Guardian 28,445 – Imogen

62 comments on “Guardian 28,445 – Imogen”

1. At the risk of sounding oversensitive, I wasn’t a fan of “swinger” = BI. Your parsing saves it a little as a known phrase, but out of context this reads as a conflation of Bisexuality with promiscuity, which is a long running and harmful stereotype. ( see attached )
   Perhaps the setter or editor could have been a bit more careful here.

2. Found this quite tough. Had unparsed salami instead of WASABI, despite eating the latter rather often; pleased to see REAL TENNIS in again (I can play again next week); dredged RIEN NE VA PLUS from the memory; was confused by DODDLE, thinking the ‘extremely large’ was D OR DD; and hadn’t heard of a POM-POM. Enjoyed many clues including STARVE, ENOUGH SAID and SAY WHEN. Many thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

3. I struggled to get on Imogen’s wavelength today though, looking at the clueing in retrospect, there’s little for me to complain about. Some splendid clues – URDU is inspired and I enjoyed the REAL TENNIS cd. STARVE, ARGUABLY, POMP, POUTING and IN FOAL were amongst the others I ticked with the splendid FOP as COTD. I am another who is a bit disappointed with BI in WASABI – but because I thought swingers were spouse-swappers rather than bisexual. Had never heard of the roulette phrase – I clearly don’t move in the right circles (though I have visited the casino in Monte Carlo!)

   Thanks Imogen and Andrew

4. I’m not always a great fan of Imogen’s puzzles, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. There are some very clever concise and witty clues, which I find always more satisfying than wordy over-elaborated ones.

5. Despite being up extra-early this took extra-long. Wow – that was tough going and needed a lot of help. This is going to need a lot on unpicking to understand the parsing fully – sevearal of these were in the ‘lucky-guess’ category for me today. I was helped by a few of the long ones going in quite quickly but was then horribly tripped up by 22a.

   23d – I’ve not heard the term ‘nettles’ for annoy – for me, it would always be ‘needles.’

   Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

6. [PostMark @3: Oh – get YOU and your Casinos! The only one I’ve been to is in a Centre Commerical in Calais to have lunch (Flunch is a favourite haunt) and buy all those lovely French things we are denied here on Brit Island… Like Absinthe and Creme de Cassis.]

7. A brilliant crossword. Five stars for HAIR OF THE DOG and NIT and FOP and RIEN NE VA PLUS and VANBRUGH and ALARMS and six stars for URDU. Thank you Imogen!

   My biggest sticking point was EASTERLIES (I had never heard of ‘earlies’ for potatoes) and I was trying to parse SAY WHEN with AY for a yard and wondering why SW meant ‘cut’ (I assumed it was butcher jargon or a type of canal or slang for being drunk or …) Thank you for setting me straight Andrew; these things are always obvious once you’ve seen them.

8. MaidenBartok@5. Here’s Dickens using it in chapter 28 of Little Dorrit: “… Clennam had to shake off a kind of stupor before he could look at Mr Rugg, recall the thread of his talk, and hurriedly say, ‘I am unchanged, and unchangeable, in my decision. Pray, let it be; let it be!’ Mr Rugg, without concealing that he was nettled and mortified, replied …” I don’t think, however, that it of one of those older uses that has fallen into disuse; perhaps someone can find a more contemporary example.

9. yesyes @7: enlightenment straight from the allotment – potatoes tend to be divided into three classes – first early, second early and maincrop. And, yes, it indicates how soon they are ready for harvesting. Most of your classic new potatoes tend to be from the first two classes.

   [MB @6: I worked at the time for a leading professional services firm who held a European conference to try to collectively discuss and understand why we were not achieving desired levels of profitability. The powers that be decided to book for our exclusive use a five star hotel in Cap St Jean Ferrat overlooking the bay of Monte Carlo. For a week. Which, I think, shed considerable light on our profitability problem! 😀 ]

10. Not at all oversensitive Shaun @1. I totally agree with you re BI.

11. Tough puzzle – I am rarely on Nutmeg’s wavelength – and there were some bits of knowledge I did not have. Lots of use of aids. But of the ones I got I really liked: URDU, ALARMS, ENOUGH SAID, FOP, REAL TENNIS and, of course, EASTERLIES.

    PostMark @ 9 – must get my seed potatoes out – way behind this year.]

    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

12. I’m with George Clements @4 on this one (though, like others, I’m not too happy with 10ac).

    I had ticks for HAIR OF THE DOG, ENOUGH SAID, FOP, RIEN NE VA PLUS, VANBRUGH, DODDLE and ARGUABLY.

    Many thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

13. I thought this was great. Favourite probably FOP, so neat. GYRUS was unfamiliar but the wordplay was clear.

    We’ve had WASABI before, in Anto’s Quiptic 1,068 about a year ago, where it was “Japanese hottie lived with a Guys and Dolls fan”. I agree with Andrew that in today’s clue, “swinger” is intended in the sense of one who “swings both ways”.

    Can I resist the temptation to ask yet again what language Liverpudlian hairdressers speak? Obviously not.

    Many thanks Imogen and Andrew.

14. For the second day running I had to start at the bottom (only URDU at first pass) and work up. The short words are all imaginatively clued and I particularly enjoyed the metal prostheses, the designer of Blenheim Palace, and the homeopathic cure. The clue for FLIGHT TEST raised a snigger.

    I tried PENETRATED for 13dn until I found FOP.

    I agree that the wording for WASABI is unfortunate – a pity, because it’s a good construction. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

15. PostMark @ 9 : it had never occurred to me that the great French singer-songwriter Jean Ferrat, actually from a Russian family, must have taken his adopted name from this location.

16. As soon as I solved STARVE for 16d and realised there was a 2-letter word beginning with a V in the solution to 22ac, I realised I was possibly in the realms of the casino and the croupier. Of which I know very little. Felt rather out of my depth at times today, but didn’t quite drown. Though sadly a DNF. ENOUGH SAID…

17. [Musing on the aforementioned new potatoes – as I do – on the dog walk, I’m prompted to commend to those who may not have encountered them the dozen or more books that make up The Minack Chronicles by Derek Tangye starting with A Gull On The Roof. They are a delightfully escapist and nostalgic collection of tales charting the life of two reasonably sophisticated Londoners who gave up their city life for a more precarious existence as potato growers on the cliffs of Cornwall in the 1950’s/60’s. Delightful reads. ]

    [Togs @15: it was a breathtaking location and more than enough to inspire a name change.]

18. [PM/MB: This is how I’ve always imagined PostMark.

    Togs @15: C’est après avoir vu sur une carte de France la ville de Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, qu’il décide de prendre le nom de Jean Ferrat, après le nom de Jean Laroche déjà utilisé sur scène par un autre artiste (from French wiki) ]

    I really must get more into Japanese cuisine. From the crossers for 10ac I was trying to force in HAWAII and QATARI. I rejected WASABI because I thought it was a particularly strict form of Islam.

    My favourite today was the clue for ENOUGH SAID. I’ve already posted two links, so I’ll leave others to find Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons duetting on Love Hurts.

    Thanks Imogen, and Andrew for the parsing and for the Vanbrugh link – interesting chap.

19. Surprised how many people have never heard a croupier say RIEN NE VA PLUS – that was an unparsed biff-in-from-definition even though I’ve never been in a casino in my life.

    However, I missed REAL TENNIS despite living just down the road from Henry VIII’s personal court at Hampton Court (still in use), and I’d forgotten the anti aircraft POMPOM. Like drofle@2 I started out with DD for extremely large:luckily that gave a useful DD to go in the middle of DODDLE.

    Some great stuff here, especially the tiny ones like NIT, FOP, URDU and RUTH. Also liked ALARMS and ENOUGH SAID; couldn’t parse MEDICARE. I also thought swingers swapped wives rather than genders.

    [I have fond memories of the VARSITY MATCH – the rugby version was always played at Twickenham on a weekday afternoon, and because of the horrendous traffic problems it generated we used to be allowed out of school early so we could get home before the crowd came out.]

20. Struggled with the top left corner today – failed to get POMP and GYRUS, and it took a long time for MEDICARE to click. Otherwise, I was pretty much on Imogen’s wavelength and enjoyed this one.

    Ronald @16 – for me it was the two-letter word starting with N (that clearly wasn’t NO) that made me stop looking for a native English phrase…

    I’m with everyone who as FOP as their COTD. Just lovely. And proof that cryptic clues don’t have to be difficult to be satisfying.

    I’d also like to say how tickled I was by 28ac.

    24d is an interesting one – I don’t think I’ve ever heard RUTH used as in that sense without the negative suffix -LESS. [Like all those DIS- words that you never hear the opposite of such as GRUNTLED (except in The Code Of The Woosters) or HWASHER, being something that makes your plates dirty…]

21. Lord Jim @13 – there was a similar, but more accurate, clue for WASABI from Kairos in the Independent at the end of March:

    Used to be part of the LGBT community, which is quite spicy (6)

22. Wow that was tough but as many have said, once solved it was clearly fair. Quite a few new ones for me including the french phrase which took ages to find. (Good suggestion essexboy@18. I also love the very different Nazareth version. Maybe it’s because they were the first band I ever saw live, supporting Deep Purple.) Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

23. Andrew @21: and all three use the same construction, ie “was a bi”. There must be some other way to clue WASABI! How about: “With a society boatman, international hot stuff (6)”?

24. I knew RIEN NE VA PLUS only from Casablanca. That and a few others were left unparsed in my transAtlantic (or cisAtlantic, depending on your point of view) ignorance. Ken Dodd and earlies are new to me. I have seen the real tennis court at Hampton Court but the word “galleries” didn’t stick, although I can picture them. Had to confirm GYRUS which as Andrew says was fairly clued. Thanks both.

25. My experience was very much like George Clements’ (@4) – some clever clues, and enjoyable throughout.
    I had to guess the answers to several clues before being able to parse them, but of course they worked perfectly. I got most satisfaction, naturally, from those that I couldn’t guess but managed to work out from the wordplay, including WASABI, RIEN NE VA PLUS and VANBRUGH.
    I thought WASABI was ok because ‘swinger’ doesn’t have to be a straight (!) definition of a word that is only a part of the answer, not the answer itself. A similar trick (if I can call it that) was used in a recent puzzle to define the part-answer ASP as ‘poisoner’, which is arguably not the best choice of definition if it was for the whole answer, as was pointed out at the time.
    FOP was my favourite clue, and IN FOAL, URDU and SAY WHEN followed close behind.
    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

26. For once I got a reasonable start to an Imogen puzzle, but then things got tricky. I tried PACK for 1D (ack-ack, ignoring one) but it didn’t really work – and then I remembered pom-pom.

    I liked many clues, especially those for ENOUGH SAID, SAY WHEN, PERFORATED and ARGUABLY (nicely misleading ‘perhaps’).

    [PM @9, I once worked for a company that wined and dined some clinicians at Cap Ferrat; very pleasant. I took home my bath robe because I thought the label in French said that it was complimentary, although it actually said that you could purchase one at the hotel shop. I then lost it by leaving it in an American hotel!]

    Thanks to Imogen for the entertainment and to Andrew for a comprehensive blog.

27. Lord Jim @23 – “Condiment made by Women’s Institue smothering a hunt protestor.”

28. Not convinced by ‘what one arrested may be given’ as a definition of IN CHARGE. Perhaps “how one arrested may be taken” would work better. Otherwise v enjoyable.

29. [A story about WASABI. In 2004, my wife and I were in a busy, rather up-market restaurant in San Francisco. When our orders arrived there was a small, green lump of something on my plate. Could it be mushy peas, I wondered? Surely not in here. Curious, I put the whole lot in my mouth. “Yeugh!”, I shrieked, and spat it out. Heads were turned and my wife and I both had red faces, but for different reasons. That was my introduction to wasabi.

    She still tells the tale if she wants to convey how uncouth I am.]

30. Hard work with a couple unparsed (completely unfamiliar with POMPOM gun and just assumed Dodd was a comedian) but satisfying- what Eileen@12 and George Clements@4 said. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

31. [Lord Jim @23 and widdersbel @27: very nice!

    ‘Jamaican may be hiding aces – behind the salt and pepper?’ ]

32. In spite of many clues that gave pleasure (ENOUGH SAID, RIEN NE VA PLUS, DODDLE, IN FOAL, STARVE, etc), on the whole I found this puzzle a bit of a grind, and was rather pleased when it was over (in almost exactly one hour). My LOI was WASABI – a word I knew, but not the pungent attribute, which I had to check with MrG. Thanks setter, I suspect the problem for me today was not your puzzle, but my mood – it’s been a rare gloomy/chilly day here on Monterey Bay.

33. 22 had a strange word count with given crossers so i though change of something was apposite-whats the nearest lingo for an Essex(Estuary) man? Normandy-bien sur!(with a dash of schnitzel)
    Very nice puzzle
    Thanks all round

34. Lots of great clues that have been mentioned with FOP being my double tick. In contrast to AlanB@26 I didn’t enjoy digging out the (to me) unknown and obscure 22 & 27a from from the wordplay – I thought 22 was particularly tortuous. WASABI amused me as I solved it and I took BI as Andrew parsed it. That said the several alternatives offered by contributors are just as good and avoid any possibility of misinterpretation.
    I didn’t parse PERFORATED or POMP so thanks to Andrew for those and the rest of the blog, and to Imogen for excellent puzzle.

35. I’m afraid I had salami in for 10a! Clearly WAS makes more sense of the first part of the clue, but the swinger still eludes me.

36. Tough puzzle.
    I agree with the comments on 10ac.
    New for me: Vanbrugh, Sir John; earlies = potatoes which are ready to be harvested before the main crop; VARSITY MATCH, GYRUS.
    Did not parse URDU, REAL TENNIS, RIEN NE VA PLUS apart from A PLUS = a bonus.
    Favourite: SAY WHEN.
    Failed POMP.
    Not sure who the comedian is in 28ac – somebody I never heard of – Sir Ken Dodd? I saw a minute of a tasteless video of him where he referred to a young black girl as his slave. Not my cup of tea.
    Thanks, B+S.

37. Although I liked the surfaces and anagrams for HAIR OF THE DOG and ENOUGH SAID I did not enjoy this crossword overall — too much esoterica for me. Thanks to both.

38. me @ 11

    Ooops meant Imogen (sorry to both Imogen and Nutmeg)

39. I was on the right wave length , helped by getting the longer answers fairly quickly. Raised an eyebrow at 10a (in the Grauniad!!!) struggled with the 4 letter ones. LOI was 1d, but a guess and unparsed.

    Thanks Imogen for the fun and Andrew for educating me on gun types!

40. I was quite content with TAMARI for 10a as a cut short form of a Tamarin monkey (swinger) and TAMARI being a type of Japanese soy sauce, although I have no idea whether it is pungent or not. Would have been a more PC answer?

41. My proudest moment in the solving was with RIEN NE VA PLUS. With just 3 crossers I decided no English phrase could fit, so how might they say “no more bets” in French. Didn’t need the wordplay at all. My un-proudest moment: well there were a lot of them, ’nuff said.

    During the whole process, especially when I saw that the Imogen implied that Ked Dodd was actually funny, was that the puzzle dates him. I have no concrete information here, but 75+ years old maybe?

42. I am growing oxymoron potatoes this year. It’s been so cold that my earlies are late.

43. [eb @18: 😀 At first, I wondered if you comparing me to the lady in red! Which left me both shaken AND stirred.]

44. BTW I was wondering how UK-centric it is to associate EASTERLIES with cold.

45. I used Imogen’s reputation as “hard but fair” to solve GYRUS: ‘dodgy Russian’ seems to require either a Russian who is a bit iffy, or the Russian word that equates to our dodgy. Neither would have been fair, so I posited a G on the end of 1a et voila!

    Having worked in British casinos for over 10 years, I have only ever heard RIEN NE VA PLUS in films; “no more bets, please” is the English version. I fully concur with Michelle @36 and Dr WhatsOn @41 with regard to an alleged comedian by the name of Dodd.

    And 1d took me ages, rummaging around in my general knowledge, discarding Bofors gun and flugabwehrkanone (Flak) until the crossing M sent me in the right direction. (Though I did have a possible PEDICURE for 9a which would have made things even harder.) The rummaging also threw up enough recollection of REAL TENNIS to solve 7d quite early on, but VARSITY MATCH took forever, as I had separated ‘amateur’ and ‘game’ like you do, and was trying to find a word or phrase where MATCH could replace HAM (Nottingham=>NOTTING MATCH?). It was fun while it lasted, which was almost as long as a T20 cricket match.

    I thought I was familiar with the phrase “given in charge”, which is surely what Imogen intended from the way the clue is worded, but Andrew has used “taken” in his blog, and a few have queried the clue. Maybe I’ve read it in old police or detective stories, but if so, why can’t I find a reference online?

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

46. s.hatter: I meant to write “given in charge” in 3d, but somehow failed to copy the word that was right there in the clue…

47. [hatter @45: don’t pedicures normally make things softer?]

48. Thanks Imogen and Andrew
    I disagree with the praise for RIEN NE VA PLUS and REAL TENNIS. The former it’s easy enough to guess the answer (from early James Bond films for me), but it’s never one you are going to build up from its component parts, though it was possible to work out the parsing post solve.
    REAL TENNIS is just straight GK. Easy enough if you know about the game (I was taken to watch a match at the Cambridge court while I was up, Andrew!), but there is no wordplay to help if you don’t have the GK.
    HAIR OF THE DOG was my favourite.

49. muffin @48
    Regarding RIEN NE VA PLUS, in fact I did build it up from its parts. I had the R and the E and saw only RIEN to fit there sensibly – rather like Dr. WhatsOn (@41) noticing that the phrase looked French. The lucky bit was thinking of REV for ‘minister’, and the letters I now had made VIENNA (or most of it) obligingly appear. I didn’t know the phrase, but, knowing some French including the ‘ne…plus’ construct, I thought it looked like a well-formed phrase with pretty much the exact meaning required.

50. I guess I’m more Jean-Paul Sartre than James Bond since the French phrase for “the betting is over” which comes to my mind is Les jeux sont faits. It, of course, did not fit.
    I also plopped in a pungent salami despite having a large ball of wasabi on my desk left over from a sushi lunch earlier this week.

51. AlanB @49
    I’m very impressed!

52. [I read somewhere that most “wasabi” sold in Britain is, in fact, mostly horseradish. Nothing wrong with that – I like horseradish – but if it’s what you want, you can buy it much more cheaply than “wasabi”.]

53. muffin @52: the “wasabi” we have at home is 4.5% wasabi, 31.7% horseradish, plus other stuff. My Japanese wife tells me that you only get very pure wasabi in the most expensive restaurants in Japan, and it takes the chef a long time to grate it. It’s really, really expensive, hence the dilution with ordinary horseradish.

54. As a big ol’ gay man, I am forced to comment. Those offended by WASABI are indeed being overly sensitive. Shaun @1 said it best – “out of context” it could be offensive. My advice: leave it in context. It was a very amusing clue and I want more like that. None of my bisexual friends would be offended by the phrase “swings both ways”. In fact it’s hard to come up with a nonclinical descriptor that would be less offensive.

    muffin @52: Basically all the “wasabi” in the US is green-dyed horseradish as well. I prefer both the flavor and the price of horseradish, but if you get the chance to try real, freshly-grated wasabi, you should definitely give it a try. It’s somewhat milder but there are some subtle notes that are really interesting.

55. Too many obscurities for my taste.

56. Not sure about ‘bored’ for ‘perforated’, OK you bore a hole in something but perforating is more punched than bored, dunno, maybe it’s just me:)

57. Shaun@1, the same issue occurs in this Saturdays Prize at 1 across, no need for this sort of offensive stuff.
    Gerald

58. Oh dear–a long time ago I used to play Avalon Hill’s Tobruk board game and I knew all about the two-pounder but I didn’t know it was called “pom pom.” Spent a little while thinking “They can’t be doing something with the Bofors, can they?”

59. [ Re WASABI: I’m with bleudot@54 on this one. If we want crosswords to be more inclusive, we shouldn’t discourage setters by taking clues with LBGT elements out of context and finding offense.
    I have to admit when I looked at that clue, my first thought was ape, monkey or other tree-inhabiting primate; my second thought was “swings both ways = BI. The other suggestion never occurred to me.
    I wonder (and I have no evidence of course) whether some straight folk are finding offense on behalf of our LBGT friends. ]

60. @40 I also parsed it as Tamari, assuming no longer indicated chopping off the n from Tamarin

61. Late getting to this, but here are my thoughts on the SWINGER / BI question. I agree that “swings both ways” is the intended link, but I don’t think it works, because the “both ways” isn’t there in the clue. In the phrase “swings both ways”, the last two words are the part that actually conveys the meaning; without it, the connection is too loose to be meaningful or fair.

    If Imogen was under the impression that “swinger” meant “bisexual” outside of that phrase, then it’s an outright mistake: as I understand it, the people who apply the term “swinger” to themselves are overwhelmingly straight-identified.

    Having said that, I don’t have any significant concern that the clue is offensive. To the degree that I find the clue problematic, it’s on grounds of accuracy, not offensiveness.

    I enjoyed this puzzle, although I found it quite difficult and sadly didn’t quite finish it (I had to cheat by using a word-finder to get EASTERLIES.) There were quite a few bits of information or words that I didn’t know (gyrus, Vanbrugh, pom pom, the number of chapters in Ruth, the rules for real tennis), but it was quite satisfying to figure them out from the clue and later look them up to confirm them.

62. Tony Santucci @37 and maarvarq @55:

    Ditto.

Comments are closed.