You are much too modest. (arsed,he)* is very clever and most appropriate.

Well, as I say above, I think Brendan’s comment was gratuitously insulting. In chosing to insult Brendan I was being appropriately inappropriate.

My choice of the word asinine was taken, appropriately, from the clue in question. It is also appropriately hyperbolic.

Now, you started all this @7, prompting Brendan to join in @14. You criticised the puzzle for being too easy and cited a particular clue by way of illustration. However your comment, in general and particular, is not invalid and your language is positively polite.

You say re 24dn “Surely not an Araucaria clue?”. It is typically Araucarian. Two cryptic definitions, the second rather loose, more an allusion than a definition. Both amusing. JS found the clue amusing. So did I. I suspect that PeterO did too, given his fine elaboration in the blog. Your criticism is invalid.

The rest of your comment seems merely to say that you thought it too easy. Nothing wrong with that but your language is sarcastic and hyperbolic. You are being insulting to JS and to Araucaria himself.

Insulting and invalid contravenes points 1 and 2 of Site Policy. To borrow a word from RCW @21 your comment is inappropriate, to put it mildly. ‘Asinine’ is, of course, not putting it mildly, but more of that later.

13D – Petero@23: apologies for my noun/verb error; I agree the interpretation has to be personification of the abstract noun. But this is awkward, and quite unnecessary: as William@18 pointed out, the awkwardness could be avoided by simply omitting “I give”.

I read your comments with interest. Please could you inform us all just how my comment was asinine?

I took the ‘I’ in 13D to be a personification of the sermon’s postamble (and I disagree with Denis @20 that the clue as phrased requires a verb as answer). All told, I would not put this clue among Araucaria’s finest – apart from the personification, the definition seems questionable (although the usage may common jargon for a cleric), and the ‘a’ before ‘hundred’ there only for the surface, which is not up to much anyway.

Mark @19

In 19A, I suggested that each word should be reversed separately. This strikes me as odd, but not entirely outside the pale. MAST and RIDER have been dealt with already. For BECK, it might be added that the verb beckon is more familiar.

EB @1

It wasn’t, but it certainly should have been. I do not know why I was fixated on Solon.

I could refute your assertion but I can’t be arsed.