Radian says that in his book it’s not fair to expect solvers to work out what’s being abbreviated AND THEN add that into the anagram fodder, but I don’t have any problem with that. Cinephile had a clue like that in Wednesday’s FT and I saw the answer straightaway.

And I agree with others that lice are not eggs – although in common parlance I suppose ‘headlice’ are equivalent to ‘nits’. A bit of political correctness, perhaps; the letters that came from school always referrred to the former, not the latter.

So this was top hole. Although I’m sure that’s rude in some mysterious way. Incidentally I met someone today who is called K Hole! I don’t know how many of you are into illegal drug-taking, but if you don’t know what a k-hole is …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-hole

This one was top-notch !! (OK, let’s have another one: !)

[and many thanks to Ali]

Since you didn’t mention it, I trust you liked the 9X repetition of ROUND, although in golf that number would normally cover more than two events. Nice to see Rory making it big time in the Dutch press! And I must try to remember that ‘rant’ in Dutch seems a whole lot gentler a word than in English, though some of our papers could do with some honesty in their mastheads. ‘StarRant’ for a start? According to my Collins, our word comes from yours, and yours means ‘to rave’. So maybe I’m wrong. The People’s Rave??? Surely not.

To be very clear: this puzzle was a whole lot better than the one in the Guardian. As Eileen said, perhaps a pity that this setter’s Redshank puzzle in the FT [a lovely one!] wasn’t scheduled for today.

Where this FT crossword had a lot of F’s and T’s, this one had many “par”s here.
Very original to include 4 PARs with different clues – I liked it, and it opened up the puzzle for me.

I am not into Golf at all, but I especially liked OVER THE HILL (12ac) and CHIP SHOTS (14ac).
Additional plusses for 9ac, 7d, 15d and 16d.

After my morning session I had RORY + the rest of “Mirror coyly” in 19ac. As I said, I went through yesterday’s Volkskrant (more or less Holland’s Guardian) and there it was: a full page article on Rory McIlroy heading “Predestinated to be a superstar”. What a coincidence. And it gave me a missing word in today’s Guardian too.

14d’s CATTINESS did remind me of yesterday’s Puck (on the “other side”). He had “Catty talk?” for “bitchiness” and here we have “cattiness” for “bitchy attitude”.

5ac (CASPAR) was the last one in. I didn’t know this Mr Friedrich, but there had to be a “par” in it. Btw, for me (as a continental from the lowlands) SPA is not really “racetrack”, as we (the ones on the other side of the North Sea) always speak of “Francorchamps”. To Dutch people SPA is mineral water (like Evian or Volvic here).
That said, the Belgian race course has of, er, course it’s name linked to it.

Radian was in a hidden/clothes mood today as both hiddens here (which unfortunately did intersect) ánd one in the Guardian had the word ‘clothes’ in it.

Only minus point for me: the ellipsis DOWSE/COCKTAILS.
In 4d “passing round” is completely superfluous, and 5d works well without the dots that start the ellipsis (one that, I think, didn’t make sense).

Otherwise, my Crossword of the Day!