Guardian 28,642 / Harpo

125 comments on “Guardian 28,642 / Harpo”

1. Phew! Thanks for the parsing, Eileen – I missed quite a few of them but did manage to complete. High Marx for this setter – well somebody had to say it.

2. Thanks Harpo and Eileen
   I have question marks of one sort or another against 9 clues (including your problem ones, I’m afarid, Eileen).
   12a was my FOI, but unfortunately with OH NO rather than UH OH – very nearly as good.
   Why is “dear” the same as “scarce”?
   I knew the song SORROW, but didn’t know that Bowie had recorded it. I looked it up and it’s a cover version, so hardly a “Bowie number”.
   Why is 1d “lack expression”>
   Quite apart from the pronunciation, Jura is an island where there is a distillery, not a “whisky distiller”. I hate this sort of confusion (as I’ve mentioned several times in the past!)

3. For 14d, we decided that going, coming, and moving were all forms of travel; off, down, and out were different ways of saying “sick.” I’m almost convinced of this explanation!
   Thanks to Eileen and to Harpo, and happy 2022.

4. (… the Scots won’t like it …)

   Indeed. Juror=Jura is a stretch too far, imo.

   Same problem as the blogger in 13/14 but glad to see we agree

5. I knew the Lyke Wake Dirge.
   Britten also used it in his Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings.

6. Nice to see a new setter and I wasn’t disappointed with lots of interesting clues. The pangram helped me with KLEENEX. I’m afraid I can’t help you Eileen with JUST THE JOB. I had ‘going off’= TRAVEL and ‘coming down’ = SICK but no idea about the definition either. I liked NAUGHTY, ESPADRILLE, LYKEWAKE (new) and QUEEN OF THE SOUTH, although for the non-footy fans (please, please no more moans about that subject), it would be tricky. HNY and thanks to everyone for all the fun over 2021. I now feel a part of this fascinating community.

   Ta Harpo & Eileen

7. Harpo reminds me of Vlad. I can see the definitions, but the wordplay eludes me, so I can’t help with JUST THE JOB. It took me ages to see SUBZERO because I’d have used a hyphen.
   So welcome to Harpo and my thanks to Eileen.

8. muffin @2 I had the same reaction re: dear = scarce but Chambers has it so I guess that makes it ok
   I found this about an odd experience and ended up with no ticks at all – maybe a half-tick for KLEENEX

9. Thanks. Re 13a, I’m not sure but JOBE means to reprimand so maybe JOB[e]?

10. muffin @2 – re 11ac: not exactly the same but if something’s scarce it’s usually expensive.
    1dn: saying = expression

    I’m almost convinced, too, Kristi @3- many thanks. 😉

11. 13a I think parses as “hatchet job” leaving “just the job” when the axe is dropped.
    14d Might be three ways of saying travel (going, coming, moving) and three of sick (off, down, out), so a triple def.

12. Muffin @2. Go without = lack; saying = expression.

13. Well-spotted for the THAR in LOTHARIO – I had thought it was just a weak clue. I thought JUST THE JOB was something to do with the result of a redundancy exercise (when the axe falls). I had TRAVEL SICK as TRAVEL = Going off SICK = coming down which led to an affliction where moving was out, but I was sure I was wrong.

14. Alternative negotiation for 14d: ‘Going out’ = TRAVEL; SICK= ‘going down’ (as in ‘going down with the flu’ or whatever), which leaves ‘moving out’ to serve as a definition. The only way I can see this is to view ‘moving’ as an anagrammatical pointer towards the obsolete Middle English word, ‘voming’, meaning ‘vomiting’. I wish I could say that I am almost convinced by this, but if I am correct it is the most spectacular exhumation of a word long gone from the language that I have seen in the cruciverbal realm. And that is besides the use of a cryptic rather than literal indication of the definition…

15. 13ac: that works for me, Adam @11 – many thanks!

16. 13a (hatchet) job

17. I assumed that when someone was sacked (the axe drops), all that was left was “just the job”. I can’t see the reason for “critical attack” though. 14d was also a bung, so thanks Eileen for the reassurance!

    And thanks Harpo – no need to say anything.

18. Just thought of Hatchet job but I see Adam @11 has beaten me to it.

19. I think, when hatchet drops from hatchet job, just the job is left. Travel-sick I parsed as Kristi@3, and quite liked.

20. Thanks Harpo – a strong and very challenging debut! And thanks Eileen for the blog, which must have been a challenge to write. I think I’ve seen THAR used by Azed before. And re 21d, yes, I would say ‘with’ is part of the definition.

    My best guess for 13a is that it’s a cryptic definition (the axe being a synonym for making redundancies), but I can’t quite see how it works – surely there would be no job left in that situation? Hmmmm!

    No idea on 14d at all.

    Those two aside, I thought there were some quite brilliant clues here – LOTHARIO and TOURISM being my favourites.

21. But I think hatchet job is the right parsing

22. Ah, I see others have come in with a convincing explanation for JUST THE JOB while I was typing slowly…

23. Kristi @3 – I like that explanation, works for me!

24. Muffin @ 2: 1d: lack – go without; expression – saying.
    Thanks Eileen and Harpo.
    I found this extremely difficult d.n.f

25. Yes Kristi @3: bang on.

26. AlanC@6: British non-footy fans have nevertheless spent a lifetime being exposed to the ubiquity of team names in the media, so QUEEN OF THE SOUTH wasn’t a problem: the parsing, however…
    Many parsing difficulties here, and I can’t help with TRAVEL SICK or JUST THE JOB. I had a theory that after the axe had fallen, JUST THE _O_ would be left, but couldn’t find anything more convincing than JOB.
    The THAR doesn’t help by being the less common spelling of the creature (usually TAHR), and JURA/JUROR was a stretch even for non-Scots.
    Harpo, whoever they are, will take some getting used to, but I liked quite a lot of these: UH-OH, LYKEWAKE, SUBZERO and the four long ones.

27. Sorry to be a slow typist.

28. I tried to make 17d into “blotter” for no good reason. As I’d already struggled understanding the same ones as Eileen, plus some more, I thought it was another one I didn’t get. It wasn’t until I was short of the X for the pangram that I twigged KLEENEX. (I thought this was a very obvious pangram. I usually don’t notice.)

    Not sure about the NAUGHTY homophone. Gnaw maybe, but tea? And JUROR doesn’t work for me, and I’m not Scottish.

    LYKEWAKE new to me.

    Thought there might be a Nina round the edges with this grid.

    So, jury’s still out for me.

    Thanks Harpo. Let’s have another one see if I can get on your wavelength. And thanks Eileen for the blog

29. Thanks for the explanations of 1d. So it’s 2 bits of wordplay rather than an expression in its own right – that’s what was confusing me.

30. I think perhaps that in 14d ‘Moving out’ implies ‘moving is out of the question’ when you are travel sick.

31. A tour de force by Harpo. Thank you Eileen and others for help with the parsing!

32. Tough puzzle.
    Liked SORROW. Did not realise it was a cover by Bowie.

    New for me LYKEWAKE, and QUEEN OF THE SOUTH FC for 7d (and did not parse it).

    I also did not parse 13ac, 3d (never heard of Jura whisky), 5d (LO = gov’t dept?) – I now see that I got this wrong as I had bunged in LOCI.
    I missed the parsing of Lothario with THAR = a goatish creature.
    14d I could see the first two meanings but travel-sick = moving out? Thanks Kristi @3 for explaining.

    Thanks, both.

    Happy New Year to all bloggers and setters!

33. To go without saying is an expression in its own right: the expression in the clue is verbal rather than facial.

34. I found this tough. Gave up on SORROW, but managed to do the rest. I agree with AlanC @6 about QUEEN OF THE SOUTH; didn’t spot the pangram; liked LOTHARIO, LYKEWAKE (considerably helped by KEW in the middle) and TOURISM. Like Eileen and others, I look forward to more from Harpo. HNY to all.

35. gladys @33
    It was the “lack expression” that was confusing me, but I now see that it parses as “lack” and “expression” separately.

36. Thanks for the blog and so many others this year.
    Nice to have a new setter just before the new year. A bit patchy but some very clever ideas and pretty tough.
    Stiff vigil – just brilliant. Also liked SUBZERO and NAUGHTY .
    No complaints from me AlanC@6 , QUEEN OF THE SOUTH and other Scottish teams seem very familiar thanks to James Alexander Gordon ( I think ) .
    Happy New Year to every body ( it should , of course, be January 4th when the Earth reaches perihelion )

37. I enjoyed this. I wasn’t familiar with THAR and didn’t bother to look it up. I worked out the parsing of JUST THE JOB in the same way as Adam @11, but TRAVEL-SICK defeated me. I think, again, Adam’s parsing makes good sense.
    OH-OH is not the best clue I’ve ever seen, but after getting the crossers the answer’s fairly clear and the surface is a delight.
    There are some quite superb ones in here, my favourites being LYKEWAKE (not a word with which I was familiar, but very clear wordplay to enable me to get it, and a delightfully mordant definition), ENAMEL, CHERCHEZ LA FEMME (once I’d managed to stop thinking of Martina Navratilova), FOCI (a good clue for a short word can be a very good clue indeed).
    I don’t have the slightest problem with the homophones. Demanding that the pronunciations be exactly identical misses the point. They are a clue – and, as with Spoonerisms, the more outrageously contrived, often the better. The fact that an awful lot of vowels in English can be replaced by the neutral sound (the one which is sometimes called a schwa) is one of the features of the English language that lends itself to wordplay. And, again, the emphasis in that word is on the “play”.
    Contriving a pangram is always clever, and doing it on your debut is making a statement. Thank you, Harpo, for an assured and enjoyable piece of work. I look forward to your next one.
    Thanks also, as always, to Eileen for the blog.

38. Thanks Eileen and Harpo. I really struggled with this one, at one point throwing my hands up and repeatedly pressing “reveal”, followed by audible shrugs when I still couldn’t parse the answer. I’m happy for the blog to see everything fully explained and the fault, as usual, being on my side!

    For 14, which was definitely one of those I needed help with, I came up with “going out, coming down” as the definition and then “moving” for TRAVEL and “out” for SICK.

39. Found this a tough one, but for a change I spotted the pangram. Thanks to all the setters, bloggers and contributors who have enlivened another year.

40. I struggled with a lot of this, but not without enjoyment and a sense if achievement for the ones I got and parsed. Like Crossbar@28 I look forward to having another go at Harpo’s next to see if I can do better.
    Thanks to Harpo for the puzzle, Eileen for sterling work on the blog and all others who helped with the parsing.

41. No fun for me. If this is to be Harpo’s style, I hope that we don’t get Boatman and Harpo in the same week again.
    Nevertheless, thanks to setter and Eileen and best wishes to everyone for 2022.

42. Roz @36: only you could get me to google perihelion! Have enjoyed the craic with you over the year.

43. Thanks Eileen, especially for elevating LOTHARIO from the realm of vague cryptic definitions, Adam@13 and Jay@16 for the hatchet, and bodycheetah@8 for the Chambers check as I also queried that (I can appreciate that scarce things may well be dear/expensive but not necessarily so). Jura distillery is well down my list of such entities and I tend to pronounce it with an initial “Y” as with our local namesake (no idea if either is appropriate) so needed the crossers for that and had to look up US trials to be sure that Grand Jurors exist.
    I only know SORROW as a Bowie song and thought that was a very nice clue but pipped by LYKEWAKE, new word but lovely bit of Jorum, thanks and a big honk of the horn to Harpo. (Are you American?)
    [Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for the education and entertainment provided thus far – long may it continue!]

44. Easily the trickiest of the week for me, with several unparsed, as for other posters. I spotted the likelihood of a pangram early on, but it didn’t help as the rare letters fell out relatively easily – I spotted QUEEN OF THE SOUTH from just a few crossers, but life is too short to waste time parsing it!

    I share the quibbles of muffin @2: wherever did Chambers find that ‘scarce’ = ‘dear’?

    As someone who appreciates a good surface, this was rather uneven , but the ingenuity of the clueing makes me look forward to more from this setter.

    BTW, GO WITHOUT SAYING seems very appropriate for Harpo (M).

    Thanks to Harpo and Eileen and best wishes to all.

45. A dnf for me – failed on LYKE WAKE (which I now think is clever) and SORROW (which I knew Bowie had recorded, but I agree with muffin@2 that it doesn’t really count as a “Bowie number” – probably it works for those just young enough to be ignorant of the mid-60s original, but old enough to remember Bowie’s 1973 recording). I’m relaxed about approximate homphones, so won’t really complain about JOROR=Jura, though in this case there can’t be many accents in which the two would be pronounced the same (muffin@2 – both the island and its distillery are named Jura).
    Favourite was JUST THE JOB, which I parsed without much difficulty, though I had problems with several which have already been mentioned.
    Happy New Year to all, and thanks Harpo and Eileen.

46. Harpo’s younger brother Skid from me!

    It was good but some parsing was overly complex. That said – producing a pangram may involve some contortion to accommodate some unusual or unexpected words (lykewake, kleenex etc).

47. Thanks Eileen. A tough but very enjoyable puzzle.
    With regard to the setter – are the four central letters of the grid significant?

48. I don’t see the issue with juror/jura, as ‘picked up’ = heard = homophone

49. Gazzh@43 – The first syllable of Jura is pronounced like that of JUROR – it’s the secon syllable that’s different (but IMO close enough for a crossword clue “homophone”).

50. Likewise AlanC@42. I hope google got it right. New year for our Earth, starts the long March away from the sun.

51. I think we are generally agreed this was a good puzzle – thanks Harpo.
    I was sure it was Travel List – and did not check it until 22 and 24 gave me enough to doubt 14d!

    Looking at the timings of the responses, it appears that quite a few needed a 225 today :O)

    Happy New Year to everyone, and especially Eileen who is already experiencing it I guess.

52. Not sure about this one. There were at least 4 I bunged in but couldn’t parse, and 2 or 3 of those I was not that impressed even after seeing them here. So I put in BLOTTER at 17d without the slightest clue why, except that it had TT and E for English Times, but by then I had given up worrying about it. Hence I had no chance of getting the unfamiliar LYKEWAKE with the T at the end, even though I had twigged it must have YKEW in the middle. However, I now think that is the clue of the day.

    But, good to see a new setter and great to have a serious challenge this morning. It may be just me, but there were a few too many “really?” rather than “aha” moments today.

53. Forgot to add at 52, there is a Jura Distillery Company based in Craighouse, Isle of Jura, and I have a bottle of it in my cabinet. Still didn’t help me parse GRAND JUROR for some reason, maybe because I struggled with main = grand.

54. Great to see a fellow MB fan setting this one, even if I couldn’t get LYKEWAKE or TRAVEL-SICK. Will Chico or Groucho, (or even Zeppo or Gummo) be setting sometime soon?

55. Mr P.B and I felt like we were pulling teeth with this one and got a few from just the intersections and definitions. Thank you, Eileen I’m not surprised you couldn’t parse everything.
    We have certainly done some brain gym exercises this morning!!
    Thank you, Harpo. Looking forward to being similarly challenged in the future.

56. 12 ac can equally be OH-OH.
    If you drop “the axe” from “the axe job” you get JUST JOB.
    I can only find LYKE WAKE or LYKE-WAKE not as a single word.
    As for dear and scarce cf. “dearth” and “scarcity”.
    Happy New Year to all.

57. No full Marx for me this morning, I’m afraid. Without any proper parsing, but with my available crossers I had Typecast (Stiff?) instead of LYKEWAKE at 20ac, which is a complete unknown for me, and would never have got. That meant I had shoved in Blotter (absorbing paper) with the erroneous T in place instead of KLEENEX at 17d. Thought that CCCP (Government) couldn’t possibly be the answer to 5d, though did wonder till I got REINDEER and ODIOUS. UH-OH produced rather the same out loud reaction, pretty poor I thought, that one. But all in all a tough but fair challenge today. Although with yesterday’s Qaos puzzle I’ve rather struggled the last couple of days of 2021. Do hope 2022 brings much better things and at least some joy, everyone…

58. …hadn’t properly read all the foregoing, but it appears that Fiery Jack@53 had a similar experience to me with the “absorbing paper”…

59. jeceris @56, Merriam-Webster gives “dearth… derives from the Middle English form derthe, which has the same meaning as our modern term. That Middle English form is assumed to have developed from an Old English form that was probably spelled dierth and was related to d?ore, the Old English form that gave us the word dear. (Dear also once meant “scarce,” but that sense of the word is now obsolete.)…”

60. Agree with Eileen and NeilH (well said) – including the bit about Martina Navratilova, who’s the only Czech I’d heard of — or so I thought until I consulted Google. Fellow Czechs include Mendel (heredity), Dvorak, Freud (by birth), Kafka, Kundera, and Havel: all familiar names.

    Thanks Harpo for a tough but fair and entertaining puzzle. I look forward to your next offering. Thanks also to bloggers and commenters for shedding light on so many clues, being welcoming, and giving me the odd belly laugh or two.

    My germane New Year resolutions: be thankful for the appearance of words and topics I’m ignorant of (it’s never too late to learn); accept that homophones don’t work for everyone; to understand that language changes, possibly in ways that I don’t like; appreciate that setters put in many hours/days into their creations but they’re only human 😉

    Best wishes everyone (including the silent majority: The Lurkers) for a more joyful 2022. Is that I light I see …?

61. Very tough and a DNF after some hard-fought completions earlier in the week. And after all that, I managed to get some of the trickier ones (including LYKEWAKE from the wordplay, although I had to Google it) and flunk a couple of the easier ones (TOURISM!). I did wonder if there was some mythological satyr called MOTHERIS, but alas.

    Thanks Harpo and Eileen, and happy new year to all.

62. I think the goat is normally TAHR so wondered if ISH was an anag indicator -but Chambers lists THAR-slightly clumsy clue I thought
    Maybe a few clues suffered as a result of getting a pangram
    Slim Harpo-{Do the hip shake baby)-no sexual refs here-purely remedial exercises (which I believe take all night long as “Coloured ” singer Bo Duddley
    once revealed)
    Thanks Eileen and Slim

63. Nobody has picked up on my post @47. The four central squares in the grid spell out the name of an established (non-Guardian) setter who might, like Harpo, have taken a vow of silence.
    Surely this can’t be accidental.

64. DuncT @63 – just catching up on the comments, not ignoring you.

    Now, there’s a thought: it would be his second subterfuge in a week!

65. Another point on Jura – surely a whisky distiller is a person, not an island, or even a distillery?

66. Well, at this time all my intended approvals, comments and questions have been raised and, where appropriate answered, so that leaves me just to say:

    Happy New Year everyone!

67. Heavy going, but quite interesting, so I’m not feeling particularly grouchy about it. I hadn’t come across “lykewake” as one word, but it would have been difficult even if enumerated as 4,4. Sick=out has still not made any sense to me.

    I liked UH-OH, as it was clearly correct from the wordplay. ODIOUS, SUBZERO and FOCI were pleasing, TOURISM took longer than it should, and ENAMEL was tough. ESPADRILLE I solved from partial wordplay and the definition. The pangram helped by giving me the first letter of QUEEN OF THE SOUTH.

    Overall, congratulations to Harpo on provoking some strong reactions here!

68. muffin @65, I agree, though I suppose a Company could be referred to, loosely, as a distiller.

69. jeceris @ 56

    12 can only be ‘oh-oh’ if “half of it’s broken” is composed of non-contiguous letters.

    Chambers and SOED have LYKEWAKE as a single word (the latter with hyphenation as an option).

70. Thanks to Cookie @59 for taking the trouble to investigate ‘dear’. Usage well and truly obsolete, I would say. Does that mean that setters can now clue ‘silly’ as ‘blessed’? 🙂

71. DuncT @ 47 & 63. In tentative support of your speculation about Harpo’s identity, the said Indy/FT setter’s given name is Mark. To adopt the pseudonym of a Marx brother might therefore be a covert homophonic admission of ownership (‘Mark’s’),

72. Thanks both,
    Muffin@65 in this case the distiller is The Isle of Jura Distillery Co. Contracting that to Jura seems fair enough to me.

73. Well spotted, DuncT! I’m inclined to believe that’s not a coincidence.

74. The worst I’ve done in a while: four missing answers, all of them quite over my head: JUST THE JOB, TRAVEL-SICK, SORROW, and QUEEN OF THE SOUTH. But I’m tickled by the parsing of TRAVEL-SICK! Well played, Harpo, and thank you, Eileen!

75. I agree DuncT seems likely to have solved the mystery of attribution.

    I had no issue with Jura, as perhaps the only distillery-related place I could have hoped to recall. SUBZERO was nice, but perhaps needed a hyphen?

    Unlike others, I’m not so enamoured with ‘stiff vigil’ – because the phrase itself is meaningless. Sure, it’s clever in its way in the use of ‘stiff’, but it rather stuck out in the surface; I can’t imagine a vigil ever being able to be described as ‘stiff’.

76. I knew the Lykewake Dirge, but thanks to muffin for the Pentangle recording, which seems to be accompanied by mostly child pictures. I don’t know that the chilling lyrics really come through as you listen to the song and watch them, so I’m adding a link to the lyrics, and I recommend reading them. https://genius.com/Pentangle-lyke-wake-dirge-lyrics

    I had assumed that grand juries were common in other countries, didn’t know they were just US. They’re actually rather less grand than regular juries — half the size, for starters.

    Didn’t know SORROW as a Bowie song — or anything else of his except for Major Tom, whom I couldn’t think how to fit in.

    Thanks and happy New Year to Harpo (welcome!), Eileen and all in this company.

77. I had OH-OH for 12a and bunged in LOCI for 5d so not totally correct but I did enjoy this one.
    While 22a is not the most obvious Bowie song it does have a clever (and accurate) surface – a quick search revealed it got to number 3 a few years after Space Oddity.
    Thanks Harpo and Eileen!

78. Muffin@65: If a river can be a flower because it flows (and a flower can be a bloomer, and a bird can be a flier or a singer because it’s just one of the things they do) then I’m pretty sure describing a whisky distillery as a whisky distiller is absolutely fine, because it’s about the only thing it actually does worth mentioning.

79. I find myself getting caught unawares all the time nowadays but I would consider myself fairly surprised if Monk has indeed written this puzzle

80. Welcome aboard Harpo! That was a toughie, but got there eventually!

    No quibbles from me, just thanks for the challenge.

    Thanks to Harpo and to Eileen (and Adam @11 and others) who helped with parsing esp JUST THE JOB

    HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL

81. Just been moved to check a bit of etymology and find that lyke meant corpse so a lykewake is indeed a stiff vigil. It’s the same meaning in lykegate (usually written lychgate nowadays) which is where a corpse waits between unconsecrated and consecrated ground on its way to a funeral. The endless fascination of language!!
    Happy New Year to all.

82. As a Scot homophone clues annoy me because I dinnae say it like that. I had parsed it as being a homophone of Dewar. Although an even more approximate pronunciation than Jura this does have the advantage of being a whisky distiller. (It was only known to me as a producer of blended whisky but google confirmed they do produce malts). However I’m now sure that Harpo meant Jura.

83. It seems like I’m in good company in finding this tough but I found it refreshing as well with CHERCHEZ LA FEMME, GRAND JUROR, TOURISM, MIDDLE AGED SPREAD, and KLEENEX being favourites. I did need to reveal LYKEWAKE and JUST THE JOB. I also had many gaps in my parsing so thanks Eileen for the education. I had no problem with JUROR and Jura sounding similar and it’s a nice whisky if you’re so inclined. Thanks Harpo.

84. Regarding UH-OH vs. OH-OH, if there is nothing in the definition to choose between them, then maybe we can invoke my observation from yesterday (me@59@yesterday) to throw the tie-breaker to UH-OH.

85. Has Paul changed his name? That was horrible 1.5 hours 1 clue solved, I think Harpos up with Paul for me, see the name move swiftly on.

86. [tony+smith @85: Paul, along with Vlad, Monk, and Io are on my no-fly list. However, Paul’s alter-ego in the FT, Mudd, is on my must-do list. Harpo didn’t seem smutty enough to be either Paul or Mudd.]

87. If Harpo is a Monk, presumably he’s from a silent order?

88. Both lyke and lych are related to the German leiche, “corpse”.

89. gladys@87 😀

90. I have it on good authority that the final version agreed between editor and setter enumerated LKYE WAKE as (4,4) and SUB-ZERO as (3-4) at the explicit behest of the editor in order for it to agree with his preferred punctuation datum that is the ODE. So perhaps the software that generates the online edition automatically changed it? Is the dead-tree version different?

91. I found this even harder than yesterday’s Vlad. I had a “I don’t believe it” moment with juror = Jura but, after a few glasses of Laphroaig tonight, from the adjacent island of Islay, I may mellow.

92. 10ac surely friends short therefore plural ami and cron(e)y

93. That was a toughie. After several I couldn’t parse and a few new words (THAR LYKEWAKE) I sort of gave up near the end.

    Welcome aboard Harpo and thanks Eileen

94. It’s been a while since I tackled a Grauniad cryptic, so I didn’t know that Harpo is a new compiler. The puzzle is a bit of a Curate’s Egg and I didn’t notice the solution was a pangram (nothing new there!). I did finish the puzzle but I was ultimately unsatisfied, particularly with respect to the clue for 14d: it’s just a dud.

95. When I saw the name and for him (?) to pop up for the first time on the last day of the year, I immediately thought collaboration. When I found bits awkward, that only reinforced my thinking. That was until I saw the four central letters.
    It took longer than I had hoped, but it was a nice afternoon to sit in the sun.
    Thanks Harpo and Eileen for all the blogs. I did need your help with some of these parsings.
    The new year has dawned brilliantly clear here which is, hopefully, a portent for the year.

96. Thank you to Harpo and Eileen.
    This went from impossible to rather good fun as soon as I’d managed to crack the long ones on the left. Lots of the usual hunting around on the internet for possibilities as is my normal approach and found some of the clues very entertaining.
    Happy New Year all.

97. I very much doubt that Monk, who is a professional mathematician, would describe foci as “central” points.

98. Welcome Harpo, even if this was a little beyond my solving ability. Just 24 clues, which is the least of any of the many setters in the Guardian archive, let’s hope there are many more to come.

    Happy New Year to all setters, bloggers and commenters.

99. Chris@97 see Chamber dictionary; definition #3 under focus is “Any central point”.

100. Harpo may be a play on Mark’s (Marx)from the real name of Monk (Prof Mark Kelmanson). The central letters are M, O, N and K.

101. One too many obscurities for me.

102. Jinniecomelately @100. Your MONiKer is apt. There have been several comments above with that speculation, starting with DuncT @47. 🙂

     Gervase@44. I thought so too, with I down being in such a prominent position in the grid. Totally fitting for Harpo (Marx). Goes without saying.

     When others mentioned the central letters I was reading left to right and wondered who RONA was. Or is it a joke for our times?

     And finally on looking up some of Monk’s crosswords and ninas and things, I saw that the K of MONK (or Kelmanson) is sandwiched between the letters that spell out LOVE.

     PUN-CTU,ATION@90 may have some inside knowledge.

     HarpoSpeaks@54 isn’t saying.

     Gladys@87 LOL.

103. Ooof. I really wanted to like this, but the going was just a bit too tough for me.

104. PUN@90 SUBZERO(7) and LYKEWAKE (8) in the paper copy.

105. Well it comes to something when Vlad is the easiest puzzle of the week.

106. A DNF as I don’t know popular music of that era – and Wikipedia didn’t list it early in the article. I spotted an almost pangram when the Dumfries team went in and just needed the V.

     HNY to one and all.

107. I think the supposition that Monk is the setter is correct, has he not hinted at it in the clue for FOCI, “central points”, apologies if someone above has already mentioned this.

108. also, 5, FOCI, is followed by 6, MIDDLE…

109. Hard that was. Thanks both and Happy New Year.
     [Roz@36: whilst I can see the point for astronomers in defining the start of a planet’s year thus, for Earthlings I think the December solstice is a more noticeable thing and a more natural start to the year (less so perhaps for those in equatorial or southern latitudes).
     If I remember correctly the precession of Earth’s axis means the solstice and perihelion are only close by accident. Are they getting closer or further apart? When did they last coincide and when will they next do so? I could find these out on the Internet but I thought you might like to do the math.]

110. Can’t understand the hesitancy to declare 1ac &lit: every word of the clue partakes of a full definition at the same time that every word forms part of the wordplay. Despite that, I failed to parse it and ended up picking the word that fitted the definition from a wordsearch based on crossers. It was the second-to-last in and I didn’t bother trying to parse it after the fact. Collins has THAR, but not the TAHR that some have mentioned. Perhaps that spelling is a solecism based on the (originally) Nepali pronunciation?

     Also can’t understand crossworders who speak English with a rhotic accent who can never seem to accept that most English speakers pronounce differently (and dictionaries give that pronunciation), despite the fact that they must have been exposed to a lifetime of hearing it in the media. They, and those who have patronising conceded that JUROR and Jura sound “nearly the same” should open their ears while pressing the little speaker icons here and here. They might also like to compare the IPA characters which also indicate identical pronunciation while also indicating the rhotic version.
     Having said that, I didn’t parse this either, never having heard of Jura whisky. I’m perfectly happy for a company (either named in full or abbreviated) whose business is distilling to be described as a distiller, however.

     I’m happy to say I’m the right age to have known both Bowie’s cover of Sorrow (on a covers album, iirc?) and the Pentangle’s Lyke Wake Dirge.

     I finally decided that “coming down or moving out” constituted forms of travel and that “going off” when doing those things constituted being TRAVEL-SICK. Not too happy with the clue though and I think the various explanations put forward for it demonstrate that is not very good.

111. Gonzo@109 the point about perihelion is that it is true for the whole planet . It is getting further from the solstice, full precession is about 24000 years , they last coincided nearly 1000 years ago so only about 23000 years to go .

112. Tony Collman@110 The album was Pin Ups. All covers, other notables being See Emily Play and Friday on my Mind.

113. [I’m old enough to remember Bowie’s Sorrow and to know it’s not original. It is on his album Pinups which is all cover versions of his favourite 60’s songs.]

114. David Wilkinson @92. “10ac surely friends short therefore plural ami and cron(e)y” – you are ignoring the apostrophe in ‘friend’s’, but the main problem with your parsing is that the clue starts with ‘note’, which is left without a function, as also (arguably) is ‘close’.

115. Several commenters have suggested that the setter needs either applause for using all 26 letters, or allowance for having to use obscure words in order to achieve it. The Guardian newspaper features every day a puzzle called Codeword, which is a crossword with no clues. The solver has to identify all the words with just two letters as a start, the only other information being the numbers 1 to 26 in the corner of each cell. I haven’t done this for quite a time now – it used to be something I would pick up when it was quiet at work – but I always think of it when people start getting excited about pangrams.

116. cookie@107 and 108. Good spot. And maybe, reading from right to left MIDDLE FOCI TOUR- IS (clue to read anticlockwise around) M ONK.

117. paddymelon @116, what fun, especially the comment of gladys @87!

118. [Roz@111, surely the Solstices are also global phenomena which can be reasonably easily detected from anywhere on Earth (unlike the perihelion?).

     Taffy@112 (and GrahamH@113), ah, yes, that was it. Thanks. I didn’t have it myself but fellow students did.]

119. Enjoyed reading the comments on this one, partly because I was feeling very stupid until I saw that others declared it a dnf within a couple of hours. I took until mignight on Jan 1st before I gave up, with several unparsed guesses and three unfilled at all. The detective work that went into working out Harpo’s identity was brilliant and convincing. I enjoyed that much more than the puzzle itself. When someone calls themselves Harpo you should be able to expect a few laugh out loud clues. But hey-ho, I console myself with the fact that uh-oh was my FOI, even though my second came hours afterwards.

120. Well I finally gave up this morning, and checked the answers in Saturday’s paper. My least favourite was Travel Sick. I wonder if anyone got it without checking. I’m also not convinced by Trenchant=Incisive. But definitely a good challenge – kept me busy for hours!

121. This is the latest I have ever posted, reflecting the extended time it took to complete. We had a number of restarts before getting the wordplay into focus; and like others, there were a number of clues we couldn’t parse. However, we kept going and once we realised a pangran was a possibility, rallied and finished.
     Thanks and welcome to Harpo for the extended work out; we’ll be looking out for you in 2022.
     Thanks also to Eileen and the many contributors for the analysis and wishing you all the very best over the next 12 months.

122. How does “She’ll be the cause of the problem” mean “CHERCHEZ LA FEMME”?

123. It comes from Alexander Dumas – The Mohicans of Paris. Rough translation, no matter what the problem a woman will be at the root of it.

124. MarcoPolo

     See Wikipedia

125. Marco Polo – see also here http://www.fifteensquared.net/2022/01/06/independent-10993-by-rodriguez/#more-158470
     from yesterday’s Indy puzzle.

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