Guardian Cryptic 28,941 by Imogen

by

Found this very tough and slow to solve. Lots of favourites once I’d sorted it all out, including 18ac, 22ac, 26ac, 4dn, 8dn, and 19dn. Thanks to Imogen for today’s challenge.

 

ACROSS
1 BUSTARD
Flyer‘s transport almost late (7)
BUS=”transport” + TARD-y=”almost late”
5 VOLAPÜK
Friend shot back in very old British language (7)
definition: Volapük was created in the late 1800s to be international language [wiki]

PAL=”Friend” reversed/”back” inside V (very) O (old) UK (British)
9 SPLIT
Light snow covers large crack (5)
SPIT (=a light fall of rain or snow) around L (large)
10 VASECTOMY
Urn, not too big, cost nothing: goodness, a snip (9)
VASE=”Urn” + C-[os]-T + O=”nothing” + MY=exclamation of surprise=”goodness”

“not too big” indicates the removal of os (over size) from “cost”
11 EISENSTEIN
Film director a genius to include heartless scene (10)
Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet film director [wiki]

EINSTEIN=”a genius” around S-[cen]-E
12 WELT
Strengthening border means the world to a German (4)
definition: something applied along a border to add strength e.g. a welt cord can be used to strengthen the seams of a cushion

WELT is also the German word for “world”
14
See 17
18 IN A NUTSHELL
Belonging to a teaching organis­ation is ghastly, to be brief (2,1,8)
IN A NUT’S HELL=’in a NUT is hell’=”Belonging to a teaching organisation is ghastly”

the NUT was the National Union of Teachers, which merged into the National Education Union
21 LIDO
Cover over pool (4)
LID=”Cover” + O (over, cricket abbreviation)
22 ARCHIMEDES
Agreed to smash one of the old gods that screw man (10)
definition is a reference to the Archimedes Screw [wiki]

CHIMED=”Agreed” in ARES=god of war in Greek mythology=”one of the old gods”

chimed=’was in harmony [with]’ e.g. ‘their view chimed with ours’
25 PRORECTOR
Guardian’s right for a time for deputy head (9)
definition: a deputy to a rector

PRO-t-ECTOR=”Guardian”, switching R (right) for the t (time)
26 DROVE
Urged peace-lover to embrace end of war (5)
DOVE=”peace-lover” e.g. a politician might be a ‘hawk’ or a ‘dove’, around [wa]-R
27 TWEAKED
Changed a little feeble content in series of talks (7)
WEAK=”feeble”, contained in TED=”series of talks” (an online series of talks from ted.com)
28 YELTSIN
Boris going out in style (7)
Boris Yeltsin the former president of Russia [wiki]

anagram/”going out” of (in style)*
DOWN
1 BUSSED
Rudely kissed bosom is reported (6)
to buss is to kiss in a rude manner

sounds like (“is reported”): ‘bust’=”bosom”
2 SPLASH
Power cut all round makes a prominent story (6)
definition: a lead story e.g. on the front page of a newspaper

P (Power) with SLASH=”cut” around it
3 AUTONOMOUS
Self-directing car without comp­uter control wasting energy (10)
AUTO=”car” + NO MOUS-e=”without computer control”, minus the e (energy)
4 DUVET
Work for two that five divide fairly makes such a day for relaxing (5)
definition: referring to a ‘duvet day’ where one can relax

DUET=”Work for two”, split in half (divided fairly) by V=”five” in Roman numerals
5 VESTIBULE
Garment, one sort of blue, that may be inside the front door (9)
VEST=”Garment” + I=”one” + anagram/”sort” of (blue)*
6 LICK
Speed to defeat (4)
double definition: e.g. as in ‘the car was moving at a good lick [speed]’, or e.g. as in ‘we got licked [defeated] by the other team’/’the other team gave us a good licking’
7 PHONETIC
Pub notice laid out in this funny-looking alphabet (8)
definition referring to e.g. the symbols used in the International Phonetic Alphabet [wiki]

PH (public house, pub), plus anagram/”laid out” of (notice)*
8 KEYSTONE
After opener stumped, single that is vital to stability (8)
KEY=”opener [of a lock]” + ST (stumped, cricket abbreviation) + ONE=”single”
13 SCALE MODEL
Small version of me squeezed up in so-called convertible (5,5)
ME reversed/”up” inside anagram/”convertible” of (so called)*
15 LUSTRATED
Passionate desire reproved, having to be purified (9)
definition: to lustrate is to purify through sacrifice or other ritual action

LUST=”Passionate desire” + RATED=scolded=”reproved”
16 LILLIPUT
Small country lane initially badly laid across island (8)
Lilliput is a fictional country from Gulliver’s Travels, inhabited by very small people [wiki]

L-ane + ILL=”badly” + PUT=”laid”, around I (island)
17, 14 WARDROBE MALFUNCTION
Bore draw possibly? It could be an unexpected revelation (8,11)
in a crossword clue, ‘wardrobe malfunction’ might indicate an anagram/malfunction of (wardrobe)*, which would give “Bore draw”
19 ODIOUS
Hateful to be overdrawn — one’s recourse? (6)
OD (‘o/d’ is a shortening of “overdrawn”) + IOUS (IOUs, I owe you s) “one’s recourse” when in debt / overdrawn
20 ASTERN
Like a bird at the back (6)
AS=”Like” + TERN=”a bird”
23 HARPY
One plucked posy in the end for rapacious monster (5)
HARP=”One [that is] plucked” + pos-Y
24 PERK
Make coffee and get a tip (4)
double definition: ‘perk’ as in ‘percolate’ to make coffee; or ‘perk’ as in ‘perquisite’, a benefit received at work other than a wage/salary

 

98 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,941 by Imogen”

  1. WARDROBE MALFUNCTION, VASECTOMY, ARCHIMEDES (couldn’t parse), YELTSIN and IN A NUTSHELL were great. Nho of VOLAPUK. Another educational workout.

    Ta Imogen & manehi.

  2. Tough puzzle.

    New: VOLAPUK; Eisenstein, Sergei (film director); BUSS = kiss (1d); SPIT = slight snow (9ac); PRORECTOR.

    I did not parse 22ac; 8d apart from KEY = opener; 19d apart from IOUS = overdrawn/in debt.

    Liked IN A NUTSHELL, VASECTOMY.

    Thanks, both.

  3. Didn’t enjoy this at all and made two errors. Why do we have to have German words in a puzzle when there are perfectly good English words that could fit?

  4. Great puzzle, not as slow as my usual attempts at Imogen. Only one I had never heard of, LUSTRATED, plus I failed to notice the swapping of T for R in PRORECTOR. As usual I shoved a few in without parsing, so thanks to both Imogen and manahi, for an especially lucid blog!

  8. Difficulty here more in the vocabulary and references than the parsing – though VASECTOMY defeated me. I liked IN A NUTSHELL, ARCHIMEDES, YELTSIN. New to me: PRORECTOR, LUSTRATED, SPIT as a noun (round here we say it’s spitting with rain, but not that there’s been “a spit”).

  9. Eureka! Thank you Manehi for ‘chimed’ in the old god. Got the screw man but couldn’t parse it.
    I had a DUVET day today, coldest summer day on record in many parts down here.
    VOLAPÜK brilliant. Loved the misdirection.
    Why is BUSSED ‘rudely’ kissed? Couldn’t find why.
    PHONETIC Phunny.

  10. Lots to like with my favourites already indicated by AlanC (first again!) Not really a quibble, but can you define a bird that prefers walking to flying as a flyer?

  11. Very nice, but a fail for me because I put protector. I thought it a bit of a stretch but prorector is new to me.
    Quiblet: does “country” imply a real place not a fictional one?

  12. Pretty pleased with myself for solving it and parsing everything – BUT – I spent ages trying to work out why “um” was “vase”. Should have gone to Specsavers…? Didn’t mind the German words and always welcome learning new ones. Got the language at 5a because the clue took me there (after a struggle and then googling to check). Fortunately had vaguely heard of lustration. Thanks to setter and blogger for a good work out and a satisfactory checking out of the solutions.

  13. Thought
    “Urn, not too big, cost nothing: goodness, a snip” might have been better phrased
    “Urn, cost nothing, not too big: goodness, a snip”, the comma after “big” in the original seemingly not requiring the solver to remove anything from “cost”. But this may be a personal preference.

    Also, seemed to vaguely recall ( 8 dn ) that, while “key” is definitely an opener, Rob Key may have been an opening batter at cricket.

    Ta Imogen and manehi

  16. I too wondered whether to go wit a ‘c’ or a ‘k’ for PERK Crispy @6, but as usual, the BRB with its 4 definitions of Perk set me right, so not crossword speak.

  17. George Clements – not quite sure what you mean by the use of German words. WELT is a word with several meanings in English, and that is how it has been defined in this puzzle.

  18. SinCam@5, The coffee bar in “Friends” is “Central Perks”. I guess, if we can have German words, we can have American words. In I.T., disc versus disk is always debated.

  19. This was a bit of a challenge, but satisfying to the end. Particularly enjoyed the WARDROBE MALFUNCTION, and to learn a little more about the challenging life of the Hungarian bustard – thanks Wikipedia…

  20. A mixed bag for me, a handful of early write-ins including IN A NUTSHELL in the first pass, steady progress for a while then stumped for a long time by some trickier holdouts. VOLAPUK I only got from a v*k wildcard search and would never have got it in the proverbial million years. The substitution in PRORECTOR took me far too long to spot, and I wasn’t even sure it was a word but that’s my deficient GK. LUSTRATED is new to me, as is that meaning of RATED. As a northerner, ‘spitting’ definitely means lightly raining, never snowing! But I accept that regional variations may exist, of course.

    My main grumble is that the inverse-anagram-indicator device in WARDROBE MALFUNCTION fell a little flat for me as there was already what looked like an anagram indicator (‘possibly’) immediately after the anagram fodder, so I couldn’t see where the MALFUNCTION part came in at all. One could call this legitimate misdirection, but it raised my eyebrow a few millimetres. Maybe just me.

    To grind out a finish required a few bung-and-checks and a few remained unparsed as ever. But if the setter never ‘wins’, the game’s not worth a candle, eh?

    Many thanks both.

  21. George Clements@3:
    I don’t see why Welt shouldn’t appear in a cryptic crossword. Presumably terroir would be OK, or mañana. Is it because of the word’s origin?

  22. ravenrider @11 – lots of crossword clues use fictional entities (people in particular) without a ‘fictional’ qualifier, and I would argue that Gulliver’s Travels is sufficiently well-known for this to be a fair clue, certainly once a few crossers were in place.

  23. Failed miserably with this, not least because of the large number of DNKs: Volapuk, Eisenstein, Welt (as border), prorector, bussed, duvet day, lustrated.

    I’ve only ever heard SPIT as a verb and referring to rain, not snow.

    Surely it’s PERC when referring to coffee?

  24. Rob T@20: “spitting” is rain only round here, too. I did start looking for real small countries for 16, but didn’t feel cheated when it turned out to be LILLIPUT.

  25. Martin @21 (and to clarify my point @17) aside from whether WELT should be an acceptable grid entry as a German word/borrowing, it has been defined in this crossword as an English word quite separate from the German meaning.

    RobT @20 I had the same issue with WARDROBE MALFUNCTION

  27. PeterT @10: Flightless birds sometimes do get wrongly clued as flyers or wingers (setters are not ornithologists) but bustards can and do fly, even if the Great Bustard is on record as the heaviest bird to be able to do so.

  28. Too many obscurities for my liking, and 6d could just as easily be ‘dash’ as in hopes, making the obscurity of 5a more penal. Fortunately VASECTOMY prevented a mistake.

  29. Interesting comments so far. Imogen is a setter I often have trouble getting along with but I managed to tune in to his wavelength quite quickly today and so found much to enjoy here. “That screw man” is hilarious.

    Thanks for the blog, manehi.

    Rob T @20 – “possibly” is needed to indicate that “bore draw” is simply one example of an anagram of “wardrobe” – “wardrobe malfunction” doesn’t definitively lead to “bore draw” without qualification.

    Flea @13 – yes, I agree – your suggested word order would have been more helpful with the parsing. I managed to work it out but it does feel a tad Yoda-ish.

  30. Excellent puzzle, tough to start but then yielded steadily. I’ve never heard spit referring to light snow but apart from that everything was spot on.

    I thought WARDROBE MALFUNCTION was a great spot from bore draw. Also loved ODIOUS and VASECTOMY.

    Great fun from a great setter.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi

  31. I was pleased to work out my LOI VOLAPUK from the wordplay, as like for many here, it was totally unknown to me. I’m another who missed the R for T substitution in PRORECTOR.
    judygs@14 – you may use the term Weltschmerz, but I don’t … thanks, it’s another new word I learned today.
    Favourite was WARDROBE MALFUNCTION – I see how ‘possibly’ might seem redundant, but to me it simply indicates that there are other possible anagrams of wardrobe – ‘wore drab’ etc.

  32. widders @29 Thanks – I get that 🙂 and much as I’m normally loathe to rewrite setters clues to my own satisfaction, a simple question mark after ‘bore draw’ would have been more to my liking! But hey, I got the answer right anyway so all good.

  34. Yep, had to squint at “um” too, TB @12, but am stubbornly resisting new specs.
    And agree, pdm @9, always thought a buss was more like mwah than anything rude.

  35. Yes this was tough but got there in the end. Favourites have already been mentioned so won’t repeat. Thanks Imogen and manehi.

  36. One person’s obscurity is another’s rarely used treasure 🙂

    Great puzzle, with concise clues, well-crafted charades and plausible surfaces. Fortunately I managed to parse everything – after some head scratching. Favourites as for AlanC @1.

    Being a language enthusiast, I like the odd bit of French, German, Italian or Spanish to intrude – and I knew VOLAPUK, although it didn’t leap out at me. It’s much less well known and spoken (if at all these days) than Esperanto (or even Klingon, probably 🙂 )

    Thanks to S&B

  39. oofyprosser @28. “Fortunately VASECTOMY prevented a mistake.” Love it!

    This was a DNF for me, but I’m happy with WELT, which I did get. We also borrow ‘weltanschauung’, admittedly obscure, but then there’s the internationally renowned newspaper Die Welt.

  43. Apart from the fact there were a couple of nho’s here in BUSSED and of course VOLAPUK, I really enjoyed this. Especially with the hugely satisfying and grid filling WARDROBE MALFUNCTION early on. Wasn’t quite sure how DUVET ticked the box at 4d, but thanks for the Duvet Day explanation Manehi. Several of these I managed through the crisp definition within the clue before working out the parsing. Hadn’t come across Ted as a series of talks before, and as my knowledge of the German language is just about zero, loi was WELT after I had unashamedly looked it up. Many thanks for the challenge this morning Imogen…

  44. I wonder whether the ‘rudely kiss’ for BUSS is something to do with its etymology (from French baiser) and possibly the use of the word in the early modern English period as slang for… well, um… screw.

  45. Wonderfully clever and inventive. Far from easy, but a nice mix of not too difficult to very challenging. A couple of words new to me, including VOLAPUK. With regard to 12A: WELT, I don’t speak German but I think it’s fair to include foreign words which are reasonably well known. There is a German daily called Die Welt. With thanks to both.

  46. We enjoyed this, like to scratch our heads a bit before finishing otherwise why bother?
    Chambers ( sorry pserve_p2@42) gives not the verb, but the noun: a spit , meaning a fall of snow.
    Thanks Imogen and manehi

  47. Difficult but most enjoyable. My highlight being the brilliant definition in 22a

    Thanks very much to Imogen and manehi

  49. Fo’ shizzle, Gervizzle

    I wasn’t sure about spit in relation to snow, but it seems to be legit. Also wondered, like others, why ‘rudely’ kissed, but the OED says ‘a kiss, esp. a loud or vigorous one’ which could be taken as quite rude.

  50. Thanks both. A toughie yes but still a nice entertainment.

    On PERK could it be that we are being asked to conjure ‘perc’ (from percolate) and thence ‘get’ PERK with ‘get’ being a homophone indicator?

  51. Not sure why the objections to German when most people would not raise an eyebrow at “UNDER” being clued as “A FRENCH AND THE GERMAN” or something along those lines (sorry, you can tell I’m not a setter…)

    Agreed that SPIT is confined to rain, at least in my dialect. “We’ve had a spit of rain”, but never “a spit of snow”.

    My parents in the late 60s/early 70s got themselves a coffee percolator and it was always my understanding that the colloquial “perk some coffee” was spelled with a K. Then again, should “perk”for “perquisite” be spelled “perq”?

    Nothing really new here, theough some (e.g. VOLAPUK) required a dredge of the memory banks. Toka Pona, anybody?

    Some tortuous devices, but laughed at Archimedes being defined s “that screw man”. Thanks to Imogen and manehi

  52. Once again I found easy what others found hard, having largely failed on Monday and Tuesday and struggled to a close yesterday. Interesting.

  54. I found this much more manageable than yesterday (which I gave up). Had to look up volapuk, and hadn’t heard of Eisenstein. And spitting is rain in Kent and east Sussex as far as I’m aware.

  57. We both enjoyed this – LUSTRATED new to us; I think I’ve come across VOLAPUK somewhere in another crossword (possibly in another place).
    Some really excellent definitions already mentioned.
    Many thanks Imogen and manehi.

    Can’t resist this chestnut (well, it’s nearly Christmas – hope I don’t get roasted though…)

    The bustard’s a fortunate fowl
    With no occasion to growl,
    It’s saved from what would be
    Illegitimatcy
    By the use of a fortunate vowel

  58. Persevered to a finish but as usual didn’t really get along with Imogen. I know it’s just a matter of taste but for my taste grammar is sacrificed for surface a little too much.

    Really struggling to see how LUSTRATED isn’t the wrong part of speech – unless we construe “having to be” as a link phrase?

    In TWEAKED I struggle to see “feeble content in” meaning “put feeble inside”. The content of “feeble” isn’t WEAK.

    That said COD is ARCHIMEDES. I was almost angry when I solved it but “that screw man” really tickles me.

    Thanks both.

  59. Loved this.
    I first heard the word buss in ‘the recruiting officer’, Laurence Olivier as Captain Brazen. National Theatre before it was built I think.
    Thanks all.

  60. PS Am surprised by how many here say they’ve never heard of Eisenstein. The Odessa steps scene from his Battleship Potemkin must be one of the most famous in all of cinema.

  62. I have never, ever, seen it spelled “perc,” you guys. Like, that wouldn’t even cross my mind. It’s always PERK coffee here (which also gives us the verb “perk,” as in, “that coffee really perked me up”.) So whoever suggested it was an Americanism might be right.

    And on the WELT thing, I agree that it was defined as in English, so it’s okay, but also that “die Welt” is such a basic bit of German that you ought to be able to get it anyway. I mean, crosswordland requires us to know *much* more obscure French than that…and there are at least two more-obscure English vocabulary items right here in this puzzle. LUSTRATED? VOLAPUK?

  63. Also…please don’t tell me that you spell the definition that’s an abbreviation for “perquisite” as PERQ.

  64. Stone Rose @57 I enjoyed your limerick but couldn’t resist tinkering to make it scan.

    The bustard’s a fortune fowl
    With no occasion to growl.
    For what would be
    Illegitimacy
    Is saved by a fortunate vowel

  65. Thanks, Job@64

    I can’t lay claim to the limerick, sadly – read it somewhere as a child.
    I find the original scans if the word “from” is stressed in the antepenultimate line, but your version works too.
    Actually, the thing I was kicking myself for was using “fortunate” twice.
    “The bustard’s a lucky old fowl” would be a better starting line.

  66. SW corner excepted, this was a successful jaunt into crossword land.
    I had no problem with the director, the steps scene in The Battleship Potemkin is a classic.
    A few obscurities, 5a apart, WARDROBE MALFUNCTION was new to me, ironic being a man who constantly suffers from the said complaint.
    15d a new one on me.
    At least I have no ‘sour grapes’ today.
    Thanks both.

  67. I absolutely loved this – you know with Imogen it’s going to be a no-holds-barred, laissez-faire, boundary-pushing sort of thing and he didn’t disappoint today. Battleship Potemkin was pretty much required viewing during my time in the SWP so EISENSTEIN was a gimme. Numerous visits to the dictionary to confirm the JORUMs and for me that’s one of the joys of solving and a testament to Imogen’s wordplay that they were all gettable.

    Earworm? Oh go on then – here’s Boz Scaggs with my karaoke favourite LIDO shuffle -a song title which surely belongs in a clue

  68. It has just been brought to my attention that today -15 Dec – is Ludwik Zamenhof’s birthday, and thus International Esperanto Day or something. So VOLAPUK may be more than coincidental. I can’t see any more that might make a theme, though.

  69. On the language issue, mrp@63 said it well.

    I don’t think requiring knowledge of words in the “big four” foreign languages, especially those you would learn in a first course or from a phrasebook on holiday, are any more out-of-scope than knowledge of musical notation, footballers, cricketers etc. Especially as the cryptic challenge is to figure out you need e.g. the German for world, and that’s what dictionaries are for (my personal feeling is that using a thesaurus implies dnf, but not so for a dictionary).

    I generally find Imogen’s puzzles to be hard but humourless, but “that screw man” absolved him, imo.

  70. Dr W @69 – fascinating distinction between use of a thesaurus and a dictionary as an aid!

    My take is that as long as I didn’t need to use the Reveal function, a finish is a finish 🙂

  71. Thanks for the blog, I note that normal service has resumed at Number 1.
    Great puzzle, Imogen moved into my top three setters in the last year or so.
    VOLAPUK could be an Azed clue, no need to check it , simply has to be right. I knew WELT from cushions and the newspaper . TWEAKED been in a few times lately , I always think of it as something else which I will not mention.

    Quite a few years ago the newspapers were giving away DVDs , the Guardian , of course , gave away Battleship Potemkin. We still watch it once a year but I prefer Tarkovsky

  72. I enjoyed this puzzle, with its generous helping of long answers and the imaginative definitions ‘that screw man’ and ‘this funny-looking alphabet’. Fortunately I knew VOLAPÜK, but I didn’t know ‘spit’ of snow. I liked the precision in the clue to PRORECTOR, where ‘right for a time’ indicates that only one of the two instances of ‘t’ in ‘protector’ is replaced by ‘r’.

    I was amused by TerriBlislow’s mistaken reading of ‘Um’ for ‘Urn’ (@12). I did exactly the same thing. The difference between us, though, is that I am actually booked into Specsavers on Saturday to get a prescription for much-needed reading glasses!

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi.

  73. Roz @71 talking of classic films, there was a marvellous program on Citzen Kane today on R4. On BBC sounds I’m sure.
    The word ‘genius’ is an overused word…

  74. Couldn’t parse ARCHIMEDES — would never have thought of “chimed.” Or of “mouse” as “computer control.” Never heard of a “duvet day,” but then we don’t have duvets over here.

    Hadn’t heard of PRORECTOR or “spit” for light snow. I’m betting none of us has ever heard of VOLAPUK.

    Are the TED talks known in the UK”? I hadn’t thought so.

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi

  76. Reading through the comments again, I’ll agree with the opinion that spitting is reserved for that disgusting flavor of rain that’s not hard enough to enjoin outdoor activity, but still hard enough to be unpleasant. It can’t spit snow. Those are flurries. Or possibly sleet (with full knowledge that “sleet” refers to a different precipitation on this side of the Atlantic than it does on that one–but in this context I could mean either one, really). But honestly, we get more snow than you, so we should be the authority on what to call various snowfalls. And I can’t ever remember hearing anyone talking about it spitting snow.

  79. HYD , great , thanks so much , should be easy to track down . I need the Shipping Forecast as well , I was late today .

  80. I knew about VOLAPUK from Frederick Bodmer’s marvellous book “The Loom of Language”, which I’d recommend to anyone. (And so, presumably, would Malcolm X, who mentions it in his autobiography as prison reading.)

    This puzzle hit the sweet spot for me: not so hard that I couldn’t make regular(ish) progress, but hard enough to make me feel pleased with myself for finishing.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi.

  81. Valentine @74: I don’t blame you for not scrolling through the previous 73 posts, but a handful of us DID know VOLAPUK 🙂

  82. [Roz @71: alas the Potemkin avoided what KPR seem destined to do, on current form. I need to avoid the Top Twenty from now on ..]

  83. VOLAPUK, WELT and BUSSED were new to me. In the latter, I think “rudely” is used in the sense of vigorously or robustly (e.g as in rude health usage).
    I don’t remember seeing “smash” as containment indicator before, and some other parsings were a little opaque to this solver. Like others, I really liked “that screw man”.
    Thanks, Imogen and manehi.

  84. Valentine @74
    TED talks certainly are known and watched by many, in the UK. Yesterday I happened to watch (again) a TED talk by the late Sir Ken Robinson, a British educationalist who has recorded very popular TED talks addressed to both UK and US audiences. John Halpern (Paul of the Guardian) has also done a TED talk – on crosswords.

  86. Very tough. Know very little about ARCHIMEDES & nowt about his screw so that was a bung in. Needed 3 reveals (WELT, LICK & PERK) to complete & Mr G got fed up with me knocking on his door for confirmation (VOLAPUK, BUSSED, LUSTRATED & PRORECTOR) of words I wasn’t familiar with. Good to see the great EISENSTEIN in there – his Odessa steps sequence was famously inspired/was ripped off by Brian De Palma in The Untouchables. WARDROBE MALFUNCTION my favourite.
    Thanks Imogen & manehi

  87. I usually emit a non-vocalised grrrr when I’ve struggled with a crossword and someone on here says it was “tough but fair”. Well, it’s my turn today, because I found this tough, fair and enjoyable. I had to work really hard to get into the clues, some of which were seriously misleading. ‘Friend shot back’ had me looking for a word beginning with OGLAP___ until I got the V from 5d. And ‘possibly’ in 17,14 also had me initially looking for an anagram, but then I had the M so I had to think again. This probably makes tedious reading (‘series of talks promises to be boring?’) but if I come out the other side of a serious tussle with the grid completed, I reckon I’ve had a good time. I nearly blew it at the end when PROTECTOR seemed obvious, but luckily I re-read the clue more carefully before laying down my pen.

    Thanks to Imogen for the wrestle, and manehi for your own efforts to produce a blog for us.

  88. RobT @70 Here’s my logic. A dictionary (either English or English -to-X) tells me something I didn’t know: I don’t want to be foiled because the setter used a term I wasn’t familiar with. A thesaurus tells me a synonym I knew all along but couldn’t be bothered to think of. YMMV!

  89. Gervase@81 I write comments as I read through the blog and comments, and I had to leave and come back before I could finish them. So when I wrote it, nobody had heard of VOLAPUK, and I forgot to go back and delete that part of my comments.

  91. Like Flea@13, I too thought of Rob Key, who opened the batting for Kent, and never considered a door opener.

    Thanks, Imogen, for the workout, and manehi for explaining the two I couldn’t parse: TWEAKED (never heard of TED) and ARCHIMEDES, which I got from the wonderful definition of “screw man”.

  93. Wonderful stuff! Took me all day (when I had breaks at work). Almost displaced the bath water when I found Archimedes.

  94. CalMac@93: good one! I just wanted to record that I loved this. It was tough but when I relaxed and let the setter guide me, it fell into place with great satisfaction – PRORECTOR being a typical example. Thanks to Imogen for a good challenge and manehi for confirming my parsing.

  95. I was in a US bar watching the Super Bowl when the original WARDROBE MALFUNCTION occurred. It was anything but a bore, and proved to be a huge draw.

  97. [ AlanC@82 I did warn you about quantum entanglement but you will insist on hogging the top of the charts. I believe they are being re-named again to become KPRN ? ]

    Greg@95 brings us all the way back to TWEAKED , it has invaded management-speak , the nerds use it at meetings and I can’t help smirking because I only have one association with the word.

  98. PM@9 Wardrobe Malfunction my COD, managed to get this into the eulogy at my father’s funeral.
    Only guessing, but did a mutual friend MHJB get you into crosswords?
    If he couldn’t finish the Times on his commute to CDC HQ he threw it at me to complete.
    Still missing the Cypriot eateries in Fitzrovia, but had a curry with DT recently.

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