GUARDIAN PRIZE

[macgee]

1D I have seen previous posting about the clue:
Accelerated church crawling with sticks (14)
The answer appears to be 'steeplechasing'... but as previous I cant see it except very very loosly and over the sticks usually refers to steeplechasing. Any suggestions?

[roslyn251254]

steep (accelerated ) le ch as ing

[macgee]

thanks Roslyn but I still dont see 'le ch as ing.' ch for church , yes
but how about the 'le .....as ing'?

[Psybbo]

steeple as in church steeple

[macgee]

thanks sibton and Roslyn

I agree steep could be the accelerated part and steeple could be used as a noun for a church ( a bit loose though) but it still remains unexplained about the rest. Is there a word 'lechase' deriving the verb lechasing?

It still remains a mystery to me but is the answer steeplchasing?

[bibblebub]

Does the Sat Guardian have instructions as to how the clue/solution has to modified?

[macgee]

bibblebub,

Sometimes they do but not this week. The clue is exactly as written. There is no general theme either.
The verified letters are
s-e-p-e-h-s-n- (14)
I was wondering if the online version which I am using has a misprint or a word missing? The rest was typical Auracaria, interesting and not too taxing!

[macgee]

I think I now have the reasoning.
'Steeple-chasing' was a form of getting from one village church to another.
Hence similar to 'pub crawling , steeplchasing was church crawling.

Thanks to all anyway.

[macgee]

sorry I omitted to explain that 'accelerated' means it was speeding up by going on horseback.

[Psybbo]

thanks macgee, I've been puzzling over it too

[Heath3761]

I think accelerated church crawling is similar to pub crawling i.e. going from one church to the next, but faster, and thus could be thought of as steeplechasing.