Guardian Cryptic 29,024 by Vlad

92 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,024 by Vlad”

1. Liked UNDERLINE, TREVI, MOGGIES, SPURS, TEDIUM and OSCARS.

   Thanks, Vlad and manehi!

2. I originally had Flee for 13 across (with the ‘F’ from 1 down) and couldn’t parse it surprisingly and only got and understood FLIT when the second crosser appeared.
   I needed manehi’s help (thank you) to parse UNDERLINE, SPURS (Son Heung-min is a bridge too far for me – why would I care about who plays for a London team), and LET RIP which in hindsight is clever.
   Favourite was the ‘doubled’ MOGGIES. Lovely clue.

3. 23 LOI. I was blind to the hidden word and was trying to fit in OWL or BAT. I agree with manehi, I think this was very tough. Got 26 from the definition, thinking initially that Son referred to the first letter (capital letter hidden at the start) and then the penny dropped, but I think that clue must surely have defeated most non-UK solvers. Perhaps the same applies to 17 as well. Thanks to setter and blogger.

4. Tough and fun. I was disappointed when the checkers showed 9ac couldn’t be UNDERPLAY which would have been the negation of all three words! Thanks v&m.

5. Like McBeak @4, I was very pleased with myself for entering “underplay” for 9a straight away. I thought it worked pretty well, only problem was it wasn’t correct! The rest of the clues were of a standard and level of difficulty expected from Vlad. Hadn’t heard of the ‘poet’ at 11a (though I’ve probably said that before) and not knowing the footballer, couldn’t parse SPURS. I did recognise the other two UK sportsmen at 17a, especially the dashing Yorkshire opener.

   Favourites were LET RIP and the double dog MOGGIES.

   Thanks to Vlad and manehi

6. Tomsdad @3. It defeated this UK solver too. Not a good week so far. Anto, Imogen and now Vlad. Enigmatist must be due. Herrick is new to me. Once I came here and saw the parsing, moggies is very clever. Thanks Vlad and manehi.

7. A lot of bung and struggle (and too often fail) to parse later, with a few too many “need to know somebody’s full name” – many fairly obscure – for my liking. But then, it is Vlad, so what do you expect – just happy to be able to finish it. MOGGIES, LET RIP and THE USUAL were all amusing. I have vaguely heard of Tim Henman – wasn’t he the one that was always in the headlines as “the first Englishman to [fill in achievement] at Wimbledon since [fill in ancient tennis player]” – until Andy Murray came along, and it switched to “first British man…”. Thanks, Vlad and manehi.

8. Thanks Vlad and manehi
   Rather GK heavy. OK if you knew it, but, for instance, I had no idea about the first definition in SPURS.
   After yesterday’s discussion, isn’t 18d, technically at least, and indirect anagram?
   Lots to like – FOI HERRICK, TREVI, and MOGGIES in particular.

9. I am also in the NHO HERRICK camp, but his famous line is “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”, so I really ought to have.

10. Tomsdad @3 It defeated this UK solver – never heard of the player.

    I finished witha pb for a Vlad, but too many I couldn’t parse: TREVI, TIME OFF, SPURS, TEDIUM and OSMIUM, so thanks manehi; and Vlad- liked a CD HOPPING MAD

11. Sorry, although I am a Londoner I’ve never heard of the footballer, let alone who he plays for, so failed to parse SPURS. Also missed Geoff Boycott in TIME OFF, failed to see what said that the Daughter had to be removed from Divert for TREVI, not sure that scar=wound. Impaled again.

    Liked the doggies and the moggies and the two kinds of rent.

12. Yes, I expected the second part of UNDERLINE to be another opposite rather than a synonym.

13. If I happen to be on the wavelength, I can crack a Vlad: I wasn’t on it today. Plenty of things I didn’t see when trying to solve/parse and plenty of need for the Check button and, in the end, a few Reveals. Same challenges as those already highlighted by others so no need to repeat. MOGGIES, my favourite.

    Thanks Vlad and manehi

14. Vaguely knew the poet, but not the footballer or the brrm brrm driver, and forgot about Henman, so there was a bit of bung and pray. 1d being easy helped. Trevi always invokes Ekberg, with Mastroianni saying “Ma che bistecca!” All part of the fun, thanks Vlad and manehi.

15. Thanks for the blog and several much-needed explanations, manehi. I too enjoyed the play on MOGGIES/DOGGIES at 16a – and the Will Smith clue for the OSCARS at 21d – both of which (I thought) showed Vlad at his cleverest, I thought. Some others very tough (hadn’t heard of several of the people referenced) and only got some of those from the definitions, with incomplete parses. (You said more expressively what I am trying to say, Tassie Tim@7.) At least I did know HERRICK at 11a, which made me feel vaguely better. Thanks to Vlad for a very challenging workout.

16. (Sorry about the repetition of “I thought”. Should proof before I press the button)

17. [The redoubtable, hard-grafting Boycott is not usually called dashing, WP @5, but his terrific record does in fact warrant the term]

18. Very hard for me, with a couple revealed and several unparsed.
    Most people seem to have at least one pet peeve about crosswords, which many others are happy to accept. For example, I have no issue with indirect anagrams, nor with answers containing apostrophes (both of which have been mentioned in the past couple of day), nor with dodgy homophones. But I know I’m not the only one who really dislikes anagram indicators that don’t indcate anagrams – and here we had ‘spent’, ‘foreign’ and ‘fighting’, none of which works for me.
    At least I’d heard of the sportsmen, though didn’t know who the footballer plays for.
    I did like MOGGIES, OSCARS, SCOURGE among others.
    Thanks Vlad and manehi.

19. “dashing Yorkshire opener” WordPlodder @5??? I always thought he was a boring blocker.

20. The easiest of the week so far, but that does not imply I found it easy, just relatively so. I kwew all the names, but I was wondering if it was something to do with Will Biffing Harry, but then I remembered that other storm ina teacup at the OSCARS. I only knew Song Heung-Minh because I had seen him on a food video and did not remember his name, only that he played for a London Club. I did see the EOFF for the miserable yorkshireman.
    Very enjoyable thanks Vlad and Manehi for helping with the half parsed,

21. Tim C @19 I think there was an element of sarcasm there.

22. An easy ride by Vlad’s standards – much more accessible than yesterday’s offering. LOI was TRAIL for no good reason. Some tricky parsing, though.
    Thanks to Vlad and manehi.

23. I grinned wryly when I realised foreign was the anagrind and I wasn’t using un as part of REALISTIC, so really liked that clue. Another one who had no idea about a Son playing for SPURS so that one was unparsed, among a few others, and I’m a sort of Londoner.

    Herrick is worth seeking out, the poem that comes to my mind is Delight in Disorder.

    Thank you to Vlad and manehi.

24. Tough puzzle, halfway through I got very stuck. LHS was easier for me.

    Failed to solve 26ac SPURS (OMG, I never heard of Spurs the football team or player Son Heung-min) and 10ac TREVI.

    I did not parse 16ac, 17ac (never heard of Tim Henman but I know Geoff Boycott, saw him play in Test matches), 5d.

    Favourites: CLOCK TOWER, THE USUAL, WITH A DIFFERENCE, TEDIUM, OSCARS; SCOURGE.

    New for me: racing driver Hill, Damon (for 24ac); poet Herrick, Robert (11ac).

    Thanks, both.

    Haha, I love TassieTim’s description @7 of “A lot of bung and struggle (and too often fail) to parse later, with a few too many “need to know somebody’s full name” – many fairly obscure – for my liking.” Also grantinfreo@14’s “there was a bit of bung and pray. “

25. Completed without aids but not all parsed. Rather too many modern day ephemeral references for my personal taste. For example, I have absolutely no interest in The Oscars and the Will Smith incident rang only the faintest of bells: when I see Will in a puzzle I think immediately of The Bard. Although I have followed Tottenham Hotspur for the past seventy years or so, I failed to pick up the allusion to the superb Sonny – I do hope that he finds his form again soon.

26. [GinF @17 and Tim C @19, about as dashing as the legendary Chris Tavaré or our very own Bill Lawry. A top batsman though].

27. This one seems to come up quite often, but can someone tell me where L is ever used as an abbreviation for ‘lecturer’?

28. Well, that was a tussle – and a most rewarding one but technically a DNF for me, as I was (like a number of others, I’m gratified to see) unaware of the footballer – though impressed by the cleverness of the clue – and had forgotten about the OSCARS incident. I’m amazed at how long it took to see the hidden creature of the night.

    However, I did know Herrick (I always think of his ‘To daffodils’ at this time of year) and TIm, of course – I liked the ‘court favourite’ definition – and even the ‘Hill on track’, another nice one.

    So many clever clues – Vlad on top form, I thought. I had ticks for 10ac TREVI, (happy memories), 12ac ROGUISH, 16ac MOGGIES, 2dn ADORNING, and 5dn LET RIP., among others.

    Many thanks, as ever, to Vlad for a very interesting and enjoyable challenge, to manehi, for a super blog and to various others for their amusing contributions.

29. nicbach@20; Auriga@22 – your modesty belies your wond’rousness. Though I too found it incredibly easy, easier than any quiptic and just perfect for a beginner. In fact, I solved it in under 3 mins; quicker than a write-in as I managed to solve, parse and enter solutions before I’d even read the clues!

    Seriously, I found this rather chewy (wish now I’d saved for weekend to savour) though looking back postsolve it didn’t seem that tricky so maybe it’s my solving that’s clunky this morning!
    And thanks to manehi for parsing SPURS; my bad, as I have (vaguely) heard of the footballer but perhaps a GK step too far for many solvers (though the solution was obvious with crossers) HOPPING MAD, CLOCK TOWER were neat; enjoyed the two long ones and their interconnectivity with THE USUAL. But my favourite clue may have been – weirdly – TIME OFF precisely because of the clever use of two very English sportsmen neither of whom I would describe as inspiring.

    Unlike Vlad – without whom my crossword life would be impoverished. My thanks..

30. [nicbach @21… I would hope so
    WordPlodder @26… a top batsman for staying at the crease, plus he’s a Yorkshireman and therefore persona non grata for this Lancastrian 😉 ]

31. For UNDERLINE I decided that opposite applied to both definition and both elements of wordplay, so confidently entered UNDERPLAY. I admired the way that Vlad misdirected with the crossword staples such as Son and foreign article.

32. Not as tough as yesterday and lots of smiles along the way, especially OSCARS, MOGGIES and SPURS for the misdirection. Loved the long anagrams and the contrast as pointed out by maheni. I sympathise with those who didn’t know Son, although he featured a lot in last year’s World Cup. I think that because one has no interest in sport, film, music, poetry etc, it does not make the answer any less legitimate. As has been said many times before, surely we are here to learn as much as anything.

    Ta Vlad & manehi.

33. Found this very trappy indeed. Didn’t do too badly with the top half, but ground to a halt in the nether regions. Thought TIME OFF required too much of an English? sporting knowledge to be entirely fair. Several unparsed, UNDERLINE for one. Loi OBDURATE, rather describing my cussed attitude in actually getting there. Liked HOPPING MAD (such a strange expression if you think about it), and TEDIUM…

34. Couldn’t parse SPURS as I’ve never heard of the footballer, though the answer couldn’t be anything else. The rest was fairly tough but I managed to digest it.

35. I very much didn’t “[enjoy] the use of names in the surfaces of 17ac, 26ac, and 21dn.” All of them completely baffled me, and I am especially unimpressed by being expected to be able to parse ‘former court favourite’ as TIM, or know that SON is the first name of someone associated with a football team.

36. “As has been said many times before, surely we are here to learn as much as anything.”
    As an Australian, I am of the firm opinion that far too much popular culture is directed towards sports people as it is.

37. Tough and thank goodness for the anagrams.

    Like TT @ 7, a lot of the non-anagram solutions came from bung in using crosses and then try to parse. And thanks to manehi for help parsing the ones I couldn’t.

    Like others loved MOGGIES which to my amazement I did parse straightaway.

    A few weeks ago I managed to complete a Vlad puzzle using minimal aides and thought I was at last getting better solving his puzzles. Today showed I was wrong.

    Thanks anyway Vlad.

38. Tough but fair, I thought, though I sympathise with those who haven’t heard of Son or wish they’d never heard of Boycott.
    Thanks to Vlad and Manehi

39. Cleverly clued puzzle from the Impaler. The last few entries took me longer than the rest of the puzzle, and I had a parse failure with SPURS, though I managed to work out all the others, eventually! LOI was TREVI – to my shame, as I was solving the crossword only a few km from the said water feature 🙁

    Favourites for me have all been mentioned, but a word of appreciation for STAGE NAME. Not a difficult clue, but I liked the allusion in the surface: the agent often being the one to suggest the actor’s working title.

    Shanne @23: HERRICK had a thing about women’s apparel:

    Whenas in silks my Julia goes
    Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
    The liquefaction of her clothes!

    Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
    That brave vibration, each way free
    – O how that glittering taketh me!

    Thanks to S&B

40. Alas I too had to rely on Bradford and much pressing of the check button. But I got there in the end and loved most of the clues, especially once I discovered the parsing! So thank you Vlad and manehi, I really don’t know how you do it (them)

41. I knew who Son is, but I honestly don’t think it’s wholly fair. If, say, “Kane” had been used in a clue, that might have been OK, since you’d have to be pretty clichéd judge-like not to know who he was, even if you weren’t a follower of football. This applies of course only to England, and, perhaps, at a stretch, the rest of Britain. Not so with the admirable Son.

    I don’t really get the letter order in the wordplay for ‘scourge’, and is the ‘recycling’ of ‘edit’ in the clue for ‘tedium’ just an accepted convention? I didn’t think so, but since no-one else has objected, perhaps I’m wrong about both these clues.

42. LET RIP has the cleverest wordplay of the lot, and it’s only one word!

43. But apart from my complaint at 41., thanks to Vlad for a challenging solve and to manehi.

44. It helped that I’d heard of HERRICK and know that a LORIS has large eyes to enhance vision at night. That said, it took me a couple of hours to complete. Am gradually getting better at these puzzles but feel I still have much to learn. With thanks to both.

45. Thouroughly disheartened by this, left feeling remakably stupid, maybe I should stick to sudoku

46. beaulieu @18: Chacun à son gout. Unusual and imaginative anagrinds are one of the joys of crosswords for me 🙂

47. Thanks to Vlad and to manehi for some parsings that I just wasn’t going to get.

    Well I enjoyed it though I pulled up at the last couple of hurdles – the parsings of MOGGIES and OSCARS. Vlad’s puzzles these days really sparkle in a way that I didn’t associate with Vlad of yore. I mean that as a compliment to Vlad and not as a criticism of a former version. It’s possibly because I have improved as a solver.

    The more I think of it the more I like HOPPING MAD.

    muffin@8: No expert but I don’t have a problem when the ‘indirect’ portion is restricted to a clearly clued single letter – in this case ‘nothing’=’O’. I was glad of it as a way in when I was beginning to panic. Getting a first clue when nearly at the bottom of the downs has its own frisson!

48. simonc@27: Apparently, L for ‘lecturer’ is in Chambers dictionary (which is conventionally taken to be the crossword bible). Chambers includes a swathe of — to my mind — completely arbitrary single-letter -> word correspondences, which makes life a bit easier for setters and a bit harder for solvers. I bridle as the use of L for ‘lecturer’ because there is no widely recognised system within which L = lecturer. N = neon is in the periodic table, E = Spain is in the list of international letter codes for countries, W = whisky is in the NATO “alphabet” for radio communication, and others belong in agreed, conventional systems and are therefore more justifiable as single-letter -> word correspondences.
    Proper dictionaries are more careful about which single letters to include as entries.

49. ludd@45: see my comment at the end of 47 – I nearly joined you. But there is no shame in defeat by an experrt setter. And the fact that the emotions are stirred shows that it matters – I get no emotional stirrage from sudoku, win or lose – it can be a useful pastime is all.

50. Simonc @27. The only time I ever see L as an abbreviation for lecturer is in crosswords.

51. Like yesterday’s, this was tough but worth persevering with. Some very good clues. I thought CLOCK TOWER was a great cryptic definition.

    muffin @8: in 18d only one letter out of eight was not directly indicated, and personally I thought it was fair enough. This is not the sort of clue that Ximenes and Don Manley were referring to when they condemned indirect anagrams. They meant the “think of a synonym for this word and make an anagram of that” type. Ximenes gave the example “Tough form of monster” for HARDY (anagram of HYDRA).

    I’m not sure I quite understand the definition for THE USUAL. Why “reportedly” (which is normally a homophone indicator)?

    Many thanks Vlad and manehi.

52. SimonC@27 In my career I progressed from L1 to L2 to the dizzy heights of SL, so L for lecturer is familiar enough for me. I can see it’s a bit niche, though.

53. McBeak@4,WordPlodder@5,Petert@31
    For 9a UNDERPLAY is a better solution to the clue than UNDERLINE! Don’t you just hate it when that happens? 🙂
    Thanks V&m

54. Thanks for the blog, great puzzle, found the Across really hard initially , was glad to get lots of Down answers in with helpful letters, especially MUCH OF A MUCHNESS, a phrase I use frequently. Did not know HERRICK , thanks everyone, but it was fairly clued. MOGGIES and NOMADIC very neat.
    Was “Come on Tim” the most depressing phrase in the English language ?
    OBDURATE and ROGUISH did arouse the wrath of the ursine Peruvian.
    L for lecturer is used in pay scales.

55. I’m afraid I found this difficult for difficulty’s sake, as I’m sure many of the clues could have been written more simply, even using the elements as parsed in the blog. I rather liked the ‘time’s up’ idea, however.

56. Imogen followed by Vlad – someone must have been complaining that the crosswords were too easy! I found this more tractable than Imogen’s effort yesterday, although one or two answers remained unparsed.

    I did know Son, as ‘some of my mates’ are SPURS fans, but I failed to recognise him in the clue. I had quite a few ticks, including: TREVI for the wandering daughter; TIME OFF, although I assumed Tim was some Elizabethan courtier or some such; SCOURGE for the second bottle; REALISTIC as a good anagram; ADORNING for an interesting surface; and OSCARS, which I eventually parsed. As for indirect anagrams, I agree with Alphalpha @47 that a one letter (to abide by the enumeration) abbreviation for nothing is, I hope, only O, so it seems fair to me.

    Thanks Vlad for the masochism and manehi for the parsings.

57. I liked SPURS (the clue not the club – other Premier League sides in North London are available) and NOMADIC because Son and Hill (Damon) were hiding in plain sight at the from of the clue, with a capital letter, making a nice change from chemistry elements and Man Ray.
    Great fun.

58. Here was I thinking I was on track to finish my first Vlad, but got tripped up by Son Heung-min. To paraphrase Tim C @ 2, why should I care for any London footballer who does not play for West Ham. Lovely puzzle, thanks to Manehi for the blog. Oh well, it’s now Matematico 0 – Vlad 8 (eight). At least the Hammers are doing well. What? Nooo….

59. I thought this was a great crossword, my favourite Vlad to date, I think. Hard but fair, and I absolutely loved the brilliant misdirections of Son (SPURS) and Will (OSCARS), even though non-UK solvers may not be familiar with the Spurs forward. Like others, my LOI was LORIS… those types of “easy” clue seem to get me every time! Thanks to Vlad and Manehi.

60. Not quite as tough as yesterday’s and a little more fun only marred slightly by (yes I know it’s subjective, but…) obscure GK (HERRICK, the ‘Son’ who plays for Spurs, IDE the fish). Slight eyebrow raise at ‘side’ being used to clue L, but maybe it’s considered acceptable and I just haven’t seen it before.

    Lots to like though: MOGGIES, TIME OFF, CLOK TOWER, OSCARS, HOPPING MAD, LET RIP and the two long downs.

    Thanks both.

61. pserve_p2 @48 re Chambers’ permissive list of single-letter abbreviations, I lean towards the Ximenes end of the spectrum and agree that they can be unfair, especially to newer solvers. On the other hand, if setters were limited to more well known abbreviations then things could get repetitive. There’s not that many common, non-specialist meanings of the single letter L, for instance. Looking at the more conservative Collins dictionary, I can only see eight or so, and that’s including Britishisms such as learner and pound.

62. Lord Jim @51: ‘reportedly in order’ because THE USUAL is a spoken instruction across a bar – deceptive, though, as you found!

    pserve_p2 @48: I haven’t checked, but if Chambers says neon = N, that’s somewhat heterodox, as it’s more usually Ne. What do they suggest for nitrogen? 🙂

63. McBeak@4 and Wordplodder@5 Apologies for missing your earlier UNDERPLAYS

64. Amazed myself by getting everything except OSCARS, which seemed a stretch too far to me, but had to come here for the parsing of quite a few. I still don’t understand how SPURS parses (surely ‘where xxx play’ rather than ‘playing’?) but hey ho, lots of fun to be had. Thanks to both Vlad and manehi.

65. Dear Ludd @45. Don’t worry you’re not alone. It is disheartening to struggle with a crossword with some tricky clues only to read someone saying ‘breezed through this before my tea got cold’. I’ve been trying for about 40 years and I’m not getting any better. If I manage to complete one I do a lap of honour. I still enjoy failing miserably though.

66. No hope of parsing TIME OFF, never heard of either of those athletes, or Damon Hill or Son Heung either.

    Couldn’t parse 7D TEDIUM.

    Thanks to Vlad and manehi.

67. Well this US resident did get all of the UK sportsmen, and Will, but not without the typical Vladdian struggle. In fact I think the number of such names in one puzzle, if not exactly a theme, helped (me) because it tuned the mind to detect and/or explore such possibilities. SPURS was fave, ironic being an Arsenal fan.

68. I’m beginning to see why the Times only allows dead celebrities (does this apply to clues as well as answers?) HERRICK’s place in Poet’s Corner is a matter of historical record and isn’t going to change. Boycott and Henman, though alive, have been seriously famous for quite a while. Son Heung-min , however, is a fairly recent arrival, and might be playing for some other team next year (sorry, Spurs fans, but transfers do happen!)

69. Lord Jim@51

    You’re right to pick up on ‘reportedly’ in 17dn as signifying a homophone. Gervase’s explanation@62 (Hi Gervase, long time no see) was clever but not the intended one. The homophone was meant to indicate ‘inn order’, narrowing it down to a pub or bar.

    Thanks for comments so far.

70. [Love hearing of Boycs, NeilH @38, and envy michelle @24 for having seen him play. Favourite quote, commenting on a bad ball, “My old moom could’ve ‘it tha’ wi’ a stick o’ rhubarb”]

71. Absolutely loved this – right in my goldilocks zone. My mum always said it’s not a fair world so maybe that prepared me for Vlad’s chicanery!

    It’s only obscure if you don’t know it 🙂

    Cheers V&M

72. Vlad @69: Thanks for the greeting and the clarification! Your intended parsing was probably what manehi understood, judging by the underlining in his blog, but he didn’t make it explicit 🙂

73. … and I thought ‘how clever of Vlad to use ‘reportedly’ other than as a homophone indicator’!

74. bodycheetah @71
    “It’s only obscure if you don’t know it ?”
    Indeed, but I count at least seven clues here that would be pretty incomprehensible without the appropriate GK – 10, 11, 17, 22 (though it is the “crossword fish”!), 24, 26, 20(ish), 21, and 23. Rather too many!

75. Great puzzle. I found it fairly smooth going at the start but slowed to a crawl at the finish. As a Spurs fan , I got a huge grin on finally twigging 26. I enjoyed all the namechecks, even if they could be considered slightly obscure (Hill, Tim and Geoff particularly, since they’re hardly current – at least not to me).
    Failed to parse TREVI, as I guessed that “round” was part of the definition. Should have Googled a picture of it! I also failed to see the clever homophone for Inn Order. Beautifully done.
    Thanks, V and m.

76. Many thanks Vlad @69. Like so many things it seems obvious in hindsight!

77. Well, it wasn’t the general knowledge that did for me today, just some extra tricky wordplay – managed to guess at TIME OFF but couldn’t for the life of me see how it worked, despite being familiar with the sportsmen in question. Did manage to spot Damon Hill and Son Heung-Min though.

    Thanks for the enjoyable workout, Vlad, and manehi for the top blog.

    Muffin @74 – you should have a look at Chalmie in the FT today – even more general knowledge than this one, including Scottish football teams and London Underground stations… what larks!

78. Thanks Vlad – had completely missed the ‘inn order’

79. Sorry that so many don’t know Herrick. (Are people sorry about our ignorance over Henman, Boycott, HIll, & Son?)

80. Positives -OSCARS and OSMIUM were great clues.

    Negatives – references to Tim and Damon (in particular) are parochial and unfair on younger solvers. I know them because I’m old – of all the many star name tennis players that could be referred to, TH is not one.

    Thanks both

81. muffin @74 if it’s any consolation I confidently biffed in COLD for IDLE thinking cold must mean doing nothing e.g. dead

82. I’m a football fan but didn’t spot the Tottenham player. I often played football as a kid on the street in Glasgow although it was an Avenue and not a Drive.

    This was really tough but brilliant. What a week so far. Matilda or Pan tomorrow please (whatever happened to Pan?)

83. [I miss Tim Henman – every Wimbledon I’d make a packet shorting him on Betfair to hordes of patriotic henmaniacs – happy days]

84. Thanks manehi as I completely forgot to think of roman numerals when trying to justify 16A despite realising the dog/mog switch, and also forgot about D Hill. Luckily knew the other sporting refs and HERRICK was nice Jorum, thanks for that link Shanne@23 and others for quotes, i agree with him (except when the dishevelledness looks too deliberately curated, mentioning no former PM’s name).
    Bronterre@41 – parsing SCOURGE threw me too, you have to think of it as doing the concatenation of S + COURAGE first then apply the “not having ‘a'” to the resulting (nonsense) string – much easier to parse if the clue read “second bottle not having a” but that makes no sense of course. And Cycling crops up every so often in exactly this way – of course it is also a subset of the possible anagrams (and I think it is not always one ‘cycle’ that we need to perform, and very occasionally used as yet another anagram indicator) – this was my last in, every part of it tricky I thought.
    Tough but great, thanks Vlad, up the Irons!

85. [bodycheetah @83 – ha ha ha, brilliant!]

86. Re ‘inn order’ – I think the fact that no one, including our esteemed blogger, got the homophone is a good illustration of the key importance of stress patterns in intelligibility. (Cf. my example of “I love a fricker” not long ago.)

    ‘Inn’ is a homophone of ‘in’, but ‘inn order’ is not (with normal phrasal stress) a homophone of ‘in order’. Similarly, ‘incite’ is not a homophone of ‘insight’.

    That doesn’t invalidate the clue of course, or the intended parsing – the ‘reportedly’ can simply apply to the ‘in’, and then we add the homophone (‘inn’) to the ‘order’ that’s already there in plain sight. However, it does mean (and this applies equally to ‘inn order’ as an intended whole-homophone) that, strictly speaking, 17d is a double-wordplay-no-def-type clue.

    Thanks Vlad and manehi (still stuck on yesterday’s Imogen!)

87. Thanks to manehi for a splendid blog and to others who commented.

    gladys@68 Son Heung-min joined Spurs in 2015.

88. Herrick wrote a poem “On Julia’s Breasts”. Afeat I’ve tried to emulate but keep getting beaten back with a stick.

89. Ref 86, why oh why were people moaning about the difficulty in this puzzle 😀

    That clue was one of the worst offenders, if I may say. Tot me, having a homophone for a definition is very unfair, and not clever.

90. It was a good puzzle I’ve decided on reflection after failing to finish it yesterday. I didn’t parse SPURS despite being a footy fan! Just an off day….for me. Good of Vlad to drop in again
    Thanks both

91. We were expected to know Son Heung-min? Good grief.

92. Some clues you get but can’t parse, and when you see the parsing you say Meh, so what, big deal, this clue leaves me cold. 17a TIME OFF was one for me – didn’t know the sportsmen and when it was explained, didn’t care.

    Others you can’t get, but when you see the parsing you say Wow, what a great clue, I never would have seen it but it’s brilliant. 21d OSCARS was one for me, with its witty surface.

    But my clue of the day, as others have said, was 5d LET RIP – clever and concise, what more could you want.

    Thanks Vlad for the challenge, and manehi for the help with parsing more clues than I care to admit.

    …and thanks nicbach@88 for the very Herricky laugh.

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