I found this quite difficult, and for a while a bit frustrating.
There is much cross-referencing in the clues, both explicit and implicit, which made it difficult to get going. Then, once started, all those cross references give an expectation of a theme but no coherent theme comes. Instead we get several themes that run for a while, some longer than others, and then peter out. This made it hard to gain any momentum as the puzzle kept changing direction.
I found this a bit frustrating for a while, but actually isn’t that what cryptics are all about? It also prevents the puzzle succumbing to ‘list-ticking’ – the list kept on changing. In the end a very satisfying and enjoyable solve.
Finally, this crossword contains a Nina at 24 across. I wonder if this was intentional in any way, a bit of a in-joke, or just a random choice.
Thanks Imogen
‘Our speaker’ here is Henry Morton Stanley, not explicitly stated in any of the clues; either unfair or an interesting touch depending on your personal taste.
| Across | ||
| 5 | QUARTO |
9, for example, with no points to make a book (6)
sQUARe (9 for example) missing SE (with points, of the compass) then TO
|
| 6 | LIQUOR |
Drink is sweet, with no ice (6)
LIQUORice (sweet) missing ICE |
| 9,8,10 | DOCTOR LIVINGSTONE I PRESUME |
Falsify income: small forged note and small coin to pick up — there you are! (6,11,1,7)
DOCTOR (falsify) LIVING (income) S (small) NOTE* anagram=forged then IP (1p, small coin) RESUME (to pick up) – words supposedly spoken by Henry Morton Stanley on locating the ‘lost’ African explorer David Livingstone
|
| 10 |
See 9
|
|
| 11 | LUKE |
9, follower of some 1 and 7 (4)
follows MATHEWs and reMARK (only some of) in the list of gospels – definition could be either Luke the Evangelist (for the taditionalists) or Dr Luke the American singer and instrumentalist (for the modernists)
|
| 12 | EPISTOLARY |
Tired wife out, keeping arm in correspondence (10)
wEARY (tired) missing W=wife contains (keeping) PISTOL (arm) |
| 13 | ASKING FOR IT |
Applying to be computerised is certain to be penalised (6,3,2)
double/cryptic definition – IT is computers |
| 18 | ACCRINGTON |
According to short burst on phone, our speaker may be on the other end (10)
ACC (according to) RING TONe (burst on phone, short) – Accrinton could have STANLEY (our speaker) on the end to make Accrington Stanley (a football team)
|
| 21 | PORT |
Drink, one put before our speaker (4)
Port Stanley in Falklands/Malvinas
|
| 22 | MANDARIN |
Damn! Rain spoiled the fruit (8)
(DAMN RAIN)* anagram=spoiled |
| 23 | MORGAN |
Mass disseminator of News Corporation, if our speaker joined (6)
M (mass) ORGAN (disseminator of news) – Morgan Stanley the financial corporation
|
| 24 | LA NINA |
Plan in atmosphere to hold weather-changing event (2,4)
found inside (…to hold) pLAN IN Atmosphere |
| 25 | MENACE |
Stick around, breaking compiler’s threat (6)
CANE (stick) reversed (around) indise (breaking) ME (compiler)
|
| Down | ||
| 1 | MATTHEWS |
Dull? Chops one that may follow our speaker (8)
MATT (dull) HEWS (chops) – may follow STANLEY in Stanley Mathews (footballer)
|
| 2 | STARVE |
Look round very fast (6)
STARE (look) round V (very)
|
| 3 | LIBRETTO |
Exaggerated heading off little rodent: write this up in book (8)
OTT (exagerated) gERBIL (little rodent, headless) all reversed (write this up) |
| 4 | MUSSEL |
No more hesitation lifting this from seabed (6)
LESS (no more, opposite of more) UM (hesitation) reversed (lifting) |
| 5 | QUORUM |
Enough people after status — weird (6)
RUM (weird) after QUO (Status Quo)
|
| 7 | REMARK |
Notice about 1 follower (6)
RE (about) MARK (Matthew’s follower, gospels) – a sneaky apostrophe is required here to get this to work
|
| 8 |
See 9
|
|
| 14 | IGNORANT |
Untaught foreign lady heading off to place of 11 (8)
sIGNORA (foreign lady, missing head) NT (New Testament, where you will find LUKE) |
| 15 | IMPERIAL |
Commanding size, bigger than 5 across (8)
an old paper size in printing, around 22×30 inches? I presume this is bigger than a quarto but there seem to be so many definitions of these terms that not being a printer it is hard to know what to rely on.
|
| 16 | SCRAWL |
Terrible fist‘s second stroke (6)
S (second) CRAWL (stroke)
|
| 17 | CREASE |
Grow unpopular and fold (6)
inCREASE (grow) without (un-) IN (popular)
|
| 19 | REDONE |
Corrected in ballpoint? (6)
RED ONE (one point for a red ball in snooker)
|
| 20 | NUMBER |
Dead queen 9, for example (6)
NUMB (dead) ER (queen)
|
definitions are underlined
Thanks to PeeDee for the blog.
I found this one very hard going and some of the explanations here in the blog do not help. Several times you equate speaker and Stanley but I cannot see why.
A couple of typos in your blog: your explanation of 5a omits TO and 2d has an odd spelling of STARE.
I struggled for a while, but once I got the quote it was clear sailing. I thought it was comparatively easy for a prize. The only thing I didn’t know was Accrington, but the cryptic gives it to you.
Stanley himself was an interesting character. The orphan of unmarried parents, he grew up in a workhouse as John Rowlands. He immigrated from England to New Orleans in 1859, and assumed a new name and a new identity. He fought for the Confederate Army, being captured at the Battle of Shiloh after most of his regiment was killed. He switched over to the Union Army, but was invalided out, but later joined the Union Navy. At the end of the Civil War he went on to various other adventures, some successful, some not.
Thanks Peedee. I agree, it was rather frustrating and I have to wonder when the key element is an anagram that is all but impossible to work out on its own. My entry was with 18 and it all fell into place not long afterwards. I was successfully misled by the 9s in 5 and 20 which with hindsight I can see were clever and I never did explain 19 and 23 satisfactorily so thanks for those. I had the same difficulty in trying to find out about paper sizes but generally it seems imperial is indeed larger than quarto.
The speaker of the House of Commons is John Bercow so where does Stanley come from?
Chas – the speaker is Henry Morton Stanley who spoke the immortal words “Dr Livingstone I presume”
in 7 where on earth would you put the apostrophe? I found it an excellent Prize.”our speaker” took a little while to click even after the big clue and that made it all the more interesting.
Tough but satisfying – one of the best prizes for ages! Even after getting DR L… the Stanleys took some cracking – I think MORGAN was last in, and IMPERIAL took me far too long too.
Thanks to Imogen and PeeDee
Thanks Imogen and PeeDee
I really enjoyed this – I think it’s the best I’ve done from this relatively new compiler (under this name, at least). Of course, I got the long one from the word count and a few crossers, rather than the wordplay!
Thanks for the blog.
Very frustrating. I gave up after a few days of not getting the long quote. With all the cross refs (some of which seem to be dummies) I had spent a long time trying to get the “our speaker” clues… but got nowhere.
Looking at the solutions now I wish I had given up sooner, or realised that I needed the long quote to get started.
I think this is the first prize in about 5 years that I have started and not been able to finish.
Only managed to finish through trial-and-error using the check button this morning. One or two slightly forced clues, I felt, but in view of my rebuttals of hedgehogy and BNTO recently it would be hypocritical of me to turn that into criticism.
There is no doubt as to the answers so all’s fair in love and war (except war).
I thought this was superb.
I thought this was an excellent prize puzzle, which didn’t yield its secrets too soon.
I think I liked this. It was definitely better than the last two “Prizes”
At least the setter tried something new.
However until one solved 9,8,10 the “our speaker” was pretty difficult to interpret. (Perhaps some people reverse engineered 9,8,10 from their guessed answer to an “our speaker” clue. I didn’t!)
Somebody is bound to point out that an otter isn’t a rodent and that 7D’s reference to MATTHEWS to indicate MATTHEW’S was stretching it a bit.
Definitely too libertarian for some I imagine. However this did keep me amused for a couple of hours so I’m not complaining
.
Thanks to PeeDee and Imogen.
Just to add my name to the chorus of approval for an excellent prize puzzle. As PeeDee says lots of twists on the way. It took longer than it should have for the penny to drop that we weren’t referring to 9A on the two ‘9 for example’ clues. The early frustration lay, of course, with not having a clue as to who ‘our speaker’ was. Corresponding pleasure when it emerged.
I echo Mang. A really good tussle. Imogen is always good value.
Thanks to Pee Dee
Thanks Imogen, very clever puzzle that I found almost impossible (I had to cheat a bit with the interweb to make sense of it and complete it.)
Thanks PeeDee, I didn’t think ‘doctor’ was much of a definition for LUKE, if I am understanding it correctly. I got the long one but the penny still didn’t drop for Stanley as ‘our speaker.’
I liked ASKING FOR IT among others.
compus @6 – Mark is a follower of The Gospel of MATTHEW not The Gospel of MATTHEWS, so an apostrophe is required to make MATTHEWS into MATTHEW’S (a follower belonging to Matthew).
Robi @16 – Wkipedia tells me that Luke is referred to in the Pauline Epistle to the Collossians as ‘doctor’. I could not say if this is significant or obscure.
For some reason, I knew that that the gospel writer Luke was reputed to be a doctor.
I really enjoyed the challenge of this one, and even when the long clue had been cracked I didn’t think the related answers were write-ins. I was very happy to have been able to finish it without recourse to aids.
Brendan NTO @13 – why are you expecting comments about otters? Just wondering.
PeeDee @ 21
Possibly he misread the parsing for LIBRETTO?
Thanks PeeDee and Imogen. I imagine I wasn’t the only one scratching my head over this last week while everyone was complaining about the Prize getting too easy!
This was tough but nonetheless enjoyable once 9ac was solved by a flash of inspiration rather than by parsing. In retrospect this was very well clued. I didn’t get the connection between LUKE and DOCTOR, so thanks for that. I liked the mini theme approach which was satisfyingly confusing. One of the best prizes we’ve had for some while.
Thanks Imogen.
Yes, BNTO, I think you have allowed your icy and otherwise impenetrable exterior to be pierced by a misreading of the LIBRETTO clue.
The rodent in question is a GERBIL hanging by his tail with his head cut off.
Still, I’d hate to go OTT in criticising you!
TTFN…
Thanks Imogen and PeeDee.
It took me ages to get really started, but then things fell into place.
As vinyl1 @2 mentions Stanley’s name was John Rowlands, that completes MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE and John, QUARTO, (in) the fourth part (of the Evangelists)?
The statement ‘La Nina menace’ is a fact, it causes drought in the south-western USA and widespread flooding in China. The increase in La Nina, and El Nino, events are thought to be related to global warming.
Yes you’re all correct. My incorrect parsing of LIBRETTO involved a reversal giving OTTER BIL.
This was obviously a non-rodent followed by BIL which somewhere in the mists of time I obviously managed to parse to my satisfaction. (Obviously in error but the answer was so obviously correct)
I write my comment for the Saturday puzzle immediately on finishing it. As I have difficulty remembering what happened the previous day in detail I would have no chance commenting on a puzzle which is a week old. 😉
I have written the sentence “I must make more effort to be more accurate with my parsing for the Guardian cryptiv puzzles.” 500 times on lined foolscap with a quill pen and have submitted it to the prefects unsmudged. I trust I have now suffered my penance and that this will be forgotten.
Your IGNORANT EPISTOLARY SCRAWL is ASKING FOR IT
Write your lines 500 times again with ‘cryptic’ not ‘cryptiv’.
P.S. I parsed it as OTTER too, thought the setter was getting muddled up with beavers.
P.P.S. I’m ASKING FOR IT too in writing ‘your’ in place of you’re, I always seem to be making this mistake.
I thought your ‘your’ was right first time, Cookie.
I found this much more difficult than many but still enjoyed the workout tremendously. I thought that the clueing was very fair, and offset to some degree the difficulty once I’d worked out where the clue was *really* trying to send me. I stared at a grid empty bar 22A, then flashed the long ‘un by breaking it into little chunks, at which point I realised falsify wasn’t an anagrind., after which Stanley leapt into view But even after that it wasn’t plain sailing.
Thanks Imogen, that was a peach of a puzzle.
Timaster @33, yes, but I was so sure I’d done something silly that I ASSumed I’d made the error.
By the way, the ‘real lord tim’ has retuned, Quos yesterday @67.
Thank you again Imogen, and apologies for the mess.
I really enjoyed this one – hard work, but interesting hard work. My way in was 14d, followed by a long think about the possible things that NT might be short for – and given the U of Luke, which I already had, that led to reMARK and MATTHEWs which gave STANLEY which gave some of the other Stanleys and eventually the long quote. Not, I suspect, the order in which I was supposed to do it! I loved all the cross-references, real and fake. Didn’t get the parsing for QUOTA or REDONE (thank you). And thanks Imogen for a great puzzle.
Sue and I solved this over a couple of pints. We too found it tricky at first. However, after a few crossings, I said I thought the first two words of the four word solution were a name, and Sue spotted the quote quickly.
The references to “our speaker” simply strike me as quaintly presumptuous: the implied “we” being those of us concerned with the crossword, and there’s only the one “speaker” in it, providing you’ve got that far.
We were left thinking that the puzzle was rather oblique, allusive and vague perhaps, but then it was an Imogen, and all in all it was pleasantly and satisfyingly diverting. You can’t really ask for much more from a crossword.
Many thanks all.
Just back Cookie.
I knew I wouldn’t be alone with my otter.
This is not a quote from “Ring of Bright Water”
Luckily I managed to correctly spell “cryptic” in my lines. There was however some grumblings from one of the prefects about my “cryptic” grammar. 😉
@26, Saint John the Evangelist is the purported author of three EPISTOLARY works, the epistles of John. Perhaps this links two of the ‘themes’ with Henry Morton Stanley / John Rowlands.
Thanks Imogen and PeeDee
Interesting puzzle ! I never twigged to the theme of Henry Morton Stanley, even having completely filled out the grid (correctly as it turned out). Having said that, there were obviously numerous clues referring to ‘our speaker’ that completely ‘parsed’ me by !!! In fact, it felt a bit like being excluded from the in-crowd – knowing that something was going on, but never being a part of it. A strange feeling …
There were a couple of the non-themed clues that I had the answer but not the why. With REDONE had no clue as to how the ‘ballpoint’ came into play – thoughts were the E was the point and was trying to make a ball from REDON. With LIBRETTO, I went down a non-GERBIL path as well – erroneously with [G]LIB (exaggerated) and a reversed [R]OTTER (rat, rodent).
Mixed feelings about this one, can see the cleverness of what was done – but just wasn’t able to participate in it fully.
Sorry if I’m being slow here, but in 5ac, how is ‘doctor’ ‘square’?
Hi Helen,
in 5 across 9=3×3 which makes it a square number. You are not being slow, it fooled me for a long while too.