Guardian 29,523 – Tramp

by

A good mixture of clues, with some easy ones to get things started and a few that took a bit of working out. Thanks to Tramp for the entertaining challenge. Best wishes to those heading to York today or tomorrow: sorry I can’t make it this year.

 
Across
1 PRESIDE Closing piece from Supertramp live: sit to play (7)
[Supertram]P + RESIDE (live); Chambers gives the definition “to be at the organ or piano, originally as a kind of conductor”
5 ABYSMAL Terrible article, not after hits, looking back (7)
A (article) + BY (not after) + reverse of LAMS
10 HIDE Conceal skin (4)
Double definition
11 EVAPORATOR One fading out record: speaker restricting volume before album’s opener (10)
V[olume] A[lbum) in EP (record) + ORATOR
12 ASYLUM A year in squalid neighbourhood retreat (6)
A + Y in SLUM
13 DIDACTIC Used to perform with Rick missing cover of 24 (8)
DID ACT (used to perform) + [r]IC[k]
14 HEART RATE Pick up track’s opening with class beat from organ (5,4)
HEAR + T[rack] + RATE (class, as in an assessment)
16 RIGHT Conservative Rudy Giuliani initially hit out (5)
Anagram of R[udy] G[iuliani] HIT
17 CRIME Skirt in church causing offence (5)
RIM in C.E.
19 LISTENING Hearing hit single in chart, finally (9)
Anagram of SINGLE IN [char]T
23 EVERYONE All against cutting weird single (8)
V (versus, against) in EERY (alternative spelling of “eerie”) ONE
24 SCHOOL Perhaps many perch in toilets, turning around to grab chain (6)
CH in reverse of LOOS
26 FLEA-BITTEN In a terrible state: fine when treated with tablet (4-6)
(FINE TABLET)*
27 WELL Clearly in good health (4)
Double definition
28 CENTURY Scream over tune in production for a long time (7)
TUNE* in CRY
29 ASPERSE Following regulars to sue for slander (7)
AS PER (according to, following) + alternate letters of SuE
Down
2 REISSUE Put out once more by class of 24 children (7)
RE (Religious Education, a “class of school”) + ISSUE (children)
3 SHELL Case of husband stuck in traffic (5)
H in SELL (to traffic)
4 DREAMER Romantic date at end; bored by Tramp (7)
D[ate] + ME (Tramp) in REAR (end)
6 BLOODY Darned large hole in main section (6)
L + O (a hole) in BODY
7 STANCHION Drunk this can leaning against bar (9)
(THIS CAN)* + ON (leaning against)
8 ABOLISH Stop crazy Basil taking over hotel (7)
O in BASIL* + H
9 EAU DE TOILETTE i.e. teetotal dude originally going out for something alcoholic (3,2,8)
Anagram of IE TEETOTAL [d]UDE
15 RUMP ROAST Arrangement for Supertramp: only one piano (ordinary not electronic) making cut (4,5)
Anagram of SUPERTRAMP less one P and with E replaced by O
18 REVOLVE Turn 16 and develop (7)
R (right, answer to 16 across) + EVOLVE
20 TISANES Herbal tea not completely hot? Is an espresso? (7)
Hidden in hoT IS AN ESpresso
21 NOODLES Improvises lots following note (7)
N + OODLES – as e.g. a church organist does when filling in time
22 COPIER Bootlegger, perhaps caught round main stage? (6)
C + O (round) + PIER (a “stage” over the sea or main)
25 HAWSE Part of ship in harbour, stormy sea over west (5)
H (harbour? I don’t know if this is a standard abreviation) + W in SEA*. The hawse is part of a ship’s bow: apparently not etymologically related to hawser, a large rope

94 comments on “Guardian 29,523 – Tramp”

  1. Thanks Tramp and Andrew
    Mostly very good, but I’ve a couple of queries.
    7d “leaning against” = ON?
    20d shouldn’t it be “teas”? TISANES is plural.
    27a WELL = “clearly”?
    19a LISTENING isn’t the same as hearing. I quote Paul Simon!

    And in the naked light I saw
    Ten thousand people, maybe more
    People talking without speaking
    People hearing without listening
    People writing songs that voices never share
    No one dared
    Disturb the sound of silence

    I liked constructing RUMP ROAST, and REVOLVE was nice too.

  2. I didn’t like H for harbour. Never heard of noodles/improvises. What’s the definition for DIDACTIC?

  3. Pace Andrew, I didn’t find too many easy ones to get going with only a couple of entries on the across clues on first pass. Then completed it mainly section by section NW, NE, SW, SE with, admittedly, a couple of checks along the way. Didn’t know HAWSE, though the anagram was fairly obvious once I’d accepted that Harbour could be ‘H’. I was worried at first that I might have to know something of Supertramp’s opus, but was relieved to find I didn’t. Wasn’t certain of the definition of EVAPORATOR, but it fell out of the wordplay with the help of the crossers and wasn’t sure that WELL meant ‘clearly’. Liked FLEA-BITTEN, NOODLES and CENTURY. Thanks to Tramp and Andrew

  4. It’s the 50th anniversary of the release of Supertramp’s album “Crime of the Century” this month.
    All 8 tracks are here…
    1. SCHOOL
    2. BLOODY WELL RIGHT
    3. HIDE in your SHELL
    4. ASYLUM
    5. DREAMER
    6. RUDY (in clue 16a)
    7. If EVERYONE was LISTENING
    8. CRIME of the CENTURY

    Many thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

  5. Thanks Tramp for a sparkly puzzle and a very well worked theme – ever so slightly self-referential which must have appealed. FrankieG is going to go nuts. Lots of earworms as a result. I might even listen to the album on my drive to York.

    Too many good ones to list favourites and my only query was the H for harbour which I have not seen before.

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew

  6. GDU@2 – DIDACTIC definition is ‘of school’ referring to the answer of 24, but I agree the grammar takes a bit of poetic licence.

  7. I started singing bits of this in my head as I was solving this – I saw Supertramp live on their Last Tour at Earls Court in 1983, so right up my street.

    Thank you to Andrew and Tramp.

  8. Thanks Andrew: shouldn’t “of 24” be underlined for definition of DIDACTIC?

    Thanks Jay@4 for theme, which was referred to on the Guardian site, but of which I had no knowledge.

    Thanks Tramp, for a hard workout

  9. Jay@4, I must say I missed the theme, as I usually do.

    [I just sold my forty-year-old Wurlitzer electric piano, having fetched a very good price as a collector’s item, and thought of Supertramp at the time.]

  10. Loved this: Tramp a very clever clue-builder, as we all know. Contributors in the Guardian speak of many thematic clues. Thank you Jay@4 for clearing it up for me. NOODLE is according to Chambers’s 3rd definition: a new one on me, but always glad to learn (then forget, of course). See some of you later!

  11. Had DOODLES for NOODLES, which made perfect sense but didn’t help. I find Tramp’s clue construction really tricky, but enjoyed DIDACTIC, SCHOOL, EVERYONE and EVAPORATOR in particular. Thanks to T & A.

  14. Super stuff indeed. I saw the theme about two-thirds of the way through solving, which for me is ideal. Up to that point, I had assumed Supertramp was simply self-referential.
    Loved ASYLUM, Rudy, FLEA-BITTEN, the reference to Fawlty in ABOLISH, and REVOLVE.
    Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

  15. Got the musical theme but not the Supertramp album (well before my time, I promise!).

    Generally enjoyed this, and much more satisfying than the last couple of days for me. Question mark (like others) on DIDACTIC – I certainly got the gist since I know it’s a teaching style, but couldn’t fit it nicely as a definition (and also didn’t parse it – thanks Andrew!). Some very good anagrams in here. EAU DE TOILETTE was a favourite today, along with some of my last to drop: TISANES and NOODLES.

    Couldn’t bring myself to like ABYSMAL – got it from the crossers & def, but it’s a very scratchy surface (which stands out among the others which are mostly good), and to expect it to be constructable from wordplay feels like a stretch?

    Thanks Tramp for the puzzle and Andrew for the blog.

  16. I’m with Muffin #1 and Paul Simon and also Sherlock who said something along the lines of: the trouble with you Watson is that you listen but don’t hear.

  17. The theme was blindingly obvious from almost the get-go, which made me think that this was just going to be an exercise in digging out Supertramp songs. However, it was great fun with some delightful clues, although I confess I did get BLOODY and CENTURY because of the theme and parsed them afterwards. I thought RUMP ROAST, REVOLVE, DIDACTIC (Rick Davies wrote and played harmonica) and FLEA-BITTEN were the pick of the bunch.

    Ta SuperTramp & Andrew.

  18. Too hard for me; I only got about half. Clever stuff, though, if loose in places. “Dude originally going” does not lead me to “ude”, for example.

    Thanks both

  19. Well, there’s more than one way to solve a crossword. I’m not particularly proud of the one I adopted this morning but I’m certainly not ashamed, either.

    Seeing two mentions of Supertramp in the clues and knowing Tramp’s lifelong admiration of the band, I guessed there was some significance in the timing of the puzzle and, since I know next to nothing about the band, I unashamedly resorted to Google and eventually found all of the elements in Jay’s list – and had a lot of fun doing so. The theme was, as expected, superbly exploited and expertly hidden at the same time. (I think someone should tie FrankieG down.)

    From an excellent set of clues, I particularly liked 13ac DIDACTIC, 14ac HEART RATE, 16ac RIGHT, 24ac SCHOOL, 20dn TISANES and, top of the list, 15dn RUMP ROAST.

    I also had a wee chortle at crazy Basil in 8dn – a lovely reminder of Tramp’s first puzzle, which I was lucky enough to blog, which contained the titles of all twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers.

    Huge thanks to Tramp for a superb puzzle – you must have had a lot of fun with this – and to Andrew for the blog.

  22. Thank you Jay for the theme, Tramp for the puzzle and Andrew for the blog.

    Muffin@1: For “well” I went with “I can see clearly/well” (now the rain is gone..?) which satisfied me. For your other points, I too wondered why a single tea was a multiple tisanes and thought “leaning against” and “on” a bit stretchy. I think the “listen/hear” thing is interesting (and I agree they are different) as we make a clear distinction, as do the French (ecouter vs entendre) but other languages I am familiar with do not. I’m not saying that makes the conflation acceptable, but that I rather enjoy finding these things we assume to be obvious or clearly distinguished in our language or culture that are not so in other places.

  23. Sorry to be a naysayer, but a lot in this puzzle was too “off the mark” for me.
    When date = D , harbour = H, and hearing = listening, I start to lose involvement.
    LAM = hit is getting lame by repetition.
    I completed , but only after a long struggle, and I didn’t find many of the clues much fun.
    EAU DE TOILETTE and BLOODY were exceptions.
    ABOLISH was nicely crafted.

    So…not so Super,Tramp for me, but I’m sure I’m out-of-step. Thanks to Andrew for the engineering.

  24. Managed to complete the puzzle without the faintest idea about the theme, thereby proving that if a themed puzzle is well clued knowledge of that theme is not essential. Tramp’s clues are often challenging but always good.

  26. That felt like a return to normality for me after a tough week. I liked the long anagram at 9D with the clever misdirection of “alcoholic”. Lots of nice surfaces.

    I completely missed the theme, but I have no complaints since it didn’t make the cluing awkward and the puzzle was eminently fair without knowing it. Which IMO is what the requirements for a theme should be.

    Eileen@19 – that’s one heck of a callback!

  28. The usual entertainment from Tramp. The theme would have been quite beyond me, even if I had recognised it. That meant I had to solve each clue in isolation, without thematic write-ins, which did serve to prolong the entertainment.

    My only quibbles were the number mismatch between ‘tea’ and TISANES, and the ‘hearing’/LISTENING disparity, as others have noted.

    I’ll second Eileen’s choice @19, but with the addition of FLEA-BITTEN, which was my favourite.

    Thanks to Neil and Andrew (we’ll miss you both at York)

  29. ENB@ 23 – I agree on ‘harbour’ for ‘H’ but ‘date’ is the very first entry in Chambers for ‘d’ 🙂

  30. Just came on to say that I spotted the theme partway through and it proved indispensable in completing the grid. No big news, but possibly a world first for me.

    And I don’t even like Supertramp!

  31. For once I got the theme straight away, but it hindered more than helped as I tried unsuccessfully to shoe-horn in LOGICAL, BREAKFAST, AMERICA and RAINING. Have enjoyed listening to them again this morning, though, and find the songs rather better than did my teenage self.

  32. simonc @27 – there’s a Setters and Bloggers annual meet at York this weekend. All invited, but not this late, because it’s fully booked. The invitation went up in September, maybe, on the site – the latest iteration is a sticky on the home page, as were all the other pages. Final details beginning of this month. (I was paying attention as I was dithering about going – but I’ve had my play weekend this month, and another isn’t on the cards.)

  33. I also had DOODLES, which fits the clue perfectly well and is probably a more familiar word, and wondered about the unclued plural in TISANES and the H=harbour. However ABOLISH made me grin for the implicit Fawlty Towers reference.

  34. Never a big fan of Supertramp, I was only aware, while solving, of the singles Dreamer and Bloody Well Right.
    And the album name gave me déjà vu. I must’ve solved Tramp’s puzzle from eleven years ago 26,025 …

  36. simonc@27. This is a wonderfully inclusive site. You may have missed the notices about the Setters and Bloggers gettogether this weekend, depending on where you’ve bookmarked your favourite blogs or how you come here to the Guardian cryptic. It’s been the first post on the fifteensquared homepage for some time. I wish I could join in, but I can’t afford the freight from Oz.

  37. Thanks to Andrew for the blog and to all for the comments.

    I turned 50 in May. This is when I had the idea of writing this puzzle as Supertramp’s classic LP, Crime of the Century, was also turning 50 this year; I checked and the release date was October 25 1974 (although I believe it was released in September in some markets), so, I hadn’t missed the date for an anniversary puzzle. As Jay@4 stated above, I managed to squeeze the key words of all the tracks, bar one, into a Guardian grid:

    SCHOOL
    BLOODY WELL RIGHT
    HIDE IN YOUR SHELL
    ASYLUM
    DREAMER
    RUDY
    if EVERYONE was LISTENING
    CRIME of the CENTURY.

    Unfortunately, I couldn’t get RUDY into the grid; there is a Shakespearean word CRUDY, but, I thought it was too esoteric for a daily puzzle. Attempts to have the word appear as a Nina failed and I couldn’t get RUDYard Kipling in there. So, I scoured the words that I had committed to the grid and searched for a word to gratuitously shoehorn Rudy Giuliani into its clue. I’m pleased with the puzzle. Thanks to Jim Toal for test-solving it and thanks to Alan for scheduling it for today.

    My twin brother and I used to attend Saturday morning art classes in Wigan. We’d sneak into town and buy Supertramp cassettes with the dinner money we’d saved all week. I can remember listening to Crime for the first time; I think it must have been ’85.

    John Helliwell does the Guardian puzzle every day and reads this blog. I met him two weeks ago for our annual Breakfast in Grange-over-Sands. He’s a legend who I’m lucky to call a friend.

    H for Harbour is in Collins but not Chambers or the ODE, so, I shouldn’t have used that. I’m not sure what I was thinking with the singular form of herbal tea in the definition: it’s probably not fair and I should have pluralised it. I have a selection of herbal tea/tisanes isn’t completely wrong. I’m not going to beat myself up too much; I do enough of that.

    Neil

  39. Tramp’s puzzles are always fun, and this was no exception.

    I failed to notice the theme; just thought the SuperTramps were self-referential. I liked the wordplays in DIDACTIC, DREAMER and LISTENING, despite the quibbles; the first entry for hear in the Chambers’ Thesaurus is ‘LISTEN’. I also liked the SCHOOL definition and the good anagram for FLEA-BITTEN. H=harbour is in Collins, so I think it’s allowable – see Ordnance Survey maps.

    Thanks super Tramp and Andrew.

  40. I loved Tramp’s crossie, and even though I knew he was a fan of Supertramp, and derived his pseudonym from there, and there was Supertramp all over the crossword, I didn’t twig to the theme, until later, so, like Gervase@28, I solved this without that awareness. So many clever and witty clues, as others have mentioned. The surfaces of SHELL, FLEA-BITTEN, EVERYONE and ABOLISH made me laugh.

  41. 19a For “Hearing” = LISTENING, oed.com has, with loads of citations, ‘hear
    5.a. c1375– transitive. To attend and listen to (a lecture, sermon, play, musical performance, etc.); to form one of the audience at.
    6. c1160– transitive. To listen to judicially in a court of law; to give (one) a hearing; to try (a person or a case).
    7.a. Old English– To listen to with compliance or assent; to accede to, grant (a request or prayer). Chiefly in scriptural use.’
    [The song title – If Everyone Was Listening – may have grammatical issues, though.]

  43. Favourite: ABYSMAL.

    2d I forgot to parse the RE = class of 24 after I had solved 24ac SCHOOL but had already parsed the ISSUE=children bit. I’m not sure I would have thought of RE=religious education today although I have seen it in puzzles in the past. When I was at school in Australia in the 1970s, RE was called Divinity class so RE does not always “click” with me.

    New for me: NOODLES=improvises; PRESIDE at = play a keyboard instrument; HAWSE.

    Jay@4 – thanks for the info – I missed the theme although I suspected there might be one related to the band but the only song title of theirs that I know is Take The Long Way Home as I really liked that song and will listen to it now 🙂

    Thanks, both.

  45. Enjoyable puzzle. The theme escaped me of course even though I remember the album well.

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew

  46. Crispy@ 38, I assumed the Supertramp references were a double bluff so never got near the theme. I forget to look for one usually.

  47. Well I got through this and enjoyed it, but can’t say I “solved” it with the amount of checking I had to do. Definitely treating it as a learning (a DIDACTIC?) experience.
    I guessed more or less what the theme was, but don’t know anywhere near enough about Supertramp for it to have been helpful. Now listening to Crime of the Century though!

  50. I struggled to start with, having only a few entries on first pass, but I already had a Supertramp earworm (Breakfast in America) from the clues. So when DREAMER went in, I wondered. Then when REISSUE followed, I checked and found the 50th anniversary, and realised I already had a couple of titles (Supertramp were a real favourite of ours when we lived in mid Wales in 77-78, and they always remind me of Borth). That was a help with a few more. Lovely crossie – thanks, (Super)Tramp and Andrew.

  51. Lovely crossword today. It was tough but largely fair. I was 2/3 of the way through when the penny dropped that it wasn’t just a Supertramp theme but a tribute to the COTC 50th reissue. I bought the album first time round and still bloody love it. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

  52. simonc @27, if you’re still there (I’ve been out for most of the morning).

    Nothing could be further from the truth! The York gathering (open to everyone) is an annual event (the first was held ten years ago) and this year’s has been advertised since the beginning of August:
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2024/08/06/sb-york-2024-friday-25th-saturday-26th-october-2024/#more-186505, with several updates in between.

    If you don’t often visit the home page (fifteensquared.net) you could be missing other important news / information.

  53. Thanks Tramp and Andrew

    I did wonder initially about HERBAL TEA / TISANES, but, as per Tramp @ 37, concluded that herbal tea can be a collective noun encompassing a multitude of flavours, so tisanes was an appropriate correspondence.

  54. Can we agree that although listening and hearing are not identical, there is considerable overlap in the Venn diagram of their “meaning spaces”, e.g. “I heard the new Supertramp album 50 years ago” vs “I listened to the new Supertramp album 50 years ago”? I don’t think there is much daylight between how most people would understand those statements.

    I would also aver that it is interesting that either one can mean getting more information than the other. For example:

    “You’re listening but you’re not hearing me” implies you’re paying attention to what I’m saying, but you’re not extracting the proper meaning. ‘Hearing’ here is suggestive of the unspoken meaning that can be ‘heard’ but not (physically) listened to.

    “You’re hearing me but not listening to me” implies that physically my voice is reaching your ears, but you’re not paying attention to what I’m saying.

    In other words, ‘hearing’ can be less than or more than ‘listening’, depending on whether one is ‘hearing’ the text or the subtext.

    Isn’t that fun?

  55. Jacob @54: Clearly both verbs relate to auditory experience! But ‘hear’ is a transitive verb and ‘listen’ is intransitive (paradoxically, since ‘listen’ is more volitional). To bring them semantically closer we have to pair ‘hearing’ with ‘listening TO’.

  56. Wonderful puzzle. I remember when the album came out. It was an Overture (but not a Fool’s). On first pass 1a and 16a gave the pin drop making it a bit easier. Thanks to Tramp for a Super solve and Andrew for the blog

  57. I suspected there was a theme when I saw the two Supertramp references in the clues, and was certain when DREAMER went in. My knowledge of the band is pretty much limited to their hits, though, so after I was done with the puzzle with no Give a Little Bit, Logical Song, or Goodbye Stranger in sight, I googled SUPERTRAMP REISSUE to see if there was one that this was commemorating. CRIME of the CENTURY popped right up, though oddly there doesn’t seem to be a 50th-anniversary reissue planned! (They did one ten years ago, though.)

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

  58. This was a breath of fresh air. After a couple of days of too-clever-by-half, this was just clever. Tx.

  59. AlanC. Who says it has to indicate a theme? Given that the setter is Tramp, they could have been self-references.

  60. muffin @1
    I see the force of much of what you say, and Tramp himself has been good enough to address some of it, but for 27A WELL I would think that (fitting the musical theme) he would sing along with Maurice Chevalier “Ah yes, I remember it well”.

  61. [The problem is that the whole time I was solving this, my head was going, “Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer…” and I haven’t even heard the song recently!]

  62. Always fascinating to hear what Tramp@37 has to say about the background of how a certain puzzle of his came to fruition. Made me feel much less frustrated by not being able – not quite – to finish this today. Hadn’t come across the alternative Eery for Eerie before, for one sticking point amongst several. But Crime of the Century one of the most iconic albums of all time for me, however…

  63. I’m surprised that nobody’s expressed shock or amusement at the image conjured up by people perching on toilets in 24 across. It reminded me of some graffiti that I remember from my childhood: “It’s no good standing on the seat: the crabs in here can jump ten feet!”

  65. Eileen @64 – Thank you for that, but for someone, who is obviously party to the Supertramp thing, to say that the theme was obvious was stretching things for those of us outside the clique

  66. Eileen, really interesting reading your blog. I notice that the clues weren’t included, which is a bit of a shame. I only wish I’d known about this site all those years ago. You must be very proud of all your contributions.

  68. [[AlanC @66 – I’m very sorry you weren’t commenting back then: I’d have been interested to see your reaction to 20dn:
    ‘In Belfast picks up an ounce and performs part of baptism (7)’
    See stiofain’s comment @42 😉 ]]

  69. [Haha Eileen, I certainly chuckled at stiofain’s comments – Kelly’s Cellars was an old haunt of mine before I abandoned ship for London in 1982, and the scene, alas, of some horrible paramilitary activity on occasions. When did stiofain stop posting, as I don’t recognise his name? I’m sure we would have had some craic].

  70. [Yes, Alan – sure you would! I’m afraid we haven’t heard from stiofain since before the pandemic, which is how I and a lot of people I know tend to date things these days. 🙁 ]

  71. Eileen@64: Before reading the blog, I had to solve the puzzle – 25,471 – It’s a good ‘un. “Dennis Potter? (6)” – a ‘lift and separate’ and nothing else!! 😉
    The Belfast clue was very nice, too! 😀 Dix points for each. [And what’s all this about tying me down?]

  72. Thanks for the blog, good set of clues , glad I missed the theme , I have never been a fan of Yacht Rock. DIDACTIC is very neat and I liked the perch in SCHOOL .
    With the incessant mobile phone prattle on the train I have learnt to hear without listening.

  74. I appreciate Tramp’s dropping by to comment on the puzzle.

    Personally, I didn’t raise an eyebrow at H for “harbour”. I didn’t bother looking it up, but I assumed it would show up on maps (in the same vein as S for “square”, etc.). I did wonder about the singular-plural issue with TISANES, but I think that it can be justified along the lines that Tramp and others suggest.

    With Supertramp showing up repeatedly in the clues, I did wonder whether there was a theme, but I didn’t look closely, or recall enough of their song names, to verify it. One of my university roommates was a huge fan, so now that I look at the list of songs I recognize most of them.

  75. [Roz @72: In the US, Amtrak has a ‘quiet’ car where any use of a mobile phone that can be heard by others is forbidden as well as any other noisy activity. I love it and I imagine you would as well.]

  76. I’m another who made a slow start yet got there in the end. Lots of clever clues, but not over-contrived. Being a Fawlty Towers fan, my favourite was the relatively simple ABOLISH. Completing the puzzle without help, in one sitting, while being totally unaware of the theme – my excuse is that I’m way older than Tramp) – made it even more satisfying. Thanks a lot, Tramp and Andrew.

    I would have been at York this weekend, but I’m on a long-planned foreign trip. To all those lucky enough to be there, have fun!

  77. [ Sounds wonderful Tony , alas we have Northern Rail so usually two carriages only .
    Am on the train …………….. wha ………………… cant ear yeh ………………..wha ……………… can
    you ear me ………………. am on the train ….. Repeat endlessly . ]

  78. [Eileen @70: so many names on that old blog that we haven’t seen here in a dog’s age. That’s normal, I suppose–people do come and go from online communities, and not always or even usually for especially dramatic reasons. I think that old puzzle from 2011 was before, but only just before, I first showed up here, but I refuse to search for myself to find out.]

  80. Mandarin@79, not having seen you on here since Monday’s Anto Cryptic I was beginning to get worried about you, having spotted being cunningly buried alive in Wednesday’s Enigmatist’s fiendish puzzle at 17ac, but I see you have thankfully struggled to the surface totally intact today, Friday…

  81. Unfortunately I only just got round to solving this. What a lovely theme (I managed to get it for once and it did help). The backstory is really touching. Many thanks to Tramp for setting a masterful tribute to a great album, and for dropping in. Well done to Andrew for the blog. I wish all at the S and B weekend a fun time. Happy weekend 😎

  82. Brilliant. Brought back memories of when John Helliwell and I were computer programmers in Birmingham in 1964/5. I warned him giving up programming would be risky.

  83. Clearly not for the likes of me, this one. I solved four clues over the space of today, and revealing the rest was clearly the right decision, in my case.

  85. I’d never heard of Supertramp so had no idea it was a band. If I’d been thinking I’d have looked it up, but I didn’t think.

    My quarrel with listen/hear is not that they aren’t quite the same thing to do but that “listen” requires “to” and “hear” doesn’t. That makes them not interchangeable.

    Admiring thanks to Tramp and grateful ones to Andrew.

  86. Took Friday and Saturday to complete this, which is at it should be for a Friday puzzle and my level of ability. Glad that I kept plugging away until the end, but even then I failed to parse a couple. Lovely to see Tramp/ Neil in the comments section. Thank you very much for the workout and thanks Andrew for explaining those I couldn’t work out.

  88. Tramp – listen and hear are used interchangeably, even if they aren’t quite the same. And that clue didn’t raise my ire as much as harbour defining jetty elsewhere the same day which are nowhere near interchangeable.

  89. Thanks Tramp and Andrew, it’s puzzles like these delicately poised between a granite wall and an kiddies pool with a large slab of tongue in cheek to make it all enjoyable that are hooking me to cryptics and the blog is a lifeline!

  90. Tramp, they don’t have to be interchangeable in all circumstances, and they are in the negative: “those who will not hear” = “those who will not listen”.

    Thanks for a great puzzle.

  92. It’s taken me nearly a week to get my brain sufficiently in gear to finish this one off. My main problem is that I can’t stand Supertramp. (Sorry, Neil!)

    I always hated Dreamer, and the Logical Song just irritates me so much I can’t concentrate. And don’t get me started on Breakfast in America! So, in the circumstances I think I’ve done very well to finish within a week. 😀

    Thanks for the crossword, anyway. It was super, Tramp. And thanks to Andrew for the blog as always.

  93. I didn’t really enjoy this one… too many abbreviations for my taste, and some of the synonyms seemed like a bit of a stretch (eg. ‘class’ and ‘rate’), but there were some quite clever anagrams (Flea Bitten, and Eau de Toilette).

  94. @93 “I class/rate Crime of the Century as Supertramp’s best album.” Works for me.

    Lovely puzzle, great band, loved reading about the Tramp-Supertramp connection.

    (I’m still bridling at one of my favourite bands being sneeringly dismissed as “yacht rock”. Some people really know how to put people’s backs up.)

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