Imogen provides this morning's Guardian puzzle.
This was a steady solve, greatly assisted by the four long entries around the perimeter. There were a few obscure words in there, although none I hadn't;t come across before, to to keep things interesting.
Thanks, Imogen
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | JOIN THE COLOURS |
Put together our clothes, prepared to sign up (4,3,7)
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JOIN ("put together") + *(our clothes") [anag;prepared] |
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| 9 | AT LEAST |
Finally securing a little energy: that’s something (2,5)
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AT LAST ("finally") securing [a little] E(nergy) |
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| 10 | LORISES |
See increases in slow slender creatures (7)
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LO ("see") + RISES ("increases") |
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| 11 | PIMMS |
Alcohol? A tiny taste, about two months back (5)
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<=SIP ("a tiny taste", back) about M + M (two months) |
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| 12 | VIGESIMAL |
Gives mail out, based on a score (9)
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*(gives mail) [anag:out] |
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| 13 | UNCLEARED |
Waiting for security pass, as Stalin’s nephew might have said? (9)
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"Stalin's nephew might have said" his UNCLE was A RED |
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| 14 | PITTA |
Prime ministers given a flatbread (5)
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PITT (the name of two "Prime Ministers") given A |
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| 15 | SIGHT |
A great deal expected soon in this (5)
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If you're waiting for something and it is now in SIGHT, it is "expected soon" |
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| 17 | DYSPEPSIA |
Result of overindulgence perhaps troubling, Pepys said (9)
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*(Pepys said) [anag:troubling] |
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| 20 | ROUNDELAY |
Simple song: could it be any louder? (9)
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*(any louder) [anag:could it be] |
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| 22 | ARENA |
Competitive place a long time back (5)
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<=AN ERA ("a long time", back) |
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| 23 | REALISM |
Artistic style of boxer’s, with rapid movement around (7)
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(Muhammad) ALI'S ("of boxer") with REM (rapid (eye) movement) around |
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| 24 | BREATHE |
Whisper, about to go in to get clean (7)
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RE ("about") to go in BATHE ("to get clean") |
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| 25 | PHARMACEUTICAL |
A peculiar match abandoned with reference to drugs (14)
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*(a peculiar match) [anag:abandoned] |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | JEAN-PAUL SARTRE |
Compiler in trousers: are you about to become intellectual? (4-4,6)
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PAUL (Guardian "compiler") in JEANS ("trousers") + ART ("are") + RE ("about") |
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| 2 | ISLAMIC |
Sort of faith I will take lots of tricks, diamonds mostly (7)
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I + SLAM ("lots of tricks", in bridge) + IC(e) ("diamonds". mostly) |
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| 3 | TRANSIENT |
Short-lived rain’s poured in many a time (9)
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*(rains) [anag:poured] in TEN ("many") + T (time) |
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| 4 | ESTOVER |
Old legal right in French is superior (7)
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EST ("is" in French) + OVER ("superior") An estover was an allowance provided from an estate. |
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| 5 | OBLIGED |
Bound to make line break important in dictionary (7)
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L (line) breaking BIG ("important") in OED (Oxford English "Dictionary") |
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| 6 | ORRIS |
Master reacts offensively principally falling over rootstock (5)
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<=(SIR ("master") + R(eacts) O(ffensively) [principally]) [falling over] |
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| 7 | RUSH MAT |
Stalks over the floor in a hurry, cutting friend short (4,3)
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RUSH ("a hurry") + [cutting] MAT(e) ("friend") [short] |
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| 8 | AS CLEAR AS A BELL |
Callas’s able somehow to retain musical sense with purest tone (2,5,2,1,4)
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*(callas's able) [anag:somehow] to retain EAR ("musical sense") |
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| 14 | PREVALENT |
Stop admitting a latitude that’s commonly accepted (9)
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PREVENT ("stop") admitting A + L (latitude) |
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| 16 | GOULASH |
One morbidly interested in death, say, remains in a stew (7)
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Homophone [say] of GHOUL ("one morbidly interested in death") + ASH ("remains") |
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| 17 | DILEMMA |
Tricky position, lying on front between two women (7)
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L(ying) [on front] between DI + EMMA ("two women") |
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| 18 | SAYABLE |
Always in black, which is OK for a speaker (7)
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AY ("always") in SABLE ("black") |
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| 19 | SCEPTIC |
One doesn’t believe it’s cold through the month, almost freezing! (7)
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C (cold) through Sept. (September, so "month") + [almost] IC(y) ("freezing") |
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| 21 | DRIER |
Cyclist has her day in the lead, weather having improved (5)
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RIDER ("cyclist") with D (day) in the lead becomes D(RIER) |
Enjoyed this today, though it was on the easier side for Imogen, I thought. I agree with the blogger that the long clues round the sides made the solving easier. Smiled to see Jean-Paul Sartre make an appearance. I think I’ve seen ESTOVER before, but it’s not a word that rolls off the tongue. But it was clearly clued. I think 15 SIGHT might need a bit more explanation. It means a great deal in a phrase such as ‘It’s a sight bigger than the other one’. Thanks to Imogen for a pleasant start to the day and to loonapick for the blog.
Well I romped through this unti I was about 3/4 finished and then ground to a halt, but I left it for a while and when I came back I slowly began to see the answers, if not all the parsings, or full parsings, easier than yesterday, but I would rank them equaly for enjoyment. I only finished yesterday’s this morning. My floor is covered in pennies,
Thanks foer yhe puzzle and blog
Wasn’t quite sure what “you” was doing in JPS.
Favourite was UNCLEARED.
Well, I found this a bit of a struggle. The most challenging in a while. As with Tim C @ 3, I especially liked UNCLEARED, as it made me smile. I had heard of the more obscure words, such as ESTOVER; only ORRIS was new to me. With thanks to both.
Had to resort to a dictionary in the north-east corner as there were two words that were new to me. An unusual mix of the straightforward and the challenging, I thought.
On the easier side of this compiler’s harder avatar, though JOIN THE COLOURS, VIGESIMAL — an anagram of a difficult word — ESTOVER and possibly ROUNDELAY were iffy inclusions for me in a daily. Still, enjoyable enough. Thanks Imogen and loonapick.
If you look up LORISES, you will find that they come in two kinds, slow and slender!
The four perimeter clues went straight in which was a huge help. I failed to parse SIGHT getting distracted by the anagram of THIS
Cheers L&I
Amusing to find PAUL featuring in the top left corner two days in a row and it did actually help me to solve the JPS clue. Tim C @3: we need someone like essexboy to resolve this but I have a feeling I have seen ‘ART’ used – maybe poetically – to mean ‘are you’? rather than just ‘are’. I’m afraid I cannot point you to examples and it’s a feeling more than a conviction but it might explain the otherwise superfluous ‘you’.
Despite some unknown words, this was a very satisfying and reasonably straightforward solve. PIMMS, VIGESIMAL, the &littish ARENA, PREVALENT, GOULASH, SCEPTIC and DRIER were my big ticks.
Thanks Imogen and loonapick
As usual, loonapick has summed it up nicely. I had to ponder over the placement of vowels in ‘vigesimal’ but eventually thought that there may be a connection with the French ‘vignt’ and opted correctly.
Sorry, should be ‘vingt’.
The 14-letter lights around the edges got me off to a good start on this one. Having said that, I am not completely happy with 1 dn as “are you” equates to “art thou” rather than “art” alone and the “you”/”thou” then doesn’t seem to be functioning within the clue.
I liked 13 ac. Although USSR is no more, Stalinesque leader Putin is making a key speech today. It might turn out AS CLEAR AS A BELL but there won’t be much REALISM in it.
It’s also Pancake Tuesday today so I feel some DYSPEPSIA coming on !
Thank you Imogen and loonapick.
Tim C @3 / PM @9 / Flea @12
We had a similar case in December, from the same setter, albeit in Vulcan mode.
Have you energy? Hurry! (5)
giving HAST + E = HASTE
Back then I managed to track down an example of ‘hast’ being used without the ‘thou’, where in modern English we would say ‘have you’. I haven’t yet found a similar example with ‘art’, but I’m working on it 🙂
George @10, 11 – yes indeed, vingt is from Latin viginti. Twentieth is vicesimus, which gives us vigesimal. Today I learnt that the Maya, Aztec and Inuit number systems are VIGESIMAL. Thanks I & l.
Some unusual words today, though VIGESIMAL was the only one I hadn’t met somewhere before. I didn’t get the four long ones as early as some, and although PAUL as an answer yesterday was fine, having him as an essential part of the wordplay is just a little bit in-crowd-ish for me.
I enjoyed the Red uncle, the peculiar match and the stalks over the floor.
I’m sure it’s all right, though HAST and ART both need THOU according to Collins, indicating that Imogen is over-egging things.
Am I alone in wondering, when I had the initial D and final A of DYSPEPSIA, whether there was some kind of homophone referring to the diary for which Pepys was famous, and the answer was DiarrhoeA? Got there in the end though.
Yes, PM @9 and essexboy @13: I thought “art” = “are you” was fine. Here’s an example from Hamlet: “What, art a heathen?” (first gravedigger, Act V scene 1).
Lord Jim @18: Bingo!
Thanks Imogen and loonapick
I found some unfamiliar expressions. I hadn’t heard 1a, wouldn’t have got 12a without an anagram solver, and ESTOVER was only a vague memory.
I didn’t parse DRIER or all of TRANSIENT – I didn’t connect “many” with TEN.
I did know the lorises from the nocturnal house at Regent’s Park Zoo. ROUNDELAY was also no problem, and a favourite. Another favourite was UNCLEARED.
PostMark @9, Flea @12 and essexboy @13…
In my original Northern English vernacular I would say “arta” (or “arter”) for “are you” and “asta” (or “aster”) for “have you” as in “arta gooin dahn pub” and “asta geet that quid I lent thee”> “Have you energy” would be astae (or hastae) not haste. I do miss the old thee/thou/ye/you (still in common use in the North) which at least made it clear whether it was singular/plural/object/subject. The Australian vernacular is reintroducing “youse” as a plural of “you”.
I may get back to this but I’m in the middle of a MyC contribution which will either be a cracker or a complete fizzer.
Enjoyable puzzle. Liked UNCLE/A/RED, AS CLEAR AS A BELL.
New for me: VIGESIMAL, ESTOVER, OBLIGED, ORRIS; SIGHT = to a considerable extent; much.
I did not parse 15ac SIGHT the def ‘a great deal’ but I understood the other bit.
Thanks, both.
Then again Lord Jim @18 and essexboy @19 “What, art a heathen?” would be rendered in my original (Elizabethan?) language as “What arta, heathen?” (a=you, no second article needed) 🙂
As LJ@18 implies, I think that “art” by itself turns up quite a bit in Shakespeare, and probably any author writing centuries ago when Latin still featured strongly. A feature of Latin is that the verb contains the governing personal pronoun and Latin authors don’t need to add it; “es” will always means “you are”. German can do it too; “bist frei?” is “are you free?”, with or without an additional “du”. Imogen is ingeniously exploiting the conciseness possible when using an inflected language. With thanks to him and loonapick.
[Tim C @21, I think youse/yous is also yoused in Ireland and Liverpool? And for the Americans here, there’s y’all – although I know not all of you guys say that.]
Tim C @21 : re the Aus plural, the Southern USA already has. y’all = you and all = you all and is “you” in the plural ! Of course it is SAYABLE only in a drawl.
Re VIGESIMAL, is 20:00 hrs PIMMS o clock ?
Lord Jim @18 – many thanks for finding that. Like PostMark, I just knew that there was an example lurking in the depths of my memory but just couldn’t winkle it out. I might have known it would be Hamlet!
(I think I’ve heard it in Yorkshire, too.)
[I got home too late yesterday evening to respond to your comment on ‘lift and separate’ but thanks for that, too.]
An enjoyable puzzle from Imogen – thanks to him and to PeterO for the blog.
Great fun. Quite a lot of unusual words, but luckily none that I had never encountered before.
I saw THE COLOURS immediately but I couldn’t see the JOIN until later – which then gave me J-P S and a big 🙂
Good anagrams for VIGESIMAL, DYSPEPSIA and ROUNDELAY.
Bravo Lord Jim @18 for ferreting out an example of a naked ‘art’. As Sagittarius @24 points out, Latin didn’t need subject pronouns (except for emphasis) because the inflection of the verb gave the person and number. Modern Italian and Spanish are similarly ‘pro-drop’, but not French, where phonological development has made many final syllables silent, thus removing many of these distinguishing features from the spoken language. It is possible that the archaic usages of a bare ‘art’ or ‘hast’ are simply examples of pro-drop but I don’t think other parts of the verb were treated similarly. It does seem significant that the following pronoun would have started with a dental consonant, so TimC’s comparison with Northern English dialectal usage is persuasive.
Thanks to S&B
A good deal easier than typical Imogen, though none the worse for that. NHO ORRIS or ESTOVER, but VIGESIMAL reminded me of Spanish vigésimo (twentieth).
Just to add to the “art” discussion – another Shakespeare line popped into my head:
“Art any more than a steward?” (Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio)
Didn’t help myself at all by thinking Nail THE COLOURS was the solution to 1ac. Managed the rest of the puzzle but left staring at what 1d could possibly be right at the very end, and the across clues on the left hand side that depended on Monsieur SARTRE. One or two unknowns, but precise clueing meant they couldn’t be anything else. Had no idea about the parsing of DRIER. Many thanks Imogen and Loonapick…
For once, I found this Vlad quite tractable.
I enjoyed UNCLE A RED, the good anagrams for DYSPEPSIA, ROUNDELAY and PHARMACEUTICAL, the definition for RUSH MAT, the surface of DILEMMA, and the wordplay for DRIER. I managed to pull ESTOVER from the deep recesses of my brain, no doubt because I had seen it before in crosswords. I DNK, though, VIGESIMAL.
Thanks Vlad and loonapick.
Tim C@21: there’s also the West Country “Where be to?” (where are (you) going?)
I remember ‘art lecturer?’ = teachest, all right.
I thought 3d was (rains)* in (a) tent, which it often does if you haven’t got your groundsheet sorted.
Like many I was distracted by trying to sort out where the “you” fitted in in 1d, but am convinced enough by people’s interpretations here. I couldn’t manage the mental leap needed to parse 21d.
Is 29,000 a significant enough number for celebration tomorrow? Probably not. I remember puzzle 25,000 was given a suitable theme, and I reckon puzzle 30,000 will be too in three and a bit years time. If the aforementioned Putin keeps his finger off the button…
Thanks to loonapick & Imogen.
A gentler than usual offering from Imogen. All clearly clued and I’m fine with the art in 1d.
Good to see that Pepys still has his upset tum, and that Ali is still the boxer of choice.
Thanks Imogen and loonapick
Tim C @3/ eb @13/ LJ @18/ Sarah @30 et al
Thank you all for, in accordance with good 225 tradition, digging out the appropriate references. I am glad memory was not playing tricks.
I wonder if Art Garfunkel ever got tired of being asked the question …
Unlike many others, I found this difficult. I did not get the parsing for TRANSIENT, as I didn’t see many = ten. And I object: ten can be many or few depending on context. How many roaches are in the bathtub? Ten is too many! How many dollars are in the bank account? Ten is too few! Only ten people in the audience? The play must be a real stinker! You get the idea.
Vlad?
I too was wondering about the missing you, but am more or less convinced by the posters here, thanks to all of you. The remaining niggling doubt stems from the thought that just because we drop words in speech, such as “You going to the pub?” (where here the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak) wouldn’t necessarily license such dropping of “are” in wordplay without a hint.
monkeypuzzler@35 – I don’t recall puzzle 25,000 having a special theme. I remember being surprised as I had been expecting one. I’ll pop over to the Guardian and have a look.
Spot the selcouth – “a word that appears in a crossword puzzle because it’s the only word that fits”.
Yesterday we had two: OPAQUER & ORNATER. Today it’s ESTOVER, which is naughty because it should only be plural. Not in Chambers online either.
The clue was made easy to account for this.
Otherwise a very fine puzzle. Lovely surfaces, good anagrams.
1d ART = “are you” in JPS.
Me@41 – I recalled incorrectly.
Thanks for the blog, a good puzzle but I prefer Imogen a bit further along the scale from Vulcan .I liked VIGESIMAL , the Mayans used base 20 .
I have loved reading the ART discussion, thanks to everybody. Making up for my English lessons at school when I would just read my Physics books.
Frankie@42 , ESTOVER is in my Chambers93 and as singular.
Roz@45: I’ve only got Chambers 21st Century Dictionary online. It’s not there, singular or plural.
The Wiktionary gives:
“From Middle English estovers pl, from Old French estover (“obligation”).
Noun estover (usually uncountable, plural estovers)
(archaic, law, historical) An allowance provided from an estate for a person’s support; an allowance of wood for repairs, firewood and fencing.
Usage notes: Now only used in the plural.”
Collins says it’s a plural noun.
Fg@46 et al – Chambers app has ESTOVER singular but also offers “common of estovers” The right of taking necessary wood from another’s estate for household use and the making of implements of industry
Frankie@46 I have a copy of Chambers 21stC . It is a good dictionary but rather modern and far less comprehensive than The Chambers Dictionary.
Long ones around the side helped a lot, but too many obscurities for my taste.
Great improvement on yesterday at least.
Thanks both.
essexboy@14 Also the Welsh language counting system is vigesimal. And French was fully so until the 1960s, when a botched attempt from L’Academie Francaise altered the numbers 30 to 59, but failed to finish the job (as it were)
Ampersand @50
Is that why 80 is “four twenties” in French?
I was wondering about ESTOVER. If most dictionaries say that it does/should only appear in the plural, and one says otherwise, then where does that leave the setter? If it were you, would you use the singular?
By coincidence, the English word comes from the French, which means “obligation” (per Wiktionary, and I’ve just noticed FrankieG@46), and right next door in the grid we have OBLIGED, with a clue that references a dictionary.
Nice spot Dr. WhatsOn@52. Suggests the setter was OBLIGED to put ESTOVER because nothing else would fit.
FrankieG @53
I’ve found a hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon or a commune in the Pyrenees that would fit. I think you have a point!
Ampersand@50:
I thought Welsh language counting used 15s & 9s:
pumptheg, unarbymptheg, dauarbymptheg, deunaw, pedwararbymtheg…
fifteen, one and fifteen, two and fifteen, twice nine, four and fifteen…
muffin@54:
Yes, ESTAVAR was a non-starter – far too obscure. What’s the hotel called?
El Tovar
Sorry, should have linked
muffin@57:
Ah, yes. I forgot to try all possible two-word combinations.
VIGESIMAL and ESTOVER were just about guessable for me. Otherwise is was satisfyingly straightforward I thought. Liked UNCLEARED best.
Thanks Imogen and loonapick.
I find Imogen’s style a bit trickier than other setters and struggled a bit with this. I don’t remember seeing VIGESIMAL before, so I guessed VEGISIMAL from the fodder. Got the rest in the end, but, before the crossers, I tried hard to make DAISY fit in 21!
Thanks I and l.
lTim C@21 It can be singular/plural or informal/formal, as in “Tha tha’s them as tha’s thee.” It seems you can leave out the subject in English (and German?) only for questions. You can ask “Art a heathen?” but not state “Art a heathen!” Or “Bist frei!”
essexboy@25 and Flea@26 The plural of “y’all” is “All y’all.”
Thanks, Imogen and loonapick.
[muffin @51 – the system of counting in twenties in French is of Celtic origin, not Latin (cf. Ampersand’s reference to Welsh).
In medieval French, all the numbers from 30 onwards could be said in either base 10 or base 20, eg vint et doze for 32. But by the time the Académie Française came along in the 1630s, the vigesimal numbers for 30, 40, 50 and 60 had already largely died out. So the question was – what to do with the three remaining ones, 70, 80, and 90?
The Académie decided to recommend the use of soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, and quatre-vingt-dix, although their Dictionnaire also contained the forms septante, octante and nonante. In Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland, they use septante for 70 and nonante for 90; octante for 80 has largely disappeared, but they still use huitante in some Swiss cantons.]
Thanks EB. Italian has a much more sensible system! I wonder why octante etc. didn’t catch on in France?
Did they actually have a NUMBER system for base 20 or just names of numbers ? The Mayans had 20 different numerical symbols, true base 20 .
Roz @65 – before the 14th century they would have used Roman numerals (indeed afterwards as well, though increasingly supplanted by Arabic ones). There is a reference in the Laws of William the Conqueror to “VII vinz et IIII” for 144.
[The Celtic VIGESIMAL system predates the introduction of ‘Arabic’ numerals to Western Europe and, presumably, any standardised way of representing numbers by symbols.
My favourite is the ancient Mesopotamian sexagesimal system – counting in 60s (60 has a usefully large number of factors and 6×60 is conveniently close to the number of days in a year). There were separate cuneiform symbols for 1-60. We have inherited this through the number of minutes in an hour and the 6×60 degrees in a circle.]
Thank you, although Roman numerals are essentially base 10 even though they did not have zero or place values, all based on fingers.
Gervase @67
Thanks. The Mesopotamian system was the origin of seconds in a minute and minutes in an hour, I think?
Yes the Sumerian system was base 60 and we know this because of the advantages of older technology , many clay tablets have survived , virtually no original Greek mathematics has survived.
I had permission from the Bodleian to look at the oldest (almost) complete set of books of Euclid’s Elements. I naively assumed it could be original or at least just after Euclid’s time. In fact it was about 900 CE .
[It is possible to count up to 60 using the hands. With the thumb of one hand you count up the three bones on each finger in turn to give twelve, and use the other hand to count up the twelves]
Valentine@62 et al ( = those interested in personal pronouns of all ilks ), I surfed this :
All y’all is used in the Southern United States when a speaker wishes to include everyone being addressed. Y’all may refer to an indefinite set of members of a group, but all y’all definitively includes everyone in the group.
Some might say, in my 3 weeks in South Carolina, I didn’t do my culture and language homework thoroughly enough ! My take-away assignments not done ? Although no Angel, Oh Carolina, it wasn’t me !
[Sadly, evolution has bequeathed us five digits on each hand, rather than the numerically more versatile six 🙂 ]
[Gervase @73: speak for yourself ! 😉 ]
PM @74
🙂
[Gervase@71 you can count up to 1023 using digital-binary, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.]
Glad I’m not the only one to find this hard but very rewarding. Maybe I’m just unused to the setter. Mudd in the FT, ironically, was much clearer!
AY = always? how does that work?
Try this
thanks FrankieG.
Ay learning with these xwords.
I was another who struggled to get on Imogen’s wavelength. I thought that 21d had to be DRIER, but not only could I not see the wordplay, I also think the definition is iffy. I don’t think I’ve heard of ORRIS, and ‘master’=SIR seems a bit of a stretch. “Rapid movement ‘ to clue REM seems a bit clumsy – what about ‘sign of deep sleep ‘? But to be fair to our setter, I was a bit short of sleep yesterday, so maybe it’s all my fault as usual.
I enjoyed the discussion of ART more than the crossword, and I had a grin at the parsing of TRANSIENT as frequently raining in the tent.
Is it possible the ‘IC’ in SCEPTIC could be ‘1°C’/almost 0°C/(water is) almost freezing?
AntonioM @83 – that’s how I parsed it too 🙂
DrW@76 I have counted in digital binary for most of my life, though rarely beyond 31 (which I can do on one hand). It’s handy for counting the number of times something happens, for instance. I use my left hand for counting, since my right hand is better at a lot of other things.
Frankie G @ 42. No – that’s not what selcouth means. Do not bastardise a useful word, please
……nor imply some clever coinage of your own ….. I’ve used “selcouth” at 15² years before I first noticed your otherwise excellent contributions