Guardian Prize 29,811 / Kite

19 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,811 / Kite”

1. Parsing of AGONISE looks correct. Good job on the rest, too.

2. Nice blog, Eileen.

   Didn’t see the racing theme until it was too late – for me, that’s par for the course (sorry!).

   The similarity in the separating of the parts of sown (SANDOWN) and gash (GOODWOOD) spoiled the second aha moment.

   Tried to find Trump in the clue for 9d, but somehow he only showed up in the answer.

   Liked LANGOUR.

3. Thanks Eileen. An enjoyable challenge and for once I managed to recognise the theme before completion but a bit late to be of much help. I agonised over 2d too but reached the same conclusion. Have to confess LOI was 22d, I’d been fixated on accommodating ‘ring’ somehow. I made the same spelling mistake or typo as Dr WhatsOn which held me up for a while too.

4. Had solved all but 1a, 23a and 2d on Saturday. But they remained unsolved through the week. I cannot suggest a better parsing for 2d. Liked many clues in this great puzzle, but missed the theme.

   Thanks Kite and Eileen

5. Meant to say I agree with Eileen’s parsing of AGONISE. Pretty self-referential, as it turns out.

6. Thanks Eileen. I too concur with how you’ve parsed AGONISE. I wonder if NEWBURY could be considered an inverse, rather than an indirect, anagram. Kudos to Kite.

7. Odd cultural mix in this one — race courses sprinkled with a Renaissance artist, a Victorian novelist and the sound of Rice Bubbles! Fun though, and not too hard. Camerawork gave me the most pause (don’t overthink: not Cinemascope, much less chiaroscuro). Enjoyed it, thx Kite and Eileen, now for a large (cafe) latte and today’s.

8. 19a The main football team in Newcastle is called Newcastle United, although they are often just referred to as Newcastle, so you could say it’s two definitions plus word play?

9. Even as an antipodean and a solver generally blind to themes, I picked this one early, Googled English Racecourses and eureka!

10. [Note to self: look up whether any of the many great tv adaptations of Trollope — one of my favourites — is streamable; love to see them again …]

11. Something wrong with NEWCASTLE surely? Its football team is United, not City. I took the definition to be simply ‘city’, but then couldn’t parse the rest.

12. Even I saw the theme for this one. I managed to solve it all with a list of racecourses by my side, which helped a lot, of course! Not the greatest collection of surfaces, but still good fun

    At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I agree that your parsing of 2d is correct Eileen. IS with ON (working) “over” = ONIS, AGE (time) entertaining it, AG[ONIS]E

    Thanks Eileen for a great blog, and Kite

13. Thankyou Eileen for your comprehensive blog.

    I knew GOODWOOD as a racing car venue and, being my first one in (I don’t solve in order), that threw me off course a bit.

    GASH in the surface did seem a bit odd, which alerted me to the idea that there was something going on. Husband follows motorsports and attempts cryptics. He liked the clue. But we were both off track.I am familiar with some of the race courses. Dont follow the ‘sport’ though.

    Count me in on the puns on AGONISE, and also Eileen’s parsing. The clue I found was a bit overwrought.

14. Thanks, Eileen. For once I not only saw a theme, but saw it in time for it to be useful, giving me GOODWOOD and convincing me that NEWCASTLE must be right (for some reason I missed the use of ‘nestle’ in the wordplay). And thanks to Kite, too, for a very neatly clued puzzle.

    I was aware of Joanna Trollope, but the two Trollopes I’ve actually read are Anthony and his mother Frances (Fanny), who wrote Domestic Manners of the Americans (she was a touch negative, I’m afraid) and some 40-odd novels including The Vicar of Wrexhill and The Widow Barnaby. There’s a very good biography by Teresa Ransom, which I read many years ago and found quite inspiring. I think she deserves to be better known – and read.

15. Thanks Kite and Eileen.

    Top faves: NEWCASTLE and GOODWOOD.

    AGONISE:
    puzzle over=AGONISE or AGONISE over?
    Is the def just ‘puzzle’?
    (Then we will have another ‘over’ to deal with!!!)

16. Good point KVa @15. Doesn’t agonise need its own preposition (or whatever it’s called) to be = “puzzle over”?

17. KVa@15 and gif@16. I agree we need another “over”. But I’m over this clue. Wonder what Kite meant by the QM?

18. I had no chance at the theme–I haven’t heard of most of these race courses. Horse racing is a sport that is hyper-local, I think–no one in the US (except perhaps obsessives) follows British racing, and I assume vice versa. And I can only name three or four American race courses, which tells you that I’m not an obsessive.

    [I happen to be in Louisville at the moment, home of Churchill Downs–one of those three or four.]

    Anyway, I failed on both SANDOWN and GOODWOOD, which I hadn’t heard of; I see they both also had the same unconventional wordplay trick, which put them particularly far out of my reach. [For the record, I know of AINTREE and EPSOM, as well as Ascot, from references in other cultural contexts, but that’s the extent of my British horsey knowledge.]

19. paddymelon@17
    AGONISE
    The clue is structured as a question.

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