Guardian 28,155 – Imogen

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Tricky stuff from Imogen today: after what felt like a good start, including the two helpful long downs, I ground to a halt, and finished the puzzle at a much slower pace. No theme that I can see, though there a few names that might be significant. Thanks to Imogen

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
9. FORTUNATE Blessed with strength to catch fish (9)
TUNA in FORTE (“my forte is..”)
10. AARON Batty about following a high priest (5)
A + reverse of NORA (character in the long-running TV series Last of the Summer Wine) Aaron is Moses’ brother and a high priest in Exodus
11. REBECCA Angry young man briefly accom­panied returning book (7)
REBE[L] (angry young man) + reverse of ACC[ompanied] – book by Daphne du Maurier, made into a Hitchcock film
12. PREVIEW Sneak look at conductor ignoring new duo playing (7)
[André] PREVI[N] (conductor) + EW (East and West, bridge players). Previn, who died last year, appeared in a legendary Morecambe and Wise sketch, where he was addressed as “Mr Preview”
13. WONT Petulant refusal is the custom (4)
[I] WON’T! is a petulant refusal
14. QUADRANGLE In court, argue against jail in speech (10)
QUAD (slang for a jail, I think, though I can’t see it in Chambers) + homophone of “wrangle” (argue) Thanks to WordPlodder for pointing out that “quod” is slang for a prison, so both it’s a homophone of both elements.
16. LULLABY Buy a three-pound mix that soothes infant (7)
Anagram of BUY A + three times L (pound)
17. DREDGES GP moves cautiously and cleans out bed (7)
DR (doctor) + EDGES (moves cautiously)
19. THREADBARE Feeble commercial ban a few accept (10)
AD (commercial) + BAR (ban) in THREE (a few)
22. CIAO Greeting government agency circular (4)
CIA + O
24. AUDITOR I hear someone coming to check (7)
Double definition – an auditor is literally someone who hears, or one who checks company accounts
25. SENEGAL Country roads twisting, say, near the middle (7)
E.G. (say) in reverse of LANES
26. MELON Fruit needing flood regularly eaten by half of us? (5)
Alternate letters of [f]L[o]O[d] in MEN (about half of the human race)
27. FIREPROOF Unlikely to go up, if turned over and put down (9)
Reverse of FI + REPROOF (a put-down)
Down
1. A FAREWELL TO ARMS Its subject: in messy warfare, male lost (1,8,2,4)
(WARFARE MALE LOST)*, and a “synopsis” of Ernest Hemingway’s novel
2. TRIBUNAL Court case: what the Master of the Rolls may bring into it? (8)
BUN (what a “master of rolls” might provide) in TRIAL (case)
3. MUNCH Chew meal, having changed starter (5)
LUNCH with the first letter changed. I’m not keen on clues that ask us to change a letter to something unspecified, especially when the replacement is unchecked, but it’s fairly clear in this case
4. PARAGUAY Country man dropped rope securing article (8)
PARA (paratrooper – a “man dropped”) + A in GUY (rope)
5. KEYPAD A number entered here — vital to move quietly (6)
KEY (vital) + PAD (move quietly)
6. LACERATED Torn material valued (9)
LACE RATED – I’m sure I’ve seen this construction a few times
7. IRVING Opening for visitor at last not initially residing in Berlin (6)
Last letter of visitoR in [L]IVING (residing), giving the famous, and long-lived, songwriter Irving Berlin
8. A NEW LEASE OF LIFE Restored health, but on borrowed time again? (1,3,5,2,4)
Double/cryptic definition
15. GALANTINE England almost besotted with it, a cold dish (9)
Anagram of ENGLAN[d] + IT A
17. DERISORY In a city (not London) is nothing totally unimportant (8)
IS O in DERRY (city, also called Londonderry, or “Stroke City” from “Derry/Londonderry”)
18. GOINGS-ON Sort of rate boy’s bad behaviour (6-2)
GOING (“the going rate”) + SON
20. RIDDLE Free, led to crack puzzle (6)
RID (to free) + LED*
21. BEREFT Deprived, be confident judge may intervene (6)
REF (referee, judge) in BET (to be confident – “I bet I can..”)
23. SNIPE Trim end of toe in waders (5)
SNIP + [to]E

84 comments on “Guardian 28,155 – Imogen”

  2. I had to look it up post solve, but ‘quod’ is in Chambers as a colloquialism for ‘jail’, hence the homophone indicator refers to both words in QUADRANGLE.

    Very hard going, with not just 14a but also REBECCA unparsed and GALANTINE a new term which had to go in as a consonant lottery. I think we’ve had it before, but I liked the ‘man dropped’ in PARAGUAY.

    I really felt I’d earned my money solving this one.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

     

  3. This was a slow, hard slog, only mildly helped by the two long ones.

    I guessed 8d but could not parse it, ditto 14a – I had never heard that QUAD = jail.

    I liked THREADBARE.

    Failed 7d  IRVING. I see it is Irving Berlin, but how to parse it?  R in [l]iving? What is the word ‘opening’ doing?

    Thanks B+S

  7. Yes a tough bird to pluck, as someone on the G-thread said, but I enjoyed it lots, though I hope the new modem arrives soon so I can have pen and paper again. As per Andrew, never heard quad as jail, so that was a shrug. Loved 1d, even the surface’s tone was Hemingwayesque (well, in his journalist voice; anyone read that book about the Paris Ritz…him, his wife, Coco Chanel, nazis, et al?). Loved fireproof, though it held me up even after both fs were in. The Previ[n] clue gave me a nice earworm, not of one of his scores but of dear Dory (sp?), abandoned for Mia Farrow, who wrote great songs about it all. The ‘man dropped’ was pretty neat, too, and Irving was pure harmony. Thanks Imogen and Andrew, richly entertained.

  9. Not QUAD but quod as jail, as several others have pointed out. Thank you Andrew for the parsing of REBECCA, TRIBUNAL and the EW in PREVIEW (duh!). I also thought the ‘opening’ in the IRVING clue extraneous. Funny that REPROF is also in the Quick today. Many thanks to Imogen for a (mostly) very fair challenge.

  11. Quod for jail was new to me. Found this tough but a very enjoyable challenge.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew

  12. Thanks Imogen and Andrew

    A DNF – I revealed IRVING and then I could only see the definition. Favourites the lovely TRIBUNAL, and PARAGUAY.

    A couple of meaningless “ins” – 14a and 23d.

  14. I really like Imogen’s clues.I had to guess AARON which implied there was a NORA BATTY which proved to be right

    Somehow I never saw that series.

    i liked Master of the Rolls and the DERISORY clue reminds me of a joke where a rather sexy therapist has a novel idea for treating stutterers.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

     

  15. Michelle@3 – I think the point of “opening” in 7D is that “IVING” is opening up to admit the R from “visitor at last”. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew – and does anyone know where “quod” comes from? I know the phrase, and associate it with the similar “in chokey”.

  16. Trying to remember which POTUS had Sir Isaiah Berlin to dinner and asked if he’d written any songs lately.

    Anyone know?

  17. QUOD was not new for me (nor for beer hiker@11, I think). It occurred in Maskarade Aug 30 2014 (I was surprised how long M had been setting the holiday prize puzzles; beer hiker, you left a comment about the puzzle); and in a Rufus Aug 27 2007, 24,166: Prison dispute heard in exercise yard? loonapick was the blogger  (again I am surprised how long you have been blogging); and there were a total of just 8 comments! Even so, Rufus came in for a great deal of stick, to which he made a rejoinder – worth reading the entry.

    However, though QUOD was not new for me, it was of no help – I had ground to a halt by this stage and quit, revealing the final half dozen answers.

     

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew

  21. Loved the long down clues. Hard for a beginner. After managing NW corner needed word search help to make more progress. But very enjoyable. Defeated by keypad and Irving.

  22. Well done and belated welcome, CanberraGirl. If you’ve almost managed this, you’re sailing!

  26. I got A FAREWELL TO ARMS fairly early so thought I was off to a flying start, but then went very slowly and needed to resort to some word searching to finish.  I liked the “man dropped” in 4d PARAGUAY, and the Master of the Rolls bringing in a bun in 2d.

    Trovatore @16: I believe Churchill dined with Irving Berlin under the impression that he was Sir Isaiah, so in that case the mistake was the other way around.  I don’t know if that’s the story you’re thinking of?

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

  27. Thanks for a great blog, Andrew.

    A most enjoyable challenge. I entered none of the across clues to begin with but 1dn opened them up very nicely – which then left the whole of the right hand side to tackle.

    Lots of excellent clues, providing smiles and pdms [AARON, TRIBUNAL, DERISORY, IRVING – and the wonderful PREVIEW, of course: I couldn’t resist watching it again. 😉

    Many thanks to Imogen for providing a great start to the day.

  28. Lots of good clues here, IMHO. I particularly liked the &lit of the Hemingway novel and the lovely surface of 27a. I was niggled by what I rashly took to be an Indirect Anagram(!) in SENEGAL — but then conceded that it was just a reversal of a synonym for “country roads”. Funny how crossword nerds are OK with an indirect reversal but not with Indirect Anagram(!). I was baffled by the parsing of IRVING: like others here, I didn’t get the “opening for” bit, and I was convinced the setter had screwed up trying to get the ‘V’ in there somehow. I do beg Imogen’s pardon.

  29. I had a rather unconvincing DAMON instead of AARON for 10ac for a while, which meant that I struggled to complete the NE corner. Tough and challenging today, a proper workout, I thought…

  30. In a way, I’ve been hoping for this crossword: it’s the first one in years that has yielded not a single clue on first reading. So I applied myself to the anagram at 1d and went from there.

    Thanks for the challenge, Imogen! And thanks to Andrew.

  31. Super-friendly grid meant the answers for about 80% of these just popped into my head so it became a bit of a guess & parse session. Not Imogen’s fault! I loved LULLABY but besotted can join spongy in my awful anagrinds file. Cheers all

  32. pserve_p2@28 I share your puzzlement regarding the “rules” around indirect anagram/reversal. Someone did once tell me that rules are for people who can’t follow principles 🙂

  33. I thought this was setting of the highest quality (though agree with muffin about his first unneeded “in” complaint though not the second – what else is he (Imogen) to do?!). Impeccable clueing as always and a lovely display of creativity and misdirection. And of top of all this, there was a fun helping of puzzlement. This constitutes, for me, a very good crossword indeed.
    Many thanks to Imogen.
    And to Andrew too.

  34. West side went in relatively smoothly, then nothing. Came back to it after dinner and slowly cracked the east side. Plenty of pdms, but also some ‘doh’s. For example, I thought of AARON early on thinking of 5 letter synonyms for priest but it wasn’t until much later, having the initial ‘a’ that I remembered Nora Batty. Chewy and satisfying with lots to like.
    Thanks to Imogen and to Andrew and also to Eileen for the link to the sketch.

  35. Most enjoyable despite a couple of over-convoluted parsings IMO. Defeated by only 3 which is good for us with this setter.

  36. A dnf for me, being forced to reveal IRVING.  Still think opening makes the clue clumsy.

    Raised an eyebrow at feeble = THREADBARE but it yielded readily enough.

    Loved the “man dropped” for PARA and SNIPE took far too long due to the clever plural misdirect of wader(s).

    Tough stuff for me this morning, many thanks, Imogen.

  38. Wow – that was very chewy. Like others, I found the NE corner tricky and stared for a long time before getting QUADRANGLE, KEYPAD and IRVING. Also ticked AARON, PREVIEW and LULLABY. Many thanks to Nutmeg as always, and to Andrew.

  39. I found this tough, and didn’t like threadbare=feeble.  Eileen@37’s argument sounds a bit like the red bus/London bus comparison.  Also don’t really buy the explanation of Opening, sorry sagittarius@15 – if you’re going to take apart the construction that way, I think you need something to indicate the insertion.  Finally, TRIBUNAL was funny, but I don’t think the commutative diagram works, for those who know what that means.

    Sorry to be a bit of a grump, haven’t had my morning coffee yet.  Must go and rectify that.

  40. The QUADRANGLE clue is slightly tautological, because QUOD (or QUAD according to Cassell’s dictionary of Slang) refers to prison, and is short for quadrangle. Newgate, like many prions, was built around a quadrangle, and Chambers says QUAD is short for quadrangle and can stand for any building with one. Anyway, it’s been in use for centuries and I was aware of it. Billy Bunter books, perhaps, where it meant detention.

  41. I really liked QUOD WRANGLE yielding QUADRANGLE and unlike Muffin @12 and William F P @33 I don’t see any problem with the introductory “in”. I see it as short for “in [a word meaning] court [there’s this homphone of jail argument]”, and is similar to the “in” in 23d. (There’s another one in 7d!)

    bodycheetah @32: doesn’t besotted have a similar meaning to drunk? (Chambers: infatuated, stupified, stupid, intoxicated.)

    Dr. WhatsOn @39 THREADBARE=feeble works for argument as well as excuse. Analogous to socks or knickers that you can see right through. Works for me anyway.

    Like Eileen and ngaiolaurenson I was able to do the LHS quite fluently with help from 1d, but got no more than a toehold further east witrh DREDGES. Finding that 27a both began and ended with an F led me to do something else for an hour to unblock my brain. In retrospect, of course, it all seems obvious, but I held myself up for ages by reading “at conductor ignoring new duo playing” in 12a as (AT CO[ndu]CT[o]R)*, but the joy of discovering that the answer was Andrew Preview more than made up for the frustration.

    Thanks Imogen for the workout and Andrew for explaining the ones I entered without parsing.

  43. Lord Jim @26, Churchill dining with Irving Berlin by mistake was the story that sprang to my mind too. Churchill supposedly asked him what his greatest contribution to the war effort had been and got the reply “White Christmas”. (I’m not sure that last bit wasn’t invented by Churchill, but the mistaken meeting does seem to be true anyway.)

    I don’t understand why some people are baffled as to why indirect reversals are acceptable and indirect anagrams are not. Who now would want to go through a word synonym by synonym juggling the letters forever given all the permutations? I think I’d give up cryptics altogether.

  44. For some reason I seldom get along well with Imogen, though I rarely find fault with his clues. Ended up with five unsolved and four others unparsed today, so I can’t say I enjoyed it much. Glad to see that others did.

    Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  47. We inherited a very old LP of Morecambe and Wise sketches. It included the Grieg Piano Concerto one with much of the same wording, though not with a famous conductor.

    [btw when I was young and Grieg was the only Norwegian I had heard of, I thought it must be a typical Norwegian surname. It’s nothing of the sort! He has a Scottish ancestor (grandfather?) called Greig.]

  48. Sheffield hatter@41, yes I see what you mean, but I’m still a bit uncomfortable about it.  I think it’s because threadbare is metaphorical here, and feeble isn’t,  and it doesn’t seem quite right to equate the two.

  49. What a surprise — I was expecting many on this blog to complain about what a write-in this crossword was compared to yesterday’s Nutmeg. I found it to be of average difficulty with above average surfaces for cleverness and readability. I ticked SENEGAL, FIREPROOF, TRIBUNAL, DERISORY, and BEREFT as favorites. Thanks to Imogen and to Andrew for parsing.

  50. We found this really tough, but after solving them I had ticks against many clues. Like others have said it was immaculate setting – apart from the “in” in 23d which clearly indicated an insertion of “e” into something to me. I even had SNIP but didn’t get to SNIPE for ages! The NE was even more of a challenge than the rest (I loved the Nora B reference – classic comedy) and I came here without IRVING – so obvious as soon as I saw it, but not the parsing.
    Thanks to Imogen for a great puzzle and to Andrew for the blog to match it.

  51. It comes to something when the Saturday prize puzzle from Paul is the light relief before the tough gristle of Monday and Tuesday. Needed Mrs Trailman to convince me not to biff in ‘radical’ for 11a’s angry young man or else I would slowly be going up the wall.

  53. A full strength Imogen.  Like others, I struggled in the NE.  The deceptively simple KEYPAD was hard to spot.  The IRVING parsing works but the word order’s highly unusual.  I stupidly convinced myself I was looking for the German word for “living”.  Thanks to Dave Ellison @17 for the other versions of QUADRANGLE.  It still seems a bit unsatisfactory, given that Quod likely comes from quadrangle to start with.  I did enjoy reading the old Rufus blog though.  PeeJay must have got out of the wrong side of several beds that day!!

    With MELON, I saw “half of us” as just ME, so I struggled to square the N at the end.  I liked FIREPROOF and A FAREWELL TO ARMS very much.  In my head I was confusing the latter with Goodbye to All That, so seeing Hemingway in the blog threw me at first.  I also think the THREADBARE/feeble equivalence is in Red/London bus territory.

    Great workout.  Beat me at the end.  Thanks, I and A.

  54. I realized I’m overthinking this @48.  Even feeble is being used metaphorically, and probably most of language is metaphorical at some level, so we’d be lost without it.  Sorry for the noise.

  55. One tiny gripe: Irving (Berlin) was in the upper east side of the grid rather than the Lower, where he grew up.

     

  56. phitonelly @53

    MELON is the sort of clue I least like. After guessing the fruit from the crossers it parses well, but you are hardly likely, in isolation, to say “Half of us? That’ll be MEN then.” (Though, to be fair, the LO is more plainly clued.)

  57. muffin @56 – I was helped with that one, because I remembered blogging Vulcan’s clue a couple of weeks ago: ‘Half of us succeeded, including me (5)’.

  61. muffin @56

    Not my favourite clue, but to be fair to Imogen, I simply grasped the wrong end of the stick.  There are other words or ideas in clues that frighten me far more – “plant” for example.  River might have done so in the past, but as we all know, there are only 4 rivers in crosswordland – Exe, Ure, Po and Dee 😀 .

  63. I laughed at the nerve of “Master of the Rolls” and Nora Batty, which must have baffled overseas solvers. I share Andrew’s slight reservation about MUNCH (How about, just off the top of my head, “I left German city to eat?” Hmm, too easy). I liked 1D, which somehow reminded me of the wonderful anagram A NOVEL BY A SCOTTISH WRITER (7,2,3,6,5).

  66. I really didn’t think I was going to finish this. I went through it twice and hadn’t entered anything. I got 1dn eventually and that started to open it up. Slow go in though and I didn’t parse everything- IRVING was a guess and originally I was thinking of David of that ilk:the well-known Nazi! I loved AARON though and PREVIEW made me smile. Both baffling for non Brits I expect.
    Thanks Imogen

  67. Peter @66 As a non-Brit, Nora Batty was new to me but AARON as a high priest has been seen in American crosswords more than once so the crossings made the answer obvious. Andre Previn (PREVIEW) is well known here both for his music and marriage to Mia Farrow.

  68. Tough one!  I couldn’t fully parse several until I came here (still can’t grasp IRVING) and I didn’t get GALANTINE at all.

    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

  69. Thanks both.

    Too many dinks for me, but I admired TRIBUNAL. And MUNCH: To dine at precisely noon. Also to dine earlier but without bromine. (5)

    2Scotcheggs@63: A NOVEL BY A SCOTTISH WRITER (7,2,3,6,5). Beats me.

  70. Not having got any of the across clues I was free to try to make LOOPAPER fit at 2d.
    It all yielded in the end. Thanks to Imogen and Andrew.

  74. Pretty tough for someone more accustomed to a DT back pager. Quit 5 shy of completion but thoroughly enjoyed the tussle of getting that far.

  75. Tough but fair, took some time to nut out TRIBUNAL.
    I may be fighting a lost cause, but trial and case are not synonymous – a case is tried. ‘Court:’ would have sufficed.
    Thanks Imogen and Andrew.

  76. Gonzo @ 75
    I don’t think court would have sufficed. You still need a word in the wordplay to denote what letters BUN is to be inserted into. The concluding “it” won’t do by itself, the “it” needs to refer back to another word. Nor would “court” fulfil this function – double work aside, court us is not synonymous with TRIAL either.
    How about “Court hearing…”?

  77. … having just posted @ 76, it strikes me that “Court hearing…” would perhaps also have had the added advantage of including a misdirection, with “hearing” suggesting a homophone which isn’t there. Or maybe that’s too devious in a clue that already calls for lateral thinking.

  78. Didn’t get AARON or LACERATED. Also isn’t PAD more move slowly? With TRIBUNAL I immediately thought of ‘Master Bun the baker’s son’ in the children’s card game.

  80. @63, 69 & 71: It’s a definition of the answer as well as an anagram of it. The answer includes a Caledonian author.

  81. 2Scotcheggs@63 et al – Given that the solution contains two words from the anagrist, I wouldn’t describe it as “wonderful” so that the comparison you note is, to my mind, a little insulting to Imogen!

  83. Interesting case of wrong parsing to get the right answer for 10 across: took “Batty” as indicating baseball star (Hank) Aron.

  84. A splendid variety of tricks and ruses here. Battled my way to the end with some help from my esteemed lady. I’m surprised nobody has commented on 25a. As far as I’m aware, it’s the first time I’ve ever come across a clue where the anagram fodder (LANES) is itself a substitution. If this becomes the norm, it’s going to make crosswords a whole lot harder!

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