A great puzzle from the great man. I wonder if he knows of this site and reads the comments relating to his puzzles. I doubt it, he’s probably working on future creations.

I loved ORPHANAGES which is a great answer to a great clue (must find another word for great, it’s starting to grate).

Also, spent ages on 17d trying to make an anagram of ‘son of his’ (doctor) and eventually latched on to the correct interpretation. Very misleading.

It must have taken me at least two hours to finish this puzzle. I only got 3 on the Saturday, finished most of the rest on Sunday evening and finally got the last three on Monday morning. I can’t see that there’s much fun in completing this in 8 minutes. If everything is so easy, then why bother. Maybe quantum physics would be a better pastime for you rightback.

Re TT. OED supports your tolerance – “T.T., Tourist Trophy (freq. used ellipt. for Tourist Trophy Race)”

I seem to remember it being used also as an abbreviation of Time Trial e.g. in cycle racing, but find no dictionary support for this.

See what you mean regarding ‘by’ in 23a ~ the clue would seem to work ok without it. Although is there perhaps a sense in which Russia (neighbour) was partly instrumental (through its membership of the Allied Control Council) in the dissolution (killing-off/decapitating ?) of the Prussian state after WW2 .
Clutching at straws, probably. I’m sure others with a better grasp of history will put me straight / shoot me down in flames.

Thanks anyway, Araucaria. And now to tackle your monster offering today !

That said, I completed this puzzle a bit too quickly to my taste, probably because the two long ones fell in place almost rightaway. Add to this some rather easy clues [23ac, 3d, 5d (probably the only one I didn't like very much because of all these abbreviations and single letters), 21d, 25d] and my ‘verdict’ had to be: an Araucaria Lite (but surely very well clued – like the fantastic EVIL and ORPHANAGES).

For once, the Cinephile that Mr Graham produced that same Saturday in the FT [we'll talk about that halfway the coming week] was, for me, the Araucaria of the Day.
[and if you haven't done it, take your chances while you can]

Thanks. As I read 2d Duaghterless Delius is another composer.

Hi Chris

‘Let’ is one of those teasing words like ‘cleave’ which seem to mean two opposite things. It most commonly appears in this sense in the expression ‘without let or hindrance’ and in the tennis expression ‘let’ or ‘let ball’ when the service has been impeded by the net. This last is confusing because it is easy to think of it as ‘allowing’ another service.