Guardian Cryptic 29,102 by Pasquale

88 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,102 by Pasquale”

1. First, if I can type fast enough!

   As so often with the Don, there were a lot of words here that were fairly obscure, but all were clued clearly enough that you could get there without actually knowing them. (“That’s a word? Must be. Huh–Google says it is.”) ADES was the only case here of an obscure word clued (a bit) obscurely, but even that one worked eventually. Thanks to both.

2. Thanks for explaining NEPER; I completely missed the envelope, and was trying to think of communication circuits that would go around “ap” or “ip” to make a word. I’d never heard of BARM, so I fell for the misdirection and plonked in “beer”, which soon became obviously wrong. Liked MARCH HARE, OMNIDIRECTIONAL and THIN ON THE GROUND; the latter two really tested by limits with deciphering anagrams. Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.

3. Just what Peter said.

   I saw the “sees” in BISHOPRICS right away, but not being familiar with Bish held me up.

   The best clue I’ve seen with ES clued as in 11a is:
   “Supremely elated once called about French art.” (7)

   Thanks P²

4. I read aa little of Paradise Lost when my sister was studying it for A level, but I don’t remember ADES, but I was thinking HADES without the H as AD was obvious and when I filled it in , saw the French art. I like a bad pun so MARCH hare was another that appealed.
   Thanks both

5. Not too difficult for a Pasquale puzzle. Grid filled, but I couldn’t see what was going on with VENERATION. I’d forgotten NEPER and didn’t know ADES or BARM but none were too difficult to work out. Unlike DWO @3 I took a while to cotton on to the correct sense of ‘Sees’ which was my last in. Favourites were the OMNIDIRECTIONAL anagram and the second part of the TAILS double def.

   Thanks to PeterO and Pasquale

6. Je suis, thou art (and Which art in heaven, as it used to go, which I actually prefer). So yes ades was ok, but the aging brain needed crossers to remember what a see was even though it’s a chestnut. And neper, tho a gimme, was a nho. As was barm, and there was a bit argy on G-thread about its relating, or not, to barmy as in barmy army. Otherwise, a gentle enough stroll, ta P and P.

7. About NEPER: the deciBel (abbr. dB) is indeed what’s used normally, but the real alternative to NEPER (based on the natural logarithm) is BEL (based on the base 10 log). Hard to fit BEL or DB into a Guardian grid though.

8. … oh yes and bish for what’s wrong was another dnk …

9. Barm cakes, anyone?
   Wouldn’t have parsed ADES in a month of Sundays, as I have no idea how to conjugate the French verb. NEPER new to me, but I remember Jennings and Darbishire making a BISH of things.
   Thanks P&P.

10. Didn’t find this the stroll that others did. I’m used to Pasquale stretching my vocabulary, but this was a stretch too far, and I think I felt something go twang. I did, however, know barm. It used to be used in northern England to make barm cakes.
    Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO

11. I think my limit for obscurities in a Pasquale puzzle is three. Beyond that it all starts to feel a bit “azedy” and this one just felt a bit flat to me.

    I liked MARCH HARE

    Cheers Ps

12. Didn’t know NEPER or BISH, but the solutions were clear enough from the clueing to lead me to look them up. Failed to parse ADES fully until coming here, it’s a long time since I conjugated a verb. My only quibble is that in the clue for 3d “cricket” is surely redundant. Cricket isn’t the only game in which there’s a coin toss.
    Thanks to Pasquale, whose offerings are always challenging, and PeterO.

13. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
    ADES, NEPER, and SEMESTRAL unfamiliar, but fairly clued. Favourites THREW OUT (I don’t suppose anyone will object to that homophone) and MARCH HARE.
    The defintion for SHIFTER is rather loose.
    BISHOPRICS is a type of clue I don’t like. I don’t think anyone will say “what’s wrong – that’ll be BISH, then”.

14. Well constructed puzzle, neatly described by PeterO – Pasquale never confines himself to Plain English.

    Luckily there wasn’t much here that I didn’t know – ADES needed the crossers (I had forgotten the ‘French art’ trick, which I haven’t seen for a while, otherwise this might have been easier) but the connection with Hades confirmed the answer.

    My Lancastrian grandparents always referred to yeast as BARM, so a write-in for me. Pasquale usually includes something churchy, so ‘sees’ rang an immediate bell. ‘Italian heiress’ is less than obvious as a definition for PORTIA, though an accurate description of the character in TMOV.

    Favourites were AESTHETE, VENERATION and MARCH HARE.

    Thanks to S&B

15. muffin @13: The pupils in prep school novels of the early 20th century were always making ‘a frightful bish’ – no objections from me here 🙂

16. …. but the word is now usually confined to the expression ‘bish bash bosh’ (a largely phatic utterance?).

17. I thought BARMbrack as I worked out BARM, for which cake I probably have a recipe somewhere. And BISHOPRICS was a clang when I saw it, but I don’t think I’ve seen or heard bish meaning an error since I read the Jennings and Derbyshire books as a child.

    Thanks to PeterO and Pasquale.

18. Gervase @15
    Not my point, really. I’m familiar with word “bish”, but it would come a long way down a list of synonyms for “what’s wrong”; in fact the grammar doesn’t even quite match.

19. Very enjoyable puzzle. Favourites: INSISTED, UNFAIR, BARM (new word for me and it was very well-clued), THREW OUT, PORTIA, MARCH HARE (loi).

    New for me: NEPER; ADES (also very well-clued); BISH = mistake (for 20ac).

    Thanks, both.

20. Yeay! Congrats @Number 1, mrpenney, you and our blogger ”in the zone” today.
    My favourite anagram was MINDSETS. Simple, but loved the surface.

    NEPER? NHO and had no idea how to parse, wondering why others on the G thread were saying how fairly it was clued. Wonderfully well-hidden (from me anyway).
    The rest of the GK needed today was vaguely lurking. I got the BISH and the Sees from other crosswords in BISHOPRICS.

21. Muffin@13. You may be right about Bish, but Pish, interestingly, is still in widespread use in Scotland as slightly vulgar slang for something unsatisfactory. Seems unlikely to be coincidental.

22. Charles @12: I can’t claim extensive knowledge of pre-match rituals but is cricket one of the only examples of a sport where the coin toss actually happens out in the middle of the pitch – presumably so the captains can inspect the wicket before deciding whether to bat or bowl? In other games is the coin toss done “off-stage”?

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

23. Nearly failed on BISHOPRICS, that meaning of “sees” having temporarily slipped my mind, and still couldn’t parse the first four letters – I did read a few of the Jennings books as a child but don’t remember that expression. Otherwise a nice steady solve, with unfamiliar words (NEPER and ADES in my case) fairly clued. If I had to pick a favourite it’s probably be MARCH HARE.
    Charles@21 – I think the reason for the Scottish use of “pish” for something unsatisfactory is a bit coarser than that – pish being the Scots spelling of “piss” as in urine/urinate.
    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

24. Milton’s Cockney Hades was new to me, but seemed to make sense. Charles@21 I always thought Pish was a variant of piss, but I don’t think Bish is.

25. Excellent blog, PeterO, explaining some I couldn’t parse … you have a capital I in 22 down rather than L.

26. thanks Pasquale and PeterO

    muffin @ 13 I wouldn’t describe the definition of SHIFTER as loose: a scene-shifter is a common role in a theatre, hence ‘dramatic change of scenery’. Seems pretty tight to me

27. prospero @ 25 The convention for some bloggers is that the solution elements are given in upper case, while omissions are lower, for clarity.

28. JOFT @22: the toss is on the pitch for both Real Footy (aka Aussie Rules, or AFL) and croquet – and no doubt others. Thanks, Pasquale and PeterO.

29. Got there in the end, but the vocabulary was obscure for me. Had to write in ADES and hope for the best having failed to spot French art = ES. And BISH? Must have read the wrong books in my past.

30. Thanks SimonS @26. I had missed the significance of “dramatic”. It now becomes a good clue.

31. I found this quite a tough Pasquale to finish with the interlinked MARCH HARE (I did not connect Party Member – doh!) and BISHOPRICS holding out at the end. VENERATION, THREW OUT and SHIFTERS were my podium.

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

32. TT@28: Thanks – I think I can excuse Pasquale not knowing about coin tosses in AFL but overlooking croquet is a serious omission on both our parts.

33. Thank you, PeterO. Surely there’s an I missing in 2d?

34. Nice to see BARM, which reminded me of our local delicacy Barmbrack. NHO NEPER though. Surely the cricket field is redundant in 3d? A nice puzzle nonetheless.

    (Barmy in the sense of ‘foolish’ is probably from ‘balmy’ rather than barm, but it’s disputed. Barmy as in excitable does come from barm).

35. beaulieu@23 and Petert@24
    You may be right, but I’m not wholly convinced that pish is just piss in disguise. Some dictionaries give “pish posh” meaning ridiculous in non-Scots English, which seems pretty close to the “bish bash bosh” cited earlier. I suspect there’s something more complicated here that simply a Caledonian spelling mistake.

36. [Actually, I think there are two versions of “pish”, one as a variant of piss, the other possibly related to bish. The late Robert Robinson who was a well-known radio and TV presenter (Brain of Britain, Call My Bluff, etc) used the word quite often, as a general-purpose interjection. This was in the days (late-ish 20th C) when the more earthy meaning would not have been acceptable on “family” shows.]

37. Thanks, Pasquale and PeterO. A good puzzle, everything we expect from the Don. Very much liked the long anagrams.

    Gervase @14 – the “French art” trick was fresh in my mind as I’ve seen it very recently elsewhere, but I won’t say where because it’s a live prize puzzle. Last time I saw it before that was probably in Azed.

38. Pasquale being very generous this morning. Plenty of smiles along the way.

39. A handful of unsatisfactory clues mixed in with an otherwise easy solve made this one a bit of unsatisfactory for me.

    11A ES for ‘French art’ passed by this French speaker. Apparently it is a known convention to more experienced solvers and I will try to retain it for future use. However I am always dissatisfied with bits that practically impenetrable unless you’ve seen them before. Being unfamiliar with the Milton source didn’t help either.

    6D seems doubly obscure. It is a relatively specialized measure, and when was the last time non-SI units were taught in colleges? Seems like a grid-filler of desperation.

    22A had me reaching for the dictionary, although the construction is fair.

40. Jacob@39 – basic foreign words are often included in crosswords, flagged either explicitly as here (“French”), or implicitly (e.g. “Nice art”, where Nice refers to the French city). Here “art” is intended to be misleading – pointing to paintings etc – but the solver has to think of alternative meanings – here the second person singular of the verb “to be” – which of course in French is ES. I don’t think it’s impenetrable or unfair – just a typical example of a crossword clue being cryptic. One could argue that one needs to know the French word – there are often discussions about how much foreign vocabulary it’s fair to assume – to me, the present tense of “to be” in the language of one of our nearest neighbours is acceptable.

41. ES= French art has come up at least half a dozen times in cryptics over the last few months. I constructed the answer, saw what it must be, but Milton is not one of my favourite metaphysical poets (John Donne, George Herbert, Henry King are way ahead for me). Had I been cluing ADES I would have used the composer Thoman Ades, best known for an opera about the Cliveden affair, in which a sporano sings and aria while giving a blow-job. My mother always said, “don’t talk with your mouth full”, never mind sing!

42. I didn’t find this quite as gentle as our blogger and resorted to external help for the last few, but overall very enjoyable. Quite anagram-heavy (eight?). The ‘French art’ trick is new to me but I like it.

    INSISTED was easy enough to get although I think ‘little girl’ = SIS and ‘boy’ = TED were somewhat stretchy. ‘What’s’ in OMNIDIRECTIONAL seems superfluous. I loved THREW OUT, UNFAIR, SLEEPIER and BARM.

    Cheers both 🙂

43. Neper and Bel are both ratios using a logarithmic scale, but bel is for noise/power and neper is for a ratio of voltages, which is not exactly “equivalent”. Thanks for the excellent explanation, and thanls Pasquale for the usual spatter of unusual words.

44. Thanks for the blog, I found the relative obscurities were clued fairly.
    NEPER is named after Napier ( Latin version ) who discovered natural logarithms so we have a follow-on clue from the base e yesterday.
    SPLOTCHED and BISHOPRICS were very neat constructions.

45. Typical Pasquale: nice clues for nasty words. I couldn’t think how I knew BISH as a mistake, but it must be the Jennings books (also responsible for Doh! as an exclamation long before Homer Simpson). For how long can setters assume that solvers have read school stories of this vintage?

    Didn’t find NEPER because I’d never heard of it (I was also looking for something with an I in it). Nho SEMESTRAL either. I did Book 1 of Paradise Lost for A level, but don’t remember ADES spelt like that – perhaps it’s in Book 2? For once I remembered the French art trick. Yes, PORTIA is an Italian heiress, but it took a while to find her.

    I did like SPLOTCHED.

46. An easier puzzle than usual, but enjoyable all the same. I was able to do it in bed last night for the first time in ages, now that my printer works again.

    Seems to me that 5ac MINDSETS is both a normal definition + wordplay clue and an &lit, since “isms” do tend to determine one’s mindset. Lovely clue.

    11ac I fell for the old “French art” trick again. When will I learn?

    Didn’t know BISH or NEPER — that last one’s really diving deep! And who knew that Milton called Hell ADES?

    22dn I’m not sure I but “niche” = BOWER.

    Nicbach@4 Where’s the pun in MARCH HARE?

    YesMe2 @7 Why is a bel a more “real” alternative to a NEPER than a decibel when it’s just ten of them? And why is it an alternative at all when one is about sound and one about electronics?

    Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.

47. So happy to do a Pasquale crossword with exemplary adherence to the traditional rules. I much enjoyed ll of it.

48. Finally foiled by the expected Don-ish (obscure for me, anyway) NEPER, and also ADÈS, to go along with the nho BARM which I did however manage to work out from the clueing. Liked the misdirection for both BISHOPRICS and MARCH HARE. Much fun along the way, while SPLOTCHED sounds rather messy, doesn’t it…?

49. Am I being very slow here? I managed to get ADES from the wordplay, but cannot find on-line anything which suggests that Milton referred to Hell by that name. Am I missing some subtlety which means I should drop the H?

50. FJ @49
    I found this reference here:
    Demogorgon was taken up by Christian writers as a demon of Hell:

    Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name
    Of Demogorgon

    —?John Milton, Paradise Lost II. 966.

    It seems that Pasquale might have misunderstood the reference. Milton referred to Hell as Pandaemonium.

51. Valentine @46: I agree that bel and decibel (tenths of bels) are equally real but they are not limited to sound. I recall building circuits to generate radio frequency signals a long time ago and components such as amplifiers, splitters etc were all rated either for the power gain/loss in decibels (which is a relative measure e.g. 3dB approximately halved the power) or in something called decibel-milliwatt (dBm) which is an absolute power reference. I’d never come across Nepers in spite of building precisely the circuits Wikipedia tells me they can be used for, which says something about their obscurity!

    Of course, another famous logarithmic scale is the Richter Scale, the old way of expressing the energy released by an Earthquake. Because it is logarithmic most people do not appreciate how significant the difference is between a 4 and a 5 on that scale. We are so used to thinking in linear terms. We use dB for sound for the same reason we use octaves in music – our sensory apparatus seems to work logarithmically i.e. we hear any doubling of frequency as the same jump, and similarly for volumes. Also we detect across a huge range of levels, so a linear scale would struggle to express that.

52. FJ@49 ADES is in Chambers but then most things are 🙂

53. Thanks muffin @50. I was googling names of Hell and Milton, and it kept offering me Pandaemonium but no Ades to speak of!

54. “In 1608, John Milton was born an unquestioned Cockney, in Bread Street just three houses south of Cheapside and the bells of St Mary-le-Bow”

    So maybe it is just good old-fashioned H dropping?

55. bodycheetah @52, so it is. I didn’t bother to look there since it seemed like a made-up proper noun from a poem, but lo and behold:

    Ades: (Milton) n variant of Hades

    So completely legit then!

56. We quite agree with bc@11 – 3 that we have to look up is ample: if the Don could take note . . .

    And PARSI was new to both Yorkshire Lass and me. I knew PARSEE from Half-hours in the Far East, a lovely empire-heyday book I had as a child. Sinister and memorable illustrations of towers of silence, with strong disapproval of the practice in the text. Autre temps etc.

57. And bodycheetah @54, I had been wondering about some obscure Cockney indication, but that the GK required for that one does seem a little unfair! The Chambers definition does it though, with the Cockney reference being a very nice twist.

58. [As others have said, the Bel, dB and Neper are all ratios, and hence independent of any system of units. For example, the headline inflation rate is about 0.36dB, which sounds
    much better. Particular domains tend to adopt a reference value and quote dB relative to that. The reference should be indicated by an extended abbreviation, but frequently isn’t to confuse people outside the domain.]

59. I think PARSI refers to a community more than a religious type. I am probably nitpicking

60. Hi all, and many thanks for the blog PeterO, I find it very useful!

    I’m still a crossword novice and the thing that I really struggle with is random, unused words in clues. I read in some crossword guide that theoretically every word in a clue should be used in some way, either in the definition or the wordplay. But that means that, for example, 2d is misleading. What’s the “what’s” for, here? Just to make a better surface? It even seems to suggest that it’s somehow part of the definition, but it’s not. How do you know not to spend ages trying to get it to fit into the anagram, and just ignore it?

    I can appreciate a clever misdirection in a clue, when a word implies one thing but is used in another way (for example, the suggestive ‘criminal’ in the same clue that implies it’s the anagrind!) but I find this kind of word padding maddening. Do you just have to shrug and say, meh, it’s not a great clue?

    I notice that Pasquale seems to use a lot of words that span the wordplay and the definition which can be excused as indicators that “doing these actions” will lead to “the answer”, for example:

    * 1a “to confront”
    * 5a “to determine”
    * 11a “showing”

    These all seem… kind of tolerable. But what about the “in” in 12a? This isn’t a word that “leads to” the definition. It’s just padding, to make the clue read better. And yet in other clues, you would be expected to use “in” to put a word inside another, or just use the literal letters I+N. But in 12a it’s just fluff.

    I apologise for the lengthy post but it’s the thing I struggle with the most – often I won’t get answers because I overlook words like “in” as just filler words and yet they’re integral to the solution! So it seems unfair to me that sometimes they are used as such. Am I just being pedantic? How are you supposed to know?

    Thanks!

61. My tea-tray moment was 20a BISHOPRIC. I just couldn’t SEE the definition. I think the pluralization hid it from my tiny brain.

    I thought the number of obscurities was within the normal range for Pasquale, and this was a most enjoyable puzzle. And thanks, PeterO for the great blog.

62. My lack of vocabulary is showing unfortunately!

    My regular plea for some help with clues….

    I have managed to get 1, 5, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22 and 24a….with multiple checks/changes/rechecks.

    What kind of clues are 2&3 down?

    What kind of clues are 9, 11, 13 across?

    Is 11a anything to do with Paradise Lost?

63. Billy@60 there is no real answer to “How are you supposed to know” the only way to get better at spotting these things is to do a lot of crosswords.
    Pasquale does tend to have extra words basically saying – this leads to the answer.
    2D What is – donetocriminalI – mixed up ? it is …..
    5A Ismstend – somehow – determine this ….
    11Ac Ades – showing this ….

    12Ac IN?? not there , I think you mean 15AC . HE is dressed IN (wearing ) a mixed up STATE plus ……. E .

    I take the Azed view, I am not quoting directly but the meaning is the same.
    A clue should have 3 things.
    1 – A definition 2- A cryptic indication of the answer 3 – Nothing else.

64. Steffen@62 a few ideas.
    2 A long anagram, count the letters before fancy.
    3 A definition – Follows – now pause, the rest is a cryptic description.
    9 A definition – Demanded – now pause , the rest is a combination of 3 bits.
    11 Two small parts giving a word Milton used for Hell.
    13 A definition – City – now pause , the rest is a word for raised minus the last letter plus a word for soldiers.

65. Steffen@62 one thing I used to do when stuck was to treat it as a quick crossword. The definition is nearly always the FIRST or LAST word(s) . This can help you to get started and get some letters in, try and work out the wordplay later. Always pause after the first word. See above @64.

66. Hi Steffen. If you read the blog, PeterO describes what sort of clues those are: anagram, double definition, and three charades. Roz has provided some help, but here’s my attempt.

    Many words can indicate an anagram – it’s called an anagrind, because it grinds the letters of the anagrist. In this case the setter has been tricky and has used ‘fancy’ (which implies something primped or altered) but also ‘criminal’ appears in the clue (implying someone who’s gone wrong). You have to try to identify which 15 letters make up the answer, and it soon becomes clear that ‘criminal’ is part of the anagrist, not the anagrind.

    You don’t really need to know anything about Milton as ‘notice’=AD (short for advert) is quite common and ‘French art’=ES has been seen from time to time: it’s the second person singular of the verb être. (It helps that we know that 11a is likely to end in S as the crossing 3d – if you hadn’t already solved it – appears to have a definition that leads to a verb also ending in S.) So putting them together AD+ES=ADES. If you don’t know it (as I didn’t before today), there is Hades, the god of the Greek underworld, and it’s a short step to imagine that ADES would be a close alternative spelling.

    Pasquale can be quite a tough setter when you’re learning, as the vocabularly can be obscure.

67. Thanks @Roz, appreciate your comments.

    I suspected the answer was just ‘practice’! I was just feeling grumpy because sometimes you spend a while looking at things that aren’t relevant, and then read this blog and the answer is blindingly obvious. Ah well, I’ll keep plugging away!

    BTW I did mean 12a:
    Lack of vitality very little to the fore in worship

68. Billy @67 you are welcome . 12Ac that will teach me to read the whole clue.

69. Roz @65 – This is also great advice!

    I used to just read the whole clue immediately and then get lost in all the nasty tricks the compilers have in store (reading the surface) but after watching the Friday masterclasses on the “Cracking The Cryptic” YouTube channel (highly recommended!) I have started to slow down.

    One of the other things they also do is look at the letters in the grid and get a sense of the types of word that fit before reading the clue, which I find also helps. That way I don’t get distracted, and can then use the wordplay to confirm my answer… assuming I understand it, of course!

70. Billy@69 I never “read” the clue at first. I read it as single words each treated with suspicion, it is particularly useful to pause after the first word and before the last.

71. Thanks Simon S @26 – I’ve never been a drama queen so I was not getting SHIFTER at all. Now it makes perfect sense.

72. Thanks Pasquale. I found this to be a mix of Quiptic & Genius, neither one of which thrills me. After a cracker by Umpire in yesterday’s Indy and a gem by Basilisk in today’s FT I was a bit underwhelmed. Thanks PeterO for the blog.

73. Fairly straightforward but too many questionable ones for my liking. Surely, there’s a better clue than “religious type” for Parsi? Might as well be Christian or Muslim! And I have a hard time buying that a “bower” is an alcove. And “hare” for “make haste” was new to me – I assume this is a Britshism?

74. Jay @73
    Yes, HARE for hurry, make haste, is fine in Britain.

75. Many thanks. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

76. Jay in Pittsburgh@73. You really should invest in a copy of Chambers. 🙂

    Alcove: a recess in a room; any recess, eg a covered outdoor shelter in a wall.

    Bower: a shady enclosure or recess in a garden.

77. Billy@69: another useful trick is that where you see a pair or group of words that usually fit together to form one name or concept, try separating them. For instance, in yesterday’s Qaos:
    Opening of honeypot? I’m not sure — tip from Pooh Bear (4)/
    …the definition is “Bear ” (and not the animal, either) and Pooh is part of the wordplay.

78. Roz @63
    Thank you (and others) for tackling the questions from Steffen and BillyPudcock. I have a point about Azed’s witty maxim which you quoted: it is perhaps not as clear-cut as it might at first sound. It is sometimes interpreted as saying that a cryptic clue should be as brief as possible, which is not quite the same thing. For instance, when blogging 2D OMNIDIRECTIONAL, my first reaction was that ‘what’s’ is not necessary to the wordplay; but with a little reflection I decided that – as you point out – it reads adequately as part of it. Is the clue any the worse for its presence (even apart from its function in the surface)? For my money, the answer is: no.

79. What’s more, PeterO, Azed does break the rule himself sometimes.

    Sheffield hatter @66 – anagrind is a contraction of anagram indicator, nothing to do with grinding. Anagrist is a whimsical back formation from that. Personally I don’t like to see these jargony terms being used in blogs as they can be confusing to novice solvers.

80. (No criticism implied of any blogger who uses them – we all have our own personal style and I know a lot of people enjoy the jargon.)

81. Peter@78 no problem , I think Steffan is trying to get hints to clues so he can progress without actually reading your blog, so I was trying to help without giving too much away .
    I agree with you about Azed , it is an ideal that is difficult to live up to, as Widdersbel @79 notes , Azed often breaks this “rule” .
    I think the best setter I have seen in that style was Fidelio , an old Guardian setter. He was in jail so had a long time to work on his clues and set very few puzzles. Every clue was brief and very difficult but once solved it worked perfectly.

82. Never seen or heard BISH except in BISH bash bosh whatever that it. Also ES was too clever for me. NEPER and ANTIVENIN were new to me so not so easy.
    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

83. [Widdersbel@79. Yes, I knew that, but I think it helps to visualise one doing the grinding and the other being ground.]

84. For Jack of Few Trades, in American football there is a pre-game coin toss at midfield and also a second coin toss if the game goes to overtime. As for the grid fills, NEPER and BISHOPRICS were new to me. The first I found pretty easily, the second was a struggle. Thanks to Pasquale for a fun puzzle from a solver on the left side of the pond.

85. On the subject of ‘extra words’ in clues, one class I consider as entirely legitimate is a word which means ‘=‘ and links the definition with the wordplay. Examples could be ‘is’, ‘gives’, ‘makes’ – or ‘in’, which is deceptive because it can also indicate a containment.

86. Charles @12 et al: besides cricket, croquet, football, AFL…I’ll add tennis, in which the toss takes place at the net (but used to be a spin of the racquet — one side with logo, the other with none — instead of a coin, back in the day)

87. beaulieu@40 To be clear, I have no objection to basic foreign words, my dissatisfaction is cluing it as “art”, which seems to one of those cryptic conventions that you either know or you don’t.

88. Thanks to gladys@77, PeterO@78 and Gervase@85 for further responses to my complaints! I’m getting the feeling that on the whole it’s a fair construction, so I’ll chalk it up to “part of the fun” 🙂

    Also further thanks to PeterO and all the other bloggers on this site as it’s an incredible help for beginners like me!

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