Apologies for lateness – wrote a whole entry this morning and lost it. Baaad IT bloke – didn’t save my work as I went along.
In the end – really quite a straight puzzle for Paul.
Across
9 RU-I-NATION
10 TH(REEF)EET – “The film” is “The E.T”
12 Left out because we don’t publish all answers here. Hint : It’s an anagram
13 WEED – Trad. Crossword Fodder
14 WELLING-TON (BOOT) S – Welling as in tears welling up – a boot upfield is a punt – Ocean is Tons ? (help !)
16 Another one I’ll leave OUT in this POST
17 PA’S-SAGE
19 PEPPER-CORN : Yes, corns are painful and Pepper is a type of spray
24 COUNTER – didn’t work out the wordplay here
26 EX-CEL(L)
27 OVERT-HERE
DOWN
1 GREEN-WOOD-PECKER
2 SI-MP-L-EST : “siest(a)” wrapped around MP and L
3 Could easily say I was leaving it as an exercise for the reader, but I didn’t get it.
4 MISSPELT – anagram of 2 down
5 UNCOOL (man !)
6 Straightforward anagram left out of solution
7 O-RIEN-T-EXPRESS : Rien is French for nothing – the rest is not a Mystery, even though the book is.
8 Didn’t get it despite having all the letters – must be going wordblind
15 F(O-REST)ALL
17 PAR-O-DIED – “All lived = Zero died” is a common crossword idiom
18 ALEWIVES = tricky anagram I thought
20 P-OUNCE
21 CAR(BONDI-OX-ID)E : Bondi as in beach. Inspiration as in Breathing. Ahhhh!
3D is HAZEL. Haze is a mist; L = lake and the whole thing is a tree.
3D is HAZE-L(ake)
8D is REDS UNDER THE BED (end deterred Bush*). Apocalyptic is a new anagram pointer to me.
24 across. It’s the thought that counts they say, so a thought is a counter.
D’oh ! I’m not going to whinge about any of those – all perfectly fair. Thanks for rescuing me.
16ac: haha Stan. But thanks for filling in my missing answers
8dn: anagram of ‘end deterred bush’ = reds/under/the/bed – feared in the cold war
hazel – our last answer – but obvious
Does anyone have a convincing full explanation for 14a ?
14A: Definition is ‘Those on 22’ (ie FEET); ‘leaking’ = WELLING, ‘punt’ = BOOT (ie propel) ‘consumed in’ = word inserted in, ‘an ocean’ = TONS (both hyperbolic expressions for ‘a lot’)
WELLING TON(BOOT)S
What a lovely crossword! Well up to usual Paul standards, even without a theme. 24A is very clever, I enjoyed the unusual charade for 21, 25 and even his straigtforward anagrams have some excellent surfaces – OARLESS and ALEWIVES, for example (fortunately I knew the latter word, so the solution came to me immediately).
Further to my ‘explanation’ of 14A it might be useful to point out that ‘leaking’, ‘punt’ and ‘ocean’ all have associations with water – hence giving a slight but distinctive allusion towards the solution. Paul is one intelligent and imaginative compiler.