Guardian 28,419 / Imogen

101 comments on “Guardian 28,419 / Imogen”

1. Held up by the SW corner today, and wasn’t at all sure about SOLIDI, but the usual excellent Imogen fun and games…

2. Thanks Imogen and Eileen
   Very slow start for me, but it speeded up once I had a few in. Favourites were TREETOP, as I took ages to see that it was an anagram, and TAX EXILE, as I put it together from its parts. The pangram, which I had spotted for once, helped with MAJESTIC, as I was missing a J.
   Shrug of the shoulders over ORRA!

3. Very enjoyable puzzle to solve, although I was a bit slow at the start.

   Favourites: TREK, PALATINATE, BAROUCHE, ABUT, TRIBUNAL.
   New: SOLIDI, BEADLE, ORRA = worthless (17ac).

   Did not parse MOTIVATE. I got confused and thought that IVA was a tax in UK.

   Thanks, Imogen and Eileen.

   * I did not spot the pangram.

4. After yesterday’s Emma turned out to be a red herring, today she came to my rescue with BAROUCHE – here’s the insufferable Mrs Elton going on (and on) about her brother’s barouche-landau (pp. 263-4).

   It’s a curious word; the spelling has been frenchified, but it derives (I discovered this morning) from dialectal German Barutsche, itself a borrowing from Italian baroccio, which goes back to Latin birotus – “two-wheeled” – which a BAROUCHE isn’t!

   Altogether a pretty polyglottal puzzle: Welsh at 11ac, Scots in ANDORRA, French in the ILE if not the BAROUCHE, and Latin in SOLIDI (and in paLATINate!)

   Merci vielmal Imogen and Eileen.

   (I don’t think the cryptic grammar for TREK quite works. The connecting word ‘in’ is in the wrong place, which means ‘back’ doesn’t function as an instruction to reverse KERT.)

5. Slowed down by some DNK’s such as Barouche and Solidi but offset by some fun ones like 10, 11 ac and 12 dn. A nice challenge today. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

6. Really good fun today. Loi was PALATINATE (what a wonderful word). Favourites included BAROUCHE and TAX EXILE but the absolute winner for me was VALEDICTION.

   Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

7. Boy, that was tough with some MAJESTIC clues. Favourites were BAROUCHE, (can’t believe I actually knew that word), SEQUINED (no boss!), PALITINATE, TREETOP and the marvellous VALEDICTION (yes I had to google, but I’m sure I won’t be alone). I feel that I’ve seen COPPERHEAD before, but as retired plod it made me smile.

   Towards the end, I realised this was possibly a pangram and this helped me with TAX EXILE. Nho of SOLIDI but gettable from the clue with crossers. Definitely not a puzzle for the faint-hearted.

   Ta Imogen & Eileen for the blog and GUS reference

8. Slow, smouldering start for me, too.

   Like muffin, the pangram helped but in my case it was TAX EXILE that benefited.

   Orra rang a vague bell so checked and found it in Chambers.

   Smooth and most enjoyable from Imogen, many thanks.

9. Good fun! Held up at the end by MARGIN; never heard of orra in ANDORRA; liked TREETOP, TAX EXILE and BAROUCHE in particular. Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

10. VALEDICTION, TRIBUNAL and TAX EXILE all great. I was motivated by recent Peter’s to look for a safe place in the TREETOP and I think Imogen was Kaned by the time s/he got to composing ROOTED

11. Thought this was fun though I didn’t manage to parse a few.

    COPPERHEAD and BAROUCHE in particular made me laugh.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

12. I absolutely loved valediction, as it is also a homophone – ‘as they say’ = valley diction!
    Thank you Imogen, though could not guess 22a and had to wait for Eileen to tell me the answer as DNK, so thank you too.

13. Slowest of the week so-far but tis only Wednesday. DNK SOLIDI and as a non-cricket/sports person 19d was a no. Strangely, BAROUCHE was buried in there somewhere!

    Echoing essexboy @4 “Altogether a pretty polyglottal puzzle” so:

    Dankon Imogen kaj Eileen!

14. No, I never met ORRA before either. Would the Scots among us like to give an example of its use? Annoyed with myself for not spotting TREK, but otherwise enjoyed this very much. SEQUINED and FRENZIED made me suspect a pangram, but I had begun to give up on the idea until TAKE AWAY, last in, supplied all the three missing letters.
    Favourites MAJESTIC, TAX EXILE and VALEDICTION.

15. I tried APPALACHIAN at 11a for a while – thinking “Hwyl fawr” might be the name of something – an “appellation”. It was one of a couple of unfamiliars, the afore-mentioned 23a SOLIDI, and 1d BIN END. I liked REM SLEEP at 5d. Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.
    [Thank you to several contributors for your very kind posts on yesterday’s Picaroon blog. I enjoyed the music comments a great deal.]

16. By the by, I have a direct ancestor who was a Bedell at the Royal College of Physicians. Have never been quite clear whether BEADLE and Bedell were/are interchangeable. Maybe Bedell is more a post in institutions such as Colleges, whereas BEADLE is more of a Parish employee…

17. By the way, 18a was obviously an anagram, but with potential 11-letter fodder at both ends of the clue it took a moment or two to decide which way round it worked.

18. Worth it just for VALEDICTION!
    LOI was SOLIDI as I only knew the scientific meaning of solidus.
    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

19. Thanks for the blog. Bit of a strange solve, found the across clues very tricky then the downs almost a write-in which made the acrosses easy. Orra is new to me but clue was fine, nice to learn new words, Azed will use it one week.

20. Forgot to say, Mr Essexboy @ 4 makes a very interesting point about the different languages.

21. A puzzle of two halves for me: at one point, I wasn’t enjoying it and was harbouring miserable thoughts about the setter. But it slowly began to fall into place, quarter by quarter, and, by the time I reached the NE, I was thinking what elegant clueing Imogen has produced. PALATINATE, MAJESTIC, FABULIST and the delightful SEQUINED all solved in a rush and were all worth waiting for. Like some other posters, BAROUCHE registered dimly and it was satisfying to discover SOLIDI is a word (I assume it’s in a class with obeli – another occasional appearance). VALEDICTION deserves the praise it’s already garnered – I hadn’t spotted the homophonic element noticed by SinCam @12 – and I’m yet another with ticks for TAX EXILE, TREETOPS and MOTIVATE. So I’m very much in with the pack today. (Not much for the musos though: REM pop in and, unsurprisingly, there was a band called COPPERHEAD – albeit only briefly.)

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

22. good fun but 2 people mentioned spotting a thingamajig ? What?

23. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

    Lots to like here – my favourites were BAROUCHE, TAX EXILE and VALEDICTION (iechyd da!).

    SOLIDUS was a Roman, and later a medieval coin. The pre-decimal British monetary system of pounds, shillings and pence was abbreviated to LSD – librae, solidi, denarii. A price like ten shillings and sixpence (as on the Mad Hatter’s headgear in Tenniel’s illustration) was conventionally represented as 10/6 – hence the forward slash was called a ‘solidus’.

24. PostMark @21 There’s also Steve Earle’s COPPERHEAD Road, although as VALEDICTION was my clue of the day, perhaps I should suggest Help Me Rhondda?

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

25. VALEDICTION is one of those answers that’s brilliant if you’re in on the joke and hopeless otherwise. I had to Google the phrase and the first few results immediately referenced the crossword and answer. I did like the homophone though (I do like them when they work).

    Didn’t know ORRA but it had to be ANDORRA.

    Never heard of BIN END (given as BIN-END in Chambers). Also, MOT as “work on a car” is very dubious, and the clue for ROOTED is nonsense though easy to solve.

26. granfran @22 – a pangram: that is, a crossword in which all the letters of the alphabet appear at least once in the answers. I suspected it early but it didn’t help much. I liked MAJESTIC FABULIST and TAX EXILE because I could put them together – and quite a few others too. SOLIDI was a bung and check – NHO it as a slash. AlanC @7 – I disagree that it could be got from the clue and the crossers, since the crossers were all vowels, and there are a myriad ways the consonants could fit, and the definition was obscure. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

27. [granfran @22: further to TassieTim’s explanation of pangram, a ‘lipogram’ is a piece of text in which one letter is absent. The most spectacular example is Georges Perec’s novel ‘La disparition’ – ‘The Disappearance’ (translated also lipogrammatically by Gilbert Adair as ‘A Void’) in which the letter ‘e’ is entirely omitted. I suspect lipogram crosswords may be as common as pangrams, but I have never seen them flagged as such]

28. Gervase @23: thanks so much for that. Genuinely enlightening and I wish I’d gone further than the initial Google search that confirmed a solidus to be a slash. I’m just old enough to remember pre-decimal currency – and I think I may have encountered denarii before – but I’ve not really probed the LSD before (that could be misinterpreted!) I certainly never knew how the slash came to represent the S.

    [Out of pure curiosity and in similar vein, do we know how the single and double inverted commas came to represent feet and inches?]

29. [PostMark @28: In truth, they are NOT single and double commas but straighter mathematical ‘Prime’ and ‘Double Prime’ marks. So the foot is the prime, the inch the double prime and then there is a triple prime but I forget and don’t have time to Google what that is.

    The same is used in the Hemholtz musical notation system – middle C (C4 in scientific notation) is c’, C5 is c”’. C6 is c”’ etc. The problem with this system is that notes below C3 are capitals and it is difficult to distinguish when reading fast (c is C3; C is C2; C, is C1; C,, is C0)]

30. [punfold@24 and perhaps dust off an old copy of “Into the Valley” by the Skids]

31. [Gervase @27: Brendan produced a stunning lipogram puzzle at 27,734. There was no “e” in any of the clues or answers, and one of the latter was LIPOGRAM. An amazing achievement.]

32. [11a reminded me of when, living in England, we took our kids across to Pwll Mawr – The Big Pit – a coal mining museum in an abandoned mine (thanks, Maggie) in South Wales. The guides were ex-miners, and our oldest son asked this burly bloke to speak Welsh. In a deep Welsh accent, he said “In the valley, boyo”. Liam was impressed].

33. Lord Jim @31 – many thanks for the reminder of that wonderful puzzle, which I’ve just revisited. There was even more to it than you’ve mentioned, as Brendan dropped in to explain – well worth a look, for those who didn’t see it / don’t remember it.

34. [Me @29; too many ”’ in C5 which is c”]

35. Lovely stuff. Once the Q and the Z went in, I suspected a pangram, but couldn’t find an X until last clue solved TAX EXILE, when like London buses two of them came along at once!

    I had to google SOLIDI and the Welsh and Scottish elements, but all clues were clear. With the England captain in there as well, I was looking for an Irish contribution to complete the Union, but none appeared. Speaking of ROOT, he seems to be getting ‘firmly established’ in crosswordworld.

    I am very partial to BAROUCHE: a great word that reminds me of snobbish characters in Jane Austen adaptations. I also enjoyed the ‘seconds’ device in 21D: it makes a change from the more common use of initials.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen, both on good form.

36. [MB @29: and thanks to you, too. As always, one comes away from this blog having learned something – although the musical element is, sadly, well over my head. Now I know what to Google, I looked up triple prime (and there’s a quadruple prime too!). Quoting from Wikipedia, The triple prime ? as used in watchmaking represents a ligne (about 2.26 millimetres or 0.089 inches).[3][a] ]

37. Another nho for orra, though much less surprised than Eileen.

38. Dnf for me as dnk SOLIDI though got there in the end with help. Thanks for the info Gervase@23, so cool to learn something new. Dnkthe Welsh phrase but made (a correct) assumption on getting the answer. Sim favs to others. And I endorse the recommendations of the Brendan puzzle mentioned above. Thanks to Imogen and to Eileen

39. Spotting the pangram helped with the NE to get SEQUINED then FABULIST (which interestingly isn’t in Bradford’s). MrsW is a JA fan so knew BAROUCHE but neither of it had heard of ORRA. And yes gladys@17 I was working on the other end of 18a as the fodder – it seems to be part of the setter’s craft to write clues in this way. Thanks to gervase@23 for the solidus explanation and Lord Jim@31 for reminding us of Brendan’s lipogram which I had forgotten about. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

40. Gladys @14

    Regarding ‘ORRA’, I can be of some help in answering your call for examples. I am very accustomed through literature to its use meaning ‘odd’ in the sense of ‘occasional’. Sir Walter Scott’s vernacular-speaking characters often use the phrase ‘at an orra time’ to mean ‘occasionally’, and in George Douglas Brown’s 1901 novel, ‘The House with the Green Shutters’, the expression ‘an orra man’ is used to signify an odd-job man. A hunch, and possibly a distant memory, however, led me to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s ‘A Scots Quair’, where it is used in the odd-job man sense, but also as a term of personal abuse. Of a number of examples, I will leave you with one, from ‘Grey Granite,’ the third part of the trilogy: “She’d never heard him swear as he did then, jumping to his feet with his fists tight-clenched. ‘That about Mollie–they said that, the orra swine! I’ll mash that bloody Galt’s head till his own mother won’t know it!'”

41. I’m another who didn’t know ORRA but SOLIDUS is familiar from my programming days. Last section to complete was bottom left. I think the grid looks very black and we got short measure with only 26 clues. However I enjoyed it all. I spotted the potential pangram early on but forgot to check at the end. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

42. [PostMark @36: Quadruple prime! Well, guess I’m going to have to start Googling that now…

    Of course this defintition of ‘prime’ is not the same as a Prime Number – I’ve got a new rule that meetings can only start on prime numbers (I’m calling it Prime Time but no-one seems to have got the joke) so my 08.30 meetings now start at 08.29. This also means we don’t waste the first minute wondering if everyone is on the meeting or not. I will be SO glad to wave bye-bye to Zoom, Teams, Webex, Meetecho, etc.

    Glad that it was a useful piece of GK – strange how I can remember bumpf like that but can’t for the LIFE of me remember where I put my jacket that I was wearing last night!]

43. [Lord Jim @31: Thanks for that – I must have missed that one. A tour de force, certainly, but Perec’s full length novel takes the crown! I seem to recall that one of the Guardian setters (I think it might have been Arachne, Whom God Preserve) produced a double pangram – all of the letters of the alphabet appeared at least twice. Can anyone else remember this?]

44. Gervase @43 – There have been several double/triple and even quadruple pangrams fairly recently – but take a look at this.

45. Orra is a relatively common staple in barred puzzles so I’m quite surprised at the number of people who weren’t familiar with it. I never spot pangrams and their existence registers a minus number on my interest scale.

46. 11 was very clever. Great clueing all round, very enjoyable to solve.

47. [Eileen @44: thanks for that – most impressive! I have only recently returned to regular solving, and then rationed only to the daily Guardian puzzle, so I seemed to have missed a lot. Some solvers (vide supra) are very sniffy about pangrams but, provided that they are not forced, they are harmless enough and it is perfectly possible to solve a puzzle without noticing that it is pangrammatic (I didn’t with this one!) Having dabbled in the art myself, I know that the first problem facing the setter is simply to fill the grid with interesting words. Attempting a pangram is one way of reducing the scope of the task]

48. [MB @42: given how often you have to go and get your coat, I’d have thought its whereabouts would always be front of mind… 😀 ]

49. Imogen is often rather a struggle for me, so I was pleased to make reasonable progress today, albeit with the occasional hold-up for the likes of BAROUCHE and SOLIDI. Overall an ace puzzle, with VALEDICTION clue of the day and a pangram (spotted, too late to be useful) to boot.

    One of my early starters was MOORED. Not seen it? A perfectly valid alternative to ROOTED, honouring my childhood hero the late great Bobby Moore. Alas does not work with ILE-DE-FRANCE.

50. Trailman@49 very interesting answer for 19D. As stated in the blog this is a very weak clue, basically just a definition with a very tenuous allusion to an England captain. Your answer is just as valid considered as a stand alone clue.
    To be fair to the setter this was the only clue well below the standard of the others.

51. Bingy#45: perhaps it reflects the number of Cryptic solvers who are also regular solvers of barred puzzles?

    Thanks for the examples, PostMark.

52. I am clearly alone in speculating, with only H as a crosser, that the jolt in the non-upholstered BAROUCHE would lead to some kind of ache (so initiating but promptly terminating an alpha-trawl (surely not…)) and when B came along settling for backache? A DNF but great fun nonetheless with much dinking and biffing.

    [gladys@51: I think your thanks in this case are due to Spooner’s catflap@40?]

53. Note to self: Have an Auld Scots dictionary to hand. Never heard of “orra” and I’ve been a Scotsman since I arrived in May 1956. Never heard my parents or grandparents use it either.

    Ah’m richt trauchled wi’ yon…

54. Oops! Thanks to Alphalpha@52 and profound apologies to Spooner’s catflap@40: after all that research, to see someone else get the thanks…

55. Ach, nae borra, gladys@54. There wasn’t that much research involved. Before retirement I was a professional ‘Scott-ist’, so that was embedded knowledge, and finding the examples in Grassic Gibbon’s work was just a speedy deployment of Ctrl+F in the available e-texts.

    Ian Pettigrew@53: I have a few years start on you, and I never heard my parent or grandparents use the word either. I wonder if, like ‘character’ in Vulcan’s 8th March cryptic (see the comments forum there), this is a use which faded out in the early decades of the 20th century. I would be delighted to hear from any fellow-contributor, native Scots or otherwise, who can come up with a more current example.

56. Rather late in the day, so everyone has probably moved on…….

    ….but I don’t see the problem with TREK that essexboy@4 sees.

    Surely – Journey (can we seen written) back(wards) in (the) second (letter)s from (the words) sKi rEsort’s tRain sTation?

57. Thanks dantheman @56, I thought nobody had noticed! I like your way of explaining it, although I still think that strictly it would lead more in the direction of KERT (if there were such a word) by means of a double-wordplay-and-no-def kind of clue. But as we live in a world without kert, I’ll concede. 😉

58. [eb @57: I’m sure you did your homework – but it appears to me there is such a word as KERT! As well as the acronym for Key Entrepreneurial Risk Taking it – apparently – has a ‘street’ meaning. Which sounds just like plenty of contributors to this blog!

    “Caring, thoughtful, helpful and self sacrificing, Kert gives to others with mild grumbling and teasing about how he doesn’t want to but will all ways be there for you. Kert is also most often intelligent and resourceful, creating something from nothing to resolve an issue.
    Dude, he totally pulled a Kert on my gutter and solved my problem! I’ve never seen such an ingenious set up… It was like MacGyver came by.” Personally, I’m somewhat dubious about the Urban Dictionary but don’t consign yourself too soon to a world without kert. ]

59. [PostMark @58 and essexboy @57
    Next time you’re seeking refreshments in Budapest, you may consider visiting a kert.]

60. [PM @58, dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have relied on Wiktionary! All I could find there was Hungarian for garden.

    Winter, spring, summer or fall
    All you have to do is call
    And I’ll be there…
    You’ve got a kert.]

61. [EB @60
    A pity that Carole King wasn’t familiar with the word!]

62. [muffin @61: 😉 so true.

    Penfold @59: “…semi-legal and invariably smoke-filled”… beats a greasy spoon for your next grandmaster challenge]

63. What a great find Mr PostMark @58. Surely though by the time a word has entered the Urban Dictionary the youngsters will not be using it anymore.

64. [Roz @63: if that’s the dynamic, then there’s a whole bunch of words in use by my two sons that I’d like to propose for inclusion in the UD !]

65. [ Start using a word yourself , a sure fire way to stop them using it I would think ]

66. Not quite in tune with Imogen today. I had no idea with the wordplay for ANDORRA so biffed AUSTRIA which fitted the crossers I had at the time. Finally disabused of this by SEQUINED, which is a fine clue with a great surface. I back-parsed ANDORRA as AND/OR + RA and didn’t bother checking RA in the dictionaries. So, beaten all ends up, basically.
    My other biffed one was TIN END, as I guessed TEND for incline. I’m not convinced by BEND in this sense. My other faves were REM SLEEP and COPPERHEAD. Impressed with Trailman’s MOORED alternative and thanks to Gervase for the background to SOLIDUS.
    Thanks, Imogen and Eileen for a very helpful blog, not least the Gaelic translations!

67. essexboy @57. I’m with Dantheman @56 on this. The instruction ‘journey back’ is to reverse TREK. You will then find it ‘in’ the second letters etc. The definition remains ‘journey’ regardless.

    Gervase @23. Apparently (according to Chambers) the forward slash developed from the “long S” that was used to denote shillings (and solidi), which is why it is used like that in 10/6 (pronounced “ten and six” for those with no monetary experience before 15 February 1971); and hence why it is named solidus; if I had known that before solving I wouldn’t have had to spend so long on that clue! It wasn’t just that one on the RHS that held me up – I was looking for eight of them for quite a long time and eventually gave up without solving PALATINATE.

    Interestingly, perhaps, I interspersed my attempts with (among others) an article in the Guardian about why brain fog is becoming a frequent complaint in the periods of lockdown. It didn’t help much with this particular instance of the phenomenon, but apparently spending my time visiting a variety of places and meeting people would help. In other words, what I used to do before March last year.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

68. [phitonelly@66: I wonder if by equating “Welsh” with “Gaelic” you are trying to tempt Anna back in? [Come on Anna! – you’ve been missed. (JinA is back)]]

    Btw Eileen (and Imogen) thanks for the enlightenment about “Hwyl fawr” which, from my limited (and I mean limited) knowledge of Welsh pronounciation (can’t resist) would render as “Hell Fire” near enough – would this lead by any means to the various Hellfire clubs which have dotted many lives?

69. sheffield hatter @67 – thanks for all of that.

    If this had been a Saturday puzzle, I’d have enjoyed expanding on SOLIDI (LSD etc.) but the pressure during the week is to get the blog posted as early as possible and I knew the information was all there in Chambers for people to look up (I love ‘solidus (nummus)’ – ‘hard cash’ for the mediaeval silver coin).

    But I just really wanted to recommend the article, which I caught up with this afternoon.

70. Alphalpha @ 68, where do I begin ? And I am really slow at typing. Let us just start by noting that the f is always pronounced as v.

71. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

    phitonelly @ 66: I think if you see ‘bend’ and ‘incline’ as referring to the non-physical it may be more convincing, eg a student may bend / incline to (eg) languages.

72. I like the idea of a Kertie who has given up obsession with science fiction in order to pursue temporary Hungarian drinking dens, while being caring and being a dab hand with gutters.

73. Simon S @71. Thanks for that – I’d been struggling to completely justify it. It works better if we think of inclination and bent, but it’s in Chambers anyway: ‘bend’: incline to a point of view.

74. I’m very familiar with bin-ends – I’m not sure if that’s to my credit!

75. [Alphalpha @68 – in addition to the single F being pronounced as a V, as Roz has pointed out, the ‘awr’ combination is similar to English ‘our’ or ‘ower’ (as in flower power), so fawr=vower. I’ve heard hwyl pronounced either hoil (like Sir Fred Hoyle the astronomer) or hoo-ul (you will sometimes hear this in English schoo-ul for what is normally skool – think of this: “Oh mum, do I have to go to schoo-ul?”). So, “hoil vower“.

    Sorry, no takers for your Hellfire Club.]

76. Alphalpha@68: With no knowledge of Welsh, but for some reason expecting a silent H, I imagined “hwyl fawr” to be pronounced “well far”, which led me via Zen navigation to “well fare” and “welfare” and then “farewell” — a completely bogus journey that ended, nevertheless, at the proper destination. Then I looked up “hwyl fawr”, fell off my chair, and went on to solve the clue.

77. 16d TAX EXILE I liked this because I got nowhere with
    CAR, VAN or BUS and couldn’t think of any more 3-letter vehicles. Now I see why!

    A less well-known but equally horrid literary beadle is Mr. Hater in T H White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose, a story of a young girl who discovers a community of displaced Lilliputians on the estate where she lives, and I recommend it to everybody.

    A barouche-landau (belonging to Queen Matildagarde IV) features in the even less well-known children’s story The Amazing Vacation, by Dan Wickenden, in which two children go magically to the Country Without a Name. If you can track that one down, do.

    Hwyl fawr baffled me — I know that “fawr” is an inflected form of “mawr,” meaning “big” or “great,” (see Tassie Tim@32) but I couldn’t find anything about hwyl. I wish Anna was still with us. I do know, though, sh@75, that h isn’t a silent letter in Welsh as it is in Latin languages.

    My record for not spotting themes has a few dents in it, but my record for not spotting pangrams is still unblemished!

    Thanks to Gervase @23 for the “solidus” explanation. When I finally got to England in 1976 I felt cheated that they no longer had the pounds, shillings and pence I’d lived with vicariously all my life, but boring decimal currency like mine and everybody else’s!

    I’ve never seen an acronym derived like TREK from the second letters of anything before!

78. Very slow today but got there. Bit surprised there is less comment about MOT = work on car and OUCH = reaction to jolt. The first I find very dubious, and a jolt always seems to me more of a surprise than something painful. To the extent that even once I had all the crossers and had guessed BARE to be filled with something I still didn’t get there. Never mind, plenty to enjoy in the rest of it.

79. [Eileen @69. Yes, solidus nummus would be such a great thing to say, but since the first lockdown I think I’ve only used hard cash about half a dozen times, and the opportunity to refer to it – never mind in Latin – just never seems to arise.]

80. An excellent puzzle, which I picked up late in the day. I like to solve weekday puzzles without references, and I just managed to do that today, pausing only on FABULIST, which I boldly entered assuming it was a word, and TAX EXILE, which for some reason I was slow to see but eventually got after working out LE = left half-cut.
    I rarely spot pangrams, but I spotted this one.
    Many thanks to Imogen, Eileen and various commenters for their views and some interesting sidelines.

81. Yes, I see bend = incline towards is in all the dictionaries. Should have checked and I’d have convinced myself Thanks, all, for the help.
    And I agree that it would be nice to see Anna back.

82. I agree that MOT and OUCH are a bit of a stretch but trying my best not to nitpick today.
    Was Aesop the first FABULIST ?

83. Thanks, all, for the comments and discussion.

    I have a Zoom meeting now but may be back if there are any more interesting developments.

84. Roz @82: Absolutely.

    [Petert @72: In honour of Captain Kirkie…

    Dirty Kertie from Bizerte
    Saw the Captain, made ze flirty
    Captain zink she verra purty,
    Lose his watch and lose his shirty,
    Call ze general alerte,
    The gendarmes look for Dirty Kertie
    From Casablanc’ to Gulf of Sirte:
    Has anyone seen Dirty Kertie?]

85. [essexboy @84 Love it]

86. I can solve these puzzles most of the time and that’s why I try to get in early, but the knowledge on this blog leaves me beautifully bewildered. Top stuff today

87. There’s a post on twitter that an Indian setter called Rishi, who was a long-standing setter for The Hindu, has died.

    Is that the same Rishi as posts here from time to time?

88. Simon S @87

    Oh dear, I fear it must be. Rishi used to be a 15² blogger – see here.

    We didn’t hear from him for quite a while but recently he’s been commenting here again. That’s sad news.

89. Simon S @87: I very much fear that it is. Please see Rishi’s last comment on 22 March on General Discussion @55. Very sad news.

90. Very sad.

91. Lord Jim @89 – I missed your comment because I immediately went searching for Rishi’s most recent comment, which I eventually found, as you said, under General Discussion, which I don’t visit very often – but I wish I’d seen this one.

    Rishi
    March 22, 2021 at 3:29 pm
    Today my first puzzle in a cycle was due to appear in The Hindu but it has not.
    No puzzle is lying with the paper.
    The crosswords were ready but I did not send them. I decided to call it a day! This after a phenomenal, uninterrupted supply of grids over more than 20 years.
    I am happy that I took this decision just before going to hospital for the third time in as many weeks.
    Now I am back home OK but I am not in any state to do sustained work.
    It is going to be a withdrawn life.
    I have enjoyed being here and at the Crossword Centre and DIY COW.
    I shall treasure the memories.
    Bye.
    Rishi

    I’m so sorry I hadn’t seen this.

92. I’m sorry to hear the news about Rishi, but I suppose his sign-off on 22 March had a finality about it that presaged this outcome. His contributions here were interesting and interested – although an experienced setter and blogger he seemed to be still keen on learning how clues worked, or why they didn’t, and the quirks of English; and he often had something from his own background to share with us, which I found engrossing. RIP

93. On using “bend” for “incline” — It was Dr. Martin Luther King who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” President Obama brought it to new fame, and now it may be one of the most cited quotations of the past year.

    I got the above from google, as well as something I hadn’t known about the earlier history of the phrase from an early New England abolitionist, and I’ll add it here: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.” – abolitionist Unitarian minister Theodore Parker in a 1853 sermon.

94. This is a bit late, but I think that “orra” is most common in NE Scotland (where I live), and the orra man is a widely understood farmng term (for the days when farmers could afford them). One of the kitchen drawers in our hillwalking club hut is labelled “Orra Cutlery”, and I’ve seen one or two heads being scratched in the vicinity.

95. A late post just to add my respects to Rishi who I only encountered in relatively recent times on this blog but who’s snippets of insight into life in Southern India – both now and in times past – were a pleasure. I had seen and noted the finality of his last post but hadn’t anticipated such a rapid turn of events. RIP indeed.

96. Very sad about Rishi. It was always interesting to read his stories of a different culture. This seems to be him. RIP Gridman.

97. Thank you for that, Penfold.

98. Thanks Eileen as I had no idea what “ORRA” was doing and had assumed it was some Scottish dialect word, looks like it is obscure even for many natives (there is an Iron Maiden instrumental called Losfer Words (Big ‘Orra) but of course that is unrelated). Diolch everyone else for excellent explanations and further commentary/background, especially on SOLIDI which I cheated with a list – needed to google carriages for that one too (BROUGHAM might have worked at one point but not for long, and if essexboy@4 is right and barouche is derived from French, German and Italian it ought to be Swiss surely and I should have known it).
    “Hwyl Fawr” to Rishi, I enjoyed his contributions which usually came from a different perspective and thus added plenty to the discussion. Those biographies on the Hindu crossword site are very entertaining too eg Incognito just below Rishi, thanks Penfold@96.
    Of many entertaining and clever clues my favourite was TREK, thanks Imogen.

99. PS Meant to respond to Ronald@16 just in case you pop back: I once fell foul of an Enigmatist clue (G 27943) where BEADLE was defined as a college official, so I think the BEDELL/BEADLE thing must be just down to dialect variant spelling or similar (maybe one is from middle ages?). But i have no further evidence.

100. AlanC@7: Copperhead was clued *Cold-blooded American being busy leader (10)* by Tramp in January

101. Very late to the party as this one took us two bedtime solves to (nearly) finish. We too (Valentine @77) have an unblemished record in failing to spot pangrams. Frustrating in this case as it would have helped us with our dopey DNF of 4ac, which surprisingly has the only G of the puzzle.

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