The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28809.
The top half proceeded more easily than I would expect for Imogen, but the lower half more than made up for it, with some wordplay that came near to stumping me.
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | DISTRAINT |
Trouble: money mislaid at the back of inspector’s carriages — it ends in Lost Property (9)
|
| A charade of DI’S (‘inspector’s’) plus TRAIN (‘carriages’) plus ‘t[rouble] minus ROUBLE (‘money mislais’). Distraint is the siezure of goods for a debt. | ||
| 8 | DANTE |
Died before becoming a poet (5)
|
| A charade of D (‘died’) plus ANTE (‘before’). | ||
| 9 | CHARLOTTE |
Scarlet woman in court, English: her name? (9)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of HARLOT (‘scarlet woman’) in CT (‘court’) plus E (‘English’). | ||
| 10 | DIVAN |
Desperate man welcomes four in bed (5)
|
| An envelope (‘welcomes’) of IV (Roman numeral, ‘four’) in DAN (‘desperate man’ in The Dandy comic). | ||
| 12 | WYVERN |
Heraldic beast with very strange name (6)
|
| A charade of W (‘with’) plus YVER, an anagram (‘strange’) of ‘very’ plus N (‘name’). | ||
| 13 | RENEGADE |
Turner sketched a general, partly from the rear (8)
|
| A hidden (‘partly’) reversed (‘from the rear’) answer in ‘sketchED A GENERal’. | ||
| 14 | MASSAGE |
Something relaxing brought over, for example tea (7)
|
| A reversal (‘brought over’) of EG (‘for example’) plus ASSAM (‘tea’). | ||
| 17 | CHASTEN |
Humble Catholic hasn’t lost any fingers (7)
|
| A charade of C (‘Catholic’) plus HAS TEN (‘hasn’t lost any fingers’); ‘humble’ as a verb. | ||
| 20 | BLUE NILE |
Stretch of water for which rower perhaps needs love and energy (4,4)
|
| A charade of BLUE (‘rower, perhaps’) plus NIL (zero, ‘love’) plus E (‘energy’). | ||
| 22 | SMOOTH |
Even money, in truth (6)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of M (‘money’) in SOOTH (‘truth’). | ||
| 24 | MOURN |
Regret loss of earth washed off mountains (5)
|
| A reference to the Mountains of Mourne in Northern Ireland – minus the E (‘loss of earth’). | ||
| 25 | MILESTONE |
Pounds a bit short, saving one in case for a significant event (9)
|
| An envelope (‘saving’) of I (‘one’) plus LEST (‘in case’ – kind of equivalent, but kind of direct opposite?) in MONE[y] (‘pounds’) minus the last letter (‘a bit short’). | ||
| 26 | FLUNG |
Loud breather chucked away (5)
|
| A charade of F (forte, ‘loud’) plus LUNG (‘breather’). | ||
| 27 | TARPAULIN |
In teeming rain, a compiler put on shirt: will this keep it off? (9)
|
| A charade of T (‘shirt’) plus ARPAULIN, an envelope (‘in’) of PAUL (‘a compiler’ of Guardian crosswords) in ARIN, an anagram (teeming’) of ‘rain’, with ‘put on’ giving the order of the particles. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | MIGHTY |
Is it possible he could be heard? Great! (6)
|
| Sounds like (‘could be heard’) MIGHT HE (‘is it possible he’). | ||
| 2 | STARKERS |
Like streakers, dodging about to avoid capture at last (8)
|
| An anagram (‘dodging about’) of ‘str[e]akers’ minus an E (‘to avoid capturE at last’), with an extended definition. | ||
| 3 | MAROON |
Deep red jumper chap’s shut away (6)
|
| An envelope (‘shut away’) of ROO (kangaroo, ‘jumper’) in MAN (‘chap’). | ||
| 4 | IN UTERO |
Routine disturbed awaiting delivery (2,5)
|
| An anagram (‘disturbed’) of ‘routine’. | ||
| 5 | PALING |
Python finally slithering by fence (6)
|
| A charade of PALIN (Michael, member of the Monty ‘Python’ comedy team) plus G (‘finally slitherinG’). | ||
| 6 | STRADDLE |
Getting stand with legs well spaced, led off with violin (8)
|
| A charade of STRAD (Stradivarius ‘violin’) plus DLE, an anagram (‘off’) of ‘led’. | ||
| 11 | INCH |
Island one wouldn’t yield, if extremely resolute (4)
|
| Double definition, the second allusive. | ||
| 15 | ALL SOULS |
Comprehensive college? (3,5)
|
| A cryptic reference to an Oxford college – and a questionable one, since All Souls does not take undergraduates. | ||
| 16 | GRIM |
Ghastly ingrained dirt finally wiped (4)
|
| A subtraction: GRIM[e] (‘ingrained dirt’) minus the last letter (‘finally wiped’). | ||
| 18 | SHORT CUT |
Quick way to make Brie? (5,3)
|
| Wordplay in the answer: ‘Brie’ is BRIEF (SHORT) minus its lst letter (CUT). | ||
| 19 | PELICAN |
Bird, large one about to be caged? (7)
|
| An implied envelope of L (‘large’) plus I (one’) plus CA (circa, ‘about’) IN PEN (‘to be caged’). | ||
| 21 | ERRANT |
Wrong sort of knight (6)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 22 | SLEEPY |
Grumpy companion, underhand, about to go up (6)
|
| An envelope (‘about’) of EEP, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of PEE (‘to go’) in SLY (‘underhand’), for one of the Seven Dwarfs, as named by Disney. | ||
| 23 | TINTIN |
Boy reporter‘s stint inexcusably deficient (6)
|
| A hidden answer (‘deficient’) in ‘sTINT INexcusably’. |
Forsooth Peter, same here re top vs bottom, although distraint was my loi, and I got the train+t bits but forgot to remember the DI … how many cop shows have I seen … d’oh! Wyvern fell in because a mate used have one (Vauxhall, that is), but remembering that sort of delivery for in utero took a while, though it’s not new, and ditto the Sleepy dwarf. Enjoyable, ta PnIm.
[… and 14ac’s Assam, where it rains 600 inches a year (school Geog), reminded me of parts of our east coast, where floods are becoming perpetual. So glad our climate knuckle-draggers got turfed out on May 21]
Didn’t finish this, with 24A, 25A, 5D and 19D proving elusive and although I got it, was also unable to parse 7A, so am grateful for the blog.
Hat tipped to Imogen!
thanks for the blog and puzzle P and I! — Couldn’t parse CHASTEN properly since I fixated on “hasn’t” as being fodder and wondered how in the world to generate an E
I found some of this a bit tricky. Didn’t know DISTRAINT and got nowhere near parsing MILESTONE and, when filling in the grid, struggled with both INCH and ERRANT. I did parse CHASTEN though would never have got the HAS TEN bit from the clueing; only with hindsight.
I liked CHARLOTTE, WYVERN, MOURN, STARKERS, PALING, STRADDLE, PELICAN and BRIE. Having checked, I see the latter is a bit of a chestnut – which is not surprising. I’m surprised, however, that I don’t particularly remember having seen it before.
Thanks Imogen and PeterO
[gif @2: politics in Oz seems so behind the times. Climate issues? When you have a couple more centuries of political experience under your belt, you’ll gravitate towards more serious subjects like parties, pornography and porkie pies: the proper subjects for parliamentary process. 😉 ]
As usual Imogen was a lot of fun: clever wordplay and a bit tricky . . . I loved IN UTERO, CHASTEN and SLEEPY in particular, but Postmark’s mentions were also great. Many thanks to I & P.
Absolutely brilliant, although I needed help from my brilliant husband for the last three. But there were loads I couldn’t parse.
And I forgave ALL SOULS because it is such a nice definition.
Many thanks to Imogen and PeterO
Tough puzzle. I did this as 4 mini puzzles. SW completed first, then NE, NW, SE.
New for me: Mourne Mountains (thanks, google); DISTRAINT.
I did not parse 11d, (never heard of Inch Island – I guessed I should have googled this), 25ac.
Liked SHORT CUT, SLEEPY.
Failed 23d TINTIN.
Thanks, both.
I did the east, north and south, without great difficulty but found the north west very hard. Took a long time to see 1d. Does it matter in a crossword if All Souls doesnt take undergraduates? It is still a college, making comprehensive for all souls an even nicer irony given the nature of the college.
Yikes. That was tough. Answers came easier than the parsing. Didn’t quite sort out DISTRAINT or INCH.
GinF: I had WYVERN at college about a hundred years ago. Dog of a thing. Didn’t like starting… or stopping, come to that. Always thought it curious that Vauxhall stuck to V or C (Viva, Victor, Velox, Cresta, Cavalier, Chevette, Carlton) except for Wyvern. Hmm?
Almost put off by the complexity of the cluing for 7ac DISTRAINT at the very start, but much encouraged by how quickly the NE corner filled up. Did wonder whether the Palin part of PALING at 5d might possibly indicate Python for the heraldic beast at 12ac, with no crossers yet in place. Loved STARKERS and SHORT CUT. Couldn’t quite parse MILESTONE, or the last one in BLUE NILE, which it simply had to be with 4 of its 8 letters in place, but not really completely convinced with Blue for Rower…
Looking back, I can’t see quite why I found this so hard. I have a feeling that this is the second time that Imogen has met the challenge of placing the definition neither at the beginning or end of a clue.
[Funny that, William, my mate’s one was a real stalwart, a bit lumbering but ran like a reliable old servant]
[PM @6, we do have those 3 Ps of course (especially the pies), but just not in quite the flagrantly entitled style with which your Eton and Harrow boys do them!]
Thanks, Imogen and PeterO. I thought this was great, a very enjoyable challenge overall with many fine clues – some faves being IN UTERO, SLEEPY, CHARLOTTE, WYVERN…
But I struggled to parse a few –
DISTRAINT – trouble-rouble seems a rather elaborate way of indicating the letter T, very sly!
CHASTEN – like Ilan Caron @4, I was looking for an anagram [lost] of “hasn’t” and couldn’t work out where the extra E came from
PELICAN – foxed by the “in PEN” trick
Thanks for unravelling it all, PeterO!
This was a challenge with some of the grammar being a bit unusual. Just to be a little bit grumpy, I do get tired of Oxbridge references and wonder how non academics get these clues. But to be a bit parochial I liked MAROON on the day of a game of Rugby. League downunder with roo (jumper) in the clue.
There were a couple here where I felt the wordplay was just a bit too convoluted – DISTRAINT, which I did manage to parse after guessing the answer, and MILESTONE which I just bunged in from the definition with no idea how it worked.
But those aside, there were lots of really nice and inventive clues with witty surfaces. CHARLOTTE, WYVERN and CHASTEN all got ticks.
Petert @13: yes, as we’ve said before, there is no rule that the definition must be at the start or end – that’s just the way that most clues naturally work. The word order for 6d might more normally have been “Led off with violin, getting stand with legs well spaced”, but it worked fine as it was and probably gave a better surface.
Many thanks Imogen and PeterO.
Many thanks to Imogen for today’s chewy challenge, and to PeterO for the blog – which I needed for the parsing of MILESTONE. But still don’t understand why INCH = ‘one wouldn’t yield, if extremely resolute’ … can anyone enlighten?
judygs@19: wouldn’t budge an inch? Or, sometimes, give an inch.
PostMark@20: many thanks! Though it still doesn’t quite work for me – doesn’t ‘yield’ need an object? eg something like ‘one wouldn’t yield *this* …? Never mind 🙂
A bit of a slog for me I’m afraid. IN UTERO and CHASTEN yielded much needed smiles.
Was there a heraldic theme lurking in here?
Thanks Imogen and PeterO
I found this the toughest for a long time. Not helped by the unfriendly grid with so many initial unches. I knew it was going to be a challenge when my FOI was WYVERN!
Good clues and surfaces, as ever with Imogen, but some of the constructions are very complicated – I failed to parse MILESTONE and DISTRAINT (LOI).
Favourites were STARKERS, IN UTERO, PELICAN, TARPAULIN and SHORT CUT (new one to me).
The ‘Getting’ in the clue for STRADDLE is just a copula – I don’t think this qualifies as a definition in the middle of a clue. If it was recast as ‘Led off with violin, getting stand with legs well spaced’ it would be unremarkable.
Judygs @21: ‘Yield’ can certainly be intransitive: ‘I yield to no one’.
Unlike paddymelon @17 I’m relaxed about Oxbridge references (being of the light blue persuasion myself – but why are there never any Durham colleges?) but ALL SOULS is very vaguely clued – and it’s curious that it crosses with BLUE 🙂
Thanks to S&B
PS I took the definition for MOURN to be “regret loss of” rather than just “regret”, with the wordplay being “earth washed off mountains”.
PostMark et al: re the 3 P’s, just had a mail from a chum in Oz wanting to know if I’d read William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies. It’s about a bunch of public school boys on a small island who adopt a disturbing life style with a bizarre set of rules. Apparently it’s a work of fiction.
judygs @21: We use yield without an object routinely in metallurgy. “At 400 degC the alloy will yield”.
Gervase@24: Yes, indeed, ‘yield’ can be intransitive. But in 11 Down, ‘inch’ should be the object of ‘yield’ … yet ‘one’ appears to refer to ‘inch’ as the subject. I can’t make sense of it, but am clearly missing the obvious.
It isn’t the INCH that wouldn’t yield, so this clue doesn’t work for me.
I got almost none of it last night, saw some more this morning and then resorted to “check.” Plenty to enjoy, as mentioned above.
There’s an Irish comic song called “The Mountains of Mourne,” in the form of a letter home from an Irish comic yokel astonished at the ways of London. Lyrics here: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22mountains+of+mourne%22+lyrics&source=hp&ei=NfTPYreJEMiqptQPm72F8Ag&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAYtACRTZyivINGLc4j3tHpjjGrl96KKTT&ved=0ahUKEwj398aAmvj4AhVIlYkEHZteAY4Q4dUDCAg&uact=5&oq=%22mountains+of+mourne%22+lyrics&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToRCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQxwEQ0QM6CwguEIAEELEDEIMBOg4ILhCABBCxAxCDARDUAjoLCC4QgAQQxwEQrwE6CAgAEIAEELEDOgsILhCABBCxAxDUAjoOCC4QgAQQsQMQxwEQ0QM6CAgAELEDEIMBOgUILhCABDoICC4QgAQQsQM6EQguEIAEELEDEMcBEK8BENQCOg4ILhCxAxCDARDHARDRAzoRCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQxwEQrwE6CAguELEDEIMBOggILhCABBDUAjoHCAAQgAQQClAAWO8sYJk6aABwAHgAgAF8iAHmEJIBBDI3LjGYAQCgAQE&sclient=gws-wiz
Yikes! There must be a way to shorten links!
Excellent puzzle and blog
Thanks Imogen and Peter,
judygs @27: Looking at the clue again, the transitive/intransitive question is a red herring because ‘island’ is the object. The ‘one’ in the clue is the indefinite pronoun and doesn’t refer to INCH. If we replace it with the more colloquial ‘you’, would the clue make more sense to you?:
Island you wouldn’t yield if extremely resolute
PS In fact, ‘Island’ is not grammatically an object in this clue. A relative clause can turn the object of one verb into the subject of another:
I read the book.
It was interesting.
The book (which) I read was interesting.
I found this very, very hard and was MIGHTY pleased to have solved it (thank goodness we don’t give solving times here), even if I couldn’t parse DISTRAINT, a new word to me. I won’t go through a list of the other ones I found hard, but there were plenty!
Favourite was the reminder of “The Mountains of MOURN(E), a beautiful song, though I wouldn’t call it a “comic” one. Here’s a link to the Peter Dawson version if you’re interested.
Thanks to Imogen and PeterO
Thanks for the blog, second super puzzle of the week, we are blessed for once. Over the last year or so Imogen has become much tougher and is rapidly becoming one of my favourite setters. CHASTEN, MILESTONE, DISTRAINT, SLEEPY and many more clever clues .
Two minor quibbles, Paul in TARPAULIN is a bit much , people could be doing a Guardian crossword for the first time today. ALL SOULS is about as non-comprehensive as you can get in many ways.
I usually find Imogen a bit of a slog, and this was partly that, but some fun clues. PALING for the MP reference, and SLEEPY, despite the surface seeming a little forced.
DISTRAINT was certainly hard, an unusual word with a crypticish definition.
I don’t see the problem with ALL SOULS. The question-mark covers the ironic nature, and as for Oxbridge colleges, it’s just another of those sets of a few dozen entities (cf. elements, Shakespeare plays, UK counties, US states/capitals, Italian musical directions, …) that you just have to learn or know where to look up, to do cryptics.
Gervase@30 – thank you! Yes, that would make sense! So it’s not really a double definition, more a not-so-straightforward cryptic.
Valentine@28 see Gervase’s comments above.
And go to TinyURL.com to shorten long links.
revbob @10
I agree with your point about 15D ALL SOULS. I mentioned it just as an oddity, a pinnacle to the Ivory Tower.
michelle @9
In addition to the specific Inch Island, inch is a general word for an island, so that we have an example for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Valentine @28
Indeed there are ways to shorten links under many circumstances: in the first place, your link starts as a google search, and you could have dug out the web reference more directly. Further, if you can highlight text (and it might be difficult on an iPad if you do not have a Bluetooth mouse), you can choose any text you wish, then select “link” to slot in your link so that it does not appear in the comment, like this.
I absolutely adored this!
Amongst a host of delicious clues that made me hug myself with glee when I solved them, PALIN, DANTE, MIGHTY and ERRANT stood out – with STARKERS being my favourite.
I understand the point about All Souls being very far from comprehensive, but surely that’s what the question mark indicates…
I could only half-parse DISTRAINT, so thank you Peter O for the help – and hearty thanks to Imogen, who is rapidly becoming my favourite setter.
*PALING*, of course. D’oh!
Thankyou PeterO for that final T of 7a (nice), all of MILESTONE (would have liked a def-by-eg ind for Pounds maybe but would never have understood lest) and SHORT CUT which I just couldn’t see but really like – one man’s chestnut is another’s stumbling block! Don’t think I have seen teeming as anagrind before but in the brownian motion sense I like it. Do GRIM and Grime come from the same place? I struggled throughout but looking back really liked SLEEPY, PELICAN and others, thanks Imogen.
Gazzh@39 re grim & grime. I recommend Wiktionary – some people here have shown disdain for it, but I’ve found that almost all entries have etymologies, plus it’s online so accessible for free to everyone. For anyone who is inclined to do NLP, the entries are consistently-enough coded so that they can be automatically parsed without too much trouble. As for are the words related, no.
Gazzh @39
In blogging 25A MILESTONE, I did contemplate adding a tut-tut for the indication by example, but decided that, in a UK paper, equating MONEY to ‘pounds’ was not unreasonable.
[Dr WhatsOn @40: I second your recommendation of Wiktionary, which I have always found very useful and informative. It was only Anna, I think, who was dismissive of it, but she might have been thinking of Wikipedia, which is more open to mischievous insertions and wild, unsupported claims. The entries in Wiktionary are always referenced. They may not always be correct – reconstructions of protolanguages are educated guesses, after all – but I’m satisfied that they represent current mainstream views]
Much too hard for poor old me.
Enjoyed going through the hints.
Thanks for the blog. This one was WAY above my pay grade. Clever but impenetrable for my standard.
I tried to make 18D a fart joke — as in cutting the cheese — but could not make the “short” part work. I admire 2D for making “streakers” do double work…both as definition and as anagram fodder.
Dr Whatson thank you will give it a try, PeterO likewise and fair enough! Andrew Tyndall yes I tied myself in knots for a while trying to untangle it but fell to the same conclusion as PeterO.
I had IN ROUTE for “awaiting delivery,” which pretty much doomed me from the start.
One (long) sitting with MILESTONE, SHORT CUT & DISTRAINT the stumbling-blocks. Thanks for the reminder of “The Mountains of Mourne” with giant url. “So I off with me coat & went diggin’ for gold” is amongst my myriad earworms from the last millennium. I think it was Cavan O’Connor who used to sing it on the wireless. Thanks to Imogen & PeterO.
Thank you Peter O for MILESTONE. I got PELICAN first thing this morning when I made a last desperate attempt on my final two, but MILESTONE still eluded me, and even when I checked the answer in today’s paper I couldn’t make it out.
But very enjoyable crossword with many ah-ha moments yesterday. Kept me busy on and off all day!
Oh, and now I’ve read the other comments…
grantinfreo@15 – I think you maybe doing Harrow a disservice. As far as I know it’s just Eton. I am prepared to be corrected!
Gervase@23 – I think if Durham colleges were included, then you could include almost any other University’s colleges, and we would then be in the region of Rock Bands! Whether or not we approve, some Oxbridge colleges are in the realms of GK, whereas I couldn’t name a single Durham college. I can do all the University of Kent ones though!
Rox@33, I also raised an eyebrow (two actually, I can’t do the Roger Moore thing) at Paul equating to Setter. On the whole, I think using other setters names is a bit too specific knowledge.
Too hard for me I’m afraid. Halfway through and gave up. The grid didn’t help, every time I thought things were going to start rolling, the crossers weren’t much use.
Gave up yesterday evening and took a fair bit of this evening to get to the end. A few clues seemed unnecessarily convoluted, but I liked MOURN, RENEGADE, MAROON, and CHASTEN. Thanks Peter O and Imogen.
A bit late to this, because I kept coming back to it but got nowhere. I only got 9 answers. Looking at the explanations I see I should have got some, but others would have eluded me forever. Something about the construction of the wordplay that was impenetrable to me.
I enjoyed most of this: tough but occasionally yielding. Had to give up with 19d and 25a unsolved. I’m with Andrew @45 in saluting the extra demands placed on ‘streakers’ in 2d, but I can’t agree with those who think Imogen should have refrained from using ‘compiler’ to clue PAUL. ALL SOULS was a poor clue, I thought, as although I got it quite early on it was still not convincingly accurate enough for me to write it in with only one crosser. Positing the second L helped me get BLUE at 20, but I still shrugged when I gave up and wrote it in.
Thanks to Imogen for the work out and PeterO for the very helpful blog.
Cannot for the life of me understand 11d
Michael@55 if someone was extremely resolute they would not yield an INCH.
INCH is also a Scottish island near to Mull.
Thanks Roz.