It’s never too late to post a comment, because the blogger gets an email of every one.

I wonder why you gave up doing the Guardian puzzle in favour of the FT?

I hope we’ll hear from you again.

[I just googled your clue and was directed [only] to this comment of yours. ]

I have no idea whether a comment like this to a two-year old blog will ever reach you, but I feel I have to comment. I lived in the UK for a few years in the 1960′s and enjoyed solving the Guardian and other cryptics at that time. I now live in the US and have taken to the FT lately. I have seen and enjoyed your comments on the FT blog. My reason for commenting is that some clues and answers from those days still stand out in my memory for one reason or another. The one that stands out as having the longest answer is the ‘crowded hour’ quotation. I believe the clue back in the 60′s was “Sixty full minutes, if our follies go wrong, is equivalent to an undesignated period” – decidedly easier than the anagram. I just Googled it today to see if it was referenced anywhere and found your blog from the past. I believe the clue appeared in the Guardian back then but have no idea who set it.

For comparison, look back at archive crosswords from The Times in the 1940s or 1950s, which demanded a comprehensive knowledge of the most abstruse Eng Lit quotations, with no concessions to weakness such as anagrams or cross-references: you either knew it or you didn’t. Fortunately, things have changed, and compilers nowadays cater to intelligence over schoolroom rote-learning.

It is very hard to solve a clue like that as a stand-alone one, you’re right.
But we impersonated your “anyone” that solved it by writing out the letters on paper from the anagram – of course, after having several crossing letters.
Never heard of the quotation though.
And to be honest, can’t be bothered by rather old fashioned quotations like this, too.
But then, as I always say, we are all different.

I haven’t contributed because I felt that I had nothing worthwhile to say. However this puzzle made my blood boil. What is the point of a Cryptic Crossword if you cannot solve the core clue as a standalone? I cannot believe for a moment that any solver dcoded the saying from the anagram alone – in my case I got “Life is” & “Glorious” & various crossing letters, and then googled quotations to fit the word sizes. I finished it but I think that it was a travesty of a crossword.

Count me as one who eventually got the quotation without knowing it in advance, but also without the help of Google. But I was stumped by the R. side owing to 17a, 18d, 24a and 4d, none of which clicked in my American brain.

As for 22, 14 – I’m glad to learn this meme is even older than I thought; I learned it as Chaucer’s “The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne” which has always been a favorite. The useful double meaning in the 4-word Latin version reminds me of another favorite – ‘ad astra per aspera’.

Many thanks for the information re Swindon Town. That’s just what I was hoping for in the preamble. As to the misspelling, as I said @17, he’s by no means alone there.

[It's just the anagram indicator I'm not happy about.]

And Uncle Yap @20: my Oyster card was similarly charged when I descended to the platform at Pimlico tube station but aborted the journey on discovering that the trains were going nowhere. I did eventually get a refund, but only after much persistence: the system seems to assume that few people will bother.

I thought this was a very satisfying prize puzzle, if not one of The Master’s best ever. I have no problem at all with mammoth anagrams.

I loved 5d and chortled when the penny dropped. Chambers actually has, fainéant = n. do-nothing, so I worked from that. My O-level French didn’t cover Merovingian kings.

Grandpuzzler, I had to check that such a thing as an Oyster Card existed and I’m only 50 miles from London. I also had to ask who on earth Houlier is.