Guardian 28,843 – Imogen

84 comments on “Guardian 28,843 – Imogen”

1. Classy puzzle from Imogen. Some slightly obscure GK required for THE LION IN WINTER and GREENGAGE SUMMER, although I was aware of both films from the 60s. A bit uneasy about BOTTOMLESS with MND and defective in the same sentence, although maybe just being too sensitive. LAWN fabric was new and I had to google the Spanish composer, FALLA, to be sure of my parsing. Very enjoyable with ASQUITH being my favourite. I presumed that tangle being a type of seaweed was just a cryptic definition, although not a particularly good one.

   Ta Imogen & Andrew

2. I suppose there’s a mini theme with SUMMER, SPRING, FALL and WINTER.

3. [dress] suits me too

4. There is a seaweed called tangle and sometimes we encounter ‘un’ meaning ‘a’ as a colloquialism: is that it? It’s my best effort!

5. UNTANGLE I parsed as a simple cryptic as TANGLE is a type of seaweed. If I’m missing something else, it’s well hidden.

   THINGS FALL APART – I thought the blog might have mentioned that it’s a line from The Second Coming by W B Yeats, immediately followed by “the centre cannot hold”.

   BOTTOMLESS I got from crossers but didn’t parse as I’d read MND as motor neurone disease! No wonder it didn’t make sense until I got here and the penny clanged.

   Slight quibble at ‘remains’ plural becoming ASH singular in ASQUITH; I know ASH is generally the word for the substance but it’s referred to as ASHES when it relates to bodily remains. But I got it.

   Other than that, a fairly accessible and enjoyable puzzle.

   Thanks both.

6. 6 down: I don’t know the Achebe novel, but the main reference is surely the inter-war Yeats poem, as prophetically weighty now as it ever was:
   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

7. Well spotted, AlanC @2 – clever to include them in all the long clues, and in order.

8. Thanks Imogen and Andrew
   I think the BOTTOMLESS clue has another level – “fundamentally” refers to the bottom.
   I didn’t understand UNTANGLE either. I also thought of DRESS SUITS first, but considered the plural excessive!
   Favourite ATTORNEY for the misleading “not yet a lawyer” – I tried INTERNEE first (though INTERN would have been more accurate, I think).

9. I agree with you about UNTANGLE, Andrew – and came here expecting part or all of the word to be some kind of seaweed. I also hadn’t heard of the 2D novel and arrived at it only after getting all the crossers, guessing the second word had to be SUMMER, and googling the rest.
   For me, 6D calls Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” to mind
   (“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity….”
   …which, of course, has a depressing resonance with today’s political scene.)
   Clearly this is where Achebe got the title, though not having read his novel, I have no idea if the clue & answer relate to it or to the original poem.
   A fine crossword – though I have a quibblette with 3D: surely it should be AMND?
   Thanks to Imogen for the entertainment and to Andrew for the much-needed explanations.

10. I’m glad it wasn’t just me with DRESS SUITS, and that I’m not alone in failing to understand UNTANGLE.
    I thought GELATIN and BOTTOMLESS were very neatly economical (when I hear someone described as a fundamentalist, the wordplay enthusiast in me always starts wondering whether that’s because the person concerned is talking out of their fundament).
    I’d never heard of GREENGAGE SUMMER but between crossers and wordplay it was gettable, and I don’t mind that sort of obscurity.
    ASQUITH is clever – and timely, given that we have a PM who has been “about to” resign for what seems like a very long time. (Asquith led us into a national disaster, too)
    THINGS FALL APART is surely a reference to the chilling lines in The Second Coming – “Things fall apart/ The centre cannot hold;/ The best lack all conviction while/ The worst are full of passionate intensity…”
    Or, as another poet wrote in the inter-war years: The glass is falling all the time/ The glass will fall forever;/ But if you break the bloody glass/ You won’t hold up the weather.
    Grateful thanks to Imogen and Andrew

11. Sorry to those above me whose comments I echoed: I’m a slow typist!

12. muffin @8: yes I also got the ´fundamentally’ reference.

13. As Welbeck @11 would probably agree – it would be useful to have a refresh button which one could use after drafting a comment but before posting it.
    Says the man who found he was the fourth to mention The Second Coming.

14. Not one of my favourite solves. Obscure films and composers makes it start to feel like Mastermind. Also why in 3d is it ‘an’ MND given the plays title is A Midsummer… and usually abbreviated to AMND? Maybe it’s just that I went off down a Motor Neurone Disease rabbit hole.

    Still thanks to both for getting the grey cells firing.

15. I heard of Falla for the first time just yesterday as Radio 3 played something by him!

    I also had Rob T’s 5 qualms about ash, but decided the singular could be remains; and also had to look up MND which was motor neuron disease.

    I enjoyed most of this today – a slightly easier Imogen than usual?

16. As tangle is a synonym for seaweed, maybe UNTANGLE is a dd of “straighten” and “out seaweed”. Like AlanC my favourite is ASQUITH for the amusingly topical surface.
    Thanks Andrew and Imogen.

17. There was a lovely puzzle set by Rodriguez (our Picaroon) a few weeks ago in the Indy, based on the poem – it’s worth looking at the blog http://www.fifteensquared.net/2022/06/25/independent-11139-by-rodriguez/

18. Slow typing, looks like its been untangled already.

19. I went well for a while then came a bit unstuck. I got 13a MOTHERS BOY (MOTHER’S BOY) but couldn’t parse it as I didn’t spot the anagram. Now I am kicking myself. A clever clue. The others I couldn’t understand were 11a UNTANGLE (NHO that seaweed), 16a GELATIN (cricket references always evade me), 3d BOTTOMLESS (like others above I thought it was a reference to Motor Neurone Disease) and 8d THINGS FALL APART (FALLA was unfamiliar). When I checked my question-marked clues against the blog, I also realised that I was actually a DNF, as I had PROMOTER instead of PROMPTER at 20a – a silly mistake now that I re-read the wordplay. Like Andrew, I hadn’t heard of 2d GREENGAGE SUMMER so had to painstakingly work it through. Thanks to Imogen, I learned a lot today. And due to my difficulties, Andrew’s blog was much appreciated. (P.S. Also didn’t link the seasonal mini-theme words – well spotted AlanC@2.)

20. This required 2 sittings but I got there in the end even if I had the same issues as most others. Is it usual to shorten Shakespeare’s play to MND or even AMND?

21. Forgot to thank Imogen and Andrew. Ta!

22. I usually find Imogen much harder than today’s, which had quite a lot of write-ins (The Lion in Winter particularly). As an ex-lecturer in Shakespeare, I’ve always used the abbreviation MND so it came to mind immediately; I like the neat clue for bottomless.

23. Enjoyable puzzle.
    Liked BOTTOMLESS (loi).
    I did not parse 11ac – was wondering if it was a cd.

    New: REPINE, GREENGAGE SUMMER.

    Thanks, both.

24. I found the seaweed.

25. I’m a big fan of Rumer Godden and GREENGAGE SUMMER was my second solve. She wrote another coming of age film as well PEACOCK SPRING. Well worth a read. What struck me in my teens, when I first encountered her, was that the “good” characters frequently acted badly and vice versa. Everyone should read King fishers Catch Fire, if only for her description of Kashmir at that time.

26. [Can I recommend “La vida breve” by de Falla? It’s a wonderful atmospheric piece.]

27. Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

    I had no problem with ASH in 4D: fag ash is the remains of a cigarette.

28. NeilH @13 It is a liitle more cumbersome, but just highlight and save your comment, then refresh the page before pasting and posting it – or not, if someone else with quicker typing fingers has got in ahead of you. Has spared me from many an unnecessary duplication.

29. A favourite uncle died of MND so I did think of that first, but then was amused by the.play on.Bottom-less. [And my favourite Eleanor was Jane Laportaire’s in The Devil’s Crown]. I do enjoy an Imogen, and ta Andrew.

30. [You just beat me to it Spooner’s catflap@28, but fortunately I followed my own and your advice so I avoided repeating it 😀 ]

31. Simon S @27 – damn good point! Quibble withdrawn.

32. Difficult if you didn’t get all the long down clues so I basically gave up. I’m wondering whether grumpiness relates to a particular day of the week. Another one who tried to work Motor Neurone Disease into 3 down but “fundamentally” was a nice touch. UNTANGLE is dodgy.
    Shirl @26, Manuel de Falla is indeed someone I love to listen to and La Vida Breve is one of his best.

33. Liked watching both the films at 2d, 7d, some time ago now, and love the Yeats poem quoted at 6d. But couldn’t necessarily find any themed connection between the three of them. Struggled to parse UNTANGLE, ASCEND and TO-DO. Actually had Ascent in place and Tu-tu, but still confused. Also BOTTOMLESS and how exactly THINGS FALL APART fitted together, if that’s not me at cross purposes with myself. Rather a strange solve this morning, I thought…

34. Thanks for the blog , AlanC straight in at number 1 and 2 and a theme. Take a bow, we truly are not worthy.
    Recent Imogen puzzles have been much tougher, maybe all the long entries and a lot of anagrams made this easier. ASQUITH and DIURNAL were pretty neat and I liked ELECTORATE although the full etc gave it away.
    The MND is a little unfortunate but surely accidental, the usual meaning in crosswords is the one used today.
    GYRE from “The Second Coming” was in a few puzzles at the same time quite recently.

35. I agree with Roz @34 that this one seemed a bit more straightforward than many Imogen puzzles.

    I was another DRESS SUITS, and ‘Motor Neurone Disease’ although I see that the RSC seem to use MND for the play. It’s rather strange that neither Chambers nor Collins has MOTHER’S BOY, although the Chambers Thesaurus has ‘mummy’s boy’. I did like the clue for this one with the ‘strangely rhymes’. I also liked GELATIN with the cleverly unobtrusive ‘on’.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

36. I thought the Rumer Godden novel was The Greengage Summer. Is it really acceptable to omit the definite article?

    Also, does peter in this context really stand alone? “I don’t think he’ll make it, he’ll peter [out] at the end”.

    Enjoyed some of this but things like MND irritate slightly.

37. I missed a few of the finer points here (including the four seasons and the Yeats poem) but still enjoyed the puzzle. I thought MND had medical connotations too, but once I’d twigged, BOTTOMLESS finally made sense and was my favourite.

    I’m a fan of Rumer Godden and enjoyed both the book and film version of The GREENGAGE SUMMER. One of her other books, “An Episode of Sparrows”, was made into a film called “Innocent Sinners” which I think is one of the hidden little gems of British cinema of the 1950’s.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

38. Neatly finished, just came unstuck with the Spanish artist. As a consequence 16a and 19a eluded me, looking forward to checking the parsing.
    The film in 7d was no problem, I remember the film with Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn.
    Thanks both.

39. Oops, he’s a composer

40. Lots to like .. but some just did not go in.. Another kind day fm the setters!

41. Also got medically obsessed with MND.. Jolly good to all those who got it!

42. Like Alan C@1, I was uneasy about the clue for BOTTOMLESS as my father died of Motor Neurone Disease. However, spotting the 4 seasons early led to the soothing lyrics and melody of Carole King’s ”You’ve got a Friend” …… winter, spring, summer, and fall ….. running through my mind. I like to think that Imogen was sending a message to a special person, or all of us.

    Also, like Muffin@8, I interpreted the clue for BOTTOMLESS with the sense of ‘fundamentally’ in both senses, and a good pun, so that cheered me up as well.

    ASH in two clues in the NW seemed a little pointed, or repetitious, or just showing Imogen’s versatility. However neither are particularly novel, ‘remains’ and ‘a quiet’.

43. Nwst losing our much loved Uncle Alec to mnd I wasn’t uneasy, pdm @42, but yes, ordinary things, including cw puzzles, can bring up grief.

44. I thought this was Imogen at his less-tough, except maybe for a couple of the long’uns.

    I also thought Imogen was being uncharacteristically imprecise in some of the synonyms, which for me did not pass the substitution test:

    In 20a, “become exhausted” =”peter out”, but out was missing.
    In 1d, the answer is a verb phrase but the definition is a noun (someone). Is the question-mark sufficient?
    GELATIN = a sticker? Really?

    However, a lot of clever stuff, as usual. Fave was ASQUITH.

45. [ gif@43, thank you, and sorry, I only saw your post @29 about your uncle after I posted. My sympathies to you. It was the ‘MND performance’ and ‘defective’ in the clue for BOTTOMLESS that affected me, as my Dad never ‘performed’ and was not ‘defective’, ever.]

46. Very enjoyable, even if in the easy side for Imogen.

    I got stuck with some – had promoter not PROMPTER, until the parsing clicked. Also got myself in knots by convincing myself “Spanish composer has to leave” = anagram of Spanish minus the letters of “has” = spin. Saved by seeing the theme so knew it had to be fall instead. Spent some time in that black hole!

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

47. Can I just add that one of my favourite Joni Mitchell tracks (from an album later than her commercial peak) sets the Yeats poem to music. The track is called Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Probably didn’t impress Yeats fans, or non diehard Mitchell fans but I love it and it helped me with this crossword.

48. DrW @44 I saw the definition in 1D as ‘Astonish someone’, which seems to work OK (you could argue that you need an ‘on’ at the end of the answer, but there are only 15 squares!).

49. Thanks Imogen & Andrew. Like others, I found this surprisingly accessible for an Imogen – almost Vulcanesque in places. I think Roz @34 is right, it’s the four long entries and anagrams that made it so. Didn’t know the seaweed, but the solution was obvious enough, and I’ve never heard of Greengage Summer but had no trouble unravelling the anagram into something that seemed likely. The Lion in Winter is the play to me rather than the film, but Henry and Eleanor are a bit of a giveaway. MND is an abbreviation I’ve seen often enough in crosswords for it to have lodged in the memory, so no difficulty there. Completely oblivious to the theme until I came here.

50. Wellneck@9 and others: Achebe”s novel gives these lines from Yeats’ poem as an epigraph:
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
    The novel is post-colonial fiction, and deals with the impact of colonialism at personal and social levels in part of Nigeria. It is a powerful work – I studied it 30 years ago and still feel its resonance – title and epigraph both most apposite.

51. Sorry, that was Wellbeck – my fat finger and tiny keyboard

52. JinA @19 & ArkLark @46: I also had PROMOTER for 20a, and was so convinced by it that I even re-typed the O (thinking I’d mistyped it) the 1st time the Check All button removed it! My favourite was ATTORNEY – didn’t spot the anagram & was struggling to find a job title for the “not yet” lawyer 🙂

53. A good puzzle with an unobtrusive theme, though I found things fall apart a rather strange item to be clued in a crossword.

    Shakespeare appearing elsewhere today, which has reminded me to agree with Sarah @ 22 that the usual abbreviation for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is certainly MND.

54. the last Plantagenet @ 53: not only that, but BOTTOMLESS also appears in the Shakesperean themed crossword to which I assume you’re referring (Tees in the Indy). The second day in a row on which there has been a coincidence between solutions in the Guardian and the Indy – yesterday we had the equally Shakespearean AGINCOURT in the Quiptic, very similarly clued in the Indy.
    Can these really be coincidences?

55. Thanks Andrew for ironing out some missed parsing eg the GEL of 16a ( for a cricket fan i miss that too many times).
    I generally find Imogen tricky, perhaps because the clues are often a little wordy hence with more room to be misdirected, but never quite enjoy him as much as other setters (maybe also I find some looseness eg Peter (Out) and “A send” – what? – annoying).
    3d was great though once I had corrected GRAY to GREY, getting it from the fundament and then the MND light dawning, enjoyed the rhyme of 13a too.
    I thought that things falling apart would be the result of the centre not holding rather than vice-versa but that’s only on a brief acquaintance with the poem. Anyway thanks Imogen!

56. Some nice touches (AGOG, MOTHER’S BOY, ATTORNEY), but overall left me a bit cold I’m afraid.

    I’m with those who felt PETER without OUT for ‘become exhausted’ was sloppy, and Chambers agrees. Never heard of GREENGAGE SUMMER or THE LION IN WINTER, although both were manageable. Didn’t know FALLA, but will leave it to others to decide whether he’s fairly obscure to non-classical fans or it’s just a knowledge gap.

    In any case, after Herb Alpert yesterday, I hope we’ve exhausted the week’s supply of older references that have not really made it to the modern day, particularly when they form part of the wordplay rather than an answer.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

57. Surprised that no one else seems to be concerned about the missing definite article in TheGREENGAGE SUMMER.

58. I read 1dn as a cd referring to April Fool’s Day. Someone who had forgotten it was April 1st might be easily “astonished” by a practical joker.

59. William @ 57 I think that colloqiually, whether in speech or written down, it’s common to omit definite articles, eg I would ask someone “Have you read Kerouac’s Subterraneans?” or “Do you like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon?”, both of which should be preceded by The.

60. Very enjoyable. Pretty much with Andrew’s comments all the way, but needed him to tell me that MND = Midsummer Night’s Dream. I threw in mummy’s boy without thinking and that held me up for a while; I don’t think that I have heard MOTHER’S BOY before. LOI was GELATIN as I forgot about the cricket meaning of on=leg – one of the first things I learned when starting these crosswords a couple of years ago but I haven’t seen it recently so the grey cells needed a recharge. I liked the definition for ELECTORATE (no comment on l for lunch).
    Thanks Andrew and Imogen.

61. Paul @ 60 It’s not l = lunch, it’s from “At first, Organising Lunch…“.

62. Jim@56: Imogen helpfully said “Spanish composer”, and there are a few de Falla pieces that are programmed regularly, so he’s probably GCMK at least.
    Rumer Godden is not as well known as she deserves, in my opinion.
    Gazzh@55, would you be happier with 23A if the homophone refers to “an email command”?

63. Hated this, but that’s not Imogen’s fault: my brother-in-law’s waiting for a diagnosis on whether what he has is motor neurone disease or something else. I’d been putting it out of my mind and so 3D hit me where it hurts.
    The state of my so-called LAWN’s something else I didn’t want reminding of…
    Some great clues, though… Merci, Imogen.

64. Not sure why April is mentioned in 1d. Spring ‘officially’ starts in March and actually starts in February as far as I’m concerned. Traditionally Imbolc on 2nd February is the beginning of spring. Logically 21st March must be mid-spring, as it comes halfway between midwinter and midsummer. However, I got it from the crossers.

65. AuntRuth @64
    I’ve never understood why Midsummer’s Day is June 24th. Summer has barely started by then!

66. AuntRuth @64 – I took it as a sideways reference to April Fool’s Day given the solution was about springing surprises, though I could have completely imagined that 🙂

67. TimSee@62 thanks for your response but isn’t that what it says already? I can just about see that SEND is an email command but how we get from an to a for the start of the word is less clear. Perhaps “ Rise with a command to email client overheard” would have left me in a better mood but It is even wordier!

68. [The Lion In Winter is the perfect Christmas movie: a forced family reunion in which the entire household does nothing but engage in bitter recrimination and the endless settling of scores, ending on Twelfth Night with Katharine Hepburn preferring to go back to prison rather than spend any more time with her godforsaken brood]

69. [Wordworrier at 50/51: thank you for the info on the Achebe novel. I shall make a point of tracking down a copy and reading it…]

70. Gazzh@67 – what I was trying (badly) to say was that I took the phrase that has a synonym that is a homophone of ASCEND to be “an email command”. It was enough to keep me happy with the clue anyway, but then I am happy to get an answer I can parse without help from our wonderful bloggers.

71. TimSee thanks yes I get it now, was just being obtuse (inflexible!) i think earlier.

72. As an amateur (and now lapsed) player of the Spanish Guitar, I knew Manuel de Falla, having learnt one of his pieces (a challenge for an amateur). However my understanding is that his last name is “de Falla” NOT “Falla” and that this is a similar construction as the Irish O’Shea (for example). Just as you would not call John O’Shea “Mr Shea”; Manuel de Falla should not be referred to as “Falla”

    Nevertheless, thanks to Imogen and to Andrew for the blog.

73. Great crossword. I have noticed some people comment that it should be AMND – isn’t there also an article missing from 2d? I believe the book and film adaptation are called “The Greengage Summer”.

74. 4:58 @73: THE MISSING ARTICLES! These threads can inspire a new game. Enough with spotting the theme of the filled out grid. Let’s spot the theme of the commentary instead.

75. Thanks Andrew – particularly for elucidating GELATIN, which I had to guess at. I must admit, being stymied so often from completing a crossword by my ignorance of cricket has, over the years, turned my indifference to the sport into active hatred!

76. what is a guardian ?my website

77. I also put DRESS SUITS instead of DRESS SHIRT. I had a few problems with this clue. First of all, women wear shirts too, so “His ’n’ hers”, does not really work, at least not as well as DRESS and SUIT do. Second, at least in Australia, a dress shirt is a shirt that you wear with a tie, as opposed to a casual shirt. It does not mean “formal wear” here, and women wear them too.

78. I’m feeling a bit grumpy this morning. I had UNTANGLE & AGOG, but could not parse them. I’m still not convinced, but I haven’t read all the comments yet. I was looking for UNTANGLE to be a seaweed, and I still don’t see where Un comes from. Also I don’t equate Ago with Gone.
    However, not getting ELECTORAL was entirely my own fault. I too had Dress Suits, so had dismissed the anagram. Doh! And I thought of GELATIN, but did not think it was a Sticker, so didn’t get as far as turning Leg around (despite being a cricket watcher).

79. Oh, where are my manners!? Thank you Andrew for the blog. Without you I would still be puzzling over my failed parsing.

80. Oh, and GFO@77. I sympathise about Dress Suits. But women wear suits too, and if you wear a tie with a shirt, I would call that pretty formal these days. However, I made the same ‘mistake’, so I do think it’s ambiguous. I like a solution that when you get it, you know it’s right. But I suppose if I had persevered with the ELECTORAL anagram, I would have been corrected by the crossing T, so I’m not really complaining about that one.

81. ELECTORATE, not Electoral!

82. Have to admit this took me two goes. Put in BOTTOMLESS from crossers without parsing or bothering about MND which I’d not seen before.
    Thanks both

83. I think the issue with UNTANGLE can be resolved if you split the clue in a different place: . For the direct definition, just use “straighten”, not “straighten out”. “Out seaweed” then equals “un-tangle”. Ungrammatical but I think it makes sense.

84. Also, if you don’t know Manuel de Falla’s music, you should definitely check it out! I’d start with the ballet The Three Cornered Hat, the work for orchestra and piano Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and the Siete canciones populares españolas – wonderful stuff, and there’s plenty more where that came from. His short work for guitar, Homenaje (written in honor of Debussy on the occasion of his death) is a tiny masterpiece. And his surname is Falla, not “de Falla”, in the same way that Beethoven’s surname is “Beethoven” and not “van Beethoven”.

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