A fun puzzle – my favourites were 8ac, 10ac, 21dn, 24dn, and especially 19dn. Thanks to Picaroon.
There is a theme, as mentioned in 23ac – all of the other across solutions are NEOLOGISMS
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | FIREWALL | Let go of everything, including WPC’s protection (8) |
| definition is “PC’s protection” as in a computer’s protection from network attacks FIRE ALL=”Let go of everything” around the W from WPC, with the remaining letters belonging to the definition |
||
| 9 | E-BIKES | Returning live president’s vehicles (1-5) |
| BE=exist=”live” reversed/returning; plus IKE’S=Eisenhower’s=”president’s” | ||
| 10 | SEXT | Determined to hide kiss in explicit message (4) |
| SET=”Determined” around X=symbol for a “kiss” | ||
| 11 | MANSCAPING | Unfortunate snag in camp grooming activity (10) |
| anagram/”Unfortunate” of (snag in camp)* | ||
| 12 | VAPERS | Characters covered in lava: perspiring, but they aren’t exactly smoking (6) |
| Letters/characters hidden in [la]VA PERS[piring] | ||
| 14 | TWEETING | Sharing one’s thoughts with cute touch, briefly (8) |
| TWEE=”cute” + TING[e]=”touch, briefly” | ||
| 15 | TRUTHER | Believer in fake news article, Republican keeping dull routine (7) |
| THE=definite “article” + R (Republican); around RUT=”dull routine” | ||
| 17 | FATBERG | Mass of waste paper cut by a composer (7) |
| definition: a mass of waste items flushed into a sewer system FT (Financial Times, paper) around A; plus Alban BERG=”composer” – edit thanks to Beobachterin |
||
| 20 | UNFRIEND | Refuse further contact with a foreign fellow in red pants (8) |
| UN=”a” in French i.e. “foreign”; plus F (fellow); plus (in red)* with “pants” as anagram indicator | ||
| 22 | BREXIT | Nationalist policy from monarch getting in scrap (6) |
| REX=king, “monarch”; inside BIT=”scrap” | ||
| 23 | NEOLOGISMS | One new chronicle with current text, like the across answers here (10) |
| anagram/”new” of (One)*; plus LOG=”chronicle”; plus I=symbol for electric “current”; plus SMS=”text” message | ||
| 24 | VLOG | Very extensive, nameless posts online (4) |
| V (very) + LO[n]G=”extensive” minus ‘n’ i.e. “nameless” | ||
| 25 | BESTIE | Man United star that is as Aeneas to Achates (6) |
| definition: a best/close friend George BEST=”Man United star” [wiki]; plus I.E.=”that is” |
||
| 26 | RINGTONE | Musical cycle has style and contemporary sound (8) |
| referring to Wagner’s RING cycle; plus TONE=”style” | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | WIREHAIR | Dog in cable host’s opening show (8) |
| WIRE=”cable” + H[ost]’s opening letter + AIR=broadcast=”show” | ||
| 2 | LENT | Fast, but not when in France! (4) |
| definition: a Christian period of fasting LENT means ‘slow’ i.e. ‘not fast’ in French |
||
| 3 | PATMOS | Greek island with quiet ambiance — not half! (6) |
| P (piano)=”quiet” + ATMOS[phere]=”ambiance – not half” | ||
| 4 | PLANETS | Time to invest in kites — they’re seen in the sky (7) |
| T (time) inside PLANES=known in slang as “kites” | ||
| 5 | HEUCHERA | Funny hue by red borders of reseda plant genus (8) |
| (hue)*, with “Funny” as anagram indicator; CHE=the revolutionary “red”; plus the outer letters of R[esed]A | ||
| 6 | DISPUTABLE | Make invalid’s absorbing phrase open to debate (10) |
| DISABLE=”Make invalid”, around PUT=express=”phrase” as in ‘put it politely’ | ||
| 7 | PENNON | Keep writing about new standard (6) |
| PEN ON=”Keep writing”, around N (new) | ||
| 13 | ENTEROLITH | Put in grinding toil with hard calculus (10) |
| definition: “calculus” meaning a stone created in organs such as the kidney ENTER=”Put in” + (toil)* with “grinding” as anagrind + H (hard) |
||
| 16 | ENERGIES | Efforts of heartless foes seizing empty Reichstag (8) |
| ENE[m]IES=”heartless foes” around empty R[eichsta]G | ||
| 18 | RAISONNÉ | Descartes’s logical bit of algebra is on news (8) |
| definition: French for “logical” hidden in [algeb]RA IS ON NE[ws] |
||
| 19 | AD ASTRA | Shot as a dart from Caesar heavenwards (2,5) |
| definition: ‘to the stars’ in Latin (as a dart)* with “Shot” as anagrind |
||
| 21 | NEEDED | Required for reporter, any editors (6) |
| ‘N E’ spoken as single letters is a homophone/”for reporter” of “any”; plus ED and ED=”editors” | ||
| 22 | BOSUNS | Sailors thus about to enter Rolls (6) |
| SO=”thus” reversed/”about” and inside BUNS=”Rolls” | ||
| 24 | VOTE | Mark an X in 18 consecutive letters brought up (4) |
| there are 18 consecutive letters going from ‘E to V’; reversed/”brought up” to give V OT E | ||
The explanation is missing from the blog for FATBERG: FT (paper) with A inserted, plus BERG for composer.
That was fun. TRUTHER was new to me, and so too were ENTEROLITH and HEUCERA, both of which I worked out from the clues I could not parse FIREWALL, VOTE (so clever!) or RINGTONE (because I had decided the definition must be ‘musical cycle’. I wonder when NEOLOGISM was one? (Can’t check the OED from my phone.) Many thanks to Manehi for the blog and to Picaroon for the clever puzzle.
Beaut fun but a couple of the neos–manscaping, truther–were ‘ok, if that’s a thing’. Makes one feel a bit old. Otoh, firewall is by now hardly neo at all (mind you, didn’t have the wit to separate the W until crossers were in). So it goes. Didn’t know the plant or the kidney stone, but did what it said. Thought it cute that the 18d hidden needed the acute to make it adjectival. The neo at 17ac, heard on radio exposes etc, always makes me feel blerrk, not that one should shy, it is our waste after all. Lots to enjoy, thanks Picaroon and Manehi.
Clever list of neologisms – very contemporary. ENTEROLITH and RAISONNE were new but easily gettable. Fave was HEUCHARA, which I enjoy propagating. TWEETING seems to be the clue of choice in crosswords at the moment. LOI was WIREDALE. Ta manehi for parsing NEEDED and Picaroon for the toughest workout so far this week.
WIREHAIR, always get something wrong!
All of the neologisms were familiar to me but it did mean several of the crossing down solutions were the kind Pasquale likes to test us with. I solved this online and was surprised that Check removed the final E in RAISONNÉ – I thought the convention was that accents are always ignored in solutions.
Thanks to Picaroon and manehi
Although I didnt parse it I thought AIREDALE fitted the bill for 1d so that put paid to 15/
I had never heard of FATBERG and slightly misled myself what with there being a BYRD
So three unsolved but I enjoyed the rest-all clued perfectly fairly.
Nice to see Picaroon go out on a limb. Thanks all.
[copmus – FATBERG stories have become very popular with the UK media over the last few years. MANSCAPING was the least familiar to me]
Copmus@7 I was thinking of AIREDALE as well, hence my mongrel @2 🙂
Sadly, I thought of Dale Winton as the host of a show
As a female, MANSCAPING was a new one for me too. I had at least seen the other NEOLOGISMS somewhere before. I haven’t seen WIREHAIR as a dog type in its own right, though there are plenty of wirehaired this and thats.
What a clever and enjoyable puzzle. Not least because there is a distinct air of anti-22ac snark running through quite a few of the clues. Has it come to this, I ask myself – when I was born, my parents were keeping going on snoek. The only thing that will keep us going through the next few months will be snark. Thank you, Picaroon.
And thanks to manehi for explaining in particular the (very ingenious) parsing of FIREWALL.
How did we manage without the word FATBERG? The village where I live has an annual litter pick. One year I found some Brexiters (well, some kind of moron, anyway) had driven a dozen miles into the countryside to dump seven carrier bags full of bottles by the roadside. But last year I actually found a small fatberg in a stream. They’re not all the size of buses or even Eric Pickles.
Yes, lots of fun. I got WIREHAIR but thought wirehaired was more usual: indeed, Mr Google tells me that it normally refers to a kind of cat, not a dog. LOI was VLOG, which looked rather impenetrable for some time. Many thanks to Picaroon and manehi.
And of course there is an E cable. I’ll get my coat now…
Seemed to be a lot of ‘think of a word and take some letters away’ clues
I found this tough, but fairly clued. LOI was the (in hindsight) straightforward RAISONNE, but the Guardian app refused to credit it WITHOUT the acute accent on the É, which I suppose is fair enough but it delayed my breakfast, and was in apparent contrast to the experience of beery hiker@6.
Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.
That was very tough this morning mostly because the neologsims have really flown over my head. As weith TimW @16, I was tripped-up by RAISONNÉ on the app for a while whilst SEXTing my BESTIE and then posting on my VLOG. I’m off for some MANSCAING now because I’m tuyrning into a lockdown FATBERG.
[Neilh @12: I thought it was the other way round and that all Eric Pickles were the size of a fatberg?]
Thanks Picarron for an interesting puzzle and manehi for the (V/B)log.
Very clever, fitting all those NEOLOGISMS across the grid. E-BIKES are fun, but I’m glad that I’ll never feel the need to SEXT,to VLOG or for MANSCAPING.
Favourites were AD ASTRA and PATMOS and I
also like HEUCHERAs. Took a long time for me yo ket go of the W from WPC, maybe because out eldest daughter is now a WPC.
Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.
An amazing feat of grid-filling, involving a bit of ‘guess and check’ but most of the NEOLOGISMS (eventually) rang a bell (second crossword SEXT in less than a week!) – and some ugly ones there were, too.
I enjoyed building up the unknown HEUCHERA and smiled at the thought of ‘fidus Achates’ being Aeneas’ BESTIE and when the NEEDED penny dropped.
In my reading of 8ac, I separated FIRE (to let go) ALL, as in the euphemism, ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go’.
As so often, I can’t possible list all the clues I ticked, so Ill leave it there, with many thanks to Picaroon for a brilliant puzzle and manehi for a fine blog.
[And thanks, NeilH, for your observations @12.]
This seemed impenetrable at first, but I managed a few across solutions and then spotted NEOLOGISMS, which loosened it up – a bit. NW quadrant held me up a while – I was another who toyed with AIREDALE. Chambers hyphenates WIRE-HAIR – but I’m not using that as an excuse.
I wondered about FIREWALL being a neologism – I’m sure its literal meaning (a wall to stop a fire from spreading) has been around a long time – but I find the term can refer to a novel usage of a word, and not just a new coinage.
Parenthetically, how new does a word have to be to qualify as a neologism? Any word coined by a single person at least starts life as one (eg HEUCHERA).
Thanks to Picaroon for a clever and meaty challenge.
And of course, another president would have fitted in 9a-the mind boggles
Anyone who got all the theme entries through familiarity needs to look at themselves.
But anyone who got them by following the excellent clues deserves a pint!
I thought it was unreasonable to insist on the e acute in raisonné. When I learnt french my mother was french speaking Belgian, it was not compulsory to put accents on capital letters. Some well known foreign expressions are ok in a crossword, but I don’t think those of us who do the puzzle online should have to change keyboard settings to complete the puzzle.
beery hiker @6
I thought exactly the same. A bit peverse of someone putting together the online version, maybe. Where do you even find e-acute on a tablet?
[Tim @16 – my post may have been worded badly, but I was making exactly the same point – I wrote RAISONNE originally]
Always the contrarian, I found this a dreary and joyless grind, but also somehow knew it would be popular with the usual suspects. I suppose it’s an age thing, and I’m quite pleased I’m old enough to remember when none of these neologisms existed, and crosswords (and the world) were kinder and gentler places. Bah humbug …
As with others on here I forced in Airedale with the three crossers I had and therefore couldn’t get TRUTHER, which would have been last one in. But a bridge too far for me, just didn’t know the word. Though I did manage to stumble over the line with the other NEOLOGISMS. Not my preferred area of knowledge today, but pleased to have managed to have got so far with the puzzle. With RAISONNE and VOTE (very neat) the first two in, I stared at V something O something for ages, thinking I must have been mistaken, before the penny dropped with what the theme was that Picaroon had decided on today…
Thanks Picaroon, Manehi
Faced with E*T*R*L***, I decided it had to be enthralled, i.e. enslaved, or ‘put in grinding toil’. Despite not understanding how the rest of it worked, it just seemed far more likely that I was missing the parsing than that there was a weird word to fit. My wordfinder didn’t have any other suggestions either. Anyway, BESTIE dropped eventually, so it got sorted out.
I see no reason to get anxious about the last E in RAISONNE (revbob@22 et al). There are no marks deducted, and those who just wrote the unaccented letter in on paper certainly won’t have given it a second thought.
At 9a I thought of ABE rather than IKE first, which gives E-BABES. Rather disappointed that wasn’t it.
I found this a fun way to break from my self-imposed cruciverbal sabbatical
I think the acute accent thing is just a bug – if you want to compare “raisonnné” and “raisonne” in Javascript (the language used in the browser) you have to get rid of the diacritics …
‘raisonnné’.normalize(“NFD”).replace(/[\u0300-\u036f]/g, “”)
🙂
UNFRIEND is not strictly a neologism, but has been around for centuries in a dusty corner of the lexicon:
1659, Thomas Fuller, The Appeal of Injured Innocence:
“I hope, sir, that we are not mutually Unfriended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.”
Hadn’t noticed the accent in 18d, but as I normally reveal when I’m sure of the answer (lazy, I know), it didn’t matter.
I really enjoyed this one, although I find obscure plant genera (5d) a bit of a chore.
I agree entirely with bodycheetah@28: it’s a mistake caused when they set up the answer grid for the software. Either the guy who has to type in the solutions screwed up by inserting the accented character or the scripting was too noddy to fix the accented/unaccented character comparison. There is no way that the solution requires the accent, surely.
This took me a very long time to solve — but a jolly good puzzle. I thought the theme worked well, despite the feelings expressed here that some neologisms are really “neo-” any more.
sorry… “are” –> “aren’t”
copmus@21 & rodshaw@25 – My ‘turning 42’ midlife crisis is well under way, so I’m ecstatic to report that I must still be terribly ‘down with the kids’ in that I was comfortably familiar with all the neologisms.
It makes me wonder what the future has to offer about which I will find myself grumbling as the circle turns. I will go out on a limb and state now that my definition of success for humanity is whether or not ‘ANTI-VAXXER’ has survived the test of time to be found in Guardian Cryptic Crossword No 33,500 (which naturally I will solve from the comfort of my virtual reality armchair.)
Other metrics are available, but I suspect it is too much to hope that Donald Trump Jr won’t be in the White House, or that we’ll finally have worked out a deal with the EU.
Thank you to Picaroon and Manehi.
I noted that the definition part of 23a said “the acrosses here”, not “the other acrosses here”, so it appears to be including itself. So is NEOLOGISM a neologism? Not quite the same as the “I am a liar” paradox, but still is both true and false at the same time.
Phew, that was hard; even my computer was complaining!
It was a nice idea, and a good grid-fill. Achates, who’s that? And I thought the MU star was a current one, not a past one.
I NEEDED manehi’s explanation for that one. [BREXIT, I expect there will be a deal with “victory on both sides” but maybe that is too optimistic.]
Thanks to Picaroon for re-arranging my brain cells and to manehi for a good
VBLOG.‘The term neologism is first attested in English in 1772, borrowed from French néologisme (1734).’ (Wikipedia)
From Wiktionary (again, sorry Anna!):
‘There is no precise moment when a word stops being “new”, but 15–20 years is a common cutoff (corresponding to one generation growing up potentially familiar with the word, depending on how common it is). Acceptance of a word as valid by dictionaries or by a significant portion of the population are sometimes mentioned as additional conditions. Some neologisms become widespread and standard (such as new chemical element names), others remain rare or slangy. (Distinguish from protologisms, coinages which have not become common.)’
(So ‘mizzle’ has well and truly deneologised 😉 )
From the same source I see that an anagram for neologism is mooseling.
[Good to see bodycheetah again, and pserve who I don’t think I’ve seen for a while]
Many thanks P & m
The surface of 15a thoroughly misled me. I spent a long time trying to parse BIRTHER. Thanks P and m.
I enjoyed this a lot. I didn’t get 2D – should’ve looked up the French for ‘slow’, which I just didn’t know – but everything else eventually came in. I got the theme quite quickly, which helped (but had ‘FERGIE’ for 25A for some time).
Thanks Picaroon and manehi
Great to see George Best and Virgil in the same clue after recent debates about what GK it is reasonable to expect of a solver. Dr WhatsOn @34 After the philosophy yesterday, I like the neologism paradox.
Yes, Haggis, I tried BIRTHER. Maybe that is one now rapidly becoming obsolete.
beery hiker @6 and others – my copy of today’s newspaper allowed me to write RAISONNE without an acute accent! Ain’t technology wonderful…
Like rodshaw @25 I was about to shout “bah humbug” and throw my paper in the recycling after solving NEOLOGISMS, in a continuation of my Vlad-sulk yesterday. Luckily I persevered and surprised myself by being able to solve even those across clues that, if asked, I would have said I didn’t know. So, thanks to copmus @21 for my pint!
There were quite a few dnks in the down clues too, but when the cluing turned out to be not as impenetrable as it first seemed I was very glad I had decided to continue, and in the end I was actually sorry there weren’t any more to do.
Thanks to Picaroon for the fast/lent joke and others that made me smile this morning.
…forgot to say thanks also to NeilH @12 – I didn’t know about snoek. I’m glad that we’ll have snark to keep us going instead of that culinary delight!
I am 46, and knew all of the neologisms. (I am American, which may explain some of that.) I was on an E-BIKE for the first time a few months ago–Chicago’s bike-share service (which I subscribe to) added them; they cost a couple bucks extra though, so I won’t make it a regular thing. MANSCAPING is funny: the practice has been common in the gay community for decades, but it’s only since that word was coined that our culture has told straight guys that it’s not effeminate to remove unwanted body hair.
I solve on my phone, and I generally hit “reveal” rather than try to type with my fat fingers if I’m sure of a word, so the É appeared all on its own. But on the subject of French, I did not know the meaning of LENT in that language (though I should have, from “lento” in music). It was clearly correct, though.
Thanks to both blogger and setter.
[bodycheetah @28: When you wrote “acute accent” my immediate reaction was “it is quite sweet, isn’t it?”]
mrpenney I’ll up your 46 to 64.
A mixed bag for me — words like HEUCHERA, PENNON, and FATBERG were simply unknown to me and tough to parse but another unknown, ENTEROLITH, was easy to derive from its wordplay. I enjoyed WIREHAIR, ENERGIES, and NEEDED and the overall theme. Thanks to both.
[Lyssian @30: Thank you for the history of UNFRIEND — one of the joys of this blog is this type of education.]
What a clever puzzle. As an old pedant linguistically I just adore neologisms. Many thanks Picaroon.
My favourite clues were 11ac (camp serving double duty?) and 13dn (it’s always good when you ‘invent’ a new word that you subsequently discover in the dictionary) and even though I find homophones hard, 21dn was brilliant.
Couldn’t parse 6dn and 24dn so thank you manehi
I started at 5ac, couldn’t solve it, thought idly to myself “one of these days, some smartass setter is going to take an acronym like that and use part in the definition and part in the wordplay”, and moved on …
Seems like I must be the only miseryguts here today, but I couldn’t enjoy this. Great idea, cleverly executed, I knew or could guess the neologisms, but seven googles to check answers just irritates me. Do 5d and 13d have to be so obscure? Would have loved to have fun, didn’t. Sorry. Thanks though s&b.
An amusing diversion today, even if a DNF (-3.5 XOO) having failed 3 NEOLOGISMS…perhaps I should just stick with mesologisms! Oh well, at least managed to parse all the rest 🙂
Dr. WhatsOn @34, perhaps could include NEOLOGISMS not by defn but in a more literal sense… i.e. a word is always a literal instance of itself?… the letter set “NEOLOGISMS”=NEOLOGISMS? Ok, a tautologism… which sounds like a neologism but isn’t 😉
FOI and COTD (tho for answer not clue – AOTD?): HEUCHERA. Occasionally, being a plant nerd pays off. In this case, alumroot (H. micrantha) is a native wildflower occasionally seen in my area, incl. several times this summer/fall on covid sanity walks.
Thx to setter/blogger/commenters for the fun!
[ P.S. bodycheetah, good have you with us again.
And essexboy: mooseling… 🙂 ]
[OddOtter – knew you’d appreciate a moose, even a rare diminutive one. And I like your neat solution to the ‘Is NEOLOGISM a neologism?’ conundrum.]
Rodshaw @25, I am possibly (reading between the lines) a somewhat younger contrarian, and my difficulties today were the GK “Ike” for president and Latin literature, though at least that was googleable.
I was puzzled by Caesar in 19, when he doesn’t appear in 22a to indicate Latin there.
I liked finding NEOLOGISMS with only a couple of them already in place, and that helped considerably, but this was a struggle.
[OddOtter @50: You might want to check out Gozo’s (Maskarade) excellent crossword in the FT of Dec. 8th.]
I’d seen all the neologisms before but not HUECHERA and ENTEROLITH. Got the first by looking on a Wikipedia list of plant genera (I feel no shame about this) and the second by working out the wordplay, thinking “is that even a word?” and checking. Count me as another that tried AIREDALE.
For 22ac I had a good guess as to what it was from the beginning but got hung up thinking about what kind of scrap a “bexit” could be. For 25ac I went around from thinking that it would be some footballer I hadn’t heard of to thinking it might be something like “He U Sol” to eventually realizing it was a footballer I’d heard of, but that didn’t come to mind as fast as something like “broadcast star’s predecessor” might have (well probably not–I’m thinking of Pete Best, Ringo Starr’s predecessor).
24d could almost be VETO–you could mark an X by something to veto it, and once you’ve got ETOV you only have to bring a letter up to get VETO!
Thanks to Picaroon for an enjoyable puzzle and manehi for the explanations.
Come on Eileen (@19)! When even you admit to freely using the CHECK button it only confirms our suspicions that the ease with which so many contributors here whoosh through some crosswords which to we paper solvers seem overly complicated and obscure is not unconnected to this CHEAT facility. Even more so, by the many howls of protest today because for once the wretched thing was misbehaving!
While this was a lovely crossword, so thank you Picaroon and blogger Manehi, I fear the pervasive use of this aid by solvers is influencing the way setters set, and not for the better.
Caroline – I may be wrong but I’d interpret Eileen’s ‘guess and check’ reference to having a guess what the answer might be from the definition and then checking to see whether it can be made to work from the wordplay, rather than using the check button. Could be wrong.
Caroline @56
‘A bit of guess and check’ (me at 19) = ‘freely using’? As a Guardian paper solver of over fifty years’ standing, and therefore one of the self-confessed oldies today, I feel no shame in having (admitted to) unusually resorted to the ‘check’ (not ‘cheat’) facility today in a couple of instances in today’s puzzle.
Many thanks, Ryaaaan – welcome if you’re new here and apologies if you’re not – for the endorsement.
When blogging, I assure you that I solve entirely from my paper version, along with, I hope, the majority of solvers.
PS: in my last sentence I did not mean to imply that most solvers here are paper solvers but that, like me, they solve without relying on the check button.
Had to look up MANSCAPING — that’s wierd! Never heard of VLOG or E-BIKES. I guess given a pack of neologisms there will be some nhos in the bunch. Same for SMS = text? Then again, HEUCHERA and ENTEROLITH are hardly neologisms, and I’ve never heard of them either.
“Ad astra per aspera” means “to the stars through difficulties,” and is a frequently used Latin phrase echoing Virgil. It is also the motto of countless schools and academies and of (who’d-a thunk it?) the state of Kansas (the things you learn through Wikipedia!)
Thanks for NEEDED, manehi, I’d never have parsed that one! Thanks for the rest of the blog too, and thanks to Picaroon for the puzzle. I enjoy most themes, and also word gimmicks like these.
Valentine @60: I would have thought that the better-known use of AD ASTRA is in the motto of the RAF – ‘per ardua ad Astra’.
g larsen @61 iThe phrase is popular everywhere. I didn’t know about the RAF, and didn’t know about Kansas until I googled it. The “per aspera” is the version that was familiar to me, but there’s a lot of ’em.
@simonc8, on my phone, if I hold down the e key, I get several choices: ? ? ? etc. One is é. I had the same query and was really frustrated at not being able to complete a previous crossword on the app, then discovered this by accudent. Whoever sets this up is not such a purist about the z)the of the umlaut in German, though. I agree that the accent is not necessary on the capital letter, and in my view in a clue like that for RAISONNE is technically incorrect since e does not equal é,
Also, to anyone complaining about the neologisms – I may be a bit younger than some of you (I’m 31) but all of these were familiar to me. And if I have to regularly put up with obscure types of plant and the like, you can certainly handle a few of these.
Jim – no complaints from me, and I’m over twice your age! (The plant genus was obscure, imho, but I got it from the wordplay and crossers.)
Re RAISONNE (or RAISONNÈ) – a while back there was a similar issue with an accented E in a Quick crossword (that got amended after complaints), so it’s not the first time the Guardian has been down this path.
BTW Something new I learned about my mobile’s onscreen keyboard because of this – if you press and.hold down a letter (such as ‘e’) it will pop up any “special characters” associated with it (accents, dipthongs, numbers, non-alphanumerics, and even emojis).
I’m late to the comments but just had to get mine in. A fine crossword but I take exception to the definition of TRUTHER. A truther is a person who seeks the truth. The term truther comes from the 9/11 Truth Movement which claims the events of September 11 2001 are not as officially reported. They have a lot of evidence to back their claims and of recent times a 4 year study, carried out by the University of Alaska, has CONCLUSIVELY PROVEN WTC7 could not have been brought down by office fires as claimed by NIST.