Guardian 27,994 / Imogen

52 comments on “Guardian 27,994 / Imogen”

1. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

   I enjoyed this more than is often the case with this setter – it had a lighter touch and more humour than usual.

2. Just couldn’t get 23 across, so sadly a DNF. I also had BLEAT in for 7 down for a while, holding up things in the NE corner. Lots of fun nonetheless..

3. I enjoyed this also and found it more straightforward than I often do with this setter. Fav was misogamy, for the wordplay. Thanks to Imogen and to Imogen.

4. I loved the surface for Romans

   Thanks Imogen and Eileen

5. I have to go out now for the rest of the morning – I hope there are not too many queries or complaints in the meantime!

6. Thanks for the log – but not knowing ‘quanta’ is as big a solecism as not knowing the author of Pride and Prejudice …

   I liked the puzzle but struggled with some of the clues – neatly misdirected on 15d, trying to make an anagram of reducinga, given 5 matching crossers.

7. 5 down, MASS OBSERVATION: this must also refer to the important organisation founded in 1937 by film-maker Humphrey Jennings and others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-Observation

   This makes the clue a very good one.

8. Yes, light and neat from Imogen today, with a bit of fun, as in not rumps and the homogroan sicker more. Ignorant biblically, I don’t know the Book order, but it had to be Romans, and the long down pretty much jumped out. Think I’ve known misogamy before, couldn’t swear, but anyway did what the clue said. Didn’t notice it, but qgree with Eileen about ‘cast’ singular. Thanks both.

9. Much the same as others – didn’t get QUANTA and like andysmith@6 spent far too long looking for an anagram of REDUCINGA. I liked CLOSER for the airless definition and MISOGAMY was new to me. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

10. … forgot about quanta, neat clue, and tend to agree with andysmith@6.. how can one not know?… but it just shows the great diversity of our backgrounds and life-journeys.

11. Got QUANTA, no prob; but couldn’t at first see that MULE also meant ‘cross’ or why SANTA could be described as ‘sacked’.

12. I agree with andysmith@6 : it is sad that nobody realises that a quantum leap is actually the smallest possible one, which is why it is discontinuous.

13. Generally enjoyable – nothing too obscure for me except 20a FIRST SEA LORD – but that one was gettable from the anagram – although I had to toss up momentarily between “casts” and “adrift” as the anagrind – and the already much discussed 23a QUANTA (embarrassed by your post@6, andysmith). Felt 18a was a poor clue for ROLL.

    I liked 5a MISOGAMY (as previously mentioned@3), 11a NON-COMMITTAL, 17a TATTOER and 21d SANTA (the plays on words for all of these made me smile).

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

14. Quanta was a write-in; romans made me smile. LOI was begone, but only because confab took me so long. All good fun.

    Thanks Eileen and Imogen.

15. Lovely variety of clues today, with many fun surfaces I thought. Re “quanta” it is not just a physics term – Ian Fleming felt fit to use it in the title of a short story “A Quantum of Solace” where it takes on just this meaning – one might say ” a tiny drop”. The film under the same title has, as usual, nothing to do with the short story. I agree with Andysmith @6 re knowing this sort of thing.

    Many thanks for the blog, Eileen, and the puzzle Imogen.

16. Missed QUANTA, not because I didn’t know it, but because I was sure it had to be WEEVIL (wee = tiny, vi[a]l[s] = packets, as can hide, giving the insect). On second look, I suppose that describing vials as packets would be a bit loose, and anyway the crossers didn’t fit, so I can’t complain. Otherwise, I agree with the consensus regarding the abundance of wit, with favourites among those mentioned above.

    Thanks to Imogen and to Eileen for the parsing of GLOAT (I couldn’t see how goat = attack, doh.)

17. DaveinNC@16 – me too with the attack GOAT!

18. Defeated by QUANTA, but I see I have plenty of company.

    Thanks quenbarrow for pointing out the reference to the Mass Observation organisation: I’m currently reading a book of diaries from some of their contributors covering the period 1946-48: fascinating stuff.

19. When doing these puzzles, I often amuse myself by trying to guess which clue would get the most, er, CONFAB, in the blog. Today I thought it would be MISOGAMY: I would never have guessed QUANTA, in part because Quantum Computing seems to be in the press almost daily (which probably is a comment on the kind of press I read – Nerd!).

20. GK is, of ocurse, “what you know”. QUANTA was my third, after CLOSER and CHOOSY. BEGONE was LOI, after CONFAB.

    btw, have you noticed that nearly everyone now says “confLab”?

21. An enjoyable challenge. Yes, muffin, I have noticed, especially on Test Match Special. I’ve emailed asking them to tell Alison, in particular, that CONFAB is short for confabulation and I don’t want to hear about her flab!

     

22. muffin @20 re “conflab” – I am one of those who will have to correct their pronunciation from now on…guilty as charged! Etymologically, it is obviously “confabulation”, a “fable” or story told together (“con”) so it’s not a readily understandable error.

23. Never heard conflab, and can’t quite believe that the articulate Alison (Mitchell I presume) is guilty of it.

24. Enjoyed that very much, though dos not get the qua bit of quanta, and also don’t see why mule = cross or why shin = climb? (I expect I shall say duh when these are explained!)

25. Beobachterin @24

    A mule is a “cross” as in “hybrid” – between a donkey and a mare.

    I wondered about SHIN for climb too, but the expression “shin up a tree” occurred to me.

26. FWIW Plank did more than “accounted for certain objects changing colour when heated” – a huge problem for Physics at the time was that on classical laws, the amount of energy emitted by a heated black body would be infinite = the “Ultraviolet catastrophe” … quantization of the emitted radiation provided a mathematical model in precise accord with experimental measurements. Well done that man. And of course that set in train the intellectual development of quantum theory, probably THE most important intellectual development inside the last 100+ years.

27. SANTA was in the Quiptic yesterday. Are the Guardian setters going for a month-long theme?

28. [It’s easier to understand Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect in terms of quanta. When light hits metals, electrons can be given off. The energy of the electrons doesn’t depend on the intensity of the light (though the number of them does); instead it is determined by the frequency of the light. Below a given frequency, determined by the metal, no electrons at all are given off. This is because the energy of the quanta is determined by the frequency, given by Planck’s equation:

    E = hf (“f” is the frequency – should really be the Greek letter “nu”, h is Planck’s constant)

    The quantum of light (better known as a photon) must have a minimum energy to knock the electron off; the electron has whatever excess over the minimum the photon had.]

29. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

    Nothing to add except I thought SANTA was Turkish?

30. Most of this was on the friendly side for an Imogen but very enjoyable throughout

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

31. ROMANS my best clue. LOI QU(ANT)A.

32. Loved Romans, Gloat and Quanta. Helps to be a physicist! Thanks to Imogen & Eileen.

33. Alphalpha @29 – I’m sure you’re teasing. 😉  My apologies for not making it clear: SANTA is holy / saint in Italian [as in Santa Maria].

34. Eileen@33.

    Indeed not – I seem to have perpetrated a solecism (have I? Not sure what a solecism is and nothing in the dictionary helps in understanding andysmith@6). Anyway I have wandered thus far in life under the impression that it was Sancta (Maria etc).  Just shows you don’t know what you don’t know until someone kindly points it out.

35. Alphalpha @34

    I believe a solecism is a slightly sloshed collection of planets orbiting a star.

36. essexboy@35: Lol!!  Now to work it into a conversation…..

37. Alphalpha again – I’m so sorry [I’ve been having my supper, hence the delay.]

    You’re not at all wrong: Sancta Maria is Latin for Saint Mary, hence Italian Santa Maria. My apologies all over again.

    As for solecism – as you’ve discovered from dictionaries, it’s practically the worst type of mistake [breach of syntax, absurdity, incongruity, breach of good manners – all in Chambers – one can possibly make and I was mortified to be thus accused so early in the day. I wasn’t entirely unaware of quantum /a and only ‘resorted to Wikipedia’ to find the nearest definition to the clue that I could and was chuffed to discover a verbatim one, as highlighted. I’ve been in and out all day [and I ‘m about to go out again now] so didn’t have a chance to respond to andysmith comment 5.

    Thanks, essexboy@35. 😉

38. I saw 5dn as a more of a dd than a cd, as in observation (study) of the mass (population) and going to church (attendance) for a service (mass).

39. Eileen – no intention of hurling insults at someone who is clearly brighter, better read and more able at crosswords than me – I was just amazed that any intellectual in the 21st century could be uninformed about such a key concept.

40. Alphalpha@34

    There are many Sancta Maria labels.

    I have always understood it to be the equivalent of Sanctum, holy place, but the feminine version. So Sancta Maria, but Sanctum Petrus.

    I may well be wrong.

41. Thanks Imogen for a reachable crossword, and to Eileen, of course.

    mutter, mutter, …CP Snow:

    “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?…

    I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had“…Wikipedia The Two Cultures, mutter, mutter

     

     

42. So on post-prandial reflection a solecism appears to be a display of innocent ignorance, and something to pounce on if you’re that way inclined.  (Unless I’ve got that wrong in which case pouncers this way pl.)  Hmmm….  But is it a “sin”?  Is to “be wrong” the same as to “do wrong”?  I’m with Eileen on  this one (cf blog/SHIN).  It’s a nice distinction I think?

43. Dave keene@40: Thanks for the lifeline, but I’m inclined to think that we’ve wandered into Latin a little bit.

    In discussion over dinner it was suggested that the kindest way to address a solecism would be to say something like “your slipshod solecism is showing”, but nobody could actually say it and it was dropped. Silence ensued.

44. Like quenbarow @7 I saw 5dn as a dd: a study of the population and, more cryptically, a study of what Roman Catholics do on their days off… 🙂 Glad to see others (e.g. Gladys @18 saw the connection).

    And I was mystified along with others by the “attack goat”, but that has placed an interesting picture in my mind.

    Thanks Imogen for the workout, Eileen for the parsing and essexboy @35 for the humour

45. PS jeceris @38 – we crossed, but glad to see another member of the tribe

     

46. Hi Dave Ellison @41 – your comment rang a distant bell re an Arachne puzzle I blogged but I was amazed when I researched it to find just how distant – almost exactly eight years ago! [in the days when we didn’t supply the clues in the blogs]. The clue for 9ac was, ‘Third element of “uncertainty principle” gripped German physicist”.

47. I knew you had discussed CP Snow at some stage, Eileen, but didn’t realise it was so long ago either. I must say how much more interesting and useful the blogs are now with the clues included.

    I noticed several names there we haven’t heard from for some time (I did wonder about Derek Lazenby, in particular).

     

     

     

48. Ah, the joys of crosswording. As with quenbarrow@7 and Gladys@18 et al, 5d MASS OBSERVATION got me to dig out my copy of some of the MO diaries which covers the war years, and paints a fascinating picture of civilian life (Foyle’s War, anyone?) I had no idea that the project is still ongoing, now based at the University of Sussex.

    Lots of excellent clues today. I can’t believe I didn’t get NO TRUMPS, doh, which was my COD, along with 5d.

    Thanks Imogen for eth great workout and Eileen for the as ever illuminating blog.

49. A lovely puzzle, thanks to both. Far too late to say this I know, but I do hope NO TRUMPS was a deliberate bit of trolling of the visiting villain.

50. I nearly gave up on this but it was worth persevering! BEGONE made me smile.

51. I’ve always said “conflab”. Seems it’s been in use since 19th century, as dialect alteration of “confab”. There’s even a conferencing tool called “Con-flab”

52. Dave Ellison @47 – I miss Hedgehog

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