Guardian 27,267 / Imogen

66 comments on “Guardian 27,267 / Imogen”

1. Thanks for “mag” at 14a, Eileen, didn’t know that term and that was my last loose end. I parsed 5d as you did (“l/ower”) but was not so sure about it. (This morning I clicked on the Quiptic by mistake and was halfway through it, grumbling mightily at the lemon-squeeziness, before it dawned on my what I had done. Thanks Imogen for putting my morning aright by your tough but gettable puzzle.)

2. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

   I saw the name “Imogen” and thought “Should I bother?” I suppose that it was worth it for the lovely PIG IRON, but I found the rest of it rather joyless and hard work. I had no idea what CANTEEN was about.

   Neither I nor any of the pronunciation sites I checked online pronounce the first syllable of CALIPHATE anything like KALE. I didn’t like “a little comedy” for C in 11a. 2d should have had “small dog” (or similar) instead of “dog”; the dog is a Labrador.

3. Like Eileen, I needed to do a bit of googling (MAGNUS CARLSEN and LABAN). A few answers were of the it-must-be-that-from-the-crossers variety, but fairly clued.

   Thanks, Imogen and Eileen.

4. You always know that Imogen will be challenging, but they are always fair and meticulously crafted. CALIPHATE went in immediately and suggested PERPETUAL CHECK, which meant that the theme went in fairly quickly, and I knew all of the chess references. In the end by last in was LABAN, who was beyond my rather limited Biblical knowledge.

   Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

5. Never thought I would finish this, but eventually got a few bits and pieces, then GRANDMASTER and MAGNUS CARLSEN, then MAN-AND-DOG with ANAND in it, so my watching of chess games on Youtube has not been entirely wasted. Favourites were TUBER, WILLOW PATTERN and PERPETUAL CHECK. Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

6. Thanks Eileen and Imogen.

   I finally got there in the end, but with considerable struggle. I always find Imogen joyless. Some of the definitions are pretty vague – 10a, 11a, 12a, 17a, 27a and 18d especially.

   Also, I (not being a queen) don’t hear the “sounds like” in 1a.

7. Yes, I took LOWER to mean “not so important” at 5d, with “after the opening” to indicate the loss of the first letter.

   I didn’t get the convolutions in 7d – I thought it was a straightforward cryptic definition with “high rise” referencing clouds and “long ago” indicating the age of the poem. But Eileen’s explanation is much better, so thanks for that!

   Reaching the end was more pleasant than the process of getting there, as I’m not a big chess fan and needed to use Google a lot – especially on 14a, as I didn’t know “GAM” for a school of whales (though I’m sure I must have come across it before). So thanks to Imogen for the education 🙂

8. muffin @2 and Dave Ellison @6

   I looked up the pronunciation of ‘caliph[ate]’ before writing the blog. Collins gives the alternatives a as in day and a as in act. I’m not a queen either but I’ve always heard [and said – but not very often!] “‘Cayliph’ of Baghdad”.

9. I found this really hard going and was grateful in the end for several of the explanations. Many thanks Imogen and Eileen.
   Is TUBER politically correct??

   Dave Ellison@6: I tend to agree that the first “a” in CALIPHATE would for me have a short “a” rather than a diphthong, whereas I don’t mind either short “a” or diphthong in “caliph”. Several dictionaries give both pronunciations for both, though.

10. Thanks Imogen, Eileen
    Never quite got into my stride on this. I liked what I got, and also also what I didn’t, except that I remain puzzled by TUBER. The time and taxi bit I get, but I find ‘underground, is it?’ so odd that I can’t believe there’s not something else going on. I wondered if ‘is it?’ was given as an alternative for ‘right?’, and thus R, giving a double wordplay. Or is underground just there to be helpfully suggestive?
    Gam’s a nice word I didn’t know.

11. Here’s a silly suggestion: ‘Or’could be wordplay for tuber. O is a tube, end-on, + R. Is it?

12. Thank you Imogen for a challenging puzzle and Eileen for a super blog.

    I managed to fill the grid with the help of Google, but not to complete the parsing. I was completely confused by the Met at 12a, to me it suggests opera, which Imogen obviously wanted to happen! The “block at Stonehenge” also stumped me, as did PIN at 19d.

    I also took LOWER to be “not so important” at 5d.

13. James @10 & 11

    Tubers, like potatoes, grow underground.

14. Re 5d: maybe “after the opening” means “take the lid off” – remove the first letter.

15. What? Not on trees, like spaghetti?
    It’s not that I don’t see the link between underground and tuber, but that the arrangement of words is so peculiar and particular.

16. James @15, the idea of “TUBE ER?” crossed my mind…

17. I parsed TUBER the same way as Eileen.

    MAGNUS CARLSEN is a good example of the sort of clue I don’t like. To start with, the solution, except in specialist circles, is pretty obscure (the crossers rang just enough of a bell for me to guess it). Then the parsing; yes it works, but only retrospectively. I suppose you might expect “sister” to indicate that NUN will feature, but “school” = GAM, “college” = LSE and “Mark” = SCAR are all more or less improbable to solve “bottom-up”.

18. muffin @17 – how can you say a current world champion is obscure, particularly in a themed puzzle with so many links?

19. BH
    Can you name the current Nim world champion? (I was going to suggest Go, but he has been in the news fairly recently for being defeated by a computer!)

20. Put me down as another who has never heard caliphate pronounced that way. Incidentally, I didn’t know that meaning of PIN in19d and parse it as a lot (3/4) of PINT.

21. I really liked this.8/23 was my breakthrough but my GK on chess had run out after Spassky, Fischer etc so admit to a google which all parsed except MAG so thanks Eileen.My only niggle was KALE/CAL in 1a but a small one.(I was trying to find the right accent to say it!)
    Thanks all.

22. muffin @19 – no, but how many newspapers have a regular nim or go column? Admittedly the world chess championship has a lower profile than it did in the days of Fisher, Karpov and Kasparov, but it still has a lot of followers…

23. Sorry – I mistyped Fischer!

24. Hi BH

    I just read the Grauniad (obviously enough), and it no longer has bridge or chess columns (I think – I won’t have missed a bridge column, but chess is less of an interest); hence Carlsen wouldn’t necessary be well-known to the target audience of this crossword.

25. Too many obscure bits for me today. Like Hovis, I parsed a lot of beer in 19d as pin(t). I am a southerner but can’t remember ever hearing caliphate pronounced with a long a, though I agree caliph often is. Thanks Eileen for demystifying today – I was so uncertain that my parsing was correct that I definitely needed to check fifteensquared for reassurance.

26. Beery Hiker @18 I agree with Muffin, it’s just clued as champion and out of the many thousands of possible names I’m guessing that chess world champions are not the best known. I was happy with the parsing because I am familiar with the all the terms but ‘college’ as an indicator for the acronym of an establishment that isn’t a college is another GK obscurity.

    p.s. Ref the ‘theme’ leading to the answer in 14A I’m not sure (although 23,8 rather gives the game away of course if it’s been solved) and can this really be called a themed crossword? There just a few related clues (two of which cross-reference each other).

27. Muffin at 24 – there is a weekly chess column, in the Grauniad’s Saturday sports column, along with bridge and chess Columns in the Sunday Review in the Observer.
    Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

28. Having never heard of Magnus Carlsen, I came up with Magnus Carlson based purely on the cryptic clue. After all, ‘college’ could just as easily refer to the London School of Osteopathy (LSO) as the London School of Economics(LSE)…….couldn’t it?

29. [Thanks, Eileen, for the reference to Schushi, from whose site I found the wiki on crossword abbreviations – very useful]

30. 2d. Laban was in fact uncle to Jacob. Rebecca was Jacob’s mother and sister to Laban. Shakespeare got it right in The Merchant of Venice when Shylock descibes the incident in Genesis with Jacob’s sheep perhaps to justify his usury to Antonio.

31. There was a theme? 3 clues seemed to have something to do with chess and that’s about it. I think I managed to get about 8 clues then gave up. Some I didn’t understand until I came here even with the answers.

32. Having completed this offline, I came here to read all the comments, and I was amused straight away to see muffin’s comment @2 beginning:
    I saw the name "Imogen" and thought "Should I bother?"

    I thought the same thing, but, being in the position of having to wait for my car’s annual service to finish, I thought I would 'forget' my previous experiences of Imogen’s crosswords, for a day, and tackle this offering with my eyes wide open and my brain switched on.

    I must give credit this time to Imogen, as this puzzle took me exactly 60 minutes to complete, and I never spend that much time on a crossword if I am not enjoying it. The theme suited me perfectly, and I knew straight away who Carlsen’s predecessor was (in 27a MAN AND DOG) as well as Carlsen himself. I couldn’t help feeling some sympathy, though, with those for whom this chess theme was obscure, but I’m pleased that Eileen and others enjoyed the puzzle nevertheless.

    Some clues were not what I would have written (having chosen to model my clueing techniques on the outputs of three other setters for my amateur efforts), but some I acknowledge were very good. I particularly liked
    10a TUBER (a clever idea, and not that easy to clue unless you find the right way to implement it properly), 12a CANTEEN, 21a SATCHMO (I couldn’t believe at first that 'stomach' had an anagram), 22a GRANGES, 2d LABAN, 19d PIG IRON and 7d ALL AT ONCE.

    One thing I questioned was the mutual referencing between 3d and 9d – something I wouldn’t normally do and wouldn’t have done here. The solver is no worse off for it, because each reference tells us the same thing: 3d is an example of 9d. It’s just not very neat and may not have been intended by Imogen.

    Like Hovis and Bayleaf, I had PIN[T] for my 'lot of beer'.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen (a super blog).

33. Sorry to rain on the parade of a stimulating puzzle, but the definitions at 2d and 7D are enough. You don’t need the wordplay. So really they belong in a Concise not a Cryptic.

    This comment is not meant to detract from a fascinating battle with Imogen. Never heard of Carlsen, but got it through the clue. No googling required anywhere.

    Super blog Eileen: I owe you a libation.

34. I’m sure you’re all right about PIN[t] – I just never thought of it! However, I now know what half a firkin is. 😉

35. Thanks, Conrad @33. I think it’s my round. 😉

36. Eileen @34, I considered PINt, but for me the deletion would have given pINT, it being a down clue I pictured someone drinking from a mug, your parsing is much better.

37. I’m afraid that I’m familiar with quantity of beer called a “pin”. When we were in London, a beer speciality off-licence near us sold “poly-pins” of beer – 4 1/2 gallons in a collapsible plastic container inside a strong cardboard box. I generally had one on the go, I think…..(it was in the 70s).

38. Agree about the pronunciation of “Caliph” assumed by the clue. It must be part of the horrible American habit of diphthongising “a” – tomayto, baysil, shayman, etc. All of which, being spelling pronunciations and therefore the result of ignorance, are as reprehensible as George W.Bush’s Eye-raq, Eye-ran, Eye-talian, the last of which, at least, is stigmatised even in the USA.
    I always thought a school of whales was called a pod. But you live and learn.

39. Pete Atkin pronounced it Kale-if in 1973, and he was very English (Screen-Freak, from A King at Nightfall, lyrics by Clive James)…

40. If I had wanted a general knowledge crossword I should have sought one out.

41. Hi again BH
    Nice to see another Pete Atkin/Clive James fan (Beware of the beautiful stranger and Live libel my favourites). Caliph seems to more readily have both pronunciations than CALIPHATE, though.

    Rompiballe @38
    Actually, California is the model for my pronunciation of caliphate.

42. Thanks both.

    Defeated by 19d but a good challenge. 3/4 pint of beer is not a large quantity, but a pin is a good size for a party.

43. A few years ago I went on a whale spotting trip in Iceland and the locals on that trip referred to a group of whales as a pod. I’ve never heard of GAM and I suspect they hadn’t either! I’ve never heard of MAGNUS CARLSON – or his predecessor for that matter- and I couldn’t get the answer from the clue,so Mr Google to the rescue!
    Despite my struggles with this, there were some goodies including TUBER and CANTEEN but this was too difficult to be truly enjoyable. Only my bloody mindedness and various electronic aids kept me going to the end.

44. I learned both gam and pod through crosswords [nowhere else] and I believe I have seen them in roughly equal measure – which is why I didn’t make a particular comment in the blog.

45. Isn’t The Guardian really letting down those who buy the paper and would like to see a decent and do-able cryptic crossword? This crossword has no merit whatsoever and quite simply does not belong in The Guardian.

46. Simon @45

    I believe this is a question the Crossword Editor should be answering.

    Hello Hugh. Are you there????????

47. I finished this and parsed all but 14a and 4d due to lack of general knowledge. I shared others dislike of some of the cluing. Canteen culture is a phrase with which I am familiar but not with particular reference to the Met. I suspect, as Cookie said, that it was dragged in to make us think of the Metropolitan Opera, often abb. as The Met. I have heard of organisations consisting of a man and a dog, but never a man-and-dog organisation. True, there aren’t many laughs in Oedipus Rex but serious writer is too wide a definition for me.
    Three-quarters of a pint couldn’t be described as a lot of beer and I’m sure that Imogen meant a pin which is itself the smallest size of barrel on general sale and not what I would call a lot of beer. A dray’s load or, alas, a tanker would be.

48. Pino @47
    I know I was outnumbered here, but in defence of PIN[T] for ‘a lot of beer’, the idea is that PIN is ‘a lot’ of the word ‘PINT’ – three-quarters of it, in fact; not that a pint, or three-quarters of it, is actually a lot of beer. That is just as good, IMHO, as ‘C’ being made to mean ‘a little comedy’ in 11a SOPHOCLES.
    Having been introduced to the word ‘pin’, however, I would now agree with you that this is a better explanation and no doubt what Imogen intended – even though it’s not a lot of beer!

49. This is the sort of puzzle that gives cryptic crosswords a bad name.

50. I really fail to understand the level of hostility to this puzzle. Yes it is tricky but can we really not cope with being challenged occasionally? All of the GK is easy to check online…

51. As has been stated this was a pretty poor puzzle in desperate need of an editor.

    It seems that members of the S&B club are less and less willing to criticise any of their “mates”.

    Of course we all all entitled to our own opinion. 😉

52. Just a footnote (if anyone is still here) to BH@39 and Muffin@41. Count me as another fan of Pete Atkins’ A King at Nightfall. ‘The only Wristwatch for a Drummer’ – masterly – with such erudite and accurate references. Hilarious too!

53. The Omega Incabloc Oyster Accutron, if I remember correctly, Conrad?

54. Muffin, it tells true, and it ain’t no bummer. Wear this watch, and you’ll keep in step with Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp.

    In the days when I ran a university jazz course, this track was the starting point for our annual Xmas party.

55. Buddy Rich had three – one on his left wrist, one on his right wrist, and one upon his knee….

56. I agree wholeheartedly with BNTO

57. Re the supposed S & B club – I for one have never met Imogen. Just felt the balance needed a little redressing. Lovely to see muffin and Conrad’s comments on Pete Atkin…

58. For what it’s worth, I produced a list of extracts from comments in which an opinion is expressed on the crossword as a whole or on the overall experience, as follows:

    more favourable
    tough but gettable
    fairly clued
    (always) fair and meticulously crafted
    I liked what I got, and also what I didn’t
    I really liked this
    a fascinating battle
    challenging

    less favourable
    rather joyless and hard work
    (always) joyless
    too many obscure bits
    managed about 8 clues then gave up
    really hard going
    if I had wanted a general knowledge crossword …
    too difficult to be truly enjoyable
    I shared others’ dislike of some of the cluing
    the sort of puzzle that gives cryptic crosswords a bad name
    crossword has no merit whatsoever
    a pretty poor puzzle
    I agree wholeheartedly with … [‘a pretty poor puzzle’]

    sitting on the fence
    reaching the end was more pleasant than the process of getting there

    There is not much that you can conclude from such a small sample or from my crude analysis. However, I have little doubt that what you see here contrasts with similar analyses that you might carry out on blogs of many other recent puzzles.

    What I have found with Imogen’s puzzles over a period of (I admit) less than two years [they appear at the rate of one a month] is that this setter seems to have little idea of how his crosswords will be experienced by solvers in general, and I suspect also that he does not aim to pitch them at any skill or general knowledge level. It would be fair comment to say that a setter might believe that he does not need to have these particular skills or aims, as long as he, his test solver(s) and his crossword editor are satisfied with the crosswords when they are finished.

    Cluing skill is one thing (I can hardly say that Imogen is lacking in that department – indeed, there are many very good examples of clues in this puzzle that I should be trying to emulate in my amateur efforts), but very often there are variations in the way a clue can be written, even using the same wordplay or clue construction, in order to pitch a clue differently and affect the solvers’ experience.

    I tend to pass on Imogen’s puzzles, but obviously I don’t decry the much more enjoyable experience of them that many of you obviously have.

59. There are a few statements in the comments that need more than just being a statement.

    This is the sort of puzzle that gives cryptic crosswords a bad name.
    Isn’t The Guardian really letting down those who buy the paper and would like to see a decent and do-able cryptic crossword? This crossword has no merit whatsoever and quite simply does not belong in The Guardian.
    If so, why is that?
    What is the actual problem?
    Can anyone spell it out, please.
    I’m on beery hiker’s side when he says “Yes it is tricky but can we really not cope with being challenged occasionally?”.

    As has been stated this was a pretty poor puzzle in desperate need of an editor.
    OK. to each his (or her) own.
    Please, tell us what is so ‘poor’ about this crossword and what is it that the editor should have done.
    Was the clueing technically poor, was the crossword too difficult, was it not witty enough (which is not really a good reason, IMHO), was the theme unacceptable, or?
    What is it?
    I really like to hear more explicit things, just shouting and pointing the arrow at the editor cannot convince me.

    It seems that members of the S&B club are less and less willing to criticise any of their “mates”.
    Firstly, I would like to echo beery hiker @57 in saying that Imogen has kept far from being part of this “S&B club”.
    Imogen is the pseudonym of Richard Browne, a former crossword editor (!!) of The Times.
    Therefore, Alan B’s statement that “this setter seems to have little idea of how his crosswords will be experienced by solvers in general” seems to be a bit bold to me.
    Secondly, calling ‘us’ [I’m indeed part of it too (and happily so)] the “S&B club” comes across as something negative, as if we all cover ourselves with ourselves.
    That said, I have questioned on various occasions that I think that some setters get more credit than others because of being closer to the solvers (whatever ‘closer’ means here).
    All in all, I can only say that S&B meetings are inspirational and give solvers the opportunity to meet setters and what they experience in their work.
    You learn, for example, what editors expect them to do and what the editors’ views in general are.
    Remember, everyone’s welcome at those meetings.
    The so-called S&B club is not a clique, although some can be called hardcore members.

    Going back to this particular Imogen crossword, we solved it in under 90 minutes.
    The way we do that is “together alone”.
    The answer to a clue will only be entered after both of us found that answer.
    Only now and then (if one of us gets stuck) we’ll ask “what’s that letter?” or “what is 10ac?”.
    We do crosswords on a printout and have no dictionaries or Internet etc at hand.
    Meanwhile, we waste a lot of time talking about work or Brexit.
    Ergo, I think this puzzle could have been solved in an hour or so if we had really joined forces.
    The chess person at 14ac went in purely from the construction, about halfway down the line.
    Never heard of him but it had to be right.
    That’s how we often approach entries in crosswords that might be viewed as ‘obscure’.
    Why bother?
    Just verify afterwards and learn something.
    Eventually, we finished this crossword (which was challenging, true) without making any mistake, understanding everything that happened (apart from ‘Canteen’ – but again, it couldn’t be anything else).

    I do acknowledge that others found this crossword perhaps too hard, unfair or whatever.
    I’m not writing this comment to take away feelings.
    But it is very easy to be upset and shout without making clear why things are perhaps unacceptable.

    In the meantime, I find that the atmosphere at the Guardian thread is becoming less civilised compared to the Indy’s.
    Well, perhaps their puzzles are less controversial.
    They are certainly more consistent.

60. Sil @59

    You have referred to me once directly and a couple of times indirectly (I would say).

    I respect everything you said and understand your point of view. Some of what I said was indeed ‘bold’, and I thought it might even be controversial. However, I gave what I wrote careful thought before I wrote it, and I maintain that my main conclusion was reasonable.

    Even allowing for some feelings of impatience or frustration that might underlie some negative comments posted on this blog, there was still a pretty consistent message coming out from among the ‘less favourable’ comments that I quoted in my list, and, without going into detail, I thought I knew why. I’ve found this before with Imogen, and I even went back to one of his puzzles earlier this year which I was very critical of at the time (even though I finshed it), and that one was (generally) even more of a problem to solvers than today’s was.

    In my view, there are just two or three setters in the Guardian stable who I believe are poor at gauging how their crosswords are ‘pitched’ and what the likely solver experience will be, and Imogen is one of them. I didn’t mean to be negatively critical of the setter, although I fear that I was. I believe he is satisfied with his puzzles, his editor must be too, and he has quite a following among some of us regular solvers.

    You reminded me that Imogen (Richard Browne) is “a former crossword editor (!!) of The Times”, as if that somehow refutes my ‘bold’ statement. I’m afraid I don’t see how.

61. Thanks Sil and Alan – both of you must have spent some time on those arguments.

    (to indulge the Pete Atkin discussion a little further – he was one of many diverse 70s and late 60s artists that were introduced to me by a wilfully eccentric local radio DJ called John Shaw. My favourites are the wistful melancholic songs like Perfect Moments, Payday Evenings and The Faded Mansion on the Hill)

62. beery @61
    And thank you for that sentiment. Sorry this is so late. I feel for Eileen too having to skim read some long essays.
    Yes, it did take some time, and I’m sure Sil would say the same.
    [But the bit in those rounded square brackets meant nothing to me, I’m afraid. No objections, though – I like to see interchanges like this on fifteensquared.)

63. And that should have been a square bracket at the end, not a round one.

64. I don’t know how to type square brackets on the Android phone!

65. Beery @ 64

    They’re on the second numeric keyboard on my android phone (as are squiggly one, & other useful symbols)…

    hth

66. What a bizarre discussion. I am by no means a regular nor even a good solver, and this took me and my 87-year-old mother 45 minutes, so it really can’t be that difficult.

    Some commentators would do well to learn some manners in my opinion.

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