Guardian 29,122 / Pangakupu

101 comments on “Guardian 29,122 / Pangakupu”

1. SALAMI
   LAM=sudden or hurried flight especially from the law (in American English) =American flight
   SAI(d) mostly spoken

2. 24a is SAI(d) mostly spoken, around LAM (American flight)

   Chamber has…
   lam2 /lam/ (US sl)
   noun
   Escape or hurried flight, esp from the police

3. I think 24 is “sai[d]” (mostly spoken about) inside “lam” as in going on the lam, meaning on the run. I agree about never being on this setter’s wavelength so many thanks for the blog!

4. Thank you all – I’m relieved to see that I would never have got that, as I’ve never heard the expression!

5. I woke at 4 this morning and made the mistake of glancing at the crossword. The last one in was 25A. A word I didn’t know, but it was not too difficult to work out. I think this was the toughest of the week (?) Worthy of a Friday. So many excellent clues. Favourites include CUPOLA, FINGERNAIL and CITY DESK. Some may raise an eyebrow at 12 D (!) I was also uncertain about the parsing of SALAMI, so thanks to those who have commented above. An excellent end to the week. After that I managed another three hours. With thanks to Pangakupa and Eileen.

6. Ran out of time, did not finish the NW corner. I failed to solve 1,9,11ac and 1,2,3d.

   Of the ones I solved, I could not parse 24ac, 7d. Also 11ac.

   New for me: SANNYASI (although I remembered ‘sanyasin’ so I managed to solve this).

   Thanks to Eileen, Pangakupu, and those who explained 24ac.

7. This was the hardest puzzle for some weeks in my opinion. I nearly gave up on several occasions but doggedly got there in the end. Like you Eileen I struggle to tune into Pangakupu but his clues are fair and stick to the rules. LOI was SALAMI with no idea how to parse so thanks to those who got here before me.
   So that you P for the very tough challenge and E for the excellent blog.

8. PURITAN
   The whole clue should be underlined, I think.

9. Got there in the end but I had the same difficulty as Eileen in parsing 24a. I realise that I had actually met the expression ‘lam’ before, but I didn’t bring it to mind.

10. Forgot to thank the setter and the blogger.
    Thanks, Phi and Eileen!
    An enjoyable puzzle and an excellent blog!

11. As is customary in Pangakupu’s puzzles, there is a Maori nina down the middle of the grid. MATARIKI is a Maori celebration that marks the beginning of the Maori lunar new year, and this year falls today, Friday 14th July. Details here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki

12. Oops!
    Thanks, Pangakupu and Eileen!

13. Excellent fun!
    Just got back from Greek holiday so a big fan of 15dn…

14. Today is Matariki

15. I think PERFORMING ARTS is just a reverse anagram. Great puzzle Thanks

16. I didn’t find this as difficult as earlier puzzles by Pangakupu, so not sure if the setter is getting more lenient or if I have found the right wavelength. I do hope it is the latter as I love a good tussle! My favourites are SEA URCHIN, FIASCO and APOLOGIA, although I thought it all was smoothly clued. Like Eileen (and others, I suspect) I didn’t have a clue how to parse SALAMI, although I am familiar with LAM meaning flight – shades of Philip Marlow, perhaps. Thanks Pangakupu and Eileen for another fine puzzle accompanied by a fine blog.

17. Spooner’s catflap@11: Thanks for drawing attention to that. Well spotted..

18. I thought this was the best Pangakupu yet. I liked having to solve from first principles as many of the definitions were very nicely disguised

    I wondered if there was a historical issue between the Maori people and PURITANs that might explain the definition?

    Top ticks for IGNORAMUSES, CITY DESK, and OPPOSITE NUMBER

    Cheers P&E

19. Someone boasting, put a spoiler in the G thread about the M?ori new year so I had a couple of extra Nina fillers. I found this much easier than yesterday’s but I agree with Eileen about retuning into his wavelength. I agree with KVa @8 about the underlining of PURITAN. IGNORAMUSES was brilliant along with FINGERNAIL and SEA URCHIN. LAM was new for me as well.

    Ta Pangakupu & Eileen.

20. Petert@15
    PERFORMING ARTS
    I feel Eileen’s parsing is perfect.

21. I’m with Kva @8 If you frown at puns and conceal sex, you are haedly a social libertarian.
    Hollywood introduced e to the phrase “on the LAM”. I’ve no idea which films.
    Thanks P&E

22. Spooner’s catflap @11 – many thanks for that interesting extra.
    I know Pangakupu has a habit of including Maori messages but there’s no point in searching if you don’t know what you’re looking for!
    (It’s my birthday, too – and Bastille Day, as I found out as a little girl, when I consulted Whittaker’s Almanac, and enjoyed celebrating it in France for a number of years.)

23. Happy birthday Eileen.

24. I am sure that the first three commenters are right about the parsing of Salami. But I had it as Am (American) surrounded by Sali, which could be a homophone of “sally”, a flight of fancy. One’s thinking gets very tortuous with cryptic crosswords.

25. The word ACROSCI, which is a type of hair treatment product, appears as a Nina across the middle of the grid, but presumably not deliberately.

26. Oops, AROSCI.

27. Two toughies on the run – yesterday’s Imogen and today’s. Pity that a tennis reference wasn’t built into the clueing for 2d – TOPSPIN – with no cricket test match this week but plenty of Wimbledon! Spotted the NINA but got up too late to be the herald. But, as a francophile, was pleased to see Le Quatorze Juillet rewarded with three French ‘partials’ in the DOWN clues ( 3rd ref being Libération ) – the day when the aristocracy went DOWN.

    Too many excellent clues to mention individual ones but 12d, as SAID, was on the risqué side !!!

    Thank you Pangakupu and Eileen.

28. Happy birthday, Eileen. If it’s any consolation, I couldn’t sort out SALAMI either (even though I did know about going on the lam). Nor MYTH or TOPSPIN – and like PeterT@15, I had PERFORMING ARTS as a reverse anagram, though your parsing is probably the right one. Nail=nick? If Pangakupu says so – but I liked the digital coverage.
    I didn’t quite parse IMPRECISION (taking jail as a noun PRISON instead of a verb IMPRISON).

    I find Pangakupu’s style rather laborious but interesting – look at SANNYASI (nho) for an example. He has an eye for an interesting reverse, too – look at I RAM A LAC, and PUCE which made me laugh.

29. Yes, birthday wishes Eileen. My beloved mother, who passed away just over three years ago, was also 14th July and she loved the fact it is also Bastille Day. It fitted with her Republican spirit. On the subject of spirit, she was a great fan of G&T and I will have one this evening in her memory. I watched some of the Bastille coverage this morning on French tv via the internet. One of these years I will make the trip to see it in person. Though this is perhaps not the best of summers for a trip to Paris…

30. Great workout, thanks Pangakupu! Like many I didn’t know SUNNYASI and couldn’t parse SALAMI but otherwise I managed with only a little help from Bradford. And of course I missed the Nina although I was brought up in NZ so I should have looked for it. Will try to remember next time. Thanks Eileen (and early bloggers) for your excellent parsing!

31. Oh and happy birthday and Bastille Day!

32. A fairly steady solve, with some chewy parsings. OPPOSITE NUMBER was fun, and I liked CITY DESK – spent a while wondering if FT could be the ‘financial journalists’ as a collective.

    I was another who biffed PERFORMING ARTS as a reverse anagram, although Eileen’s parsing is better. NHO SANNAYASI and it took me a little while to figure out that ‘when’ wasn’t part of the reversal instructions, but ultimately satisfyingly clearly clued. ‘Digital’ is one of those misdirects that no longer carries any sort of misdirection for me. Also raised an eyebrow at 12D, cor blimey!

    Thanks Pangakupu, and thanks & happy birthday Eileen!

33. KVa@20 On reflection you are both right. I missed the person. Happy Birthday Eileen. I would like to celebrate by storming Strangeways, but my radical protest years are behind me now.

34. INS=’those who got elected’ Eh??? OK… if you’re elected then you’re ‘in’. But as a noun? “How did the election go, Susan?” — “Great! I’m an in.”

35. Re the auspicious day in Leicester and @23, @28, @29 and @31, would like to post a ‘ 4 across ‘ earworm

    https://youtu.be/zp32JdgG6hg

    Happy Birthday, Eileen
    – hope a LIMO will turn up and take you for an ALL-OUT celebration.

36. Once I solved PURITAN and thought “what a crap (and probably innacurate) definition it is, whatever it is” I just gave up and looked for a better crossword in the future.

37. I really struggled with this. I eventually filled the grid despite several unparsed and having to look up 25A.

    No complaints, though. There was nothing unfair here, just tough. And after all, it is Friday.

38. If this compiler is Phi I wouldn’t be at all surprised, so well-fashioned are the clues.

    I thought a SANNYASI was a bit much, and in the struggle to escape (or be on the lam from) another I’M ALAS reversal, the clue for SALAMI was pretty tough. I was looking in vain for a homophone as it goes. Maybe a hidden would have been better. See what I did there anyone?

39. Happy Birthday, Eileen! Like you I need to re-tune to this setter each time, but overall I found this his most accessible so far. Certainly easier than yesterday’s Imogen for me, anyway. A few missed parsings but they all produced ‘aha’ moments when the pennies dropped here. I previously had Pangakupu hovering near my as-yet-empty Do Not Attempt list, but on this showing I’m glad I persevered.

    Thanks both!

40. Sorry, pserve_p2 @34 – you won’t like this:
    Chambers ‘IN: noun, a member of the party in office’. I did look it up but decided not to mention it. 😉

    Thanks, all, for the greetings – no LIMO planned but a joint ALL-OUT celebration this evening with my daughter, who’s retiring from teaching today.

41. Congratulations Eileen.

42. I’m relieved that it wasn’t just me with SALAMI.
    SANNYASI was a new one on me (comforting to find that professional compilers also have grid-filling issues as they approach the bottom corners…) but a textbook case of how to cue an unfamiliar word. Absolutely clear wordplay.
    There were some brilliant surfaces, e.g 3d with the references to Alcatraz and bird man; and some superb clues. I think IGNORAMUSES was my favourite (Paul, eat your heart out!) but COPY, CITY DESK and TOPSPIN weren’t far behind.
    Pace Tim C @36, once you’ve encountered assorted stuff about reproduction, bras and orgasms you can see why a PURITAN might not be a favourite of the setter. Anyway, it’s a bit of whimsy that worked for some people but didn’t work for you. Life’s too short.
    Thanks to Pangakupu and the birthday girl.

43. Tricky puzzle, although I found it slightly easier than yesterday’s. Some imaginative constructions and mostly coherent surfaces.

    I’m another for whom SANNYASI was unknown, though the clear clueing and the crossers provided the solution (I think our setter had painted himself into a corner here) and SALAMI remained unparsed. I’m dubious about INS as ‘those who get elected’, but the intention was clear.

    My favourites: CUPOLA, APOLOGIA, CITY DESK, FALCONER (the Bird Man of Alcatraz reference is clever).

    My knowledge of Polynesian languages is far too exiguous even to look for a Nina.
    I suppose it is easier to execute one in M?ori because of its small repertoire of consonants and alternating vowels, but bravo to Pangakupu (to my surprise the macron appeared automatically – perhaps because it’s Bastille Day 🙂 ).

    Thanks to Pangakupu and Eileen

44. …well it appeared automatically as I was typing, but didn’t survive. Hélas.

45. NeilH @42
    I smiled at the Alcatraz reference. I was telling my grandson about the birdman when we went to the tennis on Tuesday. I’d been using Alcatraz as a mnemonic for the name of my new hero (could have made a crossword clue out of it!).

46. Petert@33
    If the ‘person’ is removed, you have a case for a reverse anagram (with the ‘creating’ relegated to a lowly link word status). Agree.

47. LAM
    Eileen, this is one of the many criminal slang words I learned from The Sopranos.

48. How does ‘g’ = Hunting?

    I arrives at CALAMARI by the completely erroneous route of taking ‘French body of water’ as LA MARIE, shrugging at not being able to parse, and taking it as a gift that’s I’d managed to get a answer.

49. ragged@48
    hunting=SEARCHINg
    hunting curtailed=SEARCHIN

50. Reference: SEA URCHIN

51. Happy birthday, Eileen. I hadn’t revisited since posting @11, so I missed the opportunity to get my good wishes in earlier.

52. Lay G @38 – Well identified. He is Phi, also Tick (Telegraph Toughie) and Pedro’

    And Happy Birthday Eileen.

53. Sagittarius @24: I parsed 24a as you did, having first guessed the answer, and reverse engineered.
    Happy Birthday Eileen, and thanks to you for the analysis, and to Pangakupu for the wrestle

54. Eileen @40: Chambers (of which my dislike is steadily growing) lists ‘in’ as ‘a member of the party in office’, which is rather more than simply being elected, but near enough. Collins online (bless!) doesn’t give it as a noun. Wiktionary gives: (chiefly in the plural) One who, or that which, is in; especially, one who is in office. The plural makes more sense: ‘ins and outs’ is a common enough phrase. But other expressions are available….

55. I have lived in the States for decades, but only remember hearing “lam” (as a noun) in “on the lam”, and that only in movies. One could argue that it doesn’t mean anything out of that phrase, but I’m not going to.

    Loved IGNORAMUSES. Some might wonder if “ignorami” is the proper plural, but it isn’t, since the word derives from a Latin verb, not a second declension noun.

    Happy birthday, Eileen

56. Happy Birthday Eileen!

57. Goodfellas (1990) – Tony Darrow as Sonny Bunz: “…I’m gonna wind up a lammist, I gotta go on the f*ckin’ lam in order to get away from this guy? This ain’t right, Paulie.”

58. Happy Bastille Birthday Eileen – It’s my sister-in-law’s, too. 🙂

59. This was definitely easier than yesterday’s Imogen for me – despite a poor night’s sleep. (Probably too excited about Bastille Day!) I knew SANNYASI as my mother was a follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for a number of years. This involved giving up all her worldy possessions, of course, but Bhagwan took on the onerous task of living in the luxury that his followers denied themselves, buying a fleet of 22 downs – actually Rolls Royces – with what they had given up. What a man!

    [Did you know that in a random group of 24 or more people, there is a better than even chance that two of them share a birthday? It’s called the birthday paradox. By my count there were 31 people commenting below Eileen’s blog before me, and indeed there is now someone else here with reason to celebrate Bastille Day.]

    Thanks to Pangakupu and Eileen.

60. Happy birthday, Eileen, and happy Matariki to those who celebrate.

    Today I learned that “on the lam” is an Americanism. Putting the word “American” in the clue thus made it harder for me–I was sure it accounted for one of the two A’s. But I figured it out quickly enough. I’ve only ever encountered the expression in movies, but that may be because I have few (read: no) underworld connections.

    I do feel like Pangakupu’s puzzles have gotten a bit less impenetrable for me, but even so, this was far from a walk in the park! Many thanks to him and to Eileen.

61. SaLAMi reminded me of Blue Öyster Cult’s “I’m on the lam but I ain’t no sheep”.

    Many happy returns Eileen.

62. “On the lam” may well be related to the Irish phrase ” on the lang”, which means truanting from school, so, I suppose, on the run from the authorities. Found in, for example, Frank O’Connor’s poignant story “Christmas Morning.”

63. Thanks Pangakupu for the mental workout. I had to guess-and-check a few letters to complete several clues in the top half of the crossword but most of this fell into place without too much angst. The dearth of anagrams made this more challenging for me. My top picks were CITY DESK, FIASCO, IGNORAMUSES, and PURITAN. Thanks Eileen for parsing and I hope you enjoy this and many more birthdays.

64. Dr WhatsOn @55 – I’ve been so relieved that no one questioned the plural of IGNORAMUS – shades of the dreaded ‘octopi’ dispute!.
    IGNORAMUS is the first person plural of the Latin verb ignorare, so means ‘We do not know’. I’d often wondered about this, so finally looked it up just now and find, from Collins, that it’s (unsurprisingly) a legal term: ‘C16: from legal Latin, literally: we have no knowledge of, from Latin ignorare, to be ignorant of; see ignore; modern usage originated from the use of Ignoramus as the name of an unlettered lawyer in a play by G. Ruggle, 17th-century English dramatist.’

    sheffield hatter @59 – I first heard of this paradox on a holiday with a couple of dozen strangers in Menorca, about fifteen years ago, when it turned out that someone else had a Bastille Day birthday!

65. [In honour of Eileen’s birthday I’ll share the only joke that my kids ever actually laughed at. Who defends the SALAMI kingdom? The PEPPERAMI]

    Note to self: remember that this LAM has no B. It’s not the first time I’ve forgotten

66. AlanC @19. As the person who pointed out the Maori New Year on the G comments:
    1) How was it boasting? Another blogger commented that they’d looked and couldn’t see one. As I said on that blog, that made me go back and look for one.
    2) I didn’t say what the word was, nor what any of the puzzle answers were. How is that a spoiler? Didn’t see any complaints.

67. Eileen@40: Oh! Of course! I should have known. Thank you. … and my good wishes on your birthday.

68. Happy birthday Eileen!
    We’re off to see the Quatorze firework-display in a local village this evening, and will raise a bière artisanale to you…

69. Wellbeck @68 – thank you. Have fun!

70. Happy birthday, Eileen! Thanks for the blog, and thanks, Pangakupu, for a fun challenge.

    Ignoramus always makes me think of The Hippopotamus Song, but I’d always pluralise it as ignoramuses.

71. Sorry if someone has made this point above and I’ve missed it, but if you think this one was tough, have a go at Pangakupu’s alter ego (Phi) in the Indy today; for me at least, considerably more difficult. Liked this one and learnt that new word at 25a which I hope I’ll remember.

    Thanks to Pangakupu for two toughies today and thanks and happy birthday to Eileen.

72. Excellent puzzle and thanks for the blog! I too couldn’t parse SALAMI and I tried to make 20d as MO(nth) + D in NAY (never). Fortunately the answer was clear enough that I didn’t worry too much about the parsing when solving.

    I had heard of Sannyasi (I think from R.K. Narayan’s The Bachelor of Arts) but thought it was Sannyasa, which I guess is a variant–no problem figuring out from the wordplay once I had the general idea though!

73. I missed parsing IMPRECISION due to fixating on PRISON as jail. CUPOLA also defeated me due I guess to its etymology being the definition.
    I wasn’t sure how PURITAN was defined. The suggestions above seem to suggest the definition is to do with the setter’s sense of humour but that’s a bit odd isn’t it?
    So tough solve for me.
    Thanks both

74. Crispy @66: it really wasn’t too difficult to google Maori New year and then go from 4 down as you suggested. But well-spotted.

75. I can fairly say I am on this setter’s wavelength, having solved many of his puzzles under his other names as well. None of them were what I would call easy, but I enjoyed nearly all of them, and I appreciate particularly the quality of his clueing.

    Like tim @73, I fixated on PRISON instead of IMPRISON for ‘jail’ in the clue to IMPRECISION (but there was no doubt about the answer). Also, I didn’t know INS meaning ‘those who got elected’ (even though it is pretty obvious).

    Thanks to Pangakupu and Eileen, and to those who pointed out the new year.

76. Gervase@54, I’m fairly sure that Trollope uses “ins” and “outs” in the sense Chambers gives – so better authority than some of their entries – though I don’t have a specific instance.

    Happy birthday Eileen, and thanks as always for the blog. Thanks too to Pangakapu for the puzzle – lots to enjoy.

77. Happy Birthday and thanks Eileen for the note on CUPOLA especially, I took a while to parse SALAMI and 70s rock came to my aid as per Simon S@61. Thanks also Spooner’s catflap for the Nina explanation. I took a while to get going but, like the train I’m on, soon got up to speed, found it wittier than I recall from this setter, thanks Pangakupu.

78. Agree with all of Eileen’s ticks. This was a really good puzzle by Pangakupu, his best yet in my view. I found it slightly easier than Imogen’s yesterday.

79. I’m really just popping in to say Happy Birthday to Eileen. Everything that needed to be said has been said already. I’m one who finds it tricky to align with Pangakupu; I struggle to get onto the wavelength. Unlike WordPlodder @71, I found the setter’s alter ego in the Indy produced a far more approachable puzzle. But I did manage to finish – apart from SANNYASI.

    Thanks Pangakupu and Eileen

80. I’m shocked there is no obscure antipodean flora or fauna in this one, but we do have the Nina, well spotted by Spooner’s Catflap et al.

    Thanks Pangakupu and Many Happy Returns Eileen!

81. Thanks for the hide a salami joke too.

82. Eileen’s almost imperceptibly raised eyebrow at PER standing for person represents her understated blogging style at its best. Readers can understand the phrase “Person — it’s in Chambers” to mean “Really? That’s not quite up to par, is it?”

    As for ALL-OUT, I could not understand the hyphen in the enumeration, since I took “total” to be a noun not an adjective: a cricketing reference to the aggregates score at the end of the innings when ten wickets had fallen.

    Happy returns Mistress Blogger.

83. 11a What’s an e number and how did it get in my food?

    Eileen, thanks for parsing MYTH, PERFORMING ARTS, SANNYASI (new to me too), FIASCO (Formula One not being something I think about), PUCE, LEGIBLY, IGNORAMUSES and MONDAY.

    mrpenney@50 I’m guessing that even if you had more criminal associates you wouldn’t hear “on the lam,” which is probably very dated. I haven’t heard it either, though I have plenty of criminal associates as a prison volunteer (who has no idea what my incarcerated friends are inside for).

    Eileen, you share a birthday with Woody Guthrie, an American folksinger and songwriter of the middle 20th Century. His “Dust Bowl Ballads” are a vivid chronicling of the Dust Bowl era in the US, along with the photographs of Dorothea Lange.

    I’m remembering that glorious birthday of yours a few years ago when Arachne commemorated it with a puzzle dedicated to you!
    on the lam

84. Ground away at this most of the day, with little breaks, and without much pleasure. As I’ve probably grizzled before, this setter is not quite my cup of tea. Took till right at the very end to get the excellent IGNORAMUSES. But had a speculative Typhoon (as Tyson the English very quick bowler who terrorised the Aussies in the mid Fifties was dubbed) in at 2d with crossers of a T, a P and an N in place. Which meant OPPOSITE NUMBER never got filled in in my grid. A DNF therefore…

85. This puzzle was an 18A

86. Back home from a really lovely family evening – thanks for comments in the meantime.

    AndrewTyndall @82 re 21ac: you caught my drift – but others’ idea of a reverse anagram may well be correct: the setter’s view would be welcome.
    As for ALL-OUT, I do try to keep up with the ubiquitous cricketing references (eg 2dn) but this time that never occurred to me, occupied as many of us are just now with ALL-OUT strikes.

    Valentine @83 – see here for E NUMBERS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number
    I did know about the Woodie Guthrie connection.

    [Bless you for remembering the Arachne puzzle – but I’ve been counting backwards since then. I forbade my family and friends to send cards with numbers on! 🙂 ]

87. Belated happy birthday, Eileen, and thanks to you and Pangakupu for an excellent blog and puzzle.

88. Late to the party, celebrating MATARIKI yesterday so nice to see Pangakupu’s nina.

89. Eileen @ 86
    There was I thinking that I was only 4 months older than you but now it’s 4 months plus twice the number of years since our 80ths. I won’t give the game away by saying how many that is!

90. You’ve said enough, Pino. 😉

91. It has taken me until Saturday evening to get to the end and so, not unexpectedly, anything I want to say about the crossword has already been said. Thanks Pangakupu. Just stopping by to wish (belatedly) Eileen a happy birthday!

92. Thank you, Paul. 😉

93. Eileen — you remind me of a character in a wonderful children’s book I had, The Amazing Vacation by Dan Wickenden. (He also wrote The Mouse That Roared.) In it, in The Country Without a Name, reachable through a magic window, King Willexander counts his birthdays forward until he gets to fifty, then backward to forty again, when he reverts to forward. So happy however-manyeth birthday you’ve come to at the moment.

    I’m hoping you’ll read this, since as the day’s blogger you get all the comments..

94. Is it perhaps ‘sex’ that is not a favourite of a PUITAN?

95. …. belated but heartfelt best wishes for very many happy returns! William x

96. Thank you, Valentine and William – I had a lovely day.
    As you know, we bloggers do receive emails of comments but, for some reason, mine arrive in my Trash folder and I don’t check that so regularly after the day of the blog.

97. Enjoyed some of this, but is no one else bothered by the definitions of IMPRECISION and IGNORAMUSES? Seems to me both involve imprecision, but maybe I’m an ignoramus.

98. Hi Mark L @97 – I smiled at your witty comment …
    … but can’t really find fault with either of the definitions, as underlined in the blog.

99. Mark L@97, the def of IMPRECISION was, i thought, cryptic but fair (relating to rough working/calculation which is of course approximate), but I agree that I wouldn’t easily equate an IGNORAMUS with dick-like behaviour – the latter, for me, is somewhat deliberate. But I’m more than prepared to believe that equivalences of slang terms in particular are in the eye of the beholder, so just assume that I am ignorant of the zeitgeist here, as is often the case.

100. I agree with Gazzh about the definitions of IMPRECISION (playful and cryptic, but fine) and IGNORAMUS (doesn’t seem right). I can’t find dictionary support for equating DICK with IGNORAMUS.

101. I guessed, like bodycheetah@18, that the entire second half of 17D is the definition of PURITAN.

     From this article: “Such was the case in New Zealand in 1840, where Henry Williams of the Church Missionary Society persuaded over 500 Maori chiefs to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, which in effect handed their lands over to the British Crown.”

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