Guardian Cryptic 28,657 by Matilda

95 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,657 by Matilda”

1. Another relatively straightforward solve but very enjoyable. Nothing too obscure!! I struggled to parse 13ac, thanks manehi for reminding me of the gatepost expression. 27ac brought back memories of the great Reggie Perrin and his wonderful shop. Thanks Matilda.

2. The members of the country’s highest court are, slightly disrespectfully, commonly referred to by lawyers as “The Supremes”.
   Some enjoyable stuff here, my favourites being PRAGUE SPRING, GROT (happy memory of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin) and SIXTIES.
   Thanks both.

3. Thanks Matilda for an enjoyable puzzle and thanks manehi for a timely and comprehensive blog. I put in the wrong answer for 11, but I think a filibuster in the UK (as opposed to the US, whose filibusters have been in the news more often recently) can generally only SLOW and not STOP a motion.

   I don’t see any other way to parse 21, and I’m fairly sure I don’t like ‘way’ on its own as an anagrind. But these are two pretty small quibbles in a puzzle that I had a lot of fun with.

4. Nicely at my level. Thanks to Matilda and Manehi
   Slow/Stop Motion is unfortunate though. To my mind, a filibuster is intended to prevent a motion passing by slowing it, so stop motion is better. On the other hand, stop motion is a method of making a film rather than a style of film so slow motion is better.

5. My favourite was RUING which made me laugh.

   And always pleased to be reminded of my favourite short story writer SAKI

   Thanks Matilda and manehi

6. SUPREME COURT, PRAGUE SPRING and BODY MASS INDEX were excellent. I agree that ‘way’ is a weak anagrind.

   Ta Matilda & manehi

7. Thanks manehi, had no idea what the gatepost reference was about, plumped for STOP motion as filibustering is surely intended to halt progress of a bill rather than delay it (but don’t like the “ing”) and share the opinions of Tom@3 on your other two question marks.
   Also didn’t like the superfluous “Los” in E-SHOP (Wales would have been fine) and SAKI’s slightly tautologous “storytelling authors” could have been “storytellers, always” – nice clue anyway but one of those where the very apt surface gives the game away somewhat!
   I had a couple of other minor grumbles but this suggests I didn’t enjoy the puzzle which would be wrong – I just think it was not quite as supersmooth as the lest few of Matilda’s puzzles that I tried. And maybe there is something else lurking in there, wouldn’t be the first time she has pulled the wool over my eyes. Thanks Matilda especially for THROMBI.

8. Anyone else have MIXED IDEAS at first?

9. I liked SAKI, FIXED IDEAS, BODY MASS INDEX, RIGOR. Didn’t parse SUPREME, though I remember the group’s heyday in the ’60s. I wasn’t very keen on USHERS IN (mismatched grammer “being immoral”/”sin”), SASHIMI (rather vague definition) or YOU AND ME (vaque wordplay and definition).

   Thanks both.

10. Thanks Matilda and manehi
    I was thinking of the wrong Diana, of course, so was baffled by SUPREME. Otherwise straightforward. I liked the SIX TIES.

11. After looking hard at 21dn, I think you could read the clue as LONG with ‘in a way’ as the anagram indicator, which works for me – I think it’s rather clever.

    Thanks for the legal anecdote, NeilH @2 – love it!

    Many thanks for another lovely puzzle, Matilda and manehi for the blog.

12. Thanks for the blog, manehi, and thanks Matilda for a very entertaining crossword. Got off to a flying start with the first few going straight in, but then 9d, my LOI, took as long to crack as the rest put together. Gah!

    I opted for STOP MOTION for 11a, until the app told me on completion that “some letters are incorrect”. SLOW MOTION is probably a better fit for “filibuster”, to be fair.

    21d is an odd one – can’t help wondering if we’re all missing something (on hitting refresh before posting, I see Eileen has just offered a suggestion, which I like).

13. I don’t think I expressed that very well: LONG in ‘a way’ as the anagram indicator?

14. Eileen@11 & 13: I like that reading, but don’t you still need an A from somewhere?

15. Tom @14: ‘On the pitch that hurts a long way‘.

16. Like others I had a few quibbles, but enjoyed this a lot, especially USHERS IN, BODY MASS INDEX and the dubious STOP/SLOW MOTION. Thanks to Matilda and manehi.

17. Eileen@15 yes, but your parsing has the A as part of both fodder and anagrind, unless I misunderstand?

18. I too thought way was perhaps a little odd for an anagrind, but the neat surface was a very nice cad which does sometimes lead to slightly off word play.

    Beaulieu@9, I had the same thought but decided that taken together ‘the women being immoral’ could be ‘her sin’. I think that works grammatically?

    Definitely ticks for many including thrombi, slow motion, fixed ideas and body mass index.

    Thanks Matilda and manehi.

19. Didn’t know what the ‘Gatepost’ was all about in 13a either and still can’t see how OWN GOAL should be parsed, even though I like the def.

    Anyway, very entertaining with the reverse anagram FIXED IDEAS being my last in and favourite.

    Thanks to Matilda and manehi

20. SAKI and the gatepost are new to me. 15D was my LOI – but then I’ve always had my lunch at 12.30.

    Thanks Matilda and manehi.

21. Jim @20 – I was digging through some old notebooks recently and came across a clue I wrote some years ago*: “Make amends around lunchtime? (5)” – so that one was a write-in for me, though in truth, since I’ve been WFH, I sometimes forget to have lunch until gone 3pm.

    (*Not that I’m claiming ownership/originality – I doubt I was the first person to have that idea.)

22. widdersbel @20 – I prefer your use of ‘around’, much less didactic! 😉

23. I’m always pleased to find a Matilda puzzle, and this one lived up to expectations. There were at least three possible Dianas, the goddess, the princess and Ms. Ross, and I only thought of the wrong two – good clue, once you understand it. I was another STOP MOTION: I expect there are technical reasons why it’s wrong, but I don’t know enough about film or filibustering to recognise them. Favourite I think was RUING.

24. I had no problem with “way” as an anagrind, as a way can be an alternative. I was another who put in STOP MOTION and spent too long trying to remember Diana the divine huntress. A very nice crossword.

25. Nice puzzle. Favourites were RUING, ASPIRE, SIXTIES, FIXED IDEAS.

    I could not parse 13ac – what are gatepost partners? Thanks to manehi for explaining this one.

26. Thanks to Matilda, I’ve just downloaded the SAKI’s short stories to my Kindle for a mere 75p.

27. Oops! Garbled that.

28. Found this challenging at first, struggled with the top half, but once that had yielded the bottom half fell quite quickly. Last one in was RIGOR. Rather liked RUING too, and MISLEAD. Only aspect that spoiled things slightly, I thought was solving ISOLATION, then coming across “isolates” as part of the cluing for 20 down…

29. Matilda was being pretty free and easy with the anagrinds today, but then came up with the excellent anagrammed clue for BODY MASS INDEX — my last one in. The &lit for SAKI was jolly neat. Shame about the ‘isolates/isolation’ overlap… Hmmm. That one is a peculiar crossword convention (avoiding any lexical base form re-appearing either in the grid or the clues), isn’t it? Why does that affect the puzzle?

30. Zoe Ball helped me solve 1/16! I’d just started puzzling over it and she played Chain Reaction on the Breakfast Show.

    Cheers Zoe!

31. There are some conventions that don’t affect the puzzle, but probably the objection to the isolation/isolates business is that on seeing “isolates”, some little switch is triggered to remind you of that word group and you think “oh yes, of course, 19a is ISOLATION”. It doesn’t work like that for me (not consciously, anyway) but it obviously does for some.

32. Blah@18 – your explanation of “her sin” more or less works, but I still think it’s not a very neat clue.

33. Good surfaces increased the entertainment value of this crossword.

    I’m not sure that I understand Eileen’s explanation of the parsing of OWN GOAL; I note that ‘way’ is in the Chambers list as an anagrind, and I quite liked that clue. I also particularly enjoyed SUPREME COURT (it took me ages to see the Supremes), FIXED IDEAS and BMI. I agree with Gazzh @7 that including ‘Los’ in 17 was sloppy; I was always told that putting extraneous words in hiddens was a no-no.

    Thanks to Matilda for the entertainment and to manehi for unravelling it.

34. An enjoyable puzzle. I suppose people tend to meet at gates, hence the gateposts in 13? Perhaps ‘season’ would have been a suitable anagrind for the OWN GOAL football clue, but I suppose we have to bow to Chambers…

    Thank you Matilda and manehi.

35. I had SLOW MOTION but surely STOP MOTION works as well

36. 21d does the surface make any sense? The only scenario I could think of was along the lines of “someone kicked me on my shins and that hurt as I walked down the pitch for a long way” Given that, some other anagram indicator would have been better.

    Enjoyed the Xword, so thanks Matilda.

    Auriga@26 You could download Saki for free from The Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg
    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/152.

    Thanks manehi, also

37. Thanks to Matilda for an enjoyable puzzle with some splendid clues, elegant wordplay and tricky bits of parsing. Favourites; 1 and 16ac 9dn 10ac, 13ac, 25dn 26ac.
    Thx to manehi for blog plus help in parsing 3dn and 7dn.

38. Matilda is rapidly becoming one of my favourite setters. All my favourites have already mentioned by manehi or other solvers. The only clue I didn’t like was 8d BLOOMER which I had never heard of as a synonym for a mistake or a loaf of bread. A mere quibblet though. Thanks to both Matilda and manehi.
    [I agree entirely with muffin@10 “I liked the SIX TIES.” The music especially was great – what an era in which to grow up! Though the Seventies was pretty good too!]

39. I put in STOP MOTION as well (because it is a film style, whereas I think of slow motion as a film technique – i.e. used occasionally within a film).
    Enjoyed it all, though.

40. Very enjoyable, especially YOU AND ME.

41. gladys @31 – that would be my reasoning too. Not a mistake, but something you’d try to avoid for preference, especially in adjacent clues – unless you deliberately want to make it easier for solvers. On this occasion, I already had 19a filled in before I got as far as reading 20d anyway, so it made no difference.

42. Fun puzzle, with some splendid clues and surfaces.

    Favourites were SUPREME COURT (I was another trying to fit the goddess in until COURT leapt out at me) PRAGUE SPRING, SAKI, RUING and ASPIRE.

    Some infelicities, as other have mentioned. The SLOW/STOP ambiguity is unfortunate. HER SIN is more “the woman’s immorality” than the wording used. And ‘way’ doesn’t work for me as an anagrind, whatever Chambers might say (BTW the idea of an approved list of anagrinds is abhorrent to me).

    I don’t have any issue with the odd extra word in a hidden clue if it helps with the surface – and it can make the solution a little more difficult to spot.

    Thanks to S&B

43. I had a few thoughts about this when doing the puzzle last night (many hours pre-blog) and was interested to see which ones would have been mentioned when I woke up.

    I spent a long time trying to get 21d to work, and it seems others did too. I even tried thinking of it as an &lit. but if that was the intent it was not quite finished.

    I thought that COURT and flirt were almost opposites, rather than synonyms, in that the former is done with serious intentions, the latter without.

    There seemed to be a grammar problem with SIN and “being immoral”.

    Finally (not a quibble at all) I was amused to realise that FIXED can be its own opposite.

44. Thanks Matilda and manehi (especially for the ‘gatepost’ reference (but I feel that has been imported from the ether as there is no connecting reference to secrecy).

    OWN GOAL doesn’t work for me. The definition must either be “On the pitch”, for the ‘ow’ to appear in whichever of manehi’s or Eileen’s parsings, or the entire clue and that won’t wash because “a long way” doesn’t make a coherent contribution. Even allowing for generous elasticity my (reluctant) conclusion is that Matilda has scored an &lit.

    And the ellipsis between 4 and 6 (qv) (sorry) seems to serve only to MISLEAD.

    But I did enjoy it and as always am grateful to both for the distraction, entertainment and elucidation.

    widdersbel@21: ok I give up – WFH?

45. 11D STOP MOTION is the situation here in the US these days. You don’t have to talk for hours to invoke a filibuster, you just have to indicate the intention to do so. Once you have, you can only be stopped by a vote of cloture, which requires a 3/5 vote, 60 in our Senate of 100, which is almost impossible to get. So essentially the filibuster can stop any vote, and mostly does.

    What is an E-SHOP?

    If “On the pitch that hurts” is the definition for OWN GOAL, isn’t “that hurts” doing double duty, also representing OW?

    Never heard of a bloomer loaf. Looked it up and found that google goes to a disambiguation site with many definitions for bloomers or places or people with that name, and the bread references then connects you to an article on bread. No article, even a teeny one, on a bloomer loaf. I did find some recipes, though.

    I enjoyed the gatepost and the opportunity to dredge up the expression from wherever I’d left it. The puzzle was most enjoyable, thanks, Matilda, and thanks manehi for the blog.

46. Very entertaining with some inventive clues. I particularly liked YOU AND ME.

    Gervase @42: “I don’t have any issue with the odd extra word in a hidden clue if it helps with the surface”. I agree, and thought 17a was fine and not at all “sloppy”. Of course having lots of extraneous words would be clumsy, but I don’t see why this general stylistic point needs to become the iron rule that you must never have a single extra word in a hidden clue.

    [Alphalpha @44: WFH = working from home. Not to be confused with WTF.]

    Many thanks Matilda and manehi.

47. I was a ‘Stop Motion’ and ‘Mixed Ideas’ person. On the latter I’m wrong, on the former I think either answer works!

    @Valentine Bloomer as a word for a certain shape of loaf is quite common in the U.K. (though I’m not sure we’d use the phrase ‘bloomer loaf’).

    I’d shrugged and assumed something was doing double duty in 21D but i may have missed something.

    Anyway I very much enjoyed this one, thanks Matilda and manehi

48. AlanC @6: yes. And some others. FIXED IDEAS is the best answer, but with the crossers it’s not unique. -I-E- has a lot of possibilities and “dogmas” is not a precise enough definition. Poor clue for me because of it.

    Otherwise a lot of fun. Thanks Matilda and manehi.

49. Fans of the Asterix books should have had no trouble with 26a – Asterix’s pet dog is called Dogmatix, which is a perfect translation of the original French name, Idéfix (= idée fixe = fixed idea).

50. This was fun! Lots of smiles esp YOU AND ME, LOSES IT and BIDY MASS INDEX.

    Re 21d , I thought “way” as an anagrind was sufficient but Eileen @13 has a much more elegant explanation which I much prefer. I must be on the lookout now for words contained within “a” and “way”.

    Thanks Matilda and manehi

51. Thanks both,
    In 23a the grammar works if ‘being immoral’ is treated as a noun e.g. ‘The politcian’s actions are an instance of being immoral/sin’.

52. Lord Jim@46: TVM

53. Seemed a bit of a mixed bag today.
    I’d like to toss in another, still ungrammatical, interpretation of USHERS IN: it could be US and HER SIN (13 with/and the woman (are) being immoral), but obviously there is a problem with US as a subject. Reminds me of a college friend of mine from Chester who used to talk of “studying for us exams”.
    I’m also a STOP MOTION person. The trouble with this sort of ambiguity is that, as a solver, as soon as you’ve got the answer, you instantly forget about it and move on, so the error’s almost unfixable. Fortunately, I guessed correctly in the case of FIXED IDEAS. Loved the Dogmatix tale, widdersbel @49.
    Thanks, Matilda and manehi.

54. Thinking it over, I’ve come to the conclusion that STOP MOTION fits the definition better. SLOW MOTION is something that might be used in a film, but STOP MOTION is a technique in making an entire film (Wallace and Gromet, for example), hence a “film style”.

55. Enjoyed this one. Thanks Matilda, especially for the prompt to re-read some Saki.

    It was steady going at 1am when I couldn’t sleep, but difficult enough (for me at least) that it needed a refreshed mind to be able to finish it off later.

    Thanks manehi for reminding me of the gatepost saying and parsing 21d.

56. “way” is often used to indicate a variant of a process (more than one way to skin a cat, fifty ways to leave your lover, etc), so using it to indicate a variant ordering of the letters of “a long” in a cryptic crossword clue seems acceptable to me.

57. muffin @54: I think STOP MOTION also fits the wordplay better – a motion (in the legislative sense) can’t be slowed down – it’s the debate on the motion that is slowed down by a filibuster. So the filibuster (or threat of filibuster, as Valentine points out) in effect defeats the motion, or stops it from being passed, or even debated.

    No one has yet mentioned the non-homophone at 15d, so I won’t either 😉

    I did enjoy this though, thanks M & m

58. Dr. WhatsOn @43: To “court” disaster is to “flirt with” disaster.

59. Thanks Matilda, I enjoyed this crossword with ATONEMENT, LOSES IT, and ASPIRE as particular favourites. Thanks manehi for the blog — I couldn’t parse YOU AND ME, I missed FIXED IDEAS, and thought only of Princess Di in SUPREME COURT because I try to keep my head in a “British space” when I attempt these puzzles even though I’ve been to the Motown museum and I’m quite familiar with the Diana Ross group.

60. DougV @58
    I wouldn’t use those interchangeably. “Court disaster” implies a more active interaction with disaster than merely “flirting” with it.

61. DougV@58 Fair point, but then “with” is doing double duty, so there is still a bit of a problem, I think. With is being used to reorder the two words, right?

62. essexboy@57 No-one has yet commented on your failure to mention the non-homophone, so I won’t either as I am sure it was well mehnt.

63. muffin @60: I don’t buy that distinction. I see both terms as equivalent to “playing with fire”. If I wanted to express a lighter version of the concept, I’d go with something containing an element of humour, like “running with scissors”.

64. Dr WhatsOn @61
    That problem can be circumvented if court and flirt are being used as nouns: court/flirt – an act of courting/flirting (the latter from Wiktionary).

65. [Petert @62: 🙂 (and it certainly wasn’t mehnt as a challenge to Roz’s position as ’queen of apophasis’)]

66. Dr. WhatsOn@61: Double duty? Perhaps. But I’m comfortable with that, both here and in the more obvious case of 21d (“that hurts”). I’m not sure why so many solvers are dead set against double duty, beyond the fact that they’ve been told it’s against the rules. I think it should be seen as a legitimate component of word play. But I’m new here, and willing to be enlightened.

67. Doug@66 there is only one rule, the setter sets and we try to solve, if we do not like clues we can grumble.
    I just find double duty very clumsy. Solving word play is all about making choices , each word or short phrase can often have multiple meanings. Make the right choices and put them all together and you get the answers. Double duty means making one choice and then another. The better setters will always avoid it leading to precise word play.

68. Double duty? Nothing! How about: T (6,4)

69. Too late for most to see but I really enjoyed this puzzle so I wanted to added a couple of thoughts.
    I had STOP ACTION for 11a. It could plausibly describe a fillibuster and be a film style. Alas it did not fit the crossers and so only slowed me down.
    For 29a I had SPARKLE with spark in the sense of sparking a conversation doing for kick-up and spark going with shock. Of course, it does not quite work and again fails to match the crossers.
    However, there were many clues that brought a smile when I finally worked them out.
    Always a pleasure to dance with Matilda.

70. A surprising number of contentious issues! I tend to agree that 21d doesn’t work very well, despite Eileen’s efforts @ 11&13. I don’t normally have a problem with a word (or combination of words) doing double duty, but in this case neither the surface nor the cryptic meaning make a lot of sense.

    I agree with Gervase @42 that “HER SIN is more “the woman’s immorality” than the wording used.”

    And STOP or SLOW look like two good candidates for 11a – in my opinion either of them would be a technique rather than a style (though muffin @54 is persuasive regarding Wallace & Grommet); the question mark at the end of the clue presumably excuses the looseness of the definition ‘filibustering’.

    But surely ‘flirt’ is close enough to COURT; it’s merely flirting until such time as the other person shows signs of taking it seriously, n’est ce pas? To a third party observing such behaviour it’s rather hard to tell the difference (think of Jane Austen’s Emma, where this occupies a major part of the plot).

    I don’t see a problem with hiding a word in the last two letters of ‘Los Angeles’ – it’s a word unit standing for a place, in the same way the proposed alternative ‘Wales’ (Gazzh @7) would be, in the context of the clue.

    That’s other people’s nitpicking, now for one of my own. In 28a SIX is clued as ‘over five’ – this is one of an infinity of numbers that is ‘over five’, so an indication of definition by example is surely required? Only kidding, obviously. 🙂

    Thanks to Matilda and manehi.

71. We’re both wrong, SH! I’ve checked, and it’s “Gromit”…

72. [Doh. Of course it is! This is a grommet.]

73. My apologies to Matilda for thinking that her mind was in the gutter. For 25D, I had the exactitude being the American slang use of “Right You Are” and the “stiff feature” being the erection required in men for sexual intercourse. Hence ROGER not RIGOR

74. Much here for me to approve of, which I’m sure will make Matilda’s day.
    I liked all the clues that I solved, but particularly USHERS IN, and SIXTIES for bringing to mind Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson.
    Thank you Matilda and Manehi.

75. [off topic, but I can’t help a putting in a helpful hint for any ginocologists out there. My favourite Saki story has to be Tobermory (where someone teaches a cat to talk, leading to enormous embarassments, and the other day I fell on a gin called Tobermory, made in the isle of Mull, in our local booze shop. Couldn’t resist trying it. Bloody lovely stuff (like today’s crozzie). But I was hesitating about whether to mention this on the Graun thread. Anyway, after a so-so-subtle entry (under a different handle) somebody pre-empted me with a direct mention of the T-word. No spoiler alerts…]

76. sheffield hatter@70 there you were the other day congratulating me on not being a curmudgeon – my family nickname is Mr Grumpy and maybe I lived up to it today, probably because I tried for a long time to find a modern retail outlet called L-S..A – but agree as Los Angeles is one name it counts as misleading rather than unnecessary, sorry Matilda!
    [blaise@75 Tobermory also produces some good scotch, never tried the gin but will look out for it, cheers]

77. [I bought a bottle of Tobermory Scotch when I was there last March!]

78. DougV@66 What Roz said@67. I don’t think double duties are ever intentional, unless in some fiendish ultra-meta construction, or &lits. This was neither.

79. Late here as I went to bed last night with several unsolved after much staring. Of course, as soon as I looked at them this morning, I knew what the answers were. Weird how that happens, isn’t it? I am definitely in the STOP MOTION group. Lots to like, all previously mentioned. I can’t say I share all the grumbles, though OWN GOAL did have me shrugging a bit. Thanks, Matilda and manehi.

80. Also plumped for MIXED and STOP. Clearly in a parallel alternative universe but nice not to be the only ones. Nice crossword and thanks for the blog.

81. Late to the show again today, thanks to 48 cm of snow that kept me shoveling most of the day.

    Re OWN GOAL, I’m surprised that no one parsed it as a clue as definition (or &lit if you prefer), with “a long way” indicating that the pain of an own goal lasts goes a long way. That gets around the double-duty issue, as double duty is a natural component of a CAD. It also makes the surface more sensible. It was one of my favourite clues, among many. Have I missed something?

    I assume that 5a THROMBI is a shout out to Mr. Matilda’s other profession.

    Matilda has been one of my favourite setters since her Quiptic days, so I’m glad that she now appears here as well as there.

82. Me@81, in my parsing of OWN GOAL I should have identified “hurts” as the anagrind.

83. Morpheus @80. “Clearly in a parallel alternative universe.” Ha ha! I’ve been there a few times. Solving the wordplay but not the definition. MIXED IDEAS is not going to be a one-for-one match to ‘dogmas’ in this universe. 🙂

    FIXED is another one of those autantonyms – like cleave or fast – that can have two meanings that are opposites. In this case: made sure that something stayed the same, or righted something that was wrong.

84. [Andrew Tindall@73 “Roger” is radiospeak in some phonetic alphabet (Nato’s? dunno) for the letter R, which is the abbreviation in radiospeak for “received.” That’s what you say to acknowledge a communication. Nowadays of course you don’t have to be flying a plane to participate in this tradition.]

85. cellomaniac @80/81. I did think about that, but I couldn’t see what ‘a long way’ was doing there in the football surface. An own goal hurts the team in the same way as any other goal: only for as long as it takes your own team to score an equaliser! The unlucky player who puts the ball into their own team’s net will suffer some embarassment, but that would be for a potentially ‘long time’ rather than ‘a long way’.

    And with ‘hurts’ as the anagrind (as well as being part of the definition ‘on the pitch that hurts’ – oh, and cluing OW too) what is ‘way’ doing there at all? If it’s an attempt at an &lit I’m afraid it’s gone way over the bar and ended up hitting a supporter in Row Z, as the football cliche goes.

    I think our blogger got it right: ‘that hurts’ is doing double duty as part of the definition ‘on the pitch that hurts’, and ‘way’ is the anagrind.

86. sh@85,
    I would agree that “a long time” might be the more usual way of saying it, but “a long way” conveys the meaning adequately and provides the fodder for the anagram, thus making a satisfactory &lit.

    I would also disagree with your equating an own goal with any other goal. Psychologically it requires your team to win the match in order to make up for it. As a serious competitive athlete in my youth, I can attest that it is more difficult to mentally overcome a blunder of your own than to respond to a good play of your opponent. Yes, an own goal does hurt more (and longer) than an opponent’s goal. In my view this attempt at an &lit hits the broom with the right weight, and comes to rest on the button behind the guard.

87. cellomaniac@several, you know I respect your views and I greatly appreciate your kindness at times but , has to be a but, this is not a successful &lit.
    Two things are needed, the whole of the clue must be the definition – just about a tick for that.
    Second – the whole of the clue must give the word play , definite cross – ON THE PITCH does not contribute to word play.
    It is a sort of hybrid and a setter’s own goal.

88. Roz, I’m glad you agree, albeit somewhat grudgingly, that the whole clue as definition is there, and I accept your point about the &lit not being successful since part of the clue doesn’t contribute to the wordplay, so I stand corrected.
    I do think my parsing is correct, and so the flaw in the clue is that “hurts” is doing double duty. Notwithstanding that flaw, I still like the clue (just not as much).

89. cellomaniac @86. “I would agree that “a long time” might be the more usual way of saying it, but ‘a long way’ conveys the meaning adequately and provides the fodder for the anagram.” The wordplay is ‘that hurts’=OW + (a long)*, so the anagram section of the clue is ‘a long’; therefore either ‘way’ is the anagrind or ‘hurts’ is. You favour the latter, even though it already has a function in the wordplay (and, arguably, in the definition!) but this leaves ‘way’ without a function except to express, as you put it, that “an own goal does hurt more (and longer) than an opponent’s goal”. But as I mentioned @85, and you seem to accept, ‘time’ would be better for the surface than ‘way’. I remain to be convinced that this is a good clue, and I think Roz has dealt with the case for it being an &lit very thoroughly.

90. A real struggle, this one, but rewarding in the end. Missed HUMOUR, which is poor, and YOU AND ME went unparsed until I saw the blog and went ‘D’oh!’

    As an aside, is 3 separate Xs a record?

91. Roz and sheffield hatter, I woke up this morning and finally understood that, as you so gently pointed out, I had got the parsing of the clue completely wrong. I humbly apologize for wasting so much of your time and thank you for your patience with me.
    Now on to today’s puzzle – I hope my brain is working better this time.

92. cellomaniac @91 Thanks for owning up so gracefully! It’s never a waste of time to help others to see things as I see them. Whether the way I see things is correct is another matter.

93. So we all agree with me@44. Huzzah!

    (Empty silence – (hullo?)…)

94. Alphalpha@93 – Since only Roz and sheffield hatter responded to my original post@81, I only acknowledged and thanked them for their responses. If you are offended, I’m sorry.

95. cellomaniac@: No offence taken whatsoever – my attempt at comedy. And I trust none offered.

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