Guardian Cryptic 27,091 by Imogen

59 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,091 by Imogen”

1. 24A uses”heard” so it’s not claimimg to be a homophone.

2. Thanks loonapick. I guess setters, thinking in RP terms, will not into account the rhotic accent of some solvers. 12 across doesn’t work at all for me. Chambers gives ‘greens’ (plural) for dollar bills. The letter S standing for ‘sex’ is mighty odd and the preposition ‘for’ is too.

3. Very tricky indeed. I had to reveal CLERIHEW and QUARTERS, and needed your help, Loonapick, to parse WINTER where the reference to Graves eluded me. And as you say, there were a number of obscure terms – unfamiliar to me were lancet, clerihew, spinet, aigrette and pirogi.

   However none of this means the puzzle was unenjoyable – quite the contrary, in fact. I thought LOOK INSIDE and LE MANS were wonderful clues – not easy by any means and producing lovely penny drop moments. I didn’t see a problem with COME COME although I did spend an awfully long time trying to shoe horn in URL!

   Thanks to Loonapick and Imogen.

4. I agree it was tough to get into today. Kicking myself for not parsing 26A as a wine lover, but I was fixated on Robert Graves. I got 24A quickly enough, but I wasn’t convinced that it sounded like a shout of joy either. Otherwise a hard work-out with no write-ins.

5. Re 24 across: the word ‘heard’ in the clue serves to assert that ‘hussar’ and ‘huzza’ are homophonic. Homophones are nothing more than things heard.

6. Thanks loonapick
   12ac is surely a triple def. From Chambers under ‘green’:

   8. (in pl) fresh leaves
   10. (in pl) money, esp dollar bills (slang)
   11. (in pl) sexual intercourse (slang)

7. Can anyone shed light for a relative newcomer to the cryptics as to where the PI in 25a comes from? Was able to get it but not parse it fully, and I’m little the wiser for reading this… 2d also gave me grief as I believed the dumplings are called Pierogi whereas Pirogi is a kind of pie. I’m unsure if that’s my ignorance or a flaw in the clueing (I know which is more likely though!).

8. Fieldsman @7
   From Chambers:

   pi (informal)
   adjective
   Obtrusively religious, sanctimonious
   noun
   A pious or sanctimonious person or talk

   ORIGIN: Short form of pious

   pierogi, pirogi or perogi
   noun (pl pierogi, etc or pierogies, etc)
   (usu in pl) a traditional Polish dish, a semicircular filled dumpling, orig savoury, now also sweet, boiled and then briefly sautéed and served with melted butter

9. Thank you Imogen and loonapick

   New words for me were CLERIHEW, lancet & AIGRETTE but the clueing helped me a lot to solve these with help of dictionary.

   I solved but could not fully parse 12a (did not know that S=sex but was content with GREENS = dollar bills and leaves as in salad greens or leaves), 26a (never heard of Graves wine). Like Tomsdad@4 I was thinking of Robert Graves.

10. Many thanks Gaufrid @8 – pi is indeed a new one to me, appreciate the clarification. I’m sure some of my Polish friends might take exception to Pirogi but I’ll happily take Chambers’ word on that one!

11. PI(ous) is obsolete prep-school slang for excessively good, which survives in crosswordese because it is such a useful way of indicating those letters. The 1920s terms S(ex)Appeal or IT for “sex” and the abbreviation OR (other ranks) for “men” are a couple more old-timers that I needed to learn when I was new to solving.

    Imogen as tough as ever, but I enjoyed it.

12. I am getting a fed up with having Chambers quoted all the time, I suppose I am going to have to give in and buy the darn thing…

13. Thanks both. Tough to get into, but all fair and doable.

14. Robert Graves? I was thinking Rupert… not that it helped.

15. Thanks Imogen, loonapick and Gaufrid @8 (having my GREENS takes on a completely new meaning for me!)

    I managed to complete all the LHS at first with lots of unfilled spaces on the RHS.

    I was going to object to S = sex (the fact that it is in the abbreviation SA does not mean it can be legitimately used alone) but Gaufrid @8 has nailed that one.

    I loved the Amazon ladies. I quite liked the &lit COUPLE, although I would have preferred another word, such as people, instead of ‘who.’ My LOI was COME COME, where I was misled by the ‘domain name used by Spain’ into thinking that .es was going to be involved.

16. Thank you Imogen and loonapick.

    A most enjoyable puzzle, even though I have not found the spelling PIROGI for Polish dumplings anywhere reputable. GREENS for greenbacks did not occur to me until later and I was caught out by LAN in SIGNALS.

    The clues for DYSTOPIA, WINTER and CLERIHEW were great;

    footnote, I see that the official dictionary for scrabble players has now been changed to Collins, I would suggest a similar change for crossword setters.

17. Cookie @16; PIROGI is in Collins as the plural of PIROG.

18. Robi @17, that is not the problem, from what I understand the usual spelling is PIEROGI…

19. Robi @17, apologies, just realised you have told me that PIROGI IS actually IN Collins! Searching further I find GREENS is given for sex in several on-line sources, so that lets Imogen off the hook, and I will have to eat humble pie….

20. Cookie @16 & 19
    Isn’t that what I indicated in comments #6 & #8 or are you intimating that Chambers isn’t “reputable”?

21. Thanks to Imogen and loonapick. I needed help parsing LE MANS and WINTER and with AMPERAGE did not spot “rep” as “company.” As one who is not a regular user of Amazon, LOOK INSIDE puzzled me, and LOI was COME COME which took me a long time to unravel. An enjoyable challenge.

22. Too difficult for me today, even with some electronic assistance! Like Robi@15 I tried for too long to find a way of incorporating “es” into 23AC having always known it to be the (internet) domain name for Spain. However even in defeat I can find more than a little enjoyment which is probably just as well. Thanks to Imogen and loonapick

23. Hello darling, fancy some greens?

    Doesnt sound too good from where I sit

24. I enjoyed the different styles of clueing today. Managed to get there but found I got 19d wrong. Put in seater, s+(b)eater but wrong answer. Maybe distracted by 20d. Annoying as i thought I’d completed!

25. Gaufrid @20, I searched everywhere on-line and found PIROGI nowhere, it came up in Collins as an alternative spelling only when I searched for PIEROGI. Incidentally, it is the Russian for dumplings, not the Polish.

    As for GREENS, one has a problem searching for that since there is a Green’s Dictionary of Slang, but one must subscribe to gain access, or buy “it”, three volumes to boot. Thus one must enter “GREENS meaning” to search on-line, and I have just found the slang meaning in Collins.

    I wonder if PIROGI as an alternatrive spelling for pierogi is given in Eileen’s paper edition, or the slang meaning of GREENS? I doubt it, so one is forced by setters to have Chambers or go on-line, one does not like being forced.

    Now I am going to eat a late lunch…

26. copmus @23, five a day?

27. No complaints about the clues, but I do think that if unusual words are going to appear then a more user friendly grid should be used. Normally this basic pattern gives a friendly grid, but the addition of the four symmetrical lines of five unches defeats that idea by making the puzzle four separate puzzles which is not helpful at all.

28. I’d never heard of GREENS for’sex’,so I thought 12ac was rather a weak clue, and was LOI. I didn’t care much for COME COME either but that may be because it took me so long to get. The rest was rather good with LOOK INSIDE being my favourite.
    I’m enjoying Imogen’s puzzles more than I used to and this was well up to scratch.
    Thanks Imogen.

29. One or two parsing problems (mostly due to general knowledge failures) and PIROGI were new to me, but this was one of Imogen’s more accessible offerings.

    Thanks to Imogen and loonapick

30. Cookie @25
    I don’t have a printed version of Collins but I do have a 10+ year-old copy of the COED which gives:

    pirog n. (pl. pirogi or pirogen) – a Russian pie
    pirogi n. varient spelling of pierogi
    pierogi (also perogi or pirogi) pl. n. dough dumplings stuffed with a filling such as potato or cheese ORIGIN from Polish pierog or Ukrainian pyrih

31. Thanks Imogen and loonapick

    A thoroughly engaging struggle, I thought.

    Cookie @ 25: eChambers has PIROGI and PEROGI as alternatives for PIEROGI, and says specifically that they are Polish.

    hth

32. Thanks Imogen and loonapick
    I generally don’t enjoy Imogen’s puzzles, and this was generally no exception, though I did like TAKE TO TASK, LANCELOT, CLERIHEW and LE MANS. My problem was my slow start – after I had solved 6 clues, I had issues with 4 of the answers. I hadn’t heard of PIROGI, so searched Google for “Polish dumplings”; it insisted on the PIEROGI spelling (neither is in my paper Chambers). I’m not so concerned about the final R in HUSSAR, but SS and ZZ I pronounce quite differently from each other (influenced by Italian, I suppose). I don’t think GREENS or COUPLE work either.

33. Muffin@32 cavalrymen pronounce ‘hussars’ as huzzars’

34. Harhop @33
    ….but not “hutzars”, presumably? That’s how I would pronounce “huzzahs” (as in “pizzas”).

35. ….which is perverse, I know! It just goes to confirm the risk with “sounds like” clues – you’ll always find people for whom the “sounds like” doesn’t work.

36. This drove me bananas. Homophone gripes first: “Huzzah” is not even close to “hussar” as I pronounce things. Further, “moccasin” has a short O, while “mocha” has a long one.

    The grid, in which the puzzle is cleanly chopped into four quarters, gave me no help at all, and the southwestern quarter was almost impenetrable. I had to cheat a couple times down there.

    I had not heard of an IUD being called a coil before. And the parsing of WINTER eluded me.

    Regarding the “pierogi” spelling: Around here–I live in a city with more people of Polish descent than any except Warsaw and Lodz–pierogi are everywhere, so that one did bug me, but I have seen a wide range of other spellings too. [If you’re ever in Chicago in August: Whiting, Indiana–a nearby suburb–has an annual Pierogi Fest. Dozens of different kinds, plus of course all the latkes, blintzes, and kielbasa you want too. There’s a pierogi parade, and they crown the year’s Pierogi Queen (who generally looks like she’s never eaten a pierogi in her life, but hey.)]

37. How do “poured” and “tickled” imply anagrinds?
    It seems more and more that any word will do.
    Same for “shot” as a containment indicator.
    And 24 down would be a better clue without the “situation”.

38. Admitted defeat. The wordplay in LE MANS and COME COME was well over my head, so that was the end of the SE. There is alas a burger-dumpling cross called a BUROGI in which BUR is polish reversed, so that was 1ac scuppered. I was going to have a go at money = GREEN needing a US gloss to be fair, but have just remembered the Jam song ‘Pretty Green’, a reference (I’ve always thought, to the green one pound notes in Paul Weller’s pocket, so I’ll let that pass. Another one to file under ‘experience’.

39. Not bad for an Imogen apart from …

    20D A coupe does not typically have two seats – I’ve owned several and they all had four. Most have two doors (some have four see MB & BMW)
    14A doesn’t SOLD need to be combined with another word to mean betrayed e.g. sold out, sold short
    18A in two minds about this – is it any worse than an obscure Shakespearean reference? hmmm
    25A sound the PI klaxon
    16D only works if you pronounce one of the words incorrectly
    17D Aren’t unis called colleges in the US?

    Great apart from that!

40. jaceris @37
    Good points, but I think 21d does need the “situation” – the Le Mans 24 hour race is held at…….Le Mans. i.e. the name of the race isn’t “Le Mans”.

41. I love Imogen’s puzzles, and this was no exception but it was a long struggle for me. GREENS was LOI, and I wasn’t convinced by it (now I see the triple definition – thanks to Gaufrid) Favourites were LE MANS, COUPLE, COME COME, LOOK INSIDE and DYSTOPIA. Many thanks to Imogen and loonapick.

42. mrpenney and bodycheetah
    Both confirming my point about the hazards of “sounds likes” – I would pronounce MOCCASIN and MOCHA SIN almost exactly the same way.

43. Bodycheetah: No. Universities are called universities here in the US. We use phrases like “at college” or “in college” to mean “at university,” but when referring to a specific university, we do use the word. MIT is definitely a university.

    Muffin @42: So which one are you mispronouncing? 😉

    (But seriously, “mocha” comes from Arabic, so should have a long O; “moccasin” is a Native American word, so you should trust us on how it’s pronounced.)

44. It’s the “mocha” one – I (and everyone I know) pronounces it “mocca”, though none of us drink it, so it doesn’t come up much! It might be a Northern English thing.

45. Gaufrid @30, thank you. My son who lived and worked in Poland for several years says dumplings are pierogi in Polish, unfortunately his dictionary is small and does not give pierog.

    pirog for pie in Russian and pierog for dumpling in Polish both come from the Proto-Slavik word for feast,
    apparently in the past some sorts of pierogi were baked.

    The variant spellings of pierogi are most probably not found in Poland.

    The trouble with Chambers is that it just lists everything, pierogies for instance @8, what a horror, but I suppose that will come into use as did the word “blinis”.

46. Cookie @45
    I couldn’t agree more about Chambers. It just lists how words are used. I wish it would more often add “incorrectly” (viz. “epicentre” and “alibi”!)

47. Simon S @31, thank you, but I have been trying to get back up confirmation of Chambers entries in other dictionaries.

48. I was excited to get HUSSAR without any crossers. I agree that it sounds nothing like huzzah but I’ve finally gotten the hang of looking for non-rhotic varieties of words whenever I see a homophone indicator. I did have a lot of problems in the southeast corner though, and I blanched somewhat to learn that an IUD was a coil. TMI!

49. I support Cookie’s idea (@16) to adopt Collins in preference to Chambers. There are significant differences between them that make me respect the former more than the latter both for crosswords and for general use.

    I was disappointed with the crossword today. My experience at the start was similar to muffin’s (@32) – I had issues with some of the first 6 clues I managed to solve, and I had other doubts and queries along the way, albeit nothing in addition to what has been reported here up to this point. 18a LOOK INSIDE was perhaps the weakest clue of the lot: the wordplay was superficially appealing, but the definition-by-example (ladies = loo) was not indicated, and the answer is not really a phrase.

    The last Imogen I completed a month ago was a much better puzzle, and I look forward to another one like it.

    Thanks to loonapick.

50. The ‘s’ in mocha’s in, is pronounced as /z/ and the vowel /I/ in ‘in’ has its full quality, not reduced in the unstressed vowel in moccasin, as I hear it anyway. No idea how it’s said in the various Algonquin languages.

    The problem with MOCCASIN and HUSSAR is that both the answer and some of the components are ‘foreign’ words or ripe with potential variants.
    No setter should go there. It’s a distraction from otherwise good cluing.

51. Re “mocha” – I just heard someone on “Big bang theory” say “moka” – it must be an American thing!

52. I meant “moe ka” – not sure how to show the long O

53. QED!
    http://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/mocha

54. Are “separate tables” and “winter quarters” phrases? Pretty sure “garlicky spinnet” isn’t.

55. Cormac@54. ‘Separate Tables’ is the title of Rattigan play which is revived from time to time, and armies (cf Washington at Valley Forge) have gone into winter quarters since time immemorial.

56. Here is my final comment

    Epeolater @5

    Actually I believe homophone indicates words with the same pronunciation and this sound is usually sensed by humans using hearing. So it is a philosophical/philological argument as to whether all “homophones” are “heard”. They could for instance be “seen” on an oscilloscope.

    The argument on here is always that these types of clues indicate a homophone as in exactly the same pronunciation.

    The OED has:

    homophone

    1. Philol. (Usually in pl.) Applied to words having the same sound, but differing in meaning or derivation; also to different symbols denoting the same sound or group of sounds.

    My argument is that these clues usually indicate words which sound alike but not exactly the same unless more clearly clued to the contrary.

    Especially with words such as “heard”. As in “She screamed huzza but I heard hussar.”. Also words such as “radio” must surely indicate “sounds something like” due to level of attention of the listener and quality of reception.

    In fact an attempt to indicate an exact homophone is fraught with danger as we do not really have a “standard of correct English pronunciation” even excluding dialectal differences.

    So if I had been approaching this clue using “heard” to indicate “hussar” and “huzza” as similar would have been fine and dandy! 🙂

57. bodycheetah @39 Universities are called universities in the US. A university,as I understand the US definition, has more than one college, and usually offers graduate degrees. (But not always — the University of Hartford, in my town, had for years only an undergraduate college, an art school and a music school, but was still a university because it had more than one school.) A college is an institution of higher learning that offers only undergraduate degrees. Harvard is a University that includes Harvard College.

58. Hello, fancy some greens?

    Doesnt sound too good from where I sit

59. Having a Polish father-in-law, I know pirogi well – one of my first in. But then I only hear Polish, I never read it.

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