Guardian 28,486 / Imogen

78 comments on “Guardian 28,486 / Imogen”

1. An enjoyable way to spend some of South-East Queensland’s snap three -day (fingers crossed) lockdown, so thanks to Imogen. I see I had some of the favourites that Eileen mentioned: I ticked 16a SUBTERFUGE, 24a BRISTOL, 26a GERRYMANDER, 5d PREACHER and 6d, my very much delayed LOI, THE WORSE FOR WEAR. I appreciated the thorough blog, so I am grateful as always to Eileen.

2. After 2 very difficult days it was nice to have something a little less taxing but still not easy. It took me ages to get 25ac until I suddenly realised I’d been misled by May. 5dn was also a cracker even though I’ve never read any Lee Child’s. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

3. Thanks Imogen and Eileen
   I liked GERRYMANDER, and also enjoyed constructing DISINVEST and HETAREA.
   I had a partly parsed GALICIA at 18d for some time.

4. Thanks for the help with PREACHER, Eileen. Never read those books, though my wife has read one – she panned it badly. I took so long to see the cleverly hidden STINGY (LOI). No idea why DIVES is a rich man – and doesn’t DISINVEST mean the same as DIVEST? I tried several variations on ‘is’ mixed with [Chrissie] ‘Evert’ before hitting on one I recognised as an SI unit (and hence must have been a scientist). Thanks, Eileen and Imogen.

5. Tassie Tim @4 – I thought about supplying a link for DIVES. I’ll do it now.

   Chambers – DISINVEST: to remove investment (from) or cease investment (in)

6. TassieTim@4: Has to look it up myself. Dives was the rich man in the parable with Lazarus apparently.

7. Sorry Eileen, crossed.

8. Thanks Eileen and Imogen.

   I toyed with putting HERA around ETA, but couldn’t believe it formed a word, so that held me up there for a good while. I even checked for other 4 letter goddesses, but they seemed even less likely.

   Despite being a mathematician , I hadn’t recognised Newton as a geometer – it’s not the first thing that springs to mind about him.

9. I quite liked GERRYMANDER, FACULTY and TAUREAN but some of the other clues were seriously shonky. I thought 1d & 6d were dreadful – like Vulcan on a bad day. I didn’t like the use of “and” as a link word (ionic really) in BRISTOL. I’ll stop now – have been up since 4am dealing with kitten mayhem so maybe not in the best of moods!

10. Steadily worked my way through this in an anticlockwise direction this morning. Wondered if SCRUBS would be known as an affectionate name for that London prison across The Pond, or indeed that GERRYMANDER would be known this side. GIDDUP might not be commonly known either. Anyway, smoother progress than the last two days, as JerryG@2 has already commented on…

11. One more gripe: is “Newton” a DBE?

12. Well after the last couple of days, this was a welcome confirmation that I’ve not completely lost-the-plot, crossword-wise (maybe in every other sense, but hey-ho).

    With muffin @3, I had GALICIA until I realised my mistake but most of the rest came out without too much of a problem.

    12a whilst I hate Tolkein (and in fact that entire genre, Wagner’s ridiculous Ring Cycle included) that was gettable and I’m with Eileen on The Muppet Show, the opening title of which looks amazingly like our regular team Zoom calls.

    [I can’t let DIVES go without a link to the wonderful ‘5 Variants of Dives and Lazarus’ by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a piece of music that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. In the English Hymnal it is known as ‘Kingsfold’ after the village just down the road from where I live where it is reputed that RVW heard it performed by a local singer in a pub then called ‘The Wheatsheaf.’

    The lyrics of the song RVW heard tells the story of the murder of Maria Marten in the Red Barn – Maria Marten is a distant relative of mine.

    With apologies to Gaufrid for the slight hijack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHhymumfEm8 ]

13. bodycheetah @11 – I thought ‘was’ justified it, so I underlined it in the definition.

14. MaidenBartok @12 – many thanks for the music, which I’m listening to now (I know the hymn tune well) and your two interesting personal links.

15. Knew about the character Reacher, probably via a bookshow interview, but Child hadn’t stuck, so preacher was a partial shrug. Sievert rang only the faintest of bells, but Dives has been here not too long ago. Agree about 13a, Eileen; if the show was The Muppets, making pets plural would just about work. 1d too is a bit of a nudge clue… you know what he means, but actual substitution…?? Ntl, quite fun, ta I and E.

16. I am having a tough week. Like others I found Vlad on Tuesday hard but did manage to finish albeit with the help of aids and had a few unparsed. Gave up on yesterday’s Paul but will have a look to see how it worked later.

    Now today – and unlike some of the others above I found it pretty tough – harder than Vlad’s. Needed a lot of help from the aids – and there were a fair number of down clues I couldn’t parse.

    A learning experience…. and GERRYMANDER made me laugh.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

17. eileen @11 yes that makes sense – ta!
    [mb @12 our parallel existence continues to astound – I also harbour an irrational dislike of the whole Tolkien thing – my mum used to wander around the house quoting passages for a while and frankly we were all delighted when she moved on to Lorna Doone]

18. MB @12
    PS: … and for the picture of the Zoom Muppets. 😉

19. [Ronald @ 10 – unfortunately, I think gerrymander is known everywhere there is some sort of electorate based democracy. The late and definitely unlamented Joh Bjelke-Peterson made it an art form in Queensland. Fortunately we have an independent Electoral COmmission that handles redistributions at arms length.]

20. Thankyou Eileen for clearing up a couple of parsings and for your links, especially to Gerrymander. A TILT for me. Have often wondered..
    Yes, I do think boys suffer in our education systems where girls are often the TEACHERS’ PET, because they’re quieter, or used to be. But as my son told me, boys might shout/act out once or twice, in a loud voice, while girls constantly chatter.

    When will cryptic setters realise we’re not all au fait with arcane ‘facts’ from the bible?

    Don’t get the indicator in STINGY. ‘Not altogether’? Does that just mean word fragments are separated by spaces?

    Liked the cryptic-ish clues, eg ALL IN , and I would add TAKE SOME BEATING to that.

21. [Tassie Tim, did you escape from Queensland? I was born there and have long-harboured dream to live in Tassie],

22. Hi paddymelon @20 – both Collins and Chambers give simply ‘a very rich man’ as the secondary definition of DIVES.

    I’ve just realised what you’re querying re STINGY: I was going to say that ‘not altogether / not entirely’ is a fairly common containment indicator – but I think you must have read ‘altogether’ as ‘all together’?

23. [paddymelon @20 – no, brought up in Canberra, lived in Tassie since I was 15.]

24. Mostly good fun, although Taurean doesnt work at all, if you are born after may 20 you arent Taurus…. And puma word play doesnt work…
    Also I dont understand how a filthy carpet means take some beating?

25. Lamalas @24: Never seen one of these?

26. https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhousework.store%2Fproducts%2Ftraditional-rattan-carpet-beater&psig=AOvVaw3DoJYF9Mxezt4JYnyh26es&ust=1625218799603000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAoQjRxqFwoTCOi6v_vJwfECFQAAAAAdAAAAABAF

27. Lamalas @24 – in 1dn, I underlined ‘filthy carpet may eventually’ (take some beating) as the first definition.
    I agree about PUMA, as in the blog – and TAUREAN: all TAUREANS are May babies but not all May babies are TAUREANS.

28. Eileen @27
    To be pedantic, babies born after April 20th are Taureans as well. (Rest assured, I had to look up the date!)

29. muffin @28 – I was just about to delete the nonsense I wrote @27 but you got in first!

    I have to go out now, so shan’t be able to reply to any more queries until late afternoon.

30. [bodycheetah @17: Oh good – glad it’s not just me! It’s the whole Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett/Ring Cycle genre I dislike but I love (and can quote great swathes of) HHGTTG and Dirk Gently so I think I must be wired-up the wrong way somewhere. And I like things like Gabriel Garcia Marquez/Rushdie who aren’t always totally in the real-world either but somehow seem to hold on to believable humans rather than heading off to hobgoblins and foul fiends. Maybe it’s a result of early education in a Convent Prep school which has left me highly suspicious of anything that you can’t poke a stick at.

    I’m presuming that ‘Kitten Mayhem’ is a small cat and not a trendy name for a child. Either work in your feline context.]

31. JRR Tolkein certainly has no need of my puny contribution to defend his work. I’ll simply posit that, whether you like them or not, works such as LOTR; Harry Potter; Terry Pratchett and so on, got a vast number of young people into the habit of reading whom otherwise might not have done. I’m personally indebted to Ms Rowling whose HP series I devoured in French while recovering from a nasty illness.

32. I thought it was HETAIRA, which didn’t help, and I never got as far as agreeing that PUMA doesn’t work because I never got it at all. I worked out SIEVERT much as TassieTim did: nho the person, but an SI unit must have been a scientist. Liked TAKE SOME BEATING and THE WORSE FOR WEAR.

    [Even with an Electoral Commission to prevent GERRYMANDERing, things are far from perfect: in the name of equalising the population of constituencies, they currently propose to cut my village in half and dump (my) half in a neighbouring constituency that isn’t even part of the same local authority. We are not happy.]

33. [William @31: This was in no way to denigrate their output and I completely agree that ANYTHING that gets young people reading is A Good Thing. In fact it was more of a ‘why don’t I get it’ than anything else – Dr Who, Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, et al. also pass me by completely. It’s me, not them!

    All power to those who can get a child (or adult I find increasingly) to switch off the games console and pick up a book.]

34. I like Imogen puzzles but tis was not quite one of my favourites.
    Solved it but somehow lacked a feel-good factor
    Probably just me.

35. I always find Imogen near impossible, and this was no exception, although I got there in the end.

    TILT were Dives and Hetaera. I liked TEACHER’S PET, SUBTERFUGE, TAUREAN and GEOMETER.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

36. Just under 17 minutes to complete this enjoyable puzzle, which I think was my first encounter with Imogen. I’m in the fortunate position of knowing who Lee Child’s hero is without reading any of the books (my five friends surely can’t all be wrong !)

    LOI GEOMETER – I didn’t spot the anagrist. I must be getting old…

37. Embarrassing confession time again. 10ac – as a scientist the definition was obvious, but I somehow completely missed Chris Evert and thought this might be a DD. Google found me Frank Sievert, a 69 year old German tennis player who has played 9 games since 2011 and lost all of them. Good enough reason for him to retire and so good enough for me!

38. Tim@37 – I think Frank Sievert might be my new sporting hero.

    I enjoyed this more than I usually do Imogen’s puzzles – less verbosity and some snappy cluing definitely feels like an improvement. THE WORSE FOR WEAR doesn’t feel like it scans properly and I agree with Eileen that PUMA feels shoddy.

    Favourites were PREACHER and SUBTERFUGE.

39. Started quickly and got all the long answers and then slowed down a lot!

    Found myself struggling in the NE corner. Took forever to parse PREACHER even though my wife’s read most of the books, couldn’t see STINGY for ages until it just jumped out at me, so CROON was then obvious.

    GIDDUP was new to me, and I struggled to parse DISINVEST.

    So many thanks to Eileen for assistance there and more generally.

    Thanks to Imogen for the brain work-out

40. Tim@37 – that’s hilarious! I’ll have to follow his career now

41. Eileen at 1a Do you mean to underline the whole clue? It’s not a cad or and &lit — “in class this boy”is the definition? (Or this girl, as you rightly point out.) The sphinx link doesn’t seem to work. The DIVES link doesn’t seem to be there. Zoom muppets?

    I’d say orcs barely qualify as Tolkien characters — they appear, but they never speak as individuals. They might as well be wolves

    If you’re not one of the top three you could be the fourth or the thirty-seventh, I should think.

    To see the original configuration of the gerrymandered Massachusetts county click https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/map-gerrymander-redistricting-history-newspaper.

    TassieTim@4 and gladys@32 SIEVERT has nothing to do with Si units, though he probably used them. The word begins with “is” reversed.

    Thanks, Imogen for the puzzle and Eileen for a visit from a friend.

42. [Valentine @41
    The orcs that kidnap Merry and Pippin certianly talk.]

43. Valentine @41: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

44. By no means as challenging as the two previous puzzles, but equally as entertaining– with almost every clue well-crafted and pleasing. FOI was TAUREAN (well, I am one), and among the especially noteworthy were BRISTOL, CARELESSLY, SIEVERT, GALATIA & HETAERA (LOI).
    Thanks to Imogen.

45. Difficult puzzle but enjoyable. Took me a while to get going. I think I found some of the surfaces hard to understand plus the GK required.
    New: DIVES = used to refer to a typical or hypothetical rich man; REAM = widen (a hole) with a special tool’; Rolf M. Sievert (1896–1966), Swedish physicist; Lee Childs (author of Jack Reacher novels).
    Did not parse STINGY = mean.
    Liked HETAERA (loi).

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

46. After tackling Gozo in the morning and Tees in the afternoon I sat down with Imogen last evening. After completing about 80% of this crossword I revealed the last 20%. I wasn’t enjoying the exercise but I can’t blame Imogen for that. GERRYMANDER, BRISTOL, and FOUND were favourites. Thanks to both.

47. Newton as a GEOMETER is just ridiculous, he was an analyst who did a little bit of new geometry. Why not have Euclid , Apollonius even Descartes and many others.
    The Sievert is a derived SI unit but this is not actually linked to the clue. It is used to measure biological damage from ionising radiation.

48. Just popped back for a few minutes before going out again.

    gladys @32 – I usually spell it HETAIRA, too.

    Valentine @41 – the SPHINX and DIVES links both work for me. (I put the DIVES one in the blog.}

49. The fact that SIEVERT is a derived SI unit was a useful hint that it was a likely name for a hitherto unknown (to me) scientist: strictly speaking, it had nothing to do with the clue.

50. [Valentine @41 and muffin @42: and the ones who capture Frodo in Shelob’s Lair. Hoping that’s not a spoiler for anyone. I don’t think Eileen’s planning on reading it 😀 ]

51. [Me neither, Mark! The more spoilers, the less likely I am to read it, so keep them coming.]

52. I wasn’t on Imogen’s wavelength today, so I found this harder than Paul or Vlad. I don’t think THE WORSE FOR WEAR suggests better clothes should not be put on or am I missing something? I almost wrote in TUNICS for SCRUBS but that would be what they wear in two prisons.

53. I thought HETAERA was doubly neat: not only is ETA one of Hera’s ‘characters’ in the general sense of being a Greek letter (always assuming that goddesses use the same alphabet as their worshippers 😉 ) but it’s also literally ‘one of her characters’ because it’s the first letter of her name in Greek.

    Gladys/Eileen @32/48 – I’m sure you know this, but I find it interesting that Greek words that have come to us through Latin generally have the αι diphthong converted to æ (anaemia), and οι converted to œ (phoenix).

    [HETAERA takes me back to student days, and in particular to struggling through 800 pages of Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. The ‘hero’, composer Adrian Leverkühn, is fascinated by the butterfly Hetaera esmeralda (now called Cithaerias andromeda esmeralda). When he meets his own ‘hetaera’ in a Leipzig brothel, he dubs her Esmeralda and enters a Faustian compact; despite her warnings he deliberately infects himself with syphilis, which induces both madness and artistic hyper-creativity. (Genius through syphilis was a bit of a fin de siècle trope, despite being a dodgy theory.) The madness inspires him to invent twelve-tone composition (à la Schoenberg) and he infuses his works with note sequences based on the letters of Hetaera esmeralda – a kind of musical nina.

    Schoenberg got a bit schoerty after the novel was published; not only had Mann nicked his idea, but the composer then had to contend with the suspicion that he was syphilitic, and that his compositional technique was the product of madness.]

    [Petert – I like two nicks; rather like a building containing a Ladies and a Gents that was converted into a restaurant. They called it Toulouse.]

54. Thanks, Eileen.

    11a: DIVES for rich man is something I either didn’t know or had forgotten.

    13a: I thought I must be missing something. Can’t see how “comedy show” gives “muppet.” Comedy character would work.

    5d: Child’s hero for Reacher is very good. I haven’t read any of the books (yet) but I think they’re well enough known to be fair play.

    15d: Like Dave Ellison @8, I didn’t at first think of Newton as a GEOMETER, but I’d forgotten that William Blake depicted him as a “divine geometer.”

55. [For those here to whom “Dives” was unknown, I would recommend listening to the link that MaidenBartok gave @12 – it’s a gorgeous piece of music. I knew Dives as the rich man from this, rather than the Bible.]

56. Bonk-lit? I liked taurean

57. [ MrEssexboy@53 – thank you for reminding me why it is often worthwhile having a late peek at the comments on here , absolutely fascinating ]

58. [muffin @55: RVW has this habit of reducing me to tears. As well as the 5 Variants, ‘Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis’ and the first movement of Symphony No 5 will have me blubbing like a baby in seconds.

    The ‘Murder of Maria Marten’ tune was famously recorded by the amazing Shirley Collins and as it is late in the day, I’ll put that link up here as well https://youtu.be/vBVYotyxSdU ]

59. [MB
    I treasure my LP (since added to on CD) of the Academy of St. Martins in the fields playing the Tallis Fantasia, Greensleeves, Lark ascending, and Five variants, with Iona Brown as soloist – it must be at least 50 years old now.
    I love the 5th symphony, and the string quartets too.
    I bought “No roses” when it came out, and have been to several Albion Band gigs.]

60. muffin@42 I defer to your knowledge of the books.

    Bear@43 There may be a unit called a Sievert, but the Sievert of the clue isn’t a unit but a person.

    Eileen @48 — the Lazarus/Dives link works fine, and the analysis is interesting, but the Sphinx one still doesn’t. When I click the word “here” there’s a little ripple that goes across the box at the top with “Guardian” in it, but nothing appears. Fortunately, I already know the answer to the riddle, in case the Sphinx catches me some day.

61. Hi Valentine @60 – I really don’t understand this: the Sphinx link is still working perfectly for me! I’m glad you know the answer really, just in case, (but, you know, she killed herself when Oedipus outwitted her) but this is quite a nice telling of it. Try this way in, if you’re still there: https://www.mwpai.org/assets/Education/MA-Resources-9-15-2016/Myth-Oedipus-and-the-Riddle-of-the-Sphinx.pdf
    I try to find alternatives to Wikipedia when I can.

62. [essexboy@53 Thanks for the memories of Dr. Faustus. Surely the least accessible of Thomas Mann’s otherwise wonderful books] [MaidenBartok@58 I love the Shirley Collins, thanks]

63. Many thanks MaidenBartok for both variants on Dives and Lazarus: I love Vaughan Williams. Here’s Maddy Prior with the original words to the tune:
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3xFnoDZ_I

64. [ Folk melodies are great travellers: here’s the Irish version, the form in which I first met the tune, though I also know the hymn, both English folksongs and Vaughan Williams.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jXLnSkGmTdQ ]

65. Roz @47 – belatedly . . . I googled “Newton as Geometer” and found a long paper entitled “Newton the Geometer”, of which the first para is as follows: “Isaac Newton was a geometer. Although he is much more widely known for the calculus, the inverse square law of gravitation, and the optics, geometry lay at the heart of his scientific thought. Geometry allowed Newton the creative freedom to make many of his astounding discoveries, as well as giving him the mathematical exactness and certainty that other methods simply could not.” I’d say that’s 1-0 to Imogen.

66. . . . enjoyed the puzzle. Hadn’t heard of Jack Reacher in 5d; definitely thought TAUREAN was playing fast and loose with the dates; and GERRYMANDER reminded me of a book by Jerry Mander entitled ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’.

67. Eileen@61 That link doesn’t work for me either. And it looks like a fascinating one! I don’t know why it won’t work, because other links do, so it must be that my laptop has taken a scunner to sphinxes. No accounting for tastes.

68. Valentine @67
    Weird – sorry. 🙁

69. Far too late, Valentine @60, I know – but no-one ever suggested that Sievert the unit was in the clue, or that the abbreviation SI was either. We just said that sorting the possible elements of the clue (i.e. ‘is’ backwards and Evert) produced a word that we knew as an SI unit. As all SI units are named after scientists, we concluded that somebody Sievert must be the scientist to whom the clue referred.

70. Valentine @67: perhaps your laptop doesn’t know what to do with PDFs and the file is sat somewhere waiting for you to open it (or antivirus blocks them)?
    [Terry Pratchett has a nice skit on the Sphinx in ‘Pyramids’ btw]
    Agree on the slight iffiness of a couple, but fun nevertheless.
    Favourite 4d for the surface. Toyed with SEABORG for 10.
    Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

71. [Tassie Tim@19, if you and paddymelon (@20 are still around, yes I too thought of Joh’s GERRYMANDERs in my home state as soon as I cracked 26a.
    Regarding Dives in 11a DISINVEST: paddymelon@20 and various people@various numbers: I believe the story of Dives and Lazarus is an important metaphorical touchstone for the divide betwen the “haves” and the “have-nots”, and like the story of Lazarus being brought back from the dead, it has become a perennial cultural reference whether people possess a religious belief system or not. I guess Lazarus is better known though I wonder about young people not knowing some of this stuff. One of David Bowie’s last (chilling) songs was “Lazarus” and Nick Cave has a song called “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!” – I tend to agree with MaidenBartok@12, muffin@55 et al regarding the Ralph Vaughn Williams’ piece – how do we understand our world unless we have knowledge of such stories?
    By the way, I remain a big fan of the Brummie boy Lee Child and his vigilante justice-seeker Jack Reacher.]

72. This was a perfect example of the joys of cryptics – an excellent puzzle from Imogen, a typically engaging blog from Eileen with links that were illuminating to follow up, and a set of comments that kept my interest from start to finish. What a great community to be on the fringe of.

    [ MB@12, bodycheetah@17, et al, I couldn’t agree more with your view on LOTR and the Ring Cycle. Like you, I am willing to grudgingly admit that they have great merit and are significant works of art, but God help me if I am ever forced to read or listen to them again.

    While RVW is not my favourite composer – I find his big orchestral music not to my taste – I agree that Dives is a gem, along with the Tallis fantasia and the Lark Ascending, and I was pleased to see that someone else loves his string quartets. Another hidden gem is his Phantasy Quintet, a delight from start to finish, both to listen to and to play. ]

73. Drofle@65 I have studied Newton my whole adult life, as I said he made minor contributions in geometry. Apart from that he actually invented the subject of ANALYSIS using rates of change to examine physical processes. He was the first to provide universal laws and invented the actual science of optics. To call him a geometer is an insult to his true achievements and the breadth of his contribution. Scientists are judged by their originality and development of new fields not by what someone writes about them on the internet.

74. LOIs were DISINVEST, GIDDUP and PUMA. The first two from pattern matching in the Chambers app, assuming the last was PUMA. I don’t like the “A muppet” connection. Looked up HETAURA, took me a while to see that the Greek character was ETA not TAU.

75. Super crossword. PREACHER was particularly mean – and fun.

76. Giddup and Ream were new to me. And Hetaera.
    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

77. Another one dismayed at the Newton issue despite an article calling him a geometer. Roz @73 sums up my thoughts.

78. Typical Imogen, with 2 or 3 dodgy clues/answers. The 13a. PUMA one was just ridiculous.

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