Guardian Easter Prize Puzzle 26,537 by Maskarade

50 comments on “Guardian Easter Prize Puzzle 26,537 by Maskarade”

1. I can’t remember as far back as a week, but I do recall enjoying this a lot.

   I think it might be NOTARIAL, which is NOT (negative) and ARIAL, which is a typeface (or font).

   Many thanks Maskarade for some great fun and PeeDee for such a substantial blog.

2. Nice blog,thanks. Similar experience here, of a quick start and then slowing to a bit of a grind towards the end!…

   Does H have two islands…HERON and HOLY?

   I had the longer N as NOTARIAL, i.e. ARIAL as a font, or typeface…I guess the annotated solution will clarify…

3. Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Had to resort to Wikipedia, though, for some of the islands which were unfamiliar. No problem there though, that is par for the course for an alphabetical crossword. Thanks Maskarade and PeeDee for the parsing clarification.

4. Great blog – thanks PeeDee, and a very enjoyable challenge, though it took me a couple of days in all and a fair bit of rubbing-out! Hard to see how this could have been solved very quickly pre-Google. And one or two minor niggles such as Dante=poet twice, but they are petty set against such a towering achievement from Maskarade.

5. …I forgot to say, I think DELOS, as well as your “de Los Angeles” thing, is also a ‘composition’ of DEL (‘from’ in Spanish) and OS (old soprano) – so a really clever little clue.

6. …although i think “del” means “of the” rather than “from”…but it’s close enough to still be a very nice clue.

7. Thanks to PeeDee for the blog.

   I did very badly on this one. 🙁
   I had spotted that B was the only one that had answers of lengths 9 and 6 so its position was definite. I got BENBECULA but sadly I failed to solve any of the answers B(6), N, E and A.
   In fact I only solved about half of the clues so it was not possible to fill in the grid (as far as I could) then start to find suggestions for the other ones.

   Funnily enough when we have had an ‘ordinary’ Araubetical with just one answer for each letter of the alphabet I have managed quite happily to fill in the grid even if sometimes not all the squares were filled. At least I knew where every word started.

   This is the first time I have seen a Graun crossword with 19 squares on a side. The ordinary ones have 15 squares. I have also seen 21, 23 and 25 squares.

8. Thanks PeeDee. TAIWAN and USHANT early on gave the theme. Started putting answers in from the middle, where GENTOO/TYROL crossed. Three hours of quite good fun, but I confess to having an atlas to hand for the numerous islands, half never heard of. QESHM was last, with a sigh of relief. But great work again, Maskarade.

9. Pretty much got it all, but I had ANDROS instead of AZORES, and GANDHI for the old Hindu.

10. Thanks PeeDee and Maskarade

    In my paper version the clue for Polynesia read: Set out passionately bewildered. Guardian gremlins strike again.

    Took a lot of online searching to finally finish with Qeshm
    very enjoyable.

11. Agree that this was a tour de force, particularly the grid construction. Took me two longish sessions to finish, and the last 3 in were QESHR (loved that one), ELDER and DELOS. The misprint in POLYNESIA led to me leaving that blank until I had all of the crossers. Found the jigsaw element quite tough this time, but only made one error, carelessly putting VIOLATED where VATERSAY should be. So all very entertaining – I’d heard of all of the Scottish ones but some of the more obscure ones were either missing or not marked as islands in the gazetteer of my atlas (possibly due to changes in spelling conventions).

    [I’m off to Scotland for a walking trip now and won’t be commenting for the next few days]

    Thanks to Maskarade and PeeDee

12. Thanks for the blog and the grid, PeeDee. I was defeated by Luzon and Qeshm, which, because of the crossing “u”, I assumed were the other way round. And although I can’t find an annotated solution, there is a solution available on the Guardian website which confirms that it is NOTARIAL. The Guardian published a correction to the Polynesia clue during the week.

13. Thanks PeeDee and Maskarade
    Much more enjoyable than “Maskarade’s” previous puzzle (am I right in thinking that “Maskarade” is a joint effort?). I got BENBECULA straight away, and the next few islands were all Scottish too, so I decided on a too restrictive theme, and was stalled for a bit on the ones that weren’t. I wouldn’t have finished without Google. I eventually realised that the Q island wasn’t a QU, so was able to complete.
    I’m particularly pleased that I spotted the misprint, though I’m not sure POLYNESIA fits the theme, as it isn’t a single island.

14. Thoroughly enjoyed this and found it quite addictive; it took me most of the week to finish and distracted me from what I should have been doing. Couldn’t parse Gozo and Delos so thank you PeeDee for that. I also had Notarial. I particularly like Maskarade’s use of people in his clues, I think Jousting was my favourite.

15. Great crossword, finished it (although with NotariaN) but couldn’t parse Gozo, never having heard of gonzo. One small geographic point: Taiwan is the main province of the Republic of China, not to be confused with the People’s Republic of China across the water. Calling it an island off the Chinese coast, while accurate, might upset any nationalist Guardian solvers there.

16. I enjoyed this one a lot. Many thanks to Maskerade, and to PeeDee for the blog!

    PICASSO – I think the O may clued as part of OSS, which was a US designation for an “Ocean Survey Ship” (Oceanographer class).

17. I thought this was a splendid puzzle, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for an excellent blog. I also had NOTARIAL for the second N clue.

18. I’m in awe of the grid-filling skill required to design a double-alphabet themed jigsaw. Must’ve taken yonks; chapeau, Maskarade

19. Another geographic theme; and fairly easy to spot from AZORES. I suppose there aren’t many commonly known topics with enough words to fill this many slots though.

    I don’t know that many islands so I went straight to the reference material. Even so this was quite a tough solve because the grid has so many initial letters uncrossed.

    At one point I had 33 solutions but could only place 10 in the grid.

    I did get there in the end.

20. Please can someone explain do = the same in the Brando clue.

21. Do is an abbreviation for ditto / the same

22. Thanks to setter for a most enjoyable challenge, and to the blogger for explaining it all so well. I agree that it was easy to get into, but increasingly tough to finish. Some really obscure islands out there, especially the Q ( no U !) and the X.

    If anyone happens to be in Norn Iron, I thoroughly recommend a visit to Island R ( Rathlin), and if you make it there, call into the Arkelll House B&B for a friendly welcome and outstanding hospitality.

23. @20 do = ditto

24. Rathlin – I took falling as a anagrind for the letters t + rain

25. Fabulous setting from Maskerade, a real tour de force.

    Thanks PeeDee, I started with the ‘Bs’ and managed to get BENBECULA, which uncovered the island theme early on. I had to rely on Google for many of the islands but got there in the end, despite the set/sat typo in the clue for Polynesia.

26. A fine puzzle, although because there are so many islands in the world I suspect that the real challenge for the setter(s) was finding islands that would fit the grid that could also be cryptically clued. I needed aids to find the last few of the islands. Although I knew of the Sea of Marmara I didn’t know it contained an island of the same name, so I had to check to see that there wasn’t an island called either “Marjana” or “Marmaya”, both of which fitted the wordplay. I also had to check that NIUE existed, and I found KIRIBATI, QESHM, LUZON and XIUSHAN and parsed them retrospectively, although I’m not convinced by QE’S as Queen Elizabeth’s because she is surely ER? I also had to check the spelling of OSTREA because “ostria” also worked homophonically. After all that I then found when I clicked on the Check button this morning that I had carelessly entered NOTORIAL even though I know the official is a notary. Muppet.

27. Thanks PeeDee,

    I did enjoy this but found it very hard work. I put the last answer in yesterday and that turned out to be wrong.
    I entered all answers in the correct place but two were wrong : the W(4) and the I(5). I think I’ve only completed two Bank Holiday puzzles correctly.

    I salute anyone who managed to complete this without using aids and there’s probably quite a few out there.

    I was very annoyed with Mr M when I discovered that COLCANNON and POLYNESIA would fit in either way but just took a gamble which turned out to be correct. Many thanks to Maskarade.

28. Thanks PeeDee.

    For Gozo, I took news without a tip to be new, abbreviated to n.

29. Not very much to add. I enjoyed this with the exception of the misprint. I guessed POLYNESIA but couldn’t parse it (obviously). FOI was BENBECULA so I was well placed to get the theme- although I originally plumped for Scottish islands as someone else has said. New to me were GENTOO and sundry islands. One of my last ones in was MARMARA. Annoying because I’ve been there. I originally had MARMAYA which proved
    to be a Guatemalan holiday resort!
    Good fun and just the right side of difficult. Thanks Maskarade however many of you there are.

30. I’m still trying to get the second half of the DELOS clue to resolve!

          Pair following Victoria � composed old soprano from Spain (5)

    Within cryptic conventions, the word ‘composed’ is not needed for the contraction of the DE & LOS {from de Los Angeles}, because it’s a simple charade (so contraction goes with the territory).

    So what about if ‘composed’ is an anagrind for OLD   S (soprano)   and   E (from Spain)?

    Works for me.

31. Limeni @30: It works for me too.

32. Thanks for the explanations. I enjoyed this, but I assumed that ANDROS must be correct (first AND, last ROSE withered = without last letter). I also assumed NEAT to be correct, which was naive, but these 2 erors meant that I couldn’t finish.

33. Well I appear to be the only one who was totally underwhelmed by this.

    I did have almost all the non-islands and about half of the islands. I also had half the grid filled in. (In the correct places I now see!)

    However I hadn’t heard of about half of the islands I had already found and to be honest wasn’t motivated enough to trawl the internet finding more islands I hadn’t heard of that matched the remaining clues. So I put the puzzle in the “might look at later” file.

    Now I see the answers I’m glad I did. XIUSHAN, QESHM, KIRIBATI etc!!! Are these really islands or just “virtual islands” made up to be used in misguided “difficult” crosswords? 😉

    I think it’s very rare that the solving process only uses the wordplay to find an answer as the subconscious helps in linking the wordplay with the hidden known answer. Not possible in this case.

    So the puzzle will remain in its folder and I’ll happily remain as a minority of one who found this disappointing.

    Thansk to PeeDee and Maskerade

34. Pretty pleased to have finished this.

    To answer the query at YANK UP, I’ve never heard of “up” to mean “at college” in America. When reading that usage in British novels over the years, I’d always assumed that it resulted from the fact that if you’re in the Oxbridge set, “down” (i.e., not “up”) is generally London, which is south. Even if you’re not actually from London, if you were a Victorian or Edwardian aristocrat your family had a presence there, so you likely spent your non-Cambridge days in London.

    Well, Harvard and Yale are both north-ish of New York (“north” in train-line directions, anyway)…but Princeton is south–and a lot of the class of people we’re talking about are so-called Boston Brahmins or the elites of Chicago, whose lives don’t involve New York at all. And American universities, even the snotty ones, were always a bit more egalitarian than Oxford and Cambridge during the same era. So “up” and “down” don’t make any sense here.

35. Thanks to PeeDee and Maskerade. I don’t know the Scottish islands and many of the others so made much use of Google. I missed Luzon (which I should have known – I kept pushing “Lound” which, of course, lacked the “z” for parsing) by putting a Q over the “u” for “jousting” but “Quoin” would not work in that position. I got “Delos” via Limeni’s route and “notarial.”

    I did go “up” to Harvard in that my starting point was south of Cambridge, Mass. but that usage is definitely UK only given the complexity of US geography and the scattered placement of major universities (e.g., the western location of Stanford and UC-Berkeley) – hence the question mark – so that the clue made perfect sense to me in a Guardian puzzle.

36. NOTARIAN – fixed now.

    DELOS – I think this is a double clue, two separate constructions. I did think of both but leant towards the opera singer as I believe Maskarade (who is just one person, Tom Johnson, as far as I know) has a liking for opera.

    jxm @15 – I was trying to sidestep the issue by not specifying who the island belongs to, just where it is. My experience of writing these blogs is that whatever one writes there will someone somewhere in the population who will manage to take offence. Even people who are not actually offended themselves sometimes write-in on behalf of some imagined person who they think is offended.

    Thanks all.

37. Usage of “up” to mean being at university isn’t geographically based. It can be used relating to any university, wherever you start, although the type of people who go to Oxford or Cambridge may be more likely to use it. I think it may be related to the other usage of “up”, referring to travelling to a more important city. Oxford and Cambridge could be regarded as “more important” because of their universities.

    Now the annotated solution is on the Guardian web site, I see that my suggestion of OSS (Ocean Survey Ship) is wrong. However, there seems to be a problem with the official parsing given [“Picasso PICA + O(ver)/SS (rev)”] as there is no “over” in the clue, just the “of” used by PeeDee in his parsing.

38. ACD @35: As a Midwesterner, I went “out East” to Harvard (there for law school, 1996-2000). “Out East” seemed to be standard usage where I grew up (Lafayette, Ind.), with the decided implication that that meant abandoning your roots to move up in the world. It didn’t have to be college, either. “Oh, he got married and is working at some job out East.”

39. mrpenney@38: US directional phrasing in my experience is locally based (as with your “Out East”) as opposed to the UK “up.” What comes to mind is Down East in Maine. According to the Wikipedia entry: “When ships sailed from Boston to ports in Maine (which were to the east of Boston), the wind was at their backs, so they were sailing downwind, hence the term ‘Down East.’ And it follows that when they returned to Boston they were sailing upwind; many Mainers still speak of going ‘up to Boston,’ despite the fact that the city lies approximately 50 miles to the south of Maine�s southern border.”

40. Can anyone explain to me why for WRAP, ‘crash’ is one of its two meanings?

41. RichardY – Chambers gives one use of wrap as ‘to crash (a vehicle) into (a tree, lamp post etc)’

42. Many thanks to all the commentators for their favourable comments on my latest BH offering. I rarely join in on-line discussions about my puzzles (Guardian or FT) as I prefer them to speak for themselves without my personal intervention. But maybe you’d like a few thoughts, based on your comments as well as my memories of compiling the puzzle.

    DELOS: Yes — my approach to the second half of the clue was an anagram of O (old) S (Soprano) DEL (of). This was one of the very last clues I compiled, but the final “and lit.” version was a real joy to discover.
    PICASSO was, as PeeDee stated, defined as “pica + the reversal of o’ (= of) + SS.
    POLYNESIA: Apologies for the SET/SAT error too — mea culpa — it was a typo which my checkers didn’t spot either.
    YANK UP: your discussion about UP as an American usage amused me, as I didn’t give any thought to whether it was a US term or not. I merely used the reference to Harvard (rather then Oxbridge or any other British university) to maintain the US theme of the clue. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe too much has been read into the clue!

    I started out with a 21×21 grid with the BENBECULA corner in place, but as I progressed it became clear that a 21×21 grid would not
    work, with too many “long” words having to be included to enable me to keep to the 52 solutions in total. These longer words, many non-thematic, consequently limited the inclusion of the 26 islands, so I decided to reduce the grid to 19×19 whilst retaining the BENBECULA corner, and found that this smaller size was far more compiler-friendly. In so doing, it then became clear that I had to include words in the LH and RH columns, which therefore meant that the LH column solution had to offer initial starter letters, so I decided that AZORES would provide one of the Z solutions, BUT as a result I had to dispense with ARRAN which was originally in place where APRON finally appeared. Did anyone spot that ARRAN could have fitted in there? I preferred NOT to have both A solutions being islands. I was also determined to ensure that some of the pairings offered their starter letters as both Across and Down solutions, as with “Benbecula and Brando”, for instance. I too reckon that this may well be the first 19×19 grid to appear as Guardian BH crossword. The very nature of a double Alphabetical puzzle means that many of the solutions have to start with unchecked letters to enable a compiler to have the freedom to complete the grid. Interestingly, though, the number of pairs with starter letters Across and Down in this puzzle was well above what I have achieved previously.

    Regarding my choice of the 26 islands — obviously from the very start I was conscious that islands beginning with Q, U, X, Y and Z, especially, would be difficult to find. I had never heard of QESHM and XIUSHAN, either. But I was happy that all but XIUSHAN could be verified without the need for any online searching — all the other 25 islands are listed in either Chambers Complete Crossword Lists or the older Chambers Word Lists edited by Roger Prebble. I have learnt from bitter experience over the years that serious reliance on online lists and articles can lead to serious error, so in all my compiling (for whatever puzzle series to which I contribute) Google and Wikipedia are always very much my last resort. Maybe not every solver has access to both these books, but from a compiler’s point of view, I feel that being sure that the theme can be verified in books is a prerequisite to a fair puzzle. After all, how did we manage before computers, twenty years ago?!

    Muffin suspected that Maskarade to be a double act. I wonder why!

    Thanks once again for all the positive reactions to may latest Guardian BH puzzle. I will be taking a break from compiling in three weeks’ time when I spend a long weekend in Copenhagen with “Maskarade Junior”. “Why?”, you might well ask — I will attending a performance of Maskarade at the Danish National Opera. Sheer bliss!

43. For every prize puzzle, I always keep an eye on the number of comments and thought that 39 was the final tally but today it had gone up to 42 which was a surprise. It’s a shame but many people may miss Tom’s long comment at 42 which I found very interesting and I’m sure others would too. It’s nice to get a flavour of a compiler and it would be good if his reply could be highlighted in some way to enable solvers to read it who would otherwise be unaware of it.

44. Thank you for your very informative contribution, Tom – obviously my memory was playing me false.

    Out of interest, was the predominance of Scottish islands merely coincidence?

45. I had never thought to check the number of comments on the Guardian page here (I will from now on!) but it’s been a real treat to read Maskerade’s detailed response. Thank you, Tom!

46. YANK UP – We were convinced that the UP came from (Harvard) University Press. But the man himself has put me straight!

47. @ 20 re ‘do’:
    Not knowing the abrev of ditto, it seems I’m alone in thinking that ‘the same’ referred to ‘fete’ a second time (since a fete could also be a ‘do’).

48. pex @47 : no you’re not alone, I thought that too but did not comment as such.

49. Re up, growing up in a border town in Ireland, we always went up to Dublin and down to Belfast for some strange reason….

50. Thanks Maskerade and PeeDee

    What an excellent puzzle and a very clear blog to do it justice – the additional comment by Tom just a bonus.

    Have a tendency to put these ‘harder’ puzzles to one side for a while for some silly reason … and so didn’t start this until last Monday – what a delight it was. It took most of my solving time on Monday / Tuesday to finish … and was very satisfied to get it done, all correctly as it turns out. Having said that, I had no idea on the parsing of GOZO, missed Senora de Los Angeles (went with only the OLD S E anagram path) and had an unparsed OSS with PICASSO).

    Can’t remember how many clues that I had solved before writing my first one in on Tuesday, but it was a lot when I was able to pen in JOUSTING / JAVA!!! Saw the theme early enough after solving LUZON (even with the compound anagram) and TAIWAN quite early on.

    Was another who was heavily dependent on on-line Wiki and Google to check the obscure islands.

    A good level of difficulty with both the words themselves and the clues to help unravel them for the Easter break for which it was designed !! Now for the backlog of normal puzzles !!

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