Guardian Prize Puzzle 26,113 by Paul

by

My solving partner Timon and I knocked this off in under an hour, but once we had the long anagram the rest slotted into place without much difficulty.  As usual, Paul demonstrates a variety of cluing techniques and witty wordplay.

Somewhat belatedly, I take this opportunity to add my tribute to Araucaria, whose puzzles I had the privilege of blogging on several occasions.  I am down to blog the puzzle due for publication on the Saturday before Christmas, and had hoped that it might be one of his specials, but that seems unlikely now, as there has been no suggestion from the crossword editor that there remain any unpublished puzzles.

Finally, apologies for the fact that I may be unable to respond to any comments.  I am away on a singing weekend and may have neither the time nor the energy (not to mention internet access) to check the site.

Across
1,5,10,23,25,15 IF I SAID YOU HAD A BEAUTIFUL BODY WOULD YOU HOLD IT AGAINST ME Number of words from Marx, as revolutionary duo iffy — habitual adulation and dubious mythologies died away (2,1,4,3,3,1,9,4,5,3,4,2,7,2)
This 50 letter anagram (*DUO IFFY HABITUAL ADULATION and DUBIOUS MYTHOLOGIES DIED AWAY) is indeed a saying attributed to Groucho Marx.  Congratulations to anyone who worked it out the hard way; I guessed it from the enumeration and a few of the crossing letters.
5 See 1
9 REBUS Puzzle solver? (5)
Ian Rankin named his character Inspector John Rebus after a word which means a pictorial puzzle.
10 See 1
11 AUTOMATON Midas-touched fruit ending in bin, being made of metal? (9)
TOMATO in AU (bi)N.
12 RULER Queen, perhaps, but one’s straight (5)
Double definition, with a misleading surface.
13 STEEP Lofty soak (5)
Double definition.
15 See 1
18 PANHANDLE God requires name for the shape in some states (9)
PAN, HANDLE.  Defined as “a strip of territory stretching out from the main body like the handle of a pan”.
19 EYRIE Treetop home — why in lake? (5)
Y in ERIE.
21 EMBER One’s dying to execute politician (5)
(m)EMBER.
23 See 1
25 See 1
26 OLIVE Green ball, then the brown one of the three? (5)
0 LIVE (as in the live wire in domestic wiring).  Nothing to do with snooker.
27 DEHISCE Seed, contents of which dispersed in rupture (7)
*(SEED (w)HIC(h)).  A botanical term.
28 LEGLESS 18 down worms so? (7)
One of many synonyms for being drunk.
Down
1 INROADS Raids — and no mistake! (7)
*(RAIDS NO).
2 IN-BETWEEN Hotel admitting stay affected, neither here nor there (2-7)
BE, TWEE in INN.
3 ASSAM A considerable portion served up for tea (5)
A MASS(rev).
4 DEBIT CARD Month without coin then ’arsh for buyer (5,4)
BIT in DEC, ‘ARD.
5 YEARN Long thread binding feline’s tail (5)
E in YARN.  I wrongly guessed SKEIN at first.
6 UTTERANCE Truncate difficult European statement (9)
*TRUNCATE, E.
7 AWFUL Right abandoning summit, as hellish (5)
(l)AWFUL.
8 AT LARGE Free, on the whole (2,5)
Double definition, with thanks to Timon, who saw this immediately.
14 PLAYROOMS Royal characters among Englishmen abroad in places of leisure (9)
*ROYAL in POMS.
16 ANECDOTAL Unreliable point in material brought up to support article (9)
AN; DOT in LACE(rev).   Almost the last one in for us.
17 TURQUOISE Turn out risqué, somewhat blue? (9)
*(OUT RISQUE).  A brilliant clue.
18 PIE-EYED Pastry observed as wasted (3-4)
PIE EYED.  Wasted is here another synonym for drunk.
20 ENDLESS Incessan? (7)
INCESSAN(t).  Very easy, as long as you spot the missing letter at the end.
22 BRUSH Black plant in bushes (5)
B RUSH.  One definition of BRUSH is an area of shrubs, or bushes.
23 BUDGE Shift bird, half gone (5)
BUDGE(rigar).
24 WRONG Out of keeping, Norwegian uprising (5)
Hidden reversal in “keeping Norwegian”.  “Out of keeping” does double duty here, both the definition and part of the wordplay.

*anagram

31 comments on “Guardian Prize Puzzle 26,113 by Paul”

  1. A crossword like this is, in my opinion, a problematic one.
    The very very long one (too long?) was all over the place.
    There will surely be solvers who recognised this 1979 Bellamy Brothers ‘number’ (and Groucho Marx saying) right away from the enumeration.
    Filling the rest of the grid would then be not much of a problem.

    But if one couldn’t make anything of the very very long one, this puzzle was possibly a bit of a slog. Like it was for us – that is, until the penny dropped.
    After Beth (my PinC) remembered “body would” (23ac) as a part of a song title, things fell in place rather quickly.
    Of course, it was a crossword that was, as always, very well clued by Paul but, nevertheless, I don’t know what to think of it. Different, perhaps.

    Thanks, bridgesong.
    Needed your help to understand the second, less obvious, definition for REBUS (9ac).

  2. Enjoyable puzzle – thanks for the blog.

    In 1A – I took the ‘Number’ to refer to the song of the same name by the Bellamy Brothers. The writer David Bellamy (not the TV naturalist!) is quoted as saying he based the song title on hearing the phrase on a Groucho Marx show…

    NB. If I asked you for a ‘double entendre’, would you give me one? (;+>)

  3. Thanks bridgesong. I had much of the grid completed before 1etc across yielded to the same process as yours and after that the rest fell into place. 16 was my LOI too.

  4. As far as todaý is concerned the Guardian is messing it up again. The website tells us we’ll have a Picaroon (hooray!), the print-out gives us an Otterden (whose debut wasn’t really an hooray).
    As always on a Saturday, I will buy the paper tomorrow which then will make clear who’s the chosen one.
    Pfff.

  5. Thanks Bridgesong and Paul. Very enjoyable.

    I twigged which Marx it was straight off and had the last half of the quote in my head but for some reason took an age to remember the first half. I should have remembered the golden rule: When you’re stuck on a Paulster – remember it’s Paul.

    24d – I read this two ways, one being:

    “Out” alone as the def – “of” indicating the embed, “uprising” the reversal, etc.

    But then “Out of” is better (or at least clearer) than “of” to indicate the embed. I think we are in similar territory to the famous “extended definitions”, with which any good cruciverbal brief can get his client off the hook when charged with double duty in a case of not-quite-&lit

  6. @Sil – It’s likely to be Otterden. The usual problem on the G website seems to be that they have some sort of automated system for updating the links (and their accompanying blurb) which is a bit flaky. The files themselves are usually intact.

  9. Anyone else have ROYAL for 12 at first? I figured the Queen is a royal, and a straight in poker can also be royal.

  10. @SB – like PO I went straight in with LINER – seemed like a dead cert – slowed me down no end – as errors always do.

  11. Many thanks Bridgesong & Paul

    I struggled with this as I had never heard of 1a, etc.

    Fortunately, my elder daughter came to the rescue.

    There is another Araucaria puzzle (well Cinephile actually) in today’s FT.

  12. I found this a little disappointing for a Paul.

    I got the huge clue quite early after the 23 and 24d crossers gave the game away. That’s the problem with these long answers, one minute an emptyish grid and the next second a half done crossword?

    Held up slightly by the SW & SE corners. I’ve never heard of DEHISCE and the unlikely spelling meant I ruled out SEED and HIC as anagram fodder twice! Eventually it was the only possibility so a quick check in the SOED confirmed!

    I’m still not sure that 20d makes sense although the answer was obvious!

    Thanks to Bridgesong and Paul

  13. Thanks bridgesong and Paul

    I did not remember the quote in 1a until late on and was misled at first by trying to remember some non-existent quotation from Karl. I quite liked the clue, though I take Sil’s point.

    I also ticked 26a, 28a, 2d, 4d and the anagrams in 6d and 17d.

  14. I enjoyed the puzzle although I agree that once the long answer was worked out there wasn’t too much left to solve. Having said that, it was a devilishly good anagram even though it was wasted on me because I saw answer once some checkers were in place. I can’t remember what my LOI was, but I don’t recall being held up unduly by any of the clues.

  15. Thanks bridgesong
    Compilers are probably very pleased with themselves on creating massive anagrams, but I think they(the clues, that is) always make for disappointing puzzles. I doubt that anyone ever solves them the “hard way” – I’m sure everyone got it the way I did, from one or two letters and the word pattern.
    Today’s is Otterden,(Holt perhaps?) and is mainly much too easy for a Prize.

  17. I dun it the hard way. My LOI was olive. I new it must be that but could not construct it until my better half sai brown is live. I’m from the red black green generation.

  18. Thanks bridgesong.

    Sil @1 has it spot-on I think. The very long entry either makes the puzzle or spoils it, depending on how familiar you are with the quote.

    What was left was a good puzzle, but overall no cigar.

  19. PeeDee @ 18
    My point was that it spoils it either way – the crossword is too easy if you know it, impossible if you don’t.

  20. Brianjp says:
    “I’m from the red black green generation”

    ==

    The “new” colours (to avoid red/green colout blindness errors) are very problematic in three-phase systems.

    There, the three lives are: brown, grey, and BLACK (agh!), neutral being still blue. (In the old colours blue was one of the lives- agh! again).

    In another life, I saw a BT uplink truck powered by a wrongly wired cable, (thanks to the new, “safe” colours) giving it 415V rather than 220V. The effect resembled an old “Voyage To the Botton Of the Sea” episode, when all the instrument panels used to explode, the moment the sub tilted at all. At least we get the odd bit of entertainment from it, I suppose.

    Anyway, I thought it was a good puzzle, but made shorter by spotting the very long anagram early on, by enumeration and a few crosses. I think Paul’s latest offering would have made a better prize puzzle, actually.

    Thanks one and all.

  21. Hi muffin @19. I suppose it comes down to personal taste. I generally enjoy hunting down new stuff that I don’t know, so that would improve it for me rather than spoiling it.

  24. Thanks, bridgesong & Paul. Did anyone else start off thinking KARL Marx? Anyway, crossing letters eventually suggested AGAINST ME, WOULD and BEAUTIFUL, at which point the penny dropped. I was familiar with the quote, but only from lists of bad pick-up lines. Hadn’t realized it was from Groucho.

    Minor quibble with 19a: Doesn’t “why” require some kind of phonetic/homophonic indicator (quote marks, sounds like, etc.)? My understanding is that the “word” for the letter Y is spelled wye. (Or would it also be acceptable to clue the letter Q as queue or cue (vice kue) without a similar indicator?)

  25. Almost immediately after posting, I realized that “why” can be rendered Y in SMS speak (Y R U upset?). So I’m happy to retract my quibble, if that’s what was intended.

  27. Thanks all
    The discussion re long quote is actually worse than stated. I got w-u-d for which there is I think just one solution and ‘would’ + the enumeration gives it away.

  28. @keeper #24

    “Or would it also be acceptable to clue the letter Q as queue or cue (vice kue) without a similar indicator?”

    Your question seems to be about how that issue fares against a universally accepted set of (dread word) “rules”, of which of course there isn’t one, despite the dreams of some that there should be.

    In that particular instance I’ve always been happy with unindicated soundalikes (particularly the very simple ones representing single letters) but have never had any objection to those setters who religiously indicate them. It seems that over time txtspk will legitimise them all across the board – unless someone comes up with a Fowlers of txtspk.

  29. Very belatedly, thanks for all the comments. Not much to add, except (to RCW): what about WOUND? I think that Paul intended us to think of Karl Marx by his use of “revolutionary”, but this particular piece of misdirection has been used more than once before.

  31. Could have sworn I spotted the old misnomer “correct” flying by somewhere – or maybe not. Not to worry – each to their own.

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