The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29132.
This required some careful reading of the clues, and left me with one, 5D BLEMISH, the parsing of which eludes me.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | CHERUB |
Young scout holding the woman’s angelic baby (6)
|
| An envelope (‘holding’) of HER (‘the woman’s’) in CUB (‘young scout’). | ||
| 5 | BROWN OWL |
Leader of the pack once prime minister links up with member of parliament (5,3)
|
| A charade of BROWN (Gordon, ‘once prime minister’) plus OWL (‘member of parliament’ – ‘parliament’ being the collective term for owls). The ‘pack’ were once known as Girl Guides. | ||
| 9 | INUNDATE |
Fed sister with fruit following flood (8)
|
| A charade of I (‘Fed’ as the writer of the clue) plus NUN (‘sister’) plus DATE (‘fruit’). | ||
| 10 | INTUIT |
Divine taste originally captured by tongue (6)
|
| An envelope (‘captured by’) of T (‘Taste originally’) in INUIT (‘tongue’). | ||
| 11 | MULL |
Think about being complete after gender reassignment (4)
|
| FULL (‘complete’ with or without the ‘being’) with F changed to M (‘gender reassignment’). | ||
| 12 | SWING MUSIC |
To begin with Steve Wright’s unfortunately miscuing big band jazz? (5,5)
|
| A charade of SW (‘to begin with Steve Wright’) plus INGMUSIC, an anagram (‘unfortunately’) of ‘miscuing’ | ||
| 13 | NORDIC |
Scandinavian police unit discovered crime when looking the other way (6)
|
| A reversal (‘when looking the other way’) of CID (‘police unit’) plus [w]RON[g] (‘crime’) minus its outer letters (‘dis-covered’). | ||
| 14 | HOME PAGE |
Source, for example, rejected by Press Association reveals what can be seen at theguardian.com? (4,4)
|
| A charade of HOME (‘source’) plus PA (‘Press Association’) plus GE, a reversal (‘rejected’) of EG (‘for example’). | ||
| 16 | HEAVYSET |
Built big, tough box (8)
|
| A charade of HEAVY (‘tough’, noun) plus SET (‘box’, television). | ||
| 19 | EMPLOY |
Money initially invested in pole dancing put to unknown use (6)
|
| An envelope (‘invested in’) of M (‘money’) in EPLO, an anagram (‘dancing’) of ‘pole’; plus Y (mathematical ‘unknown’). | ||
| 21 | ABSTEMIOUS |
I mess about at sea — getting dry? (10)
|
| An anagram (‘at sea’) of ‘I mess about’. | ||
| 23 | RAGE |
Fury over silver piercing (4)
|
| An envelope (‘piercing’) of AG (chemical symbol, ‘silver’) in RE (‘over’). | ||
| 24 | DOZING |
What you might be doing shortly after dropping off party spirit (6)
|
| A charade of DO (‘party’) plus ZING (‘spirit’). | ||
| 25 | SERENADE |
Wanting a sea shell — blowing top to get tune (8)
|
| A charade of ‘se[a]’ minus the A (‘wanting a’) plus [g]RENADE (‘shell’) minus its first letter (‘blowing top’). | ||
| 26 | ISOLATOR |
One’s told sad story after all banks withdraw safety feature (8)
|
| A charade of I’S (‘one’s’) plus ‘[t]OL[d] [s]A[d] [s]TOR[y]’ minus the outer letters of each word (‘all banks withdraw’). | ||
| 27 | MERITS |
Justifies sending back porridge after half of breakfast, for example (6)
|
| A charade of ME[al] (‘breakfast, for example’) cut short (‘half of’); plus RITS, a reversal (‘sending back’) of STIR (‘porridge’ as prison). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | HANG UP ONE’S BOOTS |
Retire and – never mind university – somehow opens pharmacy (4,2,4,5)
|
| A charade of HANG U (‘never mind university’) plus PONES, an anagram (‘somehow’) of ‘opens’ plus BOOTS (UK based chain, ‘pharmacy’). | ||
| 3 | RANKLED |
On vacation rolled joint inside – getting annoyed (7)
|
| An envelope (‘inside’) of ANKLE (‘joint’) in RD (on vacation RolleD‘). | ||
| 4 | BRASSICAS |
Brussels, say, putting money into small arts organisation – quite the opposite (9)
|
| ‘Quite the opposite’ indicates that the inner and outer elements of the envelope are switched. An envelope (‘putting … into’) of S (‘small’) plus ICA (‘Institute of Contemporary Arts’, such as the one in London) in BRASS (‘money’). ‘Brussels’ are brussels sprouts. | ||
| 5 | BLEMISH |
Mark Wahlberg’s focus returns on film – ultimately melting hearts (7)
|
| Your turn for this one: ‘WahLBerg’s focus returns’ could give BL, and ‘hearts’, H; but as I cannot make sense of the rest, I am surely missing something. | ||
| 6 | OWING |
Outstanding old group (5)
|
| A charade of O (‘old’) plus WING (‘group’). | ||
| 7 | NO-TRUMP |
A lack of time behind player’s call? (2-5)
|
| A charade of NO T (‘a lack of time’) plus RUMP (‘behind’). The ‘player’ might be playing bridge. | ||
| 8 | WAITING FOR GODOT |
Women joining cast got gift on radio play (7,3,5)
|
| No, ‘on radio’ does not signal a homophone. A charade of W (‘women’) plus AITINGFORGODOT, an anagram (‘cast’) of ‘got gift on radio’. | ||
| 15 | MAELSTROM |
Pandemonium as married, eminent conductor’s hugging student at the opening (9)
|
| A charade of MAELSTRO, an envelope (‘hugging’) of L (‘student’ driver) in MAESTRO (’eminent conductor’); plus M (‘married’), with ‘at the opening’ indicating the order of the particles. | ||
| 17 | VITRIOL |
Extremely vocal about international group getting caustic criticism (7)
|
| An envelope (‘about’) of I (‘international’) plus TRIO (‘group’) in VL (‘extremely VocaL‘). | ||
| 18 | TROUSER |
Appropriate for everyone to visit seaside town in retirement (7)
|
| An envelope (‘to visit’) of U (film category, ‘for everyone’) in TROSER, a reversal (‘in retirement’) of RESORT (‘seaside town’). | ||
| 20 | PARTNER |
Some depart nervously for get together (7)
|
| A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘dePART NERvously’ | ||
| 22 | MIGHT |
Power of small child in audition (5)
|
| Sounds like (‘in audition’) MITE (‘small child’). |
Well, I never knew the Insurance Council of Australia was an arts organisation. No, hang on, ICA is something else. 😉
U for everyone? Ah, I see, a film category. Boots? Ah, a chain of pharmacies. Getting there …
I couldn’t parse BLEMISH either. KVa will be along any minute …
Couldn’t work out what the stripped crime was in NORDIC. Ah, wrong!
No idea why BROWN OWL is leader of the pack.
So lots of head scratches, but I guess it was pretty enjoyable. Thanks Fed & PeterO.
Thanks for parsing SERENADE, which made no sense to me, and BRASSICAS, where I hadn’t heard of ICA. Also a bit mystified by Girl Guide owls, as we don’t have those here.
The only thing I can contribute to the BLEMISH issue is that the “film ultimately melting” bit could give MIS[t], but then you’re still left with an unexplained E.
Mark Wahlberg has a BLEMISH on his chest in the form of an extra nipple. Fun fact.
Brown Owl something to do with Cubs, Scouts etc (never joined, my lot were suss of uniforms, esp brown ones).
I think mull needs over to equate to think about …
mrpenny@2
BLEMISH
Your parsing seems to be in the right direction. The unexplained E is slippery. Unable to grasp it.
Tried a film title or two.
BL+EMI+. ….an unexplained S…+H
BL+EMIS(sary)+H …Here we need to edit out the complete second half of the movie (that’s not ‘ultimately melting-nor ‘sary’ means ‘ultimately’).
Someone will come up with proper parsing.
GDU@1 Sorry.
Thanks, Fed and PeterO!
I’m tempted to say if KVa can’t parse it nobody can. FWIW, I couldn’t account for that extra E in BLEMISH either, with the rest parsed as per mrpenney @2. Missed the parsing of MAELSTROM as well and didn’t really know about BROWN OWL, guessing it might be something to do with Boy Scouts.
As PeterO says, some careful reading of the clues required to end up with the correct answer, as seems to be a characteristic of Fed/Bluth’s puzzles. Very entertaining though, despite that one uncertainty; I’m looking forward to the explanation.
Thanks to Fed and PeterO
Count me among those baffled by the parsing of BLEMISH. I couldn’t parse 1d either, and ironically, although I’m an Aussie, the name of the British pharmacy chain was the one bit that I did get.
WordPlodder@6
If I could parse everything, I would be blogging. At least I would offer my services to Ken 🙂
EMILY is another movie that could fit in. EMIly-ultimate ‘ly’ melting. Still, there is an unexplained S.
I got slightly further with 5d BLEMISH. BL as you have it and MIS (film/mist finally melting) and then H for Hearts.
But that still leaves an E unaccounted for. It’s in Wah / LBE / rg but then it isn’t properly taken care of. So still not parsed here either.
Re blemish
Could mish be mist (for film) losing or melting the m and replacing with h for hearts BLE are the central letters of Wahlbergs
But that reading (taking Wahlberg’s E as part of his “focus”) gets you EBLMISH, which is also wrong. We’re told to reverse it, not anagram it.
Re blmish
on film ultimately melting = (r)e mis(t) perhaps?
How about Misery as the source film, with the ultimate three letters (ery) missing?
Whoops! That also leaves out the E
I’m inclined to think that BLEMISH is simply a mistake, thinking (as I did initially) that Wahlberg’s focus was BLE rather than LBE. There’s been some heroic attempts to parse the clue as is, but none convince.
Blemish eludes me too. I’m going to pretend that it has a word missing and should read “on internet film”!
Methinks we’re all clutching at straws. Perhaps Fed will drop in and tell us either why his masterful parsing has stumped us all, or that he goofed.
I think we have to have BLE as the focus of wahLBErgs to get the right number of letters, then MIS(t) and finally H. But it is rather clumsy. I share everyone else’s frustration with the clue.
I’m inclined to go with the cgyule @12 parsing.
Maybe it should have been …
Wahlberg’s focus returns on Spielberg’s fourth film – ultimately melting hearts
🙂
cygule@12
Looks plausible. ‘ultimately’ indicates the last letter generally but maybe Fed has used it in this puzzle for removing the letters from both ends.
Someone can argue that RE MIST ultimately melting=RMIS.
I agree, cygule’s is the most plausible. But if it’s right, it’s a bit of a groan.
As one who got her wings and ‘flew up’ to Girl Guides from the Brownies I do remember BROWN OWL as our leader in the Brownies. But more useful for the solve I remembered the PM and the member of parliament.
One of the tasks we had to perform was making porridge, and we always had to carry 2 x tuppeny pieces to make a public phone call in an emergency. The cubs had much more fun.
Thanks Fed and PeterO
I missed the problem with BLEMISH as I carelessly took “Wahlberg’s focus” as BLE, which it isn’t.
I didn’t parse the RON bit of NORDIC. I wondered if BORDIC was a Scandinoir word I didn’t know. Didn’t parse SERENADE either.
Why is HOME “source”?
To be pedantic, NO TRUMP isn’t a call without a number in front – three no trump, for example.
Favourite INUNDATE for the misleading “Fed”.
This was pretty tough and I had quite a few guesses to get to the end. I can’t remember the last time a clue stumped so many of this sites biggest brains so I’m looking forward to see if BLEMISH is explained during the day. Thanks Fed and PeterO.
Re BLEMISH – could the film ultimately melting be Le(s) Mis(erables)?
Geoff @20
nice.
or maybe Wahlberg’s focus returns on film ultimately melting on film ultimately melting hearts ?
A BROWN OWL is still the main adult leader of Brownie Packs in the UK, the name for 7-10 year olds in Girlguiding: no “used to” in UK terms. Other leaders are called Snowy and/or Tawny Owl. Rainbows are 4-7 year olds, Guides are 10-14 year olds, Rangers 14-18 year olds and Inspire for 18-25. Yes, I am a Rainbow leader and work with Guides too. The international group is WAGGGS – World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts as the equivalent are Girl Scouts in the USA and other places.
I didn’t work out BLEMISH either.
Thank you to PeterO and Fed.
actually you could get away with
Wahlberg’s focus returns on films ultimately melting hearts
but it would have been a bit much
WahlBerg’s focus + LE(s) MIS(erables) +H works, but now the ‘returns’ is the problem…
Perhaps this is stretching it, but for BLEMISH might ‘returns’ function as an anagram indicator, in the sense of ‘yields’. That way LBE, the central letters of ‘Wahlberg’s’ could become BLE.
Thanks for the blog, Peter – and huge apologies to all for the mistake that’s crept in as part of 5dn.
I’m not sure what errant click of a mouse has seen it off – but I take responsibility for it – there’s a missing ‘European’.
It should be:
Mark Wahlberg’s focus returns on European film – ultimately melting hearts
Mea culpa
5d. How about: LBE returns as already suggested, MIST “ultimately melts” i.e. loses the T, H = hearts. ??
Thanks, Fed!
We were really enjoying the wild exercise of trying to make the clue work somehow.
I can’t parse 5d either, but I do admire Fed’s way with words.
Thanks to him and PeterO
Now we can discuss the other clues 😀
Thanks to Fed for putting us out of our misery!
Thanks to PeterO too for the blog
Thanks for dropping in, Fed. You’re forgiven.
I was too eager to get the correction out there to read all of the comments – but I’ve now gone through and enjoyed the herculean efforts you’ve all made to solve the unsolvable. Huge props to cygule @12 for coming up with a justification for it as was – and I very much enjoyed Geoff Down Under’s Spielberg @20 too!
Ah thanks Fed@33. So happy that GK was not needed, as was the case with most of this crossword, or none that was beyond my ken. Much appreciated. Love to be able to solve without googling or aids. Not a quiz, but all about the wordplay, of which you are a master.
Clever puzzle. Rather a lot of solutions went in from the crossers and I then spent much longer working out the parsing – with a failure for NORDIC and BLEMISH (unsurprisingly!).
I particularly liked the part-of-speech misdirection of ‘divine’ for INTUIT and ‘appropriate’ for TROUSER. And INUNDATE is fun, though the surface is a bit strange – few setters have a pseudonym that can be used in this way!
I agree with grantinfreo that MULL really needs ‘over’ to mean ‘think about’ (though Chambers says ‘usually’. Why?). My LOI was HEAVYSET – is this really one word rather than two?
Thanks to Fed (for the puzzle and the clarification) and PeterO
This all went in very cleanly except for the clue we’re not talking about anymore.
Favourites were BROWN OWL, ABSTEMIOUS, and PARTNER.
Great fun as usual, thanks to Fed and PeterO
4D reminds me that the brasserie next to the main station of Tours (in France, for non-Europeans) used to be called Le Brussel’s, which is a parsing problem in itself. We wondered if the owners were Belgian’s, or perhaps just liked sprout’s.
So – from what I’m reading – regarding 5d – we’re all saying that Fed is BLAMISH? …
… I’ll get me coat!
Errare humanism est, Fed. That’s why we have editors…ahem! ?
Surely 11ac could just as easily be FULL? Perhaps seeing earlier comments, better so.
I explained the E in BLEMISH as Wahlberg’s focus returns = EL B – WikiP gives spelling of L as EL
Very tough puzzle which I was very slow to solve – I was not on Fed’s wavelength. In the end I was very pleased to complete it.
Favourites: MULL, INUNDATE, WAITING FOR GODOT, MAELSTROM.
I could not parse:
13ac apart from rev of CID = police unit
25ac
5d only got as far as rev of LB + EMIS + H? I guessed from Guardian blog that there was an error with 5d. By the time I finished the puzzle, the clue had been corrected online -> rev of LB + E + MIS[t] + H.
New for me: BRASSICAS; NO-TRUMP (I usually know this as no trumps); BROWN OWL – the adult leader of a group of Brownies; ICA = Institute of Contemporary Arts (for 4d).
Thanks, both.
Martin @46: What’s wrong with humanism? Autocorrigere errare sit 🙂
I thought ‘Retire and’ should be underlined in the definition or else the ‘and’ seems superfluous. Either way it works. ABSTEMIOUS was nicely counter-intuitive and WAITING FOR GODOT was super. Glad I missed the BLEMISH debate until Fed put everyone out of their misery.
Ta Fed & PeterO.
Togs@44. A case of the greengrocer’s apostrophe?
Fed@23 not to worry – we all got there in the end. A minor BLEMISH on an otherwise perfect crossword. Favourites INUNDATE, TROUSER and SERENADE.
Blemish is explained (I think) by film (MIST) ultimately melting (remove T of mist) hearts (add H). Put BL at start as already shown. Convinced?
Just seen comments 33 and 34, which explain the missing E and confirm my cunning explanation.
MaestroP @54
See Fed @33
Many thanks fo Fed for an enjoyably chewy puzzle, and to PeterO for the blog.
But I agree with TonyM @47: 11a could equally be FULL, and after weighing things up, that’s what I plumped for. ‘Think about being complete *before* gender reassignment.’ would better lead to MULL …
Not entirely sure whether this was on the easier side for Fed or if I was more on his wavelength today. But once CHERUB had slotted in straight away I managed to work my way quite swiftly round the grid with the handholds and footholds of crossers in place. Knew MAELSTROM from the title of a very undistinguished college rag I edited in my youth – a veritable whirlpool of affairs?, not really – though I couldn’t quite parse HOME PAGE or BLEMISH. Wasn’t sure if it was meant to be Brassicae or BRASSICAS either until HEAVYSET plonked into place. Many thanks Fed and PeterO the Parser…
[ronald @58
Last month I was near Corryvreckan, the second largest whirlpool in the Northern Hemisphere. Tide was wrong for it to form, though.]
Fed myself a few misdirections and failed to parse the (w)RON(g) in Nordic – and of course the unreturnable BLE, but that’s been sorted out now.
I liked the party spirit in DOZING, the two good, long anagrams, and the surfaces of BRASSICA and TROUSER. I’m not sure that a grenade is a shell, despite it being in the Chambers Thesaurus.
Thanks Fed and PeterO.
Thanks for the blog, I really enjoyed this one , great variety of clues and clever wordplay, SERENADE is the pick for me.
I did puzzle over BLEMISH , I do not like to see LBE used when there is ‘s . Glad to see the adjustment, these things happen, apology made, all forgiven.
Perhaps instead cross out Mark and have a self-defining clue ?
Clever Guardian subliminal message that without European involvement problems can’t be solved. I liked SERENADE once I had given up on THRENODY.
Petert @62: I toyed with THRENODY as well. But ‘tune’ seemed rather a thin definition for a piece of music which could easily consist of more than just a simple melody. However Chambers says: ‘a song or tune….’ Grrr
PeterO thanks for parsing SERENADE, ISOLATOR, BRASSOCAS (never heard of ICA), WAITING FOR GODOT, MAELSTROM (how could I miss “maestro?), and VITRIOL. No comment on 5d.
3D RANKLED never used to be a transitive verb. You’d say, “That rankles with me.” At some point it became “That rankles me.”
Thanks to Fed and PeterO, who parsed all the parsables.
After failing to parse the uncorrected clue I rewrote it for myself:
Mark Wahlberg’s heartbroken about unfinished film
Muffin@59…that whirlpool sounds suspiciously something like Coracle Wrecker! But probably capable of shipwrecking something much larger. I wonder what the origin of that word is. Totally off thread/theme I realise, but I’ve just discovered that the word fortnight comes from the Anglo-Saxon feowertiene niht or fourteen nights, as the Anglo-Saxons counted by their nights. Maybe a reason why those times were described as The Dark Ages? I’ll get my hat…
This was a curate’s egg for me. About three quarters went in very smoothly, I was very much on Fed’s wavelength. Most of the rest went in entirely or partially unparsed. 24A completely eluded me even after revealing it so thank you PeterO.
I was very confused by all the discussion around 5D which seemed straightforward to me… and then I realized I had arrived late enough to be seeing the corrected version.
It has been a day for stretching the cryptic grey matter and this crossword certainly took a time to solve
Thanks to Fed and PeterO
Gervase@42 agreed. I think the part-of-speech switch in 18d is particularly nice if you read U = “Appropriate for everyone” with appropriate doing double-duty as wp and def.
Eventually bullied this into submission, but it took a mighty effort. That said, ISOLATOR and BROWN OWL were a delight.
Very enjoyable puzzle with the NOR of NORDIC unparsed by me and the BLEMISH of course.
Thanks to Fed and PeterO
Not very happy with SERENADE. I don’t think grenade and shell are synonymous. I also tried hard to make threnody work here.
Not quite in tune with Fed’s style yet, so a DNF for me.
Thanks, Peter and Fed, especially for dropping in.
me@ 72 Having just checked the dictionaries for grenade, I realise I’d forgotten about RPGs, so grenades can be shells.
Apologies, Fed.
God this was fun. I had ticks all over the place – but ISOLATOR, a late-ish solve for me, and TROUSER which came straight after, were particularly satisfying.
Thank you Fed for all the fun – and for dropping by to explain BLEMISH – and thank you PeterO for explaining the “ron” part of 13A (the only Ron with a criminal connection that I could think of being one of the Krays. Ye can overthink these things sometimes….)
ABSTEMIOUS – five vowels in alphabetical order (you can go to six if you take some Y as sometimes a vowel, and look at the adverb “abstemiously”, as the 1950s Eagle Annual that first pointed this out to me. It also had another word with this property – which I’m sure you can all identify.
BLEMISH – I think is the centrepiece (focus) of WahLBerg, returned, with MIST (film) ultimately melting – so losing the end T – then H for hearts.
Can’t find those meanings for INTUIT (divine) and TROUSER (appropriate) though.
Ah just seen Fed’s note
Wolf@76 INTUIT and divine can mean to know something without any actual evidence.
TROUSER and apPROpriate can both mean to steal.
Paul@75 I will not facetioulsy spoil your riddle.
The word “mull” used to be transitive: you could “mull a question”, although now you almost always “mull over a question”, as various people have said. But in that older sense equating MULL to “think about” is fine.
I think I’ve wondered about this in past puzzles, but I’m not sure I ever satisfactorily resolved it: how do we equate RE with “over”?
By the time I got to this puzzle, the clue for BLEMISH had been corrected — and I still failed to see the parsing. But it makes sense once it’s explained.
Ted
I think “re” is “concerning” or “about”, so could possibly be extended to “over”?
One advantage of being in America is that “European” had already been added to the clue by the time I got to the crossword – so no issues here with BLEMISH!
I was defeated by INTUIT, though…
Thanks PeterO and Fed.
Jay @81, unless you’re like me and you solve the next day’s puzzle in the US evening when it drops…
Just wanted to say that this might be the most controversy Marky Mark has had since the day he parted ways with the Funky Bunch.
Muffin@80 Ted@79 I wondered why Fed put Fury over, rather than fury about.
ronald @66 see Wikipedia Gulf of Corryvreckan for an explanation. I had FULL at 11ac but MULL is close to Corryvreckan so a theme of Hebridean place names?
What is the technical phrase for a clue whose components include two-step instructions — vocabulary plus wordplay — but only for part of the definition, not the whole thing?
— Think of a synonym for shell, then remove its initial letter
— Think of a synonym for film, the remove its final letter
Or even three-steps?
— Think of a synonym for crime, then remove its first and last letters, then spell it backwards
Or even four-steps (well, at least two steps twice)?
— Think of that category to which breakfast belongs, then use half of its letters, and then think of a synonym for porridge, then spell it backwards
Is it just me? Or did this puzzle have more of these multi-steps than usual? On the other hand, TROUSER would fall into this two-step category, it that clue RANKLED me not at all.
Plus Muffin @25: I too raised an eyebrow when HOME = “source”
*yet that clue…
jellyroll@84
Good idea, but Corryvreckan isn’t all that close to Mull – it’s north of Jura, between that and a smaller island (Sanday?).
I agree with those who think that 11a could be either MULL or FULL. The only thing that makes it definitively the former is that the clue begins with ‘think about ‘, but it’s only a convention that the definition should appear at the beginning or end of the clue – or more like an expectation. In the absence of a helpful crosser I think the setter needs to consider writing the clue differently.
Like some others, I didn’t parse the first part of NORDIC. This was mostly because the answer is obvious when it ends -DIC and the definition is ‘Scandinavian’. This sort of clue – think of a synonym, turn it around, take some letters off – is a favourite device of this setter, and I find it particularly difficult to sort it out. Perhaps it would be better used when the answer is not quite so clear, so that we’re incentivised to solve/parse it fully.
I found this as tough as Fed’s previous puzzles, so I was pleased to have completed it. (I’m counting FULL as correct!)
Thanks to Fed and PeterO.
Thanks Fed, that was enjoyable. I somehow managed to come up with the correct solutions but I had many of the aforementioned parsing problems. I had many favourites including INUNDATE, INTUIT, MULL, MERITS, TROUSER, and EMPLOY, the latter for its surface. Thanks PeterO for the blog.
Thanks Roz@78. I probably do have that definition of trouser locked in the murkey depths of my whisky-riddled memory.
Very late to the party – out for the day, by train, without internet access – solved the puzzle on the journey there (with a ?, of course, for BLEMISH -hard luck, Fed!) – hugely enjoyed the rest of it – left my completed puzzle on the train , as I always do, in attempt to interest others, so can’t record my (many) ticks- just lots of thanks to Fed and PeterO.
Andrew@85 , it is simply called a good clue, as long as the steps do not include indirect anagrams.
The Daily Mail is the HOME of many stories supporting Hitler and the Nazis.
Gervase@50, quite right – had an ‘aaargh!’ moment reading it back after submitting, but by then it was too late. Serves me right for trying to be smart with the italics button! ?