Guardian 29,175 / Fed

89 comments on “Guardian 29,175 / Fed”

1. Thanks Eileen, and to Fed for a chewy solve, many clues I only parsed in retrospect.

   Some elements totally new to me – eg, I had no idea what the brackets were for in 3, and NHO ‘terms’ for terminal letters at 23. Middle of ROOSEVELT, and whole of IREFUL were complete mysteries, and so on. Add in the convoluted nature of many clues, and overall it was too much of a struggle for me to enjoy totally.

   Some good surfaces though. I may warm to Fed yet…

2. I normally struggle with Fed, but I managed to wing this almost entirely based on the definitions. Wondered about the strange clueing of 23ac, but the elements clearly indicated THUS as the solution…

3. Thanks Fed and Eileen
   I don’t get on with Fed’s puzzles and I had question marks of various sorts against 13 clues. I won’t bother listing them.
   I did like CHUCKS. Peppermint Patty always refers to Charlie Brown as Chuck in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts strips.

4. This had some very satisfying clues and answers. I didn’t know gnome = saying. Got a bit confused thinking BLUNT was the agent for bit.
   Thanks Fed and Eileen

5. The only one completley unparsed was THUS. Term as limit is new to me and I would not have thought to look it up.. My brain was so addled by the end that I was wonderig how an even number could be Prime for a little while. I cannot say that I like the word IREFUL.
   Thankyou Fed for frying my brain and Eileen for filling in what I missed.

6. I loved 10ac (after spending a long time assuming that RAF must be in there somehow!) I’ve never seen a construction like that before.

7. This was another clever puzzle after Picaroon yesterday. POTHERBS, COLOUR SERGEANT, BA, BLUNT INSTRUMENT, MILK FLOATS were outstanding but IREFUL takes the biscuit. I had to look up synonyms for Shrug or KNITWEAR would not have occurred to me. I really like this setter’s style.

   Ta Fed & Eileen.

8. I have to agree on OOSEVE being rather tasty.

9. Very, very tough. I felt like there was a generation or culture gap between me and the setter.

   New for me: DIABOLO = the wooden top used in the game of diabolo’ GNOME = maxim, saw; REME = Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (for 4d); electric vehicle MILK FLOATS (I think that I can remember when milk was delivered by horse and cart in Melbourne, Australia in the mid to late 1970s but I might be imagining it!); COLOUR SERGEANT has responsibility for carrying one of the regiment’s colours in a guard of honour; CUT = record (17d); SHRUG = long-sleeve top with only the disembodied sleeves (26ac).

   Also new for me: TERMS = limit, boundary -> last letters (23ac).

   I could not parse 9ac, 10ac, 2d (suspected it was an anagram), 5d apart from S & DUP bits.

   Favourite: ROOSEVELT (parsed after guessing it).

   Thanks, both.

10. Many thanks Eileen for the parsing of 10A IREFUL – had to be that but I’d never have thought to look for ‘prime number’ locations. My favourite was 007 almost in 15D ROOSEVELT. Thanks to Fed for your inventiveness!

11. tim the toffee@4 I also was at first thinking of Anthony Blunt as the agent, having just watched a documentary about the Cambridge double-agent spies/traitors.

12. A hard one but favourites were ROOSEVELT for the “spy almost” and IREFUL for the prime trick which I used in a recent clue competition but which didn’t go down the best.
    No idea what the brackets are for, I just put it down to a Grauniad.

13. Oh and I drove a MILK FLOAT in the 1970s for a farmer who hadn’t had a holiday in years. The 4 am starts weren’t great.

14. Very nice! Thank you. I would never have parsed IREFUL on my own, had forgotten ‘gnome = a saying’ and was trying to force DEED into DETACHED. A tricky but satisfying solve.
    P.S. Thanks for the nickname link. Now I know why my grandmother Martha was always known as Patty. She was an ace with the diabolo as it happens, so I solved that one quickly once I decided to ignore the [ ].

15. To make the homophone in 7 work, are you supposed to pronounce ‘sore’ like an upper class twit, or ‘saw’ like an old-time American gold prospector?

16. Saw the aIRmEnFlypUbLic prime numbers trick. Fed (or was it Bluth?) has used it before.
    For DIABOLO maybe the square brackets represent the sticks at each end of the rope that the top shuttles between?
    O O SEVEN is brilliant.

17. I got there in the end and like Bullhassocks@1 I’m not sure I overly enjoyed it. Thanks to Eileen I can see that Fed is nothing but fair and increasingly clever. (10ac is probably genius but I’m not sure I ever would have seen the parsing!) At 26 ac I’d never heard of a knitted shrug but in the end guessed it must exist! Thanks F and E.

18. I think I might have been one of those who commented on the last Fed that “all you have to do is follow the instructions” – definitely true again today. Very satisfying to solve.

    ROOSEVELT appeared in Qaos’s recent prize, so that immediately came to mind for the president, and the clue was brilliant.

    I imagine one of muffin @3’s unmentioned question marks was the SORE / saw homophone! (It was fine by me.)

    Many thanks Fed and Eileen.

19. Huge thanks to Eileen for explaining lots of the answers, which I somehow got but couldn’t parse. I think Fed’s style is growing on me, slowly.

20. Excellent overall, but I didn’t know that meaning of ‘shrug’, nor ‘gnome’ as a saw. Very disappointed to see the egregious SORE=saw yet again in the space of only a few days.

21. Perhaps the two brackets with the DIABOLO clue represent the two sticks used to play the game ?

22. Hugely enjoyable and in the friendly side of difficult

    Many thanks to Fed and Lucky Eileen

23. Some very difficult parsing here so thank you Eilleen. I did, however, intuit that “terms” might mean the final letters. I even suspected that this was a well-known convention to other solvers, but apparently not!

24. I managed to get it all completed though I had not heard of POTHERBS (as one word) or MILK FLOATS. The London Hospital I’m not familiar with either (I’m in Australia) and didn’t come up when I googled ‘ARTS’ and ‘London Hospital’, Funnily enough. 🙂
    I had ROOSEVELT from the cross lettering but still didn’t see the 00SEVE afterwards, silly me. Now that I can see it, I love that clue!
    Thank you Fed for the challenging puzzle, to Eileen for the unveiling of it and to both for teaching me some more new words and concepts. Gnome – who’d have thought???

25. Thanks Fed and Eileen. Fed qualifies for my gnarly gang, along with Vlad, Tramp and Boatman. Several were beyond this plodder, eg the prime trick, the 2 tenants, and the REME acronym. But the 007 was yes pretty cute, and the surfaces are up there. How globally known is St Bart’s? [I’ve known it since childhood as my uncle was there getting his G&O ticket].

26. An earworm for MILK FLOATS
    Benny Hill – Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)(1971)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ93u1alWdA

27. Tough, but great! Laughed out loud at the 007 clue; couldn’t parse IREFUL or THUS, but enjoyed the whole puzzle muchly.

28. Lord Jim @18
    7d was on my question mark list, but I hadn’t even got as far as recognising it was an intended homophone!

29. Thank you Fed for a great puzzle and Eileen for a lovely blog.
    Apologies to FrankieG about the DIABOLO sticks, I take an age to type on my small tablet.

    [Michelle, we had horse drawn milk floats in Wellington, on Saturday mornings I used to help the milkman with his horse Daisy since the slope of our street was dangerous.]

30. …me again@2…the reason I made what must seem like a Cryptic comment about 23ac and Bat Mitzvah is that I think I must only ever have heard that term spoken, never written down. Ignorantly assumed it was Bah Mitzvah or even Bar Mitzvah. Thought the Bat bit was a misprint at first to be honest, though of course the T enabled THUS…

31. Ginf @25
    St Bart’s is one of the best known of London hospitals – ‘the oldest working hospital in the country and is 900 years old in 2023’, I’ve just discovered.
    https://www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/st-bartholomews/

    FrankieG @ 26 – I’ve been trying very hard all morning not to think of that. 😉

32. Like Eileen, I am always pleased to see Fed’s name pop up and know I will be in for a fun ride. This is NOT one of those crowing posts – but I was more on Fed’s wavelength today than I can ever remember. Everything fell into place very smoothly with the exception of KNITWEAR which went in with a shrug – ironically! As an item a shrug was nho.

    The prime trick is lovely – it does pop up on occasion and it is such a memorable device with the jump out indicator ‘prime’ that I am always surprised at how many solvers seem to encounter it for the first time.

    So many favourites today; to narrow it down to a really short list is difficult but I’d nominate EVERY NOW AND THEN, COLOUR SERGEANT, BLUNT INSTRUMENT, EPHEMERAL and, of course, IREFUL.

    Thanks Fed and Eileen

33. ronald @30 – see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_and_bat_mitzvah
    for bar and bat mitzvah

34. Me@16 – It was Bluth – using the same indicator “in prime locations” but it was only a 5-letter word, and he was only cluing 4 of them.
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/05/24/independent-11424-by-bluth/
    “Film deer in prime locations after Western gets an Oscar (5)”

35. I was really struggling with this and came here to read the intro to the blog to get an idea of how difficult others were finding it. Having seen Eileen’s comment that ‘all you have to do is follow the instructions’ I returned to the puzzle and completed all but 10a (which I wouldn’t have parsed in a month of Sundays) and 26a (where I couldn’t dredge up this meaning of ‘shrug’, though I have come across it before) in fairly short order. So big thanks to Eileen, I’ll make that my mantra from now on (at least with sertain setters).

    Thanks Fed and Eileen and other commenters for an enjoyable puzzle and read.

36. Eileen @31
    The hospital is usually referred to as “Barts”, but its correct name is “Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital”. Should there have been an indication that an abbreviation was required?
    My wife worked there for a while!

37. Eileen@33…ah, thanks very much for that link. I don’t feel quite so silly now!

38. Well well, Eileen @31, almost back to W The C, worthy indeed of global recognition!

39. Many thanks to Fed and Eileen – especially for clarifying bar/bat. Hadn’t thought of ‘term’ in that sense … but now realise why it is a term for the end of pregnancy, so to say. I’ll refrain from commenting on yet further abuse/misuse of purported homophones!

40. Sorry – that was referring to saw vs. sore

41. I don’t get 5a potherbs. Why does other mean effort . Where’s the b from? I think they are all a bit too clever for me.

42. Tricky but entertaining solve, although I didn’t see the prime trick or the (h)ELD=hosted. The shrug definition was new to me.

    The first definition of ‘term’ in Chambers is ‘an end’, so I think it’s OK and a useful indicator for setters. I liked the POTHERBS with the cycle trick, the definitions in COLOUR SERGEANT and KNITWEAR, and the good replacement in DETACHED. The IREFUL trick was good for a strange word. Despite the valiant efforts to justify the square brackets in 3D, I think it is just a signal during the editing process that should have been removed before publication.

    Thanks Fed and Eileen.

43. Kirsty @41
    Sorry if I didn’t explain it clearly: the letters of BOTHER (make an effort) are ‘cycled’, with the B going to the end.

44. Angus @39
    You’ve reminded me of one of my all-time favourite clues:
    Philistine: ‘End of term party? (6)’

45. that was my thought 🙂

46. 20 is careless:

    1) The usual meaning of ‘astride’ is something like ‘with one leg on each side of something’ – it’s usually the rider who is astride, not the legs, and the rider is not ‘on both sides’.

    2) Even if we stretch the usual meaning to include the idea of the legs being ‘astride’ something, they would be ‘on both sides of’ it; they wouldn’t be ‘on both sides’ it.

47. A chewy puzzle indeed, but the clues yielded even if the parsing didn’t. Needed the blog to understand IREFUL and THUS.

    Favourite was ROOSEVELT.

    Thanks for the fun Fed and Eileen

48. Thank you for an excellent blog, Eileen. I would never have managed to parse “ireful” although I got it from the crossers. Also thanks to Fed for a good workout.

49. [I saw a similar clue to 10a on the Crossword Forum recently:
    Obtain prime seafront locations (4)]

50. I thought this was great, especially the much-commented-on prime and 007 clues.

    I really liked Eileen’s comments, but I’m a little puzzled by the ‘lift and separate’ mention for ADMITTANCE; isn’t this term normally used when a clue word is mischievously split into two parts, rather than an answer word? Apologies if I’m being overly dense.

51. Thank you, Eileen. I had just worked it out! Fell a bit silly. I will persevere.

52. I did technically finish this, but I set a personal record, by a good distance, for number of answers I needed Eileen to parse for me. I won’t list them all, but thanks to Eileen for doing your part.

    I think in the past it’s turned out that stray brackets around a clue meant that the setter was unsatisfied with the clue and intended to go back and write a better one; every so often, either he never gets around to it or doesn’t delete the brackets.

    MILK FLOATS were new to me, as was “gnome” meaning anything other than the mythical being. Also REME, the soldiers: His Majesty’s Armed Forces seem to be a bottomless pit of unfamiliar abbreviations.

53. Thanks to Fed and Eileen. I had 6 clues that I couldn’t parse so very much obliged for the explanations.

54. DWO @50

    I’m on a bus just now and shan’t be home till later this.afternoon, so can’t look it up for you now. The classic definition of ‘lift and separate’ is a situation where two or more words are so linked together in the mind (eg ‘boxing gloves’ )
    my that setters use them to mislead. Try googling ‘Crosswords unclued lift and separate’.

55. Fed is a favourite, and this didn’t disappoint. I managed all but four. Too many excellent clues to list….FrankieG @ 26: Thanks for the reminder of the Benny Hill number, which will haunt me for the rest of the day…A strange man: at his death he was worth around sixteen million in today’s money, but continued to live in a rented flat in Teddington (just down the road from me) where he died and was not found for a few days. He seems to have been averse to spending money. The exception was periodic trips to Marseille. Always the same place. Chaplin was a fan, though (needless to say) some of his work doesn’t quite chime with the times. …With thanks to Fed and Eileen.

56. Thought this was super and Eileen’s thoughtful blog and usual kindness in following everything up is much appreciated. I have a feeling the brackets for DIABOLO were deliberate just because they were (unusually) square. Plus it does add something to the clue which could be paraphrased as “Play with ‘top’ between sticks”. A tiny query on BACHELOR OF ARTS : I think the surface reads better if “treatment of” is taken as the anagram indicator and “by” then gives us the “of” in the answer. As in “she had two children by / of him”. And a quibble! In MILKFLOATS surely there’s no need for “say” after “vessels”? Vessels aren’t a kind of boat all boats are vessels. Boats on the other hand are a kind of vessel. Unless it’s me looking at things upside down!

    Thought was top notch overall.

57. Btw where is KVa? Come back you’re missed!

58. Tough, and needed the blog for far too many explanations.
    Muffin@36. Don’t think an abbreviation indicator is required. It’s nearly always just called Bart’s.
    Thanks Fed and Eileen

59. Incidentally, today’s New York Times puzzle, which I think a few others here occasionally do, also has a clue that contains “bat mitzvah”. Twice in one day we have the less familiar female version! (In the NYT clue, it wasn’t strictly necessary–could’ve been anything from a bar mitzvah to a bris.)

60. One man’s meat, etc. Many people whose views I respect, notably Eileen, thought this was wonderful. I thought some of it was decidedly “too clever by half”.
    I don’t think the serial substitutions needed to solve 9 ac – “put off” > deterred and “sin” > err are any fairer on the solver than the dreaded indirect anagram.
    The TCBH device in 10ac would just about be acceptable if it clued a reasonably familiar word. Applying it to a word that is obscure in itself is a bit much.
    What is the “say” doing in 12ac? A vessel needn’t be a boat, but surely all boats are vessels.
    Isn’t the “of” in 16, 19ac doing double duty? “Treatment” on its own doesn’t work as an anagram indicator, so as Eileen notes, the clue is actually “treatment of of cholera…” Yes, it’s a lovely surface and an otherwise very neat clue, so that’s a minor cavil.
    Gnome > “pithy and sententious saying” (Chambers)> saw > sore in 7d is a bit much, too.
    OTOH, I thought ADMITTANCE and THUS were brilliant.
    Never particularly liked Benny Hill, but material like his attempted chat-up lines “Do you like cauliflower?” and “Do you like marmalade?” (the latter, as I recall, getting the response “Yes, but not on my cauliflower”) laid the foundations on which Alan Partridge would later be built.
    Ta, both.

61. Thanks Eileen@54, I had thought the term was limited to just the more specific usage that I mentioned. You learn something every day!

62. Thanks Fed for a superb crossword. I thoroughly enjoyed this even though I had several parsing gaps including IREFUL (I’ll keep the prime trick in mind), EYESORE, and ROOSEVELT. My favourites were EVERY NOW AND THEN (loved the seamless surface), COLOUR SERGEANT, CHUCKS, THUS, RANCOUR, and TASTE. As usual with Fed/Bluth there were no bad clues. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

63. After Picaroon’s excellent offering yesterday, I found this an unrewarding slog.

64. Unlike most bloggers I found this overly complicated although there were some good clues. Still feel he is a marmite setter: you either like or dislike. Thanks Eileen for the parsing: you’ve earned a well deserved rest!

65. I parsed BACHELOR OF ARTS as Nick@56 to avoid “of” doing double duty.
    I liked EYESORE – People who don’t usually pronounce their Rs will often stick in a non-existent R when drawRing a picture or SAWRing some wood.
    A recent Bluth puzzle had a brilliant use of ellipses. In 24…25 the clues can just be read together as one sentence. Or am I missing something?
    I loved this. Thanks F&E

66. I failed to parse 15 (thanks Eileen) but adored 10. ??
    As an old maths teacher I have my response ready when the students ask “ why do we need to learn about prime numbers?”

67. DrWhatsOn @61 – if you’re still there –

    I’m off the (shaky) buses and back home in my laptop comfort zone and so I’ve been able to check what shuchi at Crosswords Unclued (who years ago was a 15² blogger) had to say about ‘lift and separate’ clues.
    https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/12/lift-and-separate.html
    Different people use this expression in different ways – some for the type of clues which you describe, which is logical, but, as shuchi points out, the phrase was actually coined by the Times Crossword Champion, Mark Goodliffe (see the heading and introduction to his blog here
    https://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/30214.html for examples of the type which I didn’t describe very well @54). (Note his solving time!)
    I don’t think there’s a Mark Goodliffe copyright on the phrase but that’s how it originated.

68. I believe the square brackets are an editing hint for the setter that a clue is still a work in progress, or needs amending in some way.

    I certainly see no semantic significance to them being there.

69. Thomas Adam @68 – that was my belief, too, as I said, and several people here seem to agree.

70. Thanks to Eileen for the excellent parsing. I was very proud of myself for working out the bottom half of the puzzle but had neither the time nor patience to parse almost the entire upper half. As expected, I was delighted by the explanations (except those blasted brackets). This puzzle belongs in the Hall of Fame.

71. Thank you Eileen, and glad to know that some people get 3.00 am inspirations. I just get a stiff neck. Fed pushing the boundaries indeed. Very nice; just too clever for me today.

72. I find Fed chewy but enjoyable, and it really is just follow the instructions, when you have worked out what the instructions are, and thereby is the rub.

    I did parse the KNITWEAR shrug as my last one in – possibly helped by recently frogging a half-knitted shrug which was being made to go with various orphaned garments in my daughter’s wardrobe. As we’ve recently had one of our periodic swaps around of clothes, that jacket and the skirt she made to go with it are now mine (returned to me for the jacket) and I’d rather knit the same wool up differently for me.

    I also knew about bar and bat mitzvahs, so that I parsed. I didn’t parse gnome = saw, but I should have linked to gnomic utterances, because when I read the blog, there was a tea tray moment of realisation.

    Thank you to Eileen and Fed

73. Another Alan reporting here. (Eileen, you will need an Alan key!)

    A tricky and entertaining puzzle. I agree with what Eileen wrote about the ‘hallmarks’ of this setter, and I expect to work hard (in places) for my reward. I missed the ‘prime’ trick in IREFUL, but I should not have done as I have seen it at least once before. I liked EPHEMERAL and EVERY NOW AND THEN particularly.

    Thanks Fed and Eileen.

74. Although this didn’t come to my attention till lunch I decided to have a go- daily “Guardians” are a secondary part of my diet. I usually do Pauls, whilst knowing I shall be groaning at some point. Fed had the same effect. The term “parsing” implies that the “subsidiary indications” as they used to be called, have ceased to help the solver but simply to provide an extra level of puzzlement.
    This was just such. Congratulations to Eileen for picking up all the pieces. As one with a maths degree from the 1940s my brain didn’t take long to click on the word “prime” in 10ac but I wonder how all the linguists responded.
    EVERY NOW AND THEN could have appeared as a on-word clue in a Quick Crossword and picking apart the cobbled-together anagram with redaction seemed pointless, however ingenious.
    This may sound grumbly but I admit it was fun. Thanks Fed & Eileen.

75. Eileen, thank you for many elucidations, especially LEAFY GREENS (on looking them up, I found them defined both as vegetables like spinach and as herbs used for flavoring like bay and oregano), THUS, SHRUG (never heard of it as a garment, but guessed it was one). I’ve never heard of gnome = saying either.

    And I also thought of BLUNT as the agent in question.

    Loved the “prime” clue, and also Anthony Eden’s redacted review.

    I’ve heard of MILK FLOATS, exotic creatures, but never seen one in the wild.

    I always thought “ephemeral” meant “lasting a day and a half.” Apparently I was 50% off.

    I think we’ve had both EYESORE and ROOSEVELT recently.

    When I had a few crossers for 13, 14, COLOUR SERGEANT popped into my mental ear, not because I had the slightest idea of what a colour sergeant’s duties were (I do now) but because I heard Peter Bellamy’s setting of Kipling’s “Danny Deever” sung in my head.

    What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade
    “To turn you out, to turn you out, the Colour Sergeant said.
    The poem/song (a lot of Kipling’s poems work as songs) goes on as a dialogue between the two, about the hanging of Danny Deever.

    Thanks to Fed for the challenge and Eileen for the fascinating links and for her usual welcome participation in the conversation.

76. But… isn’t one a prime number?

77. Never mind! Primes are greater than one!

78. One is not prime. A prime has just TWO factors. Every number has a unique prime factorisation. If one were prime you could increase by 1X1X1… for ever.

79. Thanks Eileen and thanks all.

    Like Robi @42, it is that first definition in Chambers for term (“an end”) that I think justified using it for the end of a word, rather than the archaic sense of a border etc. and as others have said, it’s used in that sense regarding pregnancy quite commonly.

    I find those who think “prime locations” too clever by half (or similar) quite curious. It seems to me to be much more precise an indicator than many others we’re all very familiar with. Try and explain to a muggle why ‘occasionally’ is supposed to mean alternate letters – when in truth it could equally mean almost any other smattering of letters. Prime locations is fairer, surely, just harder to spot – but only through lack of familiarity. Which – to me – is in its favour. Why would anyone want to see only what they already know?

    Cheers!

80. An enjoyable struggle, so thanks, Fed. There were several answers I got right without understanding why. I missed the ‘ELD and the spy, and didn’t know the extra meanings of gnome and shrug, so thanks, Eileen, for the explanations.

81. Very late with this – I’d departed for the theatre by 6.30, so missed all the comments from then.

    Thanks for all the comments – and especially to Fed for dropping in: setters’ contributions are always more than welcome. I don’t suppose you’re still there but I can’t believe that I missed the very first definition in Chambers for ‘term’ and I agree entirely with your observations on the ‘prime locations / occasionally’ issue: one thing I really love about Fed / Bluth puzzles is the fresh approach. [No comment on the brackets issue, though? 😉 ]

82. KT@78 you’re right but does the clue suggest 1 is a prime?

    I thought this was brilliant with genuine innovation, wonderful wordplay, and smooth surfaces

    Cheers E&F

83. Eileen @81 – the brackets can be ignored. I suspect they’re a part of the editing process at the other end.

84. Chapeau, Eileen – I think unpacking IREFUL was cleverer than the setting of it – never met a clue where the def so clearly proffered an impossible-to-parse solution. Thank you.
    I’m getting fonder of Fed. Thanks to him, too.

85. I didn’t parse 8D correctly – I lazily assumed it was referring to Anthony Blunt and left it at that.

86. Thanks (late, as I needed a wee dram to polish this off late yesterday) Eileen for explaining DETACHED (which I had assumed was the definition – very nice misdirection and clever clue) and BLUNT… (I am as lazy as Clive@85 – was going to grumble that Blunt was maybe more of a spy and Bond really an agent but luckily didn’t). Nor did I know gnome=saw but maybe some echo in my brain from “Gnomic” should have helped me. I did understand THUS but by assuming that “term” was allowably short for termini or terminals, thanks to discussion above (and the man himself) I now know there was more to it. Agree the “say” in 12a wasn’t strictly needed but loved a recent jorum POTHERBS being clued so neatly, and plenty more: thanks Fed.

87. Found this very difficult. Used word search a LOT!

    5ac, POTHERBS: Collins has it as two words

    12ac, MILK FLOATS: can’t see what “say” is doing here. Boats are vessels, aren’t they?

    16,19 BACHELOR OF ARTS: don’t agree that “treatment” preceding fodder works as an anagram indicator. I took it “treatment of cholera” (correctly) indicated an anagram of ‘cholera’ and the “of” therefore wasn’t clued. (Perhaps Nick@56 has it? I thought by was another error, tbh, but maybe not.)

    21ac, ADMITTANCE: how is this a lift-and-separate (sic)?

    27ac, TREATY: couldn’t parse this, though I understood what “2” meant. Thanks, Eileen.

    15dn, ROOSEVELT: couldn’t see why OOSEVE was “famous spy almost”. Thanks Eileen. Brilliant!

88. Tony @87 I think you – and others – are right that the ‘say’ in 12ac is unnecessary. The original clue had “fuel tankers, say” with tankers being a DBE for boats – but I was persuaded that they are ships not boats and didn’t notice that, when changed to vessels, the say was no longer needed.

    You and Nick @56 have it right re BACHELOR OF ARTS. I agree that treatment before fodder isn’t an adequate anagram indicator but ‘treatment of’ is. And Nick is right to suggest that ‘by’ = ‘of’. My justification would be ‘the poems of/by Wordsworth’.

89. Thanks, Fed. Your explanation of of=by is probably even more convincing than Nick’s.

    Btw, @Eileen, re 21ac, ADMITTANCE: of course, the lift-and-separate is “boxing gloves”. What was I thinking? Glad I got back in before you saw my stupid comment.

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