Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 29,027 by Qaos (25 March 2023)

69 comments on “Guardian Saturday Prize Crossword 29,027 by Qaos (25 March 2023)”

1. Thanks mc_rapper67. Yes, another enjoyable challenge; it began for me with quite a few that wrote themselves in but progress slowed down before others could be persuaded to yield. I spent quite a lot of time after entering ‘chorus’ for 3d trying to figure out why. After overthinking 20d I had to consult Google about RED ROOT, never heard of New Jersey tea. Never noticed the mathematical theme either, too obscure for me.

2. Found this more accessible than many Prize puzzles, but since there were several misdirections and red herrings I thoroughly enjoyed the solving process. 1d was favourite as took ages to register the numerical implications.

3. Yes totally agree: an excellent puzzle. I struggled with RED ROOT.
   I think you could highlight COMMUTE too as commutative is a feature of various mathematical operations.
   Thanks both

4. I noticed fairly early on (it’s Qaos, there must be a theme) the mathematical theme, though it wasn’t a lot of help as there are so many mathematical terms. I did wonder if there was a more specific theme but couldn’t spot it, and it appears not. Had to check that there is such a thing as RED ROOT (OK, the theme helped confirm ROOT). Lots of fun. Thanks, Qaos and mc_rapper67.

5. I don’t like crosswords, I love them, but I don’t like cricket, and I do wonder why setters are so set in their ways, why can’t we have other sports, or references to more varied GK.
   I do wonder what the average age of cryptic crossword solvers is, and is it a dying art, I’m guessing from 15 squared that we are all quite senior, please prove me wrong and also please can we have more variety of themes, punk rock is already ancient but we never have a Ramones theme, more likely Romans!

6. Thanks Qaos. I found this to be a struggle and after several attempts I gave up leaving six clues unsolved. I did like RIDING SUIT, CONSTANT, PRODUCT, and HORSE TAMER. Thanks mc_rapper 67 for the blog.
   [Ant @5: After doing American crosswords for years I began attempting the British ones when I retired in 2018. Learning new things makes me think I’m not that “senior.”]

7. Just looked at a list of 50 of best known Ramones songs and didn’t recognise any. I’m 75 and the kids are 46, 55 and 58. Hey ho.

8. I enjoyed this, and was chuffed to see the theme, despite being mathematically etc challenged.
   PROVE and TEST could also fit the theme.
   I also wondered about the (to me) unusual grid, and the word OPEN. Could that be a reference to the IT term OPEN ARCHITECTURE?
   I liked UNIT and HORSE-TAMER. Made me laugh.

9. I can’t remember if I noticed the theme, but it’s not surprising given Qaos’ maths background. In hindsight I would add OPEN (which can go with the nearby SET), and COMMUTE (e.g. the commutative law of addition… a+b=b+a etc)
   I always enjoy Qaos’ mathematical clues (the engineer geek in me) so UNIT was a favourite along with the lovely “4 or 6” misdirection in BOUNDARY.

10. I was utterly defeated by the entire SW corner, which does not happened often. Easily the toughest Saturday puzzle I’ve tackled for a long time. Well done Qaos, and thanks mc_rapper67 for the enlightening blog, including the theme that completely escaped me.

11. @ANT #5

    The sport of RU makes a regular appearance in puzzles, as does references to football (e.g. KEEPER for a desirable person). Football clubs and managers also pop up on occasions, with words such as ARSENAL.

12. I remember wondering if Qaos was attempting a nina of TURING and TELLER in columns 1 and 15 but gave it away, happy with his achievement of inclusions in the grid.
    Coincidence? Or has he buried some operation in there lost on the likes of me?

13. Along with PROVE and TEST (paddymelon @8) there is also a Teardrop function (also there’s a function for an egg shape) which with Commute and Open would mean that nearly every answer has a maths related component. Impressive.

14. I agree with those for whom this was a challenge – for me, the bottom half and particularly the south-east held out for a long time, and even then I wasn’t sure of 26d MEAN, my last one in. I kind of got that it was all about Maths, which isn’t one of my strong suits, so I am impressed at how many thematic solutions and references have been teased out in the blog and by other contributors. In some small consolation for how pondeously slow my solve was, 10a UNIT was one of my first ones in – and fully parsed at that! Warm thanks to Qaos and mc_rapper67.

15. Was going to say COMMUTE is a theme word but noticed tim@3 got there first, so I won’t. But I will say that PROVE, while not a mathematical term per se, is so associated with the field, I mean FIELD, it should be included.

    To Ant@5: my 35 yo older son is interested in learning; just one data point though.

16. Well, when I started writing the post@15 nobody had mentioned PROVE yet. Must be a slow typist.

17. Data point: I’m 48. Cryptics have actually been gaining steam (relatively speaking) among Americans my age and younger, at least if I gauge correctly from the fan community here. (For those Yanks reading, Games World of Puzzles Magazine runs four per issue–two standard-issue 15×15s, and two barred puzzles with clever gimmicks. Start there. No need to know anything about cricket either.)

    I noticed the theme just as I was asking my usual people for help on the last one I had unexplained, which was RED ROOT, of course. Glad I wasn’t the only one. And to me “New Jersey Tea” sounds like it should be a name for some gross cocktail. (Of course it’d be gross–it’s Jersey. Speaking affectionately as an old Princetonian here.)

18. Apologies tim the toffee @3, I missed your Commute.

19. I had to return three timesbut got there in the end. I noticed some mathematical terms but it never occurs to me to look for a theme,. I got UNIT fairly early on, lovely clue, but open was a bung , BOUNDARY I solved from the word play and crossers and I laughed out loud when I got it. Sometimes there are baseball references too Ant@5 and I have to look them up, always seems like an expensive form of rounders to me.
    Thanks for the fun Qaos and Mc_rapper67 for the parsing of open and an entertaining blog.

20. I looked up RED ROOT on the net and found it could be used as an infusion, but NEW JERSEY TEA just took me to sites selling tea, none of it called New Jersey.

21. [Grant in Freo @7: regarding the Ramones, you should take a couple minutes to add at least this one to your store of earworms. It’s appropriate in a surprisingly large range of circumstances.]

22. It does seem that every solution, or nearly every one, may have a themester. gyRATEs is another.

    I thought there had to be a RARE number, and sure enough:
    https://planetmath.org/rarenumbers#:~:text=Other%20examples%20of%20rare%20numbers,are%20infinitely%20many%20rare%20numbers.

    Found NCO on Wiki : A numerically-controlled oscillator (NCO) is a digital signal generator which creates a synchronous (i.e. clocked), discrete-time, discrete-valued representation of a waveform, usually sinusoidal. 🙂

    That leaves TRUTH SERUM, GUARANTEED, TOGETHER, and RIDING SUIT.

23. Thanks for the a great blog and the grid , totally missed the theme , I will look through my paper copy in a moment for more.
    Minor quibble for Faraday= F , the SI unit of capacitance is the FARAD =F , Faradays are used in electrolysis for the charge on a mole of electrons but the unit is the Coulomb , is there an obscure branch of electrolysis using Faradays=F ?
    Great to see Faraday anyway.

24. I see the Tims have got COMMUTE , non-commutation very important in quantum theory. TRUTH tables are used in Boolean algebra. RAREFY in acoustics.

25. Good puzzle – took a while

    I really liked the usual numerical clue – UNIT – my FOI – I always try to solve this one first in a Qaos puzzle.

    Also liked: CONSTANT, GUARANTEED, RED ROOT

    Favourite: OPEN (made me laugh)

    Didn’t parse MODE, NUMBER and also never heard of RIDING SUIT

    Thanks Qaos and mc_rapper67

26. I think you’re correct about the abbreviation F now being accepted as a Farad not a Faraday Roz @23. Electrochemical stuff is not my forte but it appears there used to be a unit of charge called a Faraday which went out of favour, the unit of charge now being the Coulomb (1 Faraday = 96500 Coulomb). They probably went with the Coulomb to avoid confusion with F for Farad (unit of capacitance, not charge).

27. Thanks mc_rapper67 and Qaos.
    Like others, I struggled with the Southern half, but got there is the end.
    Also LOI was RED ROOT. Never hear of it, but “about to request” was enough to write it in.
    Hopefully someone can confirm that NJ Tea is usually served in a jorum.

28. Tim@26 F has always been the Farad , standard SI unit , I am just wodering if Faraday=F is used for the physical quantity in electrolysis , not the unit ( Coulombs).
    Every physical quantity has a symbol plus a unit with a symbol.
    Current symbol I with unit Ampere symbol A etc.
    Just unsure if Faraday=F used for the quantity , definitely not the unit.

29. Yes, the Faraday constant (charge on 1 mole of electrons, in coulombs, but not a coulomb) is given the symbol F, though usually stylised. See here.

30. Thanks Muffin, I will not look at the link but I am sure it is what I suspected.

31. I do not think that I have knowingly attempted a Qaos puzzle before and found it relatively difficult and so enjoyable. We got completely misdirected by 19D and spent ages in a garden shed which could be an anagram of predator. This held up the SE especially 26 A&D which were easy enough once we had found TEARDROP which was the one that made us laugh. Struggled with RED ROOT but were delighted to find that it comes from a beautiful Ceanothus which grows in New Jersey. Completely missed the theme and thought that perhaps there were too many anagrams. This was a good week’s work. Thanks.

32. First puzzle to be a DNF for ages, defeated by MODE and MEAN in the SW corner, which given the amount of time I’ve spent reaching them, is frustrating. Also had to Google RED ROOT.

    Thank you to mc_rapper667 and Qaos.

33. I loved the misdirection in 1d!

34. Enjoyable puzzle. I forgot to look for a theme until I had finished it and then I could not see what it is/was.

    Favourites: UNIT, TOGETHER, OPEN, BOUNDARY, RAREFY (loi).

    I could not parse 26d MEAN = design / E in MAN – I was not sure what the E was for.

    New for me: RED ROOT tea aka New Jersey tea.

    Thanks, both.

    [Ant@5 – my impression is that the solving of cryptic crosswords is a dying art. I would love to know if there are a lot of regular solvers under the age of say, 20 or 30? And yes, many of the setters tend to use cultural references stretching way back before the 1970s but sometimes the political references are more up to date]

35. Roz @30, if you’re not going to follow links, then there’s little point further explaining what I was saying @26. The link by muffin @29 confirms what I was saying (ref. Foundations of Physics, Volume 2, by R. S. Gambhir, 1993, p. 51)

36. Tim@35 I never click on links but I am pretty sure it will simply confirm what I said @23

37. Like Shanne@42 was stumped by 26A & needed a hint from Ms Womble to finish this off. She also saw the theme before me but then she is a Maths grad. Still waiting to find out what branch of Maths horse-tamer occurs in though.

38. Unusually, one of the ‘small corners’ (UNIT/TEST) got filled in first, but normal service resumed after that, and the opposite corner went in last. This took less time than I usually take for the Saturday crossword, but I enjoyed the ride. My favourites were CONSTANT, BOUNDARY, PRODUCT, HORSE-TAMER and MEAN, although I wondered whether the BOUNDARY clue demanded ‘specialist’ knowledge of cricket.

    I didn’t notice a theme, but that’s often my experience as I don’t necessarily look for them. If I were to spot a connection or two I would look for a theme, but that didn’t happen here (perhaps because numbers are often used in clues anyway, and Qaos is known to include a weird-looking number clue from time to time!).

    Thanks Qaos and mc_rapper67.

39. Sorry mc_rapper67 , just noticed you got SET from it. Thanks for the blog

40. Like Shanne @32 I was defeated by MEAN and MODE, but by my reckoning they are in the SE corner! 🙂 Or bottom right, to avoid confusion. It took me all week to get that far, with PROVE coming to mind just as my head hit the pillow shortly after midnight Friday.

    Thanks to Qaos for the workout and mc_ for the enthusiastic blog and glitzy grid.

41. An enjoyable puzzle from Qaos, and I managed to see the math(s) theme.

    Chambers gives F=Faraday, and, as others have said, it’s representative of the Faraday constant, which EB says is also called just ‘Faraday’. I guess that takes Qaos off the hook.

    I liked the ‘work with dough’ in the clue for PROVE, the 4 and 6 BOUNDARY, and the nepotism in OPEN.

    Thanks Qaos for the fun and mcr for the blog with some sparkle.

42. Ant@5; I tend to agree about the prevalence of cricketing terminology, which to me is a closed book (though I’ve learned some of it by now despite having zero interest in the game), but we do see other sports from time to time.

    nho of RED ROOT, so dnf.

43. Thanks Qaos and mc. TOTALly missed the theme and I am another one who missed out MODE and MEAN. Also ashamed to say I used an anagram search for TEARDROP. Obvious (now)!

44. PROVE, RED ROOT, MEAN and MODE were also my last in but PROVE was a guess and google. Theme was way over my 62 yr-old head.

    Ta Qaos & mc.

45. I suppose that it’s just me but I did not find this a ‘fun’ puzzle. The first half went in well, but the second half was a bit of a slog. Got most of it eventually, but did not complete 26a/d in the SE corner. I considered MODE and MEAN but could not match the clues. I then worked my way through all other possible word fits without success. I was hooked on the noun solutions for both 26a and 26d. I suppose that the solution to 26d must refer to the verbs to DESIGN and to MEAN, although it still seems a bit of a stretch to me. I liked a few clues, especially UNIT which foxed me for a while, then did make me smile when I got it. I have never heard of a RIDING SUIT despite being a cyclist all my life.

46. JohnJB @45. I suppose ‘design’ is linked to MEAN via intend, but I don’t think I’d ever have got that without looking at the answer.

47. As 1d and 2d were among my FOI I wondered if cricket was the theme. I would have added (Joe) ROOT at 20d had it not been my LOI, by which time I’d spotted the real theme, not that it helped as so many words are used in mathematics.
    Thanks to Qaos and mc_rapper67.

48. JohnJB@45, I think a RIDING SUIT is used for motorbike leathers, not for cycle wear.

49. Another excellent crossword from Qaos, and nice to see him in the Saturday Prize slot for once. A little surprised to see that several of our most regular contributors still do not instantly think “It’s Qaos so there must be a theme” but of course all of his puzzles are eminently solvable without that knowledge – and sometimes I can’t pick the theme out from the completed grid even though I know it must be there. Personally when I see that Qaos is the setter I go to his own crossword blog site where there is invariably a (heavily !) veiled hint as to what the theme may be; the hint for this puzzle was “see if you can figure it out. ”

    As regards content and references, I’ll show my age by declaring that I’m perfectly happy to see cricketing terms used. Where music is concerned I’ve only very recently started seeing references to the sorts of music I was listening to in the 1970s, so I don’t think we’ll be getting anything more up to date until I’m gone !! To be fair though I remember Qaos having a theme of Deep Purple albums a couple of years ago, and another setter longer ago who included the title of several Queen albums in the grid.

    Thanks to Qaos and to mc_rapper67 !

50. Thanks Robi@48. That must be the explanation, I suppose. Bike means bicycle to me. Thanks also sheffield hatter @46. That seems to be the idea, but I still find it a stretch to link the shared usage of to INTEND for the verbs to DESIGN and to MEAN. Anyway, the clue is clearly constructed for the noun DESIGN, for which the noun MEAN is not right as a solution.

51. The blinking on-and-off grid is frustrating — you read one and then they all vanish and you have to wait to read the next one. Could we have just plain colored, please?

    Never heard of RIDING SUIT or those cricket boundaries.

    Thanks, Qaos and mc_rapper69.

52. JJB @50. The surface of the clue makes ‘design’ a noun, and ‘base’ is also a noun. But as the definition of the verb MEAN, design needs to be seen in its sense that is close to intend. Interestingly, ‘base’ can also be an adjective, meaning low or MEAN!

53. Not sure about Egg being defined as Kind of Person. I mean its not the first thing you think of when asked what’s the definition of an egg? Unless its a good egg but that doesn’t quite work. Also mean and design are too far away in mean-ing.

54. Another here defeated by the MEAN/MODE corner; haven’t met RED ROOT tea before; didn’t know a RIDING SUIT was a thing. Liked TEARDROP and HORSE TAMER. Noticed the mathematical theme but it didn’t help. Not really my cup of tea, this.

55. Mickey@53 I took the whole clue as the definition for EGG .

56. 9ac, PROVE: There’s no work involved in the proving (intr. ) of dough: it’s what happens when you leave it to stand, due to the fermenting action of the yeast.

    11ac, RIDING SUIT: like others, I was puzzled about this, thinking only of a pedal bike at first. After googling the term, though, I realized it was motorbicycles (also commonly described as ‘bikes’) that were being referred to.

    ‘Trip’ doesn’t seem like a very good anagram indicator to me.

    21ac, TRIANGLE: lovely clue. I think there are six arrangements of those letters which make words, something which was the theme of a Genius puzzle once (by Soup?), if I’m not mistaken.

    26ac, MODE: I guessed this was the answer from the def and crossers, but didn’t get the wordplay. I don’t think ‘[def] for [wordplay]’ really works and perhaps that’s part of the reason so many had trouble with it?

    3dn, CHORDS I don’t think ‘[wordplay] with [def]’ works really, either. Or is “with” part of the def? (In which case, there’s a parts-of-speech clash, isn’t there?)

    4dn, PRODUCT: Is D an abbreviation for ‘director’? Solving, I just assumed it must be, but checking now, I don’t find it in Collins online or my old BRB.

    6dn, HORSE TAMER: lovely &lit anag.

    20dn RED ROOT: hadn’t heard of it under that name or as ‘Jersey tea’ and didn’t twig the wordplay, but Google revealed the necessary.

    26dn, MEAN: can’t think of a sentence where you can sub it for design. Can anyone?

    Mr Penney@21, thanks for the vid.

    [@Roz (passim), what’s with the space before commas? Have you turned French? I moderate the comments on a local site and a lot of people seem to want to leave a space before punctuation marks. It really irritates me and even though I let through a lot of other crap, I always edit those spaces out, even though I’m supposed to let the ‘authentic voice’ of commenters come through.]

57. Tony @56 , this site is the only time I ever type so I am not used to it. Unfortunately , my Personal Electronic Notemaker is too advanced for the current version of the internet . In future I will leave two spaces .
    D=Director is in the definitve first edition of Chambers 1993 .

58. TC @ 56 D = Director stems, I think, from abbreviated film credits.

59. Tony @56. “Is D an abbreviation for ‘director’? I don’t find it in Collins online or my old BRB.” This is in Chambers, as Roz says, but perhaps you missed it by looking in lower case d – it is listed under upper case D.

    [By the way, “what’s with the space before commas?”. This seems to be a strange thing to get irritated by. Mind you, I know someone who puts a space before full stops and starts the next sentence with no space at all! It’s taken me a few years to be able to type that sentence with something approaching a smile on my face and a song in my heart , let me tell you .I feel your pain .]

60. TC@56. You leave a dough for the yeast to work.

61. Tony @56, it’s probably poor typing skills. Using my laptop I automaticaly press space after a word, just did it, then realise I want to use a punctuation mark, so press delete ,usually anyway. Autocorrect does it for me on my phone, then I have to remember to press space. When writing, I have no problems, I can also keep up with my thoughts.
    Valentine@51 6 & 4 are the runs gained for the ball reaching the boundary; 6 if it does not touch the ground, 4 if it does.

62. Roz@57, as you may recall, my BRB is an edition of the real Chambers (Chambers English Dictionary). Perhaps D for director wasn’t yet in use then (1988)?

    [Checking, I notice now you having been sporadically putting spaces before commas all the time; I just hadn’t noticed before. Why will you use two spaces in future? To irritate me even more? What’s a “Personal Electronic Notemaker”, anyway? Or is that a member of your staff?]

    SS@58, thanks. Yes, that’s what I imagined it might be before I couldn’t find it.

    SH@59, see above regarding my version of Chambers.

    [“I know someone who puts a space before full stops and starts the next sentence with no space at all!” Aaargh! Yes, seen that, too. Worst of all are those who use only ellipses to divide up their text, as: “i went there 63-69 … nightmare … some of them teachers was proper sadists … theyd go to prison these days”.

    “I feel your pain”. Thank you. Maybe we could start a group?”]

    TT@60, yes, if you consider fermentation to be work, but the dough just proves as it sits there.

    [nicbach@61, yes possibly, but I think perhaps more likely a kind of virus spreading between those who only ever read or write on social media.]

63. [Tony@62 The Chambers Dictionary 1993 was the first edition , previous volumes were just inferior protoypes . My Personal Electronic Notemaker is very advanced and experimental , it can immediately turn my thoughts into hard-copy , no battery or power supply needed , no hardware or software required , it is made by Boolean Interactive Corporation . ]

64. [Tony @62. The beginnings of the Personal Electronic Notemaker are lost in the mists of time. However, as Roz points out, there are modern versions, originally from the Boolean Interactive Corporation, but now the British-Indian Riting Company has also started making them.]

65. [Oops. British-Indian Riting Organisation, of course. My fingers took over from my brain there!]

66. SH@64, 65, ok, got it, thanks. It’s the engineers we need to thank for modern technology (if, indeed, thanks are due), isn’t it, not the scientists.

67. Late thanks mc_rapper, Tony Collman@56 for querying PROVE which I was going to do, and TassieTim@60 for responding: rightly or wrongly I now understand that the yeast works with the dough in the process of proving, which is good enough for me. And thanks Qaos for a tricky and enjoyable challenge, good use of a broad theme (my last two in, as for a few others it seems, were MEAN and MODE – connected to each other and the theme, yet even with crossers neither was guessable from theme alone, a mark of quality I think).

68. Tony@56 To continue the theme, another of the anagrams of RELATING is INTEGRAL. Countdown viewers will be familiar with all these.

69. Alan@68, yes, 8 points each for:

    ALERTING
    ALTERING
    INTEGRAL
    RELATING
    TANGLIER
    TRIANGLE

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