Guardian 28,651 / Imogen

111 comments on “Guardian 28,651 / Imogen”

1. Great fun as always from Imogen. Like Eileen I wasn’t so keen on ALL BLACKS, but I thought PERMISSIVE was fine; loved SHELL SHOCK and IN MY BOOK in particular. Took forever to parse SONG AND DANCE. Many thanks to I & E.

2. In ALL BLACKS I think “against” is just indicating the position of “blacks = refuses to play” compared to “all = every”. But it’s a pretty weak clue, IMO.

3. Pretty straightforward, although I share the doubts about 9a and 24a. I liked 1a

4. Thanks Eileen for sorting out SEDIMENTATION and the complicated STAG BEETLE. GODSPEED made me smile, but reading TAMP=pack, not pack round, had me muttering about 11a. My other question marks were the same as yours, and “few’ll” made me wince, but it just about works.

   The difference in syllables in COMMUNIQUE (three in wordplay, four in answer) and CAMARGUE (three in wordplay, two in answer) was distracting.

5. I think we have to accept “some people say it like that” for homophones, but fuel pronounced “fewell” rather than “fewl” always sounds odd to me.

6. PS: Is O’Casey (6) or (1,5)?

7. Thanks very much Eileen as I couldn’t see where SEDIMENTATION came from and did not know CAM = Eccentric (I nearly had Harangue in there), but even now I am unhappy about the latter – if an eccentric cam is but one type of cam rather than another word for a cam in general, shouldn’t it have a def by example indicator? Wikipedia’s entry for “Cam” seems unclear and does not list “eccentric” as one of the several types of cam described, and its entry for “Eccentric” seems to differentiate these from cams in terms of the resulting motion. Any further clarification from engineers would be welcome please!
   I think if nothing rang then the phone was silent so with some cryptic licence I was fine with that, and constructed O’CASEY from wordplay, not knowing the playwright and only later realising there would probably be an apostrophe in it.
   Anyway I thought STAG BEETLE and SHELL SHOCK were great clues, thanks Imogen.

8. Ravenrider@5: unless you’re out with Good King Wenceslas, gathering winter few-oo-el.

9. Particularly liked GODSPEED (Paul would approve!), FUEL (as I have suggested elsewhere, the more contrived a “sounds a bit like”, often the more entertaining), CAMARGUE.
   I, too, am not awfully impressed by 9a, but perhaps we are being too picky. If the clue clearly and unambiguously leads to the answer, perhaps that should be enough. And given how many nuisance calls are made by machines, I’m not too bothered by O (nothing) RANG.
   I did spend a little while wondering whether there was an obscure playwright called Ocasey, before the penny dropped. But if you enumerated 20d as “1’5”, it would be a write in. Enumerating it as “6” is a lot less irritating than Azed writing “2 words – but I’m not going to tell you where the break is”.
   Thanks to Imogen for a pleasant start to the morning and to Eileen for the blog

10. Would never have been able to parse the delta region. Never heard of cam meaning eccentric

11. Gazzh @7 – I totally agree with you re CAM: I was hoping for some clarification, too.

    gladys @8 – you beat me to it with Wenceslas!

12. Cam = eccentric bothered me (as an engineer). A cam is (generally) eccentric but that doesn’t mean the words are equivalent. You would never call a cam (noun) an eccentric, so it’s a bit of a stretch but I understood what Imogen was after.
    Some pleasing clues with some good surfaces. I particularly enjoyed GODSPEED for the Paulism.

13. Tough but enjoyable.

    I liked SHELL SHOCK, FUEL, GODSPEED.

    New for me: playwright Sean O’Casey, ENCLOSED ORDER.

    I could not parse 11ac, 17d apart from CAM =? + ARGUE= dispute.

    Thanks, both.

14. So instead of harrumphing about homophones, we have cam-plaints about eccentrics…
    Chambers has: Cam – An irregular projection on a revolving shaft or rotating cylinder, shaped so as to transmit regular movement to another part, eg to open the cylinder valves of a car engine. Eccentric – A device for taking an alternating rectilinear motion from a revolving shaft (mechanics).
    Which seems close enough.

15. Another enjoyable tussle with Imogen. I had no problem seeing the O in ORANG, it was the second part which held me up. I thought that REINSPIRE and COMMUNIQUÉ were particularly well clued, and felt very pleased to get CAMARGUE (I always immediately think of CAM when I see ‘eccentric’). I do feel it’s a shame we have to have the recurring debates about ‘sounds like’ clues. Of course, in Norfolk, we pronounce FUEL as ‘fool’, but that really has no importance as far as the clue is concerned. Once I’d dismissed ‘phew’, the answer came readily.
    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

16. Thanks Imogen and Eileen
    Like some others, I spent some time wondering where someone called OCASEY might come from, before the penny dropped.
    I didn’t parse SEDIMENTATION.
    Favourites were LORNA DOONE and CAMARGUE.

17. I too liked 1a GODSPEED and also ticked 18a LORNA DOONE and 4d ENCLOSED ORDER. I quite liked solving Sean O’CASEY at 20d as I learned some time ago that the watchword for the cryptic crossworder often is “Ignore the punctuation”.
    Similar experience to others – I also had question marks against 9a ALL BLACKS and 19a FUEL. Also didn’t understand CAM – I see I was not alone – in 17d CAMARGUE but biffed it because of the ARGUE part.
    Thanks Eileen for a super blog and explaining all the ins and outs of this one; thanks also to Imogen.

18. I thought HOER referred to a woman who worked in bed, ie. a prostitute.

19. A few oddities that perhaps don’t quite work. I agree with various bove that cam and eccentric aren’t exactly the same. A cam may or may not be eccentric, but if I understand it correctly all eccentrics do operate in the same way as a cam does by transforming rotary motion into linear. (TimC and any other engineers please feel free to correct me if I’ve misunderstood this). If I got it right then surely for a crossword an eccentric is a cam?

    All blacks is another slight odd one, it is an anagram of lacks ball buts that’s even stretchier.

    On a positive note I am always impressed at how Imogen is always that little bit harder than Vulcan. Keeping the two styles as distinct as they are must surely be applauded. Also there was lots to like. TAMPA (round as part of def was nicely misleading) SHELLSHOCK, SEDIMENTATION. Too many to list…

    Fuel made me laugh which I think (as others have previously said) may well be the point of a homophone .

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen

20. An alternative for cam = eccentric:

    Wiktionary, Etymology 3 – cam = alternative form of ‘kam’

    kam is then subdivided into
    (i) crooked, awry – cognate with Celtic cam, and possibly English game/gammy (gam = leg ultimately goes back to the same Indo-European root, though through a different route)
    (ii) borrowed from Chinese kam = weird, awkward

    Sorry Eileen – yuel be wishing I stuck to homophones 😉

21. ORANG I took it to be zero people rang

    Thanks Eileen and Imogen

22. Norbrewer@15 … yes, but wouldn’t Naarfook Booeys also pronounce few’ll as ‘fool’?

    Rob@18 … yes, in Naarfook!

23. Tricky, some less common words in the fodder.

    I took O RANG to be “nothing rang” i.e. the phone was on silent, rather than “no one rang” as then the phone setting makes no difference.

    Like many others, ALL BLACKS and CAMARGUE and SEDIMENTATION parsing did not yield as easily.

    Thank you Eileen and Nutmeg.

24. [btw did you know that the NZ basketball team are the TALL BLACKS?]

25. Nice puzzle with some clues straightforward and others somewhat chewier.

    My likes and quibbles are exactly the same as Eileen’s, except that I would add LORNA DOONE to the ticked list.

    I interpreted ORANG as did MattWillD @23: nothing rang (neither the phone nor the doorbell). And FUEL reminded me of Good King Vaclav, as it did Gladys – no problem there.

    Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen.

26. I got on with this better than usual for an Imogen crossword.

    I liked GODSPEED and SONG AND DANCE. I didn’t have a problem with ALL BLACKS because, surely, against just means next to without specifying the order. I had to come here for the parsing of DULY. For eccentric, the ODE has: ‘2.A disc or wheel mounted eccentrically on a revolving shaft in order to transform rotation into backward-and-forward motion, e.g. a cam in an internal combustion engine.’

    Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

27. essexboy @20, I’m slightly disappointed that you beat me to it! I have come across Cam (crooked) in Gaelic place names, and also in Cumbrian place names, for example Cam Spout below Scafell in Upper Eskdale. I wasn’t sure whether cam meaning “crooked” could be justified as an English word, though, and it’s maybe a little unkind to expect solvers to know Gaelic or archaic English.

    Rock climbers will be familiar with “camming devices”, such as Friends, which grip the sides of cracks via spring loaded cams, but I don’t think these cams are necessarily eccentric.

28. Thanks, Robi @26 – that explanation of eccentric cam works for me.

29. I crossed with you, Monkey @27 – thanks for that.

30. 24ac reminded me of a cri de coeur clue from the days before EE swallowed up a certain fruity service provider:
    Why I can never get a signal on my mobile phone network? (6)

31. Shan’t get involved in any arguments about the source of FUEL today. Struggled to get the last two to yield, ORANG and subsequently CAMARGUE, an area I spent some time exploring in the summer of 1970, with it’s amazing dragonflies around les etangs there. Ticks for LORNA DOONE, KIDNEY, COMMUNIQUE and SHELL SHOCK…

32. Tim Philips @22. No, it would be foo-uhl.

33. [Ronald @31
    I was there in the late sixties some time. The highlight was seeing flamingoes!]

34. muffin@24. as a pub quizzer, I’m fascinated by the Kiwi nicknaming of teams around their team kits/equipment. The hockey team are the Blacksticks, the cricket team the Blackcaps, the bowling team the Blackjacks. Most of the women’s teams incorporate Fern – Black Ferns (women’s rugby), Silver Ferns (netball). But my favourite is that the football/soccer team are the All Whites (only referees are allowed to wear all black in football) who last played at the World Cup when it was in South Africa, which surely raised a few eyebrows at the time!

35. Thank you Robi@26 and others for clarification of CAM which is hopefully now stored safely in the lumber-room! (essexboy@20, that is also neat but I can’t believe it was the intended meaning. Nice to learn that I have been speaking tautologically whenever mentioning a “gammy leg” though!)

36. Nice crossword: thanks to Imogen & Eileen. I agree with Ronald 31 about the insect life in the Camargue, which is unfortunately also very riche de moustiques.

37. Rather a slightly dodgy eccentric than a commonplace river for CAM. Other than that Eileen has said it all very well.

38. Lansker John@36…ah yes, had forgotten about being bitten almost to death by mosquitoes in the morning when camping in a tiny unprotected tent just outside Arles en Provence, …and muffin@33, I did get a very brief glimpse of those flamingoes too. Perhaps I was just trying to remember insect life, with the STAG BEETLE appearing in today’s challenging puzzle…

39. Rob@18-like it but which area would it work best in?I’d ask Andy Murray but he’s been busy lately.

40. An evocative puzzle, thank you Imogen, and thank you Eileen for the helpful blog.

    Ronald @38, I remember going down to a beach near Hyères in France one calm sunny morning and seeing STAG BEETLEs moving rapidly inland through the trees – a few hours later there was the most violent storm.

41. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

    Worth doing for CAMARGUE alone: one of my favourite words. CAMARGUE.

    Now to introduce it into a conversation……

42. Learnt much today, thanks to I & E – I also needed DULY parsed, then had a laugh as I tried to look up DUILY to see what that word meant!
    Why is “OR” allowed as “gold” without a French indicator? (3 down)
    And must we invoke Paul every time our setters use the lav? (wink emoji)

43. Thx to Imogen for a tough but fair Tuesday puzzle. Favourites were 4dn, 13dn, 17dn, and 18ac.
    Thx to Eileen for her blog and summary.

44. Yehudi @42 or is the word for gold in heraldry

45. Oh, and I do like the (surely not accidental) possible homophone at 15A.
    Cheers, Rob@18, copmus@39

46. Thanks Crossbar@44 – I’ve held that question for some time but I’m never in early enough to post it.

47. A very enjoyable puzzle. ORANG = Zero rang so I agree with Dave Ellison @21

    ALL BLACKS – the word “against” is surely an indicator to put a word beside another, without specifying the order?

    I liked PERMISSIVE, DO NOT DISTURB and COMMUNIQUE

    I first had the pleasure of visiting the CAMARGUE when I was 17, which is a very long time ago.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen

48. I loved this puzzle, including the debatable All Blacks; particularly the lovely surfaces for Communique and Camargue.

49. For fellow Camarguists
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LFpHTGkBQo

50. [Ronald and Landsker John: Some years ago a colleague went out for a trip in the Everglades to see the famous alligators. He reported that the mosquitoes were bigger.]

51. I held myself up by getting distracted with the thought that SCAR BEETLE might be a corruption of scarab, and had to use the check button to disabuse myself. This would have been a DNF by my personal rules, but I also put the incorrect (and unparsed) adjective DULL where the adverb DULY was clearly required.

    Despite these failures I enjoyed this puzzle today, with GOAD and PECK being particular favourites. And grins appeared at the wickedly provocative homophone in FUEL and the apostrophe-less playwright at 20d. The discussion above re ‘eccentric’=CAM was informative and for the most part restrained; if it’s possible to have a favourite three letter word, I think cam would be mine.

    Thanks to Imogen and Eileen (one of these days perhaps commenters here will heed your plea for restraint about homophones and enumeration, but it’s not today 🙂 ).

52. Sheffield hatter@51, the Cam by no means my favourite river, but certainly the closest…

53. Rob@18, Tim Phillips@22: and yes in Dutch too, with (Yehudi@45) more or less the homophonic pronunciation you suggest.

54. Am I alone in rueing Paul’s apparent abandonment of naughtiness? At least others can pick up the baton – thanks. Imogen, for 1ac!

    Perhaps I don’t do enough crosswords, but I can’t remember when Paul last did a “trademark” naughty clue…

    I was happy with 9ac, as “against” can mean “next to”. Needed to come here to find out why “cam” means “eccentric”. Eyebrows hit the ceiling at TAMP = “pack around” rather than just “pack”. But these are fairly minor quibblets in the run of things, so thanks to Imogen and Eileen and to all the contributors for some interesting discussions.

55. Thanks for the blog, did a bit of checking after, TAMP= pack round is clear in Chambers . Following MrEssexboy@20 , Chambers give CAM=KAM= awry , close enough. .
    Helpful grid today , a lot of first letters.

56. After seeing GODSPEED in 1 and BLACK as part of 9, I was looking to find EMPEROR somewhere else in the grid – Godspeed! You Black Emperor being one my fave band. Alas, no Canadian post-rock theme emerged.

57. Godspeed! actually used this pun, referring to themselves as “God’s Pee” in the liner notes to one of their album. So 1a was a write-in for me.

58. Isn’t the issue with ALL BLACKS the age old debate about the word “on” being capable of being used to indicate above, beside and under (on the floor, on the wall, and on the ceiling respectively)? Likewise if something is against a wall, then it could be to the left or right of it. So Blacks against All is perfectly fine being All Blacks, surely?

59. Struggling to get back into routines post the festivities so late to the party today. Largely enjoyed this but failed on Orang and Camargue. Wouldn’t have got Eccentric equals Cam in a month of Sundays so learnt something new today.

60. New to me that TAMPA is a resort. I just think of it as a city in Florida.

    Has anyone ever said MENTATION to mean thought? Or even seen it? I’m not willing to acknowledge its existence as a word.

    Quibbles aside, enjoyed the puzzle, thanks Imogen and Eileen.

61. Hmmm . . . Camargue. Thought I’d heard that word before.

    First try with a link – apologies in advance

62. I think cam’s all right for eccentric, which, as well as being an adjective, is a noun that carries the right meaning.

    Re enumeration for O’CASEY, we’re back to convention (that thing some people don’t seem either to comprehend or like), in that apostrophes don’t count. So Sean’s úa (thereafter spelled ó) gets a big clumsy British apostrophe that’s ignored by crossword editors. Btw in Azed, the enumeration is only given for the entire answer length to maintain the level of difficulty: it’s not to be ‘annoying’ though some may find it so.

63. At the risk of stoking dissension where all hitherto has been sweet concord, I think the problem with ALL BLACKS is that BLACKS doesn’t mean ‘refuses to play’, it means ‘refuses to play against’ (in the sense of ‘boycotts’).

    Which means that ‘against’ is not available as a juxtaposition indicator, which means – as Eileen says in the blog – there is nothing to indicate a swapping round of BLACKS ALL.

    On a more harmonious note, many thanks for the Georges Brassens, Lansker John @49. And a belated Happy Birthday – he would have been 100 just recently (Brassens, not Lansker John… probably).

    [gladys @50 – mosquitoes bigger than alligators? Now that is a disturbing thought]

64. me @63 – scrub that – I’ve just realised ‘play’ can be transitive

65. Never heard of CAM or indeed CAMARGUE – I ended up with MADARGUE, which as well as fitting the wordplay appears to be some sort of wine from the Loire region. Maybe next time.

    Also NHO O’Casey, although it went in. Like sheffield hatter@51 I biffed in DULL early on, and a couple unparsed. Not sure about the definition in 14D.

    Thanks Eileena and Imogen.

66. me @64 – as in Ain’t gonna play Sun City. Good clue.

67. essexboy @63 – many thanks for highlighting Lansker John’s link @49 to Georges Brassens, which I’ve only just had a chance to follow up. It brought back very happy memories of student days in my final year, after I’d spent my holiday earnings on a Dansette record player. My flatmate and I had only a handful of LPs between us but one of hers was a Georges Brassens which she’d brought back from her year in France. We heard all of them every day – I’ve heard him only very rarely since! (Thanks to you, too, of course, Lansker John. 😉 )

68. I parsed ALL BLACKS as “refuses to play [leaning] against every” – which puts ALL first and BLACKS leaning against it. Against isn’t required in the definition: refuses to play suffices.

    It looks like CAM has got previous. I could see ARGUE but couldn’t find anything suitable for “eccentric”. So I checked Bradford’s, which told me:

    Eccentric(ity) Abnormal, Cam, Card, Character, Crank, Curious, Dag, Deviant, Dingbat, Ditsy, Ditzy, E, Farouche, Fey, Fie, Freak, Geek, Gonzo, If?sh, Irregular, Kinky, Nutcase, 0dd(ball), Offbeat, Off-centre, Original, Outré, PECULIAR, Phantasime, Queer, Quirky, Quiz, Rake, Raky, Recondite, Rum, Screwball, Wack(y), Way-out, Weird(o), W(h)acko

    So, look out for the other meanings 😉

    northernrich @34 – thank you for that edutainment 🙂

    [Bear+of+little+brain – you asked the other day but I saw it too late. You’re taking me back but yes I’ve heard of vW-grammer. It was IIRC used in Algo-68 spec. At the time, I encountered BNF more. I don’t see them mentioned nowadays – perhaps because I tend not to read language specs anymore 😉 . Why do you ask?!]

69. [Eileen @67 – yes, one of the greats from outre-Manche who are hardly known over here. A bit like Johnny Ha… OK perhaps not.

    Here’s another favourite (Georges, not Johnny – playing live at the old Bobino, I think).]

70. Essexboy@63: it was more that the only alligators they saw were baby ones and disappointingly tiny.

71. Again, a strange definition of resort, as TAMPA isn’t one. We discussed that with regard to OBAN a few days a go, and this is similar. If you want to go to the beach in Florida, you might fly into Tampa; and there’s plenty to do there for tourists, as with any big city. But Tampa isn’t on the beach, and it’s no more a resort than Chicago is. (I remember a similar definition of MIAMI in a puzzle a few years ago; again, big city, not really a resort.)

    The beach town near Tampa is Clearwater; there’s also a beach in St. Pete, but even St. Petersburg doesn’t really count as a resort.

72. [mrpenney @71
    I let TAMPA pass as I’ve heard of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Doesn’t “bay” imply coast, or is that somewhere else entirely (like RI not being an island!)?]

73. Who would have thought of “mentation” as a word? New to me, so thanks for the explanation, Eileen. My favourite clue and loi was 1 across. Thanks for the crossword, Imogen.

    Incidentally, why do compilers change names depending on type of crossword or which publication is publishing their work? After all, Rufus was Rufus for the Guardian and was also Rufus for the Times Educational Supplement.

74. [I’m loving all the George Brassens. “Je veux partir pour l’autre monde par le chemin des ecoliers.” Just brilliant]

75. To minimise offence I won’t quote it verbatim but surely the old Michael Jackson joke (about him, not by him) regarding his choice of holiday destination and companions is sufficient to establish TAMPA as a resort of some kind? And if not, does it pass the “stick of rock” test (which I am keen to establish as being of equivalent standing to a Chambers entry)?

76. erike44 @ 73

    Rufus was also Dante in the FT

    But Monk is Monk in both his regular locations and in his occasional G Genius

77. Simon S
    There is a theory that Monk is now also Harpo in the Guardian.

78. [Muffin @ 72: Tampa Bay (of which the city of Tampa sits at the head) is a slate-grey stretch of brackish water that’s not much fun to swim in; there are no beaches in Tampa. And as all of Florida is pretty dang flat, the land around it is not much to look at either. And as regards the Buccaneers, I’d say that if you’re a big enough city to support an NFL team (with apologies to any Packers fans) that’s evidence that you’re not a resort. They also have major-league baseball (the Tampa Bay Rays) and ice hockey, believe it or not (the Tampa Bay Lightning); both the football and the hockey teams are defending champions at the moment.]

79. [Thanks for that clarification, mrpenney. I don’t think I’ll ever get to grips with US place names!
    Though isn’t Miami, at least, a resort with an NFL team?]

80. Thanks Imogen and Eileen. I enjoyed unfurling this one gradually – as you say, Eileen, some nice easy ones to get started, with some trickier ones to prolong the enjoyment/torture. Threw in the towel on FUEL eventually – after writing down all the possible 4-letter words that fit the crossing letters and not seeing the answer in any of them. Proper groan out loud when I hit the reveal button. (Not to be taken as a complaint!)

    Also failed to see how CAM=eccentric, even though I’m familiar with the engineering terms, but that has been cleared up now, thanks all.

    gladys @6 – I was trawling the fifteensquared archives the other day for reasons I won’t bore you with, but I came across a rather heated discussion about the correct enumeration for O HENRY. The O’CASEY clue brought this immediately back to mind, but I’m pleased to see the discussion is more temperate today.

    [Thanks for the Brassens link, Lansker John @49 – always a treat to hear the great man. For those whose French isn’t up to appreciating the Brassens original, I give you Jake Thackray’s idiomatically perfect translation of Brother Gorilla. ]

81. And thanks very much for the Jake Thackray link, widdersbel – I was a huge fan.

82. [widdersbel@80 Even though I much prefer the original that’s fantastic translation.]

83. widdersbel @80
    Out of curiosity, how was O HENRY enumerated? I can accept (6) for O’CASEY (just, though the O and the CASEY are separate words), but surely O HENRY must have been (1,5)?

84. muffin@83 Apparently not. Hence the heated debate.

85. Thanks Petert. I would have been heated too! The only justification wuld be the Azed one of just giving the total number of letters.

86. My first ever post. I simply do not understand how 2 Down gives DULY. Had everything else in place and could parse everything, but 2 down defeats me totally and the comments above haven’t helped, alas. I’m clearly being obtuse – can anyone elucidate, preferably in words of one syllable, for me?
    Delighted that there are clearly so many Francophiles amongst you but, whilst I love Brassens, the greatest Georges has to be Moustaki!

87. Janeiro – welcome aboard. My knowledge of Moustaki is fleeting at best. I shall investigate.

    Re 2d:
    ”With spirit lacking” = DULLY
    “Heart lost” = remove middle letter (ie what’s at the “heart” of the word)
    “At the expected time” = DULY (ie when due)

    muffin @83 – I’m trying to find it again to check, will let you know. It was incidental to what I was actually looking for so it’s possible I’ve misremembered an important detail.

88. Thank you widdersbel@87 – so obvious from your explanation. I feel especially DULL! I can’t seem to type accents on this thread but Le Meteque is just wonderful then there’s Le Facteur, La Carte du Tendre, Ma Liberte, Ma Solitude and so many more.

89. Janeiro @86 – welcome to the site! I hope we’ll hear from you again.

    I’m sorry if the blog wasn’t clear: I think it’s probably because my lower case letter l in DU[l]LY looks like a capital I. widdersbel’s version has made it plainer, I hope.

90. Sorry, Janeiro – we crossed. 😉

    You can find some help with accents etc here: https://slcr.wsu.edu/help-pages/microsoft-keyboards-standard-english-us-101/

91. [Janeiro – we might quibble about les deux Georges, but here’s a treat for you and other Francophiles (and Hellenophiles)]

92. Thank your Eileen@89 – I did indeed read your post as a capital I and was totally foxed. All is now clear and, perhaps, from being a long time lurker, I’ll become more of a contributor – especially if I solve the accent problem for my French enthusiasms!

93. Essexboy@91 – that’s made my evening! Mille fois merci!

94. Holding out against Cam here. I can’t claim to have come across the mechancial eccentric before but my researches (admittedly wikipedia) indicate that an eccentric and a cam are not the same thing at all. Not convinced that a listing in a thesaurus is tantamount to equivalence (or at least a subset) which to my mind the rules of crosswords require. But hang me for a pedant if you like!

    Otherwise thank you to Imogen for some nice if typically quirky (mostly in a good way!) clues.

95. Janeiro @92 – Ah yes, I see what you mean, the lowercase L does look like an I – it’s a convention for deleted letters to be written in lower case, but maybe bloggers should make an exception for L? [Thanks for the Moustaki suggestions]

    muffin @93 – found it… but in the interest of letting sleeping dogs lie, I won’t post a link. O Henry was indeed enumerated as (6). A commenter by the name of Eileen remarked: “I have a niggle with the enumeration of 9ac: I’m used to apostrophes being ignored – but full stops?” and my own observation was to agree that the enumeration was wrong but that it didn’t spoil my enjoyment. Some others were rather less restrained, although the most heated remarks were actually about “esoteric literary stuff” rather than enumeration, but looking at it again, I’m not sure they were all entirely serious, eg:
    “O Henry?? O dear — never heard of him (her?)– no desire to and could not care less… crosswords are supposed to be a challenge of VOCABULARY not obscure pen-names of authors that no-one knows or cares about. Screwed up and thrown away in disgust 2/3 of the way through.
    4/10, Must try harder”

    I detect a hint of sarcasm here. 😀

96. I’m surprised that people have taken exception to CAM for ECCENTRIC. If you take “eccentric” as a noun (which it could be), there doesn’t seem to be any problem.

97. essexboy @91 – lovely! thanks

98. Thanks indeed, widdersbel
    O. Henry is one of my favourite short story writers, I’ve heard that “The gift of the magi” is compulsory reading for US students, though it’s far from my favourite.

99. muffin @98, if you’re still there –

    I haven’t actually read any O. Henry stories but I had tantalising memories of a much-enjoyed dramatised TV series, starring Thomas Mitchell as O. Henry, which I was moved to track down. I find that it was titled ‘The O. Henry Playhouse’ and was shocked to find that it’s from the late 50s (!) but, amazingly, DVDs of this ‘long-lost’ series were released just a couple of months ago.
    (I also found that ‘The Gift of the Magi’ was broadcast on Radio 4 on December 22nd but haven’t had time to look that up.) It’s here, if anyone would like to read it.)

    So, with Georges Brassens and Jake Thackray, a real trip down Memory Lane for me today!

    Thanks to all for your helpful comments.

100. widdersbel@80
     I spent my first two years at secondary school in the same class as Jake Thackray. Over 30 years later he told my brother-in- law that I was the first person to explain the facts of life to him. Not something I remember but I do recall being dismissed from being class Captain for telling risque jokes in the back of the bus on the way back from a choral competition in Blackpool. We came fifth out of seven entrants. The other two didn’t turn up.

101. Pino @100 – wonderful story, the icing on today’s cake!

     … and a reminder that you’re the same age as me: I did remember this time! 😉

102. Morpheus @ 94

     “Not convinced that a listing in a thesaurus is tantamount to equivalence (or at least a subset)”

     In which case what is the purpose / point of a thesaurus?

103. As soon as I saw the FUEL “homeophone” and OCASEY enumeration issues I thought, this will get us to 100 comments easily. Well done folks, it was a fun read.

     And a fun puzzle and blog, so thanks Imogen and Eileen.

104. Pino @100 – superb anecdote!

105. Morpheus @ 94: “Not convinced that a listing in a thesaurus is tantamount to equivalence … which to my mind the rules of crosswords require.” In my view crosswords require a rather more flexible approach. If all clues had to have exact equivalence with the word clued, what a boring pastime this would be. 🙂

     There are two (or more) ways of looking at this clue, as other commenters have described. One is to look at cam=kam=awry=eccentric. (The first two equivalences are in Chambers, the final one requires the use of the thesaurus that you threw away.)

     The other way is to pick apart camshaft – this is a shaft with eccentricities, so it’s a “cam” shaft, with cam used adjectivaly, so equivalent to the adjective eccentric. Related to this is to treat eccentric and cam as nouns, but this seems to be a specialist engineering use, rather than what may be understood from a scratchy knowledge of internal combustion engines.

106. Valentine @60.”Has anyone ever said MENTATION to mean thought? Or even seen it? I’m not willing to acknowledge its existence as a word.” I hope that final part of your comment was tongue in cheek. 🙂

     I can’t claim to have used it myself, but I have certainly seen it written down. More to the point, it is in Chambers, under the head word mental (in my edition, which is arranged that way): ‘mentation n mental activity’.

107. Didn’t get CAMARGUE and wouldn’t if you gave me till the end of time. Didn’t help that I had Omani instead of ORANG, though!
     Put me down for another miffed at ALL BLACKS.

108. Re 17dn: An “eccentric” is a type of cam (in fact it’s short for “eccentric circular”), other types of cam include “elliptical”, “snail” and heart”. If a cam has an irregular shape, it’s impossible to describe it as eccentric, since eccentricity requires the camshaft to be placed somewhere other than the centre point of the cam. See here for examples.

     So, not all eccentrics are cams (obviously) and not all cams are eccentric. To my mind, that makes the clue somewhat unsatisfactory …

109. … unless one goes with essexboy’s explanation @20

110. I thought like Rob@18 about prostitute but… bit risqué.
     CAM surprised me – will ask my friend Cam about that.
     Thanks both

111. copmus@39: I think your possibly libellous comment requires some clarification. I have never read, heard or seen anything relating to Mr Murray that could in any way validate it.

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