Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,159 / Enigmatist

67 comments on “Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,159 / Enigmatist”

1. Thanks Eileen. Rather a mix of the straightforward and the abstruse. The four 15 letter answers went in quickly enough and paved the way for a lot of the others but IDEAD, AQUIEGIA and SLOPS needed some lateral thinking. After toying with ‘sprog’ I’m still not convinced crack = spring, that again = then or that D = degree. And should not 8, 17 be the other way round, 2,4,6 entrances….? Are not ingresses entrances or have I missed something?

2. Thanks Eileen and Enigmatist. Especially to Eileen for excellent work navigating some difficult parsing.

   I found this rather tricky, also with a few quibbles at the time. Quibbles largely explicable by the abundance of so many very obscure words and usages which made this impossible for me to solve and parse without at the very least trawling through a dictionary. I couldnt complete it without revealing some letters on some clues and even then couldn’t parse all the clues after the event.

   I thought of 9A (one that I did manage to get), if anything, as a golfing reference. No idea why as I don’t play golf and have no interest in it! Beyond Eileen’s good point about the wordplay grammar (which I missed), am I alone in wondering whether needing a marker and forgetting one’s place are really the same thing? I need a marker to mark my place while I remember it. As soon I forget my place, I’ve no longer any need for a marker as I wouldn’t know where to put it…

   3D – is there a case that on this occasion, the “noisily” is justified not just to indicate a homophone but simultaneously as part of the definition of the homophone indicated? One can cry silently but bawling is definitely noisy crying.

   14D – another one I did get – I’d forgotten the relevance to the Good King Wenceslas lyrics, thanks for the reminder Eileen. That said, it’s possible to get the answer and parse it without any reference to that carol: 26th December is St Stephens Day, and thus that saint’s feast day, independently of the carol.

   Thanks again.

3. I got close, but gave up with three missing: AT PRESS, EYEBALLED (I was fixated on wailed) and SLOPS. I also had SPROG. My Dad was an ASDIC operator in WWII, so I liked that (though I wondered if it finds the location rather than the sub). Several went in with a shrug – IDEAD, SPAGHETTI. I also had to look up Ipswith Town before seeing 2d. 1d/15d went in very quickly and led me into a false sense that I would be OK here! I did like A MATTER OF COURSE and EVENING DRESSES, which helped enormously in the East. And I couldn’t get WARNE to fit at 19d – but this is a Pommy crossie, so Jim LAKER did come fairly quickly afterwards. Thanks for a week of head scratching, Enigmatist, and for the parsing, Eileen.

4. Thanks Eileen. I too wondered about the grammar of ‘forget one’s place.
   Perhaps ‘on the other hand’ for ‘then/again/the again’? OED has a quote
   “Someone winning young..doesn’t go down particularly well with some people… But again, if winning means putting a few noses out of joint, I don’t mind.”
   BigglesA I think ‘entrances 2,4,6 etc’ would be ‘the even ingresses’. D for degree is in Chambers, though I don’t recall seeing it in the wild. ‘Spring’ for crack – think warping wood, sprung floorboards.
   Thanks Enigmatist.

5. Thanks Eileen. As Biggles A has said, a mix of easy and more challenging. Thanks for the parsing of SKEDADDLE, the ‘sked’ portion of which eluded me and LAKER, where the superior craft aspect likewise eluded me. ASDIC and AQUILEGIA new to me, likewise the meanings of SLOPS. And isn’t IDEAD an ugly looking word, though admittedly crying out for a cryptic clue! Fav was BREASTFEED.
   Thanks to Enigmatist.

6. Thanks enigmatist and Eileen.
   No prize for me as I had Sprog for the junior and SNOTS which I think is a pretty fair definition for “sentimental issue” as well as a RN slang word for a midshipman. No worse an answer than SLOPS!

   SKEDADDLE was my final (correct) entry favourite though PORTMANTEAU WORD is a masterpiece, to be treasured.

   Thanks again to Setter and Blogger and to all sailing on the good ship 15^2.

7. Thanks Eileen.  Like Biggles, five of the long ones went in first, with Wikipedia explaining the Ipswich Town ground and coming in handy also for Pronghorn.  Obvious answers SPAGHETTI and ST STEPHEN took a good deal of fathoming and a few (IDEAD, SPROG? and last-in SLOPS) done with a shrug.

8. Me @3 Actually, thinking about it, there is a bit of a theme – but it’s personal. My Dad was also a publisher, though his books were always IN PRESS, not ‘at press’. As an ASDIC operator, he was also a sailor in the RAN, though I never heard him call bedding ‘SLOPS’. And our surname is very close to ‘SPROG’ (not quite so close to ‘sprig’ – I couldn’t decide between them, so opted for the former for sentimental reasons). He left us his STOCKS AND SHARES, and he did talk about SKEDADDLing. He loved words, including PORTMANTEAU WORDs, some of which he made up. I have to CONFESS to being BREASTFED too. All right, all right, enough of this wittering.

9. The name Enigmatist has been known to strike fear in the hearts of solvers, and I must admit I was a bit apprehensive on seeing it. Although I did fill the grid on the first day, it wasn’t until Tuesday that I had figured out some of the toughies and so considered it finished. When I was part way through this, there were so many clues that I thought I could answer but couldn’t justify completely, that I thought there may be some theme involving some extra manipulation, but without instructions (it is a “Prize”, after all). I kept refreshing the webpage to see if instructions were added late, but there weren’t any.

   I got SKEDADDLE and suspected we were wanted to equate “put” and “asked” to get there. However, I think it is not really viable to do so, even though “put a question” = “asked a question”. It is not the same as the red bus error, which can be explained in terms of Venn diagrams, but rather a matter of what is called semantic load. In “I asked the question …” the word “question” is redundant, and “asked” takes the load of both performing an action, and making the action an interrogation. In “I put the question …” the “put” does does little more than say I did something, the interrogative nature comes from the word “question”, which is not redundant here. This is just a long-winded way of saying that “put” and “asked” are not synonyms.

10. Thanks, Eileen.

    I found this tough, and was chuffed when I finally (on about the fourth visit) put SLOPS as my last one in. But I’d entered a couple without being able to parse them: SPAGHETTI (thank you for explaining that) and, as a rather desperate guess, the incorrect SPROG.

    Pity about the “antelope.” At least he didn’t call it an elk.

    5d reminded me of a funny book I read many years ago: Lady Addle Remembers, by Mary Dunn, the purported memoirs of Lady Addle of Eigg.

     

11. So glad when I saw you were the blogger, Eileen, as I know you are as meticulous in your solving as Enigmatist is in his setting. Each clue solved here was like a mini-victory for me. Some of the wording felt impenetrable and even though I filled in every square, I came back to it several times this week to try to tease out several solutions as I couldn’t parse them at the time. A UK friend and I emailed each other and he gave me his thoughts on a couple of the tough ones, and I also had a few PDMs myself by dint of perseverance, so by yesterday I was much more satisfied that I saw where Enigmatist was going with some of the word play. I was another SPROG, TassieTim@3 and Epee sharkey@6, so it was in the end, a disappointing DNF for me. No wonder I couldn’t parse it – and I am ashamed that I have never heard of the nautical term SPRING as applied to a mast – fortunately we haven’t had that happen on our little sailing boat. [I do like your maritime reference to our site 15² being a “good ship”, Epee, and the “navigating” reference, David@2.)

    Enigmatist certainly is a top notch setter!

    Favourites were 21a ELOPE, 24a CONFESS and 1/15d AS FAR AS I CAN SEE. 2d was of course too tough for me due to the need for local knowledge, but I got it from the crossers and the inclusion of “telethon” in the clue. I do love portmanteau words, such a clever branch of the language (I top up my list whenever I come across one, I like them so much).

    Many thanks to Enigmatist for the extended mix of pain and enjoyment, and to Eileen for a very impressive and careful blog.

12. Thanks both Pasquale and Eileen – lots of fun.

     

    I checked ‘marker’ in OED and one somewhat lapsed definition is as a bookmark, which I hadn’t grocked… though the grammar is still probelmatic:

    b. A bookmark. See also bookmarker n. at book n. Compounds 3.
    1852   M. R. Mitford Recoll. II. 184   I had no marker, and the richly bound volume closed as if instinctively.
    1853   J. D. H. Dale tr. G. Baldeschi Ceremonial Rom. Rite 293   When carrying the Missal, he will take care not to displace the markers.
    1889   Harper’s Mag. Aug. 417/1   ‘I shall be glad to go too’, answered Mrs. Mile..putting a marker in her book, and rising.
    1996   R. Mabey Flora Britannica 116/1   Tutsan leaves were still being used as Bible markers in parts of Somerset up to the Second World War.

    ‘Tutsan’ btw is a variety of St John’s wort: so by the mythology of same, it’s using the Green Man to mark one’s place, which I find quite poetic.

13. [Crossed against several, but I have to say that I liked the fact that you discovered such meaningful personal links, TassieTim@8. I enjoyed reading your story.]

14. A tip of my imaginary hat to all those who were able to crack this nut. Unfortunately I was another SPROG, and also failed on SKEDADDLE and SLOPS (had SWOBS = sailors, thinking that at a stretch it might be a homophone of sobs = sentimental issue — nope!). This was my third encounter with Enigmatist, and I have yet to get the best of him, but it is one to study in retrospect in order to sharpen my skills, so thanks, Enigmatist for that.

    Thanks also to Eileen for a masterful effort on what mst have been an especially challenging blog.

15. Gonzo @ 4. Thank you. I should have thought of street numbers.

16. I always start one of Enigmatist’s offerings unconvinced that I’ll finish; this time I did, but by the skin of my teeth and with several unparsed and only lightly pencilled in – and others where I could see enough of the parsing but not quite the whole story. Thanks, Eileen for explaining the mysteries of SPAGHETTI and the others. I agree with TassieTim’s dad; to me books are ‘in press’ not ‘at press’ and I was surprised to find Chambers giving ‘at’ but not ‘in’. I’m afraid I thought of an L.A. Laker spinning a basketball as my justification for LAKER, and missed the Superior reference, so I was lucky to get that at all. I had an unparsed sprog right to the very end, when I finally wondered about alternatives, and discovered that SPRIG could be a youngster and that spring could mean crack, neither of which I’d realised.

    My thanks to Enigmatist, and my admiration to anyone, and particularly you, Eileen, who could work out every one of those and explain them.

17. I was not on the setter’s wavelength, and failed to solve 20d, 24a.

    My notes were:

    Guessed 2d, could not parse it apart from PORT plus EAU in TWO?

    Also could not parse :

    AT PRESS (ANAGRAM OF SPARE TS?)

    ELOPE?

    SPROG (pro in SG?) //should  be SPRIG

    ST STEPHEN

    LAKER = boat/craft, but what is superior spinner?

    SKEDADDLE

    Thank you to Eileen and Enigmatist.

18. No notes on this but filled the grid without too much pain, albeit absent some parsing, eg the grammar of skedaddle. Portmanteau was a shrug and bung, lazily not looking up the town arena to see what what was going on. Though a pre-teen at the time, I well remember our blokes’ fear of the demon spin pair Laker and Lock. The latter became a resident WA player and spin mentor (later falling under something of a cloud, but that’s another story).

19. For sprig I was thinking spring a lock or safe.

20. Ages since I read Mrs ginf’s 20-vol O’brian series (great to binge) wherein I thought slops were just sailors’ clothes, but no they include bedding, as Eileen says.

21. Thanks to Enigmatist for a challenging puzzle and to Eileen for the clarifying blog.
    Re 9a: I think others may have already touched on this, but the beauty of a bookmark(er) for me is precisely so that I DON’T have to remember my place. (The less one has to remember one’s place, the better, say I!)

22. Fairly generous for Enigmatist – still tricky in places but enough starters to make it a reasonably quick solve.

    Thanks to Enigmatist and Eileen.

23. I was so delighted to see Enigmatist return that I solved a few clues and then took him off with me to join the queue at Sainsburys where I solved several more clues while waiting, which I wrote in on my return while Mr CS put away the shopping.

    I think beery hiker sums up the experience @22 above

    Thanks to Enigmatist and to lucky Eileen  (I’m off now to queue again but will probably leave Picaroon at home!)

24. A difficult one, at least as far as parsing was concerned.  I thought I had finished on Sunday evening, but in fact had gone for SPROG, which of course I failed to parse – as I did SPAGHETTI, SKEDADDLE, EVENING DRESSES and ST STEPHEN (annoyingly, as it’s my own name – without ‘saint’, of course).

    Michelle@17, Jim Laker remains the superior spin bowler in cricket, as his record still stands, of 19 wickets (out of a possible 20) in one match, which Eileen mentions.  She mentions who the opponents were, so I won’t embarrass our Aussie bloggers further, though thanks, grantinfreo@18, for the tribute to his skill.  His 46 wickets in the 1956 Ashes are also still a record.  Coming from Surrey, I saw Laker bowl at the Oval in the 1950s.  I knew the connection with the LA basketball team, KeithS@16, but had to look up the meaning of ‘a ship on the Great Lakes’.

    Was there anyone who did not have to look up where Ipswich Town play?  Perhaps there is somebody from Suffolk in our circle?

    Thanks, Eileen and Enigmatist.

25. One of the nice things about the Saturday blog with its early appearance is the opportunity to see a whole section of interplay between our posters from Southern climes and I enjoyed the personal theme identified by TassieTim@8.  And good to see David @2 has acquired a dictionary (I’m sure you made mention of preferring to solve without one on a recent post).

    This finally fell for me half way through the week when AT PRESS and SLOPS occurred.  Like Eileen, the first was new to me and I wrongly assumed the second to refer to the issue that is presumably hurled overboard first thing in the morning.  Pleased to complete the grid but quite a number were left unparsed.  Thank goodness for the blog which makes all clear.

    Several favourites for the neatness and simplicity of their construction, together with clever misdirection: CONFESS (so good, it’s in the blog twice Eileen), ELOPE, the brilliant LAKER (both the player and the clue) and favourite BABY GRAND.  I acknowledge the cleverness of PORTMANTEAU WORD – impossible without knowing or looking up Ipswich Town but then straightforward afterwards.

    Perhaps my only disappointment was 1,15 d where the enumeration bracket meant the answer leapt out too quickly.  It could only be that.

    Could 15 ac be a multiple definition of Steve Jobs?

    Thanks E&E for the twin pleasures of solving and reading

26. Thanks both, I put in SPROG (SPR = special purpose rifle, some sort of snipers gun, therefore “crack shot” + O = of + G = note) but was happy to be corrected here, even if crack = spring seems a bit obscure.
    [re Jim Laker – in his later commentating career he was kind enough to umpire a very low-quality cricket match I was at. What a nice man he was]

27. Thanks, Mark @25 – second CONFESS deleted now.

28. An excellent and well-crafted puzzle – challenging in places. The long words and phrases were a part of the enjoyment, all of them gettable (some more readily than others) and all of them helping with other clues. I queried only ‘needing a marker’. As ‘ask’ is one meaning of ‘put’ I had no problem with that. I was careless with SPRIG, though. I tried SPRIG and SPROG, couldn’t parse either, and bunged in SPROG because I knew what it meant! But the correct answer is hard to see, and I probably would not have got it.
    Crossword and blog both much appreciated.

29. sjshart  @ 24

    Since you ask, yes I did know Ipswich Town’s ground’s address; no I support a west London team!  I regret to have to admit that we football cognoscenti – I will not say ‘nerds’ – frequently use the association of the locality for the team, – e.g. White Hart Lane; Anfield – in a manner not too dissimilar to our use of many of the references bandied around on this site.

    Super puzzle; thanks to both for a satisfying challenge

30. Like many others I found this tough but was chuffed that I managed to finish at the third attempt, though I was yet another sprog rather than sprig. Several were unparsed or only partially so, especially spaghetti. Slops was a stab in the dark.
    Being a resident of Suffolk and sometimes attendee at Ipswich town’s dreadful football matches recently,Portmanteau word was my first one in (cf sjshart).
    Thanks to E and E

31. Mark @25. I for one didn’t have to look up the name of Ipswich Town’s ground, but I do have a slight quibble, in that it would never be written Portman Rd, it’s Portman Road.

    I knew slops from (I think) reading CS Forester’s Hornblower books, and should have remembered spring for the same reason (though it would have been the adjectival/past participle sprung, I think). Instead I entered SPROG (well done Eileen and Keith S @16 for persevering) and added it to my list of unparsed Enigmatist clues, along with skedaddle (I agree with Dr Whatson about asked and put not being synonyms) and St Stephen (would never have equated then and again either).

    Favourite was the very nifty even ingresses. Thanks E & E.

32. Sorry, that should have been a ref to sjshart @24, not Mark @25.

33. Trembled when I saw Enigmatist’s name but had a good stab at this. I was another unparsed sprog. Sprig as a youngster is in Chambers but I didn’t know it. I also failed on SAD FACE – this doesn’t seem to be in any dictionaries as far as I can see but it is of course an emoji (not Smiley), I should have known!

    Quite chuffed to almost have finished though; thanks to Enigmatist for the challenge and to Eileen for the good explanations.

    BTW ‘Ara beers’ is a diagonal NINA starting from the top left, if that means anything to anybody; maybe just coincidence?

34. Re ask = put

    AFAIK this is a peculiarity of English.  It’s certainly a frequent source of error when translating from English into French or German.  Poser une question and eine Frage stellen both mean put/pose/set a question, which is more logical when you think about it.  After all you don’t make a request of the question.

    Demander une question and eine Frage fragen would both be marked wrong (you would think the second would be obvious because of the repetition, but I have seen it!)

    The English ‘ask a question’ sounds so natural to the ears of native speakers that we never, well, ask the question why.  It’s only when you see how other languages do it that it starts to seem odd – to me it now has the same redundant feel about it as a double negative, the only difference being that ‘ask a question’ is considered correct standard usage, whereas ‘I ain’t never gonna do it’ is non-standard.

    Thinking about Dr W’s post @9, I wonder if the Venn diagram approach may fit both ask = put and red = London.  In the latter, we have two circles, representing the sets ‘red things’ and ‘London things’.  They only intersect in the case of buses.  In the former, we also have two circles, ‘usages of ask’ and ‘usages of put’; they only intersect in the case where the following word is ‘question’.

    Apologies to Eileen for a lengthy nit-pick, and thanks to Enigmatist for defeating me yet again.

35. @ Mark
    What an excellent memory you have. I’m afraid my comment about was misleading. I still don’t solve with dictionary to hand, which meant I couldnt solve certain clues without checking various letters in a trial and error process.

    One thing I’ve always wondered about solving with a dictionary is how one knows where to look before one knows what one is looking for…

36. I enjoyed this a lot more than Enigmatist’s previous outing and count myself lucky that PORTMANTEAU WORD popped out of my subconscious from the crossers. One very minor additional gripe with FORGET ONE’S PLACE is that you can’t tell whether it’s ONES or YOUR until you have the crossers in place. I guess it is a crossword so not the end of the world. Erstwhile airline impresario Freddie Laker was a dab hand at PR so could be considered a superior spinner if cricket’s not your thing. Thanks for the blog Eileen & cheers all

37. I had the same stumbles and queries as many above – SPROG and nothing for SLOPS, along with un or part parsed ENDURED (yes, I was lUREd up the garden path), SPAGHETTI, ST STEPHEN. IDEAD is a horrible word and ASDIC was new to me. Most of the rest I could cheerfully have ticked so thanks to Enigmatist and especially to Eileen for her sterling work in disentangling everything so clearly.

38. I managed to solve this unaided but for me this was one to parse with Chambers and wikipedia to hand.
    1a, 15a (I was surprised to find this in my 1965 Chambers as I had thought of its coining as being contemporary with the athlete’s “medalled” and “podiumed” Yuck),21a, 4d (my Chambers gives “slop” in the singular as “wishy-washy sentiment”,so the clue doesn’t work for me), 5d (as Eileen for SKEDADDLE as a noun and ADDLE without a D and Dr Whatson for ASKED = “put”), and the first definition of 19d – craft used on Lake Superior is very specialied knowledge (I got the LAKE but couldn’t make R = “superior”, For the second half I had SWANN as a possible until I got a crosser. Must have been some sort of amnesia caused by trying to rid myself of bad memories that WARNE only came to mind later).
    Of the others: 13a as Eileen, more like Vulcan than Rufus, I thought. 14a Couldn’t parse SPROG so entered SPRIG parsed hesitantly as cracking a safe. 22a The sands of time may pass but to me “passing time” doesn’t = “sands”. 6d In my experience a section is part of a department so the clue doesn’t work. 14d I was another who only reluctantly accepted that “then” = “again”.
    As is usually the case with me and Enigmatist, I found the clueing not so much clever as too clever by half. Thanks to him for the challenge and to Eileen for the customarily generous blog.

39. Expectations play a large part in my solving so when I saw which setter it was I steeled myself for failure. However I didn’t find this anything like as difficult as I feared. I made much heavier weather of yesterday’s Pasquale. Not to say this was a piece of cake though,I hasten to say, because last time I said an Enigmatist puzzle was easier than usual,I got some very snotty comments from some who didn’t share my view. I was reluctant to put IDEAD in but I found it in the Shorter OED and in Webster’s.
    I’d never heard of ASDIC which I got from the crossers. I also hesitated over SINGLE BED because it seemed too easy- expectations again!
    Thanks Enigmatist.

40. I struggled through this, but nearly every clue was ‘fill in a likely answer and try to backwards-parse it’, which I found a little unsatisfying.

    If it weren’t for the four generous long down clues, then this might not have been finished. PORTMANTEAU WORD and STOCKS AND SHARES therefore both my favourites.

41. On ‘asked’ vs ‘put’, in the supposed equivalence they take different cases
    The question was asked (of him)
    The question was put (to him)
    So really it is only ‘asked of’ and ‘put to’ that are synonyms in that specific case.

42. I found this very difficult, but got it all in the end albeit with an unparsed SPROG (oops) and END(URE)D, so thanks for the explanations, Eileen. Had to look up a number of things: Portman Road, sailors’ SLOPS, AT PRESS, IDEA’D,
    SKEDADDLE as a noun and ASDIC.

    I thought the first def for LAKER referred to a craft of Freddie’s fleet (superior because in the air). Never heard of the lake craft.

    I liked EVENING DRESSES best, although I suspected that was the answer for quite a while before I spotted ingresses to justify it.

43. Oh, and had to ask a cricket fan about the other LAKER to confirm my suspicion.

44. After a couple of months warming up with the weekdays, this was my first time (almost) finishing the prize – the two longs went in almost immediately (if the team was in Division One in the late 70s I know where they played then, at least) but I too fell foul of SPROG/SPRIG at the last. Will this be the closest I ever get? Thanks, Eileen and Enigmatist.

45. Well, drat and damn!! Completed grid with too many half or totally unparsed. Tripped up by entering SPROG and SHOTS just to fill up the blank squares, waiting all week with fingers crossed but expectations decidedly low.
    Unparsed SKEDADDLE but not ashamed that I didn’t crack it, because of others before commenting. Also SPAGHETTI was a bung in, but Eileen comes to the rescue, as ever! Thank you!
    As I was born in Ipswich General hospital some 57 years ago, I have always felt obliged to support them, through thick and thin (very thin at the moment), so that was first in for me.
    So a steady solve, with two fails and several ‘check those later’ clues.
    Overall, for an Enigmatist, I was really quite pleased!
    And many thanks to Eileen again, a top solve and explanation as ever.

46. Antelopes again.  It was in the Great Antelope Discussion of a few months back that I learned that antelopes aren’t deer.  Who’d’a thunk it, when they look so much like them?  Now I’ve learned that the okapi isn’t either one, which is not surprising once I look them up.  Pronghorns are familiar in my half of the world, at least by name — they’re thin on the ground in New England.

    Yes, Eileen, I tried paddling up the Ure but kept getting beached.  I finally had to do a skedaddle, which was a new noun on me.

    Thank you for straightening out EVENING DRESSES.  I got as far as “even” and then had no idea where to go.

    I’m not sure St Stephen enjoyed the original Boxing Day event — he died shot full of arrows.  I can still see a painting of him that was in a book we had in my childhood.

    Thank you,  Enigmatist and as ever, Eileen.

47. Valentine@46 – no, St Stephen was stoned to death (my namesake, so I know something about him).  Perhaps you are thinking of St Sebastian, shot by a firing squad of archers.  Though why 26 Dec is his feast day, I know not.

48. Hi Valentine and sjshart

    [I’m just in from a lovely lengthy lunch – after three months! – with my daughter, hence the delay.  😉

    As sjshart says, Stephen had a different death [and different painting] 

    Saul of Tarsus [later Paul the Apostle] held the coats of those who stoned Stephen.

49. Gonzo@41
    My quibble is that “put” needs “the question” after it to = ” asked”. On its own I don’t think that it does. Even in the barrister’s cliche “I put it you that you killed Reverend Green in the library with a candlestick” “it” is needed to make the phrase the equivalent of “I ask you, did you etc?”

50. Pino, I think “I put it to (sic) you that …” is more of an assertion than a question. The implied question is: “What have you got to say about that (the fact that I assert this), then?”.

51. Thanks to Eileen and to Enigmatist. I was overjoyed to have completed this puzzle – with assistance, it has to be said – as its the first time I’ve ever got more than halfway with Enigmatist. Shame I had to spoil it by putting in SPROG and deciding to wait until today for the parsing. Oops !

52. @ Pino
    In LAKER, I don’t think the R denotes Superior. Superior stands as an example of a (famous) lake. And a laker is, or could be, a type of vessel that is operated on lakes (a lake-going craft).

    Re the discussion on Jim Laker’s superiority – he was before my time, so I don’t know whether the rest of his career beyond his feted 19 wickets matched the level of Warne or – I’m genuinely surprised no one seems to have mentioned him – Murali. In my view, one incredible individual return during one match (depending in part, as it must, on how other bowlers and batters are performing) doesn’t in and of itself make someone the best spinner. I’m not sure we can even say that the career figures of Warne and Murali put them leagues above everyone else, given that it’s a fool’s errand to compare players from very different eras.

    But – getting to the relevance of all this to crosswords (!) – I think the debate as to who is better of Laker or Warne or anyone else, while fun, is academic here. Superior doesn’t mean the best of everyone. It means better. Laker undoubtedly was (and remains) a superior spinner, regardless of whether or not he was (or remains) the best.

53. Tony Collman@50
    I agree that it is an implied question which to me confirms that “put” on its own isn’t an equivalent to “asked”.
    David@52
    The point I trying to make was that, not having the specialist knowledgae that a laker is a vessel used on Lake Superior, the only way I could make the clue work was by making R = superior but I couldn’t so for me that part of the clue didn’t work. Sorry it wasn’t clear.
    I think the reason no one mentioned Murali is that he has 6 letters so wouldn’t fit.

54. We agree with most of the comments above.  We really  enjoyed the puzzle, but left quite a few not filled in while scratching our heads about the parsing.

    Thank you Eileen for explaining them.

    And thank you Enigmatist for an enjoyable few hours.

55. Good puzzle, but I didn’t think it was one of Enigmatist’s best.

    Like many others, I failed on SLOPS (not aware of either half of the dd) and SPRIG (an unparsed SPROG was irresistible).  It was good to learn of SPRING meaning to split or crack thanks to the blog.  Pleased to remember Portman Rd without having to look it up.  Perhaps age helped here, as I am old enough to remember Ipswich as a First Division team.  I also liked BREASTFED, SPAGHETTI, BABY GRAND and EVENING DRESSES.  I wasn’t so keen on the CDs for FORGET ONES PLACE or SINGLE BED.

    One question I still have:  when is F used as an abbreviation for Foot?

    Thanks, Enigmatist and Eileen for the helpful blog.

56. Pino @53

    The clue for LAKER (19d) is not a charade (+ definition) as you are trying to read it, but a cd/d (a cryptic definition plus a straight definition). “Superior craft?” is a cryptic definition (as indicated by the QM) where you have to understand that what is referred to is not a craft of higher quality as seems apparent on first reading, but one which might operate on Lake Superior, ie a LAKER.

57. phitonelly @55, I was ready to query F = foot as well, but I see it is listed in Chambers. However, I can’t help with any examples of where that is used. For me, the standard abbreviation is ‘ft.’.

58. Tony @57
    Thanks for checking Chambers.  I only have access to the free online version, which doesn’t list it.  I am curious whether it refers to Foot as the unit of measurement or to one of its other meanings (metrical foot, say).

59. Pino @ 56

    Thanks for the explanation of what you meant, sorry if I was explaining the already obvious.

    And thanks for pointing out why Murali wasn’t mentioned. Makes obvious sense now.

60. phitonelly @58

    It’s just listed as “foot” (along with other words that F can abbreviate) in my old paper Chambers (1986, I think; not to hand right now).

     

     

     

61. Thanks to Eileen and Enigmatist

    I saw 4d as “is sentimental” i.e slop as a verb

    In 20d “OED”? = dictionary, short = dict, even shorter = dic

    Much the same reservations as everyone else along with one I don’t think has been mentioned yet – the use of a standalone “left” in 11a to indicate a reversal. Not seen that before, hope not to again.

    I also don’t get 6d other than as a vague sort of double poke in the general direction of the answer.

62. Too difficult to me. I found the multi-word answers insanely easy, got a few others, then was stuck.

63. Tony Collman@56
    My son tells me that LAKER is a local term used for a type of craft that operates on Lake Superior. To discover this he had had to delve into internet sources which I don’t think should be necessary. So, as you say, I did try to make it work as a charade and, as I said, I failed.

64. Pino @63, really? I just looked in Chambers (“a boat for lakes”; 2nd def, after “a fish found in lakes”). I hadn’t heard of it before that, admittedly. Collins prefers “a cargo vessel used on lakes”.

     

65. [Eileen – a thousand apologies. I tried last night to listen to my recent recordings of ISIHAC only to find I had episodes of the Unbelievable Truth! I felt disappointed but, worse, guilty for having misled you – albeit with the best intentions. I should have checked at the time. My grandmother’s admonition resounds; ninety-nine percent of a gesture is no gesture at all. I am so sorry, Eileen. I feel it likely I’ll spend some of today’s constitutional musing on my latest failing. Have a lovely day.]

66. Don’t worry about it, William: all is forgiven. There are lots to choose from on BBC Sounds. 😉

67. BTW I thoroughly enjoyed this. I’ve had little time to visit 15² recently but have solved all the crosswords (of course) and recall this as one of my favourites.
    (‘noisily’ does not faze me as an anagrind. Perhaps it should as I agree it isn’t exactly the same as ‘out loud’. On the other hand, it is an antonym of ‘noiselessly’ – from which direction it works. At least, I think that’s how I saw it!)
    Many thanks, both and all.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.