Guardian Cryptic 29,029 by Fed

117 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,029 by Fed”

1. L 50 to V 5. Not that I saw lentil myself!

2. LENTIL goes down by 90% from L (= 50) to V (= 5).

3. Thanks, both

4. Sorry, 22d still doesn’t make any sense to me. If Trigger is a different character to Del Boy in the sitcom, what does “perhaps Del Boy” mean?

   I worked this out, but with far too many unparsed; I don’t seem to have been on Fed’s wavelength. Thanks loonapick for the explanations.

5. MAIZE
   I read it as
   E Zee (American Z and E Z sounds like EASY ) I AM reversed.

6. Maybe loonapick meant the same. I was highlighting the fact that the American pronunciation of Z is Zee (as opposed to Zed).

7. GregfromOz – Del Boy was only one of a family of Trotters

8. GregfromOz

   Del Boy was only one of the Trotters in the show (eg there was also his brother Rodney), therefore “Del Boy maybe” indicates that Trotter was maybe Del Boy, but could have been Rodney. Does that make sense?

9. GregfromOz @ 4: Del Boy is a DBE of a Trotter (it’s his surname), hence the perhaps as indicator

10. I think I can forgive Fed a great deal for a couple of superb surfaces – 5d giving us the image of Margo Leadbetter appearing in Some Like it Hot, and 29 concerning the late Queen’s favourite son (allegedly).
    Thanks, both

11. Hi, loonapick. Struggling to think how you wouldn’t pronounce PHONIA the same as FONIA.

12. GregfromOz @4 Trotter is Del Boy’s family name. Drop the second T ie T(rigger) and reverse the rest.

    Re 7 down, loonapick could try Oz – both probably end in a schwa!

13. I got there in the end, but like loonapick there were several where it had to be that but I couldn’t find the parsing (KINKY, CAKED, RETORT) Missed the sliding letter trick (as usual) in SMUT. If we hadn’t had mathematics with Roman numerals somewhere else recently, I’d never have spotted L(V)ENTIL either. Hard work but interesting: liked PENELOPE KEITH,ONYX, WOKE, HATPEG.
    Unlike loonapick, I can’t think of an accent where phonier doesn’t sound like FONIA, but never mind.

14. Perfect difficulty level for this little black duck. Thanks Fed, loonapick & Wikipedia for revealing who Del Boy is.

15. I agree with Crispy @ 11. If I had to write SINFONIA as I hear it, I would write SIN-PHONIER. Sounds the perfect homophone to me.

16. Well, if we’re going to argue about homophones, there was the Dionne Warwick/Bobbie Gentry song I’ll Never Fall in Love Again which contained the magnificent “What do you get when you kiss a guy? Just another chance to catch pneumONIA. After you do, he’ll never PHONE YA (phonier)…”

17. Iffy homophones are a bugbear for me, but this would have to be the first in a long while that works perfectly. I can’t imagine how fonia and phonier could possibly be pronounced differently.

18. Gosh this was tough this morning but I got there with a couple unparsed, so particular thanks loonapick and everyone for explaining 9ac. Loved 5dn once the penny finally dropped. Also, I realise I must have been mispronouncing Sinfonia Al my life as the homophone worked for me!

19. Al should be ‘all’. Sorry

20. Thanks Fed and loonapick
    Lots unparsed – most of them very clever after the parsing was revealed. Favourite was ERRAND BOY, though I misparsed it, associating the second R with ANDY rather than embarrassed!
    Although they can be used in a similar way, I wouldn’t regard a DUSTPAN as the same as a shovel.
    Does PEG by itself (rather than “peg back”, for instance) mean “control”?

21. SINFONIA is the rhotic thing again. If you pronounce the R, PHONIER and FONIA are different.

22. For me FONIA and phonier sound the same. But I think there are two ways they could be different. Firstly, in a rhotic accent the r at the end of phonier would be pronounced. Secondly, some people pronounce SINFONIA with the stress on the second i.

23. David “Del Boy” Jason also played Granville in Open All Hours, who was an ERRAND BOY…. coincidence?

24. Lord Jim – yes, those were what I was talking about – I didn’t realise you could stress the O sound in sinfonia (my bad) and phonier had an R at the end and I’m Scottish, so…

25. In Italian, which is where the word comes from, the stress would be in the I

26. Loonapick et al. I’d forgotten that not everyone talks proper, like worr I do.

27. NeilH @10 – I totally agree. I thought 5, 17 PENELOPE KEITH was stunning. I had the first name for several minutes before I saw the hidden KEITH and the pdm came with a gasp of amazement and a chortle.
    The audacious 29 ac ERRAND BOY had a similar effect – I had spent some time trying to justify RANDY round BO (like muffin @20). (No one has mentioned Prince Andrew’s alleged inability to sweat https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/31/giuffre-lawyers-seek-details-on-prince-andrew-claimed-inability-to-sweat .)

    Other ticks were for 9ac VENTILATE, 21ac DUSTPAN, 2dn INCUBI, 3dn WINDOW-SHOP, 15dn GO-BETWEENS, 22dn RETORT, 23dn HEREBY and 24dn WOKE. Considering these, there was actually nothing to forgive!

    I was defeated by KINKY, though – thanks loonapick (and for the rest of a great blog). Huge thanks, too, to Fed for a lot of fun.

28. Clearly Loonapick is a cultured type, pronouncing SINFONIA in the (endorsed by the OED) Italian style, unlike the rest of us plebs! Oh well, every day’s a school day, etc…

29. Sorry, Mr L – I was a bit tardy posting my comment there!

30. Window-shop & browser activity:
    Is there a part of speech mismatch?

31. Very good puzzle. I failed to parse ‘Kinky’, so thanks for that. KVa@30, I had the same reservation about the part of speech in ‘Window-shop’ but eventually decided that some people might say ‘I’m just going to window-shop today’.

32. Don’t get me started on the foani homofonia warrrrs. Nowhere does the clue mention the word “homophone”. Does it sound a bit like it (“in audition”) after a few scotches or with a mouthful of marbles or ….. If it does it’s good enough.
    So much to like here (including the orchestral aural wordplay). KINKY was good for the jet ski as was PENELOPE KEITH with the genius “some like it hot” misdirection. Favourite has to be ERRAND BOY for the most brilliant surface (and the answer being a fairly accurate description of Andrew).

33. Randy Andy?

34. George @31 – I had that reservation, too, and your version still has the noun/verb mismatch that KVa notes. I liked the clue’s construction and surface so much that I wanted it to work and justified ‘window-shop’ as a noun by analogy with ‘food-shop’ – but it isn’t sanctioned by the dictionaries!

35. I must say I’ve never heard sinfonia. I’m reminded of fantasia which the purists claim is the correct pronunciation, despite everyone I know saying fantasia.

36. Liked this a lot, some quite simple, others more chewy, so many thanks Fed. Couldn’t properly parse VENTILATE, SMUT or HEREBY, so appreciate the help here. As others have said, some really nice surfaces, too.

37. Very loose BBC sitcom theme seems to be almost there. Croft wrote Dad’s Army. Del Boy and Penelope Keith.
    Maybe I am seeing things that are not there.

38. Some imaginative constructions here. Favourites were VENTILATE, PLENTIFUL and AVER – good constructions and surfaces.

    The grammar doesn’t quite work for me in a few places – WINDOW SHOP (verb) and ‘browser activity’ (noun) (as KVa comments @30), and ‘acre in the middle’ and ‘female goes to be browsing…’ jarred.

    Yes, it’s pronounced sinfonía in its native land, but in English it’s usually sinfónia (Fowler calls this ‘recessive accent’ – we tend to move the stress towards the middle of a polysyllabic word). [It isn’t difficult to make a reasonable stab at pronouncing an Italian word, once you’ve learnt how sounds are represented in the language – apart from tonic stress, which is unpredictable. Words ending in -ia are a nightmare (‘incubo’ in Italian 🙂 ). sinfonía but guárdia, polizía but gustízia.]

    Thanks to S&B

39. On Fed’s wavelength today with lots of ticks. Liked the follow-on clue from BEANO, where Desparate Dan was the, Scottish comic, Dandy’s figurehead in competition with Dennis The Menace. Incidentally the Dandy came out 6 months ahead in 1937. Like Eileen, I thought PENELOPE KEITH was wonderful along with CHINWAG, RETORT, KINKY and ERRAND BOY. Was looking for a J somewhere as it seemed to be heading towards a pangram. Most enjoyable solve.

    Ta Fed & loonapick.

40. Isn’t (to) WINDOW SHOP an example of “browser activity”? Hence the DBE question mark?

    I found this the funnest Fed so far with KINKY PENELOPE KEITH the pick of the bunch for me

    Cheers F&L

41. Some really good clues here, including VENTILATE (clever double meaning of “pulse”) and CHINWAG, and AVER with the nice lift-and-separate (“State of Virginia”).

    Coincidence time – about a week ago I thought I had come up with the “Some Like It Hot” = KEITH idea and was rather pleased with myself. Then I was trying to work it up into a clue that would possibly reference KEITH Lemon and Jack Lemmon… but at the back of my mind I did think it might actually be an old chestnut. A quick search shows that Dalibor did it in Independent 10,433: “Boy, some like it hot! (5)”. But Fed made better use of it I think.

    bodycheetah @40: as Eileen said @34, (to) WINDOW SHOP is a verb. The activity (noun) would be window shopping, so I think the clue doesn’t quite work.

    Thanks Fed and loonapick.

42. I took ROUND to be a triple definition as in round up/group together.

43. The clue for PENELOPE KEITH is very ingenious, but ‘some’ is a bit weaselly, and roundly criticised in less felicitous contexts!

44. AlanC @42: Ditto

45. …And David ‘Del Boy’ Jason also played the DI in Touch of FROST(Y).

46. Gervase @43: why is “some” a bit weaselly? I think it’s a perfectly good inclusion indicator – if I take a slice or piece of cake, I’ve taken some cake.

47. Lucky 7 is very real to me. In my accent , no difference between FONIA and PHONIER. I hear you Lord Jim@22.
    NeilH@16. Great Burt Bacharach and Hal David song.
    Am reminded of a Jimi Hendrix mondegreen. Scuse me while I kiss this guy.
    Love Fed, he’s a mind-binder.

48. Lord Jim @46: Because it’s imprecise – it doesn’t indicate how much, or from which part of the word or phrase. Therefore it is a no-no for Ximenean fundamentalists, though it suits this more libertarian clue very nicely.

49. “some” as a hidden indicator is fine with Chambers Crossword Dictionary (maybe not Ximenean enough) and also seems fine with “Dr Clue” who I would have thought was as Ximenean as they come.

50. Gervase@49

    The great man himself used “some” in his book – last part of chapter VI. His first example of a hidden clue is

    “Give power to some of the policeman – a blessing (6) ENABLE.

51. Tim C: Point taken. ‘Some’ is OK as an inclusion indicator – it’s when it is used to indicate a group of letters in a charade that it becomes problematic.

52. My late mother adored shopping, and would often justify the time spent by ‘window-shopping’ so she couldn’t be criticised yet again for spending money we did not have.
    Great puzzle, thanks to all – I loved the two favs especially. Such good surfaces!

53. Just read that myself loonapick @50 except it’s policemen. 🙂
    Off to bed. Too much excitement for one night.

54. Don Manley is also fine with “some”. He says in the Chambers Crossword Manual, “Another common hidden indicator is ‘some'”, and gives the example “Some overenthusiastic kissing – one draws blood (4)”. He says, “Some (ie ‘part of’) overenthusiastic kissing is TICK, a bloodsucker (defined by ‘one draws blood’).”

55. Tim C – sorry for the “mistype”.

56. My LOI was CROFT, the parsing of which was far too convoluted for my liking. The first anagram of ‘Dan puts’ I came up with was STAND-UP. Did I read that this is Fed’s calling? Pity it wasn’t right. Del Boy is way beyond my GK. Thanks, Fed, for the crossie and loonapick for much needed parsing help.

57. Lots of fun from Fed today.

    I eventually parsed VENTILATE – nice idea. I particularly liked PENELOPE KEITH – I don’t agree with Gervase @48, surely all hidden indicators are imprecise in that you have to search for the word wherever it is? 🙂 The surface for ERRAND BOY was priceless. I also liked WINDOW-SHOP – I think one could almost say: “I’m going for a window shop (no hyphen). I also liked CAKED for the vernacular ‘croaked’ and HEREBY with the neat substitution. I have no problem with FONIA sounding like phonier in the way that I pronounce SINFONIA. However, according to the dictionaries (ODE and Collins), it’s not pronounced in that way … although the OED gives an alternative pronunciation sounding like phonier (with apologies to the rhoticers).

    Thanks Fed and loonapick.

58. Worked my way steadily through this, but struggled to parse quite a few. The last two in RATCHET and HEREBY. Very glad to have Loonapick explain things when I came on here

59. To millions of rhotic speakers, PHONIER and FONIA are not the same, but we’ve been over this many times before and although I occasionally protest about it I’ve pretty much given up on being taken seriously by setters and editors.

    That aside, this was a tough but very good puzzle and I had to wait for the blog to see the parsing of KINKY and WORK OF ART. HEREBY was my cotd.

60. What a mixture. Some I worked out straightaway from the wordplay or just sprang into my mind from the definition. Others were much more difficult and I needed help parsing a few. I seem to remember that I found the last Fed puzzle the same.

    Annoyingly I failed to spot the hidden KEITH.

    And being a Scot I too pronounce the R in phonier but still got and parsed it.

    Thanks Fed and loonapick

61. Robi@57: I’m not sure I really thought about it, but if I had, I’d also have accepted that if you can go for a walk, you can go for a window-shop (but why is the hyphen therefore a no-no?)

62. For our Aussie friends unfamiliar with the sitcom … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFuYIi5-igc

63. A complete delight from beginning to end! Such invention and fun. 29a ERRAND BOY had me laughing out loud – just brilliant to get Andy’s sweat/non-sweat issue involved. Other gems were WORK OF ART, PENELOPE KEITH, HEREBY and SINFONIA.

    Thanks Fed and loonapick

64. Gladys @61, maybe WINDOW SHOP as a noun could have a hyphen also. I wouldn’t worry about it. 🙂

65. Robi @57 – yes, that’s how I was thinking of ‘window -shop’ @34 but, like gladys @61, I don’t understand your ‘no-no’ hyphen. (A window shop is where I would expect to buy windows. 😉 )

66. Sorry, Robi, we crossed!

67. Robi, Lord Jim, TimC, loonapick – and anyone else I’ve inadvertently omitted: I have retracted my comment about ‘some’ 🙂 . Yes – it’s perfectly acceptable as an inclusion indicator. Where it becomes iffy is when it is used to indicate an unspecified number of letters forming part of a charade. Sorry!

68. I didn’t understand how some clues worked, though I got a complete gridfill in the end. My question marks involved clues that have been much-discussed above already. As some other folk have said, the lack of some parses was more than compensated by some clever and amusing clues. I actually understood the word play in both 28a KINKY and 29a ERRAND BOY so felt happy with those minor achievements. However, the solve from loonapick and the contributions from other solvers were much appreciated for the explanations of some of the solutions. Thank you to Fed and loonapick.

69. Enjoyed this as per with Fed – some fiddly constructions, but I actually find them strangely easier to parse. Loved PENELOPE KEITH, RETORT, and WOKE, among others.

    re: 10A isn’t it that to an American, E and Zee provide a homophone of EASY? In UK English it’d be E and Zed

    Thanks loonapick & Fed.

70. Re Gladys@61; Ate you sure that you can “go for a shop”? I would normally say “go shopping”. Likewise most speakers can say “go drinking” but not “go eating. (“We went drinking” is normal for me, but “we went eating” sounds odd – judgements differ on this.

    For people with an interest in the quirks of English, read on.

    There’s an article about this. See
    https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/publications/on-going

    There’s a link to the full article at the bottom of that page, with lots of authentic examples.

    If you want to pursue this, I gather that the author of the paper welcomes comments. Google his unusual name along with “Brighton” to quickly find his email address.

    The article is not a major work, in my opinion, but is quite entertaining.

71. Well we got there in the end, but with lots of answers solved from the crossers and then parsed. While that’s fine once or twice when half the puzzle has to be solved that way it doesn’t feel quite right.

72. It’s all been said, but I wonder if I was the only one who tried to parse 13d as CARKED minus the r, “arrow periodically”. It didn’t seem quite right so I persevered and twigged to “croaked” but was disappointed that “carked” wasn’t involved. Amusing, onomatopoeic word.

73. Thanks for VENTILATE and KINKY, which I was unable to parse, and for PEG = control. For SMUT, I had TUM = essential, but it doesn’t parse as well as loonapick’s correct version (or at all, since the “S” would land at the end rather than the beginning).
    For 18D INSURING, we may be missing a bit of cleverness from Fed. I took it as a reverse cryptic clue, with the F(emale) going IN . . . SURING to become surfing?
    Loved PENELOPE KEITH, also the brilliant economy of ONYX.

74. I thought the parts of speech didn’t match in “must” and “essential”, but I suppose you could push them both into being nouns.

75. The trickiest of the four crosswords I’ve solved today, but great fun throughout

    Many thanks to Fed and Loonapick

76. Thanks for the blog, good set of inventive clues and lots of clever word play. I liked KINKY for the use of jet and RETORT for the precision of “once” .

77. 22a Since when is 100 called “hundred” rather than “a/one hundred”? Since that happens in no other language that I know of, speakers of other languages trip up on it, especially of German, probably because our word and theirs are so similar. But I’ve never seen it from an English speaker — rather the opposite issue, where you keep the article in a place it doesn’t go, like “His a hundred acres.”

    28a I had no hope of parsing KINKY or SMUT OR caked.

    4d HATPEG Why does “peg” mean “control”?

    GDU@17 You can’t imagine how anybody could pronounce “phonier” and “fonia” differently? I do, and so do the many millions (some of them even in Sussex) who pronounce final r’s. Have you never met any of us? That’s not to say I disagree with this clue, we’re all used to clues that assume non-rhoticity, but to say you can’t imagine …?

    Have to leave with comments partly read, thanks to Fed and Loonapick, see y’all later.

78. I had to consult the dictionaries to check that ‘jet’ could be used as an adjective (it can!). It’s more usual to say ‘jet black’.

79. Favourites: INCUBI, GO-BTEWEENS, WINDOW-SHOP, CAKED.

    I did not parse
    9ac apart from [l]ENTIL + ATE. Could not see where the V came from.
    22d – never heard of Del Boy Trotter or Fools and Horses
    23d

    New for me: RATCHET = a device consisting of a bar or wheel with a set of angled teeth in which a cog or tooth engages, allowing motion in one direction only.

    Thanks, both.

80. I can’t believe everyone is ignoring the ‘WORK OF ART’ derivation!

81. re:post 16. I have to note that the wonderful rhyme of pneumonia and phone ya was written by Hal David (RIP) long time collaborater with Bert Bachrach

82. On the pronunciation of SINFONIA, I don’t know if it’s always the case, but the orchestra tends to be pronounced without the stressed second I, whereas works (e.g. Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem) stress the second I.

83. Thanks Fed for a most enjoyable crossword. I had the same parsing difficulties as many others but they didn’t rise to the level of spoiling the fun. I liked CHINWAG, SINFONIA, GO-BETWEENS, AVER, ONYX, and especially FEE. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

84. muffin @82: That’s because ‘Sinfonia da requiem’ is an Italian phrase – the ‘da’ is a giveaway 🙂

    It’s similar to the way we sometimes treat plurals of Italian nouns which have become incorporated into English – it depends whether they are in a longer Italian phrase. Normally we would talk about Beethoven’s piano concertos, but Handel’s concerti grossi.

85. Yes Gervase, but another example is V-W’s “Sinfonia Antartica” – ah, but Wiki tells me that’s Italian too!

86. Yes, muffin – it’s Antartica, not Antarctica!

87. An excellent puzzle. I left a couple of clues that I couldn’t solve, and there were a couple of others that I couldn’t parse, but there were some gems here, of which I picked out PENELOPE KEITH, ERRAND BOY, INCUBI and WINDOW-SHOP as favourites.

    Thanks to Fed and loonapick.

88. Surfaces seem overworked here so as to produce meaning, for me. What’s unfortunately also produced as a result is an unnecessary level of difficulty.

    We also had a partial hidden.

89. Fantastic. I love the freshness and innovative style of puzzles by Fed/Bluth .

90. Loved this puzzle, favourites included PENELOPE KEITH, WORK OF ART, ERRAND BOY, WINDOW SHOP, HATPEG, CAKED, CHINWAG. Some excellent surfaces too, I thought.

    Also looking forward to seeing Fed on stage next Wednesday!

    Thanks to Fed and Loonapick!

91. Brilliant. Excellent surfaces along with misdirection and inventiveness throughout. Hard to spot the definition vs wordplay in a number of clues which is great setting in my opinion. I enjoyed the partial hidden along with some other stunning clues as mentioned by Eileen and others – thanks Fed!

92. I found that brutally difficult. I only got 5 clues solved, and I struggle to bend my mind for how the clues are worked out.

    KINKY – does ‘K’ mean barely?

    PENELOPE KEITH – way beyond me.

    There were so many others.

    General question….what does “some” lead you to think when solving cryptic crosswords?

93. Thanks loonapick as I couldn’t quite see where KINKY came from ( Steffen think of barely as in naked meaning without outer layers so you strip the s and i away from ski to leave the k). Enjoyed all the clever devices and wit on display, wondered if Frosty Morning might be a work of Art Garfunkel or Tatum but Google sorted that. Wonderful, thanks Fed.

94. Thanks Gazzh…is that something that is used commonly in cryptics?

95. Loved VENTILATE – and, yes!, I figured out the wordplay almost at once. Maybe it ought to have been one of Qaos’s ‘numeric’ clues.
    Also thought PENELOPE KEITH was very good, I wonder whether the hidden word in Some Like It Hot has been used before? Especially with the very helpful “Some”. Perhaps someone will enlighten me. My only niggle with that one is that the actress may not be all that well-known to younger or non-UK solvers. And why oh why do we have to use ‘actor’ for performers of either sex, these days – as per the Grauniad‘s PC (some would say “woke”) standards? Is the word ‘actress’ so taboo nowadays?

96. Laccaria @95
    Yes (as the bishop said to the actress).

97. Laccaria @95: I’m halfway in agreement with you. I actually prefer a unisex word but when I see “actor”, I immediately think of a male. I think we should all switch to “acter”.
    And also this non-UK solver loves To the Manor Born and the fantastic Penelope Keith – although I had to fill in every single crosser to divine the solution.

98. Actor/actress? Just the other day a puzzle included “editress” — a new one for me.

99. [Actor/actress — aren’t there separate awards for male and female performances from all the major organizations who care about these things? If everyone were an “actor” wouldn’t that cut the number of awards in half? I can hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth already.]

100. I actually had 11 as a triple definition – group as a verb = round (up). Double is less leaky though.

101. Laccaria @95: “I wonder whether the hidden word in Some Like It Hot has been used before? Especially with the very helpful “Some”. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.” If you have a look at my comment @41 you’ll see that it has been done at least once before.

102. Muffin and Gervase
     I’ve always pronounced Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with the emphasis on the “fon”. I may well be wrong but I think that’s how I’ve heard it pronounced on Radio 3. It would be different if I were in Italy.

103. I think as subtracting the first and last letters of a word is subject to a paucity of reliable cryptic devices, setters have become really very artistic in finding some. They ‘unclothed’ things quite a lot, ‘undressed’ or ‘stripped’ them to start with, so the move on to using the likes of ‘barely’ seems but a small leap. That one however, in the clue for KINKY, was tough to spot.

104. Thanks Loonapick and thanks all.

     On the homophone front, Chambers gives /sin-f??ni-? as the first pronunciation for sinfonia and /f??ni/ for phoney which suggests that much is the same in a standard form. Of course there is the never-ending debate about rhotic/non-rhotic accents to go with the final syllable.

     Of course there are some (but by no means all) rhotic accents that not only pronounce the R in phonier but also add an intrusive R on the end of words such as sinfonia. But also, the fact that something doesn’t work in one’s own accent shouldn’t mean that one can’t get it. If there’s a homophone that only works in a rhotic accent, I think I should be able to get it – to suggest otherwise is to pretend that if I heard the two words said by a rhotic speaker I wouldn’t understand them. But I would.

     Anyway, here’s a conductor of some note saying sinfonia as I would expect to normally hear it… so while others might put the stress elsewhere and make it sound more authentically Italian, I’m not convinced that one is proper and the other not.

     muffin @20 the definition of dustpan in Chambers is “ A pan or shovel for removing dust swept from the floor” but without having to reach for a dictionary, I find this even more persuasive. I’m sure we’d all use the words interchangeably to describe it.

     M Courtney @37 it wasn’t something I set out to do although I did, part way through, briefly contemplate changing the grid to accommodate a PERRY to go with the CROFT.

     Gervase @43&48 I know you’ve already rowed back on this and accepted that ‘some’ is an acceptable – indeed, Ximinean – hidden indicator… but I’m fascinated to know what was in your mind when you typed it. Are there many hidden indicators that do indicate how much and from which part of the word or phrase?

     Bleudot @97 It’s not clear from your username if you are a solver or a solvess? I know a few female actors and they pretty much all prefer the term actor to actress. Who am I to argue with that?

     GwynJames @90 see you soon!

105. Ah… it seems the special characters from the pronunciation section of the dictionary don’t come through. But the fact that those syllables are rendered identically is, I hope, implicit.

106. Fed @104 Just a thought on ‘some’ as hidden indicator etc question. Is one of the things that often (mostly?) with hidden clues, we are looking for the whole answer. But in this clue we are looking for some letters to combine with the rest of the cryptic part to form the whole answer, albeit as it turns out to form a separate word, in a separate grid placing?

107. Fed @104 – many thanks for the puzzle, which I very much enjoyed (as always). I had no problem with SINFONIA, but I just wanted to respond to a more theoretical point you raised above. “If there’s a homophone that only works in a rhotic accent, I think I should be able to get it – to suggest otherwise is to pretend that if I heard the two words said by a rhotic speaker I wouldn’t understand them. But I would.”.

     It sounds self-evident, but I don’t think it’s actually the case. I can’t think of an example where a homophone works in a rhotic accent but not a non-rhotic one, but let’s take another linguistic phenomenon – the cot-caught merger – which is widespread in many Scottish and North American accents.

     Most of us in England have been exposed to accents featuring the merger, without even being conscious of it. In context, we would have no problem recognising the words fox, knotty, nod, offal, Otto, and rot. Also, in context, we would have no difficulty understanding Fawkes, naughty, gnawed, awful, auto, and wrought. But, unless it’s explicitly pointed out, it would never occur to most of us that those pairs of words are homophonous in such accents (and I think it would cause considerable consternation if they appeared as soundalikes in Guardian crosswords 😉 )

     yehudi @73, re INSURING – thanks, that was bugging me, but I think you nailed it!

108. Fed @104
     Gervase explained what was in his mind @67- that some is too imprecise when used to indicate a wordplay element.
     For example, ‘Some cake after exercise is best’ (PEAK) using some cake for AK.
     Some used in that way makes identical sense to some used to indicate a hidden word, but it’s better for hidden words because of the extra certainty provided by the enumeration and definition. Without that, it’s too woolly. Your clue falls somewhere between the two cases; no problem for most, but a few were stymied by it.
     I know this is obvious to you, and to Gervase, but I’m just spelling it out because I thought Gervase did have a real point that was lost in the subsequent retraction.

109. A delight, as ever, from Fed, and never mind that I had funny and WiFi for KINKY and WOKE. PENELOPE KEITH and ERRAND BOY are exquisite.

110. With regard to VENTILATE (which I couldn’t parse either) – I’d love to ask Fed and/or Alan Connor whether it’s a complete coincidence that the Guardian carried an article about percentages in cryptic clues just over a week ago, and specifically mentioned reducing Roman numerals in this way?

     https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2023/mar/20/cryptic-crosswords-for-beginners-one-to-a-hundred-when-clues-use-the-sign

111. TimC@32, snap. 7d SINFONIA is an excellent example of aural wordplay. Why do people insist on calling the wordplay a homophone and then complaining when it doesn’t meet their exacting definition of the word they have chosen to use?

     As for the rhotic/non-rhotic issue, if a rhotic speaker is not familiar with non-rhotic pronunciations (and vice-versa), I wonder what isolated part of the universe they are inhabiting.

     Thanks Fed and loonapick for the fun and explanations.

112. James @108 thanks.

     Dr Almost @110 as far as I know it’s a complete coincidence. I wrote and submitted this puzzle in October last year. I’ve used the idea several times before although without going back over notes I couldn’t tell you whether any of those examples have been for the Guardian or not.

113. Fed@104 Your link takes me to a page that asks me to accept Amazon cookies, and I’d rather not, even though I’m wondering about your shovel.

114. Like Geoff@17 I can’t think of how PHONIA could differ from FONIER.
     Thanks for blog and RETORT explanation and to Fed

115. I’m still puzzled as to how “worried” can indicate “ate”.

116. Hi, Nick – “eat” is a synonym” for “worry” in Chambers. Think of the phrase “what’s eating you?”

117. I’m late getting here, but I want to thank yehudi @73 for explaining 18dn (INSURING). Although the general idea behind the clue made sense to me, I couldn’t quite see how the pieces fit together. In particular, I wasn’t satisfied with “where” being used to clue IN.

     There were a number of others I couldn’t parse before coming here, but after reading loonapick’s explanations the rest all make perfect sense to me.

     As an American, I still find unfamiliar aspects of British culture to be a stumbling block. I’m not complaining: if I choose to to British puzzles, I have to expect this! In this puzzle, I’d never heard of Penelope Keith, I’d forgotten that BEANO was a comic, and although I know that Only Fools and Horses is a touchstone of British popular culture, I know almost nothing else about it, including the characters’ surnames. But I stumbled through anyway.

     [A fair amount of British TV has come across the Atlantic to us over the decades, but if Only Fools and Horses ever did so, I missed it. I find some — e.g., Fawlty Towers — brilliant and some — e.g., Are You Being Served — baffling.]

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