Guardian 29,276 – Imogen

111 comments on “Guardian 29,276 – Imogen”

1. I needed help with this one (i.e. I cheated).
   Disappointed it took me so long to get PRESTON, given it’s my home town.
   Enjoyed the serendipity of SERPENTINE as that’s where I was baptised.
   Favourite has to be CAPTCHA for the definition and intricate wordplay.

2. Thanks Andrew and Imogen.
   It was hard. Gaps in my parsing have been filled, thanks.
   CAPTCHA is brilliant – test for humanity indeed.
   Liked several other clues as well.

   Thanks for the editing feature. Nice!

3. 14d is really a misspelling, apparently common & shown in some dictionaries, but still a misspelling. I was bamboozled into trying “bamboozle” for 19 as a result.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lippizaner&redirect=no helpfully traps the misspelling and redirects to…
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipizzan

5. nho CAPETOWN

6. I tried unsuccessfully to find a reference that supported reducing saag to sag.

7. Too much of a slog, and too many ‘Huh?’ moments to be enjoyable. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.
   By the way, Andrew, Corpus Christi was in yesterday’s Guardian quick crossword.

8. Try Chambers dictionary Geoff @6

9. Didn’t know the meaning of plummets in 13, but the answer was obvious from the crossers. I think I might have come across the horse name, but it didn’t spring to mind and it took a while to see the misspelling (or, I suppose, an alternative spelling as it seems). Some of the definitions brought out the pedant in me (you don’t turn over the bed when you hoe, for example), but fair enough in crossword land. Definitely a difficult start to the day for me. I did like the definition for CAPTCHA. Thanks to Andrew and Imogen.

10. I didn’t know Capet in CAPE TOWN, wasn’t happy with sag not saag either, which made SAGA one of my last two in, and am glad my wobbly spelling for LIPPIZANER is a feature of the crossword, not me, this time.

    Otherwise all in and parsed, other than FRACAS, where I couldn’t think of scarf=comforter, but should have, it’s fairly common English useage.

    This took a bit longer than the other three Cryptics this week, which I found took me about the same time.

    Thank you to Imogen and Andrew

11. Yes, very hard, and the Reveal button got overheated towards the end.

    I messed up several “easy” ones by toying with wrongly selected words or letters: AL instead of DON in LONDONERS; H instead of PRES in PRESTON; taking the ERG out of ENERGY, instead of E, in SERPENTINE; and trying to make an anagram instead of EXCEPTION in 16ac.

    Thanks Andrew and Imogen; I liked your definition for CAPTCHA

12. Yep, took a bit of doing. Stuff like the horse that was a nho, the medieval Frrench royal house, and taking ages to remember that apic- is bee-related. Still, you expect a bit of erudition/obscurity from Imogen. Thanks both.

13. … and yes, the test for humanity was nicely oblique ..

14. Great puzzle (if you didnt have train to catch-and I didnt-it was raining here which is great in the tropics)
    Slight hint of a mini London theme with W(R)EN, SERPENTINE(first heard The Nice whilst rowing there )
    and of course LONDONERS
    Tiny quibble-I often cook SAAG panir-cant remember sponach being represented by SAG
    I liked APICULTURE and CONCORDE(driving round there makes Hyde Park Corner seem like a doddle)
    Ta Imogen and Andrew

15. I’m sure someone will pop in soon enough to say they were on the wavelength and found it a doddle – but that is deffo not me. Tough today and, like others above, I had to resort to both Check and Reveal several times. I was chuffed to remember the horse and Chambers seems to cover all the bases, giving us no fewer than 5 alternative spellings – which is just what you want from your definitive authority! However, gaps in GK and an inability to make some of the connections Imogen intended (capital river, for example, had me looking at loads of combos of capitals and rivers but I was never within a million miles of SEINE).

    I think the def for CAPTCHA just about made up for all the failures.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

16. PS. I was relaxed about SAG/SAAG. Indian restaurants are not held to the same standards as Chambers (!) and they often provide us with spelling variants: SAG is one of those and, indeed, the BRB does provide it as an alternative, allowing all those ‘Spinach dip’ clues.

17. Thank you Andrew. Agree that the clue for SWATHE needs a QM. Liked it though.
    Tim C, first off the mark@1. It must have been a bit of a thrill to have your significant places recognised.

    I enjoyed a lot of this and am always reluctant to focus on a few that were exceptional, but , is
    close to the French fair for pres in PRESTON
    CORPUS fair for a college, if it’s an abbreviation?
    SERPENTINE’s a bit well serpentine, capital river (got it, but a bridge too far).
    Is a change of government necessarily a r(EVOLUTION]?
    Loved CAPTCHA, which I only found out today is an acronym. I just thought it was a good homophone for capture.

18. So plummets are lead weights? Makes more sense than my bung of LEAPS, but if the gk is lacking what do yer do? Thanks both.

19. I only solved a handful of clues, then gave up as I wasn’t enjoying it. Looking at the solution confirmed that I’d made the right decision, and I moved the setter back to my “Don’t attempt” list. Not my cup of tea.

20. Oofyprosser@18. I must admit I thought LEADS/plummets from roof was a cryptic def rather than a double def, once I looked up plummet. Interesting to find the origin of plummet.

21. paddymelon @17, not sure what significant places you mean but I don’t really care where I am in the list. I just hope that I add something useful and interesting at times. It just so happened that the blog appeared with enough time to compose a post before I went and cooked dinner (or tea as us Northerners say 🙂 ) for my dear wife. Curry and rice as it happens.

22. Having been unamused yesterday, I was more than compensated today. A superb puzzle, I thought. Too many outstanding clues to list, really, though CAPTCHA and SERPENTINE were among the highlights. Mainly, though, Imogen stands out for the sheer elegance of a lot of the surfaces, they’re a joy.

    Very chewy stuff in places. I needed most of the crossers for APICULTURE, having attempted to decapitate eagles, kites, hawks, falcons and even kestrels without getting to vultures, and (slightly bizarrely in this company) LEADS was loi: I’ve never heard a plumb line referred to as a “plummet”, but was left with no other option.

    Terrific fun. Many thanks to Imogen and to Andrew for the blog.

23. Andrew, I’m glad you mentioned it. I struggled with UNEXCEPTIONABLE, after having got the diffuse nebula on the outside. Pretty significant, a 15 letter answer right across the middle. I didn’t understand why an event is an exception, unless, as you indicate, it’s an unusual event, from the wordplay. Double duty?.

24. [Tim C. @21. PRESTON your hometown, and SERPENTINE, where you were baptised. Meaningful, surely? ]

25. Thanks Imogen and Andrew
    I found this very difficult, with a lot of guess and check. A DNF as I revealed LEADS. A lot unparsed too – I thought FRACAS was something to do with the industrial conciliation service ACAS!
    FOI was HOT YOGA, a jorum.
    I had a sag bhaji last night, but was a bit unimpressed with “a little anchovy” for A.
    Couldn’t he have found a better first word for 23d than “in”?
    Favourite LONDONERS.

26. Paddymelon@23
    I don’t see there’s any double duty going on. Unusual event = exception and diffuse is the anagrind for nebula. I also struggle to understand Andrew’s objection to the clue, as exception as in anomaly isn’t the same meaning as exception as in to take offence. I thought it a good clue, but perhaps I’m missing something.

27. Does Imogen ever do themes? The only hidden Indian dish I could find was SAG ALOO… (one of my favourites, however you spell it).

28. Charles @26. Thank you. You’re absolutely right. My thinking was stuck back when I was attempting to solve this and was looking for an anagram (unusual) of event and of course there weren’t enough letters. Whew! Can let that go now.

29. I had to resort to a few word searches and checks to complete. CAPTCHA was indeed a test and SERPENTINE a bit, well, serpentine. I had a very speculative LOFTS for LEADS on the basis that a lofted shot plummets in the end.

30. [paddymelon @24… ah yes, I see. Must be time for bed. 🙂 ]

31. [Me too, Tim@30. Time for bed, curry also here for ”tea”, following a day of record humidity, almost double the January average for the dew point, in the “oppressive” range, liable to induce heat stress. It never rains but it pours. Droughts, floods, fires, and now a record for “mugginess”. ]

32. Slow, tough and chewy, but satisfying to finish. Didn’t remember SAG=spinach (I obviously don’t eat enough Indian food) or LET for the unsatisfactory service (or play/watch enough tennis) and needed a list of cities to spot PRESTON. Not that familiar with SKIPLANEs or HOT YOGA, either, but I got there.

    Sort of a London and Paris vibe to this, with LONDONERS, SERPENTINE, WREN as copmus points out, and CONCORDE and Seine, PRES(ton) and CAPET(own). (Didn’t his Revolutionary jailers jeeringly call the deposed Louis XVI “Citizen Capet”? That’s where I finally remembered it from, so was surprised to find the actual royal house was medieval.)

33. muffin@25. I’m impressed HOT YOGA, your FOI. NHO. A jorum? Sounds deadly. That’s how I felt all day here and I didn’t even move.

    Something I found: Hot yoga classes are even hotter than heated yoga classes, with temperatures typically ranging from 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit, in addition to humidity levels of 40% or higher. . That is seriously dangerous.

34. [pdm @31 I mowed the back lawn today. HOT YOGA would have been a lot less sweaty]

35. Completed successfully but thought that this was a stinker in more ways than one. I think that I eventually parsed them all apart from ‘Cape Town’, where ‘Capet’ was unknown to me.

36. Thanks Imogen and Andrew!
    Top faves:
    CAPTCHA, SERPENTINE and HOED.

37. [Tim C@34. As Noel Coward would say, Only mad dogs and ………….. . Glad you lived to tell the tale. 🙂 ]

38. Very hard. Failed on LEADS in the end; tossed the coin and went for the wrong LEAPS option, knowing it was unlikely to be correct. I was surprised to see SKIPLANE as one word but “It’s in…”. HOT YOGA anyone? No thanks.

    Toughest one in various places so far this week with the consolation of the best clue of the week CAPTCHA.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

39. I managed to solve 5 clues then gave up. Came here to read the blog.

    Thanks, both.

40. UNEXCEPTIONABLE
    Agree with Charles@26 regarding EXCEPTION.

41. This was like pulling teeth. I had nothing at all until I managed to solve the last clue, 23d LOOP. Gradually I got some others, although there were at least half a dozen I couldn’t parse, so I appreciated Andrew’s blog. I liked 25a EVOLUTION and 18d BEATIFIC. Thanks to Imogen.

42. This was a pretty tough solve, but we ended up with most of them accounted for. Particularly enjoyed Londoner and Beatific, and CAPTCHA also fun. We also had a different spelling for LIPIZZANER, but otherwise a good tough puzzle.

43. Thanks Andrew, I had the same missing question mark as you for Devon/SW, thought CORPUS alone a bit unfair for non-Oxbridgians (?), luckily had no idea how to spell the horse (Anto would be hammered for that) and struggled with many as noted by others – also 1d as I didn’t consider vultures to be birds of prey (even though the birding world does, acc to Wikipedia, so that’s my fault of course). Luckily had time to do some dictionary research to leap the right way on LEADS so my ultimate feeling is accomplishment and much relief. But as well as the much-lauded CAPTCHA I thought FRACAS and AT WAR very well done, and the “place in Paris” a nice touch, thanks Imogen.

44. I would have hoped that ‘And deeper than did ever plummet sound/I’ll drown my book’ from Prospero’s ‘This rough magic’ speech would be fairly well-known.
    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

45. I must be weird. Heavy going, beaten in the NW corner, but still enjoyed it.
    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

46. Found this hard too, particularly with EFFED, LET OFF and HOT YOGA in a tricky SW corner. Some lovely clues with SERPENTINE, LONDONERS, EGLANTINE and UNEXCEPTIONABLE. LIPPIZANER took quite a while, and I did struggle to complete this today. But plaudits as ever for Imogen’s elegant style and trickery…

47. Well I always assume an Imogen will be hard and I wasn’t disappointed, but I was extremely pleased to finish it! Couldn’t parse a couple, including my fav, CAPTCHA, which I got from the wordplay, delightful. No quibbles over spelling such a horse, Bradford gives both popular ones, in fact no quibbles over any of it. Thank you Imogen and Andrew

48. Google has a remarkable varieties of spelling 14d, including this one, but the consensus seems to that it’s wrong.

49. Chewy but highly rewarding puzzle.

    No unknowns for me, fortunately, except HOT YOGA (though that wasn’t a problem) but I had to dig deep.

    First sweep revealed little. SAGA was my first entry. I have no problem with ‘sag’ – the ‘aa’ only indicates a long vowel, and ‘a’ is always either long or a schwa in Hindi, a language which gets transliterated in various quirky ways. Luckily I couldn’t remember the proper spelling of the horses, so the wordplay served to make the entry.

    Lots to like: CAPTCHA, LONDONERS, EGLANTINE, EFFED, CAPE TOWN, SERPENTINE were my pick.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

50. HOT YOGA occurred as a solution a little while ago, so I didn’t need to check.
    First pass yielded only one solution until I got to the SE corner, oh and the A in SAGA. Sag/saag is a translation from a different alphabet, so you can use the long A, rare until the sons of the aristocracy wanted to distinguish themselves from the hoi-poloi, or two short As. It was my LOI.
    I think chewy is an understatement. I got the UN and ABLE of the long answer but was trying for an anagram of is in and event to fill it, wasn’t going to work.
    Two quibbles, and I usually don’t, is a SKIPLANE a thing and a swathe is a band/line of hay/silage/straw/pea haum etc. and whether it is broad or narrow depends on what it was cut or rowed up with.
    Ta both.

51. That much French always makes me grumpy!

52. Sorry, but despite plugging away till I filled the grid I left several unparsed. I have to say that this puzzle was deeply unsatisfactory in several places. EFT is unfairly obscure. I have never heard of the house of Capet. NHO plummets as a noun. I agree with the other complaints about SAAG/SAG. 1D was borderline; there surely has to be a fairer way to clue vulture, much better known as a scavenger than a bird of prey to those of us not birders. I dredged WEN from the depths of memory, but suspect it was unfamiliar to many.

    And I have my usual complaint about EGLANTINE, although I assume it was familiar to the horticulturists among us.

    Fortunately I was familiar with Lippizaner in its various (mis)spellings.

    If a puzzle is going to rely on so much general knowledge it really should be more general.

    Thank you Andrew for the blog. On to Friday.

53. Also although VULTURES are carnivorous, do they really qualify as birds of prey?

54. paddymelon@17 re PRESTON. I saw the inclusion of ‘the’ as a misdirection towards the definite article rather than to the word ‘close’. The clue works well as ‘close’ to the French (people) ie ‘pres’.
    I found this puzzle tough, but so worth the effort. I thought CAPTCHA was brilliant. I also loved CAPE TOWN, PRESTON, LONDONER, SERPENTINE, EFFED.
    Thanks Imogen for the workout and Andrew for the clear explanations.

55. Jacob @52: EFTs are not infrequent in Crosswordland. EGLANTINE, an old name for a wild rose, is a word not now used by gardeners, but perhaps familiar to some from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

56. Well, my computer and I eventually solved it; a good one for the experts.

    I liked the wordplay and definition for CAPTCHA, the wordplays for LIPPIZANER and HOED, and the definition for LONDONERS. Mike B@44, an excerpt from a Prospero speech is fairly obscure to me. I also don’t think many people would know CAPET.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

57. Jacob@52. I must say I disagree with your criticism of the amount of general knowledge required. Obviously one can’t know everything, but as long as the solutions are fairly clued I see nothing wrong with having to use a dictionary or other work of reference to check that one’s solution parses correctly. In fact I rather like it – one of the pleasures of a good cryptic is that one learns new things, and to restrict setters to the commonplace would greatly impoverish the genre, imo.

    As far as today’s is concerned I think London is referred to as “The Great Wen” so often in literature that it’s reasonable to include it, lots of birds of prey eat carrion, and Eglantine is often seen in crosswords and is mostly familiar, as Gervase@55 observes, from Shakespeare. The only one here that I think pushes acceptable limits is Capet, because there’s little else in the clue to help work it out, but with the crossers CAPE TOWN looked the only plausible solution so I wasn’t unhappy.

58. Thanks Imogen and Andrew

    nicbach @ 50 A skiplane certainly is a thing, generally an existing design fitted with skis as well as or instead of the standard undercarriage – cf also floatplane.

    I knew making those Airfix kits decades ago would come in handy sometime!

59. I prefer to be able to solve crosswords without looking things up, personally, so I was happy enough with my decision to abandon this one early. Having come here to be put out of my misery, the amount of GK I was missing would have made it unfinishable in my lunch hour, if ever.

60. I’ve had a good run of completing the puzzles and was clearly getting over confident. This brought me back down to Earth with a bump. I had to come back to it several times during the morning, and gave up with three to go. I had to Google LIPPIZANER and was thrown by a different spelling. I was also defeated by CAPTCHA and LEADS. Other clues gave up their secrets slowly, but things did pick up over lunch. Oh well, I did get much further than I thought I would first thing this morning. I liked POKERFACE, CAPTCHA (despite not getting it), LARKISH and EFFED. With thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

61. Got the SAG, but like many others have only seen SAAG in practice.

    This was as hard as Paul’s harder offerings, with similar unobvious synonyms, but without the humour.

62. It took me forever to get CAPTCHA and not happy about misspelt Lipizzaner!
    Enjoyed it though.

63. Many thanks Imogen. I agree with Andrew it was a tough workout but nonetheless very enjoyable and I picked up some new words along the way. A thought about the parsing of FRACAS. Could the ‘comforter’ = FR (ie abbreviation for vicar) and could the ‘brought over to settle’ = ACAS (as in the conciliation body)?

64. Thanks to Imogen for the challenge. Agree with Cobbler @63 but I loved the misdirections, as in 14 across.
    Great sense of satisfaction when the answers were found. Thanks to Andrew for the blog.
    Favourites:
    SKIPLANE
    LARKISH
    APICULTURE

65. On second thoughts, my cotd was WREN. So apt, somehow with the great architect producing those lovely places of worship in the Great Wen itself. I also found it hard to believe that the diminutive wren (that used to appear on one side of our farthing coin) was once the U.K’s? most commonly occurring bird. I’ve rarely ever seen one…

66. I’ve only come across eglantine in crosswords and long may I continue to do so as it’s such a beautiful word.

67. This was a toughie! It didn’t help that SKI-PLANE (unhypenated) and CAPTCHA were crossers.

    Can’t say I much liked the 15 letter clue or answer.

    On the bright side I liked LONDONDERS and HOED

    Nho of scarf = comforter

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

68. [ronald @65 the wren was recently confirmed as the UK’s commonest bird-I see them in my London back garden]

69. Some great clues but far too many loose clues, odd spellings, etc. More hmms than laughs.

    I think the 15letter crosser was bad on a few levels. Captcha was brilliant.

    Thanks Setter and Blogger

70. Brilliant puzzle–thanks Imogen!

71. This puzzle left me grumpy for several reasons, all of which have been well articulated above. Too much French! Too much general knowledge! Not enough help to get you there via wordplay! Like many others said, I made heavy use of the cheat buttons–and if that’s true of so many in this group (who are all dedicated cryptic hobbyists), it’s a sign that it’s not us, it’s Imogen. Sorry, Imogen.

    I will say that I had heard of the House of Capet, though. If you want a good read, check out Maurice Druon’s excellent series of historical novels about the last four Capetan kings (and first two Valois). It’s wild stuff–scandals, machinations, assassinations, you name it–and pretty much all true. The series is entitled (in English translation) The Accursed Kings; the first of the seven novels is The Iron King.

72. Gladys@32: Although the House of Capet technically ended with the death of Charles IV in 1328, the name Capet has been generally applied as a surname for French monarchs. You are right that following his dethronement Louis XVI was referred to as Louis Capet in revolutionary France (that’s how I first came upon it). Following his execution Marie-Antoinette was known as “the widow Capet”. Though we all know that that was not for long…

73. I’d just like to add that though I found this tough, and finished with three blanks, I thought it was a really good puzzle. You can’t please everyone. Sometimes people complain that a puzzle is too easy. Sometimes that it is too tough. It’s good to have a range, and I like puzzles that include general knowledge. I enjoy learning new things and dredging up facts from my memory banks while I still can.

74. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow …

75. Mr SR and I both enjoyed this. Handily, between us, we usually form a Venn diagram of GK (eg today I knew HOT YOGA and Mr SR knew CAPET and we both knew EFT and WEN). However neither of us knew “plummets” were LEADS, but we like to learn new things – thanks for that and the rest of the blog, Andrew.
    And many thanks to Imogen for the fun and the mental workout (preferable to a hot yoga physical one, imo).
    We’ve seen both “sag” and “saag” on menus but, a few years back, a local restaurant offered a “meat and sago balti” which sounded less appetising.

76. I knew EGLANTINE from O level Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale:

    I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
    But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
    The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
    Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
    And mid-May’s eldest child,
    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

77. Cross posted with you, nuntius@73, as I’m a very slow typist but it’s good to know that others like to learn new things too 🙂

78. Vulture is a scavenger not a bird of prey.

79. The first sentence in the in Wiki entry for vulture starts “A vulture is a bird of prey…”. It is placed in the family Accipitridae, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards, and hawks.
    I agree that vultures’ modes of “hunting” pushes the “prey” designation a bit!

80. If all my relatives are omnivores, I can still be a veggie.
    I think it’s Wiki that’s pushing it!

81. Or indeed the nearest Indian restaurant to my house, Tim C @8 and Geoff @ 5…

82. As I remember it, the curry house we visited last night had both sag bhaji and murgh saag on the menu – even they aren’t consistent!
    And then there’s palak as well…

83. I admit that my already foul mood was made worse by this puzzle but to give credit where it’s due, I thought the clues for WREN, CAPTCHA and PRESTON were brilliant (not that I was able to solve any of them). Extra points for the originality of “close to the French”!

84. My word this was a toughie! I’ve been slogging away at it, off and on, all day.
    Once or twice I even considered giving up.
    HOT YOGA was my foi (I tried it once. Just the once. Never again) and was one of the few I could parse without any trouble. Lots of others were CFEs (crossed fingers entries).
    A lot of it was down to sheer luck. I knew the horse from some cheesy kids tv series yonks back, the theme tune of which had a woman warbling about “my snowy white horses”, and CAPE TOWN was a guess because it fitted. (My GK on royalty is sketchy at best, and the only French ones I knew were the Bourbons.). 8D had to be WREN – but I’d always thought a wen was an old word for a boil or something similar and that London got likened to a Great Wen because it was so corrupt and unhealthy, rather than congested. Hey ho.
    I agree with Andrew’s quibbles about 7D & 16A.
    On the other hand, PRESTON, CONCORDE, EFFED, HOED made me smile – and CAPTCHA was a little beauty.
    Thank you Andrew for all the explanations – and thanks to Imogen for the challenge

85. I think it was Samuel Johnson who first referred to London as a (the?) “Great Wen”.

86. …by analogy to a wart.

87. I found this very tough, but very satisfying – with the notable exception of LEADS, which as Oofyprosser@18 says, is near-impossible without some quite specific GK. Full disclosure, like others I guessed the wrong way with LEAPS, but I’d be only slightly less dissatisfied had I got it right, as ‘leads’ referring to the element is a peculiar word. In hindsight I can wrangle a lead=pb=plumb=plummet connection, but that’s too much to ask of a solver IMO. Imogen/Vulcan does this fairly often with dds or cds, but requiring either GK or guesswork isn’t to my taste.

    As I say, otherwise this was cracking, and I was pleased to work out the (far more fairly clued) LIPPIZANER from the wordplay.

    Thanks both.

88. Well I was right on Imogen’s wavelength and found this a bit of a doddle.

    But sometimes I lie!

    Needed to make liberal use of the check button and was wrong on a couple of occassions – guessed 13. LEAPS instead of LEADS; 14d LIPDILANER (which still looks just as likely as LIPPIZANER) Needed the blog to make sense of why the Newt was effing at 24ac, and of course the aforementioned LEAPS.

    BTW Sag/Saag is not the ingredient but the dish which can be made with any leafy green vegetable- I’ve even been served Saag made with carrot tops;. Relevant article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saag. But it’s ‘in Chambers’.

    Many thanks to Andrew for the explanations and to Imogen for the test (failed in my case!)

89. I think UNEXEPTIONAL and UNEXCEPTIONABLE have two different meanings!

90. matematico @88: Quite right about sag/saag – the specific word for spinach is palak (see muffin @82). The usual spelling in English with double A is curious. Other words with long a don’t get the same treatment. We don’t write ‘paalak’ or ‘paarathaa’. I suppose it is just to make it sound less floppy…

91. Muffin@85; the Great Wen is courtesy of William Corbett. Dr Johnson declared that when a man was tired of London he was tired of life, since London offered everything that could be desired. I enjoyed the puzzle and don’t share any of the gripes, but if I were being pedantic- and who on this site isn’t? – I would say that Wren did not build anything; he designed buildings which others built.

92. 16 across definition is ‘not so exciting’. That would be UNEXCEPTIONAL. The word UNEXCEPTIONABLE means something quite different: ‘beyond reproach, unimpeachable’.

93. I had VIN YOGA initially for 22A. It does apparently exist, although it’s less common than YIN YOGA and HOT YOGA.

94. “Ther was also a Nonne, a PRIORESS
    That of hir smylyng was ful symple and coy;
    Hire gretteste ooth was but by Seinte Loy;
    And she was cleped madame Eglentyne.”

95. Tim Chard @92, hmm, my first google hit says “Not open to objection, but not particularly new or exciting” …

96. Tim Chard@92: I think you are right. Chambers seems to support this. If so then it can be added to Andrew’s comment as to why this was not a very satisfactory clue.

97. Hard graft this, but that’s part of the fun so I’m not going to get too narked about it. EFFED raised a smile. I share some of the concerns re: 15a. As regards general knowledge concerns, prior to this puzzle I didn’t know the Capets from a bite in the leg, so I’ll take it as a learning experience.

98. Would anyone object to kites being defined as a birds of prey? They live mainly on carrion in the same way as vultures.

99. Way too hard for me 🙁
    Managed maybe a third of the answers only. I didn’t have much crossword time today, but having read the other answers I would not have managed many more. Many thanks for the blog.

100. A DNF for me. The toughest weekday puzzle for some weeks, but I didn’t think any of it unfair on reflection. Thanks to Imogen for the challenge and to Andrew for the much needed enlightenment!

101. Thanks SueM48@54 and others who’ve highlighted the innovative cluing for pres in PRESTON, close to the French (-speaking people).. Who was I to question that pesky the ?

102. DuncT@98: Kites are raptors, so no objections..

103. A bit under the weather yesterday so relieved to learn I wasn’t alone in finding this very hard going!

104. I did this a day late but evidently found it as tough as many other folk. Not a great deal of fun. Required a few Reveals and I really dislike resorting to those…

     Also surprised it took up to comment number 92 for someone (thanks Tim!) to query the definition in EXCEPTIONABLE.

     Now I’ll do today’s and try to catch up…

105. Everything I was going to say has been said. This was exceptionally hard.

106. Whew. Learned a few things along the way, and pleased when stuff already lodged in our brains eventually emerged to be helpful (Wen, sag, hot yoga, Larkin . . .)
     Toyed briefly with CAMPUS for 21D, thinking that armies always have camps.

107. Never did get the NW corner. Normally I am content to admit that the fault is in me, but the grotesque misspelling of LIPIZZANER ruined the whole thing for me. On to tomorrow…

108. I wholeheartedly agree with Charles@22. Didn’t find it unusually hard, and all fairly clued. I also didn’t think there was all that much GK required – I’ve learned a good many new words via cryptics! If it’s well-clued, you can just look it up… I, for one, like that.
     Many thanks Imogen and Andrew 🙂

109. Spent most of the day thinking WILD HORSE = SHORE = EDGE. That’s a duh then

110. Very difficult puzzle for this Texan. Took days and multiple shots. Finally ground it out on this lazy Sunday morning. Cracking 16A and 14D got me out of the SE corner. Did not solve CAPTCHA but admire the cleverness. EFFED and blinded is a foreign expression here. I was surprise no other commentator remarked on it, so it must be common to y’all. These last two were my only errors.

111. 24d
     Isn’t it LIPIZZANER?

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