Guardian 28,307 / Imogen

93 comments on “Guardian 28,307 / Imogen”

1. 1 across is a reference to Rydal water in the Lake District.

2. 1A is Rydal (Lady R backwards)Water.
   Favourites today were HOMO SAPIENS and BACKWATER.
   ROTIFER, NDEBELE and AMAIN were all new to me.
   I thought that you had to be dead to be a DOE unless you’re a deer, a female deer.
   The eggs at 2D scrambled my brain. I didn’t know that CAVIAR can have an E on the end, what ‘caviar to the general’ meant or that it’s a quote from Omelette, sorry Hamlet. In fact, putting this clue before me is probably a good example of caviar to the general.

   Thanks Imogen and Eileen

3. Many thanks, Andy and Penfold – I should have seen that: I’ve been there!

4. I always look forward to an Imogen puzzle, and this was no exception, though definitely on the hard side. AMAIN and NDEBELE were new to me, and I too failed to parse BACKWATER. Very enjoyable!

5. The bottom half went in reasonably quickly but the rest was chewy. Too many ticks to mention and same new words for me as Penfold@3. Thanks for your comprehensive parsing of CAVIARE Eileen and BACKWATER Andy@1. Imogen is really top drawer. Ta to both.

6. Should mention ABDOMEN though, it was SUPER DUPER.

7. [Meant to say that, of course, DINGY reminded me of Joe and Petunia in the old Public Information Film about the Coastguard Service.]

8. A very enjoyable puzzle, that kept me busy for longer than usual this morning.

   I particularly liked FAST FORWARD and EXPLAIN.

   Only one major quibble:  DIVER.  OK, I understand the footballer being a diver (or a diva) but is it not a bit far-fetched to equate diver with olympic medallist?  An olympic medallist could be any sort of sportsman or -woman.  Is there an olympic sportsman actually called Diver?

   Similarly, ROOKERY does not do for crowded place, in my book.

   I was led astray temporarily by wanting the dinghy to be d(h)owdy somehow …

   And AMAIN is an interesting word.  I suspect it’s a Norman import in its meaning ‘violently’.  I suspect that the other meaning is from a different source, Celtic??  Am wondering about Welsh maint, cyfaint.  May be totally wrong.

   Anyway, thanks to Imogen and to Eileen.

    

9. SUPER on its own is excellent

   And DIVER is not necessarily a medallist

   And you need a degree in Hamlet  for that-tis a long play but a classic.

   Otherwise entertaining and challenging.

   The rest is silence.

10. What a grind! Not in the right waveband this morning, never mind wavelength. I liked HOMO SAPIENS, though (the clue, not the species) and I hadn’t thought of ROTIFERs since A-Level.

    Thanks to Eileen for the many parsings which had eluded me and to Imogen for the challenge, even if it was ‘caviar to the general’ in my case.

11. Anyone else try to make NYERERE work?

12. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

    Anna @ 8: I may be pushing things re a rookery being a crowded place, but I saw it as a pun that rooks and crows are similar, so it’s a crow-ded place.

13. As for Rookery being a crowded place.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Giles,_London

14. For 11 across I originally had: (d)emu(r)

15. sky soccer a.m. do a cute little segment every Saturday on the footballing ‘dive of the week’ and includes a very amusing diving pool scene.

16. I had the same three unknowns as Penfold @2 but nice to be able to get them all from the clueing which is lovely throughout.  Thanks Andy and Penfold for parsing BACKWATER; I was soooo close in that I realised the device and mentally put R and then YDAL without realising the word that was resulting.  Doh!  (or DOE!).  I don’t know my Hamlet as well as I should so CAVIARE was a bung and shrug.

    I agree with Eileen on all the anagrams she enjoyed and wouLd add STRIDENCY for its construction, the neat device for BAD OMEN and the nice definition for BEHAVED.  Both LAMPOON and SPRINGY made me laugh.  As did your egg-inspired madness @2 Penfold.  Your brain appears to be not only scrambled but also, it would seem, addled, coddled, fried, boiled, poached….  hopefully not Hundred Year Old.

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

17. The DoE of 6d could once also have included (in the UK) the Department of Employment.  But UK governments like fiddling with names, and there are currently no ministries with the initials DoE.  Hence the “initial” indicator also has to refer to bygone days (though it may also just be accidental – it’s hard, and largely pointless, to keep up with official names).

18. Auriga @ 11. Yes. I didn’t know NDEBELE, and NYERERE was all that jumped out from the crossers with that clue. I even speculated that Julius might have had relatives who had been in power. Of course not…

19. Much slow fun this morning with some very clear clues and good surfaces – DNKs were ROTIFER, AMAIN and MOA.

    Just going to find my breakfast caviar and coffee to recover…

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen!

20. A lot  to reply to!

    Anna @8 – I wasn’t familiar with that definition of ROOKERY but Collins has ‘an overcrowded slum’ and Chambers ‘a crowded cluster of slum tenements’. Thanks for your link, Andy, which I haven’t had time to read yet. I’m still researching AMAIN! I’ll be back on that.

21. A tough challenge today but very enjoyable.  I knew AMAIN from the memorable lines from Horatius when the hero extracts his sword from his dead foe’s head: On Astur’s throat Horatius / Right firmly pressed his heel, / And thrice and four times tugged amain / Ere he wrenched out the steel.  

    Many thanks Imogen and Eileen.

22. Anna @8 (and Andy @13): That’s a helpful link from Andy and is certainly the basis on which I parsed ROOKERY which I understood to be a reasonably common term in the nineteenth century for a slum or other area of overcrowded living – often with its dark and criminal side and the word ‘rook’ itself became associated with thievery and criminality.

    Re AMAIN, I didn’t connect it with the carol as highlighted by Eileen but do now recall singing the line and assuming the word was related to being on the sea: a main – so delighted to learn its proper meaning. Your language insights tend to be far more informed than mine but I’d have gone with a French etymology too.  One online source suggests the Old English maegen (strength, power).

    And I loved your alternative D(h)owdy: if only!

23. Eileen @20: I wonder if something has happened to the W key on your keyboard?  Or did you inherit one of those bequeathed to his successor by Bill Clinton?

24. Ha!  It’s been corrected in the three minutes it took me to respond!  Just enough time to boil an egg.

25. Not a doddle. Half dozen in the SE first, then the rest of the bottom, then the top with 3ffort. Caviare is classic Imogen, literate and scholarly and above my head. Backwater…similar? (any connexion to the Lake poets?) More mundanely, duper and diver got grins. Love the tithe barn at Bradford on Avon [sister’s mate lived there].. magnificent building. Good workout, thanks I and E.

26. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

    I found this very difficult and needed a lot of electronic help and checks. Several not parsed – I didn’t spot Rydal, though I know it well, I didn’t know the Hamlet quote, and I didn’t see the ABDOMEN. I hadn’t heard of NDEBELE or AMAIN.

    Peter Toner – my FOI was EMU as well, but it would have to be “Endlessly complain”.

    An odd coincidence: I took some time to parse STRIDENTLY as I was fixated with RI as the state, so it was quite a surprise when I solved 13d.

27. Back to AMAIN: MAIN can mean force or power and I’ve always assumed it came from the French for hand and associated it with the hendiadys ‘with might and main’. The initial A in MAIN is analogous with ‘afoot’ and, I suppose, your ‘astray’, Anna. 😉

    I should have remembered the Horatius poem, Lord Jim. I remember being stirred by ‘And e’en the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer’, when we read it in primary school.

28. Gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever completed a crossword with so many unparsed solutions, starting with BACKWATER. Then BAD OMEN, then CAVIARE and so it went on. Had to look NDEBELE up as LOI. A stiff challenge, with much pausing for confirmation along the way this morning…

29. PostMark @24 – I nearly made it in time! Thanks for the link, though.

30. I found this relatively accessible for an Imogen. But, yes, lots of stuff went into the grid on def alone and had to rely on Eileen for some much-needed parsing.

    Surely the DoE became DEFRA years ago, though?

31. Not a particularly enjoyable puzzle for me, though I did manage to complete it.

    I think that ‘Bolivar’ should have an indication that it is a ‘definition by example’, or, at least,  a question mark. I briefly had ‘Joy’ instead of ‘Amy’ at 25d.

32. Simon S, Andy, Eileen

    Thanks for the stuff on rookery.  Good, happy now.

33. Still not sure about AMAIN, though you (collectively) seem to be agreeing with me that there are two different words here from two different sources.  I think we all agree on the Norman one.  You seem to be saying the other source is Anglo-Saxon.  (I think we’re supposed to call it Old English now??).  That may well be correct, sounds fine to me.  I never studied much AS and perhaps I should take it up again, problem is that I’ve got to do Russian first, much behind schedule thanks to Covid, and then Danish, just because of the phonology of the language.

    Anyway, I’m not at all happy with the a- part of the amain in our puzzle being dismissed as ‘analogous’ to the a- in astray and afoot. Though it seems Ok in the other amain, being much older and AS.  Neither are words native to Britain, then 🙂

34. It’s not only Imogen who uses it this way, but how on earth does open mean insertion?  Just because you open something up, doesn’t mean you stick yourself in it!

    While griping, I also thought DIVER was a horrible clue.  Nowadays it seems so many footballers fake being fouled that “reviled” just seems inappropriate – in addition to the question of why a medallist, as already asked by Anna and Copmus.

35. 28ac. I took “a way to travel” as simply STRIDE

36. AMAIN in both the senses “exceedingly” and “violently” is “with great force/strength” from an Old English word meaning strength or force, ultimately related to the verb “may” = to be able to, to have the power to, and the verb and noun “might”. “Main” then comes to be an adjective meaning chief or principal, and then again a noun meaning the principal extent of land, continent (the Spanish Main = coastal South America) or of water, the ocean. None of has anything to do with the French “main”= hand, from Latin manus, from a different Indo-European root.

    “Amain” calls to my mind this Thomas Weelkes madrigal:

    As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending,
    she spied a maiden Queen the same ascending,
    Attended on by all the shepherds’ swain,
    to whom Diana’s darlings came running down amain,
    First two by two, then three by three together,
    Leaving their goddess all alone hasted thither;
    And mingling with the shepherds of her train,
    with mirthful tunes her presence entertain.
    Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana,
    Long live fair Oriana!

    The music full of examples of what are called madrigalisms, where the music literally imitates the text: down the scale on “descending” and up again on “ascending”, a duo singing “two by two”, a trio “three by three” and all at once on “together”, etc. Handel revived the practice in “Ev’ry valley” in Messiah.

37. As usual, Imogen is really above my pay grade. My computer and I eventually solved it, and I thought BAD OMEN was SUPER DUPER. I liked HOMO SAPIENS also.

    Thanks Eileen and Andy for sorting out the Hamlet and the Lake District. Thanks also to Imogen for straining my brain and my computer’s CPU.

38. Didn’t particularly enjoy this one and wasn’t impressed by several clues where definitions were wooly.

    I thought 16A “No end of fruit in pub for Simon.” doesn’t work precisely and should have been “No end to fruit in pub for Simon.”

    I didn’t like 6D. I thought the litigant was always referred to as JOHN or JANE DOE though I suppose a law suite might be cited as “Doe v Trump” for example.

    1D isn’t an accurate definition and 9A might not be a medallist. 10A TITHE BARN I got from the 10% but the clue doesn’t gel for me.

    1A I guessed and as with others, I couldn’t parse it.  Now I see it’s a clever clue though, being well acquainted with the place, I wouldn’t call it an isolated place, unless there’s some literary allusion in the description I’m missing. There are other, more apt descriptions of Rydal Water.

    It’s a pity all clues didn’t match the precision and conciseness of my favourite, 28A STRIDENCY.

39. Like Dr. WhatsOn, I have trouble recognising open(ing) as an insertion indicator: PLACATE was my last in. As for LAMPOON – very fiddly indeed. Re 1a: I got the first two crossers, guessed BACKsomething, and a good hard stare at the clue produced Rydal.
    I liked TITHE BARN and all the anagrams, especially HOMO SAPIENS. Knew the Victorian slum definition of ROOKERY.
    People on the Guardian thread are talking about an “unfortunate” connection between the answers PLACATE, BEHAVED and LAMPOON. Can anyone explain, as I can’t see it?

40. (Or is it nothing more sinister than the repeated use of “opening?)

41. Anne@8 I, too, thought of DOWDY and pressed reveal without checking for the Y – a lesson there for me.

    [I used to think  the reveal button would be a useful device for entering the answer, once I had got it, to help with getting a personal best time for finishing a crossword. I used to try with Janus or Altair (relatively easy crossword setters – I forget with which one I achieved my PB) in the good old pencil and paper days writing in the answer whilst reading the next clue to save time, but I have never come near a PB with the reveal button]

     

    I didn’t like the “From” in the 25d clue; typical of Imogen to use superfluous words for the surface’s sake.

     

    Thanks Eileen and Imogen.

42. Excellent puzzle from Imogen.
    Like Peter Toner@14 I originally put dEMUr in for 11ac.
    Wiktionary (an excellent resource for etymologies of words from many languages) suggests AMAIN is from a-main, with the initial letter as in afoot or astride, and the rest:

    From Middle English mayn, main, maine, mæine, mæ?en, from Old English mæ?en (“strength”),[2] from Proto-Germanic *magin? (“strength, power, might”), *maginaz (“strong”), from Proto-Indo-European *meg?- (“be able”). The word is cognate with Old High German magen, megin, Old Norse magn, megn, megin, Old Saxon megin.

43. The question marks in the piece taken from Wiktionary should be yogh – the Old English letter representing a guttural ‘ch’

44. Gervase @ 42

    Wiktionary has absolutely no credibility at all.  As I understand, anybody can write anything on it.

45. Tough solve for me today, largely because of woolly and fiddly answers identified by others above, notably BACKWATER, DIVER and LAMPOON.  Not as enjoyable as this setter’s puzzles usually are.  Nevertheless, thanks to Imogen for the challenge and Eileen for elucidation.

46. Pentman @38

    Re 1ac: ‘isolated place’ is the definition of BACKWATER, not Rydal Water.

    gladys @39/40 – I referred to the three uses of the insertion indicator in my preamble.

    Gervase @42/3 – thank you for that. See me @27 re AMAIN / afoot.

47. Enjoyed that – needed a bit of checking to help, but given it felt way above my grade I’m pleased to have completed it fairly quickly. Thought BACKWATER – now it’s been explained – very smart indeed, if a leap too far for me to have got it other than spotting it from the crossers.

     

    With regards to DIVER, as someone who used to attend football matches regularly I can confirm grumbles along the lines of “he could have won an Olympic medal for that one” are – or at least were – pretty much a cliché in reaction to particularly egregious dives.

48. Cryptics really teach perseverance. In my first 40 minutes, I had gotten exactly two : HOMOSAPIENS and RHODEISLAND. I had to put it away for an hour, and then fight for another hour to end up with 5 short.
    Proud 🙂

    Thanks Imogen, and thanks Eileen for the blog.

49. @Gladys 39/40

    I posted the comment on the Guardian thread earlier (it was before Eileen’s blog was published and I didn’t want to post an overt spoiler). I wouldn’t call this “sinister”. Careless maybe. Particularly given the setter’s background (we already know from his own admission that the editor does not go to the trouble of solving the puzzles himself)

50. grantinfreo @25, the Lake poets also came to my mind, especially as regards “amain”

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Christabel

    They spurred amain, their steeds were white; And once we cross’d the shade of night.

    William Wordsworth in The Two-Part Prelude, Book I:

    Suspended by the blast which blew amain,
    Shouldering the naked crag, oh at that time,
    While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
    With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
    Blow through my ears!

    John Ruskin in a letter to his father 1

    Oh, such a day! the drifted rain In stately columns stalks amain Along the hills, and o’er the valley; And dashes on the window pane, Like ocean spray in surges driven.

51. Same goes for me with looking at D(h)owdy and Nyerere for far too long. Enjoyable puzzle, newbies for me Amain and Ndebele. As for Rookery, isn’t there a saying about a rook on its own being a crow, and a crow with other crows being a rook?

52. Anna@44 I’ve always found that the English etymologies in Wiktionary square with those in Chambers and the SOED (and the Italian ones with Zingarelli). As with Wikipedia there are eagle eyed pedants ready to correct any fantasies that might get inserted, though I suspect there are far fewer rogue philologists.

53. Thank you for that, Cookie @50.

54. I did not realise that Rydal Mount was Wordsworth’s home in the Lake District.

55. Agree with all the gripes above. Not much fun today: O+ON was the straw that broke me.

56. A hell of a tussle for me, particularly in the NW corner, but got there in the end apart from DUPER and DOE. A lot harder than most Imogens, I reckon,  but plenty of enjoyable clues, particularly HOM SAP, STRIDENCY and LAMPOON. Hadn’t heard of ROTIFER, and like others I couldn’t parse a few, but still really enjoyed the puzzle. Many thanks to Imogen & Eileen.

57. Hard work for me but enjoyable. NDEBELE was my FOI, from the cryptic clue and because it looked plausible. I liked all the 3-letter clues, and am surprised at the level of quibbling today. I thought DIVER and ROOKERY, for example, were fine – and both made me smile when I got them, as did DOE, TITHE BARN and GEE-GEES.

58. Penfold @2 & Pentman @38 (hope I’ve got those the right way round): John and Jane Doe are also used for unidentified dead bodies, and although anonymised or substitute litigants also usually have generalised first names, the term “Doe defendants” appears in this from Cornell; also (Boffo @30) “several ministries” have (at one time or another) had the initials DoE so I don’t see a problem with this clue.

59. A nice tough challenge with some absolute beauties: LAMPOON, and BADOMEN being favourites but some wonderful anagrams as well.

    I too failed to parse 1ac.

     

60. I got myself in a right tangle with DUPER, as I couldn’t see where the excellent policeman came into it, despite having Abba’s Super Trouper running through my head on endless loop. Likewise mistook “to be obliged” for the definition in 16d, although realised that BEHOVED would be incorrect, which led me away from V as the initial letter for 24a, so this was a DNF for me in the SW corner.

    I like Ben T’s reinforcement @47 of Imogen’s clue for DIVER that some have queried – I’m sure I’ve heard that “Olympic medal” comment on the terraces or in the pub after the game too.

    Some of Imogen’s surfaces were totally impenetrable to me today, with BACKWATER, HOMO SAPIENS and FAST FORWARD being especially so. Managed to solve the latter pair after taking an hour away from the grid, and the former from crossers, but needed help from this community to understand Lady R. I enjoyed LAMPOON: naked=nothing on=OON tickled me, and “like May” in 21d reminded me of the strong, stable government that the Tories have promised so often.

61. Despite failing with ROTIFER and GEE-GEES (previously unknown to me) and stumbling into BACKWATER, DUPER, and LAMPOON (the parsing escaped me) I found this enjoyable nonetheless. HOMO SAPIENS, PLACATE, and EXPLAIN were favourites. NDEBELE seemed oddly familiar, as if it had been in a crossword recently; in any event the wordplay made the answer obvious to me. Thanks to both.

62. As it’s a literary reference day, there’s a great description of a ROOKERY in Oliver Twist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookery_(slum)  I wasn’t sure about GLEANER https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50331/ruth

    Shouldn’t it be one who picks up. I tried to make GLITTER work (litter after G). It sounds like an old word for slimmer to me.

63. Tony @61: like London buses – no interaction for ages then twice in two days.  I had the same deja vu re NDEBELE as you, once I’d worked it out, and I put it down to finding UKELELE in an Indy crossword earlier this week (and our Paul dropped in to commend the setter, Bluth, on clueing a difficult word).  Good job there isn’t a NDEBELE UKELELE band anywhere!

    [BTW, if you didn’t pop back into yesterday’s blog after making your second contribution, there was an enlightening contribution from our blogger a couple of hours after you were on.  Post 108 (!).  Shed new light on the clue we were all discussing that resulted in a fairly wholesale reappraisal.  Well worth a glance.]

64. muffin @26 “demur” can also be a noun (“she accepted without demur”), so EMU works.

    That held me up for a long time. Oh well, I can add it to the collection of clues with two valid answers.

65. I found this very hard. A DNF for me, as I couldn’t see 6ac (DUPER) and couldn’t parse it once I’d revealed it. I didn’t know the “tenement” meaning of ROOKERY, and was unfamiliar with NDEBELE, but in both cases the wordplay got met there. I had no chance of parsing 1ac, as I hadn’t heard of Rydal Water, so I was relieved to find that others had trouble with that.

    I particularly enjoyed 22ac (HOMO SAPIENS) and 1dn (BAD OMEN), but I think 2dn (CAVIARE) is a weak clue. If you know the quote (which, as it happened, I did), then it doesn’t seem cryptic; if you don’t, it’s impossible.

66. Thanks for the Lakes entries, cookie @50, and great examples of the much-discussed amain… in action, as it were.

67. Usually love Imogen’s clever surfaces, but this felt like the crowbar had been employed a few times(9a for example). Thanks both.

68. Well that’s taken me all day… Arduous. And ridiculously the only one I got on the first pass was NDEBELE – completely new to me! Hey ho.

69. Definitely a challenge today… but a highly enjoyable one, and glad to be off yesterday’s grumpy bus (and to see Gervase found today more fun too 🙂 ). But certainly can empathize w/those who found this not their cuppa, having just been there myself.

    A DNF (-1.0 XOO), and with lots of guesses and several unparsed, but given the difficulty and some Britishisms, feel good about it.

    Parsed STRIDENCY as Martin S… STRIDE, rather than ST+RIDE; fun to discover the alternate, equally viable take given here.

    Re DIVER, saw “may be” as part of defn (so by description rather than synonymy), thus allowing more latitude, ala a “?”… otherwise I’d’ve concurred with quibbles above.

    Re ROTIFER, saw “wheeling” as part of defn (and a nice misdirection), so a bit more precise than just “animal”… and then “retreating” as the sole rev-ind, applying to all the fodder not just RE/OR.

    Liked MOA, TO TASTE, and EXPLAIN; COTD: FAST FORWARD… feared it an ungettable British sports ref, and delighted to find it otherwise… and quite clever to boot!

    Hats off to Imogen for a fun workout, to Eileen for excellent elucidations, and to our commenters for added insight and nuance.

70. Petert @ 62

    A gleaner was originally a person who went around cornfields post-harvest picking up the ears of corn that the harvesters had missed. It later transferred to picking up information.

    As a gleaner picks up there’s no need for ‘who’ in the clue.

71. OddOtter @69. I saw 5d the same as you. ‘Animal wheeling’= defn; ‘to take exact position’=FIT; ‘between two groups of soldiers’=RE+FIT+OR; ‘retreating’=ROTIFER.

72. Simon S @70 Yes, hence my link to Ruth above, but picks up is still a verb and GLEANER a noun, so I still have a quibble.

73. Re GLEANER: This is akin to previous discussions re handling of defns involving pronouns. Could underline just “one” so grammar matches, but then lose the necessary context of “picks up” in the defn. With “picks up” in defn the grammar doesn’t match, but it was concluded that’s ok… just have to view as defn by description rather than strict synonymy (thus grammar matching and plug&play tests need not apply).

74. Petert @62 and Simon S @70: There is a famous painting by Jean-François Millet in the Musee d’Orsay called The Gleaners. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/gleaners/GgHsT2RumWxbtw?hl=en has plenty of background.

75. MaidenBartok @74 That’s lovely and also this https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/716987203158773231/ for an update.

     

76. Petert @72 (& Simon S @70 & OddOtter @73). Re 19d GLEANER. The way I see it is that ‘one’ is a placeholder for ‘the answer is a noun which’, or perhaps ‘one of these’, or more simply, as you put it in #62, ‘one who’. The verb/description ‘picks up’ works with any of these, but not in the surface reading of the clue, so we just have to imagine that ‘one’ is substituting for one of them!

77. Not sure I really enjoyed this too much. I was defeated by CAVIARE and being from the other side of the pond, BACKWATER was impossible to parse even though it was the obvious answer.  I also thought the “ministries” bit for DOE was kind of weak. And of course, my pet peeve again – the use of a common noun to clue a proper noun.  Surely there’s a more clever way to clue AMY than the generic “girl?”

    I did like LAMPOON, BAD OMEN and in particular, HOMO SAPIENS…

78. More re GLEANER: sheffield hatter touches on this a bit, but just to clarify… with defn by description (at least in this case), rather than saying what something *is*, or providing a direct replacement, it says something *about* what’s being defined. E.g. for “leaf”, could say “one is green” or “one has veins” or “one falls from a tree”; likewise, for GLEANER, “one picks up”.

79. Ted @65, I didn’t know the quote, but I guessed it’s meaning. I got CAVIARE from the crossers, and the knowledge that caviare is sturgeons eggs. That was good enough for me. There are usually some answers that I have little chance of getting until I have the crossers; as others have suggested, that’s why it’s a crossword puzzle – the crossers are part of the set of information we use, along with the “definition(s)” and any cryptic elements and any “general knowledge” we have.

80. [PostMark@ 63: Thanks. I did see Manehi’s comment and I even thought of the chess angle when I was trying to parse SABLE but I solved the clue by definition and crossings as I sometimes end up doing. I never saw any insensitivity in the clue and I doubt if any of the setters would ever have bad intentions.]

81.  OddOtter and sheffieldhatter . I am almost convinced but it still feels to me that “one picks up” as a definition by description fits better to what you pick up rather than who does the picking up, which is why I wanted LITTER in my answer.

82. neverrainsinbarry@51 I know that saying as
    “A crow in a crowd is a rook, a rook on its own is a crow”

83. Quite tricky, LOI DOE. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.
    I think ‘opening’ is fine for an insertion indicator, think ‘pushing the sides apart’ as in a crowbar, which has to be inserted in order to open. My only real quibbles are ‘for’ in 20 and ‘from’ in 25. Still, a good puzzle.

84. Petert – I almost see where you’re coming from. (And it fits that new version of The Gleaners that you linked to @74.) It’s more of a prompt than a definition, though. “One picks up…” – LITTER. “One writes…” – NOVELS. “One supports…” – LUTON TOWN. But this device of “definition by description” is after different answers: the nouns so defined are the ones that do what the description says: “One picks up…” – GLEANER. “One writes…” – AUTHOR. “One supports…” – HATTER.

85. Re open/opening: Took it much as Gonzo did. The phrase I thought of was “get into”. Not a great insert-ind in my book, but I can see it (tho lament it thrice used today).

86. [Petert @75: Very, very clever.  As (pre pandemic) a reasonably frequent visitor to northern France, especially around Calais, I’ve often wondered whether Millet would have painted something with the waifs-and-strays you see wandering around the port and tunnel areas, wondering when our humanity will return…]

87. Catching up – I’ve been quite busy this afternoon.

    Many thanks to Petert @62 (Whenever I see the word’ garner’, I think of Ruth) and MaidenBartok @74 – a painting I love, with an excellent commentary – and Petert @75 with the update.

    Re the clue itself: I had no qualms about entering the answer (a write-in, I thought), nor the parsing. I was on the point of composing a response to the queries on that when I found that sheffield hatter @76 had said (perhaps more succinctly) just what I’d want to say, reinforced @84 – many thanks for that.

88. Finally finished it – and it’s taken me the better part of the day. As usual with Imogen, some touches of inspired brilliance, and a few references that sailed right over my head.
    Enormously enjoyable though.
    In a host of clever clues, HOMO SAPIENS and FAST FORWARD were my faves, with DUPER a super runner-up.
    CAVIARE, with an E, threw me for ages: I had the line vaguely on the tip of my tongue – but never thought of Hamlet. Hearty thanks to Eileen for clearing that up! And ditto to Andy and Penfold for BACKWATER (a guess from the crosses) the parsing of which completely eluded me.
    Thanks to Imogen for a classy challenge.

89. Sorry this is late… But nobody has mentioned the Lady R Foundation which supports people who are overlooked/forgotten/isolated http://www.theladyrfoundation.org/
    I worked out the answer from the crossers, but couldn’t connect it to the charity. I’ve been driving across the country all day, mulling over the clue, unable to connect backwater to the charity. I get the Rydal thing now. Thankyou

90. I thought that this was an unreasonable crossword – way too out there!

    For example, GEE GEE’S. Really!

91. Thanks Eileen. Found this tough and was a DNF. Parsing of a few eluded, including BACKWATER and CAVIARE. Thanks for including a full quotation explaining that. Still, despite toughness, enjoyable and satisfying for the most part. Thanks to Imogen

92. Ang Almond @89, if you’re still there – I’ve only just seen your comment – many thanks for the link to the Lady R Foundation, which I hadn’t heard of.

93. Unlike 4. above, I don’t look forward to an Imogen puzzle and this was no exception. Obscure words, poor or convoluted clues and things which are just wrong, eg. “be obliged” isn’t ‘have’, it’s ‘have to’.

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