Guardian Cryptic 28,826 by Tramp

99 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,826 by Tramp”

1. Fair comment about barber

   Neil

2. STARFISH made me smile for the clever mainly.
   I didn’t know FREESTONE peaches were a thing. First thing Google showed me was something to do with masonry. But easily gettable.
   Found BEEFALO a bit wordy and laboured but liked the in stock definition.
   Took me ages to remember SUPERTONIC from my piano playing days, but got there eventually.

   Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

3. The corny-cheese connection was a bit meh, and it’s many decades since hearing about freestone (as against clingstone) peaches, and ditto decades for hearing the term supertonic, but those were the least of it. Beefalo? Nagware? Needed to use ‘try a letter and check’ for these. Wondered, too, why the RA in Do minicab was ‘virtually led’ … d’oh. Still an’ all, enjoyed the workout thx both.

4. As for the Open Sesame bloke getting a haircut, no problem down under, I say them totally identically.

5. Liked ESCAPED and RECKON for their surfaces, even though they gave me a bit of a mental workout for their multi-positional wordplay. Favourite was SUMATRA for similar reasons, and the misdirection with ‘ground that’s hot’.
   MACHINATOR and STARFISH were chuckleworthy.
   I do know FREESTONE peaches, and so does my husband, as I NAG him to bring them home for juicing.

6. I only got about three quarters of this out before I came here. I’m afraid my groans outnumbered my smiles.

   I’d forgotten that OS was a sailor. (There are so many initialisms and synonyms for sailors, I’ve lost track.) I don’t have an issue with BABA/BARBER, but why is barber a cut? That’s like calling a doctor a cure or a shopkeeper a sell. Cheese might be corny? Groan. Hadn’t heard of a beefalo nor nagware, and Dominic Raab is only vaguely familiar.

   But I can proudly say that, as a muso, SUPERTONIC was something with which I was very familiar.

7. GDU @6 – to barber is to cut (hair)

8. Tough puzzle.

   I did not parse 2/15 apart from DO= party and CAB =taxi; 3d; 19d.

   New: NAGWARE, FREESTONE peach, TRAP SHOOTER; BEEFALO.

   Liked STARFISH.

   Thanks, both.

9. Thanks, Loonapick. I’ve never heard of “barber” as a verb, which means either it doesn’t happen down under or I lead a sheltered life, possibly both. Just checked OED online, and sure enough, it’s there …

10. Knew a hairdesser in Melbourne called Ollie. You’ll never guess what he called himself!
    But he was good as are Tramp’s puzzles

11. A slew of new words for me today meant I was in uncharted territory at times. Funny to see STARFISH come up after its appearance in yesterday’s centipede discussion. I wonder if a MACHINATOR could be some kind of trendy barrista?

    Favourites today included VIDEOCONFERENCE and TRAP SHOOTER, both for the lovely surfaces and clever anagrams; NABS for connecting the muscles neatly to the operation; AVARICE because it’s a lovely simple spot (there were a lot of anagrams today; VESTRYMAN was another lovely one). Lastly, STARFISH (with an anagram!) but with a simply glorious surface (a slight sense of deja vu solving that – no idea why). I found the def for SUMATRA somewhat on the vague side: no chance of guessing the solution from that.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick

12. I enjoyed this overall and thought TRAP SHOOTER was a standout clue. I bought a peach tree for my home orchard just last week and became acquainted with clingstone / freestone. NAGWARE is a new term for me and one I’ll be pleased to add to my vocab. (Much nicer than freemium.)
    Thanks Tramp & loonapick.

13. Homophones inevitably don’t work with every accent see this wiki
    Wouldn’t it get a bit tedious and make the clue a bit obvious if every time we had a “homophone” it had to be qualified with “some might say”?
    As a Yorkshireman I can’t understand why people can’t say grass or castle properly but we all have our cruciverbal crosses to bear

    NAGWARE, FREESTONE & VESTRYMAN all new to me but very gettable from the wordplay

    If I hadn’t been working with some NAPHTHA data this week I think that might have eluded me

    Cheers all

14. Bodycheetah @13

    Precisely why homophones involving the letter R should be avoided in my opinion. If not for the crossers, I would never have got ALI BABA, as to me and over 5 million of my compatriots (and I imagine many more who pronounce BABA with two long As, BABA and BARBER sound nothing alike and are only alike in that they share a couple of Bs

15. Can of worms time! Green pepper – vegetable or fruit??

16. Patting my own back — I managed to eventually parse every answer! (And before going to bed.)

    Yes, BABA had me scratching my head…I thought of BOB (the haircut) but that left the extra “A”. Then remembered the rhotic/non-rhotic lesson here a few weeks back. Rather than “some might say”, which seems unnecessarily clumsy, perhaps a simple “?”

    I used to get freestone peaches when I lived in the mid-west, but in California no one seems to have heard of them.

17. @Crispy — both, of course.
    Botanically a fruit (as are green beans and squashes/marrows).

18. DOMINIC RAAB is a gem of a clue. Lots of new words already mentioned but gettable. Yes PM @11, I had the same thought about STARFISH, not the first time for such coincidences.

    Ta Neil & loonapick

19. Crispy@15. Are you saying that vegetarians don’t eat fruit?

20. Dear loonapick,
    I had a wry smile when I solved 27ac, knowing that you would be blogging. I wish you could have met my late Scottish husband. 😉

    I’d never heard of NAGWARE but, like Paul @12, I’m glad to have learned it.

    I particularly liked MACHINATOR, NABS, DOMINIC RAAB* and the delightful surface of STARFISH. (*I meant, of course, ‘the clues for…’)

    Thanks to Tramp and loonapick for an enjoyable puzzle and blog.

21. I finished with a certain amount of bunging-and-checking but I didn’t find that wholly satisfactory, I must say. Partly because of lots of new-to-me words (BEEFALO, SUPERTONIC, FREESTONE, VESTRYMAN) although to be fair they all make sense so I wouldn’t call them obscure, just gaps in my knowledge. Partly because of clues that raised my eyebrow a few millimetres: I have never previously seen caviarE spelt with that E on the end, though Chambers has put me right on that. And ACUTENESS as a synonym of ‘wisdom’ seemed slightly tenuous to my understanding.

    Re the ALI BABA controversy: by huge coincidence I included this in a recent MyCrossword puzzle but chose a completely different way of clueing it. I tend to avoid homophones unless they are widely phonically similar across multiple accents!

22. copmus @10, Sir John …?

23. Rob T@21 I think you’ve been hiding your light under a bushel.

24. Well NAGWARE isn’t in Chambers so it musn’t be a real word (tongue firmly in cheek). That and BEEFALO were new for me. I could go on about homophone clues but I won’t (but onya, or is that onyerrr ginf @4).
    Favourite was BACKSTAGE.

25. Thanks Tramp and loonapick

    I pronounce all the As in Ali Baba short, but, as usual, am not bothered by how universal or precise a homophone is, especially if it brings a grin.

26. Blaise @19. Don’t see how you think I’m saying that. After yesterday’s “is a centipede an insect” discussion, I’m merely querying the fruitiness or otherwise of the green pepper.

27. For me, thinking what may be a homophone to some is just part of the challenge, like thinking how they spell capsicum.

28. [Tim C @24, we have a Finnish mate named Pirkko, with a very trilled ‘r’. After oral work some years ago, I was dismayed that I could no longer trill … ageing is a bore!]

29. Nice puzzle. I always assume that a homophone might not really work with my accent hodge podge, but if I can imagine the English saying it that way if seems OK to me. But perhaps that’s an outsider’s perspective that grates on the some.

30. Not too sure about SUMATRA being “ground that’s hot!” And NAGWARE a new one for me. Which was also the case for SUPERTONIC, which was LOI even with all the crossers in place and the anagram staring me in the face. The VIDEOCONFERENCE, VESTRYMAN axes of initial helpful anagrams led the way in this morning. Thanks Tramp and Loonapick.

31. ginf@22 Very clever. Dodgy (or in the case of BABA, rum) homophones are nearly always in my own accent, so I don’t feel I can comment without sounding smug, but I was happy enough with Auntie/Anti the other day. The unusual words (BEEFALO, FREESTONE, NAGWARE and SUPERTONIC) may all have been “gettable”, but I didn’t get them without recourse to a wordfinder. I enjoyed the puzzle, though.

32. I didn’t know the NAGWARE but apart from that, I made steady progress

    Thanks to Tramp for the enjoyable crossword and to loonapick for the equally enjoyable blog

33. [paddymelon @23 – I mentioned on the General Discussion thread that I’d started dabbling in setting… I’ve got the bug and have posted half a dozen puzzles on MyCrossword. For anyone who uses MyC, my setter pseudonym is Henri]

34. [ginf @28 not so much a bore as a frustration. Given the old use of Bay Rum as an aftershave I’m thinking of opening a hairdresser’s shop called Bay Rum Baba. If I ever get round to compiling my first crossword, don’t bother attempting it all you rhotic speakers!! 😉 ]

35. Could someone please explain ‘page’ as a synonym for ‘side’? Is it in the sense of two sides of a page? Can’t quite get my head round it. Thanks!

36. Bonnylass @35 – yes, that’s how I read it… as in “I wrote two sides / pages of notes in that last lecture”

37. Thanks Tramp and Loonapick. Enjoyed this very much indeed. As is often the way with Tramp, I found it quite tricky in places while solving, but looking back at it afterwards, can’t see why… the sign of a good, fair puzzle for me (notwithstanding the reasonable objection to BABA/BARBER).

    BEEFALO is new to me, but the answer came with a groan/smile when the penny dropped on “stingy thing”. Very good.

    Crispy @15 – would you put it in a fruit salad?

38. Thanks Rob T @36 🙂

39. No Widdersbel @37, I wouldn’t put it in a fruit salad, although I try to avoid putting it in anything, but if we’re going to insist that a caterpillar is not an insect, then we have to insist that a green pepper is a fruit surely. 😉

40. Widdersbel @37. No. I’d put apple in a Waldorf salad, though. Does that make apples vegtables?

41. Several other posters have mentioned above my particular “unfamiliars”: like the Tory MP DOMINIC RAAB (2d,15a) (who I had to google once I got Dominic from the crossers). However I managed to work out all my other “new words” from the word plays – 20a SUPERTONIC, 1d VESTRYMAN, 5d FREESTONE, 7d NAPHTHA, 19d BEEFALO and 21d NAGWARE. I actually liked 8a PROCESSED CHEESE and 14d ACUTENESS despite some naysayers above, and like Tim C.@24, 16d BACKSTAGE was my favourite. I echo others above (many of them Aussies) in that I was cool with 27a ALI BABA – it sounded all right to me. Thanks to Tramp for the enjoyment and the new learnings, and thanks to loonapick for a good explanatory blog.

42. Thanks for the blog, very good clues starting with a great anagram. This might have been tricky but the grid was very friendly, numerous first letters . Agree with AlanC@18 for DOMINIC RAAB , will steal gem in future, and MrPostMark@11 for STARFISH.
    Did not know NAGWARE but the letters helped, horrible word and concept, fortunately it will never affect me.
    I would call the (sweet) pepper a salad vegetable.

43. Crispy @40 – no, it means that Waldorf salad is a type of salad that contains both fruit and vegetables (walnuts are also fruit, botanically speaking).

    TimC @39 – I avoided getting embroiled in the caterpillar discussion. I generally try not to let taxonomic pedantry spoil my enjoyment of crosswords.

    The fruit salad thing is someone else’s gag –
    “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

44. *centipede, not caterpillar… but they’re all bugs, right? 😉

45. Chambers describes the capsicum as a fruit “eaten as a vegetable” which raises the intriguing possibility that how something is used or consumed can also define it (in addition to its botanical/biological definition. If that makes any sense at all? I’ve tried crispy fried insects and te=hey were delicious – not sure if there were any centipedes in the mix 🙂

46. [bugs and creepy crawlies as well as some two legged individuals (not on here I hasten to add) are all insects to me Widdersbel @44]

47. [bodycheetah @45, I hope you counted the number of legs before you ate your “insects”]

48. The use of “needing” (GREEN PEPPER) to mean something is present rather than absent always gives me more pause than questionable homophones, but everyone else seems to like it so it must be just me.

    Speaking of ALI BABA, I really thought it was a good clue. A good workout altogether, this puzzle.

49. BEEFALO, NAGWARE and MACHINATOR new to me, but at least the first two were interesting to discover. Perhaps homophones should be banned entirely, since all of them, as far as I can tell, turn out to be unacceptable in somebody’s accent.

    Yes, a green pepper is botanically a fruit, but in culinary terms it’s a vegetable (as are the tomato and the courgette/zucchini). As a definition, though, in which category are we most likely to recognise them? No complaints from me.

50. I’m sure I’ll kick myself buy why is SIDE a meaning for PAGE ?

51. .. but ..

52. @50 – see 35/36

53. I remember the joke as: “knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit…..wisdom is knowing not to put custard on it”

54. All fine fun, although BEEFALO and NAGWARE took me as long as the rest of the puzzle combined.

    Somehow I thought there must be a link between DOMINIC RAAB and MACHINATOR, both excellently clued.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick

55. Bet Heston Blumenthal has put custard on tomatoes!

56. Thanks Tramp. This was tough in spots but I got there in the end with a minimal use of checking an occasional letter and some lucky guessing. I never fully solved DOMINIC RAAB — the name was not known to me — and I couldn’t parse ALI BABA but all else fell into place. TRAP SHOOTER (great surface), NAPHTHA, and BACKSTAGE were my top picks. Thanks loonapick for the blog.
    [Widdersbel @37: Green peppers, navel oranges, red onion, and olives with an oil & vinegar dressing makes a fine salad.]

57. Green Pepper – Animal, Mineral or Vegetable?

    The latter. Case closed.

    Smashing puzzle. Jogging on. 😀

58. Actually no, not done yet – loonapick @ 14: Claiming barber and Baba sound nothing alike apart from the two Bs is clearly nonsense. Baba and bonobo sound nothing alike, despite having two Bs – but I would understand any sentence where you swapped the pronunciation of Barber and Baba. I probably wouldn’t even comment on it. This homophone thing is frankly ridiculous, and frankly tedious. It’s making me want to stop visiting here, and that would be a shame, because it’s otherwise a wonderful resource.

59. MarkN – sorry you feel that way, but as a Scot, I think it is fair to point out where a homophone doesn’t work for everyone. I used to mention it every time I came across a homophone, but now limit it to particularly egregious examples like this. Some agree with me, some don’t, but life is about opinions, and I’m entitled to mine. In fact, I have just checked back and it’s quite a while since I highlighted a homophone in the preamble, and May since I last complained about one (LORD = LAUD). Given that I write 8 blogs a month, I don’t think I’m overeating the pudding.

60. Loonapick @59; as I’ve said many times before, we rely on dictionaries for spelling, and should do also for pronunciation. The pronunciation of BABA and BARBER is very close if not identical there, so, I think, no need to add ‘as some might say’. Otherwise, we are going to have to add a qualification for all homophones.

    Tough but good crossword. I particularly enjoyed TRAP SHOOTER and, yes, ALI BABA.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

61. BEEFALO and NAGWARE anew, never heard of and unlikely to be remembered. No problem with ALI BABA here on the south coast, even in Hampshire where the first R in ‘barber’ is very often clearly audible. (Imagine John Arlott saying it if you’re a cricket fan of a certain vintage and you’ll certainly get my meaning.)

62. Well above my level today.
    Thanks both.

63. Loonapick @ 59: Do you not agree that you would understand a sentence where the two pronunciations of Baba and Barber at their *MOST* extreme were swapped. If someone said Ali BarrBurrr would you not know who they were referring to? If a foreigner asked for directions to a Ba! Ba! would you not have a clue what they were referring to?

    They sound alike. It doesn’t have to match, you just need to understand what is being said.

    Crikey – thinking about what goes as given for “rhymes” in song makes this pale into insignificance, but here it’s still hotly contested when there’s a minor stress difference between the two pronunciations.

64. MarkN – I do agree with your opening sentence. Not sure I’d understand if a foreigner asked me where the BA BA was. I might think he meant baby or sheep, but I take your point. The point I’m making is that crossword clues need to be precise to be fair. I myself submitted a puzzle recently where I had to change a clue because Auntie and Anti do not sound enough alike, so am as much a victim of pedantry as I am a pedant. I used “on Radio Scotland” as my homophone indicator in the end, to show that we pronounce the two the same in Scotland, although the English don’t.

65. Loonapick @64. Surprised you had to reclue auntie / anti – it appeared last week in a Gurdian puzzle. Oh, and there was much discussion as to whether or not they are homophones.

66. I’m fairly sure I’ve seen BEEFALO in a crossword before somewhere, probably in a cross themed one with mules, hinnies, ligers, tigons and many others I can’t now recall. Useful word to hang on to. 🙂

67. loonapick @ 64: It’s actually an interesting subject when you think more about it. I’m happy for loose homophones, but then your anti/auntie example stopped me. There’s not much between them, but for me absolutely not homophones. But I could understand a sentence where you swapped them. I definitely would want an indicator for regionality, and even then I’d be stretching.

    But I can’t see how Baba/Barber is egregious. Baba/baby is one letter different but is so far removed, but Baba/Barber is out by several letters, but being lazy I would pronounce them almost identically, personally.

68. Crossbar@66 I remember the cross theme but not the BEEFALO ?? will check later. Azed has used it I am sure , perhaps 5 or 6 years ago. Again I will check later .

69. Crossbar@66 the Brendan Noughts and Crosses theme ? Had a few you mentioned but not BEEFALO I think. It was in the first week of Wimbledon straight after a tennis theme.
    Azed was May 2017 first time I had seen it I think.

70. As the joke runs that one pahks one’s cah by Hahvahd Yahd*, I can imagine a stereotypical Bostonian saying he’s getting a haircut at the Bahbuh, but I find it hard to make that work in any of the other typical North American non-rhotic accents. (It doesn’t work in Brooklynese, and I don’t think it works in the Carolina low-country either, though that’s a tough accent to emulate.) That having been said, I’ve long gotten over giving a rat’s ass about homophones in British crosswords. I just accept in advance that some setters are in a state of warfare with the letter R, and leave it at that.

    *(Do not attempt to actually park your car by Harvard Yard. Street parking anywhere within a mile of Harvard is between rare and basically nonexistent, and the traffic pattern’s a nightmare. Take the T like sensible people.)

71. I put BEN GUNN assuming I didn’t get the homophone. Parsed crossing PLAID and corrected it but still didn’t get the homophone!

72. I’m in the same boat as Bonny Lass @35 and Sugar Butties @50: unimpressed with SIDE as a synonym for page

73. The homophone debate never seems to end. Bet Tramp wishes he’d gone with a pair of flipping sailors now! I prefer my puzzles with a little lateral thinking, for the most part.
    That said, I enjoyed the blog and the puzzle, particularly SUMATRA, DOMINIC RAAB (the clue, not the reality!) and STARFISH (where I needed all the crossers). I messed up 5d at first, going for FIRESTONE, which I hoped would turn out to be a shade of peach in some dictionary somewhere. Tant pis, as they say, allegedly.
    Thanks, l and T

74. Did anyone else toy with “bag” being a synonym for “hang” — as in fatally catch — so erroneously had “gab” instead of GAS for 25A?

75. loonapick — you don’t want the apostrophe in “it’s” in 11a unless you mean “it is step.”

    I dredged up TRAP SHOOTER from somewhere, though I think it’s called “skeet shooting” in the US, unless that’s something different.

    Never heard of NAGWARE, but it put itself together deplorably easily.

    I’ve run across MINICABs here, and had assumed they were just like regular cabs but smaller. This time I looked it up — what a surprise.

    What’s with this long A” To me, a long A is the sound in “take.” To some, perhaps it’s the sound in “palm.” But does anybody say “Ali Bah-bah”? Or even “Ali Bay-bay”? Surely the second A is a schwa, unstressed (like the second syllable of “barber,” rhotic or not).

    mrpenney@70 The vowel in question is not the A in “calm” but the A in “plan” or “cat.” I think that pronunciation is limited to Eastern Massachusetts.

    Yes, Andrew@74, I had GAB until BACKSTAGE put me right.

    Enjoyable puzzle and blog, thanks Tramp and loonapick.

76. When unfamiliar with a word or meaning, check the dictionaries and other sources. Accept that you don’t know the entire English language. For instance:
    SIDE/PAGE
    Chambers OL:
    (SIDE) 15 a page
    (PAGE) 1 one side of a leaf in a book, etc.

    NAGWARE
    Not in Chambers or Collins, but obviously a newer term:
    The Free Dictionary gives:
    nagware: Software that periodically prompts the user to register the product. … Also called “annoyware.”

    ps.
    I originally tried NAGGING, discovering that GING is an Aussie word for catapult/slingshot which might be considered a product.

77. “Sides” are also excerpts (or pages) from a script, used by actors in auditions and acting classes.

78. mrpenny@70 reminds me of one of my teachers who was from Boston. She would would have said Cah-Pahk for car park, but also talked about the island country of Cuber (or that’s how I heard it).

79. There have been a few ongoing discussions on here in the last few days that make me realise (in a positive, horizon-expanding, though-provoking way) that there are so many things that each of us take for granted as ‘accepted knowledge’ and yet we all have gaps in our knowledge, we all have unrecognised confirmation biases about what’s ‘right’, ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’… and we’re all right!

    Whether it’s differences in geography, dialect, cultural knowledge, socio-demographics, age, whatever — reading the thoughts of other crossword solvers is a fascinating insight into the minds of other people.

    And long may that continue 🙂

80. ALI BARBER:
    I like the Ollie Barber mentioned by copmus and love the wordplays used by many salons and barbershops: Shear Bliss, Blade Runners, Hair Razors, From Hair to Eternity, Rock Paper Scissors, to name a few.

    Maybe we could call it a pun instead of a homophone?

81. Rob T @ 79: I agree. That’s why I deplore the use of ‘obscure’ unless qualified by something like ‘to me’.

    Calgal @ 80: I’ve been pushing your suggestion for three years or more, but sadly it’s never gained traction. I hope you have more success than I did.

82. Andrew@74 I also had gab rather than gas. I guess that’s why they are crosswords with crossers to check each other.

83. Across The Pond @82: from your name I assume that you — as am I and Valentine @75 — are a resident of these United States. Perhaps “gab” is more of an Americanism, and hence misleading all three of us. Me: born in Nottinghamshire, resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, emigrated in 1976.

84. Roz@69 There was the OXO one as you say, but I’m pretty sure there was one much longer ago than that. Might even have been a holiday jumbo. Lost in the mists of time. I don’t do Azed, so it can’t be that that’s ringing bells.

85. Crossbar and Roz: BEEFALO appeared in an Araucaria Alphabetical, 26,047. (With pairs of clues being rhyming couplets – brilliant!). Is that what you were thinking of? Clue: “Insect on flower gets round to cross-bred kine (7)”.

    On the homophone question, can we all not just accept that if it’s a homophone in at least one well-known accent of English then it’s ok, even if that isn’t our own accent? Ok, in the Guardian and other London-based papers it’s usually a homophone in RP, but not always, as in Brendan’s ANTI/auntie last week.

86. I went somewhat awry in the south-east corner after unthinkingly slapping in PROCESSED CEREAL – surely cereal can be corny?

    Ah well, let’s see what tomorrow brings.

87. Enjoyable but DNF – FREESTONE, NAGWARE and BEEFALO were new for me. SUOERTONIC escaped me because of the misdirection, trying to put ‘note’ in ‘score’

88. Thanks loonapick and Tramp, nice to see new terms coming into play. While I admire Rob T’s world embracing view I had always sided with the muffins of the world in wanting to stamp out misuse of technical terms that would lead us all into a soupy mess of confusion. I was always happy that a capsicum was a vegetable until I saw a bloke in South London last week eating one like an apple and even less sure after today’s comments. Oh well…

89. FREESTONE ? BEEFALO? ACUTENESS? NAGWARE? All guessable I suppose but new. Apart from the rhotic etc issues who would equate BARBER and cut?
    But …I was entertained so…
    Thanks both

90. Loonapick@59
    Overegging the pudding?

91. Pino @90

    B****y predictive text, lol

92. Coming from London I pronounce it Alley Barber. I understand that many others don’t, but surely they are aware that some of us do, and that justifies the clue. I don’t pronounce auntie and anti the same, but I enjoyed the recent clue that worked that way.

    Thanks to both for puzzle and blog.

93. I agree with RobT @21 that “ACUTENESS as a synonym of ‘wisdom’ seemed slightly tenuous” – not only that, but ‘lovely’=CUTE seems a bit of a stretch too – no doubt it’s in Chambers.

    I have a lot of sympathy for Loonapick @59ff, though I can also see where MarkN @58ff is coming from! I think dodgy homophones only need commenting on by those who struggled to solve the clue because of the dodginess, or by the blogger in anticipation. As one or two others have mentioned, the setter’s use of a “?” at the end of the clue to indicate dodginess would help. It’s too much to expect everyone to stop complaining about them, though. 🙂

    I’ve been doing the crosswords out of order, having been away recently and trying to catch up, so today I failed abysmally on a Vlad from over a week ago, and it was nice to get back to this much more pleasant* and accessible offering from Tramp. Thanks to him and to our blogger.

    *(Except for DOMINIC RAAB, of course.)

94. An excellent crossword, and an interesting blog and comments page – it took just as long to solve one as to read the other!

    FREESTONE, NAGWARE and BEEFALO were all new to me but in no way spoiled the puzzle.

    Thanks to everyone, but especially to Tramp and loonapick.

95. Thanks Tramp and loonapick. Enjoyed this apart from the odd clunky clue e.g. BEEFALO. NAGWARE took me longest and I’m supposed to be an IT buff – I’ve certainly installed enough of it over the years. Loved the grid and the fact that 1ac,1d and 23d were probably the easiest clues. I am though entirely disinterested in the vagaries of homophones !

96. Thanks Lord Jim @85, must be about 10 years ago from the number, much earlier than the Azed. Crossbar I can’t think of any others.
    Penfold@86, I had the same idea but only wrote in the PROCESSED, I was patient for once and the Down clues helped me later.

97. Late as usual. Didn’t get SUMATRA, OUTSTRIP (because I had got fixated on it starting with Overt) and NAGWARE – a word I didn’t know and couldn’t derive, but which will now stick in my brain. I don’t hate it as a concept.
    [There is a site called Bandcamp which allows you to listen to music for free (put up by the artist). If you listen to the same thing more than three times it suggests (but does not insist) you pay for it. That seems totally reasonable to me. It gets the music out there, and there is some recompense for the artist if people like it. And Wikipedia has just asked for money. I do think it’s a great resource and worth paying for if you can afford it, so it can be available to all. The Guardian itself does the same.]

98. [Moth @97: I’m one of the few dinosaurs that still buy CD’s and I always check Bandcamp first because the artists get a bigger share of the sale than other outlets give them.]

99. Tony if that makes you a dinosaur I must be pre-Cambrian , never bought a CD. We only buy original vinyl, analogue recording, first pressing.

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