Guardian 26,564 / Imogen

68 comments on “Guardian 26,564 / Imogen”

1. I think PRESS ON just refers to the action on the remote control!

2. Oh dear – thanks, ulaca: I’m sure you’re right!

3. Nice puzzle. Not mad about GATSBY but SCREECH OWL was very cunning.

4. LHS went in without trouble, but RHS proved a real struggle, but having looked at it afterwards, I’m not sure why! Not keen on Gatsby, but largely because it took me ages to twig. Thanks to both.

5. Thank you Imogen and Eileen.

   These were very elegant clues, there are so many I liked that I can not choose a few to list, but SCREECH OWL, POTOMAC and TUCSON made me laugh.

   I parsed PRESS ON as a double definition, is that possible?
   Failed to parse GATSBY (there is another ee, Trustee; my mother hated her name Kathleen because of the ee, but you do not hate yours do you Eileen).

6. Thanks, Eileen.

   I fond this easier than his last one.

   (In SCREECH OWL I think you mean ‘unstable’ in place of ‘unreliable’?)

7. Thanks, Dave @6 – fixed now.

8. Thanks Imogen and Eileen. Only failed on YGGDRASIL, which is a lovely word that I was unfamiliar with. I’d perhaps expect it more in an Azed or such, but have no complaints about it.

9. Thanks all
   Enjoyable, with some cunning clues.
   I failed to solve Rubens and to parse press on, otherwise satisfying.
   Last in was 20 down.

10. I really enjoyed this puzzle. I had come across YGGDRASIL in puzzles before, and as Eileen said it tends to stick in the mind once seen. Having said that, it was also very clearly clued. I finished in the SE with TURNOUT after TETHER.

11. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.

    I was wondering how Paul would clue BLUE TIT, but then I found out: ‘Creature unhappy with useless person (4,3)’ I liked the BUST A GUT/STAND OUT couple. I wasn’t expecting a YGG… word. I thought the Y & G were going to be filled with something. I also liked COMPILER among a number of others.

12. Lovely puzzle – thanks to Imogen and Eileen. Struggled with SE corner but eventually got there. Favourites were PLAYBOYS, SCREECH OWL, HOURLY AND YGGDRASIL (I spent a couple of years making stained glass windows, and one of the early panels I made was an image of Yggdrasil).

13. Thanks Eileen and Impgen
    A good puzzle. I had to hunt out Yggdrasil having got the basic idea. I’ll remember it if I see it again.

14. Thanks Imogen and Eileen
    I enjoyed this; PLAYBOYS and COMPILER were my favourites. I didn’t parse GATSBY.

    I did know YGGDRASIL (whisper it) from Wagner’s Ring cycle (Wotan breaks a branch off from which he makes his spear, later broken by Siegfried’s sword Nothung – the tree also features in Joanne Harris’s re-imagining of the stories these are well worth a read), but I was a little surprised at “good” giving GD rather than the usual G.

15. A very nice puzzle, with no clues which felt dubious to me. Thank you, Imogen and Eileen.

    RUBENS was my LOI, partly because for a long time I couldn’t think of any artists who fitted those crossers, but mostly because “sounds like”, “son of Israel” and that U misdirected me towards some variant of Jew/Jewish/Judean.

    Favourites were COMPILER, SCREECH OWL, BLUE TIT, YELLOW SUBMARINE, RIOT ACT and CAN-DO.

16. This is very good, with hardly any horrible things. 24a uses ‘tailback’ which is a Guardianism of course, and 4d has a weird surface. I got it straight away as YG can only mean one thing.

    I am only amazed that, since this is the smutty Guardian, that LADYBOYS did not show up in 5a 😀

    HH

17. I didn’t like the uneccessary ‘and’ either in 4dn or 19ac. There were some very good and fair clues generally though.

18. Yes, a very enjoyable and neatly constructed puzzle. Had the whole of the left hand side finished before tackling the right, and TURNOUT was last in. Have to admit that the submarine sandwich was new to me, but that had to be right from the first few crossers. Liked COMPILER, GATSBY, HOURLY, RIOT ACT, POTOMAC and SCREECH OWL (which was only familiar thanks to Castle Rock, one of Nottingham’s best breweries).

19. muffin @14 – “good” isn’t giving GD. It’s that “good” is being emptied along with “young” to give YGGD..

20. PS Thanks to Eileen and Imogen – forgot my manners!

21. Thanks jaceris – missed that.

    [I wondered about the origin of the term “submarine sandwich” too. I found it on wikipedia, but that led to this fascinating page:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sandwiches
    ]

22. Failed on YGGDRASIL, since I had to look it up. Failed on TUCSON because I didn’t know “scut.” All the same, I thought this was excellent.

    If there weren’t a river Po, crossword setters would have to invent it. Ditto for the Cam and the Dee. Most American rivers are long-named, and therefore not nearly as useful—this is the first time I can recall seeing the Potomac in a cryptic, for example. If I ever see Monongahela or Susquehanna in one of these, I think I’ll maybe drop dead.

23. [muffin – thanks for that link – from what I remember, I’m not entirely convinced by the picture of the British Rail sandwich!]

24. [Nothing like curly enough, BH!]

25. Mr Penney @22
    You are forgetting probably the commonest river – the EXE.

26. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

    mrpenney @ 22: in the graun POTOMAC appeared in Double Alphabetical Prize 26035 on 31/8/13 by Maskarade, who was subbing for the ailing Araucaria, and prior to that in 25103 by Paul on 31/8/10, clued as “River given to another, backing onto a third?”

27. Prickly comment. 25a – “an organisation” = “NATO” or “an + NATO”, not “a NATO”.

28. Thanks, Eileen

    Another great puzzle from Imogen.

    Started off at a sprint in the NW quadrant (the World Tree went straight in at 3d – what else starts Y_G..?) but ground to a halt in the SE, which took longer than the rest of the crossword put together, unaccountably. This wasn’t helped by my failure to parse GATSBY, which was my LOI (I was trying to drop A or I from GIANT, without success) – great clue, though.

    Although I had YELLOW quite early, it took a while to see SUBMARINE, as I was trying to think of some vegetable narcotic. I’m surprised that ‘submarine’ as a (baguette) sandwich is unfamiliar, as the chain Subway is now ubiquitous.

    Favourites were 1a, 16a, 27a, 8d, 22a – all imaginatively constructed with polished surfaces.

    mrpenney @22: Not all US rivers have jaw-breaking names – how about Red? – but I would be surprised to find Schuylkill as part of a charade.

29. Gervase @28 – you are a mine of information (as always) – the connection between SUBMARINE and SUBWAY is new to me too, and I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything from Subway!

    Re US rivers – I’m sure I’ve seen COLORADO a few times too…

30. Gervase @28
    So that’s why they’re called “Subway”? I wondered”

31. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen, especially for the parsing of GATSBY (I know the novel well but TSB was new to me). RUBENS was visible from the crossers, but I did not think of Reuben and instead got hooked on “ben” as “son of.” Very enjoyable puzzle.

32. Also, in 19a why is “one out” gay? “One in” would also be gay, just that other people wouldn’t know it. The Great Openlygatsby.

33. I found the lhs straightforward but struggled with the other half. I don’t understand submarine = sandwich or number = ether.

34. “Yellow submarine” was a song (“number”) by the Beatles

35. JohnM @33 – remember number = ether – it is an old chestnut in crosswordland, almost as popular as flower = river

36. Strangely, I have Imogen in my (short) list of setters I don’t usually click with, but this was a wonderful crossword full of joyous clues, and a real pleasure to solve – many thanks to Imogen and to Eileen.

    Particularly liked GATSBY, COMPILER and the “laybys” in PLAYBOYS.

37. JohnM @33
    I misread your post. BeeryHiker has correctly said that number = ether is common in crosswords, but perhaps you don’t know that ether was used as an anaesthetic, hence “number”.

38. JohnM @ 33

    The reason ETHER = NUMBER is that it used to be used as an anaesthetic, hence it made you numb. Therefore it’s a NUMB-ER, not a NUM-BER. As others have said, it’s something of a regular.

    hth

39. With a late start, thought I was in for a long slog, but like many others the LHS was quickly in place thanks to the very gettable 2d. GATSBY etc took much longer, even though the YELLOW SUBMARINE was in nearly as quickly as the LAUGH … clue.

    We had some discussion recently over whether US cities should be glossed as such. Well, TUCSON wasn’t. Didn’t worry me – this time – even though it was not one of the most common.

40. Van Winkle @27

    “Prickly comment. 25a – “an organisation” = “NATO” or “an + NATO”, not “a NATO”.”

    For me, ‘an organisation’ = ‘A North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’.

41. As far as 25ac is concerned a=an (indefinite article) and organisation=NATO are absolutely fine when separated.

42. Limeni, I felt that the LADYBOYS would make a better fit with the magazine element. You may speculate on my taste in mags as much as you like of course!

43. Andy B @41. I still don’t like it. NATO is an organisation, not “organisation”. And “a” and “an” aren’t supposed to be interchangeable – I presume they are in an either/or relationship grammatically.

44. What’s all this with LADYBOYS? I found this quite difficult to start but once I did – with RIOT ACT- the answers went in quite easily considering this is Imogen. Most of the favourites have been mentioned but I really liked TUCSON and YGGDRASIL. TETHER was my LOI and I guessed it rather than noticing ether= number.
    Nice puzzle though.
    Thanks Imogen.

45. Van Winkle

    Please would you explain what is wrong with my comment @40?

    I thought afterwards that I should, perhaps, have expressed it the other way round:
    ‘A North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’ = ‘an organisation’.

46. What about ATO, Air Traffic Organization, and being done with the problem…

47. Eileen @45 and various others

    Shouldn’t it be “the” North Atlantic Treaty Organisation rather than “a” or “an” as there is only one of them?

48. Cookie @46

    I like your solution.

49. jennyk @47

    Yes, there is only one NATO but the components of a cryptic clue are treated separately.

    I’m sorry but I really can’t find any fault with this clue!

50. I agree with Eileen on this. A or AN just depends on whether the next letter is a consonant or a vowel; other wise they are completely equivalent.

    Some words have changed on this – for example A NAPPLE, A NORANGE (roughly – naranja in Spanish) and A NAPRON all transferred their Ns to the indefinite article.

51. Thanks to Imogen for a most enjoyable puzzle and Eileen for the blog and for Riot Act 101. I’ve hardly heard it used since my school days when it was used as an ultimatum to a single misbehaving student (not 12 of us).

    BUST A GUT was one where the enumeration helped, for a fleeting instant my mind went to other things that stood out. GASSTBY was a long time coming (LOI) but I was deceive by 25a, trying to think if ATO was an organisation>

    In the Guardian blog it was pointed out that rows 1 and 2 describe the ‘plight’ of an energetic hedonist (my liberal paraphrasing).

    Re 4d (which I didn’t get): are we ready for ‘sulfur,’ the scientifically accepted norm?

52. Gervase @28:

    Yes, there’s the Red–in fact there are two different prominent Red Rivers (the one that’s the Texas-Oklahoma border and the one that’s the Minnesota-North Dakota border). Also the East River (which is short but well-known–it’s the one spanned by the Brooklyn Bridge). But if you’re going to include Red or East (or Charles or James or York or Snake), you’re likely to use simpler references than American rivers.

    Even OHIO is more likely to be a state than a river.

    [Incidentally, on that note, there are tons of states that are named after rivers (or vice versa): Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin. Plus Nebraska, sort of: The local Indians called the river the Nebraska, while the French trappers called it the Platte. Originally used interchangeably, the French name stuck for the river, while the Native American name was applied to the state it flows through. The two words both refer to the same feature of the river, which famously has been described (with only slight exaggeration) as being a mile wide and an inch deep.]

53. An enjoyable puzzle from Imogen but as has been said very much easier than his previous few offerings.

    Perhaps I was just on his wavelength but after the first pass I had about half of the across clues and almost all the downs! 😮

    Only hold up really was RUBENS as I had convinced myself it began JU! Eventually I had the big “DOH” moment.

    Regarding the “prickly comment” regarding “an” –> “a”. I seem to remember that we have often had this happen in previous puzzles when the wordplay word began with a vowel and the entered word didn’t. I can’t be bothered trawling the archive though as I don’t see it as a problem.

    Thanks to Eileen and Imogen

54. Van Winkle@43 – are you being deliberately absurd? If asked to provide an example of an indefinite article one could say “a” or “an”, so from that perspective they most definitely mean the same thing. Your comment that NATO is not “organisation” but “an organisation” is frankly bizarre. Since when does a noun have to have an indefinite article before it to become valid?

55. I wrote in SICK for 23.

    Is it me?

56. @cookie – missed your perfect solution. So there is an ATO!

    @today’s debaters: IMO precision syntax doesn’t apply to crossword clues, otherwise we would have to discount a good many more clues. Surely ambiguity is bread, butter and filling to setters?

57. Andy B @54 – I’m afraid I don’t see it as absurd. Per the counterarguments that you treat the parts of a cryptic clue separately, it would be fair to use “a fish” to clue “an cod”, which I would find peculiar. Of course “a” and “an” mean the same thing, but I thought the whole point of their dual existence was that they were not interchangeable. When you need to use “a”, you use “a”; you don’t have a choice to swap it for an “an”. I don’t find the argument that they both mean “indefinite article” works – “cat” and “dog” both mean “animal”, but one wouldn’t use “cat” to clue “dog”.
    (Apologies to those who have been irritated by my nitpicking – I appear to be in a group of one of those who found the clue didn’t work.)

58. Van Winkle @ 57

    “Of course “a” and “an” mean the same thing, but I thought the whole point of their dual existence was that they were not interchangeable.”

    A hotel, a historian…An hotel, an historian…seem fairly interchangeable to me.

59. Van Winkle @57

    To use ‘a fish’ to clue AN COD would be bizarre, certainly, but to use it to clue AN EEL would be fine – the epenthetic ‘n’ is only inserted before a vowel.

    Similarly, ‘An organisation’ = A NATO works perfectly well, as NATO is a true acronym: an abbreviation which forms a pronounceable word. Unlike IRS or FDA, for example, which are always articulated as their separate letters, NATO is invariably pronounced as ‘nay-toe’ and not ‘en-ay-tee-oh’, so begins with a consonant. We wouldn’t generally talk about ‘a NATO’, to be sure, but the point everyone has been making is that the morphology is fine, which is what matters in a good cryptic clue.

60. In 23 across, I can see why ‘rear’ means ‘bring up’, but why does it mean ‘this’?

    Thanks.

61. muffin, that shift must have happened a very long time ago. As I recall, the German cognate for “apple” is “Apfel”, not “Napfel”. There again, their indefinite article is ein, eine, etc.

    Many thanks all.

62. Freddy @56, I don’t think it is a perfect solution, I think Eileen’s parsing is correct, just thought ATO might be a way around the gripes.

63. Thanks, Gervase @59, for articulating what I tried to say in the blog and in comments 40 and 45. [I’m surprised that what I thought was a straightforward [and good] clue has generated such discussion.]

    Alastair @60 – it’s a reference to ‘bring up the rear’ [Collins: ‘to be at the back of a procession, race, etc,’

    I’m going to bed now – it’s going to be a long night tomorrow!

64. Gervase@59 – I am not questioning that if you were to put an indefinite article in front of NATO it would be “a”. My problem would be why would the clue lead you to. As I saw it, the “an organisation” is either one cryptic element, leading to NATO, or two, leading to “an” and “NATO”. My worry was that there was a tiny step too far to treat “an organisation” as an instruction to think of an organisation and then put the appropriate indefinite article in front of it. You would be separating the cryptic elements and then bringing them back together.

65. Van Winkle @57

    I’d say you are in a group of one and a half. That clue didn’t bother me – as I said in my first comment on this puzzle, “with no clues which felt dubious to me”. However, I do think your point as repeated @64 is a valid one, even though it didn’t spoil the clue for me.

66. Why can’t ‘an’ be treated as cryptic, giving ‘a’, or for that matter ‘one’ etc.?

67. Oh. Thanks, Eileen – wouldn’t have spotted that on my own.

68. Thanks Imogen and Eileen

    Late to this one and finished it across a few short sessions. Followed a common trail by finishing the lhs first and then battling down the other half, finishing with GATSBY (where I guessed GAY and had to look up to see if there was a TSB bank), TURNOUT and TETHER.

    Didn’t see Reuben as the son of Israel but had guessed Ruben / Rubin as a traditional Jewish name. Misparsed ANATOMIC (lazily going with AN ATOMIC) and totally agree with Eileen’s version with no problems at all with the clue.

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