Guardian Cryptic 29,145 by Imogen

139 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,145 by Imogen”

1. I wasn’t sure where the dog came into 21d. SCRY & CLOY are new to my lexicon. Didn’t parse LAST and didn’t know JET was jewellery. Why is DRESSING getting straight? In parsing EIFFEL, I was taken by Google to Effie Goodson’s 2003 crime.

   An enjoyable entertainment today with a good smattering of smiles, thanks Imogen & PeterO.

2. GDU @1 a group of soldiers dress to get in a straight line.
   SCRY was new to me as was Scott’s Effie.
   I also was puzzled a bit at the ‘guarded by dog’ and took it to refer to ‘dog in a manger’ with a shrug.

3. GDU@1
   CLOY
   Do you use a different word to express ‘this’?
   MANGER
   I agree with PeterO and Tim C@2. ‘Proverbially guarded…’ might have worked better?
   FIELDING
   Making a point (whimsically)=fielding at the point position?

   Liked JET SET the most.

   An enjoyable puzzle and a neat blog.
   Thanks, Imogen and PeterO!

4. go GODIVA! found this puzzle to be quite hard with lots of intricate wp. Thanks for clarifying the baby-killer!

5. GDU @1 and Tim C @2: you also dress a piece of rough timber to get it straight and smooth

6. Re: 7A, I went down the rabbit hole of positing an apple called the Belfast, and removing the letters B, E, A, S, and T.

7. I liked this. A good old straightforward crossword. No themes. Nothing contentious. Well clued withba couple if chewy bits. One new word SCRY but very gettable. Some new GK.
   FAIR PLAY I say. Although I got that back to front until THRIFT put paid to
   that.

8. After recent comments about the Guardian crosswords getting easier, it was good to have something a bit more taxing (for me at least). Was beaten by cloy, and there were a few bung and hopes. Never heard of Effie or Lully.
   Thanks Imogen and PeterO

9. There must be a better explanation for the ‘guarded by dog’ part of 21d, but I can’t explain it. It held me up, as I was fixated on ‘curator’ to get the dog part, but couldn’t get a six-letter word. SCRY was new to me as well, but of course there’s ‘descry’. Found this tough today and had to check a few answers such as FIELDING as I wasn’t convinced even when I’d arrived at the correct answer. Thanks to Imogen and to PeterO

10. Very happy to have the Nina / acrostic; couldn’t have solved this otherwise.

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dog_in_the_Manger
    Greek origin ‘The short form of the fable as cited by Laura Gibbs is: “There was a dog lying in a manger who did not eat the grain, but who nevertheless prevented the horse from being able to eat anything either.”‘

12. A good example PostMark @5

13. Elegantly compiled crossword with a mixture of reasonably easy clues allowing me – as an average solver – to achieve the more difficult answers. CLOY was my LOI and it was accompanied with ‘Of course it is you buffoon!’ comment to myself.
    The Acrostic was way over my head!
    Thanks Imogen and PeterO

14. Geoff Down Under@1
    In parsing EIFFEL, I Googled “Effie Scott” and got lots of women of that name – even one man(?) Scott Effie
    Had to add in “Walter” to get what I was looking for. “Sir” would have worked, too, and would have been quicker.

15. WordPlodder@10 – nice one! 😉
    Completely missed the acrostic; solved it anyway. Had to sleep on the two at 22.

16. WordPlodder@10. What can you see?

17. Oh, derr, I was l looking in the wrong place. Thanks Wordplodder for drawing attention to something more without spelling it out. 🙂

18. Frankie, I think I googled “effie baby killer” and got someone who’d killed a woman and stole her foetus in 2003. Couldn’t work out what Scott had to do with it!

    Thanks for the enlightenment regarding dressing, TimC @ 2 & Postmark @ 5.

19. Thanks Imogen and PeterO
    Another one requiring a lot of general knowledge. I didn’t know Effie, so that was a guess. FIELDING was doubly obscure – I’m sure the cricket haters will complain!
    I didn’t parse AIRCRAFT as I thought the boat was “craft”. No idea on the parsing of UNDISPUTED either.
    Favourites were GODIVA and MANGER. I don’t see any problem with the latter – it’s quite funny.

20. I withdraw what I said @7 about this being a crossword with no tricks. Impressed that it’s solvable without seeing the extra thrill, until in the afterglow.

21. I’ll have to wait until someone is more specific before registering the Nina!

22. Thought butter might be something to do with ghee … dimwit! 1d is interesting; you say caught by the keeper but caught at point. Nho [de]scry sans de but I like it, in fact I like Imogen’s little obliquities in general, like 5d, where I needed to try the ‘u’ before the synonyms (more or less) clicked. Enjoyable, ta both.

23. The two I got stuck on – 22a JUDGES & 22d JET SET – took so long I ended up not liking either clue.
    If I’d known they had to start with “J” they’d just have been a bit “meh”.

24. PM@21. It’s more of an acrosstic than an acrostic, I think

25. As usual I didn’t spot the nina whilst I was solving the puzzle. More annoyingly, I can’t spot it now, even though I know it’s there. Thanks to Imogen and PeterO

26. JET as an ornament is actually fossilised wood. It is particularly associated with Whitby on the Yorkshire coast, as it can be picked up on the beaches there if you are lucky.

27. Crispy@24. Or an across shtick ?

28. To be fair to those who haven’t seen the light, thanks to WordPlodder for not spelling it out, I wouldn’t call it either a nina or an acrostic. But it’s there, as easy as …….

29. Spotted it. Disappointing it finishes half way!

30. A B C, It’s easy as
    1 2 3, as simple as
    Do re mi, A B C, 1 2 3
    Baby you and me girl

31. paddymelon@27 🙂

32. Annoyingly, having cruised through all of this I could not for the life of me see CLOY. Had I been aware of the Nina it would have been no problem, of course, but despite many years of reminding myself I simply never look for them. The usual nice surfaces from Imogen. Can’t quite understand the objections to the dog in the manger, is that expression no longer in common use?
    Thanks to Imogen and Peter.

33. Was pleased to finish this (though with a couple of checks along the way). Hadn’t seen the Nina until it was pointed out here. You guys are good! Not much gets by you!

34. Further to Miffin @ 26: this, from Wikipedia, makes a happy coincidence for Guardian Xword fans:

    Jet is a product of decomposition of wood from millions of years ago, commonly the wood of trees of the family ARAUCARIACEAE.

35. paddymelon@27
    LOL. It’s a punny place. Words busy doing double duty.

    paddymelon@7
    FIELDING and MANGER
    Some contention or say that I am missing something.

36. Tough puzzle. A DNF as I gave up on solving 1d, 10ac, 15ac.

    18d How does DRESSING = getting straight? Thanks TimC@2 and PostMark@5 for explaining.

    Also new for me: character Effie Deans in Scott’s novel The Heart of Midlothian (thanks, google); Gregor Mendel (for 25ac); DJ = dinner jacket (for 19d).

    Thanks, both.

37. Lovely challenge, with LOI FIELDING. Must remember when stuck, think of cricket!

38. Hugely enjoyable puzzle. Too many favourites to mention them all, but I’ll pick out AIRCRAFT, FAIR PLAY, ADJOIN and my LOT, GODIVA for wonderful surfaces and penny drop moments. NHO Effie or or Lully, so needed the crossers to have any chance of getting these. Thanks Peter O for working it all out (I was wondering about sticks in the definition of GOATEE but I think that you have it). Thank you IMOGEN.

39. KVa @35. You’re probably right about FIELDING and MANGER, but FIELDING did have a question mark. I do feel for the solvers who don’t have that level of cricket knowledge, and many of us who find these cricket references repetitive and exclusive, but so are the books of the bible and military terms.

    I spent a while trying to work out the dog guarding the MANGER, even more so as ‘mange”, the skin condition, is also there. It reminded me of the old joke. Have you heard of the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog.

40. I knew EFFIE, having been subjected to HOM at ‘O’ level and I also studied FIELDING’s Tom Jones (still a wonderful read), but SCRY, LULLY and MENDEL were new. Apart from that, on the easy side for the setter. I liked BANG ON, GOATEE, KNOCKABOUT, GODIVA, UNDISPUTED and JET SET. Great spot by WordPlodder @10.

    Ta Imogen & PeterO.

41. Thanks Imogen and PeterO

    As well as the various meanings of DRESSING already mentioned, it also refers to the practice in shops of making sure all labels are facing front, there are no gaps etc (ie shelf dressing).

42. “The dog in the manger” was one of Aesop’s Fables originally. Are they not as well-known as they used to be? When I was a child, nearly every child had to read them.

43. I wonder if the reason many of us found CLOY difficult is the fact that the “a” before “year” is not part of the wordplay? Also, if Love is to wear a smart suit, I sort of expect the “o” to be between the “D” and the “J”. I liked GODIVA and enjoyed the challenge overall.

44. I think the definition for MANGER should be extended, all underlined, feeder guarded by dog. Credit to Imogen for not cluing the more common nativity reference.

45. If it were much larger
    Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
    And continued its flim flam
    Niltac, you’ld have seen it
    You would have had a nice pangram

    I think the only time I have heard or used the word CLOY is with regard to the hymn “Lead us, heavenly father, lead us” and its fragment “pleasures that can never cloy”.

    SCRY was new to me but here is something that might be new to you from Paul McCartney’s “almost brother in law” ( glasses and banjo ) well remembered by me

    https://youtu.be/EdRj_pAMVik

    Thank you Imogen and PeterO.

46. pdm @44
    Similarly, is the definition for JET SET “travellers loaded”?

47. muffin and paddymelon
    MANGER
    Maybe a question mark at the end would have made it better. I rest my case.

    FIELDING
    The ‘making a point?’ part is certainly leading to a whimsical def. No doubt there.
    There is a reference to a field position (cricket) i.e. point.
    The solution is FIELDING.

    Thinking again, I read it like this (call it a stretch):
    When you are ‘making a point’ in cricket, you could be (whimsically) ‘FIELDING (placing/putting on the field) a player at the point position’. There should be a better explanation.

48. I entered EIFFEL and FIELDING with the shrug that means I recognise there’s something here I don’t know (like the whatever-it-is that all you sadists are smugly holding out on). I expect Imogen to be tough, and was defeated by ADJOIN, ABRASIVE and UNDISPUTED, but I did remember that Harry Potter had SCRYing lessons and GO DIVA! made me laugh. I don’t see why the allusion to the dog in the MANGER (surely well known?) is a problem.

    And now back to looking for the McGuffin.

49. Icn only see have a column 5 on the [ad]19t.

50. Agree muffin@44.. Def for JET SET should be travellers loaded. Good clue.

51. Flea@45: I know CLOY from the same source. Victorian hymns can be a rich mine of vocabulary.

52. [PM@39. Or the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa?]

53. Already too late to add much to the thread but just to say that I found this tough in places. I didn’t feel I got properly onto Imogen’s wavelength but that could be just me. Re 12a: I only got EIFFEL from the wordplay and didn’t get the Scott part. (But like Geoffdownunder@1 and 18 – and Frankie,G@14 I found the 2003 story of Effie Goodson when I googled “Effie supposed baby-killer” – terribly sad circumstances to read about). I wish I had known about the literary reference rather than learning of the real-life crime but a bit of an awful concidence. I did like the already cited 6d GODIVA and 22d JET SET. Thanks to Imogen for the challenge, and to PeterO and other members of the team for unpacking this one fully for me.

54. paddymelon@39 Heard that joke before. Good one!

    muffin@46
    Yes. I agree with you.

55. Thanks to paddymelon@44 and muffin@46 – MANGER & JET SET are much better clues than I first thought.

56. Well not “fully” – I just can’t see the extra layer of nina or acrosstic. Sorry to be thick as two short planks but I’m going to need to have the extra cleverness pointed out as I have missed it entirely (and sorry if this is a spoiler for others).

57. Even if someone just tells me where to look?

58. Help! I’ve stared and stared but I can’t see the Nina or acrostic. Can someone please put me out of my misery, I’ve got stuff to do!

59. Snap digbydavis@58!

60. Damn! Just seen it! What a dope!

61. …look at first letters of answers

62. Just look at the first letters of the across clues.

63. Oh thank you friends – very good! Congrats to those who spotted the extra level – I should have got it from all the hints (poetic verses etc.)

64. I was a professional ‘Scottist, and EIFFEL was my SOI (after DERMATITIS), but I did wonder how many solvers these days would know of Effie Deans. But HOM or any Scott at O-Level, Alan C? That is ridiculous. In what was, I take it, a Protestant school in NI, did they allow you to read the ending where Effie converts to Catholicism and decides to become a nun? [The last time I reread The Heart of Midlothian I was on a sun lounger at Rimini and recall wondering, if anyone before me had ever read the novel on Rimini beach. It was a slightly bizarre experience but my own fault for not giving my brain a rest and taking work on holiday.]

65. Excellent puzzle, which I found much easier than the Arachne-Nutmeg offering on Monday, strangely, with nothing left unparsed. Many well-crafted clues: I particularly enjoyed GODIVA, FRATRICIDE, JET SET. Naturally, I missed the Nina, though I didn’t need it to complete the puzzle.

    I’m surprised CLOY is so widely unknown. More commonly encountered as ‘cloying’ and ‘cloyingly’ perhaps, but it isn’t all that rare, surely? SCRY was new to me and therefore my LOI, though I had posited it almost as my first entry (‘but there’s no such word’…)

    Thanks to S&B

66. Widdersbel – yesterday on the FT ‘
    Q. Is it normal for people not to be familiar with Fielding’s novel?
    A. It’s not unusual’

67. Thanks both. For me today 1d wasn’t quite 14ac. I spent too long along the lines of an actual point.

68. I’m completely at a loss re Nina/acrostic. Can someone put me out of my misery?

69. Look at the first letters of the Across answers in order Bonnylass @68

70. Thanks for the blog, excellent puzzle with great wordplay throughout, AIRCRAFT KNOCKABOUT ADJOIN etc put together vey cleverly, even some head scratching at times.
    I think of CLOY as quite a common word , I hear and use it quite often, only yesterday I used cloying to describe the theme .
    SCRY ( or descry ) does turn up in puzzles reasonably often , the only time I ever see it.

71. Peter@43 . Love is to wear a smart coat with fashionable.

72. Panic over. The penny’s finally dropped after staring desperately at the grid for far too long!

    Thanks to Imogen and Peter O

73. Thanks Tim C @ 69. Just seen your post 🙂

74. I struggled with this, as is usual for me with Imogen. There seemed to be a lot of DD and CD, but I think there were only 3 and 2, respectively.

    Like Gervase @65, I had thought of SCRY early on, but discounted it as a word, so didn’t look it up until nearly the end. I liked ADJOIN for the surface and wordplay. I had no hope with EFFIE; at first I Googled it with Scott Fitzgerald and, not surprisingly, got nothing useful. I didn’t spot the acrostic/NINA.

    Thanks Imogen and PeterO.

75. Petert @43, I’d say ‘love wearing [a smart suit with fashionable]’ is a standard and kosher way to confound your expectations, but I agree with you about the ‘a’ before year in the clue for CLOY. It should not be there, like the ‘an’ before hour in the clue for THRIFT.
    The clue for SCRY reminded me of one of Anto’s where nobody can agree in which direction the wordplay works (or rather, everyone disagree’s with Anto’s view). Surely, SCRY is a word meaning divine, but is a word meaning frightening if there is an answer.

76. I found this quite tricky, though with a couple of exceptions I got there in the end. I got LULL without difficulty as I know Lully’s Te Deum and one or two other pieces. He had rather an unfortunate death: having struck his foot with his long conducting staff during a performance of the music, which was composed to celebrate Louis XIV’s recovery from surgery, he contracted gangrene which spread to his brain. Apparently, he refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance (!) With thanks to Imogen and Peter O.

77. SCRY also surprisingly new to me despite 50 years of weekly scrabble. I wondered about AIRCRAFT where cox minus ox is used to fit another sailing term in the clue. Fairly clumsy I thought. Sorry Imogen. And JUDGES a pretty easy book answer. I read Waverley to see what Scott was like….and tried starting Ivanhoe but that clue had to be guessed. Does anyone read Scott now?
    All in all though I did enjoy it as it filled my pre bedtime hour almost.
    So thanks Imogen and PeterO

78. With apologies as I’m still very much a crossword beginner and it may just be a learning blind-spot, but could someone explain for 15ac why ‘butter’ = GOAT? Many thanks.

79. Jarrel@78: goats engage in headbutting. So a butter…

80. Ah. *Groans, slaps forehead*… thank you!

81. Sorry, too much specialist knowledge for me. ‘Effie’ Mendel’ Lully’, got there in the end but had to check the solution to know how.

82. Roz @70: I’d agree that ‘cloying’ is a word in regular use but I don’t recall hearing or reading ‘cloy’ that often.

83. 78 @Jarrel. A goat ‘butts’ with its head.

84. Apologies – I hadn’t refreshed so my answer was too slow!

85. [re Lully: surprisingly, this was almost a write-in for me due to one of those weird snippets that lurks unvisited in the brain for decades. At some point in school history lessons reference was made to a piece of music composed in France in 1725, The Apotheosis of Lully. I don’t believe it is particularly significant and have no idea how it arose. I recall thinking it was an extremely odd title to give to a piece of music. And have barely given it another moment’s thought in 45 years. Until today!]

86. PostMark@85: Translated from the French: “An Apotheosis composed in the immortal memory of the incomparable Monsieur de Lully”; by Francois Couperin.

87. muffin @29, I suspect it finishes there for a reason … is this Imogen’s 100th Guardian Cryptic (not including Prize puzzles)?

88. Gosh, what huge number of contributions on the blog already…
    I thought when I considered FIELDING early on, oh, not another cricket reference for those not at all in love with the game and its references. Had Lalo in instead of LULL at 24d as I’m sure I looked him up and got the thumbs up for that musical obscurity, for me. Wasn’t particularly convinced about DRESSING. The interlocking SCRY and CLOY took a while, as did the last 2 in, ABRASIVE (had Abrasion in there at first) and HEATED.
    Sorry if I’ve overlapped or repeated previous comments, in a rush…

89. Nuntius @76: LULL gave me a moment’s pause because I first read the clue as ‘short peaceful interval’ = ‘French composer’. Another ambiguous Imogen clue, but the crossing letters confirmed the answer. I’m well acquainted with J-B Lully, but I’m afraid more for tedium than Te Deum. Give me Rameau any day 🙂

90. Thanks to IMOGEN for the challenge. Some excellent word play and well hidden anagrams. Just a thought re 21D – why do we need the phrase ‘guarded by dog’ as the clue works perfectly well without it.
    Thanks also to PeterO for the blog. Thx to MUFFIN@61 for the hint about the nina
    Favourites:
    5D UNDISPUTED
    13D FRATRICIDE
    16D ENVIABLE

91. Thanks PeterO and everyone for the dog in a manger (i got there from MAN and thence manager but without much conviction) and TimC and PostMark for the dressing on DRESSING, and Wordplodder et al for the hints on the acrostic – nice and a clever way to mark reaching three figures. I must know SCRY from roleplaying/fantasy novels and thought CLOY was a Postmarkesque blast from the past from Heaney’s blackberrypicking, but having checked it must be the temporally less apposite (but no less lovely) Spring by GMH. I had a few quibbles with link words spoiling the flow, mentioned already i think, but thought there were some wonderful clues here too, thanks Imogen.

92. ShropshireLass @90
    Much funnier with the dog, though!

93. Glad to learn I wasn’t the only one suffering from my usual Nina blindness!

94. me @42 re 21d
    When I showed the clue to my daughter (aged 42), she was baffled by the “dog” too; perhaps we neglected her education?

95. Flea @45 I didn’t know that hymn, but the fragment you mention also appears in traditional song Haste to the Wedding: “And revel in pleasures that never can cloy”.

96. Roz@71 Thanks. I see now that my expectation that wearing a smart suit with fashionable should make sense on its own was unreasonable. I am still struggling with yesterday’s Axed clue.

97. Maybe I read too many fantasy novels, but SCRY was an easy one

98. I suppose you could say that Whitby on the NE Yorkshire coast might have been considered where the JET SET went in Victorian times, as the fashion for this stone as a symbol of mourning meant that the locally mined Jet was in great demand there…

99. Thanks to Imogen for a super crossword and PeterO for the blog.
    Another one here who didn’t see the Nina but having taken a rather scattergun approach to the order in which the clues were solved, I’m letting myself off.
    On SCRY, I thought the definition ‘divine’ was used in the more specific sense of the act of divination and therefore gave a hint at something slightly more arcane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrying#:~:text=Scrying%2C%20also%20known%20by%20various,detecting%20significant%20messages%20or%20visions.

100. Peter @96, the word play never needs to make sense, it just puts all the letters in the right place.
     Yesterday was BEDROLLS , with a quark reference, slightly more ambiguous than Hamlet or Macbeth yet again.
     MrPostMark @ 82. Yet another Shakespeare theme will cloy for those who have seen hundreds of them in the past.

101. …Jet formed from the fossilised Araucaria tree, which seems suitably appropriate for Fifteensquared, somehow…

102. Spooner’s catflap @64: we were a very tolerant Protestant school 🙂 I can still remember being amused by the sound of ‘The Laird of Dumbidikes’.

103. Very much enjoyed this–especially liked the clever misdirection in 5D where “Upset” and “reversed” are not wordplay indicators. Completely missed the Ninaesque. FIELDING, DRESSING, and ADJOIN (nho “DJ”) were all bung and checks.

     For 12ac I thought LIFFEY at first, thinking “Well did Scott write “Effi Priest [sic]?” While looking for whether there was a Liffey Tower the search engine reminded me of the more famous tower and I felt silly. Didn’t know the name of the character but it was clear once I was primed with Effi Briest. (I usually allow myself a search if something looks like British Isles geography, but here I cheated myself!)

104. I think it is an Americanism: in some regional dialects to “lay the table” or to “set the table” is to “dress the table”. In which case the dinner would apply to both halves of the clue: DRESSING would be to set the plates and cutlery and glasses straight, before putting on one’s formal wear (for men, a tuxedo — not the DJ in the Down clue that follows)

105. It was only a week ago that Qaos offered C + HEATED (Fooled around, getting angry). Isn’t that fact that 17A is the identical wordplay, only reversed, an editorial flaw?

106. Oddly, when I googled ‘effie babykiller’ I got this link – it is the nickname of the character. So it doesn’t quite need the somewhat ponderous Walter Scott to make sense … . I guess the character was named after the original though.

107. I’m another one who doesn’t think FIELDING works: ‘standing at point’ – but that wrecks the surface. How about “…stopping at point”? That seems to just about work: indicates a hesitant novelist (like Yours Truly 🙁 )

     And then there’s MANGER – making this puzzle alas! a DNF for me (I put in MINDER but couldn’t make out any wordplay for it). Is this a case of definition-in-the-middle (a no-no!) as Peter has indicated with the underlining?

     But maybe, with ‘proverbially’ put in as suggested above, it becomes just about doable.

     Thanks to Peter and Imogen.

108. My bad – the link is to Beth the babykiller.

109. Noël Coward uses the word CLOY in Mad About The Boy.
     Giovanni Batista Lulli was originally from Florence. Moved to Paris and took French citizenship, I believe, before stabbing himself in the foot!

110. Andrew@105: I think Qaos’s and Imogen’s clues are sufficiently different that it doesn’t matter. Having said that, as I wrote in HEATED I did feel a sense of déjà vu – though I couldn’t quite place it…

111. Laccaria @ 107
     I agree that “definition in the middle” is a bit off, but, as paddymelon suggested much earlier, the definition is actually “a feeder guarded by dog”.
     I’m really surprised by the number of posters unfamiliar with the term “dog in the manger”, and the fable that gave rise to it.

112. Muffin @111: that would be “feeder guarded by dog” since the “a” is needed for the wordplay

113. …which is what Paddy Melon said in @44

114. Yes – i hadn’t checked back.

115. I confidently entered TRUC for 24d, then googled and found: “Georges Truc was born in 1893 in France. He was a composer”. Needless to say, held me up for a bit.
     I found this quite hard. I also think some of the definitions are a little oblique, e.g making a point for FIELDING and reviews for JUDGES. I agree MANGER needs a ?, as they’re not usually guarded by dogs.
     Thanks for the mental work-out, Imogen and Peter.

116. Yes I know we’ve done ‘dog in the MANGER’ almost to death – but may I suggest this?

     Perhaps the misleading word is ‘guarded’. In the fable, the dog isn’t actually protecting the contents of the manger against theft – which the word ‘guard’ seems to imply. Instead, it’s selfishly obstructing the horse from eating its rightful entitlement. That’s the meaning as I understand it.

     So I think if it had been “feeder obstructed by dog” I might have twigged. Ah well…

117. I had to read Ivanhoe in school, and I saw the movie Rob Roy as a child, and that’s my entire connection with Scott. Oh, and the supposedly traditional ballad :”Jock o’ Hazeldean.” So no hope of parsing 12a EIFFEL.

     PeterO, thanks for parsing EIFFEL, KNOCKABOUT (lovely word).
     Cricket is lost on me, so I couldn’t see the point of FIELDING.

     We have a part of speech mismatch in the blog for 16d ENVIABLE. The definition should be “showing ability to survive” for the VIABLE part.

     I didn’t get to CLOY through remembering Flea’s hymn@45 but from Trial by Jury. “But joy incessant palls the sense and love unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense unto her lovesick boy.”

     I got almost none of this puzzle last night. Filled it in this morning with judicious use of the check button. And now that I’ve enjoyed the puzzle and the blog — thanks, Imogen and PeterO.

118. Valentine @117: I was looking for a hat trick this morning 🙂

119. Ouch. 2 answers.

     21d – I thought the definition should be at the beginning or the end of the clue?

120. Steffen @119
     Yes, that is the general rule, and in practice it’s rare for that rule to be broken. In this clue (MANGER), the setter has taken the liberty of providing two different wordplays, with the definition placed between them. The first wordplay was, for me, the easier one of the two, and that’s how I got the answer (with the help of a crossing letter or two), the definition ‘feeder’ not being particularly easy. The second wordplay was not as clear. (A ‘dog in a manger’ does not just ‘guard’ what’s in the manger – it does so meanly or spitefully.)

121. Needed help from Google on EFFIE and LULL(y), but I knew what the answers had to be. I liked this puzzle; challenging, with lots to unpack. Thanks to Imogen, and to PeterO.

122. Steffen@119
     21d – The definition is at the end of the clue – “feeder guarded by dog” – See paddymelon@44 & others agreeing @46,50,55(me),111-113

123. FrankieG, Steffen and others
     My apologies. In making my comment I was going by the blogger’s analysis of the clue, which coincided with my own. (But I didn’t know that it was normal for a feeder to be guarded by a dog!)

124. ronald@101. …Jet formed from the fossilised Araucaria tree, which seems suitably appropriate for Fifteensquared, somehow…

     Thank you! That really adds to this puzzle.

     https://rivierawhitby.com/whitby-jet/#:~:text=Did%20you%20know%20that%20jet,of%20years%20in%20the%20making

125. To be fair Pat@34 mentioned it and Muffin contributed earlier . I have found jet on the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay.

126. Pat@34 deserves the credit. 🙂

127. Sorry, Roz@25 – You weren’t there when I clicked the Post Comment button – Snap.

128. 125

129. A DNF, but I liked CLOY, and being a proud Coventrian, glad to see GODIVA making an appearance.

130. SCRY is Divine in the sense of divination as a form of fortune telling, especially with a mirror or crystal ball

131. Like Gervase@65 I thought of SCRY but discarded it as clearly not a word, and forgot to revisit it when stuck. I checked for previous appearances in the Guardian and only found one three years ago, though a few DESCRYs. It’s an obscure word only found in Spenser, Chambers and crosswordland. I think there have been more groans about CLOY, which I found pretty easy, than SCRY. Oh well, horses for courses.

     I liked MANGER – I agree with those who say that the definition is not in the middle of the clue: it includes the bit about the dog.

     Thanks to Imogen and PeterO.

132. Took ages to get going on this and then it gradually yielded, very satisfying. Although a cricket fan, I took FIELDING to mean making points ‘the speaker fielded all the questions ‘

133. FrankieG @122 and sheffield hatter @131
     With reference to 21D MANGER: if, like Laccaria @107, you decide that a definition in the middle of a clue is not allowed, you are more or less forced to include the dog, but I think that stretches the definition of “definition” beyond breaking point. As Alan B @123 points out, a manger does not necessarily come with a guard dog; it is evidently not a dictionary definition.

134. PeterO. Thanks for extending the discussion. I don’t agree that a definition cannot be in the middle of a clue – it might be unexpected, but if it becomes clear what is going on I don’t think it’s a no-no, as Laccaria affirms. It’s a convention that follows fairly naturally from English sentence structure, and in this case I think it’s natural that the last four words are in fact the definition here.

     I agree that ‘feeder guarded by dog’ is not a dictionary definition, but then very often we are not given a definition that accords with the dictionary. A cryptic or allusive definition is often acceptable and can make for a more interesting or misleading surface. (‘Travellers loaded’ is not in Chambers under JET SET!) I think a non-dictionary definition should be quite acceptable to most solvers.

     Yes, a MANGER does not necessarily come with a guard dog, but there is at least one that could be described as such, even if it came from the imagination of a story teller.

135. sheffield hatter @134 (no less!)
     OK: an extreme case of unannounced definition by example (to use an expression I generally avoid for reasons not too far from this discussion). As you say, we should be used to non-dictionary definitions, but my take on what makes this one different is that, in ‘feeder’, we have an adequate straightforward definition.

136. The never ending blog, I think I have to agree with Peter here. IF the clue stopped at FEEDER we have a standard word play plus definition clue. Maybe “guarded by dog ” was there to give people an extra helpful nudge but it seems to have backfired.
     I do agree with Sheffield Hatter about clues in general, there is no RULE saying the definition must come first or last it is just that the structure of clues almost always leads that way. I always like to see a definition in the middle when they do turn up.

137. Agree with all the points made by Roz@136.
     I wonder how many more questions or complaints there may have been if the def had stopped at ”feeder”.

138. Put me down as another who’s surprised that “dog in the manger” isn’t as familiar as I’d assumed. But I’m shockingly ignorant of all sorts of things that everyone on this site appears to know, so I’m hardly in a position to criticize. (In this puzzle, my never-heard-ofs were Lully and Effie, and it appears I’m not alone in either case.)

     I also completely missed the alphabetical acrostic.

139. [If I had to clue “Effie”, I’d be forced to go with Effie Perrine, Sam Spade’s secretary in The Maltese Falcon, one of my favorite films. The film is undoubtedly a more familiar work to most people here than Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, but Effie’s name still doesn’t leap to most people’s minds.]

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