Guardian Cryptic 26,934 by Boatman

by

A themed offering from Boatman

Most of the clues or solutions in this puzzle refer to the Tour de France, which is ongoing at the time of this blog.

Mostly, it works, but there’s the occasional clue where he has had to stretch the rules a bit to get the theme in, or to make the surface work (3dn, 22dn, eg)

Edit:  I stick by my comment on 3dn, but Dave Ellison below has pointed out that my parsing of 22dn is incomplete, and I now think it’s a fantastic clue.

Parsing was difficult, but apart from 23dn, I think I managed.  Edit: see comments below for a parsing of this clue.

My favourite clue was 27ac.

Across
7 MAKE UP FOR Redress nature of regressive Right (4,2,3)
MAKE UP (“nature”) + <=OF + R
8 DERBY Race shows guts of rider, Byelorussian (5)
Hidden in “riDER BYelorussian”
9 ARMSTRONG Rider penalised, prepares for a fight: conduct ultimately improper, they say (9)
ARMS (“prepares for a fight”) + (conduc)T + homophone of “WRONG” (“improper, they say”)

Referring of course to drugs cheat Lance Armstrong
10 MOPED Personal opinion expressed here on podium finish by bike (5)
OP ED on (podiu)M
12 FROOME Rider, a man of iron, grabs opportunity (6)
FE “grabs” ROOM

Chris Froome, leading the 2016 Tour de France at the time this blog was written
13 DREARILY Depressingly, rider lay injured (8)
*(rider lay)
14 EXCLUDE Anticipating feverish duel, Europe embraces the crossbar! (7)
EC (“Europe”) “embraces” X (“cross”) + *(duel)
17 TRADERS Wheeler-dealers substituting one of riders after start of Tour (7)
T(our) + RIDERS with the I substituted by A
20 BROCCOLI Brassica, some brown cabbage and cauliflower heads and cooking oil (8)
BRO(wn) + C(abbage) + C(auliflower) + *(oil)

“Some” is a bit vague here, but it doesn’t ruin the clue.
22 REFUTE Reply exposing fallacy, using tenets extant ab initio (6)
First letters, indicated by “ab initio” of Refute Exposing Fallacy Using Tenets Extant
24 EXPAT An Englishman in France, perhaps unknown during record comeback (5)
X in <=TAPE
25 TGVTRAINS They race across France, starving, beaten on top of the Tourmalet (3,6)
*(starving) on T(ourmalet)

TGV stands for “Train a Grande Vitesse”
26 GNASH No! Time flies before hard grind (5)
GNA(t)S + H
27 ANDROCLES He was close to a beast and, in a way, closer (9)
AND + *(closer)

Refers to Androcles and the Lion
Down
1 FAIRER More sporting provisions in report on rider’s backers (6)
Homophone of “FARE” (“provisions, in report”) + (rid)ER
2 CESSPOOL These French, on a roll, find no place to swim (8)
CES (“these” in French) + SPOOL (“roll”)
3 SPARSE Spaced-out Boatman lost bearings around Paris (6)
Not sure about this one.

I assume it’s

SE (“bearings”) around PARS (“Paris” with I (“Boatman”) “lost”)

but in my opinion, the “Boatman lost” bit of the clue needs to be nearer “Paris”
4 TORNADO Contador, top undone, working up a storm (7)
*(ontador) (Contador without the “top”)
5, 18 LE TOUR DE FRANCE  Where riders in fleet race round all over the place (2,4,2,6)
Cryptic definition
6 ABSEILER Boatman (Boatman?!) said to be a descender? (8)
AB (sailor = “boatman”) + homophone of SAILOR
11, 16 TEARDROP Go quickly on descent: evidence of regret? (8)
TEAR (“go quickly”) + DROP (“descent”)
15 XEROXING Copying style? Ignore two times (8)
*(ignore XX)
16   See 11
18   See 5
19 WIGGINS Rider triumphs, taking on Italian legend with force (7)
WINS (taking on”) I(talian) (le)G + G (“force”)
21 CLAUSE Perhaps rider in lead to take on large entry (6)
CAUSE (“lead to”) “taking on” L(arge)
22 ROTORS King of the Mountains’ features: most fans need them (6)
R (“king”) + O’TORS (“of the mountains’ features”)
23 TANDEM Where more than one rider is seen in A & E (6)
Need help with parsing this one

*anagram

82 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,934 by Boatman”

  3. Thanks Boatman and loonapick

    Some I didn’t fully parse. I think I can be forgiven for not getting the O of O’TORS! GNASH was another, but, after your eplanation, it becomes my favourite. TANDEM also.

    I agree obout SPARSE – I nearly got it, but don’t think it quite works.

    Could you explain the OP ED part of MOPED, please?

    I suppose there’ not point in saying that 25a should have been given as 1,1,1,6.

  4. Sparse is a slightly iffy surface but hey, its Boatman and all the bits are there.
    And thanks Pex@1 for the A&E
    Thanks all- always a pleasure to see his puzzles

  5. 10ac doesn’t really work does it? ‘op-ed’, new to me, appears in Chambers but the clue makes no mention of editors. Re 25ac: ‘TGV trains’ like ‘PIN number’, is pleonastic.

  6. Thanks, pex

    Of course you’re right with 5,8.

    I’m not convinced by “accidenT AND EMergency”, as that is a bit like an indirect anagram (you need to take an extra step). When I read A & E, I don’t automatically change that to Accident and Emergency, so at the very least a question mark is required, in my humble opinion.

    Muffin – I toyed with commenting on TGV being (1,1,1), but thought it wasn’t worthwhile. Actually TGV TRAINS, although accepted terminology, is pleonastic as the T of TGV stands for “train” (a bit like PIN NUMBER being wrong, as it is PERSONAL IDENTIFICAL NUMBER NUMBER).

    OP ED (from Wikipedia) – An op-ed (originally short for “opposite the editorial page” though sometimes interpreted as “opinion editorial”) is a written prose piece typically published by a newspaper or magazine which expresses the opinion of a named author usually not affiliated with the publication editorial board.

  9. @gladys

    No! Time flies before hard grind (5)

    GNATS = “flies”, but with no time (T) that becomes GNAS

    Add the H for hard and you get GNASH.

  10. Thanks from me too, Loonapick – I was wondering whether I should explain the OP-ED bit, but you’ve done so very succinctly.

    I quite like the occasional bit of trickery of the “A&E” type. As you say, it needs an extra step, but not the violent lurch that’s implied by an indirect anagram. There’s nothing inherently wrong in having two steps – it applies to most reversal clues nowadays, after all. It’s just that one of the steps has to be so straightforward that it can be done subconsciously, with no danger of becoming lost in a maze of permutations, which is why indirect anagrams don’t work. In this case, you either think of writing out “A&E” in full or you don’t, but once you’ve seen the trick, you know you have the answer. I think you might be right about the question mark, though … or I could have said something like “in A&E at length”, which would have made the clue easier than I’d want, but then again I rather like the way that it invokes the ghost of the Victorian Latin scholars’ joke that led to “tandem” being coined in the first place!

  11. Thanks, Boatman.

    I agree it isn’t as bad as an indirect anagram, and in the contect of the puzzle, was acceptable. I did spend a while trying to work out whether T & M (t and em) had any connection to A & E, but couldn’t see it.

  14. Top stuff as expected. Power cut here all day so, unusually, I did it online – ie unable to print. If that sounds counter-intuitive I’ll explain. My 1000w mickey mouse generator will run the computer but not the printer too. Also, sadly, the vac is 2000w (Miele natch) so the cleaning lady had to cry off – never mind – at least this was cheering.

    Still searching for those broken rules.

    eg:
    Boatman lost bearings around Paris
    [with]I missing – S and E around PARIS – S(PAR(i)S)E

    If anything I’m surprised to find anything so bog standard in a Boatman puzzle.

    Thanks all

  16. So – which rules – from which rulebook and where’s the stretch?

    Of course B must consider himself to be in good company because Araucaria always got that sort of thing too.

  18. but in my opinion, the “Boatman lost” bit of the clue needs to be nearer “Paris”

    lose I from S and E around PARIS
    ie lose I from S(PARIS)E

    have S and E around (PARIS with I lost)

    both give S(PAR(i)S)E

    The order of evaluation does not (in this instance) affect the outcome.

  19. I said, in my opinion, which I believe I’m entitled to.

    Other “stretches”, (again, in my opinion), are O’TORS, for “of the mountains”, and the TANDEM clue discussed above.

    They didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the puzzle, to be clear.

  22. I took “tors” to be features of mountains (why else is the apostrophe following MOUNTAINS’) which they very often are, rather than mountains themselves. So the clue seems fine to me.

    By the time I reached 5d I didn’t need a clue for it!

    Thanks loonapick and Boatman

  23. O’TORS, for “of the mountains”

    You can have O = of (dictionary support – Collins at least)
    lose the “the” in a noun-noun translation (Ximenes support)

    or O’ = “of the” – of which there must surely be plenty of examples.

    I’ve seen Enigmastist/Elgar do TANDEM-type clues – can’t remember in which if his incarnations – it’s just a curly clue – no “rules” broken. Even The Times pulls tricks like that occasionally. Not long back they had “completely” (or equivalent) for IN TOTO – indicating insert what you’ve got so far in TO…TO.

  24. @DE #22 – that’s better.

    King: R
    of: O
    the Mountains’ features: TORS
    most fans need them: def

    Sorted

  25. JollySwagman

    I repeat, I never said that Boatman broke any “rules”.

    My objection to O’TORS relates to TORS, which are not mountains, but as I said in the blog, given the theme, Boatman took a small liberty.

    I could just give the parsing of the clues, and not comment on the quality, fairness, surface reading, “rules” etc, but that would be a pretty anodyne and unsatisfying experience for all concerned.

  26. In fairness (or otherwise) to L, and bloggers generally. Even though it’s the basis of ximeneanism, you have to be pretty brave to pick holes in a clue – ie read it one way and say: “That’s wrong”.

    So often there are numerous ways of reading them.

  28. Thanks Boatman and loonapick.

    Good, topical puzzle with lots to like. Lack of knowledge of the TdF would not inhibit most progressing, I think, although FROOME, WIGGINS and ARMSTRONG might not have been known [and where’s the peloton?] I couldn’t fathom ROTORS although in retrospect the parsing is fine. Nice to see MOPED not clued as the usual dd.

    I’m not a great fan of these grids with unches all the way around the perimeter unless used for NINAs, pangrams, alphabeticals etc. However, I managed to solve it so it’s no great issue.

  29. Robi @28
    You wouldn’t like the Radio Times puzzles, then – they always have unchecked squares around the perimeter!

  30. Thanks to Boatman and loonapick. I usually have great trouble with this setter and several items here were new to me (WIGGINS, FROOME, TGV) plus I could not parse GNATS, ROTORS, and TANDEM (and MOPED was last in -though I’m familiar with “op ed”). Still, I fared better than with previous B. puzzles and enjoyed the challenge.

  31. Thank you Boatman and loonapick.

    I did not understand the OP ED part of the parsing for MOPED, tried to work in OPINED, however I managed to parse TANDEM and thought the clue rather good. I also liked the clues for EXCLUDE and GNASH.

  32. Loonapick

    Have I missed it, or did you not spell out that 5,18 was also an anagram (fleet race round)?

  34. ACD – It’s always good to hear this sort of comment, and I’m glad you’re making headway and enjoying it. It’s a confidence thing, I’m sure: once you know where I’m likely to be tricky, you can focus your efforts there and start to use the existence of the theme to help you …

    Robi – At least it wasn’t the feared Grid 64 – the one with the top and bottom halves held together by four three-letter lights. They’re so easy to fill, though – I’ve been looking back at my old puzzles recently, and there was a striking sequence a few years ago when it seemed that every other grid was one of these. I remember that it took a real effort of will to get out of the habit and to use more tractable grids … for a while.

  35. muffin @3, I don’t know what the policy on acronyms is, but TGV works for me clued as 3, after all it is not written T. G. V. or T.G.V.

  36. Cookie @35
    I’d be happier if you could actually pronounce it as a word (e.g. PIN), but TGV must be pronounced Tee Gee Vee.

  39. No problems with the theme (not my specialist subject but the 3 riders should be familiar to most who pay any attention at all to the sports news), and plenty of easier ones by Boatman standards, but it did take me a while to finish, and I had to resort to the Check button to see ANDROCLES – needless to say that was unfamiliar though the name rang a very distant bell. Liked TANDEM.

    Thanks to Boatman and loonapick

  40. Just updated my list and I’m staggered to see that ANDROCLES has appeared 8 times before. Less surprisingly Araucaria was responsible for 3 of them, but even Rufus has used it twice. In my defence it is the first one since 2008. TGV TRAINS is one of those nonsensical tautologies like pin number, but it must have got Boatman out of a tricky grid-filling problem…

  41. Cookie & Muffin – We have this discussion every now and then – the last time I remember was for ADHD – and I usually echo both of you, in that (one the one hand) the letter count should really only be (3,6) or (4) if the solution is a genuinely pronounceable (and prefereably well known) acronym like NATO, but (on the other hand) giving the count as (1,1,1,6) or (1,1,1,1) looks awful and is borderline insulting to the solver – a bit like the old style of putting “(anag)” after every anagram. Hugh’s approach is to count abbreviations as if they were acronyms, as long as they’re in common use. A TGV is a pretty well-known thing – not in the same league as the BBC, to be sure, but an established way of identifying a class of object and arguably as much an addition to the language as any other neologism. I’d feel much less happy if the solution had been say RHDR (the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway – a charming thing, but unlikely to come up in everyday conversation).

    And yes, BH, I do normally try to avoid such things (unless, of course, tautologies were the theme of the puzzle, and that’s not something I’d rule out for the future …) but in this case it did make three theme clues work in that corner of the grid. At the rist of asking you to repeat something that you’ve said many times before, I’d love to know which 10 words top your list for setter popularity …

  43. Boatman @41 – oh go on then – these are the ones with 30 or more appearances since the start of the archive in 1999:

    1 EXTRA 51
    2 ISLE 44
    3 STUD 40
    4 USED 38
    5 ECHO 36
    6 STYE 35
    7 EDGE 34
    7 STUN 34
    9 ARCH 33
    9 BLUE 33
    9 ERATO 33
    9 IDLE 33
    9 ISSUE 33
    14 ADDRESS 32
    14 ANON 32
    16 ESTATE 30
    16 NIECE 30
    16 OUNCE 30

  45. Boatman @41
    Thanks for the clarification. I agree that “1,1,1,1” does look ugly, and is a bit insulting. I’ll live with the house policy in future.

  46. Cookie @44 – no, it shouldn’t – STYE (the eye problem) is very popular with setters because of its unusual crossers. Rufus is responsible for 11 of the 35. STY has only appeared twice – three letter solutions are pretty rare!

  47. Apologies beery hiker, my English is rusty, so I checked in my COED before posting; checking again I see that the spelling STYE (spell check will not accept this) is an alternative for STY. I also thought you might have meant STYLE.

  48. There is more logic to the list than you may think. The most popular solutions tend to be short words with common crossing letters in awkward places – try finding other words that match E*T*A *S*D or *T*D and you will see why these get setters out of tricky corners.

  49. Incidentally (and I’ve only just realised I can filter the list this way) the most popular single-word solutions of other lengths are as follows:
    3 TEA 11,
    8 ESTRANGE and INSTANCE 25,
    9 ORCHESTRA 22,
    10 ADOLESCENT and APOSTROPHE 15,
    11 SHAKESPEARE 7
    12 BUTTERSCOTCH and INSPECTORATE 6
    13 ACCOMMODATION 6
    14 CORRESPONDENCE 7
    15 PRESTIDIGITATOR 5

  50. Alas not a completion from me today. The left side went in pretty quickly, and the SW after a bit of winkling out, but the NW remained pretty impenetrable. I am now kicking myself for not looking for cyclists’ names – I follow the TdF, and I twigged WIGGINS, so it’s my fault entirely. Or nearly entirely, given that 3d is dodgy.

  52. For 6 down, I thought the AB referred to Boatman’s real initials. I read somewhere that the name is Ambrose Bierce – could be mistaken, But obviously your explanation is better.

  53. BH – Very interesting list, and your logic is, I’m sure, correct … Patterns like E-T-A are really annoying, because it’s so easy to scan across them, see the common letters and assume that there’ll be no problem filling them. I’ve had to back out of grids on a couple of occasions that threw up E-E-D, for which only EMEND will do – not a word I want to have to clue twice!

    Following that train of thought, I don’t suppose you can quickly see from your database which words I’ve used more than once? I’d like to think there are no more than two or three of them …

  55. [PJ – try “The devil’s dictionary” by Ambrose Bierce. Here’s a sample
    “Man n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.”]

  56. I couldn’t resist a challenge like that, but it turns out to be fairly easy. SNAPSHOT is the only one with 3:
    Boatman 24911: In a way, it’s irrelevant; Posh is insane for quick exposure (8)
    Boatman 24965: Attack on goal at end of game – it’s caught by photographer (8)
    Boatman 25121: Picture a drunk taking a snooze: quiet, please! (8)

    These are the only others with two appearances:
    APPEAL
    APPEAR
    ASIA
    DALLIANCE
    DEXTER
    IGLOO
    LAID UP
    LOADED
    LUDO
    MALE
    NARROW
    NEIL
    ONSET
    PRECIS
    PRONOUN
    STRAIGHT
    TENFOLD
    THAMES
    TYPE

  57. Excellent – thank you! You’ve earned yourself a mention in my much-anticipated (by me) collection, which may or may not be out by Christmas …

    SNAPSHOT I knew about – I was pleased to get three properly different clues for it – and I don’t know whether to be more surprised that there haven’t been more doubles or that there’ve been as many as there have. Very interesting.

  58. I had a lot of trouble making the clues work for this solve, and I feel the puzzle is quite badly-written. There were quite a few mistakes, if you are someone like me who wants clues to roll out correctly. Going through after solving (and cheating several times, I must admit) I saw that the devices used were quite obstructive to progress, as if there for the sake of it, and I couldn’t make the parsing work on a good few occasions. It has to be better to keep things nice and simple if it is such a struggle to write the clues, surely, or perhaps this was a ploy just to be difficult for the sake of it.

    A comment above mentions the great Araucaria, who was NEVER like this. The comparison is for me quite an insult.

  59. We enjoyed this challenge from Boatman this afternoon.
    As one may know, I have a kind of love/hate relationship with his puzzles but I don’t think he went too far beyond the borders of Crosswordland today.
    (I know, many think there are no borders and ‘anything goes’ as long as a clue is solvable – fine by me)

    5,18d was my first one in – just one glance at the clue and bingo!
    (last one in was FAIRER (1d) after ARMSTRONG (9ac) made his appearance)

    When a set of clues has one word staring you in the face time after time (‘rider’), we always slow down.
    For some reason, we find it a bit off-putting (purely our ‘fault’, so no black marks against Boatman).

    We are not big fans of a construction like in 26ac (GNASH).
    True, everything’s there but not in the order we ideally want.
    With also some punctuation getting in the way.
    But then, Boatman doesn’t do punctuation.

    Talking about punctuation, I don’t know which dictionaries Boatman uses but ‘spaced out’ meaning SPARSE (3d) is used without hyphen in Chambers, Oxford and Collins.
    The surface reading wants us to see ‘spaced out’ as in ‘I’m dazed and confused’ (to cite Led Zeppelin).
    That meaning might be written with an hyphen (especially across the pond) but if Boatman did this deliberately to misdirect, we don’t think that’s correct.
    The definition (with hyphen) should mean ‘sparse’ and if not, we think ignoring punctuation here is the right thing to do.
    I clearly remember a puzzle in which Boatman wrote ‘its’ where he meant ‘it’s’ or the other way around.
    In my opinion, you cannot do that.

    We liked the A & E thing, even if it took a while before the penny dropped.
    And 22d is clever too, especially since at the end of Le Tour there will be a rider crowned as the king of the mountains.

    In 12ac the definition is a bit clumsy, isn’t it?
    ‘Rider, a man’ – ah well, Chris Froome is indeed a man.

    Two final remarks.
    In 19d Boatman uses ‘Italian’ to clue I.
    That’s not right, I = Italy and IT = Italian.
    We thought the word ‘Byelorussian’ was a joke but it was not after googling it.
    Perfect word to enrich the vocabulary of some Brexiteers!

    Thank you, loonapick, for a fine blog.
    On other occasions you have shown to be rather Ximenean but it is good to judge Boatman according to the rules of his own imperium.

    Good puzzle.
    Not a minute of our time wasted.

  60. In the fourth line of the paragraph about SPARSE it should read: “and if not, we think ignoring punctuation here is NOT the right thing to do”.

  61. This was one of my favourites for a long time, thankyou Boatman! I particularly liked the A&E clue.

  62. I wonder how Boatman parses, for example, 2 down. I’m not necessarily saying it’s wrong, but I’d love to know how he’s getting his big ole Master Compiler’s head around it.

    Speaking of wrong, what’s wrong with writing out ‘accident and emergency’? Was it too much effort?

  65. Not for me I’m afraid: FROOME, MOPED, REFUTE, I could go on, GNASH, TGV TRAINS (the T stands for trés, not train) and on, ROTORS (I mean really?) And XEROXING was clunky out. Applause for CLAUSE, but obviously in bad mood.

    Thanks Boatman and loonapick but not for me – my prob of course, many regulars obviously enjoyed.

  67. Cookie @66
    Thanks very much. I remembered the expansion of TGV as you have written above. But when I looked it up today following all this discussion, I was quite surprised to see it as “train etc.” Now I know my memory didn’t fail me; only I had not come across the change.

  68. One postscript to the earlier discussion on stats, and just for completion, the record for most occurrences of a solution for a single setter is 12, jointly held by Paul with EXTRA and Rufus with ADDRESS. Araucaria’s favourites were ETERNAL and VENUS with 8 each. Rufus has 28 words with 8 appearances or more, Paul just 3. That’s my last word on this unless there are any follow-up questions.

  69. Fine work, BH – you have a very useful resource there, which deserves a wider following. I could imagine it being offered as an optional tab in WordWeb (just the stats, showing how many times used by each setter) or even the whole thing as a monster clue database for CrosswordCompiler (to be used strictly as an educational tool, obviously, rather than as a substitute for coming up with new ideas – would have to be careful about copyright, too). Worth a thought, anyway …

    I’m not surprised to see Rufus being responsible for the largest number of 8+ appearances, but I’d have expected him to walk away with the prize for most occurrences of any one word by some margin. It might be interesting to ask (and I’m only saying this hypothetically – it is by no means a follow-up question or a challenge) how many of Paul’s EXTRAs and Rufus’s ADDRESSes were genuinely different clues, as opposed to being variations on the same idea …

  70. I was wondering the same thing – the wider following bit, I mean.

    It would be useful for setters to see what’s been done before so they can avoid chestnuts.

    Matt Gaffney provides a list of clues that have appeared in US puzzles and doesn’t charge for it, which is very generous.

    I personally would be prepared to pay a reasonable amount for the data. Even though it’s in the public domain, bh should be rewarded for the effort involved.

  71. Boatman, loonapick – thanks – I sometimes feel this stuff must be boring people.

    The biggest problem (other than the copyright issue you mention) with making this data available publicly is its sheer size (fast approaching 150000 clues). Fortunately Excel spreadsheets can cope with this, and have some very powerful ad-hoc filtering tools. The other problem is keeping it up to date. I discussed some of this with Qaos at a recent gathering and his view was that the idea was very interesting, he wouldn’t want to see the list, since it might make him paranoid about the originality of every single clue!

    Anyway, just for completeness I will answer the question – no exact duplicates, but I have come across a few of those, particularly from Rufus.

    Rufus 22382: Speak to one’s home (7)
    Rufus 22500: Speech getting publicity coverage (7)
    Rufus 22680: Lecture put on at short notice (7)
    Rufus 22846: Speech written on an envelope (7)
    Rufus 22984: Speech might indicate where one lives (7)
    Rufus 23060: Lecture a daughter on clothes (7)
    Rufus 23306: Notice groom giving speech (7)
    Rufus 24898: Give a talking-to, being direct (7)
    Rufus 25257: Publicity coverage of speech (7)
    Rufus 25371: Pay attention to sermon (7)
    Rufus 25803: Directions for delivery of speech (7)
    Rufus 25856: Speech and attire of modern times (7)

    Paul 22135: Small part, though wide, perhaps? (5)
    Paul 22836: Spare time right during cutback (5)
    Paul 22851: More times with time in time (5)
    Paul 23428: More artillerymen on leave after Italy surrendered (5)
    Paul 24099: Run old transport, not reaching home (5)
    Paul 24473: Further, far from a star (5)
    Paul 24593: More subordinate to a 27? (5)
    Paul 24661: Old painting reflected more (5)
    Paul 25512: Further Essex traffic jams (5)
    Paul 25559: More cross, train not in, completing last in puzzle (5)
    Paul 25807: … more of which old, almost entirely conventional (5)
    Paul 26876: Entering vortex, travelling further (5)

  72. One more table – these are the compilers with 1000+ clues and their most-used solutions (I love the Bunthorne list!):

    Araucaria 21918 8 ETERNAL VENUS
    Rufus 20274 12 EXTRA
    Paul 17522 12 ADDRESS
    Gordius 9055 5 ACID APPETITE IDLE OMEGA REIGN
    Chifonie 6195 5 ERATO EVENT RADON STEAMER
    Shed 5728 4 ANGORA OYSTER PASS ROAST STARLING
    Orlando 5265 4 APOLLO DEAR EERIE ONUS REPRESENT RIGHT STRAIT STUN
    Pasquale 5121 4 OUNCE
    Brummie 4398 4 KING
    Brendan 4179 4 PIERCE SCREEN TASTE
    Bunthorne 3857 3 ASPECT BACARDI BRIAN BORU EXCLAIM EXEDRAE EXTOL OVID ROGER USED
    Rover 3269 4 ANAGRAM
    Quantum 3147 3 ABLE ALIBI APATHY BALSA BARSAC BASSET BISTRO DWELT ERASE IFFY ISSUE ONSET OPINE SCALPEL SISAL STEM TWANG
    Taupi 3136 3 ABLE ARENA DEIGN LEATHER NIGHTINGALE TRANSOM
    Logodaedalus 2859 4 EDEN
    Puck 2833 3 STELLAR
    Arachne 2679 3 AUTHOR CHASTITY SARTRE SO-SO
    Janus 2517 6 TARPAULIN
    Enigmatist 2390 4 JOHN
    Picaroon 2052 4 MILLER
    Crucible 1841 3 HERO
    Audreus 1620 3 NEGLIGENT
    Tramp 1617 3 ADOS DISPOSE
    Philistine 1578 3 ASTERN CLUB EMUS ETHIC
    Boatman 1570 3 SNAPSHOT
    Bonxie 1384 2
    Nutmeg 1231 2
    Crispa 1160 2
    Qaos 1110 2

  74. Priceless! … Well, literally so, as you’re not charging for it …

    No lazy repetitions from either Rufus or Paul, then – particularly impressive in Paul’s case, I thought.

    This was a very interesting exercise – I’d join with LP to provide a bit of beer money if that helped you to keep this sort of thing up to date and to make it available in some form, and I’m sure we wouldn’t be the only ones. Do get in touch through my website if you’d like to talk further …

  75. Incidentally (and this may have to be my last word for today) if you plot the largest number of repetitions against the number of clues for each setter, you get a very tightly defined, pretty much linear, relationship with only two outliers: Janus’ bizarre six-fold TARPAULIN to the north of the line and Araucaria, showing his class with no more than eight repetitions, far to the south of where you’d expect him to be, based on the number of clues. Instructive.

  76. At the risk of being a little too mischievous, Rufus likes this clue so much he has used it 5 times:
    Retribution seems in order (7)

  77. Beaten by Boatman – reduced to pattern matching for MOPED since motorised didn’t occur.
    And took far too long on CLAUSE because I didn’t bother to look up that sense of ‘rider’.
    Favourite is TANDEM – I too wondered about ‘t and m’ until the penny dropped 🙂 .
    If I may presume to suggest an improvement to 6dn:
    ‘Boatman (Boatman?!) reportedly hanging on on the descent?’
    Thanks to setter and blogger.

  79. And BH – That is, indeed, mischievous. You wouldn’t want to be seen as a respected setter’s … er … oh, what’s the word?

  80. I was in a meeting years ago when a colleague apologised for using yet another TLA. As usual I’m with muffin on TLAs like TGV being 1,1,1 not 3. It would be different if it were prounced as a single syllable, like PIN.

  81. Thanks loonapick and Boatman.

    This is clearly a high quality puzzle and I’m pleased to say that I fully parsed it after quite a bit of thought.

    So I appreciated the challenge.

    But I did not enjoy it as much as I would like.

    As usual from this setter, we had a few repetitions of “Boatman” (3) but also 10 x Rider/Riders/Rider’s which I’m afraid I found somewhat grating. All very clever, but is it fun?

    I also found TGV TRAINS to be wrong! The T stands for Train. TGV Lines, routes, signalling etc would all be fine but surely not …Trains.

    Add to that the tedious subject matter – a bunch of self-obsessed fanatics following a touring advertising circus – which only got interesting last week when one rider had to get off and run, and you have a recipe for a disaffected Hamish.

    OPED – meaning an opinion page was new to me but fairly clued so OK.

    So I really appreciate the effort, but it seemed a bit self-indulgent.

  82. Thanks Boatman and loonapick

    Took an elapsed 24 hours to complete it and enjoyed it. Was able to parse everything in the end as well which was very satisfying, especially when the TANDEM logic finally dropped. Thought that the theme was cleverly woven in both the surface readings and the sprinkling of related answers and also thought the mini-theme of the different variation of ‘riders’ was an interesting concept as well. So sorry Hamish, I will have to disagree with your sentiments this time. Using Boatman within his clues is a surface-signature of this guy in all of his puzzles – and he usually does it 1 or 2 of his clues, which I think is fair enough.

    I’m a fan of the way that this setter does tend to flout the traditional ‘rules of crossword setting’ – just adds that variation of style and gets one to have to think that little bit differently to get his grid filled.

    Like a number of others, I finished up in the NW corner with ARMSTRONG (and having well and truly twigged to the theme am surprised why it took so long), SPARSE (just cos it was hard with the ‘twisted logic’ of the word play) and FROOME (which, especially after the fact that he actually won the race again, should not have taken as long as it did!)

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