Guardian Prize 29,189 / Boatman

104 comments on “Guardian Prize 29,189 / Boatman”

1. Wasn’t aware of the bit of business jargon in 2d, failed to spot (as I often do) the concealed answer in 13a, and also failed to get the perilously close to indirect anagram 13d, so for the first time in a long while DNF. Also didn’t get that all of the undefined items were collars, not just something to do with clothing.

2. Thanks very much for this, Eileen. I believe that Boatman has said somewhere that 25 was a misprint – but is remaining deliberately coy about the special instructions issue…

3. Thanks Eileen. Much too abstruse for me. When I had provisionally solved all but a couple of the clues (LOIs 25a and 21d) I wrote down all those which I could not explain and still couldn’t see any correlation but then I’m not a couturier. I did flirt with ‘returned’ which crops up twice but that didn’t get me anywhere. NEHRU was one of the first in and I wondered about statesmen but that was another blind alley. So thanks again for putting me out of my misery. This once I disagree with you about the lack of special instructions here.

4. Thank you Eileen. When I queried the “missing” instructions on the Guardian thread, consensus among respondents was that it was deliberate on Boatman’s part, and the fact that I did manage eventually to complete the puzzle leads me to agree. I think DOG and NEHRU were the first in to raise my hackles re absent definitions, and I happily admit to having google on standby to, ahem, collar some of the others!

5. Thanks for the excellent blog Eileen. The intro was excellent.
   Thanks to Boatman for the lovely puzzle.

   ARRESTS
   From this clue, it appeared as if the undefined clues were expected to be starred ones (and of course with an instruction).
   Anyway, it didn’t matter. We enjoyed solving the puzzle without any special instruction.

   TAHITI
   HAITI—>H back after ‘a’ (moved back after A)—->AHITI. After T (time) AHITI.

   IN TOTAL
   Could be taken as a CAD:
   ….Jethro shouted, all together (inn toe tull).
   Def: Altogether.
   The problem with this parsing is that the definition is
   split into two parts (and with an apostrophe at the beginning).

6. Had absy no idea what could possibly connect dog with Nehru and the rest. So, well done Eileen and anyone else who twigged. Enjoyed (briefly) wondering about it though, and doing the rest. Didn’t twig in+toe+Tull either, though the bits are familiar. Hey ho, now for today’s, nice weekend all, and ta E and B.

7. Thank you Eileen. My take on IN TOTAL was that the ‘l is meant to be read as the missing double l, from tall/Tull and you then put it all together.

8. Not all of the theme clues were as clearly missing definitions as the others. In DOG, for example, the leading “Put” is not necessary for the wordplay, so was it a definition? Eileen, it seems, had similar thoughts. But in NEHRU, there was clearly no definition, which caused me to go web-searching for discussions of missing instructions. I found none, so assumed it was intentional as part of the challenge of a Prize puzzle. Unusual, but not impossible.

   With those assumptions, completing was straightforward-ish. SPLIFF was fave.

9. I didn’t mind the ”missing” instructions. I thought it was deliberate and enjoyed the discovery. I thought the theme was signposted by the very prominent DOG in the middle and ARRESTS with the definition collars a bit above it.

10. SPLIFF also a fave of mine, from around the same era as Jethro Tull. I wonder if Boatman and I might be contemporaries? The route to High (Sierra) made me laugh out loud, conjuring memories of Easy Rider.
    Chuckles too for the surface of WOKE, and ALPHA, when I woke up to it.

11. Eileen, I parsed TAHITI as you did.
    KVa@5. I don’t quite get your parsing with two afters and/or without a position indicator for the time at the beginning.

12. paddymelon@11
    TAHITI
    My parsing was absurd. Sorry.

13. Phew, that’s a relief, KVa. 🙂

14. 😀

15. Eileen’s parsing of TAHITI (and of course yours) is quite all right.

16. IN TOTAL
    The blog is clear about the whole clue being used for the wordplay. So that was a repeat from me (It can’t be a CAD. Just that the wordplay spans across the whole clue).

    ‘l together: does it represent both all together and altogether?

17. Maybe how you feel about the missing instruction depends on the breadth of you knowledge of collars. Like Eileen, I got DOG, NEHRU and PETER PAN, but couldn’t see any connection. I’d not even written DOG in at that point because I didn’t see how it worked. Then when I got ETON I remembered DOG and Googled ‘types of collar’. That helped a lot, although I thought NEHRU was a jacket not a collar. Finishing wasn’t helped by not being able to understand the Tull clue, even though I guessed that was who Jethro was, or by having no idea of how the MANDARIN wordplay worked. I also missed the obvious definition for ALPHA and spent a while trying to convince myself it was another collar. (Confused by the fact that an Alpha collar seems to be an tradename for some sort of electronic dog collar – not for the clergy, obviously). And both ASCOT and CENTS were close to indirect anagrams – as maco89@1 mentioned – not that I was too bothered by that. So, finished, but with some difficulty. But it was satisfying to get there, and I particularly liked SHAWL, SPLIFF and GAINSAYS (Britannica has an article about the Sagay people – not that I’d ever heard of them). Thanks Boatman – quite a challenge – and Eileen – quite a blog!

18. Thanks Eileen. Boatman confirmed via Twitter (X as it is now) last Saturday that “…there’s a small typo in 25 Across, which you’ll probably have realised should end “All together!”.”
    He also confirmed UPTURNED, rather than being thematic, was just a “happy coincidence”.
    I suspect the lack of instructions was an editorial omission, but most people I’ve seen commenting seem to have got on just fine without them!

19. Worked out some of the no description clues and wrote them down by the side but couldn’t work out what connected them. Then I went to look at “collars” in 15ac in the crossword dictionary to see if the answer was ARRESTS as I thought and realised the theme.

    Favourites: CAIRN, LAST WORDS, SPLIFF

    Thanks Boatman and Eileen

20. Thanks Eileen. The theme dawned on me about a third of the way through with the third undefined collar answer. The ‘collar’ clue 15A seemed to confirm it, ending as it did with ! The only other clue with ! was the last-in (and possibly erroneous?) Jethro one, which had to be right. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the battle with the setter: thank you Boatman.

21. Thanks, Jay@18!

22. Thanks Boatman, I absolutely loved this puzzle. One of my earliest solutions was NEHRU; there was no obvious definition so I figured there were other similar clues and that jacked up the fun factor for me. I eventually saw that something like jacket and/or collar was the theme. In any event the clues themselves were excellent including ARRESTS, CENTS, AGUE, GENIUS, INSTITUTES, and SPLIFF. I could not parse IN TOTAL and I’m grateful to Eileen for her detailed explanation as well as her blog on this prize. Thanks Eileen.

23. I think MANDARIN is supposed to be M AND A (mergers and acquisitions) + R (“are not extremely”) + IN

    So, now I know that sometimes the puzzle doesn’t obey the usual rules, and everyone knows to expect that. Live and learn…

24. KeithS@17. Noted that you weren’t too bothered about ASCOT and CENTS, but I don’t see a problem with either. In ASCOT there is an extra step with the abbreviation for company and a positioning indicator. And CENTS uses a common indicator ‘cycling’ to move a letter or letters around to the beginning without affecting their position in the synonym.

25. Yeay, thanks to Jay@18. We’re now all together.

26. Lovely blog as ever Eileen and the link to Boatman’s “meet the setter” from Alan Connor was a good read, giving us a nice insight to the personality behind the pseudonym.

    The last couple of prize puzzles have been a treat and I thoroughly enjoyed being puzzled more than normally by this treat of a theme crossword.

    I am kicking myself for not actually having completed the grid fully and particularly missing out on getting the right answer for SPLIFF (a favourite word of mine from a partly misspent yoof). I had a not fully parsed SALIFY for that clue and didn’t revisit once I’d put in my last couple of the undefined clues.

    Many Thanks to both S & B

27. Thank you ThemTates@ 23. M&A not a term I was familiar with. Agree about removing both extremities of are.

28. This source has SAGAY meaning ‘to catch or take’ so at least one of the clues contains the special instructions.

29. 225 @28. Did you mean to create a link in your post? I found SAGAY, Turkic-speaking people in the Republic of Khakassia, in Central Russia, but I didn’t find a translation of their name. Is that what you were referring to?

    https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/khakass

30. Further to 225 @28. Or are you taking the mickey and have caught me out? That would be almost as tricky as not including instructions. I’m surprised 225 let you in with that moniker. 🙂

31. Paddymelon @29: yes, not sure how reputable it is though: http://lookdef.com/meaning/sagay.htm

    @30: true, that was my username for Guardian comments before I realised that this site is commonly known as 225. Thought I was so clever!

32. OK so it appears I have been had. That site seems to have taken my search terms and made up a definition….

33. Ex225@31 and everyone. I got a threat notification, and stupidly went back in again and it’s just nonsense.

34. I’ve emailed admin and asked them to look into this.

35. I still don’t understand 19d, I’m afraid. I got the answer from the definition but still don’t get how we arrive at gainsays and the blog reads like another puzzle!

36. Culbin@35. That one was my last to parse. GA in SAYS. An embedded or containment clue. SA GA YS

37. @paddymelon36 thanks! I see it now

38. I was clued in to a possible lack of definitions because of a few off-topic (and hastily discouraged) comments on this site for last week’s crossword. Without that I think I would have spent a frustrated week trying to fit all the clues into a conventional pattern. Maybe this is the best level of “special instructions” – a hint that something is odd but you have to work out exactly what yourself.

39. MAnaged to finish this, but don’t get the point of a theme without indicating the theme somehow. Including the word collars in a clue doesn’t do that for me. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen.
    Incidentally, Eileen, there are a couple of errors in your blog. ThemTates @23 has mentioned one of them, and 31 across should be [o]NE[‘s][h]ARS[h]

40. I spotted the collars on Saturday, dressmaking means I know these things, and solved it all, also wondered no sailors collar from Boatman. I did think this would be worth printing off and sending in, but didn’t get my act together.

    My last in was SPLIFF, being held up in the southwest corner and taking longer than I should have been by NEHRU having already spotted BERTHA, ETON, and the rest.

    Thank you to Eileen and Boatman.

41. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, I knew something was happening here but I didn’t know what it was. Having uneasily solved DOG, ETON and ASCOT sent me down a rabbit hole of the missing link being Berkshire (or “Barkshire”). But PETER PAN (which couldn’t be anything else) put paid to that. So a DNF ensued as a few others (SHAWL and, with confidence undermined, I just couldn’t see ALPHA) eluded me. I did manage to bung in 2d, avoiding embarrassment. Thanks to Boatman for a good challenge, and to Eileen for the enlightenment.

42. Part way into this puzzle I realised something was ‘wrong’, and I then remembered reading something about missing instructions. I got as far as I could, with nine clues still to solve, and decided to stop, still wondering whether the instructions were missing!

43. I twigged something was awry after solving 26a, which just had to be NEHRU from the crossers and parsing. After that I thoroughly enjoyed solving others that I had passed over because I couldn’t unravel the definition / parsing.
    Boatman must have had a touch of ‘Paulitis’ at 25a.
    Many thanks to him and Eileen

44. Very tough and hard to parse some of my answers. Doing the puzzle online, I suspected that there should have been some special instructions – I finally worked out on my own that it was a theme of collars but with no definition mentioned in the clues: dog, peter pan, mandarin, ascot, eton, nehru, butterfly, bertha, wing etc.

    Failed to solve 20ac (I thought of ALPEN but could not parse it apart from alp=mountain), 16d.

    For 25ac, I was thinking of the band Jethro Tull – I remember buying their record Thick As a Brick in the 1970s. I thought of the definition as being ‘l = All together. I parsed the clue section as hom of INN TOE TULL (jethro).

    I could not parse 15ac, 20ac, 19d and also 2d I don’t understand why M AND A = those who consolidate businesses. Is it an abbreviation of Mergers and acquisitions, as mentioned by ThemTates@23?

    I parsed 23d in the way mentioned by Eileen: T + HAITI with the H dropped down a spot.

    Favourites: LAST WORDS, INSTITUTES.

    Thanks, both.

    Sorry if I have repeated what others have posted as I didn’t have time to read all of the comments above.

45. Thanks to Them Tates @23 and paddymelon @ 27 for pointing out the error in 2dn. I had it right when solving!

    …and to crispy @39 re 31ac. I will amend them now.

46. Despite Paddymelon’s explanation@36, we cannot understand what GA means.
    We understand it is put in the centre of SAYS, but where in the clue for 19D do we find GA?
    Thanks

47. Thanks, Eileen and all – I have indeed been coy about whether the lack of Special Instructions was deliberate, not least because the solvers who spotted it on the day and commented on that-which-was-Twitter seemed to be enjoying the challenge. Anyway, I still don’t know the answer to the question. There were definitely Special Instructions when I submitted the puzzle, but they’d disappeared by the time it appeared in print. I suspect that it wasn’t deliberate, but Hugh isn’t available to answer questions at the moment, so it may have to remain an interesting mystery. Next time, though, I’ll have to think about whether to do it on purpose.

    Paddymelon @29 – Yes, those are the Sagays intended and, no, I hadn’t heard of them either until their existence became necessary for the clue to make sense.

    Mandarin @41 – Your alternative Berkshire/Barkshire theme is an excellent invention – I wish I’d thought of it!

48. Shirley @46 – It’s a reverse clue: “gainsays” could be parsed as wordplay indicating “put GA in SAYS”, the solution being SAGAYS, hence “clue to Sagays …”

49. I would sum this one up as “nobody likes a smart-arse”

    I had no idea what was going on, a DNF, until I googled to see if something was up, and then slowly worked out what had been going on.
    I did get NEHRU, as it was clear, but no idea why, and ETON, which could have also been RE-(NOTE) turned to also give ETON leaving a MESS-AGE, an Eton one perhaps!
    I felt M and A was pretty unfair, especially as there was no definition anyway.

    Still, I will be ready for next time!!

50. Great puzzle and great blog especially the Tull anecdote. I think the lack of instructions was a bonus like a secondary rainbow. A further step to conjecture but looking at NEHRU PETER PAN ETON AND MANDARIN of the first undefiners had me all at sea. Ended up thinking they were jackets. I love theme puzzles especially and the way that even if you spot the theme it rarely helps. I find that so weird. Several clues like GAINSAYS and IN TOTAL began as hopeful entries till the brain engaged. I’m happy and smiling I came here to see I’ve a rare completed grid.

51. Boatman@47. Whatever was the intention, or snaffus, it’s a credit to you that your crossie was solvable without the special instruction. Wordplay, wordplay, wordplay. I had a whollottafun.

52. Why, thank you, PM! I foresee a new genre of puzzles in which the special instructions are to be inferred and reconstructed, followed by a Schrödinger-like subgenre in which multiple versions of the special instructions are possible, some of which may lead to alternative solutions that may or may not be complete …

53. Boatman, are you willing to tell us what the special instructions were?

54. I meant to comment earlier that the juxtaposition of ORANG(e) PRESIDENT in the second row is rather amusing 😉

55. Got half way through this, including several incomplete clues. The blog comment about possible missing instructions was helpful as it saved me from wasting too much time on the remaining clues. I did not know the various types of collars, and so if I had persevered, I would have wasted more time. This puzzle was just too vaguely set and the theme was niche. So Boatman was having fun with us! I had better not say any more. Timewaster puzzle.

56. Eileen @53 – You’ve already stated them in almost exactly the words I used: “Ten solutions are of a kind and their clues lack definitions”!

57. Many thanks, Boatman!

58. Boatman@52
    That will be exciting! Can’t wait…

59. I was fully prepared to huff about the missing definitions but now that Boatman has explained, I see it is, as usual, down to the Grauniad’s customary care and attention. Definitely (!) not amused.

60. I liked this comment on the lack of special instructions from last week’s Prize blog:’
    Aye-Aye Books@55
    September 30, 2023 at 1:53 pm
    [someone will get it in the neck for this]’
    I think that’s what Admin’s ‘Gentle Reminder – Site Policy – PLEASE READ’ is about.
    There have been a few transgressions of site policy recently.
    Please take a moment to review the various policies here: https://www.fifteensquared.net/site-policy/
    And let’s hope that my gentle warning doesn’t have to become more severe.’ 🙂

61. Thank you Eileen and also Boatman for dropping in to explain. I probably wouldn’t have got the drift even with special instructions. I was seeing a Nehru jacket and an Ascot tie. That’s US crosswords leading me astray. Apart from dog and maybe wing tip I never even knew collars had names. An interesting challenge. Thanks both.

62. Maybe I’m the odd man out but i liked the lack of instructions-DOG and ETON were obvious what with some other clues
    i always thought that Ian (Anderson) knew who Jethro Tull was-my girlfriend at that time told me.
    I dont think that Ian was much into spliffing being somewhat straight(you’d never have thought when you watched him on stage)
    Robert Fripp was another perfectly clean chap-didnt need anything he was brilliantly out there from the get-go
    A Frenchwoman I knew (wife of a mate) called them Jethro’s Tool. Not all the band were straight. I can vouch for that.
    And thanks Boatie for dropping in-that one did need a tweak.

63. Thanks Boatman and Eileen. Well I began with UTTER for 26a and it was all uphill from there! I ended with many blank lights, including MANDARIN and BERTHA, which I had “solved” but couldn’t parse, so were not inked in. Great fun and no complaints, except shouldn’t 6d be DISCORDANTLY?

64. Thanks for a cracking puzzle Boatman, and thanks to the Grauniad for giving it an extra twist! I guess. I had to leave in the middle for an event, and while walking back I thought “ah, it must be Nehru JACKET!” and… that was not productive. Fortunately I remembered the bit in Dirk Gently where Richard describes a Peter Pan collar under hypnosis but doesn’t know the name. A few NHOs under the collars though, and I confess looking at a list of collars to get SHAWL even though I should have got that from the wordplay.

    Took me a long time to parse MANDARIN and didn’t parse ASCOT, though I feel foolish seeing what it is. LOI was ALPHA where I was desperately looking for an Alpha collar, until I saw how the definition had squeezed into a small space.

65. Well, it looked like a case of missing instructions and once I had Googled PETER PAN and BERTHA, I saw that it was 15A ‘collars’. So, I managed to finish it. I was, however, perplexed by the parsing of ASCOT. I did find a few companies called TOCSA, so that was entered with a shrug. I did like the well-hidden ARRAIGN and the super definition for SPLIFF.

    Thanks (I think) to Boatman for the brain-bashing and to Eileen for illuminating it all (including the guess for the typo).

66. Graham @ 63 “The negotiation was discordant / without agreement when it finished”?

67. I found this doable without the special instructions, though they would have helped. Like others, my way in was after DOG and NEHRU were obviously correct but lacked definitions. Ah, both are collars, and we also have ARRESTS and NABS, which both are synonyms for that other meaning of collars. Cute litle hint there. Anyway, I immediately went looking for ETON, found it, and then it was off to the races. I assumed that the previously mentioned electronic dog collar was intended for ALPHA, and I now see I’m wrong. I never did figure out the Jethro Tull clue, so thanks for the explanations.

    I had never heard of a BERTHA collar, but the others were all familiar to me for some reason or another.

68. Oh, and the clue for PRESIDENT is amusingly yet sadly topical just now.

69. I only came back to this one today having forgotten that I didn’t finish what I’d begun last weekend. I got it out in the end but still with several question marks.
    Really glad I did so and have now come on here to read a very interesting blog, including the fascinating ongoing dialogue with both setter and blogger.
    I got the collar idea reasonably early on but kept writing “definition?” beside the clues leading to the collars, so clearly I was groping in the dark wondering why there was no indication that some clues lacked a definition. Like some others, I still thought it was a super puzzle and enjoyed (eventually) cracking it very much indeed.
    Thanks to Boatman, Eileen and follow contributors for a lot of fun and an interesting wash-up.

70. SimonS @66. Yes, I suppose that works, ta. I was thinking “The negotiation finished discordantly / without agreement”

71. I never spotted the collars, so thanks Eileen.

    News to me that my compatriots say “fly” for “stylish.”

    Never heard of M and A, but now I’ve looked it up. so I know

    In the cautious comments last week, somebody said that an exclamation mark was the clue to the missing instructions. Does anybody know why?

    I thought the lower case l in the Jethro clue was a capital I, so I was led even farther astray than I was meant to be.

    25Ac A buoy isn’t a danger signal, it just guides boats.

    Thanks to Boatman and Eileen for a good time.

72. Valentine @71

    ’25Ac A buoy isn’t a danger signal, it just guides boats.’
    ?

73. 25 Lad picked up danger sign at sea
    G-Quiptic 1246

74. Thanks, KVa. 😉

75. This one beat me. Lots of respect for those who completed it without being given the theme… Would it have been too easy to have referenced 15 ac. (re-clued without the word COLLARS), as the answer is a quasi-synonym for the theme?

76. My experience was similar to that of Alan B@42, although I only had four left before deciding it wasn’t worth wasting any more time on. Annoyingly, one of these was SPLIFF, a favourite word for a favourite thing. That’s partly because I’ve never seen F as an abbreviation for feet, only ft. There’s very little support for it in Collins online except as (unindicated) American usage , and even then only in the section with the most vaguely defined sources.

    Nho of half of those collars and was never going to see the link, although others equally ignorant apparently did with a bit of research.

    I also don’t accept that George can be G because of GR, any more than Elizabeth can be E, etc. Not sure about abbreviations for the autopilot.

    I don’t think it was fair to expect those who aren’t players in the great game of capitalism to know ‘M and A’ although I notice Eileen doesn’t think it’s worth explaining. The fact that that the clue had no definition (something one could only suspect, anyway) and the rest of the wordplay just gave ARIN made this a very poor clue in my estimation.

    This could have been a good puzzle with the intended special instructions, especially if the clues had been starred. That would have made 25ac an excellent pointer to the obscure theme. Just having the word ‘collar’ in a couple of clues is not enough, imo.

    Well done everyone who solved this.

77. *only gave RIN* (late erroneous ‘correction’)

78. Coming late to this (I’ve been out all day), I would only add (in response to Boatman @52) that Magpie magazine not infrequently has themed puzzles without any instructions. Tough at first, but, like this one, there will always be some accessible clues to enable the solver to get a toehold.

79. Eileen@72 — I meant that buoys often mark a channel, for instance, not necessarily alert sailors to a danger, though I suppose running aground because you got off the channel is something most would want to avoid. Sailing note: in US ports, as you sail between the buoys or other markers, if you’re heading into harbor the red ones should be to starboard and the green ones to port, which leads to the mnemonic “Red Right Returning.”

80. TC @ 76 GEORGE = G stems from the RAF radio alphabet from the 1930s. Not as old as ‘ancient city’ = UR!

81. Simon@80, thanks for that. Do I have to know all the radio alphabets then? I guessed it was G, because it made a word with WIN. Have to admit I have heard of a wing collar too, but I wasn’t looking for collars at the time.

82. Thanks both (with a large bouquet for Eileen because…).

    I’ve been working my way happily through Boatman’s books so I cracked my knuckles when I saw this. But it beat me all ends up. I know it’s probably an unanswerable but I have always taken pains to differentiate between ‘shall’ and ‘will’ – can they really be taken as synonyms? And even having read the blog and comments I don’t know what M AND A signifies. Ah well.

    (Took some consolation from the name-check in ALPHA.) 🙂

83. [Boatman’s books are, btw, great fun. You can pick one up and put one down at the same time.]

84. I’m grateful to Boatman for clearing up the mystery. (I can be certain that the instructions were inadvertently omitted.) I’m only sorry that I didn’t have the patience to work out what was consistently ‘wrong’ with those ten clues and thereby enjoy the rest of the puzzle. Thanks to Boatman, Eileen and all contributors here.

85. Hi Valentine @79

    Thanks for that but, as KVa indicated @73, you were obviously referring to a different puzzle. 😉 25ac here was the Jethro clue.

86. Tony Collman @76 and Alphalpha @82
    I confess to never having heard of M AND A but by that time I was looking for collars and it seemed it must be that and so I googled it and found this https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mergersandacquisitions.asp, which seemed like something that everyone but me would have heard of and so I didn’t comment!

    I’m absolutely with you, Alphalpha, re shall and will but decided not to open that can of worms. 😉

87. Eileen, “something that everyone but me would have heard of”. Surely no such thing?

    I googled it and found the same link although, strangely, the first hit was for Marks and Spencer (M and S).

    Thanks for the Jethro Tull history, btw. I was a fan in the seventies, but never knew that stuff. Saw them at Colston Hall (as was) in Bristol in 72 or 73. Re the clue, I did notice it was a small l, not a capital i and guessed it must be a misprunt.

88. Valentine @71 “I thought the lower case l in the Jethro clue was a capital I, so I was led even farther astray than I was meant to be.” — likewise here. I shall refrain from a rant about poor font choice. In the future, I suspect I will copy and paste the clues into a separate document in an unambiguous font.

89. May I take this opportunity to apologise for anyone who clicked on the link I posted @28 which led to a website with some inappropriate and annoying pop-up ads. And edit or delete comment option would have been useful.

    Also apologies to admin as I inadvertently transgressed the multiple alias rule. Ironical I was changing my name because I realised people were using 225 as a shorthand name for this site.

    Boatman @47 thanks for elaborating – was it a coincidence that some of the clues referred to “denies clues…” and “missing stars…”. Also did you confirm ‘l together’ was a misprint?

90. Ex225@89 – see Jay@18 re ‘l together’

91. Valentine@71 – this clue has an ‘exclamation mark’:
    15a – ARRESTS – Collars with stars removed! (7)
    If the ‘missing instructions’ had been “Asterisked clues … are undefined’, this might have indicated that the asterisks were also deliberarely missing.
    Making it even more devilish. I really enjoyed solving this without instructions or asterisks. Please do it again next time.

92. My other half works in banking, and two weeks ago mentioned a colleague “in M&A”. “What’s M&A?”, I asked, and received the inside information just in time to help me solve MANDARIN last Saturday. “Which was nice”

93. Thanks Eileen, nice history of Jethro Tull and I couldn’t parse ASCOT at all (I did guess the word but as with BERTHA only confirmed when I worked out what was going on and found an online list of collars – on the other hand my dad’s old DJ had a SHAWL collar but even then took me a while to understand the wordplay). Thanks also paddymelon@29 for the Sagays which elevated that clue and has made for interesting reading. I am always interested in what everyone finds obvious/obscure and am surprised at the lack of awareness of the term M and A but suppose I wouldn’t know a similar term from the world of, say, social work – i thought it was a great clue and surface. Anyway I am in the camp of happy solvers regardless of missing instructions (but only because of online assistance this time, would probably have been annoyed otherwise), thanks Boatman.

94. Got most of it but the lack of instructions defeated me in the end. That said, I spent a good while discovering Jawaharlal Nehru’s last words so all was not lost. Thanks blogger and setter.

95. simonc@95 — the missing instructions aside, and despite the implications at 5dn and 7dn, there are some iffy surface readings combined with grammatical errors in — and/or redundant words that interfere with — the cryptic readings of: 11, 12, 13, 15, 20 ,25, 26, 31ac and 13, 16, 19, 21, 23, 26 and 28dn, many of which don’t actually say what they mean in a cryptic sense.

96. Not being very experienced, certainly not enough to know the foibles of particular setters and the possibility of ‘special instructions’ in the first place, I found this not much fun at all. I think I was further thrown by some of the clues being very dully conventional. On the upside, that is what led me to fifteensquared. But I think I prefer my crosswords solvable without having to delve into blogs etc.

97. I was quite pleased with myself for nutting this out just from the wordplay. I was baffled by the undefined clues, but whether there should have been special instructions or not was largely irrelevant to the solve. Of course, I didn’t spot the collars theme.

    I loved SPLIFF. Great puzzle; thanks Boatman and Eileen.

98. nope DNF, could have used the undefined clues / theme notification. Thanks for clearing it up for me

99. Olive@96, if you are dissatisfied with clues you should give the full specifics, as indicated in Site Policy No.2, not just a list, which doesn’t allow the setter to defend his cluing or others to disagree with your assessment of the clues.

100. Olive@96, oh! It seems you are referring to this week’s puzzle, not Boatman’s, which you shouldn’t do in any case. Next week, you can explain exactly what you think is wrong with those clues.

101. Olive@96, or maybe not, as you refer to “missing instructions”. I’m pretty sure Simon C was referring to this week’s puzzle, which is why it is no longer visible.

102. I keep seeing references to the Guardian crossword blog but couldn’t find one that’s relevant to this puzzle – any chance that someone could post the link. Thank you.

103. Da Bebb, the Guardian Crossword Blog is not about particular puzzles.

     https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/crossword-blog/

104. Thanks Tony @103

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