Guardian 29,396 – Imogen

by

This started off seeming straightforward, but a few clues held me up at the end, and there are a few rather tricky parsings. Thanks to Imogen.

 
Across
1 STOOD UP Failed to meet Rose (5,2)
Double definition
5 BROWSER Leaves to support one piece of software (7)
.. and another: a browser is an animal that “feeds on [i.e. is supported by] the rough shoots of plants”, which you might call leaves
9 WEEDY Wet day, not a minute earlier (5)
WEE (small, minute) + DAY less A
10 CONGERIES Eel one’s holding first of electric collection (9)
CONGER + E[lectric] in I’S
11 SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN Criminal’s weapo? (4-3,7)
Cryptic definition – rather a weak one if you ask me
13 YAWL Boat you heard in America (4)
YAWL is a casual pronunciation, or even an actual spelling (as “y’awl) of the American “you all”
14 RENOWNED In well-known study be surprised date’s missing on back (8)
Reverse of DEN (study) + WONDER (be surprised) less D[ate]
17 AMNESIAC I don’t remember cinema as free (8)
(CINEMA AS)*
18 STEM Support power source, not initially atomic (4)
STEAM less A[tomic]
21 NOT LIFT A FINGER As umpire, do nothing to support bowler? (3,4,1,6)
Cryptic definition – if a bowler in cricket appeals for a wicket, the umpire would raise a finger to show that the batsman was out; not to do so is to support the bowler by doing nothing. Incidentally, this is the third clue to include the word “support”
23 COME AGAIN Return for pardon (4,5)
Double definition – “pardon” and “come again” both mean “what did you say?”
24 A DEUX For us two farewells, not one (1,4)
ADIEUX less I
25 LAWLESS Left Wales, mad scene at first, like the Wild West (7)
Anagram of L WALES, plus S[cene]
26 YIELDED Daughter after fluttering eyelid stopped resisting (7)
EYELID* + D
Down
1 SEWN Stitched up by random directions (4)
The four cardinal directions in a random order
2 ONE MAN WENT TO MOW No women want me to change nursery rhyme (3,3,4,2,3)
(NO WOMEN WANT ME)*
3 DRYING Failing to save river, lost for words (6)
R[iver] in DYING (failing)
4 PACIFY Calm breaking fast, I start to feed (6)
I F[eed] in PACY (fast)
5 BANISTER Rail stoppage I back, but not 100% (8)
BAN (stoppage) + I + STER[n] (back)
6 ODE TO JOY In love, Joanne and Eddie raised occasionally holy anthem (3,2,3)
O (love) + reverse of JO and TED, + alternate letters of hOlY
7 SWINGING THE LEAD Taking principal role in musical, bearing with malingering (8,3,4)
W[ith] in (“borne by”) SINGING THE LEAD. The origin of “swing the lead” for “malinger” is uncertain: there’s some discussion here
8 RISING DAMP Implied quietly crazy problem in-house (6,4)
“Rising damp” could be a cryptic indication of P (quietly) MAD (crazy)
12 TYRANNICAL Oppressive time in command, delving into your record (10)
T[ime] + I[n] C[ommand] in YR ANNAL (your record)
15 ASPIRATE What may have poisoned me mad doctor’s to suck out (8)
ASP (poisonous snake) + IRATE – “doctor’s” indicates that it’s a medical usage
16 MARTIANS Aliens from star one man shot (8)
Anagram of STAR I MAN
19 IF ONLY I whizz round town now and then? I wish! (2,4)
Alternate letters of tOwN in I FLY
20 INHALE Close to Manchester, take the air (6)
If you’re IN HALE then you’re close to Manchester
22 AXED Article Times editor ruthlessly cut (4)
A (indefinite article) + X (times) + ED

102 comments on “Guardian 29,396 – Imogen”

  1. Completed successfully but had no idea about the parsing of 5a and never heard of 10a, so I’m grateful for Andrew’s explanations.

  2. Strange mix of very easy and very difficult. Top ticks for the umpire, RISING DAMP, YAWL & SAWN OFF SHOTGUN

    Wasn’t 100% convinced by 14a, 3d and 15d

    Cheers I&A

  4. Brain a bit gluey today. Could only think of moray, but went Oh yes conger once I’d cheated and looked up eels, and much the same for congeries, recognition but no recall. Didn’t get the leaf-eating thing about browser either. Dropping the weighted line over the side to gauge depth was a cushy number, hence swinging the lead. That’s what I was told anyway, can’t remember when or by whom. Hey ho, good puzzle, thx Im and Andrew.

  5. Didn’t finish. Several clues were beyond me. I’ve not heard of “swinging the lead”. I haven’t looked through your blog yet Andrew, but will at my leisure.

    What I did manage I enjoyed, and as an added bonus I now know that Hale is close to Manchester. 😉

  6. Thanks both.
    I came up with congeriem for 10a which seems to fit and my very brief google suggested is singular form of congeries (so if anything a better fit). Clearly 8d corrected it but it feel a little unfair for what was an unknown word to me. Hopefully someone can correct me.

  7. Thanks Imogen and Andrew
    A sticky start, but speeded up after a few went in, followed by a slow finish in the SE.
    I knew CONGERIES from Stephen Donaldson terrific fantasy “Mordant’s Need“.
    Friends used to live in Hale, so that should have come more easily!

  8. It’s been a long time since I was in grade bubs, or even had children that age, so I got held up a bit by the nursery rhyme. I figured it had to start with ONE from the crossers, but the rest took ages. Then I somehow convinced myself that it was ONE MAN CAME TO MOW, and bunged that in without double-checking. Got there eventually.

    Thanks to Andrew and Imogen.

  9. Hmmm… as others have commented, a mixed bag.

    Thought WEEDY was neat but an iffy surface that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    Weapo was uncharacteristically weak for this setter.

    I don’t understand the explanation of NOT LIFT A FINGER in the blog. If the umpire doesn’t lift his finger, surely he’s doing nothing to support the bowler?

    Had to look up CONGERIES & HALE, but otherwise, all good fun.

  10. NOT LIFT A FINGER a bit strange – it’s a literal description of a phrase referring to being lazily or wilfully idle, but there’s no definition other than that not-at-all cryptic one, except maybe ‘do nothing’ hidden in the middle. (By the way Andrew, your blog isn’t quite right – not to lift a finger is not to support the bowler.) Edit – as noted by William@9.
    Like others, never heard of CONGERIES. Needed to come here to parse ODE TO JOY, and also realised that I’d mis-parsed RISING DAMP, having assumed that ‘rising’ could in some convoluted metaphorical way mean ‘implied’.
    I agree with Bodycheetah@2 about the unevenness of difficulty.
    Thanks Andrew and Imogen.

  11. Glad I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of Congeries. I think Andrew’s blog has all the intended parsings yet I remain a little unconvinced. I liked Not lift a finger – but it needs tweaking. But I enjoyed the crossword immensely and clues were answered without too much brain ache so I am happy

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  12. Another who enjoyed most but not all and who thought the umpire clue was misleading as not raising a finger supports the person batting not the bowler.

  14. Found the NE corner a real struggle – then when finally twigged wondered why I had taken so long. Andrew thanks for blog but I found 11ac more amusing then weak. I am a bit baffled as to why you have underlined all the clue for 5ac as a definition. Surely the definition is just “a piece of software”? But as I am a technophobe maybe I am missing something – I often do. Thought this was a brilliant and entertaining crossword. Thank you Imogen.

  15. My experience similar to others above I suspect, raced through much of this and then chewed long and hard over the final few, which for me were CONGERIES and BROWSER. NHO of the former, and couldn’t parse the latter, which I now like very much on seeing Andrew’s explanation. A DEUX was clever, as one seldom sees the plural of adieu. SWINGING THE LEAD was my favourite, and I quite liked SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN too, although I can see why it would not be to everyone’s taste. I didn’t find NOT LIFT A FINGER misleading – on first reading I took ‘do nothing to support bowler’ to mean ‘does not support bowler’ – but it is an odd clue when you think about it. Many thanks Andrew and Imogen.

  16. SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN
    I was looking up weapo and it looks like it’s not a real word.
    A SAWN-OFF weapo-n (SHOTGUN being an example). And one that is used by criminals
    a lot.
    Agree with the blog that it’s a weak cryptic def unless we are missing something.

    TerriBlislow@14
    5A BROWSER
    Andrew has underlined two separate defs. The first one ends at the ‘one’.
    By saying ‘…and another’, the blogger has indicated it as a DD.

  17. Thanks KVA @16 for clarifying the blog on 5a. It does not look like that to me but I absolutely take the point about it being a DD. (My infinitely better half pointed out to me that, also, a reading type of “browser” needs the leaves of a book, etc, to sustain the habit!)

  19. BROWSER is a type of feeder distinguished from “grazer”, which eats off the ground, grass, mostly.

  20. Terri @14 – pretty much the same as you, the NE held me up though all was clear when I got there. Likewise 11a, perhaps not the strongest clue but it did bring a smile.

    Interesting to see the parsing of some of these, a number of which I got from the definition and crossers primarily. I’m certainly not dismissing the quibbles raised – NOT LIFT A FINGER being a case in point – but none of them served to mar my enjoyment.

  21. SAWN OFF SHOTGUN was easy but fun – and this puzzle needed one like that to provide some crossers for the much harder stuff. I vaguely knew CONGERIES was a word, but not what it meant until now. Failed to parse BANISTER and RENOWNED. My cricketing knowledge just about stretched to knowing that there were times when the umpire might lift or NOT LIFT A FINGER – it will be interesting to see what solvers across the pond make of that one – and of the rather local geography IN HALE.

    Tough but enjoyable, which is what I expect from Imogen: BROWSER took ages but was worth the wait, and WEEDY reminded me of the Molesworth character who is “uterly wet and a weed”.

    By the way, Andrew, the anagram fodder for 2d is “no women want me TO”.

  22. Tough, especially the NE corner. I gave up on 14ac, 5d.

    New for me: CONGERIES=collection; village of Hale in Greater Manchester; nursery rhyme ONE MAN WENT TO MOW; YAWL=boat; SWINGING THE LEAD = malingering.

    I could not parse 5ac, 15d.

    Thanks, both.

  23. I was another who found this easy-peasy in places, fiendishly-tricky in others.
    I also agree with Bodycheetah@2 regarding 14a, 3d & 15d.
    I’ve never played cricket so the subtlety of that one passed me by and I just guessed it from the crossers.
    SWINGING THE LEAD and COME AGAIN were satisfying – and, like TerriBlislow@14 I was rather amused by the villain’s weapo. It reminded me of the joke about Haikus:
    Writing a poem,
    In seventeen syllables,
    Is very diffic.
    Thanks Andrew for the blog – and Imogen for the classy entertainment

  24. Chewy, particularly the NE corner, too, but wrote in SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN. I know nothing about cricket, so NOT LIFT A FINGER was a bung and shrug, couldn’t parse RENOWNED, but it’s one of my last ones in, and I know I’m not great at parsing the last few.

    We chatted about SWINGING THE LEAD a few weeks back, and it’s an easy enough job to give to children. My daughter got given it to do at about 8.

    Thank you to Andrew and Imogen

  25. Don’t want to sound impertinent, but I wonder if Weapon of Shogun? might have been more satisfactory?

  26. As Andrew implied and Bodycheetah @2 made explicit, a curious mixture of write-ins and headscratchers, but none the worse for that.

    I didn’t understand the cricketing reference but NLAF flew in from ‘do nothing’ and a few crossers. CONGERIES was new to me but easy to piece together. I would describe ONE MAN WENT… as a cumulative song rather than a nursery rhyme, as I don’t think it is ever recited rather than sung, but that didn’t hold me up. I failed to parse ODE TO JOY as I interpreted ‘Eddie’ as ED (wouldn’t Edward have been more natural?) and couldn’t rationalise the T. D’oh!

    I lived in Hale once upon a time, so that one gave me no trouble.

    I particularly liked AMNESIAC, A DEUX, RISING DAMP and ASPIRATE.

    Thanks to S&B

  27. William @25: Clever, but it is more usual to saw off the end of the barrel rather than the middle of the shotgun 🙂

  28. William @25: like your thinking but the end has to be cut off hence the SAWN OFF. Armed blaggers notoriously used them to devastating effect when I was a young cop in the 80s, because they were easy to conceal. They were referred to as ‘nostrils’ by both blaggers and the Flying Squad alike because of their appearance when shoved in your face.

  29. Not much to add to the above. Do wonder if the reason for multiple uses of “support” commented on by Andrew, is a reaction by Imogen to the groans on here about it always being used to signify “BRA”? I do hope so…
    My favourite was SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN. Didn’t know CONGERIES but I solved it and think it was fairly clued. Thanks so much I and A.
    PS Wot, no earworms? 😎

  30. Pauline @29 I did think about linking Radiohead’s entire AMNESIAC album but I’m not sure you’d call it an ear-worm 🙂

    We’ve had One man went to mow which is now stuck in my brain!

  31. I thought this was going to be a write-in, but half way through I began to slow down. The NE took me longer than rest of the puzzle put together. I wasn’t too keen on 14A as I thought the “In” was “unhelpful”. Favourites include CONGERIES (a word I haven’t seen in years), RISING DAMP (something I have in my mid Victorian house, though I suspect people often over react and end up paying out thousands they would have been better spending on something else), and PACIFY. With thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  32. Had the same idea Bodycheetah but just listening to ‘Knives Out’ made me think better of it🤣

  33. I liked RISING DAMP, when I got it, but I was misdirected by in-house (hyphenated), as in the sense of
    ”within an organization or group: an in-house job’. (Collins). Did no-one else fall into that rabbit hole?

  34. This went in quite smoothly until I struggled to complete the NE corner. CONGERIES was one of those “has to be that from the clueing, but never come across it before, so let’s look it up”, followed by hopefully bunging in BROWSER without much of a clue – so to speak – of its parsing. BANISTER, ODE TO JOY and loi RENOWNED all required Andrew’s explanations for their right to occupy the grid. Lots of JOY along the way, as ever with Imogen, however..

  36. Thanks for the blog, bit of a Spock puzzle really. Giraffes are the typical BROWSERs and eat a lot of leaves. SWINGING THE LEAD always sounds like a hard job to me. TYRANNICAL was neat and RISING DAMP was brilliant.
    MARTIANS earned a severe Paddington stare.

  37. [Meant to add, a propos yesterday, that I heard on the beeb that baseballers of colour are being officially recognised, Yogi Berra getting special mention]

  38. [ AlanC @28 apparently it was easy to tell if the robbers were KPR fans because they would saw off the wrong end . ]

  39. gladys @35: Thanks for the link. A great version, if a trifle slow. I’m pleased you didn’t give us Sting’s rendition….

  41. Finished this, after struggling… definitions for “malingering” and “lost for words”, also the song/rhyme were new to me.
    Held up in NE corner till I remembered “conger” for “eel”…
    Like Simonc@18, don’t understand what the “in” is doing in 14a, nor in 6d.
    Don’t know what a “weapo” is…
    Liked “A deux” now that I understood it. Also “Inhale”
    Thank you to Imogen and Andrew

  42. Glad to have finished but didn’t really enjoy it. Rising damp was very clever and l liked swinging the lead but 5 across is not to my liking. Could go on about some others that had me shaking my head holding a faint sneer, but won’t. Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  43. Like so many, I got stuck in the NE, (was it BROWSER? but why?) and getting RENOWNED with a kNOWN in the clue was somehow disappointing.
    I wonder if cricket buffs were more likely to be misled by 21A than were those who,like me, have little more than a nodding acquainatnace with the game. I liked it, anyway! And ‘weapo’ (I too had Gervase’s thought en route). In fact I liked all the long ones. Congeries is a weird word, looks like a plural but is singular. Nice puzzle, helpful blog. Thanks to all.

  44. Struggled at first but then it all came together nicely.

    I liked the surface for YIELDED, the OMWTM and AMNESIAC anagrams, and the wordplays for WEEDY, BANISTER, ODE TO JOY, and RISING DAMP. I got A DEUX by thinking the second farewell was an X at the bottom of a letter; not exactly right but it satisfied me temporarily until I saw the correct interpretation in the blog.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  45. I greatly enjoyed the south west … but not most of the north east. A strange puzzle with some strained wordplay, for example TYRANNICAL and RENOWNED. And I don’t accept OMWTM as a nursery rhyme.

  46. I am unconvinced by the parsing of 12D, in particular YR ANNAL for “your record” seems like a stretch. However, the answer was inevitable from the definition and crossers.

    I am in the camp of smiling at 11A, and also in the rather crowded room of those who wrestled a while with the NE corner despite quickly getting all the down clues. Needed Andrew’s parsing for 5A.

    Thank you Andrew and Imogen.

  48. I expected a lot of tough clues and wasn’t disappointed. Some easier ones, too. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

    I still can’t see what ‘on’ is doing in 14ac, RENOWNED. Can anyone enlighten me?

  51. muffin@7 – Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant – that’s the trilogy you had to read with a dictionary at hand, isn’t it?
    Like many others, I found the NE very difficult. For a long time, I only had the SHOTGUN and ODE TO JOY there. RENOWNED, with “well-known” as part of the clues, annoyed me (and, I see, ludosmoll@43). Too close. A curate’s egg, then – other parts of the crossie were excellent. Thanks, Imogen and Andrew.

  52. Sorry if someone’s already said this and I’ve missed it, but aside from cricket ‘not to lift a finger’ is to do nothing (‘my husband didn’ t lift a finger to help with….) so if the umpire does nothing to support the bowler he does not lift a finger to support him or her.
    Thanks Imogen and thanks Andrew for the blog which helped me with the parsing of several, including 15d were I got fixated on ‘as’ being arsenic and then couldn’t see how ‘pirate’ fitted with ‘mad doctor’. Ah, well.

  53. Surprisingly swift solve, with the long clues all on the very easy side.. nho of 10a but was obvious from the wordplay.

    I quite liked the imagery evoked by LAWLESS!

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  54. Gladys @35 👍 on the “support” usage and thank you for the link, just lovely.

    Imogen, assuming it was deliberate thank you and 👍 also.

    [Bc @ 30. I do love that album so much, and you’ve managed to get the other earworm out of my brain, so thank you too 😎]

  55. Well I had to have a good laugh at SAWN OFF SHOTGUN, whatever purists may gripe over it. Only in the Grauniad could a setter get away with a clue like this, methinks – but that’s what the Grauniad‘s for!

    I had difficulty parsing ASPIRATE because I couldn’t see how ‘doctor’s’ fits into the clue – I didn’t think the word is particularly ‘medical’ but … ah well! Reminds me of the old joke:
    Q: If old Mrs ‘Awkins ‘as an ‘eadache, what does she need?
    A: A few aspirates.

    Everything else is fine, though I struggled for a long time with A DEUX – went through every 4-letter English word ending in X that I could think of, before I realised it was French…

    Loved RISING DAMP – a super reverse clue, made me think of the TV sitcom and the incomparable and much-missed Leonard Rossiter. Also ticks for STEM, NOT LIFT A FINGER (did our transatlantic friends have trouble with this?), COME AGAIN, AXED, ODE TO JOY, SWINGING THE LEAD … and others.

    Thanks to Imogen – one of his best, I think – and Andrew

  56. Re NOT LIFT A FINGER – I don’t see a problem: the entire clue can easily be read as a cryptic definition (with a bit of a twist).

  57. I liked a lot of this, but like others raised an eyebrow at the “in” and “on” in RENOWNED.

    Like Gervase@26, got ODE TO JOY. but couldn’t figure out the T. Which leads me to this question, which I hope doesn’t sound like sour grapes. We know that synonymy and substitutability are not always transitive, so if A=B and B=C we don’t always have A=C. In this clue, both Eddie and Ted are familiar forms of Edward, but does that mean they are equivalent? Just asking.

  59. ASPIRATE
    Found this online (National Cancer Institute):
    aspirate
    Aspirate (pronounced AS-pih-rit) refers to fluid, tissue, or other substance that is withdrawn from a body cavity, cyst, or tumor. Aspirate (pronounced AS-pih-rayt) refers to the act of withdrawing the fluid, tissue, or other substance through a needle.

    The Phantom Stranger@41
    Like Simonc@18, don’t understand what the “in” is doing in 14a, nor in 6d.
    This is one style of clueing. In ‘wordplay’ (there is) ‘def’. In ‘def’ (there is) ‘wordplay’. Someone will explain this in better English.
    SWAN-OFF SHOTGUN
    Don’t know what a “weapo” is…
    I don’t think it’s a real word. Just ‘weapon’ sawn off/weapon’s end removed.

    RENOWNED
    Benchillian@48 and pdm@50
    Tried to justify the ‘on’ …
    1. DEN, WONER on/by the side <
    Or
    2. The 'on back' means 'placed/put on back/reversed'.
    I am not sure either explanation is satisfactory.

  60. Sourdough@52. So glad you fessed up about arsenic and the mad doctor in ASPIRATE. I don’t feel so crazy after all.
    I was relieved when the scales fell from my eyes.

  61. [TassieTim @51
    I’ve read the Thomas Covenant books (actually I was going to say that there were two trilogies, but I’ve just checked and there are four more I haven’t seen!), but I much preferred the Mordant’s Need pair (The mirror of her dreams and A man rides through).]

  62. [muffin@61: I gave up after the first trilogy – I tried book 4 but thought the quality was nosediving. A bit like the Dune books… Maybe I should try Mordant]

  63. Hard, and needed to come here for some parsings. Knew CONGERIES as a lovely oddity found while dictionary browsing. (Should get out more).

    RISING DAMP very clever; ASPIRATE made fair by the precise definition. TYRANNICAL totally unparsable by humble folks like us.

    Thanks to I&A.

  65. I can see I’m not alone in having almost all done except the NE. Didn’t get 5, 6, 7 or 8dn or 5ac last night, had to commune with the check button this morning.

    11ac gave me brief pause, because I’ve always heard the weapo called a “sawed-off” shotgun. Ungrammatical, I now realize, but that’s the only way I’ve heard it.

    ginf@37 The beeb story may have mentioned Yogi Berra in some context, but he wasn’t a player of color. The Negro League co-existed with the major leagues for some decades and included some powerful players, but finally stopped existing because the white leagues took on so many of its players, Jackie Robinson being famously the first, that the Negro League lost its audience. The League was not recompensed.

    Thanks, Imogen and Andrew.

  67. 10a CONGERIES is another Latin singular, like biceps, species, and sapiens. So you can’t assume it’s plural and take the “s” off, as some people are wont to do.
    ‘Etymology … A borrowing from Latin … < Latin congeriēs heap, pile, collected mass, < congerĕre to carry together: see congest v.'

  69. As others, I needed a fair bit of help with the parsing.
    Never heard of congeries. (The) Congeries sounds to me more like a collection of footballer villages near to Manchester.
    Enjoyed BANISTER, but having studied the word looking for the parsing, I cannot but think of regurgitating Greek wine.

  70. William@25, I initially shared the reservations others have offered to your clue, but I see it’s much cleverer than I thought. Nice one.

  72. A very enjoyable puzzle which I managed to complete, but found some of the parsings a bit tricky. Thanks Andrew for explaining BROWSERS and ASPIRATE, both great clues. Favourite was NOT LIFT A FINGER. Also liked SAWN-OFF etc, RISING DAMP and ADIEUX.
    CONGERIES was new, but gettable.
    In OMWTM, the anagram is of ‘no women want me to’ – just the small omission of ‘to’ in the blog. Still a lovely surface. And whether it’s a nursery rhyme or a song, most nursery rhymes are also sung and if songs like this are regularly sung to entertain small children, then I’m sure they can enter the canon.
    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  75. RISING DAMP
    Athanase@74
    Cryptically RISING DAMP=PMAD=P+MAD (quietly+crazy-implied)
    In other words, Quietly crazy could be clued as RISING DAMP.

  76. [FrankieG @68, I was and I thank you. Can’t wait to try filling it in. You are a 🌟]

  77. I do the Cryptic daily and greatly appreciate the blog explaining parsing etc as well as the comments – so thanks one and all, and Imogen and Andrew today. Minor query, with apologies if in scrolling comments today on my phone I’ve missed seeing this being said already… in 2d shouldn’t the anagram include ‘to’ as well as ‘no women want me’?

  78. Agree with Cheetah. One man went to mow isn’t really a nursery rhyme. Although according to Wikipedia it is. We used to sing it in the car on long journeys. Before cars had radios.

  80. So far no-one has answered the honest question I brought up at me@57. All I’m asking in effect is whether saying Eddie and Ted are interchangeable because they are both forms of Edward is the same as saying cats and dogs are interchangeable because they are both pets. I know Eddies who do not respond kindly to being called Ted. It would be good to get an understanding here, because this is not the first time this question has arisen. Thanks.

  81. I think Eddie and Ted are both familiar versions of Edward , it does not mean every Eddie is a Ted .Perhaps a better analogy would be pooch and mutt are familiar terms for dog , pooch=mutt would be fine in a clue.
    Qutie right Edith@77 .

  82. Thanks for that example Roz. I think what separates the acceptable from the unacceptable is that if the two terms are synonyms of each other (like mutt and pooch) then OK, if they are both hyponyms of a common parent and not synonyms of each other then not OK. I think we agree that Eddie and Ted are not synonyms.

  83. Haven’t totted up the votes on OMWTM, but an interesting little cultural controversy. The child ginf had a very large Mother Goose, sort of quarto-and-a-half size and very thick, very comprehensive, hundreds of pages. With little ink sketches, like Dr Foster in his puddle, the Spratts at their table, and so on. Young ginf read it from cover to cover, many many times. And I do not remember OMWTM. So I vote no, fwiw.

  84. I would say definitely not a traditional nursery rhyme , more a counting song like Ten Green Bottles. It can of course be sung by groups of young children , easy to remember and a simple structure.
    I suspect there is no general agreement on what constitutes a nursery rhyme or which songs are in the set .

  85. Late to the party here. Wanted to mention that I’ve never seen “y’all” spelled Y’AWL. (The clue works fine as a soundalike, of course, which is what it is; I’m just quibbling with the blog.) It’s a common word in many southern US dialects. Many of the rest of us (e.g., me) have adopted it because it’s too useful a word to ignore, but it’s not actually a part of the dialect I grew up with (Inland North, as the linguists refer to it).

  86. I’m not seeing the problem with Eddie and Ted. Eddie, Ed, Ted, Teddy, Ned, Neddy etc. are surely all pet names for Edaward?

  88. I took 24A as a joke on “us” English and our pronunciation of French: we’d mangle “adieux” (two farewells) as “A DEUX”, hence the definition “not one”.

  89. Hi muffin@86. I get that, but then red, blue, green, yellow, pink etc. are all colours, but they’re not the same as each other. The question is, when/how do you draw the line?

  90. Am I the only one to think that NOT LIFT A FINGER is not a phrase? Don’t we expect the answers to be words or recognised phrases?

    If you look this up you get suggestions such as “He did not lift a finger”, but the words NOT LIFT A FINGER don’t seem to appear by themselves

  91. Gervase @27 & AlanC @28; Many thanks. I was aiming for sawn off SHO(t) + GUN

    I’ll get my coat….

  92. mrpenney@85 I took “heard” to be a homophone indicator, so YAWL sounds like you (plural) in America, Y’ALL

  93. Thanks Imogen and Andrew

    DE @ 90: I know that can be contentious to cite dictionaries, but Chambers has “not lift a finger” as an entry on its own.

  94. My wife, who trained childcarers, doesn’t think of OMWTM as a nursery rhyme, but rather as a campfire song for Scouts and Guides etc.

  97. I think this blog demonstrates the relationship between numbers of posts and controversy. Often the ones which are less critically received attract fewer posts. Inverse proportion.
    One of our resident statisticians may prove me wrong, but I feel sorry for the setters with fewer numbers of posts, as they are often the best ones.

  100. Superb
    Imogen has delighted – with a sumptuous level of elegance, his usual unswerving accuracy and an extra bonus of some inventive clueing…
    Luvverly
    Probably my favourite Imogen to date – and no longer a compiler I assume, wrongly, to be dry!

    Many thanks both and all (haven’t had a moment to read blog/comments but will do. Had just solved this wonderful puzzle, saved until early this Sunday morning and had to express the joy it brought. And I’ve a saved Paul for later …. lucky me!)

  101. Apologies if someone said this and I missed it: SAWN-OFF is also SAW N OFF, which I think makes the clue stronger,

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