Guardian 27,720 – Imogen

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A few easier clues got me started, but generally I found this pretty hard. As one expects from Imogen, it’s all clearly and fairly clued in retrospect, though I have a couple of criticisms, noted below. Thanks to Imogen.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. POPULIST Trump, perhaps, to slip up badly (8)
(TO SLIP UP)* – the president continues to prove useful to setters…
5. KNEADS Exerts heavy pressure on joint — shortly notices (6)
KNE[E] (joint) + ADS (notices)
9. YOSEMITE House in miniature around back of Hyde Park (8)
SEMI (semi-detached housed) in reverse of TOY, plus [Hyd]E
10. FINNAN Haddock, part of it with bread (6)
FIN (part of a fish) + NAN (bread)
12. HEAD OF STATE King‘s ambassador fine, say, following commotion (4,2,5)
HE (His Excellency) + ADO (commotion) + F[ine] + STATE (say)
15. PIECE Gun, one produced on stage … (5)
Double definition – a stage play can be called a piece
17. ANDROMEDA … an animal with no lines stars (9)
AN + DROMEDARY less RY (railway; lines). The Andromeda galaxy is relatively close to our own, at a mere 2.5 million light years away
18. TEA FOR TWO A number shared meal (3,3,3)
Double definition – famous song (“number”), originally from the musical No, No, Nanette. Not particularly exciting as a DD, I must say
19. FROND Foolish to eat a bit of radicchio leaf (5)
R[adicchio] in FOND (foolish)
20. A DOLL’S HOUSE Play, with this? (1,5,5)
Double definition – it’s a play by Ibsen, and a doll’s house can be played with
24. LIEBIG Chemist‘s position serious (6)
LIE (position) + BIG (serious). This German chemist came up in a Picaroon puzzle that I blogged last August
25. YADA YADA Forty-eight hours backchat that’s boring? (4,4)
Reverse of A DAY twice. American expression for tedious talk. Chambers only gives it in the 3672-hour form as “yada yada yada”
26. DUSTER Representative comes out of bin cleaner (6)
DUMPSTER less MP
27. DE-STRESS Relax, supplying energy for one in grief (2-6)
DISTRESS with E replacing I
Down
1. PSYCHOPATH Film course for one with a problem (10)
PSYCHO (film) + PATH (course). Rather weakened, I think, by the fact the name of the film is just a shortening of the full word
2. PASSAGEWAY Goodbye to the outside, going in to die in alley (10)
The “outside” of G[oodby]E in PASS AWAY (die)
3. LIMBO Waiting period as posh car collects bachelor (5)
B in LIMO
4. SATISFACTION One’s group of rebels relaxed at first in comfort (12)
SAT (relaxed) + I’S (one’s) + FACTION
6. NOISES OFF Sounds of foxtrot that are heard in the wings (6,3)
NOISES OF F[oxtrot]. Again, I don’t like the double use of “noises” in cryptic reading and definition
7. AUNT Family member is cow (not daughter) (4)
DAUNT less D
8. SUNK Suggesting Louis XIV collapsed? (4)
Louis XIV was known as Le Roi Soleil or SUN K[ing]
11. HARD TO PLEASE Fussy car rental (4,2,6)
HARD-TOP (car) + LEASE
13. REPOPULATE Get people back into perpetual strife? Nothing in it (10)
O in PERPETUAL*
14. HANDLEBARS From barn, as horse led out, they steer (10)
Anagram of BARN AS H[orse] LED
16. EVOCATIVE Judge’s last case bringing back memories (9)
[judg]E + VOCATIVE (grammatical case)
21. HEART Almost home, where this is? (5)
HEART[H], referring to the proverb “home is where the heart is”
22. SLID Succeeded with hat, lost it with feet? (4)
S[ucceeded] + LID (hat). If you slide you could perhaps be said to lose it with your feet
23. KEYS Man’s house and college spoken of (4)
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, is usually known as just Caius, pronounced “keys”. The House of Keys is part of the parliament of the Isle of Man. The intersection of this with LIEBIG in this rather isolated corner might cause a few problems, with three bits of “general knowledge” required

53 comments on “Guardian 27,720 – Imogen”

  4. Thanks both. I thought that “Noises Off” and “A Doll’s House” might lead to a theme of plays but apparently not.

    I would never have parsed 26a (DUSTER) in a month of Sundays – isn’t “dumpster” a US term?

  7. Thanks Imogen and Andrew

    I don’t usually enjoy Imogen’s puzzles, and this was no exception. I was going to make all the quibbles you have, Andrew; in addition, there isn’t any realistic wordplay to get A DOLL’S HOUSE if you haven’t heard of the play. “Produced on stage” is very loose for PIECE. “A bit of radicchio” for R in FROND is just silly.

    I did like HARD TO PLEASE and SLID.

  8. I found this difficult and was amazed that I almost completed it. I failed to solve LIEBIG and KEYS – I never would have gotten those GK ones in a million years.  I could not parse 6d, 9a or 10a – which I still do not understand. What is FINNAN? a haddock?

    Okay, just found it in wikipedia under haddock – smoked varieties include the Finnan haddie and the Arbroath smokie. That seems to be a very obscure bit of GK too!

    My favourites were PSYCHOPATH + SATISFACTION.

    Thanks B+S.

  9. Too tough for me, I’m afraid. Gave up with about half done. Favourite was HARD TO PLEASE.

    Thanks, Imogen and Andrew.

  10. Andrew, in the blog for 25a

    Chambers only gives it in the 36-hour form as “yada yada yada”

    I think you mean that this is the 72 hour form (3 days)

  11. Not to my taste I am afraid. Many of the double definitions were, for me, stretched too far on both sides e.g. Piece, A Doll’s House – ok it is a play and you can play with it but there are a million other things that is true of so this only made sense backwards. Ditto many of the other parsings – you had to know the answer in order to solve the clue which is not very satisfactory unless you are Benjamin Button. Hard to please comes to mind here.

    Along the way I just did not feel at ease with lots of bits of clues. To knead is not to exert heavy pressure – that pressure has to move. A massage is not the press torture! Andromeda defined as stars is weak – Andromeda is a galaxy made up of stars and much else (including, if cosmologists are to be believed) a substantial amount of dark matter and dark energy – rather more than the stars. Could a metre be defined as centimetres? Or more accurately, could a lake be defined as fish just because it contains them?  1dn as well as Andrew’s observation, the definition is again very weak. In 2dn why “to the outside”? Superfluous words here really confused me and it’s not like the surface was that great as a result. Satisfaction defined as comfort? hmm… In 13dn “into” really threw me as it surely suggests some sort of charade but it’s just a meaningless link word which accidentally throws the clue out. In 14dn we have to know to abbreviate horse when it is in the *middle* of the rest of the anagram fodder – I felt that was a bit off too as abbreviations like that usually appear separately.

    Sorry, that turned into much more of a rant than I anticipated (and I deleted a few other comments!) but I don’t think I’ve ever disliked solving so many clues.

    Noises Off, however, immediately takes me back to Michael Frayn’s play – still the funniest thing I have ever seen on stage (multiple times) and always gets a smile.

  12. I hadnt done an Imogen in a while and with his style being unlike Picaroon(yesterday) it wasnt until I got to the down clues that things started to fall into place.

    Recemtly read A Dolls House so no prob there-I loved FIN +NAN and HARD TOP LEASE and HE ADO F STATE.

    Imogen just constructs his surfaces in an individual way that can make them seem tough at first but they all work really well

    My bête noire was the SW- I finally twigged KEYS/CAIUS and half guessed DUSTER so thanks for the parse there.

    Thanks to Andrew and Imogen.

  14. As for others the SW was last, with du[mp]ster and keys biffs: the college, yes, but the Isle of Man parliament? Obscure, what! As per quenbarrow, it helped to have had Liebig recently, tho not hard if you’ve done school chem. Slow to get 1 and 3 down, tho the components are standards. Wondered about faction members having to be rebels. Forgot about the alphabet, so noises of F was unparsed, tho obvious. So a bit of curate’s egg, but enjoyable ntl.

    Thanks Andrew and Imogen.

  16. Thanks Imogen; only one clue solved on the first pass, so very tough.

    I gave up on KEYS as there were too many possibilities and I forgot the ‘Man’s keys’ although I think it has been used before. Thanks Andrew for the good explanatory blog; I couldn’t see the parsing of SATISFACTION.

  17. Thanks for the helpful blog.

    My dad went to Gonville & Caius college – so I should have got that (DNF), and along with the House of Keys a clue all but impossible for foreign visitors IMO. Agree with most of the other mildly negative criticisms, but I liked the puzzle overall.

  21. I owed my knowledge of FINNAN to Cole Porter and his ingenious ability to find rhymes for Daddy in every verse of ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ (my favourite recording of which is not the original by Mary Martin, nor yet the famous Marilyn Monroe version, but naughty Eartha Kitt’s):

    If I invite
    A boy some night
    To dine on my fine Finnan haddie,
    I just adore
    His asking for more,
    But my heart belongs to daddy.

    I think ‘KEYS’ as the IoM Parliament chamber comes up often enough in Crosswordland for that reference in 23ac to be acceptable (though possibly not when combined with the recherché pronunciation of the Cambridge college).

     

  22. Andrew @20: I’m sure you are all too well aware that being a mathematician doesn’t necessarily make one good at sums!

  23. I always expect a battle with Imogen but this one was more of a war – the SW corner being the last to fall

    I’m off for a lie down in a darkened room but I’ll stay long enough to say thank you to Imogen and Andrew – not one I’d have wanted to blog

  24. A very slow burner for me today. I too fell at the SW corner. Half parsed KEYS not knowing the college, and didn’t get LIEBIG or SLID. Thanks Andrew for the parsing of HEAD OF STATE

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  25. as a newcomer to this (I’ve only posted once before) I’d like to ask a general question about setters*:- do setters copywright their clues? or is there an unwritten code between “the Union of setters”? is there likely to be. or has there ever been any kind of standoff/fisticuffs if another setter uses the same clue in his/her own puzzle (i’d exclude anagrams in this)? I’m sure if I devised an absolutely brilliant clue for a word I’d be mighty hacked off if I saw it at a later date in someone else’s puzzle without at least credit…. or is it seen as high recognition/flattery?

    *Apologies if this has been asked before or the answer is well known

  26. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew. No surprises here, I generally found this very tough going, and a DNF for me in the SW. I failed on Liebig and slid, but at least I did manage to get Keys and duster. In the end pleased to have only missed out by two, because at halfway I have as on the verge of giving up. That said I did like hard to please and head of state. Thanks again to Imogen and Andrew.

  27. I have to agree with thezed that there were a lot of little issues with this puzzle, even more than posted.

    Talking of agreeing, Rog was right on the money. When at a restaurant with a large number of people I frequently get passed the bill and am asked to figure it out. My response is that mathematicians are trained to find a way to look at a problem so that the answer is obvious. Doesn’t work with bills (or most other things in daily life!)

  28. Some knots just got tighter the more I fumbled, others unravelled pleasingly. I never feel quite in my stride with Imogen. Agree about the weakness of 1 dn. Barely cryptic. Liked 11 dn best – short, crisp surface with a long, satisfying definition.Yada yada new to me. And much as I like smoked haddock, had never heard of finnan. (Except Steve Finnan, who was a very fine Fulham footballer!) Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  29. Hmm…pretty much what I expected with this setter – I begin to lose heart when those I solve look too dodgy or half-parsed.

    Beaten by the SW corner but disappointed in myself for missing SLID.  I’d never have parsed DUSTER if I’d looked at it all day but should have bif’d it anyway.

    thezed @11:  Fine rant, reasonably balanced, I thought, with many of my gripes well expressed.

    HARD TO PLEASE was fun, though, and I thought SUNK was nicely clued.

    PiesMcQ @25:  Welcome back.  Yes, I think it has been touched on before in divers guises.  Generally, as a setter for friends and family, I’m slightly chuffed to see one of mine reproduced in one form or another.  I wouldn’t have thought many setters would be over-precious about their ideas.

    Many thanks thanks, Andrew & Imogen, nice week, all.

  30. Thanks both,

    I enjoyed some of these immensely including keys, Finnan, handlebars and repopulate but I needed a cheat to get duster having tried washer first.

    AIUI, copyright would a) belong to the newspaper, b) exists in the words – you can’t copyright an idea.

  31. I enjoyed this puzzle.  Clues like 12 and 25 ac are my type of clue – easily workoutable from the wordplay.  I don’t like the DOLLS HOUSE type of clue, though they are perfectly fair, of course.

    The definition part of 22 ac is a bit vague isn’t it?

    Also failed with fond for foolish.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

  32. thezed @11: Andromeda is not only a galaxy; it is also one of the constellations listed by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy and remains one of the 88 modern constellations.  So I think “stars” is fair clueing there!

  33. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew. A big struggle for me. I knew the US dumpster, FINNAN from Cole Porter along with Rog, LIEBIG from a previous puzzle, and Caius-KEYS (but not the link to Isle of Man), but failed to parse a lot of other items already mentioned.

  35. So ‘Finnan Haddock’ is a dish and ‘Sea Port’ is harbour. And if FINNAN can be defined by HADDOCK, then SEA could be defined by PORT. Rubbish!

  36. I got 1ac off on the wrong foot with the Donald as  POTUS, got me there in the end, how I missed the anagram I don’t know!

  37. Came to this quite late on in the day, and like the very first comment on here, the SW corner was last in, particularly the far from obvious Liebig and Slid…

  38. To PiesMcQ (@25):  This also happens in the field of more general puzzles – chess problems, mathematical puzzles, and the like.  There is, at least in English, a very important distinction between **plagiarism** (taking somebody else’s work, perhaps making minor cosmetic alterations, and passing it off as one’s own) and **being anticipated** (publishing something in good faith believing it to be original, only to find that somebody else has got there first).  Here, we are surely talking merely about clues being anticipated, and (short of being able to access a complete computer database containing all words so far used in published crosswords and the clues given for them) all we can say is that this is bound to happen and that we can do nothing about it.  When I was an editor of chess problems, I used to tell promising novice composers that it was actually a good sign when their work started being anticipated (the untidy work of a beginner is unlikely to have been exactly anticipated, the polished setting produced by an expert chancing on the same idea may well have been).

    In other words, don’t steal, but don’t be too distressed if somebody turns out to have got there first.

  39. Poor foreign solver in Kenya, failed to get KNEADS, LIEBIG, DUSTER, SLID, KEYS & NOISES OFF. Well… what do you expect with lmogen? FOI 1a.

  41. Most enjoyable!  Many of the quibbles above seem unreasonable.  You can only put people into a place or organisation to populate it.  But DUSTER was a guess not fully parsed, and SLID defeated me, having given up on TITFER! S for Succeeded?  New to me.

  42. Phew! Extremely hard but after drawing blank on at least three passes I started to pick them off- POPULIST,TEA FOR TWO,PSYCOPATH and,best of all,HARD TO PLEASE -and I admit to thinking of the phrase prior to seeing the parsing. I didn’t parse DUSTER either but I couldn’t think of anything else.
    Just as well I could take my time.
    Thanks Imogen.

  44. It was a struggle but I got there in the end, having a last minute brainwave about keys/Caius. Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

  45. Belated thanks (I have been ‘out of office’ for most of today) to Andrew @6 for locating the other recent instance of the obscure, to me and to others, name LIEBIG. Which surely, topically, evokes one who notoriously Lie(s) Big(ly) – and look at the very first word in the first clue here, at 1 across.

    The helpful link back to the Puck precedent reminded me of a perception that I floated at the time. Parallel down-solutions there of TWEET and OAFISH, followed by STOVEPIPE (hat), the most vivid possible visual symbol of a president at the other extreme of the one who lies bigly – this seemed, along with other words in that puzzle, to reinforce the ghost-theme opposition of values.

    Or maybe this is all just coincidence. One thing seems certain: puzzles will continue, for now, to reference the LieBig man, though not as often as Cyclops does in Private Eye

  47. Just to round it off (I must be nearly the last), I had exactly the same experience as Chris in France@1! Those last four words in the SW stumped me too. I see some others had similar difficulties to mine there and elsewhere. Thanks to Imogen, Andrew and all contributors.

  48. My usual experience is to come to this blog 3 days after its posting, having just finished (or nearly finished) the puzzle, only to find everyone grumbling about its lack of challenge.

    So it’s very heartening that Mrs Beaver and I finished this one comfortably today and to hear the chorus of anguish!  Thank you, everyone, for making us feel clever, if only temporarily 🙂

  49. I enjoyed all of Imogen’s puzzles in 2018, but this one jarred a little in ways that have been aired already.

    This setter always includes four long answers in his constructions (sometimes all of 15 letters, although today it was two of 12 letters and two of 11).  Just for the fun of it I always try those first before attempting any other clues, and today I had to be content with HARD TO PLEASE and A DOLL’S HOUSE until the other two long ones yielded much later.

    I liked FINNAN, SUNK and HARD TO PLEASE most of all.  In the much-commented-upon SW corner I got LIEBIG, SLID and KEYS readily enough and needed all the crossers to get DUSTER.  The least satisfactory clue was for YADA YADA, which had to be that but is a phrase that seems to have precious little dictionary support.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  50. Not the last JinA@47 – and likewise I failed with the SW. I got LIEBIG when it was in the Puck puzzle but not this time. Imogen remains a setter whose wavelength seems to be different to mine, but not so for others – just as it should be.
    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew for some missing parsing as well as the SW.

  51. When I gave up and turned off the light last night I had only KNEADS, AUNT and SUNK.  This morning I had some more insight and access to the Check button for a few.  I did know LIEBIG (dimly remembered from Chemistry) and FINNAN (haddie), but KEYS defeated me.

    Thanks, Imogen and Andrew.

     

  52. Loved this, just difficult enough. Thanks Andrew and Imogen.
    I must add my support for Andromeda being a constellation, not a galaxy. ‘The Andromeda Galaxy’ is just more poetic than its proper name M32. As for FINNAN, that is the headword in Chambers, with ‘also finnan haddie’ as an afterthought, so entirely fair.

  53. Like so many above, defeated by GK in SW corner. Feeling grumpy now as first time I’ve had to give up completely.

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