Guardian 27,594 – Imogen

by

This was considerably more of a challenge than yesterday’s Qaos, but after a slow start it yielded steadily and satisfyingly, with a couple of tricky parsings to work out at the end. Thanks to Imogen.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. DAB HAND Expert‘s light touch with cards (3,4)
DAB (light touch) + HAND (cards)
5. HOT SPOT Hilarious person inhales small quantity in fashionable club (3,4)
TSP (teaspoonful – small quantity) in HOOT (hilarious person – “he’s a hoot!”)
9. POWER Very modest debtor might (5)
A modest debtor might be someone who owes a penny, so a P-OWER
10. SCRAMBLER In dons’ room fitter installs minute security device (9)
SCR (Senior Common Room) + M in ABLER (fitter) – I’m not sure what the “In” is doing in the cryptic reading
11. STANDS TO REASON What peripatetic philosopher does is obvious (6,2,6)
Double definition
13. RUED Deplored coarse speaking (4)
Homophone of “rude” (coarse)
14. WINE LIST Secure almost the best bottles shown initially here? (4,4)
WIN (to secure) + S[hown] in (“bottled by”) ELIT[E]
17. JETTISON Abandon working at landing places, lacking energy (8)
JETTI[E]S + ON (working)
18. PIUS Pope is up for review (4)
(IS UP)* – name of twelve popes
21. DOUBLE-CROSSING Cheating a pair of zebras? (6-8)
Double definition – anyone unfamiliar with the second meaning can find an explanation here
23. CONSTABLE Artist, an apprehensive type? (9)
Double definition – John Constable, artist, and a policeman, who might apprehend people
24. IHRAM One is admitting personnel in pilgrim garb (5)
HR (Human Resources, the department formerly known in businesses as Personnel) – a garment worn by Muslim pilgrims to Mecca
25. DARK AGE Risk loading silver on back of truck? There’s no written record of it (4,3)
[truc]K + AG (silver) in DARE
26. NAMIBIA By main road, refuse collector about to leave north country (7)
Reverse of A1 (main road) + BI[N] MAN
Down
1. DOPE Information from page in browser (4)
P in DOE (deer, browsing animal)
2. BOW STREET RUNNER Way in front, athlete 23 (3,6,6)
STREET (way) in BOW (front, in a ship) + RUNNER (athlete)
3. AIRING Twosome avoiding initial exposure (6)
[P]AIRING
4. DISUSE Neglect of French entertainer heartless (6)
DISEUSE (French entertainer) less its middle letter
5. HARMONIC Man trained with choir for musical (8)
(MAN CHOIR)*
6. TIMBERED Boy about to be put into cot made of wood (8)
TIM + RE (about) in BED
7. PALESTINIAN ARAB Albanian pirates tortured refugee (11,4)
(ALBANIAN PIRATES)*. Is a Palestinian Arab necessarily a refugee?
8. TURING TEST Bad stuttering may show evidence of intelligent behaviour (6,4)
STUTTERING* – the Turing Test was initially proposed by Alan Turing as a way of determining whether a machine could be said to think
12. PREJUDICED Before month half over, Democrat killed racist? (10)
PRE (before) + JU[ne] or JU[ly] + D[emocrat] + ICED (killed)
15. VIOLETTA Wildly impetuous, missing note (you shouldn’t have!) in soprano role (8)
VIOLE[N]T + TA (thanks, you shouldn’t have). Violetta is the eponymous main character in Verdi’s La Traviata
16. FORCIBLE Powerful Catholic overwhelmed by weakness (8)
RC in FOIBLE
19. SOLEMN Only fellow not given a grave (6)
SOLE M[A]N
20. OSMIUM Expand very large element (6)
OS (outsize) is the chemical symbol of the element Osmium, so it’s “expanded” to give the full name
22. EMMA In poem, “maid” is “girl” (4)
Hidden in poEM MAid

38 comments on “Guardian 27,594 – Imogen”

  1. This seemed a different sort of a solve today but not sure why. We had the R of SCR at the end which might account for the ‘in’ at 10a.
    Liked SOLEMN and DOUBLE CROSSING in particular. Not sure, like Andrew, about the Palestinian refugee and found OSMIUM an unusual clue. New word in IHRAM though topical.
    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

  4. Elegant as always. Many thanks Imogen and Andrew. In 10ac I just read the ‘In’ as something like ‘by doing this, this follows’

  5. Diskeuse, female hip-hop DJ? Nope. It was clearly an ‘euse’ and it was the simplest one. Thick! And 9a was similar: p for penny. I was slow to get the zebras too, and had no idea about the Hajj garb, though guessable. And a dnf as had to look up Osmium, clever clue, and got impatient with Violetta. Not a great day!

    Enjoyed it nonetheless. Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  6. In 10a I think you have to take the don’s room and fitter together (SCRABLER) and then put M in.

    Didn’t know disease so had to come here to parse DISUSE. Thanks Andrew.

    Lovely puzzle. Particularly liked OSMIUM once I’d twigged.

    Thank you Imogen and Andrew.

  8. A very enjoyable puzzle, with many elegant clues.

    I parsed 10ac as Hedgehog did: A[M]BLER in SCR.

    Favourites were DOUBLE CROSSING, FORCIBLE and TURING TEST.

    Many thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  9. Agree with Crossbar @6 re 10a. The “In” provides a nice surface (I don’t recall any such an animal as a “Dons’ room fitter”).

    As a former computer programmer (yes, before IT was invented), I almost teared up at 8d.

  11. @Mike I feel likewise about Turing, esp re his persecution; what thanks for cracking Enigma and launching the tech that now runs the world.

    Re 10a, maybe ‘installs’ is being used as a kind of reflexive (= is installed), which would account for ‘In’ at the start.

  13. Hedgehog, Eileen, Mike in Q. If SCR is the ‘container’, then the contained part would have to be “ra(m)ble”. It don’t work (unless ‘rable’ means ‘fitter’!)

  15. Hedgehog and Eileen’s reading is better, but even so is implicitly reflexive: ‘abler installs m’ [into itself].

  17. LOI was PIUS. Large tea-tray!

    Diseuse seems unfair to me. Certainly not one of the words “everyone knows”. IHRAM, equally unfamiliar, could be deduced.

    Thanks to Imogen and to Andrew for enlightenment on some abstruse parsing.

     

  20. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew. I had the same problems already noted (e.g., with diseuse) and did not know SCR for SCRAMBLER or HR for IHRAM, my LOI.

  22. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew. I found this a strange sort of solve. A lot went in quite readily, but the last few took an age, and I needed to come here to clarify some parsing. My last ones were ihram and Violetta, neither which I knew, but just guessed from the wording of the clues. I liked both the long across clues and Turing test. I used to talk a lot about this when I was covering artificial intelligence in psychology. Thanks again to Imogen and Andrew.

  23. Not all Palestinian arabs are refugees (though I imagine there are few who have not been displaced), but I think it’s a fair clue.

  24. So wanted DESUETUDE for 4d but lack of shoehorns.

    I am still trying to imagine a peripatetic philosopher STANDING to reason!

    I love Imogen’s puzzles but I reckon Nutmeg has set the bar very high for this week

    And thanks Andrew.

  25. DNF for me today, dislike the GK requirements of Violetta and Pius, both of which I had to Google a list for (and yes, I know the anagram meant Pius should not have needed that!), plus an unsatisfactory number of non-parsed answers. Plus never heard of Diseuse. Not my favourite!

    Heads off to garden mumbling…

  26. Another very high class puzzle, full of ingenuity and quite entertaining too, if a little tricky in places. IHRAM was new to me but easy enough to deduce and look up, SCRAMBLER was last in. Thanks for the parsing of DISUSE – the French was beyond my ken.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

  27. In 14a I tried to make “almost the best” be B LIST.  Didn’t work.  Thanks to Andrew for explaining how it works.

    11a Wouldn’t a peripatetic philosopher “walk to reason”?

    I hadn’t seen 24a IHRAM before.  I might have put it together anyway if I’d thought of I AM and not been stuck on I’M.

    If a chanteuse is a woman who sings, a diseuse must be a woman who speaks.  Who’da thunk it?

    Thanks, Imogen and Andrew.

  29. Like Andrew this seemed tough to start but then went in steadily until I was defeated by VIOLETTA and as others I couldn’t parse DISUSE and was fixated on the M1 rather than A1 in 26a. Favourites were POWER for the misleading surface/definition, 11a, PIUS for its deceptive simplicity, and 23a & 2d for the way they worked together.
    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew, and Hedgehog for the early contributions.

  30. I did enjoy this despite not knowing DIS(E)USE,IHRAM and OSMIUM.The last two were easy to work out and the former had to be right. I’d heard of TURING TEST but didn’t know what it was although reasonably easy to get. I liked DOUBLE CROSSING and STANDS TO REASON, although I take the point of those who’ve criticised it.
    I don’t object to GK being required if the K is truly general and it usually is in these puzzles. My dislike and lack of knowledge of sport is my problem. Anyway,I often find I learn something!
    Thanks Imogen.

  31. Valentine @27. A peripatetic philosopher would walk while reasoning but walking requires being in an upright position in the first place, I don’t have a problem with ‘stands’ as a synonym of ‘gets to ones feet’.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  32. I Didn’t know dope meant information. I must be a dope for not having this dope.

    Different but entertaining fare.

  33. I enjoyed this very much.  I got CONSTABLE first followed by the four long words/phrases.  Of the rest, I liked TURING TEST, FORCIBLE and PREJUDICED the best.

    I had the same query as Andrew with SCRAMBLER, and I thought OSMIUM a bit iffy as others did.  (If you expand OS you get outsize.  Os is the symbol for Osmium rather than an abbreviation of it.)

    These are minor quibbles, so thanks to Imogen, and to Andrew for the blog.

  34. Very hard. I left this last night with only about a quarter of the clues completed and came back to it this morning (Australian time). It was a DNF for me as I couldn’t for the life of me see 14a WINE LIST and the crossers allowed for too many possibilities. Similarly I did not get VIOLETTA at 15d; new learning for me. There were several others I failed to parse so I have enjoyed coming late to the blog both for the solve and the ensuing discussion. Like Alan B@33, I liked 23a CONSTABLE and 12d PREJUDICED. 19d SOLEMN was also a favourite for its clever misdirection.

    Thanks to Imogen for a big challenge which ultimately defeated me, but which held my interest, and to Andrew for explaining some of those very “tricky parsings”.

  35. PS I have to admit that I cheated 20d OSSIUM, by which time I really had to accept that it was going to be a DNF and come here. I did learn a lot from this puzzle and for me that alleviated somewhat my feelings of dissatisfaction with my performance.

  36. Life is very rough and tumble
    For a humble
    Diseuse
    One can betray one’s troubles never
    Whatever
    Occurs
    Night after night
    Have to look bright
    Whether you’re well or ill
    People must laugh their fill
    You mustn’t sleep
    Till dawn comes creeping.                                                                                  Though I never really grumble
    Life’s a jumble
    Indeed
    And in my efforts to succeed
    I’ve had to formulate a creed

    Verse of Noel Coward’s “If Love Were All”.

     

  37. Indeed a bit of a toughie!  Had never heard of IHRAM. Got VIOLETTA but given opera is not everyone’s thing thought that something closer to violent than wildly impetuous might have been fairer. Failed completely on DISUSE – fixated on DE or DU for “of French” and then fruitlessly tried to think up an entertainer S*(x)S *.

  38. I do better with opera than rock bands, purple or otherwise, so this was easier than yesterday’s.

    Thanks to InGrid and Noel Coward for the poem, probably one of a very small number of published works containing the word “diseuse.”

Comments are closed.