Guardian 28,359 / Imogen

107 comments on “Guardian 28,359 / Imogen”

1. Excellent puzzle and blog.
   For which thanks.

2. Though I’m sure many will rave over this, but we felt it was too full of obscurities and imprecise wording of clues.

   A couple of smiles though such as 29a – CURTANS.

3. Difficult but enjoyable. Took me quite a long time to solve this puzzle.

   Many favourites: DARK, VIOLA, SALAMANDER, PEERESSES, SHINTO, GOTHIC, FEVERISH, URBAN LEGEND, BEANO

   New: ETH

   Did not parse: DONUT (loi) – and still do not understand why NUT = boil over

4. ignore my comment above @3
   I understand 3 down now:
   do one’s nut = British informal / become extremely angry or agitated.
   That’s a new phrase for me

5. A very enjoyable challenge – enough gentle starters to get a foothold and a few that required more thought.
   Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

6. Apologies and withdrawal of my first post. I got a phone call and sent it prematurely.

   On reflection and seeing the parsings given by Eileen, I see it in a different light with many class clues..

7. Dunno about rave, Pedro @2, took me ages, bit stiffer than his Monday alter ego, but not so much obscure as my rusty recall, eg the afore-seen urban (pope) and leg end (toe), doh…chestnut. Quite llike how ult, inst and prox survive, though I’ve never actually used or seen them in a real letter. Somewhat ditto the northerly boreal, seen very recently but ntl slow to groink to the surface. Be a no was cute. Agree, Eileen, surfaces pretty much coherent. Thanks both.

8. Spiffing workout, thanks Imogen. Thanks to you Eileen not only for the impeccable parsing but also for referencing the orthography explaining “eth” @2d. Here in return is a slight extension of that explaining why the formulation “ye olde” is usually misunderstood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde

9. Thanks, TerriBlislow @8 – that’s one that’s been aired many times here but there’s no harm in reiterating it!

10. Hard work this morning interrupted numerous times by Windows deciding to do updates (memo to self – ditch the PC and go back to Mac.)

    Didn’t like 3d because I dislike the spelling of DONUT which I thought was a recent Americanism?

    As the blog puts it, some easy, some tough.

    Thanks Imogen; thanks Eileen.

11. URBAN LEGEND has managed to avoid me until now so no chestnut as far as I’m concerned. A lol moment though I think PEERESSES just pips it. Very Paulian. I was also misled on BEANO for a while – how different the definition becomes if you don’t include the word ‘for’ in it. I was away looking for abstain synonyms for some time.

    I think I ticked all those listed by Michelle @3 and I’d add MULTITASK with it’s nice surface and CURTAINS which looks like it might be another classic but, again, not one I’ve seen before.

    This promised to be more difficult than it eventually turned out; a solve of three waves after an intial couple of passes revealed very little. I think I was lucky in that the four long clues solved in the first wave, giving me something to work with to tease out those that had escaped me.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

12. This was one hard slog but worth it, after almost giving up on the SE. I learnt something new about the SALAMANDER and I particularly liked PEERESSES, DONUT (needed that parsed along with HAWSER), GOTHIC, URBAN LEGEND, FEVERISH and the amusing CURTAINS. RACONTEUR was indeed an excellent surface. Super blog as per, Eileen and thanks to Nutmeg for the mental mauling.

13. Thanks Eileen and Imogen.

    I still didn’t understand NICKER: looking it up I see it means a whinnying sound – never heard it!

    I, too, liked BEANO, and CURTAINS – a worthy CD, for once

14. Imogen of course

15. [TB @8, by an odd resonance Ye Olde Pizza Bar reminded me of a sign in Piza that read Snach Bar]

16. A tough one, this – for some reason I always thought the mineral was ‘feltspur’ so had no chance of getting that one. Was chronically mislead by the clue for PEERESSES, some excellent misdirection going on there. And I liked the slight silliness of URBAN LEGEND.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

17. Many thanks Imogen and Eileen; you can count me as a raver.

    ETH, as you say, doesn’t get as much air time as her pricklier companion. It’s a bit before my time, but an alternative way of cluing her might reference this.

    Candlemas (Chandeleur) is Pancake Day in France. Hope Cookie, trishincharente, Wellbeck and possibly others enjoyed their crêpes.

18. essexboy @17 Hah! – I was sorely tempted by ETH. 😉

19. Thanks Imogen and Eileen
    I soon had a oddly filled grid – SE full, NW empty, and it was slow going to complete this. I liked TREE SURGEON and URBAN LEGEND best.
    I agree with MaidenBartok on DONUT – it should be “doughnut”, of course! I was also confused by CURTAINS – aren’t they “hangingS” rather than “hanging”?

20. essexboy @17 – there I was, looking for more orthography. Time for you to don the outer garment methinks.

21. TerriBlislow – I just grabbed my CORSELET

22. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

    Just the right level of difficulty for me – neither a write-in, over too soon, nor a frustrating slog. Very good variety of clue types, with much misleading (like PostMark, I was thrown at first by the ‘for’ in the clue for BEANO). The NW quadrant held me up for a while, despite ETH being my FOI!

    I had never come across the verb RECUSE before, though the solution was clear from the clue, but I am familiar with ‘recusant’ to describe those disobeying the various religions Acts of Uniformity.

23. Another DONUT hater, here, but it didn’t spoil an excellent crossword.

    Urban myth is more familiar than URBAN LEGEND but it was still a clever clue.

    Dredged CORSELET from some Dorothy Dunnet or other and CURTAINS was great fun.

    Many thanks, both.

24. Didn’t know the other meanings of NICKER (Chambers says it’s Scots) and SALAMANDER, and as per usual HAWSER doesn’t sound anything like WHORE’S A to me.

25. PostMark and Gervase – yes, I was ready to rail against BE A NO = refuse to vote, too (and didn’t like the ‘for’, as a link, into the bargain) – until I read the clue properly!

    Re URBAN LEGEND – I was really only meaning LEGEND was a bit of a chestnut: like William @23, I’m more used to urban myth.

    I didn’t like DONUT either (but ‘it’s in Chambers’ 😉 )

26. Liked SHINTO and PROSTRATED. BEANO and URBAN LEGEND raised a smile, but with a feeling that it I’ve seen them before. I also remembered where I’d heard RECUSE before.

    Thanks to Imogen, Eileen and essexboy for June Whitfield.

27. essexboy @17: I also thought of the Glums reference for ETH, despite being too young (just) to have enjoyed the radio programme. Although Old English used thorn and eth more or less interchangeably for ‘th’ sounds, in modern Icelandic, which still uses them, thorn represents the unvoiced and eth the voiced sound. Consequently, the word ETH should be pronounced with the voiced ‘th’, unlike the reduced Ethel.

28. Like most of my fellow Brits, I’m all for Dublin’ the spelling DONUT.

29. Sorry, that should have read dunkin’!

30. Gervase @27 – the Icelandic usage is included in the Chambers definition that I gave. I still had to smile at the incongruous link to June Whitfield, though.

31. ETH was our FOI, but it remained in isolation in the NW corner until we had worked clockwise through the rest of this enjoyable puzzle. Eileen, thank you so much for the link to King Alfred’s Grammar, which gives me hope that I may at last get to grips with Old English!

32. [Penfold – or should that be Rickrold? – you need the CORSELET more than I 😉 ]

33. Just enough relatively easy clues to suck you in – the NE corner got well-populated, and then I hit a brick wall (as is often the case for me with Imogen).

    I liked the clues for PROSTRATED, BEANO and PEERESSES (the mystery of what goes on in the Ladies).

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

34. Eileen @25; It is in Chambers but with “or (especially US) donut” – I don’t think that I’d ever seen that spelling until I went to the US for the first time in 1992 (conference in Washington DC and then 10 days looking round the sights – thoroughly recommend it).

    But obviously with the influx of such nastiness as “Dunkin’ Donuts” is has become more common but I don’t that makes it correct/desirable.

    Anyway, the best doughnuts by far not American but Canadian – Tim Horton’s Canadian Maple donuts are so sweet that you can feel the enamel peeling off your teeth as you eat them.

    [grantinfreo @15: One of my US co-workers sent me a sign outside of “Ye Olde Pizza Joynt” (I think in California somewhere) stating that all hands must be properly satanized.]

35. @18, 20, 21 Take them off, Eth. No Ron, I can’t see without them.

36. I hadn’t realised that DROPSY could also mean a tip or a bribe. Its use to mean (o)edema is now pretty obsolete.

37. Wow – really tough puzzle for me, but that’s how I like ’em. Lots to enjoy, as others have said, especially BEANO, CURTAINS and DROPSY. Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

38. [grantinfreo @35: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9gxabtABvk ]

39. MaidenBartok @34 – I looked under ‘donut’, so got simply ‘see doughnut under dough’. It is horrible but not quite so bad as my real anathema (also in Chambers): barbecue, barbeque (!!) or (inf) bar-b-q(!!!).

    Robi @36 – thanks for that: neither had I. That one’s not in Chambers, though!

40. Chewier than a day-old DONUT for me. With PEERESSES, that makes the second time this week that we have been encouraged to see the P*** in the nobility as a way, possibly, of taking it out of them. I had always thought that an URBAN LEGEND referred to a character rather than the story as in urban myth, but I was evidently confused by “a legend in his own lunchtime”

41. Eileen @39: No entry for “DONUT” in my Oxford 7th ed. (1982) so it is a recent import. Time to export?

    Don’t get me started on barbecue! BBQ is my pet-hate because it just sounds like a DIY store (which is essentially what such an event is – I dislike them intensely anyway; eating raw food outside whilst having smoke blown in your eyes is my idea of hell, quite frankly).

    I know that the common theory is that “Barbecue” came from the Spanish cooking-over-coals style barbacoa but I prefer the (unfortunately apocryphal) French derivation “de barbe au queue.”

42. Afraid to say that I was out of my depth with this today, a DNF with the left side of the puzzle nearly impenetrable. Thought that leading off with a mineral (could have been anything) for 1ac made things difficult from the very beginning. Normally I’m on Imogen’s wavelength, but not this morning…

43. [Perhaps showing my youthfulness for once, I had wondered whether essexboy’s clip at 17 might have been this repeated use of ETH in the spoof news broadcasts from the Fast Show. (Not suggesting anyone watches the whole clip; the eth-eth-eth appears reasonably early on)]

44. Got off to a good start in the top half but then slowed right down and needed help in the bottom half. Also needed help with parsing a few even after I got them.

    I am one of those who had not seen LEGEND for toe before and yes it made me smile as did TREESURGEON. Also liked SHINTO, HASSLE.

    Not heard of ULT meaning *in the last month*

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen (Oh and thanks for telling us a while ago that a certain flightless bird was a useful word to remember – I did remember it and so the clue with that was my FOI yesterday – now going back to that puzzle – nowhere near finished.)

45. Ronald @42 – That was almost my fate (left side impenetrable) but FELDSPAR jumped into my head, which helped a lot.

46. Was the majusculation of Pole legitimate?

47. Robi @36: I knew the slang meaning of DROPSY from the wonderful sentence: “It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide”. Mad Magazine in the US used it a lot, but without attribution. It comes from the mouth of Magersfontein Lugg in Margery Allingham’s detective novel ‘The Fashion in Shrouds’ (And means ‘it’s madness to bribe a policeman with counterfeit money’)

48. Fiona Anne @44 – ULT used to be used in letters, as in “Dear Sir, Thank you for your letter of the 15th ult.” If the letter was dated in the same month, it would have been “the 15th inst” instead.

49. [PostMark @43: Thanks for the laugh – needed that today… My favourite Chanel 9 Neus has to be Nimbo Cumulos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abFJuqp867g ]

50. MaidenBartok @41: Re the deadly BBQ, a lovely Aussie bloke who used to live in our village and became a close friend, was devoted to the barbecue and his favourite expression was, “no sausage is cooked until you can write with it”!

51. This took rather longer than I thought it would, partly because I had ROMAN for URBAN which held me up. Once I had that sorted MULTITASK became my favourite clue. I couldn’t parse DONUT without Eileen’s help, so thank you.

    Nice puzzle Imogen, thanks

52. Eileen: I was just revisiting the clue for 17a in the light of NNI’s comment @24. Unless my eyes deceive me I think you’ve accidentally underlined the ‘a’ in the definition.

    [Just as well Imogen didn’t use the plural of 17a as a homophone]

53. [William @50: Lovely (or not, come-to-think-of-it). I always work on the basis that when we came down out of the trees we had to cook with fire but over the generations we’ve manage to tame that into a friendly little bistro complete with a carafe of Rosé, the former situation being a poor substitute for the latter. Why would I wish to regress?]

54. Re 22a, was anyone else reminded of the old Chambers def of éclair (long in shape but short in duration)? Or am I just odd?

55. drofle @48. Thanks for that – makes it easier to remember if I understand it. I shall add it to my list of useful crossword language items (will also add inst).

56. Hi Pedro @52 – oh dear, just when I was thinking I’d got away with no slips today (and I’d been careful not to do that in 26ac). I’ll fix it now. – thanks.

57. Fiona Anne @44
    I hope you have discovered that ult is actually an abbr. of ultimo.
    inst – instant
    We also have ‘proximo’ -in or during the next month.

58. MaidenBartok @53: Couldn’t agree more. I think the BBQ is pretty much a ‘bloke’ thang where the alpha male of the group is he with the tongs and a daft apron with something a bit saucy on it. Weather permitting, I have no problem with cooking it in a well-appointed kitchen and carrying (and the carafe of rosé) outdoors.

59. [MB @53 & William @58: I don’t think it helps that we either see on TV or are lucky enough to experience professionals with seasoned-hickory fired ovens, graduated grills, 3 day slow roasts and the like and then we try to replicate that at short notice with an upturned metal washing up bowl, a rusting misshapen grid and a bad of compressed briquettes from the local garage!]

60. When I was half-way through reading 2d (yes, THAT microsecond), I was thinking EDH (an alternative to ETH). Although it is wrong for this clue, the D form is apparently more faithful to the typography and its evolution in Scandinavia and thereabouts. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

    [Re barbec… barbeq… cooking outside. There are occasions (I have in mind once cooking a duck on a rotisserie) where you are glad the ensuing fire was outdoors, not in your kitchen. Just sayin’.]

61. Mrs ginf’s bbq advice was If you have to be there, stand next to a pom or a kiwi, the mozzies prefer them…

62. Good crossword, full of fun, and thanks Eileen for the blog and the ever-informative links.

    I googled BEANO as one of those British terms I’d heard but couldn’t really define, and got a page of anti-fart products.

    “Do one’s nut” is another of those.

    With P_E_ as the start of 7d, I tried to make something of “peel.” Anyone else?

    I also remember the rozzer/dropsy line, both from Mad Magazine and from discovering it years later in The Fashion in Shrouds. What a moment that was!

    Eileen — how do you spell barbecue?

    In the Old English orthography article that Eileen links to in the blog for ETH, the author says that the “th” sound is voiced in “thud.” It is? Have I (and everybody else) been mispronouncing it all these years?

    Where is the reference to June Whitfield that people are mentioning, and what does she have to do with any of this?

    drofle @48, Fiona Anne @ prox
    I don’t see the

    DONUT may be an Americanism, but it’s not “the American spelling,” in case you ask. It’s certainly not mine, and mrpenney may come along and join me on that.

    Am I imagining it, or have we had more pee jokes than usual of late?

    The Ye Olde Wikipedia article (thank you, Eileen, some new info even though I’ve written some of the anti-ye-olde posts here myself) led me down a path to one on on”Merry England,” which introduced me to the idea of “Deep England,” the traditional rural parts. Ir’s apparently derived from “la France profonde,” In nine months of living in France I often heard the latter phrase. In seventy-odd years of reading and speaking English, I’ve never heard of “Deep England.” Is it a thing?

63. Valentine @62: you don’t think Deep England might be another (reverse) pee joke? You probably came across this, from our very own Guardian? Although attributed to an academic it has something of the “doesn’t really exist but we’ll invent it as a descriptor” about it. So a ‘thing’ rather than a thing.

64. Eileen @ 56: I noticed the a underlined but thought it doing double duty in the definition and was fine. Wrong for the umpteenth time again 🙂

65. PostMark @63 – I had just that minute found that link to post!

    Valentine @62 – I realise my post @39 wasn’t quite clear: I spell it ‘barbecue’. What I posted was taken verbatim from Chambers – my apologies.

    June Whitfield played Eth in ‘The Glums’.

    ‘ “th” sounds (the sound at the beginning of “thud” is voiced; the sound at the end of “with” is unvoiced).’ – I would have said it was the other way round!

66. Re ‘with’ – on reflection, perhaps it’s sometimes unvoiced – but not always.

67. Oh dear. Having done the right hand side quite quickly I got completely stuck with just the C of CORSELET and H of GOTHIC to get going on the left. The left side seemed like a different crossword and when I looked at the blog and wrote in some of the across answers I still couldn’t do the downs! Never heard of RECUSE, followed the link to the song and still didn’t hear it! Not my day. Thanks Eileen for explaining everything and to Imogen for a nice right hand side.

68. A tricky solve interrupted by the essential task of marmalade making. The last four, three of them in the NW, had to wait until after the enjarring (is that a word?); up to then, things had gone quite smoothly, for an Imogen. A tiny little cheat on MULTITASK helped to finish things off. Must remember that MIT is a college, not the first time I’ve seen it.

    Didn’t know horses went NICKER.

69. Eileen @65 – you’re quite right, it is the other way round! Clearly King Alfred, like Homer, was apt to nod.

    Julia @67 – you have to say the name of the singer 🙂

70. Valentine @62 and Postmark @63 Maybe Deep England is an URBAN LEGEND, though come to think of it, the tendency to propagate unreliable takes may be as much Rural as urban these days

71. Thanks. Couldn’t parse ‘donut’. Very clever.

72. Reference the voicing or not of the end of ‘with’, I wonder if the unvoiced version is a back-formation from context-sensitive pronunciation – cf wither and withhold.

73. Eileen @65 and 66 In my dialect the “with” is always unvoiced, but some people voice it when the next word starts with a vowel. The beginning of “thud” is never voiced.

    Having never heard of The Glums, I googled them, and Wikipedia gave the role of Eth to Patricia Brake.

    For me this was a game of diagonals. Last night I filled in most of what was under the SW-NE diagonal and very little above it. Got more this morning and then hit the check button.

    Kamintone @31 and essexboy @59 — how did you know Eileen’s link was to King Alfred’s Grammar? all I could see in it was KAG, and then it went all grey. And essexboy — what singer?

74. me above “the end of ‘with.’ “

75. I’m with Ronald @42 – “…out of my depth with this today”. Got off to a bad start with the shocking image in the surface of 29a being hard to get rid of – and distracting me from some evidently easy clues. (Someone in the comments said they liked this clue, but to me it is full of horror, whether we are talking about suicide, lynching or capital punishment.)

    Made good progress for a while, even solved 29a, then ground to a halt with eight still unsolved, mostly in the NW. I thought “refuse to vote for” was a strange way of alluding to BE A NO, but got there in the end. The racing driver remained in the pits for an awfully long time, refusing to start 4d until the crosser from MULTITASK came along to give him a push. I did think of RECUSE for 5d, but I didn’t cotton on to RECreational USE, so put it on the discard pile awaiting a crosser; unfortunately FELDSPAR never turned up, so a DNF for me.

    Sorry for the negativity, which is probably down to a poor night’s sleep. Hoping for more cheerful stuff tomorrow. (I did enjoy URBAN LEGEND, though!)

76. Rather chewy, I thought. Hard to think of a single clue that doesn’t deserve some sort of credit, but some of the words and some of the clues were distinctly challenging. I had to check NICKER, ETH and CORSELET in the dictionary to be sure, and several answers wouldn’t come easily, even with most of the crossers. And then there were the words I had, but struggled to fully parse.

    Got there in the end, and very much enjoyed the journey. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

77. Valentine @73 – I’ve been saying ‘with’ to myself all afternoon and concluded that it does depend on whether the following word begins with a vowel..

    The Wikipedia article has Patricia Brake playing Eth in the1970s TV series – I’d forgotten there was one! essexboy’s link was to the 1950s radio programme, with a photograph of the cast, including June Whitfield.

78. Valentine @73

    In most of the UK, ‘with’ is normally pronounced with the ‘th’ voiced, as in ‘breathe’. For an international audience King Alfred could have picked a better example, but perhaps he was in a tizzy after the cake incident. I knew it was His Majesty who was at fault because I clicked on ‘Index’ at the top left of Eileen’s ETH link, which takes you to the title page.

    For the singer, try clicking on Penfold’s ‘RECUSE’ link @26 😉

79. This was a dnf for me, but I enjoyed what I managed to do. I got derailed early on with RUSTLE for 18A, but RACONTEUR soon put me straight – Somewhere in the nether reaches of my mind NICKER lurked.
    Thanks to Imogen, and Eileen.

80. Valentine @73: Patricia Brake was Eth on the TV (short-lived) version of The Glums.

    The Glums was originally a radio comedy programme on the Home Service (I think – possibly the Light Service?) called “Take it from Here.” I am FAR too young to rememeber that programme but it is one a group that are so embedded in the British pschye that you don’t need to have been alive when they were around to know them.

    Others of the same genre and worth searching out (there were really quite risque for their day) are “The Navy Lark,” “ITMA”, “The Goon Show,” Beyond our Ken,” “Round the Horne”, “Hancock’s Half-Hour,” “All Gas and Gaiters.” Any more for any more?

    [essexboy @78: I struggled with the US pronunciation of “with” for a while as mine is very voiced and in California it is virtually missing… However “roof” and “woof” are two that still trip me up as over there it can be as short as rf and wf to English lugs.]

81. [Me @80 s/there were/they were/ – D-, must try harder…]

82. [MaidenBartok @80
    I think ITMA was contemporary with The Glums, and earlier than the others you mention, all of which I’m old enough to remember (though possibly only the Telegoons rather than the radio show).
    Les miserables is often known as “The glums”!]

83. [MB @80: I with they all could be Californian… it’th the boothy boothy blonde hairdooth that do it. I misread your post at first, and thought – do Californians really have roothes on their houtheth, and do their dogth say woothe?]

84. [muffin @82: I’ve got a feeling that ITMA was earlier and on the Light Programme (now Radio 2)? Take It From Here was definitly post-War…

    My radio listening really kicks-off with the original run of HHGTTG and hasn’t stopped since.]

85. [essexboy @83: I’ve offered the anecdote before (I think) about young JrBartok playing with a remote control car with his mates in CA when he shouted “DUDE!!! The BADDERIES are DUD!” in broad slack-jawed Cali, found me and in perfect RP said “Dad, may I have some new batteries please; these are flat… Kidz]

86. [MaidenBartok @84
    The Light Programme (and the Third Programme and the Home Service) lasted until 1967, when Radio 1 was introduced, and they became 2, 3, and 4.
    Question that all pub-quizzers know the answer to – what was the first song played on Radio 1, and who played it?]

87. MaidenBartok @84: You’re right; ITMA ran through the war and was still going when Take It From Here started in (I think) 1948. ITMA ended in 1949 with the death of Tommy Handley – an event from which I’ve never really recovered 🙁

88. [muffin @86; Flowers in the Rain by ….errrr…. can’t remember…. and I’m sure it was Tony Blackburn but given that this is a pub-quiz question and therefore likely to be a little bit slippery, I’m probably wrong?]

89. [You’re right on both counts, MB]

90. MB @88: The Move

91. I couldn’t know that the face for The Glums on essexboy’s link didn’t go with the name in the wikipedia article, assumed they were the same person.

    essexboy@78 perhaps King Alfred shared the Australian criterion for when the barbecue’s done?
    At the moment I can’t play any links that sing or talk until I take my laptop to the vet.

    Maidenbartok@81 I’m mildly acquainted with The Goon Show (though none of the others). I remember one where the gang stole Broadmoor Prison, replacing it with a cardboard replica so no one would notice, and sailed it — was it round the Horn? ITMA looks like an acronym, is it? HHGTTG?

92. [Valentine
    ITMA – It’s That Man Again (I am too young for this)
    HHGTTG – HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy]

93. Valentine @91: Yes, ITMA was an acronym for “It’s That Man Again”, a phrase that was used in the UK to refer to Adolf Hitler, and taken up for humorous purposes by the comedian Tommy Handley. The radio show created characters who soon became nationally known, such as Mrs Mopp, Funf (the German spy), Colonel Chinstrap and many more, each with their own catchphrase. I could go on, but I think that’s quite enough for now.

94. Sorry, Valentine @91, I didn’t realise you were having technical issues – most of my soi-disant witticisms must have been completely lost on you!

    My link @17 would have got you to the 50s radio show that Eileen mentioned, Take It From Here, where the Glums made their first appearance. Even to someone of my (slightly younger) generation it’s much better known than the later TV version. The classic line in the linked episode is “Oh Ron… Do you expect me to just sit here… like a lemon?” “No thanks Eth, I’ve just had a banana.”

    Penfold’s RECUSE link @26 would have taken you to the singer Rick Hughes – which must be a candidate for Dodgiest Homophone of the Year.

95. An abject failure for me today, with 8 unsolved clues. But Eileen’s excellent blog confirmed that the fault was entirely mine – all the clues I missed were perfectly gettable in hindsight. Nothing wrong with the puzzle, so thanks Imogen for the exercise. URBAN LEGEND was my favourite.

    [ Petert@46 and PostMark (in general): I’m meeting a cousin on Zoom in an hour; he spells his surname VanDine, so I will be able to use ‘medial majusculation’ in a sentence legitimately for the first time. ]

96. [muffin @92: Thanks!

    Valentine @ 91: Sorry! Many of these programmes have the same kind of societal impact that something like Prairie Home Companion did in the US (I used to fly to SFO once every 3 weeks and I knew all was right in the world if I landed on time to listen to it KQED on whilst driving to my hotel on 101!)

    “Round the Horne” and “Beyond our Ken” are both definitely worth listening to – the “Ken” and “Horne” were one-and-the-same, Kenneth Horne, but the real star of the show was Kenneth Williams, especially in his gloriously camp Sandy persona and the extensive use of Polari (which every cruciverbalist should know…) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-cULGX2GPc ]

97. [cello @95: just popped in before turning in and saw your comment. Hope it went down well. As sh (I think) pointed out the other day, if you enter that phrase into Google, this site comes up as top hit!
    PS Good to see you’re still here and still hope Anna follows your example. I’m awaiting an opportunity to ask her a question and see if we can tease a response. My linguistics aren’t sophisticated enough so it may have to be prompted by Finland/Shetland/East Germany or some of the other disparate locations she’s mentioned]

98. essexboy@69 . Shucks. I needn’t have listened to the song – not my sort of thing.

99. Thanks Eileen and Imogen. A very enjoyable puzzle and blog.

    Charlie Chester also had a popular wartime radio show and there was also Richar Murdoch and Kenneth Horne’s Much Binding in the Marsh.
    Funf the German propagandist spy in the Tommy Handley show was I believe a lampoon of the infamous propagandist traitor Lord Haw Haw who was captured and hanged after the war. Funf is said to have done a lot to help maintain morale in Britain at that time. Another Itma character was Mona Lot whose catch phrase – every character had one – was a lugubrious “it’s being so cheerful that keeps me going”. Tommy Handley himself was probably best known for the acronymic TTFN, tata for now. Though they were Immensely popular at the time, it is a good bet that all these shows would seem pretty badly dated to contemporary ears.

100. muffin @92 I should have recognized HHGTTG — I’ve read the first of the books and we just had it as a puzzle theme last month courtesy of Paul.

     essexboy @94 — on this computer I can follow links, I just can’t play them. So I saw the photo of the radio Glums and the site for Rick Hughes — got the dodgy homophone, I agree with you about it.

     “Tata for now” was a phrase that Disney gave to Tigger in his animated version of the Pooh stories. It annoyed the hell out of me. Tigger is a child. and that’s not a phrase a child would use; and all the characters are nursery but upper class, where nobody would say “TTFN”!

     MB@96 You could also have listened to PHC on KALW. One of the two stations played it as first broadcast at 3, the other at 5. I’ll play your link along with the others when I get my other computer back from the shop, tomorrow I hope.

101. ‘Oh Ron, I love the way you’re running your fingers through my hair. Are you trying to drive me crazy?’
     ‘No Eth, I’m looking for my chewing gum.’

102. Goodness, but that was tough to finish.
     I had about four clues that I just couldn’t crack, put the crossword to one side for most of the day, picked it up again at about 3 am this morning and bingo. Why does that happen?!
     With 7dn I had to check that it wasn’t Paul setting the grid!
     First time through I had SOBS for 6dn (“ob.” inside SS, with the cry of “It’s not fair!”) which misled me for a while.
     Valentine @100 – entirely agree with you about the Disneyfication of the Pooh stories. E H Shephard gave a certain dignity to his characters, notably the wonderful Eeyore. Can’t abide what Disney did to the Jungle Book, either.
     Gervase @22 and others – RECUSE is a term that has been coming into fashion of late because when you ask a judge to stand down for the perception of bias (or whatever) you ask him/her to RECUSE him/herself. And of course, encouraged by the tabloids and social media, the reasoning “You decided an issue against me therefore you’re biased” has become very popular, notably being deployed by the Post Office against the judge who shredded them in the Horizon litigation.
     And as to judges – Flowers in the Rain by the Move (MaidenBartok @88; AlanC @90) was the subject of a seriously defamatory marketing flyer circulated at the time, which led to the group being sued by the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The days when it was defamatory to suggest that the PM of the day played away from home…

103. [NeilH @102; AlanC @90; Hmm – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41414837 tells me that the first voice on Radio 1 was Paul Hollingdale, not Tony Blackburn…

     NeilC @102: “…defamatory to suggest that the PM of the day played away from home…” are you suggesting that our current… Nah…. never… surely… My gob is smacked.]

104. Neil H @ 102

     Re Flowers In The Rain, as a result of the settlement to this day Roy Wood has seen not a penny of royalties from the song.

105. I don’t get how “bore” is synonymous with “put up with”

106. Siminsays @105

     ‘Bore’ is the past tense of ‘bear’, to put up with, endure, stand. ‘Put’ in the clue is also past tense.

107. As usual, struggled with Imogen, and the usual several clues I’m not happy with and too many obscure meanings.

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