Guardian 28,240 / Imogen

80 comments on “Guardian 28,240 / Imogen”

1. I’d just got 21A from arbutus, when the BBC informed me that it was 400 years today since the Mayflower set sail for the New World. I was therefore expecting to find ‘pilgrim fathers’ and ‘Plymouth’, but they never materialised. Never mind, it was still an enjoyable puzzle and my inner schoolboy was amused by HEARSE. Took me quite a while to work out that the SH in SHEAR came from ‘can it’ and that we were looking for half a tsetse fly rather than a stand-off in STIFFEST. Poor Laika.

   Thanks Imogen and Eileen

2. Thanks Eileen for parsing WILD DOGS and SHEAR. A dnf for me as I had to reveal 10, not a very elegant word. Like Penfold@1 MAYFLOWER was an early entry and like them I had heard it was the 400th anniversary of it sailing so was expecting a theme too.
   Again like Penfold I had a smile at HEARSE when I finally saw it. In fact the SE corner took a while.
   Thanks to the two ladies Eileen and Imogen

3. Fortunately, I’d heard earlier in the week about the anniversary – I knew the year but not the day.

4. I only recall seeing Matilda’s name above a Cryptic on a few previous occasions and wasn’t sure what to expect.  Quite testing today with a first pass that only threw up PATMOS (and that needed a Google check!)  Second time around, the NE corner largely fell and, from there on, it was a steady solve though LAIKA was a dnk and needed a Reveal.  I also failed on WICKER where I had a (slightly unsatisfactory as Eileen says but also wrong) WICKET (bits of wood – though hardly twigs unless playing a very rustic game of cricket).

   For once, I spotted the pangram and it helped: JAWING was LOI and J the only missing letter.  Not sure I’d have seen the solution without.  I certainly came to enjoy Matilda’s style and humour as the puzzle unravelled.  Some cracking clues of delightful simplicity – AMAZE, ELICIT, INQUIRES and the beautiful EXIST stood out.  SYNTAX is an amusing homophone (and probably the word that signalled the pangram, given the Q and Z were already in place).  CORNWALL and CHAMPERS both misled for a while and I loved the definitions for SIGNPOST.  COTD was a toss up between the aforementioned EXIST and the clever GRAYS INN.  Splendid definition and could there really be an anagram of ‘granny is’?  Yes, there could.

   Many thanks to both Matilda and Eileen

5. Thank you Imogen and Eileen, especially for the parsing of SHEAR.

   For the first time in my crossword life, spotting that this was a pangram actually helped, prompting the possibility of a Z in AMAZE.

6. Not my cup of tea at all, I’m afraid. I found the parsing too tortuous for enjoyment.

7. Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

   A few were unfamiliar – 18a HERITABILITY, 15d UP TO SNUFF (sorry I can’t recall that one from a previous blog, Eileen) and 20d PROSIT, my LOI. Fortunately I had enough crossers and could work out the wordplay for each. I must confess I only got 1d WICKER from the WICKED wordplay but didn’t understand it fully either, Eileen. I really liked 5a PATMOS, 25a INQUIRES, 26a SYNTAX, 4d GOLDFISH BOWL and 11d ALTO CLARINET. But my absolute favourite was definitely 16d CHAMPERS!

   [The judges clue for JAWING at 10a and the GRAYS INN solution at 17d were strangely coincidental, as I am going to court tomorrow to see a barrister friend welcomed as a District Court Judge.]

8. Mark @4 – you seem to have your setters confused. Imogen is Richard Browne, a former editor of the Times crossword.

   I was momentarily beguiled by ‘wicket’ at 1dn, too.

   Well spotted, everyone – I never look for pangrams!

9. I wondered if ‘popular’ in 2d was also intended as a reference to Pop Larkin in TDBOM?

10. [Didn’t see the pangram – well done to those who saw it (Mark@4 and Roger N@5)! We crossed, Mark, so apologies yet again that I didn’t acknowledge some commonalities, but I am not sure why you had the setter’s name confused on this occasion?]

11. Eileeen @8: what a twit.  I even checked how many times Matilda had set a Cryptic before posting!  Apologies to Imogen.

12. [And we crossed too, Eileen@8.]

13. Thank you, Eileen, needed your unraveling of SHEAR (which I find dreadfully clumsy) and STIFFEST where I missed the F for following.

    I don’t understand the definition of HERITABILITY.  Surely that is the capacity to inherit, not pass on.  Perhaps others will see it differently.

    Imogen often has a somewhat obscure way of defining things and this can make fun clues like GOLDFISH BOWL & ALTO CLARINET but I’m not wild about JAWING = lecture.

    All in all a pleasant answer to insomnia.

    Many thanks, Imogen.

14. JinA @10: that’s twice in two days you’ve apologised for not including me in your responses and there’s no need.  I am regularly confused about things as you’ll have noted from previous moments of public embarrassment.  I hope you’ll be enjoying more champers after your engagement with the beak!

15. Yep, toughish, similar slog to yesterday, with my ignorance to the fore…the Revelations ref, Cornwall as Celtic, and the 400th anniversary going right over my head. Had just a dozen or so scattered round, looking dumbly at the rest, then it unfolded, but with the ‘sh’ for ‘can it’ also eluding my parse. Thought elicit meant ‘give rise to’, but my old Collins has ‘bring to light’ as well, so ok. Inquires earns GotD, and syntax is a chestnut…you need one or two in an Imogen! Wicker at 1d was a hmmm?, 4d a bit the same.. nudge-ish but clever, and while the floor/stun/amaze cluster is a chestnut, still took a while to click (like rusty points on an old rail track). 11d too took a while, misdirect had me looking for a phrase that means ‘impending’. 16 and 19 were fun, while the ‘brief’ ref in 17d only rang after looking up…d’oh, been there, done the London Walks tour. Nice workout, lots of wit, ta Imogen and Eileen.

16. In all my years I had never heard of an alto clarinet-bass clarinet, yes and alto flute. It certainly exists but if its not in the Rite of Spring it must be rare. the clue provided it easily enough so  no complaints there.

    There was some clever wordplay here-I had trouble justifying SHEAR(LOI and the blog explains why.)

    Otherwise a very challenging puzzle.If I’d spotted the panagram looming,I may have finished quicker

    thanks Eileen and Imogen

17. Julie @7 – it’s here. I only remembered it because I blogged it and had to look it up then.

    William @13 – re HERITABLE: I can’t work out whether or not you’re agreeing with my quibble in the blog.

    grantinfreo @15 – the anniversary didn’t have anything to do with the  puzzle. 😉

    Sorry, all, for the delay – I temporarily lost my internet connection.

18. Whew, a tough one today! A dnf for us today as we didn’t get JAWING… never heard of that to mean lecture before. If we’d noticed the pangram, we would have got it!

    Favourites were HEARSE and HORS DOEUVRES.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen!

19. Eileen @17, hmm maybe not but, as your ? implies, I do wonder whether Imogen, who is pretty switched on, was aware of it.

20. I always experience some trepidation when I see Imogen’s (and, even more so, Enigmatist’s) name above the crossword. This one was no exception to my ‘very hard’ rule. Anyway, my computer and I eventually solved this with quite a lot of BIFDs and later parsing (with the exception of the clue for SHEAR).

    I should know better but I keep getting tricked by following meaning ‘F’. I missed the pangram, of course.

    Some fine clues; I’ve seen the painted wolves in some wild life parks and enjoyed that clue, with the parsing coming later.

    Thanks Imogen for the torture and Eileen for a comprehensive blog.

21. Eileen @17:  So sorry, we’re in agreement – I missed your comment in the blog – unforgivable.

22. brojo @ 18 – Chambers gives ”to scold, lecture’ for ‘jaw’ and, for ‘jawing’, ‘talk, especially if unrestrained, abusive or reproving’.

    grant @19 – I just meant that you didn’t need to beat yourself up for lack of GK: it wasn’t essential for the solve.

23. i really enjoyed this, and also unusually spotted the pangram which helped me with 10ac (so RogerN@5, I knew the feeling but in a different way)

    On the basis that teachers once – untruthfully – instilled in me that there are no silly questions…can someone explain why 4d is Goldfish Bowl? I must be missing something… is it hi-vis as in transparent? jacket as in the thing that encases the swimmer? (I’ve literally come up with that possible explanation just now once I started typing, but I’ve been mulling it over for a good fruitless few minutes)

    Thanks to Eileen and Imogen, much fun. (I liked 19d as well, even though it was my 2nd to LOI)

24. …and I just now hit your link to painted dogs, yet another thing going over my head..saints, linguistic anthropology, history (not to mention Latin, id est yesterday), sigh 🙂

25. wonderstevie @23 – I wasn’t over-impressed with GOLDFISH BOWL and wondered whether someone would comment. I took it as referring to the saying, ‘It’s like living in a goldfish bowl’ (exposed on all sides and so highly visible – no privacy.) I wasn’t keen on the ‘jacket’ – I think you’re probably on the right lines there.

    grant @24 – I wrestled with that clue for ages, never having heard of the animals and had to (literally) sleep on it. It was only when I woke up that I thought to google the unlikely-seeming ‘painted wolves’ together!

26. ..ta Eileen, I feel better now (well, wasn’t really suffering, more just nattering, or wittering as VW might say..)

27. I didn’t really enjoy this one despite lots of clever clues and neat surfaces such as in 1, 9 and others.

    Allusions to ‘doctor’ always present so many possibilities.  Is it an anagrind, MD, DR, MO, PhD (A doctor I injected for bug. (5)) etc.? I alighted on DD only after the fact since I knew painted wolves.

    I see Eileen’s reservation about 18’s definition, though I can almost read it as being correct.  A HERITABLE characteristic can PASS ON to the next generation.

    UP TO SNUFF as is an esoteric, antiquated expression.  However, though I had to guess it from the crossers and check, I was able to parse it and it should have been gettable.

    I couldn’t parse 23 which I thought a clumsy clue with the “Put to ” instruction and the syntax, nor 27.

    GRAY’S INN is a bit esoteric but was gettable.

    Thanks Eileen

     

28. I found this tough and it was a dnf with wicket (I took the ‘t’ from the must finally!) and a totally unparsed george instead of HEARSE, having completely failed to think of a vehicle which fitted both the clue and the crossers. Some not fully parsed answers – SHEAR, WILD DOGS and STIFFEST Also missed the pangram.

    Agree some less than elegant clues but nevertheless some good ones eg GRAYS INN and EXIST. I was amused by GOLDFISH BOWL.

    Thanks to Imogen for the workout and to Eileen for the helpful blog.

29. Thanks Eileen.

    I got SHEAR from (Wheat)sheaf but did not understand why f changed to r (but ,why not, after Wicked to Wicker).

    I was certain it was Wicket too!

    Please explain how “online” gives E  unless it is from E-mail (online mail / electronic-mail).

    “Can it” to “SH” was very clever imho, as was SYN for fags and beer (though it took me an age to get the X and Y).

30. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

    I’m another who had WICKET for 1D, on the basis that cricket stumps are colloquially referred to as ‘sticks’, and it’s barely a hop from there to twigs. Oh well.

31. Good blog as usual from Eileen, but I’m left with one question.  In 27a STIFFEST, “replay” means “play again”, or even “play back”, but not backwards, so how does it indicate a reversal?

32. Thanks, Eileen. “Reasonably tough” is about right, I’d say. Lots of nice “aha!” moments, separated by stretches of bafflement.

    I share your reservation about 1d’s “change a letter to some other unspecified one” device. It’s not that it’s difficult, but it feels incomplete, as when someone whistles a musical phrase but doesn’t finish it.

    Here’s a spotting of 15d in the wild:

    “This case was being prosecuted, competently enough, by my learned Head of Chambers, and as we sat together chattering before the judge came into Court, I happened to remark, that Guthrie wasn’t looking quite up to snuff.” [The Trials of Rumpole, John Mortimer, 1979.]

33. I am also a WICKET person having used branches (though not quite twigs) back in the day when buying actual wickets was a luxury 🙂

    I spotted the possible pangram after INQUIRES which helped me get JAWING. However, was a dnf as I didn’t know the word PROSIT.

    Took me more than an hour, but was worth it. Thank you IMOGEN and Eileen.

34. Dr WhatsOn @31 – you’re quite right: it doesn’t.  I did jib at it when I solved it but I was beguiled by the surface, for which it was necessary, of course. I expected someone to comment!

    Thanks, Miche @32 for the quotation.

35. Imogen is usually a dnf for me, and when after one pass through the clues I had only one filled in, I didn’t much like my chances. However, I surprised myself and got there with a couple of hours of work (and a bit of help from google for GRAYS INN and LAIKA). Like Mark @4 and others, I was watching for a pangram, which helped with my loi JAWING. There was an abundance of clever, tough but fair clues along the way to provide lots of ‘aha’ moments, as well as some smile-raisers. I’ll just mention EXIST, INQUIRES, SYNTAX, and HE-ARSE among the latter. Thanks to Imogen for allowing me a rare and satisfying win. Thanks also to Eileen for the blog, and in particular for explaining the SH in SHEAR.

36. “They **** you up, cryptic crossword compilers…” One of those tough puzzles that left me musing “Did I actually enjoy that, or was it as frustrating as trying to plait raw spaghetti?” It was such a relief when I cracked the occasional clue straight away (e.g. DO WITHOUT, MOISTURE, ELICIT). I nearly “hit the wall,” as marathon runners say, with about five clues to go, but summoned up reserves of stamina to finish in an unremarkable time.

    I liked AMAZE and SHEAR. I’ve never heard of UP TO SNUFF, but will try to include it in conversation soon, just to see what reaction I get. WICKER was indeed unsatisfactory and lazy, while I agree ‘replay’ in 27A is wrong. And (26A) if drinking and smoking are sins, I’ve been condemned to the eternal sulphurous inferno for nearly half a century. Hey, my local’s open now, so I’m off for some sinning – socially distanced, of course.

37. Definitely a DNF. I also had WICKET (isn’t a wicket gate made of twigs? Maybe not). And UP TO STUFF. But the biggest problem I had was a very sure BUOYANCY VEST for 4d. Made it difficult to make any further progress. And it (still) seems a superior answer – to me – for the clue.

38. We still don’t understand why it’s Goldfish Bowl!

39. Very much held up in NE corner by JAWING and False STEP. HORS DOEVRES an excellent and early welcome appetiser.

40. A bit of my life I will never get back. GOLDFISH BOWL only went in because BOWS didn’t check. JAWING is a participle not a noun. Never heard of UP TO SNUFF. But HEARSE was fun!

41. Peter & Ant @38 – if a goldfish is swimming in a transparent enclosure, that could fancifully be described as a hi-vis jacket. It’s quite a stretch. In a different mood, I might have enjoyed that. Today I harrumphed a bit.

    (I wonder whether syntax/sin tax reminded anyone else of Mike Yarwood doing Denis Healey, decades ago. I’m sure the gag is older than that, though.)

42. Trailman @40 – I should have given the whole Chambers entry @22: ‘jawing – n (sl) talk, esp if unrestrained, abusive or reproving’. In this context, ‘jawing’ is a gerund, or verbal noun.

    2Scotcheggs @36 – I saw what you did there: one reason why he’s a popular poet. 😉

43. Thanks Eileen @42. I can envisage giving someone a jawing-to, but not a jawing per se, so I’m still struggling. But Chambers is the arbiter so I will give in gracefully.

44. PG Wodehouse, William Tell Told Again, 1904:

    But the people, who prided themselves on being what they called uppen zie schnuffen, or, as we should say, “up to snuff,” and equal to every occasion, had already seen a way out of the difficulty.

45. Imogen is one of the setters I struggle to get on a wavelength with in general, often staring at an almost empty grid for ages so I was delighted to find this a little less chewy than some of our previous showdowns. I’m another one who was helped by the pangram, on the hunt for a J, V and Q once I had X and Z. Of course this method can lead to a whole load of nothing if the puzzle isn’t a pangram and just happens to have a couple of less common letters in it!

    As a fan of clues at the cheekier (literally) end of the spectrum I loved HEARSE.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

46. Thanks both,
    I, too, had very little written in after the first pass. 19 raised a smile, particularly as I’d been harrumphing silently about the use of ‘behind’ in a down clue. Dnk arbutus but the answer had to be mayflower from the crossers.

47. Gave up on 10ac – too many words that fit checkers (and having misread clue, was sure I needed to take L for ‘lecturer’ from ‘judge’ to give ‘dread’) – if I’d remembered to check for the pangram I might have cracked it!

    Peter & Ant@38: Eileen@25 explains.

    Strictly speaking, the Puritans assembled at Southampton and departed thence for America on August 15th, so that would be a more precise date to commemorate.  (I suppose cases could be made for the departure of Speedwell from Sunderland or Mayflower from Rotherhithe.)

48. AC87 @45:  Sometimes, doing that same hunt, one encounters an almost-pangram: 24 or 25 of the letters.  I find myself wondering whether it was an attempt at a pangram that fell short or, as you say, a chance combination.

49. Madmax@23 Please explain how “online” gives E unless it is from E-mail (online mail / electronic-mail).

     

    Yes, that is precisely it; this construct is frequently used these days. As soon as I remembered this, the clue fell easily.

50. I, too, never look for pangrams, as I think I have pointed out before. I always wonder if they are intentional or fortuitous, but this query has never been confirmed or denied by any setter, as far as I know.

    It prompts the question about how frequency of letters used in a particular crossword; I suspect near pangrams of 24, 25 letters (as Mark@48 mentions) are quite common. Perhaps beerhiker and his data base could answer this?

51. peterM @47 – re the Mayflower Pilgrims; you’re right, of course, about the departure from Southampton on August 15th but they had to turn back because of bad weather. The final departure for America was from Plymouth on September 16th.

    This is the best account I can find – it’s very interesting.

52. I usually do the Times crossword before the Guardian because I find it easier. The Guardian always seems a bit loose or even sloppy so although I guessed goldfish bowl correctly I am not satisfied with “cryptic definition” as the solution offered by Eileen. But can someone give a rational explanation for goldfish bowl being a “swimmer’s hi-vis jacket?”? Why “jacket”??

53. Alison @52 – I’m not satisfied with it myself (see my comment @25, where I questioned ‘jacket’ – and Miche’s @41).

     

54. Some Googling has turned up the – probably coincidental – fact that several skiwear manufacturers produce a Bowl jacket (Vaude, Columbia and Patagonia).  But no explanation as to what the word signifies.  Not sure it helps though!  Unless swimmer’s = belonging to a fish, hi-viz = gold, jacket = bowl, resulting in a gold Bowl belonging to a fish giving gold fish Bowl as an &littish answer?  Pretty stretched if so and requires a switch of word order.

55. Wow – that was one tough gig today.  Didn’t even come close to spotting the pangram.  DO WITHOUT and CORNWALL in reasonably quickly but then total mental shut-down although UP TO SNUFF is one that yielded without too much of a struggle.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen!

56. I couldn’t parse SHEAR, and I definitely didn’t like 1 dn. – I’m not a fan of “change” without *any* qualifier on how!

    But that aside, a very enjoyable puzzle with some lovely surfaces. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

57. Re: GOLDFISH BOWL. Eileen@25 gave the correct explanation of the hi-vis part.  Collins online defines jacket as any exterior covering or casing.  So the clue appears to be justified or justifiable, but imo it’s just too contrived to be satisfactory.

58. Maybe not Imogen’s finest hour but I enjoyed EXIST, PROSIT & SYNTAX (primarily in the hope that noone would call the homophone cops). Van winkle trigger warning – music reference to follow – HMHB fans please remember if you going to quote from the book of revelation, don’t keep calling it the book of revelations. There’s no s …

59. A bit late to this, but I parsed goldfish bowl as – the ‘jacket’ is the fishbowl, ie what the fish is in. A ‘gold’ fishbowl would be very visible. So goldfish bowl becomes gold fishbowl.

60. I had lots of comments but deleted them by mistake.  So I’ll just say thanks to Imogen for the puzzle and Eileen for the blog.

    And to penfold@1 to say that we don’t call them “Pilgrim fathers” in the US, just “Pilgrims,” and that they didn’t call themselves either of those.  I’ve just learned from skimming Eileen’s article (I’ll read it properly later) that they got the name in 1820, and that at the time it was Pilgrim Fathers, but that didn’t stick.  It’s just Pilgrims.

     

61. Valentine@60 Plymouth Argyle Football Club are nicknamed The Pilgrims and the club crest is the Mayflower.

62. I only started at tea-time as I was attending to my chariot. The consensus seems to be that it was a bit of a curate’s egg and I’ll go along with that.

    I’m 95% theme-blind, but I always spot a pangram!

    Thanks to Imogen and to Eileen for elucidating some obscure parsing.

63. The clue for 1d was wickedly misleading, with ‘must finally’ leading several commenters to go for WICKET when WICKER was required. Is it possible that the clue has been revised, from a previous version? But not completely…

    As many have said, requiring a change in the final letter without cluing the substitute is lazy, but could it be careless? I’m going with the latter until proven otherwise.

64. This was quite hard, partly because the wording is somewhat liberal in a few cases (e.g. “appears rotten” rather than just “rotten” as an anagrind; “replay” as a reversal indicator) or in a strange word order (e.g. “Put to part of cereal plant, can it” for SH + EAR).  As a result, I ended up with a DNF and revealed the last three, HEARSE, PROSIT, and INQUIRES.  Like the latter of these, but I’d question whether a HEARSE is necessarily slow and whether PROS are necessarily top level sportsmen.  Mainly though, I think my brain was just not 15 today.  I enjoyed the puzzle, nonetheless.

    I liked GOLDFISH BOWL – I thought it worked well as a CD.  Also enjoyed looking up LAIKA again.  I had this as RAITA (homophone of RATE + A) first time through (my bad memory) until some crossers sorted it.

    Failed to spot the pangram and it would have helped mightily with JAWING (forgot I missed this one too!).

    Thanks for the workout, Imogen and Eileen for the excellent blog and links.

65. Can PROS ‘have’ IT in any cryptic reading?

66. I’m another who spotted the pangram in time for it to help with JAWING & AMAZE. The latter has a neatness to it – but the former is a tad clunky. Hey ho. Deffo a curate’s egg puzzle, with lots of guess-first parse-later efforts. Several remained semi-parsed till I came here – so big thanks to Eileen for disentangling my befuddled mind.
    I enjoyed EXIST & INQUIRES, whilst FALSE STEP & HEARSE made me grin.
    But at least I managed to finish it, and I often can’t with Imogen, so I’m pleased about that. Thanks Imogen!

67. Very late and all has been said except to add my own thanks to Eileen for clearing up even more guesswork than usual and Imogen for a real test. I vote thumbs up for Goldfish bowl and Hearse just in case anyone is counting.

68. phitonelly @64:  the first yoghurt to orbit the Earth 😉 (the Americans of course sent up chutneys instead).

69. phitonelly @ 64

    In the UK at least, a hearse with a coffin in it, on the way to a funeral, is certainly slow.

    It’s not much quicker on the way back either.

70. Simon S @69, they are generally slow here too, but I have seen the processions on highways before now and, while not hurtling along, they were certainly moving at a fair lick.  I was really being a bit too nitpicky.

    essexboy @68.  I knew RAITA as the India yoghurt.  I was just hoping it was the dog too.  It’s a bit depressing because I know the story of the Russian space dog, but keep forgetting the intrepid mutt’s name.  Perhaps I’m destined for the GOLDFISH BOWL before much longer 🙂 .

71. Simon S @64 – “It’s not much quicker on the way back either.”  Wow – didn’t know you could come back from a funeral…

72. The hearse can.

73. Agree with some of the comments on here re slightly unsatisfactory parsing – and why does bowl (in goldfish bowl) mean jacket??   I also intensely dislike the examples of schoolboy humour (so in this one we got “falsies” and “arse”… really?!) which does seem to pop up in these crosswords with depressing regularity.

74. Late to comment though I did the crossword early this morning. Completed with the help of the check button, I parsed everything except the SH in SHEAR and STIFFEST, so thank you Eileen for those. I thought GOLDFISH BOWL was quite funny though would have appreciated a more substantial clue. I also wasn’t keen on the clue for HEARSE, though I expect it is an undertakers’ joke. The “anagram of GRANNY IN” bit seems to be missing from the GRAY’S INN blog entry. I missed the pangram too, annoyingly as recently I have looked for them fairly consistently, but didn’t today. Thank you to Imogen for the challenge and to Eileen for the explanations.
    (Btw I found my way to the bloggers’ bios page here which I much enjoyed. I wondered if it might be possible to update it to included thise regular bloggers who are not currently mentioned?)

75. After my nocturnal solving / blogging the night before, I went to bed rather earlier than usual and so missed some of the later comments.

    Paul Bringloe @65 – no, I missed that one!

    Beobachterin @74 – I don’t know how I got away with the missing anagram in 17dn for so long. My typos are usually pounced on within minutes! (I think I was too too busy looking for the best link for GRAY’S INN.) I’ve fixed it now, for the sake of the archive.

76. 1d. Wicket. T from must finally (last letter). N’est- ce pas?

77. Jimbo @76 – sorry, no. If you use the ‘Reveal’ facility here,  you will see that the correct answer is WICKER, as in the blog. There is quite a bit of discussion of this clue in the comments above.

78. Eileen, I was surprised too. Jimbo, how would WICKET mean twigs?

79. Beobachterin – as I said @77, see comments 4, 30, 33,  37 – and there may be more. However, the given answer is WICKER – final answer!

80. Harrumph

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