although couldn’t parse it so couldn’t get 1dn. Finally got there.

   Liked CONSTRAIN, SUNDRY, BOGEYMEN, TAPER

   Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

7. Enjoyed this a lot.

   As for HARLEY STREET being an &lit – go for it Eileen!

   I was misdirected by the “academic distinction” phrase in 5a for a bit, looking for something like Summa Cum Laude [since – see 6d – “US” can be implicit]. Ironic, since 3 of my degrees are CANTAB. Oh well.

8. Great question re 12 and 13, Lord Jim. We are certainly (metaphorically) tottering, at any rate.

9. Regardless of the day of the week Nutmeg’s always a welcome setter. I found this on the easy side but satisfying nonetheless. As always the surfaces are smooth and easy to read. I ticked DIATRIBE, CARPI, HAPPENSTANCE, ECLIPSE, SUNDRY, FRANKLIN, and QUEENS as favourites. Thanks Nutmeg, and Eileen for the blog.

10. No major problems with this one. I agree that HAPPENSTANCE is a lovely word. I thought INURE was very neat, but the favourite was HARLEY STREET for the succinct &lit.
    As far as BIRD OF PASSAGE goes, the OED has one quote from the 1790s but it’s the ornithological rather than the metaphorical meaning. A lot of online dictionaries (including Collins) have its origin as 1785-1795, but there’s a poem by John Hoadley called The Bird Of Passage from 1749 and Alexander Pope uses the phrase in his Moral Essays and he died in 1744.

11. Nutmeg always welcome in this house,

12. I’m in total agreement with Tony Santucci regrading this – experience and nominations. Very enjoyable.

    [Dr WhatsOn @7: All of my degrees are Celsius … ]

13. Thought tim the toffee @1 brave to open with “nothing controversial”. But no counterexample from me. Compact clueing. Thanks, Nutmeg.

14. Quite a hard one, I found, but I eventually finished. Thanks, Nutmeg and Eileen. I also much enjoyed HARLEY STREET.
    In 19d, ESSE is not just a Latin word. Chambers and Collins recognise it as an English philosophical term, meaning ‘existence’.
    Grantinfreo@5, I think Chequers is one of the reasons BJ is carrieing on, though there are others. In the UK we still wait to see what happens next week, and the future of the party in more than one sense. Whatever, it was a fortuitously relevant clue.

15. Aha! 8d was a Briticism. Grew up in the US where we said BOOGEYMEN….

16. I thought this was a very well-crafted puzzle with many good clues, of which my favourites were HARLEY STREET, an ‘&lit’ as I saw it, and QUEENS, defined as ‘powerful men on board’, taking advantage of the definition of ‘man’ in chess. (On that last point, I thought it was interesting that bêtes noires, a feminine noun phrase, was used to define BOGEYMEN.)

    I always like having long words in these crosswords. HAPPENSTANCE was my first entry, and BIRD OF PASSAGE (a phrase I don’t remember having met before) my last.

    Thanks to Nutmeg for a quality crossword and to Eileen for her excellent blog.

17. Oh, Eileen, thanks so much for the correct, non-offensive parsing for 4d! I had it as piece=BIRD (which made extraordinary un-used). And for 18d, I was thinking of on board as on stage, and a very different sort of queen (but could tell something else was going on).

    I really liked CROWN PRINCESS which I hadn’t heard before and BOGEYMEN as golfers.

18. [Love the carrieing on, sjh@14, and no wonder: think of the hassle cancelling all the invites, plus the caterers, the waiters, the musos, dancing girls, fireworks, the … ]

19. I enjoyed this. Nutmeg can always be relied on for short clues with more plusible surfaces than most.
    5a. I queried whether CANTAB was a distinction as it applies to any degree, not just a good one, but then I suppose it distinguishes it from a degree from any other university, Oxon, for example.
    24a. It may be a long time since we had Ernie ELS but it’s not long enough. Never again would be too soon.

20. Thanks Eileen. Much needed blog this week. The UK heat addled our brains (along with political shenanigans!) We just couldnt see some of these so the bottom left/south west largely a DNF. Thanks Nutmeg for the challenge. Enjoyed Bogeymen, our first in, among others. Defeated by from time to time and baroque as instructions. Missed the cricketing reference for on but got queens, another favourite. Both are Dads sung in amateur Mikados in the fifties so we know the tunes even though never seen it! Also a big old ‘Doh’ on reading blog for tailwinds. We have been glued to Tour de France coverage this week where tailwinds a big feature but still were fixated with tailfins or wings.

21. Grrr *our not *are. Addled spelling too!

22. Very good puzzle. Tough but fair and no “meh” clues.

23. Tim C @10 – many thanks for your research on BIRD OF PASSAGE. I didn’t try hard enough – in fact, I only consulted Brewer!

24. Whether it’s an &Lit or not, I am with Eileen and others above in really liking 17a HARLEY STREET. Yes gif@3, for me 5a CANTAB was also unfamiliar, so new learning. Lots of clues to relish here as this unfolded. Many thanks to both Nutmeg and Eileen – two of my favourite women whenever I encounter them in Crosswordland!

25. My brain always freezes, when I need to think of a fish, but, like tim the toffee, I found nothing to carp about here. I liked CHIDING for the very smooth surface.

26. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen. I had to cheat 24a, eventually, but I didn’t mind because I would never have got ELS the golfer, and it was my LOI anyway.

27. I failed to complete, having ALIVE instead of AGILE, intending to go back and try to justify the parsing, but completely forgot. I was unaware of CARPI but it had to be, didn’t it. I enjoyed the four longest, with HAPPENSTANCE a particular favourite, but some of Nutmeg’s clues for the shorter words really trip me up, and AVIARY was my last one in after a feeble struggle last night turned into the blazing glory of this morning.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

28. Me too sh@27. And once you see it AGILE is so obvious! I spent ages trying to convince myself that IV might be some sort of Roman Soldier. Doh!

    I think CROWN PRINCESS is the female equivalent of a CROWN PRINCE, i.e. the Heir Apparent, so the first (top) person waiting to be Monarch. In the past, an eldest daughter might always be sidelined by a younger brother, so they were quite rare (usually she would be Heir Presumptive). But I think Queen Victoria qualified, as her father died before William IV.

29. Actually I’m wrong about Queen Victoria, as while he still lived, there was always a possibility William IV could have had a legitimate heir. So I don’t think there’s ever been a British Crown Princess.

30. Not the most difficult of Saturday puzzles, but beautifully clued. A crossword for those of us who prize a good surface – less appealing perhaps to those who ignore such things, because the wordplay is never tortuous. There are too many good clues to list.

    Re BIRD OF PASSAGE, Wiktionary gives a late 18th century quotation from Smollett as its first example of the metaphorical use. TimC’s suggestion @10, that Pope might have been the first to use it, is the best bet – he had a good eye (ear?) for metaphor.

    [Wiktionary also suggests that the ornithological expression may be a calque of the French ‘oiseau de passage’ – ‘passage’ is not an obvious English word to describe ‘migration’. Historically, the most numerous bird of passage was the North American passenger pigeon. It is thought that they originally numbered 3-5 billion, but became extinct by the beginning of the 20th century through habitat loss and industrial scale hunting. Rite of passage’ is also plausibly a calque from French]

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen

31. Lovely to meet another G and S fan, Eileen. I had the same schoolday experience as you. Watched Scottish Opera’s Gondoliers on TV just recently.

32. I really enjoyed this – many thanks Nutmeg, always a pleasure to see you are the setter. Too many favourites to mention them all but HARLEY STREET and HAPPENSTANCE were my top two. Solved ON ONES WAY but could not parse (no chance with cricket clues) so many thanks Eileen for explaining it, and for the blog.

33. Eileen, there is no 5d. Is 4d or 6d one of your favorites?

    I will never learn that ON = LEG. Cricket is ever my downfall, along with British children’s TV. On the other hand, I know perfectly well that some of my compatriots are GIs, but couldn’t get unstuck from “Alive” at 6d.

    I googled “Chequers” to find Eileen’s wedding story, and found that its current tenant is listed as “the prime minister of the United Kingdom.” And who would that be just now?

    Thank you, Nutmeg, for a super puzzle, and Eileen for a blog that kept me grinning.

34. Hi Valentine – sorry, it was 6dn, the one that stymied you. I liked the ‘parting drink’.

35. Thanks Eileen, I appreciate your extra comments today as I seem to have lost my annotated solution. I remember being confused by the “Top” in 10d too but I agree it’s just a helpful clarification for the cd, and was happy to tick 17a as a vg &lit. As usual your highlights are well chosen, i would add 2d as the def bamboozled me for ages. Thanks for research on the bird of passage Tim C and Gervase (I think “passage” is not unheard of for transitory movement eg through the digestive system, so maybe less unusual for the scientific community). I do remember that it took a few sittings and was a very pleasant way to pass the time last Sunday so thanks Nutmeg.

36. I can’t see a theme either, but I had fun looking. I did find FRANK and a slightly drunk DINO; directly underneath little ol’ wine drinker DINO, appropriately enough, is SWAY; and if FRANK takes a trip north he’ll find the Isle of CARPI 😉 (sorry, that pun was pants)

    If those refs are all a bit antediluvian for some, there’s a 70s/80s corner in the SE, with QUEEN, PRINCE, Midge URE and a cross-clue YES along the bottom.

    Not in AlanC’s league, I know. Many thanks, Nutmeg and Eileen.

37. Valentine @33 (and ginf @various) – this may help fill in the background on the party-that-was-to-be-at-Chequers, now relocated – and this on the one that apparently going ahead tomorrow.

38. essexboy @36 – I had fun, too, following your search for a theme, so thanks for that (especially the ‘pants’). 😉 …

    … and 37 – I very nearly gave a link to that Guardian article in the blog. I hadn’t seen the second piece of news, though – the audacity is mind-blowing.

39. Very enjoyable. Such smooth surfaces. Particularly liked “Get thinner and lighter”. I guessed the clue’s structure, but it still took me a while and at least one cruise to come up with TAPER.

    Gervase@30,

    “‘passage’ is not an obvious English word to describe ‘migration’.”

    Maybe not now but isn’t the passenger pigeon most likely so called because of its annual ‘passage’?

40. I was also looking for a theme. There are two fish at the top with ‘CARP’ and ‘PERCH’ (across two answers in row 3) and there is one loaf across the solutions on the bottom row ‘RYE’.

    Is the cost of living crisis that bad that even Jesus has to bed the multitudes with only one loaf and two fishes?

41. Oops, that was an unfortunate typo. For ‘bed, read ‘feed’

42. For the first time in my life I find myself disagreeing with Eileen on something. (Shocking!)

    My father used to perform in and direct G&S operas, and he had a fit every time they were referred to as operettas. To distinguish them from the short, one-act operettas of Offenbach and others, Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte insisted that their productions were comic operas, not operettas. (Their one-act Cox and Box was an exception.) So I respectfully disagree with Eileen’s “strictly speaking” reference to The Mikado.

    Once again Nutmeg has treated us to an impeccable crossword, and Eileen has given us her usual informative and engaging blog, for which much thanks.

43. Thanks to Eileen and Nutmeg.
    Slight quibble on happenstance = coincidence in 13a. As Goldfinger observed to James Bond (IIRC), the first time is happenstance, the second time coincidence and the third time is enemy action.

44. Malcolm @43, iirc, the Fleming aphorism was printed on its own on a page at the front of one of the Bond books. Goodreads says it’s from Goldfinger.

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