Guardian Prize 26729 by Paul

by

I always find Paul puzzles a pleasure to solve and blog.  Thanks Paul

 

completed grid
Across
1 FORESTALMENT
Motive in man of letters, an anticipatory act (12)

(MAN OF LETTERS)* anagram=motive (in motion)
8 EURASIA
Where Britain and China are as one, in a way backward as France would have it? (7)

AS I (one) in A RUE (way, as French would have it) reversed (backward)
9 LANGUID
Inland instrument not half listless (7)

GUItar (instrument, not half) in LAND
11 INVEIGH
Rail taking popular figure briefly beyond Venezuelan capital (7)

IN (popular) then EIGHt (figure, briefly) following (beyond) Venezualan (capital, first letter of)
12 TERBIUM
Metal bolts ingested for starters by the Queen, entering stomach (7)

Bolts Ingested (for starters, first letters of) following (by) ER (The Queen) inside (entering) TUM (stomach).  I read a little about about Terbium on Wikipedia and I noticed that the element is described as “very hard” in the introduction but “soft enough to be scratched with a knife” in the Physical Properties section.  Can any chemists in the audience explain this contradiction?
13 APRON
March off then ___ , to get protective garment (5)

first MAR (march) is OFF then APR is ON
14 THRILLING
Gripping device holds stream (9)

THING (device) holds RILL (stream)
16 INFLATION
Rise in New York building, dropping right (9)

IN then FLATIrON (New York building) missing R (right)
19 JUDGE
Beak of gannet’s opening in book (5)

Gannet (opening letter of) in JUDE (book, of the Bible)
21 IGNITES
Seen during sunset in Gibraltar, westward lights (7)

found inside (seen during) sunSET IN GIbraltar reversed (westward, right to left on a map)
23 AFGHANI
A short story about country detailed in language (7)

A FIb (story, short) containing (about) GHANa (country, detailed)
24 YEARNER
One having a yen for money ultimately, someone bringing in cash (7)

moneY (ultimately, last letter) EARNER (s0meone bringing in cash)
25 EARLOBE
Where a stud may be noble, having love to endure (7)

EARL (noble) having O (love, tennis score) then BE (to endure)
26 TRIANGULATED
Adulterating plastic, it’s adapted to a particular form (12)

ADULTERATING* anagram=plastic
Down
1 FOREVER
Temperature outside over limits always (7)

FEVER (temperature) contains (outside) OveR (first and last letters, limits of)
2 RUSSIAN
Putin perhaps hurried to embrace America — certainly requiring translation? (7)

RAN (hurried) contains (to embrace) US (America) SI (certainly, Spanish) requiring translation to English
3 SPAGHETTI
That woman has hole to fill up, one after dry pasta (9)

SHE (that woman) contains (has…to fill) GAP (hole) reversed (up) then I (one) following (after) TT (dry)
4 ALLOT
A fee going up to get parcel out (5)

A TOLL (fee) reversed (going up)
5 MINERAL
Possibly, rock goddess not very ladylike at first (7)

MINERvA (goddess) missing V (very) then Ladylike (at first, first letter of)
6 NAUTILI
Molluscs caught in marina utilised (7)

found inside (caught in) mariNA UTILIsed
7 DEFINABILITY
Capacity to be described as identifiably toxic (12)

IDENTIFIABLY* anagram=toxic
10 DEMAGNETISER
Device removing the attraction from contentious disagreement (12)

DISAGREEMENT* anagram=contentious
15 RING A BELL
Calls to pen article sound familiar (4,1,4)

RING and BELL (calls) contains (to pen) A (the indefinite article)
17 FUNFAIR
Foolish primarily and a bit thick, where one’s been taken for a ride? (7)

Foolish (primarily, first letter of) and UNFAIR (a bit thick)
18 ANTENNA
One picks up signals as an amount of cash mentioned (7)

AN and TENNA sounds like (mentioned) “tenner” (amount of cash)
19 JOGTROT
One pace — or two? (7)

JOG and TROT (two paces) – a jogtrot is a slow trot
20 DIAMOND
Having to tidy one’s own hotel room up before beginning of day, one sparkles (7)

NO MAID (therefore having to tidy one’s own hotel room) reversed (up) before Day (beginning, first letter of)
22 SPRIG
Shoot gun in rather packed saloon, every head looking up (5)

first letters of (every head) Gun In Rather Packed Saloon reversed (looking up)
*anagram
definitions underlined

35 comments on “Guardian Prize 26729 by Paul”

  1. Thanks PeeDee – my sentiments exactly. The four long outside ones were all nicely clued: three not hard to get but 1A in fact was LOI. Most elegant, the architecture of 16A. Least elegant: AFGHANI as language (bit like “those people are speaking Indian”).

  2. Very much enjoyed this. The long anagrams around the sides were nicely crafted and disguised.
    It sometimes feels like we have Paul every other day, but, to my mind, he can vary the difficulty and style so deftly that I’m always glad to see his name.

  4. Thanks Paul and PeeDee
    I loved the unexpected anahrams around the edges. Usually these would make the rest easy, but in fact they were so unexpected that they were late in!

    Although an ex-chemist, I’ve never seen TERBIUM, so I don’t know how hard it is. However I do know it as one of the four elements named after Ytterby in Sweden (the others being Ytterbium, Yttrium and Erbium).

  5. Very entertaining puzzle.

    single-word anagrams of 12 letters are not very easy to find, and to be able to use three at once is, in my view, extremely adept. I feel sure Paul will have tried hard tried for a fourth, and, without trying very hard, I haven’t managed to find one.

    Another one up to Paul.

  6. I should have added that, no doubt, there are published lists of all high-number anagrams, but that’s not playing the game.

  7. Thanks all
    I failed to parse 1ac,couldn’t avoid forest as man of letters!
    Favourites were 26ac, and 7,10,20,22 down,
    I always enjoy one word anagráms.

  8. A nice enough prize puzzle.

    Paul showing his love of unlikely anagrams.

    Not too difficult but all meticulously clued. No particularly stand out clues besides the big anagrams but entertaining nonetheless.

    Thanks to PeeDee and Paul

  10. I rattled through this at first (by my standards) and then took a break and found it took me a long time to polish off the top right corner, for no good reason. 1ac was my last; even though at one point I decided it must be an anagram I got fixated on trying to insert a motive into some suitable author. Finally I realised what the word must be and twigged the parsing and felt silly. But very nice, all told, so thanks to Paul, and to PeeDee for the blog.

  11. Thanks Paul and PeeDee.

    I enjoyed solving this puzzle and nearly completed it, but needed help with some of the parsing – the Flatiron building in NY was new to me or forgotten.

    I entered FORESTALLING at 1a, which led at 5d to LANGREL (found cheating on crossword solver, a kind of shot formerly used at sea for tearing sails and rigging, I thought sharp rocks might serve the purpose). Neither would parse of course.

  12. Unusually for me I found this too easy; I completed all the top half before reading any of the other clues and deliberately didn’t read 7 down until last, to try to make it last a little longer.
    If others didn’t find it so, maybe I was just in the groove. I do sometimes wonder how much the apparent ease or difficulty of a puzzle has to do with ones frame of mind at the time.

  13. Thanks Paul and Dee.

    From memory, I was slow to spot a couple of the long anagrams until later in the game. My favourite was DIAMOND, just because of the way it made sense of the word play.

  15. I agree with Cesario at 5 that “single-word anagrams of 12 letters are not very easy to find”.

    I have an old small book titled The Nutall Dictionary of Anagrams by A. R. Ball (Frederick Warne, year of publication not given) that is a list of whole-word anagrams. As I riffled through its pages I found that the lengthiest word might be 11 letters. The fodder entry is a real word and its anagrams are given alongside.

    The words are not arranged according to length.

    A list of similar arrangement of words is available at

    http://www.hakank.org/anagramatical_words/anagrams.eng

    but again it’s for small words.

    The Crossword Anagram Dictionary by R. J. Edwards (Stanley Paul, 1978) has anagrams of long words but the fodder is a mere string of letters arranged alphabetically.

    Under 12-letter words, I find only three COUNTER-MARCH/COUNTERCHARM, DELICATENESS/DELICATESSEN, CONSERVATION/CONVERSATION against relevant letter-strings.

    Is there any computer program?

  20. cholecyst @19
    The first one I use for setting clues rather than solving them – can’t claim that for the other one, though!

  21. Of course this was enjoyable but I didn’t find it a quick solve. FOI was NAUTILI and LOI was DEFINABILITY because I didn’t immediately see that it was an anagram. Silly me!
    Otherwise a fairly typical Paul.
    Thanks.

  22. I have used the ‘advanced’ anagram facility at wordsmith and also other anagram software.

    To be specific, is there a computer program which on my choosing a word-length throws up words of that length in its dB and gives also whole-word anagrams of those words?

    Is this too much to ask?

  23. Thanks to Paul and PeeDee. TERBIUM was new to me, and I was mistakenly looking for an S at the end of RING A BELL and wanted to put a second L in FORESTALMENT [my spell-checker just rejected that choice], but overall this puzzle went quickly. Great fun.

  24. This was mostly easier for me than the previous week’s Prize, but still an enjoyable challenge. I got FORESTALMENT and recognised the anagram, but I still couldn’t see why “motive” was the anagram indicator. For RUSSIAN, the best explanation I could find for “certainly requiring translation” giving SI was that an emphatic “it IS” conveys certainty and then reversal would be a physical “translation”. It was a big stretch but I was getting desperate. My LOI was AFGHANI. I had been thinking that the “story” was “lie”, so I was expecting AL—-I OR A—-LI, but the crossers eventually led me to the answer, and then the parsing.

    I prefer ‘letter jumblers’ like the Anagram button on the Guardian page to anagram solvers as usually, before the actual answer comes up, something in the combinations triggers my brain. When solving on paper, I just keep re-writing the letters in different orders, so that button is the nearest equivalent without getting a pen and paper. I’ve still bookmarked muffin’s second link, just for emergencies ;-), and here are two similar sites:
    A2zWordFinder
    One Across

    Thanks to Paul and PeeDee.

  25. Thanks Paul and PeeDee

    Time-wise this came in on the easier side, but it certainly did not feel like it was whilst doing it!

    Started off with the four short 5-letter words, which is unusual – generally find them the hardest to get.

    FORESTALMENT was my second to last one in – and just couldn’t parse it. My thinking was along the lines of rcw … and didn’t even consider the anagram route. MINERAL was then last and took a little while to find the Roman goddess.

    Usually do the Prize one on the following Saturday at earliest and it was good to get a bit of relief from the midweek toughies this week. Still an enjoyable ‘let-up’ all of the same.

  26. molonglo your parallel between Afghani and Indian is apposite in that there is no single language of Afghanistan. So Afghani is used as a catch-all term.

  27. Paul maintains pretty high standards, but it can be a challenge to find new things to say about his puzzles. This was enjoyable and not too difficult. My last in was TERBIUM, which was surprisingly unfamiliar for an element discovered that long ago.

    Thanks to PeeDee and Paul

  29. jennyk @24

    Does this mean that the new “Anagram Helper” appears for the Prize puzzles for you?

    I only get the Anagram Helper on the weekday puzzles. I have written to the Crossword Editor and the Crossword Development Team (twice each) to ask why but of course have had no answer. (not even an automatic acknowledgement!)

    The only button I get at the weekend is the “Clear All” button!! I can see no reason for this except for an error on their part. (Of course the crossword editor will have checked this out extensively and will have an explanation 😉 )

    Is this the same for everybody else?

  30. I have an excellent anagram helper given to me by my mother on my birthday. It is always with me, has no buttons, requires no batteries and recharges automatically when I sleep.

  33. BNTO @29
    Coincidentally, I was complaining to my DH only a few minutes ago about not having the anagram helper at weekends and wondering the best way to complain. I’ll follow your example. Until that is fixed, it’s paper and pencil for complex anagrams.

    I think it must be an oversight. It can’t be just to stop people ‘cheating’ on prize crosswords. The helper doesn’t give easy answers, and its omission doesn’t stop anyone solving online from using a proper anagram solver which hands them the answer on a plate (once they’ve identified the correct fodder, of course).

  34. Thanks Paul and PeeDee.

    This seemed very atypical for a Paul.

    I thought one or two of the clues were a bit lazy by his normal standards (e.g. EURASIA) or obvious (e.g. DEFINABILITY) and no laugh out loud moments.

    Still needed your help to properly parse INFLATION and DIAMOND – the latter being very clever – so thanks for that help.

    Still a good quality puzzle by any standards.

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