Guardian 27,006 / Imogen

65 comments on “Guardian 27,006 / Imogen”

1. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

   I didn’t enjoy it as much as you obviously did, Eileen – it seemed more like hard work than fun for me, though I did like SCOURGE, SOUP and SEE-THROUGH.

   I did remember Ross Peron, though he was a pretty obscure ex-candidate! I didn’t know BARTHES, but it was easily constructed from the clue.

   I’m a bit red-faced at the length of time I took to get RING CYCLE, as I had on my lap Roger Scruton’s book about it (Ring of Truth)!

   Why is “lattice” “ornamental frame”? Surely it just means “network”?

2. Yes – a triple definition at 21ac! I was so thrilled to have tumbled to all 5. Has this clue ever been bettered (number-wise)?

3. I’m with Eileen on this one. Bravo Imogen indeed. (And no less a bravo for the blog ma’am!)

   Invidious to pick any one clue of course, but I rather relished 16 across.

4. I meant to say that I’ve never heard the term “muesli belt” before (and it seems an odd term – how can a belt, that goes around something, be an enclave?), so I Googled. Most of the hits were for something called “muesli belt malnutrition”!

5. Just spotted I said “triple” definition re 21ac. Curses. I meant quintuple of course – and yes I also agree with Eileen about the fine quality of this great crossword.

6. muffin @4

   I had no problem with MUESLI BELT – I think I live in or near the edge of one – and I’m surprised to see it isn’t in Chambers. I agree that ‘belt’ and ‘enclave’ are not synonymous but I think of it as being analogous with ‘stockbroker belt’, with ‘enclave’ suggesting exclusivity [Chambers: ‘a distinct racial or cultural group isolated within a country’] – and Chambers has enclave as a verb meaning ‘to surround’.

7. I think “muesli belt” was coined by John Naughton in an Observer article in the 1970s (or at least that’s where I first saw it). It specifically referred to a stereotypically middle-class area of Cambridge, and its residents’ reactions to the opening of a sex shop. The use of “belt” is presumably by analogy with the more familiar “stockbroker belt”.

8. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

   Pretty tricky although my computer came to my rescue. ‘Say you are’ and I didn’t! I didn’t know MUESLI BELT or BARTHES although both were fairly clued (too fairly for BARTHES as I thought it must have been BARTHIM.)

   I liked AGROUND and TRANSPARENT.

9. Eileen and Andrew
   It was the analogy with “green belt” that sprang to my mind.

10. I go along fully with Eileen on this one. What a great puzzle. Really enjoyable solve. I wish I could put my finger on why it was so good – no unifying theme (not that I could spot) – no big giggles – but lots of little smiles and just pure solving pleasure – which I suppose indicates that it held out just the right amount for me but I got there in the end.

    Why waste your time with Chambers? I thought the Guardian, whilst not specifying an “official” dictionary, relied mainly on Collins (now padded out since they won the Scrabble gig from Chambers) and Oxford.

    ODO (Oxford online) not only has “muesli belt”, but also “muesli belt malnutrition”: “Illness (especially in children) blamed on a preponderance of faddish foods in the diet” [good] – cured no doubt by a couple of visits to McDonalds.

    Top stuff – many thanks to S&B.

11. JS @10
    I’ve often said I prefer Collins – but it doesn’t have MUESLI BELT, either! 😉

12. I really loved this one. After a few solid but uninspiring offerings and a couple of “ordeals by crossword” in various places over the last few days, the wit and inventiveness of this puzzle really stood out. Lots of clues which brought a smile and even new terms such as MUESLI BELT and LINEAR A were clued so that they were gettable. Too many favourites to mention all – the quintuple def at 21, WHOA, RING CYCLE and PROSPERO were just some and there were plenty more.

    A v. big thanks to Imogen and to Eileen

13. Thank you Imogen and Eileen.

    A most enjoyable crossword with many brilliant clues, PROSPERO, SHIFT, TEACHER’S PET, ADAPTOR, TRANSPARENT and many more.

    Here is a news item that has just come up related to STEALTH bombers

14. I’m yet another fan of this. Didn’t see the quintuple definition at 21ac – I stopped counting after three! MUESLI BELT, TEACHERS PET, ADAPTOR, PSEUDO . . . lots of great clues. Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

15. [A last (?) point on MUESLI. When I first came across it in the late 60s as “Dr. Bircher-Benner’s Familia”, it was spelled with an umlaut over the u. I think this means that the first syllable isn’t pronounced “muse”?

    http://www.bio-familia.com/en/our-range/us-products/swiss-mueesli.html

    ]

16. [muffin, both pronunciations are given by the COED.]

17. [Yes, I should perhaps have said “wasn’t” rather than “isn’t”]

18. [anyway, muffin, it would have been pronounced differently in every Swiss German village, the dialects are so different that they cannot understand each other.]

19. Thank you, Eileen.

    Had to work quite hard at this but got there in the end.

    Never heard of MEUSLI BELT, Roland BARTHES, or LINEAR A but all reasonably clued.

    Not happy about lattice = ornamental frame, bit of a stretch for my taste, and a shame about the double use of muse at 16a & d.

    I presume the inclusion indicator at TEACHER’S PET is comprehend in the sense of ‘take in’?

    Chuckled at THAT’S MORE LIKE IT & THROW OUT OF COURT.

    Hard going in places but stylish work on the whole.

    Thank you Imogen, nice week, all.

20. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen. I had trouble getting started (very little was filled in at my first pass) but then things started to fall into place. I had trouble parsing THROW OUT OF COURT and PSEUDO (“dues” = “subs”?), and MUESLI BELT and “sth” for “south” in STEALTH were new to me (and I did not see all five versions of SHIFT). Great fun.

21. This was enjoyable and just the right level of difficulty for me. I was very impressed by the 5 definitions in 21a, and 1d brought a smile.

    I was a bit doubtful about STH as an abbreviation for south (24a), but it is in Collins (but not in Chambers). A Google search for “STH abbreviation” gives mostly “something”. Thefreedictionary.com gives 36 meanings for STH, including Sonic the Hedgehog and Stairway to Heaven, but not south!

22. ACD @20

    I’ve just been paying subs/dues for several activities just starting up again and to me they’re completely interchangeable.
    Collins: dues: [sometimes singular] charges, as for membership of a club or organisation
    sub: short for subscription.

    JimS @21

    That’s odd: Sth = South is in my [12th Edition] Chambers but not my [rather older] Collins. I’ve certainly seen it quite a lot – on road signs, for instance.

23. Absolute beauty from Imogen and great blog from Eileen.Thanks all.

24. Oh-and the clue for muesli belt (which was unfamiliar to me)was so perfect that no dictionary or anything was required. (My Chambers is falling to bits and needs replacing)

25. Sth. is in the COED as an abbreviation for South, not sure why they put a full-stop at the end…

26. Eileen @22, Sth is in the Collins online.

27. Thanks, Robi. My Collins is coverless and in the same state as copmus’ Chambers; I’ve just worked out it must be fourteen years old – a treasured Guardian Prize!

28. Eileen @22, for reasons I won’t bore you with, my Chambers is missing a title page, so I don’t know what edition it is! It dates from the 1970s.

    My “Collins” is in fact the WHSmith Definitive English Dictionary which I bought in the belief (I hope correct) that it was identical to the Collins dictionary. It is copyright HarperCollins 1998.

29. Like muffin, I found this quite hard work, and I’m pleased that my intuition, normally not a strong point, came to my aid with some clues I couldn’t work out at first. Some clues in particular I liked very much, including 5d PROSPERO, 14a SEE-THROUGH, 20d PSEUDO and 18d LINEAR A.

    16a MUESLI BELT was a strange one for me. I’ve never heard of it, but the idea of ‘belt’ helped me to get it. Remarkable, ‘muse’ (‘ponder aloud’) also helped me – I so often don’t get sound-alikes.

    [To address the side-issue of the umlaut: the ‘e’ of muesli is there instead of the umlaut – the German word is Müsli. Its the same for other words like Führer and Röntgen. The ‘Müs’ in Müsli is not really pronounced ‘muse’, but it’s near enough for Guardian crosswords, no question, and near enough for me to get it today.]

    Thanks Eileen and Imogen.

30. Imogen always makes you think a bit, a fine challenge that rewarded perseverance. MUESLI BELT and LINEAR A were unfamiliar but fairly clued, and PSEUDO was last in after SOUP. Liked TRANSPARENT.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

31. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

    Cookie @25 I agree about you questioning the full stop. When I went to school (quite a few years ago) I learned that if the last letter of the abbreviated word was included no full stop was required.

    I appreciate most of the quintuple definition in 21 but can someone tell me how MANAGE is equivalent to SHIFT?

32. I failed to solve WALLOW, WHOA, ADAPTOR

    I solved but could not parse 6d, 16a

    I liked SOUP

    Thanks Eileen and setter

33. Kevin @31: as in the the phrase “shift for oneself”.

    Sir Thomas More, who features in 1d, said to his executioner: “I pray you, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”

34. Yes, rather liked this. Not sure about 16ac and dn both being plays on MUSE but I enjoyed the rest with SOUP being LOI. I liked WALLOW,WHOA and,finally,ADAPTOR which I didn’t see initially because I misspelled it. BARTHES was rather good too.
    Thanks Imogen.

35. Kevin – ‘shift’ as in expressions like ‘shift for yourself’, ie. Look after yourself, manage things yourself.

36. JimS @33 – you beat me to it with the wonderfully apt example! I was looking up the remaining quotations: ‘He is then said to have told the executioner: “Pluck up thy spirits, man. My neck is very short!”

    And when he moved his beard away from where it would be hit by the blade: “It were a pity it should be cut off, it has done no treason.”‘

37. [Alan B @29
    If you click on the link I gave, you will see that “Familia” did spell it M U(umlaut) E SLI]

38. [muffin @37 – ignorance of German has a long history!]

39. [bh @38
    Well, it was a Swiss firm!]

40. [muffin @39, you a right, it is Müesli because it is Swiss German, not standard German which is Müsli.]

41. muffin @37, Cookie @40

    Thank you for your corrections. My comment as it relates to standard German no doubt still stands, but I unforgivably overlooked the Swiss German word. My late mother-in-law was Swiss German – she wasn’t around for me to check this point, but I do recognise that idiosyncratic ‘üe’ combination.

42. Not unforgivable, Alan B 🙂

    I was going out on a limb anyway, as I have very little German.

43. Müesli is from the Swiss German word Mues which means purée, it used to be soaked before eating – not a word to be found in my German dictionary, perhaps in one that includes Bavarian words?

44. You’re too kind, muffin – the lady I mentioned also loved Swiss muesli!

45. Oh, yes, of course it is, but as Mus, as Alan B points out; that would give Müsli if the diminutive “li” were added.

46. No problem with Linear A. In fact,it prompted me to put “The man who deciphered Linear B” by Andrew Robinson on my re-read list.

    Muesli belt & Barthes unknown to me but easily gettable from the cryptic part of the clue.

47. As a US citizen old enough to remember H. Ross Perot, I’m very impressed that any non-Americans remember him. At one time, he set the standard for insane US presidential candidates. Those were the good old days.

    I too had never heard the phrase MUESLI BELT, but the wordplay was crystal-clear.

    I have a mark next to 21a, saying “quadruple definition!” Apparently, I can’t count to 5.

    I found this puzzle difficult, but very satisfying as it slowly yielded.

48. No one has yet pointed out that Perot was actually a two-time Presidential candidate, making the clue perhaps incorrect. (I don’t actually have an issue with it, since we can take one-time to mean “former” rather than “just the once.”) (He got better traction the first time around, but by the second time out, he had formed a party. It fizzled within a few years.)

    I was yet another for whom the Muesli Belt was a mystery. It’s funny to see posters named Cookie and Muffin discussing muesli, incidentally, though muesli as an ingredient in either baked good would make a very dissatisfying treat, I think.

49. A splendid challenge, I agree. The only gripe I would have is that the word “muse” has been employed in the clueing of both 16 Across and 16 Down, but with a different meaning of “ponder” and “reflect”, and the phonic application in the across clue

50. SHIFT was very clever and, like others, I’d never before heard of MUESLI BELT. I went slightly astray entering SOOK (so ok) instead of SOUP until figuring out later that it couldn’t be correct. I think sook might be an Aussie/Kiwi bit of lingo?

51. Great Crossword, great blog, thanks both!!
    Could Imogen have gone even further with :- 21a Key work team manage to move fast to change dress (5)

52. @48, one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns…one of my aunts made the most delicious little cakes out of muesli ingredients by adding marmalade.

    I told you they would get fed up with us, muffin.

53. I did enjoy this although I needed Eileen to help me finish it.

    I say moozli, not myoozli. And other sources give moosli and myoosli variants. Homophones are a bit risky with words adopted from other languages, nicht wahr? But then that’s English.

    The quintuple SHIFT is spectacular but I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the grammar. TEAM should take the singular verb MANAGES. If I dare to make a suggestion to tweak such brillance: MANAGE WORK TEAM TO MOVE FAST TO CHANGE DRESS

54. S Panza @51
    Yes – well spotted! I had exactly the same idea, with ‘Key’ at the start, to make 21a a six-fold definition. It doesn’t even spoil the surface (in my opinion). ‘Shift’ is one of those words that lends itself to this treatment – there are no doubt a few others.

55. I struggled with this one, and failed to parse TEACHER’S PET and THROW OUT OF COURT. I enjoyed it, though, with favourites include WHOA, SHIFT, CURSE and PROSPERO.

    Thanks, Imogen and Eileen, and thanks also to muffin, Cookie and Alan B for the enlightening muesli discussion.

56. Usual complaint re 13a … The Doctor is not Who. Who is not the name of the Doctor. Faulty equation.

57. I managed to solve one clue before giving up: LOST CAUSE. which is what this puzzle was for me.

    Van Winkle – i found the first episode, An Unearthly Child, on YouTube and I was surprised to see the character on the cast list as Doctor Who not The Doctor.

    Whilst I’m not suggesting the clue is unfair, was anyone else outraged by respect being equated with deference?

58. Paul Robinson @57, the COED gives respect n. 1 courteous regard, respect.

59. apologies, that should be “the COED gives deference n. 1 courteous regard, respect.”

60. I didn’t think 5d could be Prospero,(having forgotten about Peron), because of the apostrophe s after the word magician. Can anyone explain why that’s ok?

61. Well the COED is clearly an august publication and I respect it, but to me the connotations of the two words are quite different, so I don’t defer to it.

62. Meg @60
    Think of the apostrophe s as “is”, not as indicating possession. Then the clue becomes “definition is wordplay”, which seems ok to me.

63. Paul Robinson @61, I should have given the second meaning for deference, here it is

    deference 2 compliance with the advice or wishes of another (pay deference to).

    Does this make things clearer?

64. Jolly Swagman@10
    As a contributor you may remember my query @ 45 on General Discussion about whether The Guardian had dropped its previous reliance on Chambers and Alan Browne @46 reminding me that in the past The Guardian would warn solvers when a crossword included a word that wasn’t in the red bible. That’s why some of us still try to rely on it.

65. Thanks JennyK.

Comments are closed.