Guardian 29,269 – Paul

111 comments on “Guardian 29,269 – Paul”

1. This looked very difficult at first but it all fell nicely. Loved TOUGH TITTY, COVENTRY CITY, PIG-IGNORANT, GOBLIN and SUGAR TONGS. So many witty clues and I see BUNTHORNE was also the pseudonym for Guardian setter, Robert Smithies, although long before I started doing thesE.

   Ta Paul & Andrew.

2. i wasn’t convinced by HARD for ‘powerful’ and 8 felt a bit awkward, but I loved this return to form from the G’s most irreverent setter. specially 28.

3. From Hugh Stephenson’s obituary in the G in 2006 – ‘Bob Smithies began setting ‘to fill in the time spent hanging around hotels on photo assignments’. But he had learned the pleasures of esoteric information and of language and literature from his father, a self-taught man like himself. Bob delighted his father at an early age by pointing out what the name on the Gartons vinegar bottle read if spelled backwards’s. So a nice tribute from Paul with SUGAR TONGS.

4. Pottered slowly through this with one eye on the cricket. Bit of Pauline erk … tonsils, snot, cockroaches. The other day a nice young young lady commentator said How are the crown jewels? to a cricketer who’d just been struck there. I was a bit surprised, but of course not so today. All part of life. Thanks P and A.

5. I laughed at the pun of STODGY. I think Paul has been reading these blogs and is having a lend of the ‘homo[hone’ police on here.

6. Didn’t finish (beaten by PIG-IGNORANT ), but more enjoyable than yesterday. Being reminded of Bunthorne was nice, who was one of the tougher setters, but I always felt I had a chance.
   Thanks Paul and Andrew

7. I think Paul pre-empted the argument about the homophone in 28. I took it as part of his sense of humour and I enjoyed it. 27 is rather classic Paul as well. Like the blogger, it took me a while to get into this today, with PURPLE being my FOI, followed by 26, another trademark Paul. Wasn’t convinced by the second definition in 6 GET OFF, so delayed entering it until I worked out 8. Still not wholly convinced after Andrew’s example, but a minor niggle. Thanks to Paul and Andrew

8. Tim C – I had the same thought, Paul is ribbing us. Love it.

   Also enjoyed the BUNTHORNE anagram and the amusing surface of the TULIPS clue. Thanks, Paul and Andrew.

9. Can I echo AlanC with the inclusion of the two homophones, both of which made me laugh.

10. I didn’t get the homophone in 27, but the a in ’emphasis’ is usually a schwa, and that’s not uncommon in ‘for’ in connected speech. So, fair enough.

11. Lots of smiles at Paul’s tongue-in-cheek humour today, especially the two dreadful homophones. I have to agree with all of the favourites cited by AlanC@1, to which I have to add 9a5d TONSIL HOCKEY, 15a GOBLET, 26a NUDIST and 8d FIRST PERSON. Thanks to Paul for the fun and Andrew for the blog.

12. Many thanks Paul and Andrew, very enjoyable. On 2d, Andrew is surely right, but I also thought: “back pain” – lumbAGO, “over half way down” of that is letters 5 to 7 of 7, giving the solution with the definition “back”, a rather neat loop.

13. Czech Rod @12: that’s how we parsed AGO too. TOUGH TITTY, TONSIL HOCKEY, SUSPENSE, FIRST PERSON (especially for the PDM when we saw the definition) were all good. Also GOBLET and GOBLIN right on top of each other. Thanks, Paul and Andrew

14. Same parsing as Czech Rod @12: both parsings seem valid.

15. Although in the first parsing it’s hard to make out what “way down” is for.

16. Thanks Paul and Andrew
    Too many “guess then parse” (or not) for me to enjoy this much. I liked the &lit GOVE.

17. I’m another who went for lumbAGO. Roger GS @15: the ‘way’ following ‘half’ is needed for either parse as it’s indicating where in the fodder – AGOny or lumbAGO – we need to look. ‘down’, I took as simply acknowledging that we’re moving down the fodder rather than along it.

18. Another lumbAGO sufferer here, but I think AGOny probably works better.

    I had no hope of parsing SIS, so thanks for that. I did laugh at the STODGY homophone. Nothing much else to add today.

19. At his best – and that’s saying something! Always creative and often fresh, how does he keep doing it? (I’ve said that before and will doubtless say it again)

    We are fortunate to be solving crosswords in the days of Paul

    Many thanks

20. Andrew
    Shouldn’t the underline in 27d be “relative”?

21. Like mrpenny, had lumbAGO but think AGOny is better. Agree with muffin on 27d. Also the Y in TYpically should be upper case in 21a.
    As some others, I thought this was Paul at his best.

22. Once I’d I got Bunthorne (after patiently perusing wikipedia) I remembered the story about the vinegar: my first laugh of the day. And I can’t help wondering if there are more allusions to the setter.The second laugh was for GOBLET, my COD. Distracted me so much that I mixed up the entries for GOBLet and GOBLin, which put paid to any possibility of solving MULTIMEDIA until the check button showed me the error of my ways.

23. Thanks AlanC@3 for highlighting the tribute to BUNTHORNE in SUGAR TONGS. I just wished Paul had stopped at that.
    GOBLET and GOBLIN as Tassie Tim mentioned@13 can’t have been an accident in their prominent position. There’s also TONSIL HOCKEY and the other nasty bits like what’s contained in SUGAR TONGs and the wordplay of STODGY (hard to swallow).
    Another slight amendment to the blog, TOUGH TITTY needs to have the Y capitalised/included in the hidden.
    Paul is known for having a thing about homophones, from things I’ve read, not that I’ve participated in his zoom sessions. He never comes here except for self-promotion, which hasn’t happened recently, so I don’t think he’s necessarily having a lend of us. Just something that entertains him. It amuses me as well.
    Favs PIG-IGNORANT and BABY GRAND.

24. I solved BUNTHORNE from the anagram then looked him up, and realised how little I took in of the amateur production of Patience I saw years ago. I remember Bunthorne, when I did these crosswords as a student, as the setter where I’d be lucky to solve anything. (I stopped solving cryptic crosswords for ages and came back to it around lockdown, probably just before.)

    Another lumbAGO here, and another vote for Paul reading the blogs as we had a discussion a while ago about the cod alphabet, of which there are various versions:
    A for ‘orses
    B for honey
    C for swimming
    D for fishing
    E for lution (evolution)
    F for vescent (effervescent)
    ..
    M for sis (emphasis)
    …
    Q for P
    which I remembered when I solved that clue.

    Thank you to Paul and Andrew.

25. And a belated thank you to Andrew, for your helpful blog, as ever, and a Happy New Year to you as well.

26. nho “having a lend of us” https://australian_slang.en-academic.com/3970/Have_a_lend_of
    ‘take advantage of somebody’s gullibility, have someone on; tease someone: “He’s having a lend of you”‘

27. Harrumph! indeed. I don’t quite know how I managed to stumble my way to loi TULIPS – yet another “how do I parse that one?” – but for whatever reason Paul always seems to give me an encouraging leg up to persevere. Something in his style and cheeky sense of fun. Solving BUNTHORNE early on made me wonder whether we might be in for a parade of Guardian setters, past and present. And took me a while to dredge up from my not very up to date GK the term TONSIL HOCKEY. Several others unparsed, but what fun I found it all this morning. Laughed when I uncovered the NUDIST, thought both PURPLE and the TENNIS PRO excellent…

28. …Paul remains my fave setter, btw, in case you hadn’t guessed…

29. [FrankieG@26. Never knew that having a lend of someone was an Ozism. Thank you for going to the trouble of teaching me something about my own dialect.]

30. I am not a G and S aficionado so I thought Bunthorne was referring to Roz’s admiration of the setter.

31. Thanks Paul for such a good laugh and the reminders of some expressions not heard for ages. Thanks too to Andrew for the blog.
    Happy new year.

32. Thanks for the blog, and the extras from AlanC @3 . BUNTHORNE a legendary setter greatly missed. One week we had Bunthorne, Gemini and Fidelio , how fortunate we were to solve in those days.

33. Entertaining puzzle with lots of Paul’s characteristic touches: ribaldry, loose homophones (fourth wall broken here 🙂 ), ingenious constructions and the occasional weird surface (COVENTRY CITY has both the latter!).

    I enjoyed BUNTHORNE (RIP), SUGAR TONGS, GOBLET, GOBLIN and FIRST PERSON, and gave a sigh of resignation at the sandwich (O tempora, o mores).

    Am I the only one who has never heard the expression TONSIL HOCKEY? It fell out from the crossers, nevertheless.

    Thanks to JH and Andrew

34. [ Thank you Peter@30 , I missed this while I was typing. He was also my most hated setter when I was learning ]

35. [I would add Taupi to the list of great setters of the past]

36. Yet another lumbago trier here.

    Not a massive fan of this setter but enjoyed this one.

    No chance with emphasis gag but rather admire it, now.

    Many thanks, both.

37. Paul at his hardest for me. But still funny, clever and very enjoyable. I’m another who derived 2dn from lumbago. Nice to recall great setters from the past but hugely remiss not to mention Araucaria. Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

38. Didn’t get TULIPS or AGO but otherwise got there and thought it slightly easier than Paul can be.

    Never heard of TONSIL HOCKEY but got it from the crosses.

    Loved PIG-IGNORANT, COVENTRY CITY

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

39. [JerryG @37: Indeed – but Araucaria is the late great whom everyone remembers]

40. [ Jerry@37 I was thinking only of difficulty, Araucaria could be very tricky when he wanted to but also set across the whole range. The other three were uncompromising. Taupi a fine setter , particularly long anagrams, but too easy for my list . ]

41. Given that it’s Paul. my first try at 26 was s=saint=ST +IFFY. I wondered, could even Paul get away with this?
    Bunthorne was the great master of the self-defining long anagram, and had the distinction of being the only setter that the regular fastest solver of Listener, Crossword Club and AZED puzzles (who’s now one of the Guardian’s cryptic setters, along with almost all the other ddaily papers) told me he could not solve.

42. Goblins are not trolls. Goblins are small cowardly humanoids whereas trolls are taller, have more hit dice, and take extra damage from fire.

    Anyway, I’m off for a cappucini, as we apparently don’t bother with singular forms anymore.

43. If I recall correctly, Bunthorne was difficult as he tending to set rather loose clues – hints rather than actual clues in some cases.

44. Could someone pls explain how moralistic = PI in 12d?

45. mcc @44
    Common crossword trick. In everyday usage it is short for “pious”.

46. thanks! I’ve been doing cryptic a little while, there’s still so much I’m not familiar with. Is there a primer of some sort available on these common shortenings?

47. I’m sure there is, but I don’t know of one. Perhaps someone else does?

48. mcc@46 the best way to learn is keep practising, and keep asking, people are always glad to help , we were all beginners once. The Chambers Dictionary is the most common source for this , especially 1 letter abbreviations but does not have everything .

49. Shanne – was about to post about M for sis when I saw yours. However a number of my father’s were different from yours – eg B for mutton, C for thHighlanders, D for mation, G fo’ police … I could go on but will refrain … there are numerous websites with variations but they don’t have P for your mother for Christs’s sake …

50. Thanks Setter and Blogger – very enjoyable. Like many others I find openings very difficult with Paul – but as soon as I have a few crossers the rest go in well; which I think is a perfect crossword (I don’t like lots of easy write-ins with a few NHO obscurities.) I also like his slightly puerile sense of fun.

    Curious what others think; my parents actually used the word pi – but the meaning was pejorative. It was short for pietistic; a synonym for religiose whereas pious was closer to religious

51. Two sessions to completion separated by yet another soggy Devon walk – will no one rid me of this turbulent rain?
    I have a 75 minute elapsed time limit on solving and only came in 6 minutes under. Thus credit to Paul for making the puzzle tricky but not impossible for a medium level solver.
    Managed to crack the parsing of SIS which I was rather smug about. But not HARRUMPH so my pomposity bubble has been burst.

52. An enjoyable puzzle.
    You may be interested to know that the Egyptians had kings, not pharaohs.
    The word ‘pharaoh’ actually means ‘the big house’ and referred to the king’s dwelling. Eventually it came to denote the person himself, in much the same way as we might say ‘Number 10’ or ‘the White House’.
    Thanks Paul!

53. Agree with Matthew@50 that PI is nearly always pejorative and, I suspect, used by many people who have never heard of pietistic. It has been in use for as long as I can remember (nearing 80 years) but seems less frequent these days, perhaps because there are fewer people who openly express piousness or pietism? Though could those who take offence at Paul’s mild vulgarity be accused of being pi? These days, without Araucaria, Bunthorne, et al, Paul is the highlight of my week.

54. Like some others, struggled to get started and I’ve never heard of TONSIL HOCKEY (but then I’m not exactly a teenager any more).

    I liked the powerful cut in HARRUMPH, the well-hidden TOUGH TITTY, the definition for NUDIST, the good anagram for FIRST PERSON, and the surface for TULIPS. I never did fathom out PIG-IGNORANT, and I was another (lumb)AGO. which personally I thought was a better explanation than AGO(ny)>

    Thanks Paul and Andrew.

55. In my crossword utopia 28a would be RHOTIC and the blogger would be loonapick 🙂

    Top ticks for STODGY, PIG IGNORANT & GOBLET

    Cheers P&A

56. I managed OLDIES & NUDIST.

    Impenetrable for me otherwise.

57. @24 Shanne – I haven’t seen this COD stuff before and I cannot understand it. Can you please explain and educate an idiot like me?

58. I didn’t solve AGO and even in retrospect I don’t think much of the clue. It can surely only come from AGOny, as it goes over half way through that word, whereas with lumbago it starts over half way through. If Paul had intended lumbAGO then either ‘back’ is doing double duty without an indication or warning, or ‘pain’ is meant to clue lumbago when agony is a simpler and more accurate alternative. But the fact that several respected solvers still plump for the alternative parsing suggests that it’s not really up to this setter’s usual standard.

    I have problems with STODGY too – not the homophone so much as what the apostrophe S – after a comma – is doing in the surface.

    I enjoyed most of the rest, and AlanC’s reminder @3 about Garton’s vinegar was a nice reminder of an old favourite.

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

59. “Crown jewels on display” – classic Paul!

    Brightened my day. Thanks both.

60. I enjoyed this clever, typically pauline fare, and after solving 10 & 26 I half expected Lady Godiva to appear, but then Rossetti came to mind.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew, and a happy and peaceful new year to all.

61. This was a lot of good cleanish fun. It certainly helped knowing the setter was Paul: when your mind is exploring the enormous search space of possibilites for elements in the clue it certainly helps to have the green light to “go there”. (As opposed to Quiptics or Monday Cryptics, where the opposite is true.)

    BABY GRAND was cute. Another lumbago here.

62. [ragged @42: Panini as a singular (except for the great Sanskrit grammarian 🙂 ) never fails to irritate me. I presume it is because some Italian plurals have been assimilated as singular nouns, such as spaghetti and graffiti, but these are effectively mass nouns. There is no such excuse for ‘one panini’, which is stupid and ignorant. We can cope with concerto and gigolo, after all…..]

63. [Gervase @62
    It reminded me of the clue a week or so ago when it was considered that PASO was a valid shorthand for “paso doble“.]

64. sh @58: See your point but the lumbago solution works slightly differently. Back is still the def, then pain is LUMBAGO, over half way down means you drop L-U-M-B to leave AGO.

65. Gervase @62: I know it rankles, but one simply has to accept that words change meaning when adopted into other languages. Think of the Russian “voksal” meaning railway station, from a specific (Vauxhall Gardens) becoming a generic (pleasure gardens). The only answer is to laugh rather than cry when it’s a lost cause.

    I had a friend who was half-Italian and even taught the language but in the UK he still pronounced the coffee as “laar-tay”, which I can never bring myself to do.

    Thinking of your examples though, when several young “kept men” are together are they gigoli or jiggly? A non-homophone even Paul might baulk at.

66. Steffen @57 these alphabets need to be read as puns. So instead of “A for apple” (or “A for Ancona” to keep Gervase happy!) you get “A for ‘orses” to be read as ” ‘ay (hay) for ‘orses (horses)” in a cockney fashion. So the sentence makes sense but the letters don’t match up. “B for mutton” is really “beef or mutton” – each one is like a mini crossword clue in its own right. Sometimes “for” has to become “fer” or “fur” to work.

    My own contribution is “n for c’est les autres”

67. Took an hour, which isn’t bad going as I only had RESIN after a distracted first 30 minutes. Like muffin, there was a bit too much bung and parse for me and it didn’t help that both 1ac and 2dn are a little weak by Paul’s standards. I enjoyed the customarily funny NUDIST, STODGY and FAROES, and thought TOUGH TITTY a good surface. Thanks Paul for a good Thursday challenge and Andrew for an illuminating blog.

68. [JOFT @65: I’m never going to like the usage, but I accept it and even use it myself, so as not to sound pedantic. But it still seems uncomfortable to order a panini with my cappuccino 🙂 ]

69. mcc@46

    Appendix 1 in Chambers Crossword Manual by Don Manley has a list of common indicators for one, two or three letters. It includes PI for religious. But as he says it is not easy to provide a definitive list.

    It is still a good manual for learners.

    I started to compile my own lists of crossword language soon after starting to learn how to do cryptic crosswords. I find it helpful.

70. William @ 64. Completely agree with your comment. It is a down clue and AGO is over halfway down LUMBAGO.

71. Very Paul today! I was surprised to see TOUGH TITTY in a crossword but a very clever hidden word. I think it might be a little less polite here–I remember Monty Python using it, but I’m pretty sure you can’t say it on broadcast television in the US.

    Needed to look up BUNTHORNE (though I did see Patience a long time ago) and COVENTRY CITY after working out most of the wordplay, and needed the blog to parse the three-letter ones but they were clear from the crossers. STODGY was closer than some Paul homophones! Also particularly liked the clever reversal/envelopes in TULIPS and SUGAR TONGS. Thanks Paul and Andrew!

    [Shanne@24: Two I remember from a cod alphabet I’ve seen are R for mo and P for idious Albion!]

72. Great puzzle although not convinced by STODGY!

73. Those of us who remember the 1940s might like B for your very eyes (Arthur Askey) and O for the wings of a dove (Ernest Lough). And in those days one could P for a penny (in two senses).

74. Thanks Andrew as I couldn’t parse SIS nor PIG IGNORANT despite earlier mistakenly assuming that 25A had to have API in the middle for a while. Made a confident start with TONSIL TENNIS but then had to turn my pencil round when the Sky Blues became clear – thinking back, it might have been “tongue tennis” anyway. I thought TULIPS was excellent and plenty of stretchy challenges and humour on top, thanks Paul – and thanks for some extra GK above from various.

75. In general, the discussion of “lumbagony” has shown the weakness of clues of the type “I’m thinking of a word meaning X, and if you chop an unspecified chunk of it off, you get a word meaning y.” It often happens that more than one X will allow you to solve for Y. In this case, he said “back pain”, so people were already thinking lumbago; even when we realize that “back” has to be the definition, we check and, yeah, lumbago is pain, so it still works. On to the next one…thus not finding the slightly more elegant “agony.”

    So I’m with Sheffield Hatter that it was a sloppy clue.

    And may I gently suggest us pedants start ordering (as I do) “one of the ham and cheese panini.”

76. I can remember B for mutton, E for brick, O for a pint, Q for snooker and W for quits.

77. Paul: ha, I thought. I always find it Very Hard to make headway with Paul … but, if I keep going for, let’s just say, simply ages, I will pretty well finish it. And then I will wonder what was so hard!! And so it was. I like crosswords like that.
    Was a DNF because I could not parse SIS. Having read the blog, I’m surprised you folks could ?. Dodgy!! … which reminds me … actually I too laughed at STODGY, given the frequent complaints ?.
    Absolutely loved HARRUMPH.
    Managed to (eventually) work out TONSIL HOCKEY from the clue – sad to say little innocent here had never heard the phrase!

78. Ragged@42. That made me laugh. What a troll expert!

79. I thought this was Paul at his best, with quite a few clues that made me laugh.

    For what it’s worth, I’m team LUMBAGO, because otherwise I don’t know what to do with “way down”.

    And I actually don’t think that the homophone in 28ac is dodgy (see what I did there?) at all. I have never heard any of you speak, so I would never presume to know how you pronounce anything, but for me, and for many people, a sound like D often turns into a T when it comes right after an unvoiced consonant like an S. (Not sure I’ve got the linguistics terminology right, but I think so.) I suspect that many people who think they don’t do that actually do, but have never noticed.

    Upon solving 25ac, I made a mental note to myself: That means another round of the singular-plural PANINI argument. And so it came to pass.

80. I think there’d have been a major quibblefest if Paul had equated PAIN with LUMBAGO?

81. Ted @79 et al isn’t it just “more than half way down” that tells you how much of AGONY to use?

82. I don’t see any problem equating LUMBAGO with PAIN, and a couple of dictionaries I checked seem to agree. And AGO is more than half of AGONY, but it’s not more than half way down in AGONY. But I could certainly be wrong.

83. 66. Thank you. Interesting

84. Very funny and very clever! Paul on top form again.

    Yes it was a bit of a struggle to get going but that makes it the more rewarding to crack it.

    I laughed out loud at so many answers as I managed to solve them but highlights were GOBLET, COVENTRY CITY, PIG-IGNORANT, TOUGH TITTY (haven’t heard that since school!) and SUGAR TONGS.

    After Araucaria, Bunthorne was my favourite setter back in the day. When you completed one of his, there was a huge sense of achievement! So nice to see the mini tribute here.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

85. sadoldsweat: A for ‘orses; B for mutton; C for thHighlanders; D for mation; E for brick; F for vescence; G fo’ police; H before beauty; I for Novello (or a hole in my bucket); J for oranges; K for royal; L for leather; M for sis; N for cement; O for a muse of fire (or crying out loud); P for your mother for Christ’s sake; Q for chips; R for Askey (or mo); S for Williams (Esther) or we have no bananas; T for two; U for mism; V for la France; W for quits; X for breakfast; Y for onts; Z for Zodiac

86. [Gervase @68. You should feel uncomfortable ordering a panini with a capuccino. It should be ordered with a frapalappamocachinerino]

87. Ted@82. If you stand AGOny up, with the A on top and the Y at the bottom, AGO is precisely ‘over half way down’ the stack of letters. Whereas in lumbAGO it is at the bottom of the stack, which surely Paul would have said if that was how he meant to clue it.

88. Ted @79: P and T are usually aspirated in English, ie with a puff of breath at the end. But they aren’t when preceded by S. That makes them sound more like B and D, which are never aspirated.

89. Real gem from Paul. As usual a fair smattering of smut which is fun. Trying to recall my teenage passion never heard of tonsil hockey but there were other short phrases we used like pocket billiards, rumpty tumpty , deep throat and heavy petting etc. Also as others have said lovely memories of Bob Smithies. I still have the little book which was published after he died of a collection of his best crosswords which of course highlighted much about Gilbert and Sullivan. Thanks for the blog and for a smasher from Mr H.

90. [Crispy @86: You’re probably right. And in any case, ordering a cappuccino after midday is something only barbarians do]

91. [Gervase @90
    It’s a no-no after breakfast!]

92. Thanks, Gervase @88!

93. Haven’t heard TONSIL HOCKEY in many a year. Had no idea what the surface of COVENTRY CITY was meant to mean, but the answer was apparent from the word soup. Lots to like in here and so too many favourites to name, but well worth the three sessions it took me to get to the end. And even then I needed help with quite a few parsings, including both homophones and SUGAR TONGS. Thanks Paul and Andrew.

94. Ticks all the way here with accompanying chuckles. Best for me was GOVE: – crossers in place, I stared at it; it stared at me; this went on for an unreasonable amount of time, then an anvil hit me. And I had to apply all my grinding skills to unravel BUNTHORNE (but the aha! was worth the effort).

    Entertaining fun. What more could one want? Thanks both.

95. [muffin @91: It’s acceptable with a cornetto at a mid-morning break, particularly if ‘breakfast’ was just an espresso, as it is for many working Italians]

96. I thought Paul was being more friendly than usual.
    I didn’t finish, but then I never do.
    I had not heard of TONSIL HOCKEY but guessed from the wordplay.
    Thanks both.

97. I only got round to this at tea-time and had the usual sequence of chuckles and groans.
    Thanks to Andrew for the heavy lifting.
    The usual third-former smut was a bit evident here and one expression was new to me. The horrible “i” at the end of PAGANINI without the “es” on sandwich was a shock.
    “Bunthorne’s Bride” is the alternative title for Patience so, sadly, my mind didn’t turn to past setters. Nonetheless I do enjoy Paul’s sauce.

98. I LOVED this! Worth the entrance fee just for 21/13A!
    Though NUDIST GOBLET, TULIPS, PAGANINI & SIS also had me sniggering.
    Many thanks to Paul & Andrew

99. @68 Gervase what about a cannoli I mean cannolo with your cappuccino? In the US, it is cannoli for any number of the coronary-in-a-plate sweet.

100. Although he was before my time (in terms of my Guardian readership) I understood the fond reference to BUNTHORNE. His fearsome reputation piques the interest – are any of his puzzles available online?

101. Alphalpha
     Try here

102. Thought I’d give Paul another go. Got 3 in and thought about giving up. Returned and got a few more. Then wished I hadn’t bothered. I rarely fail to finish but yet again Paul proved too hard.

103. [Cedric@89: I believe all those come a little later on than TONSIL HOCKEY which is just French kissing!]

104. These cod alphabets are new to me. I was trying to parse 27d as M being head of MI6 (SIS)!

105. Gervase @68. You should give up ordering wanky food and drink. Be content with a chip butty and a pint o’ your best!

106. A tough one with quite a few guesses and write-ins.

     I couldn’t make sense of SIS and looking at Andrew’s parsing, I can see why. Maybe this is ‘Estuary English’ at its Estuariest, but it don’t work for me! Same goes for STODGY. ‘T’ and ‘D’ are not homophonous in my manner of speaking.

     But FAROES (once I got the spelling right) is excellent – that’s a homophone that’s spot-on for me (perhaps not for everyone – do some put a glottal stop into PHARAOHS?).

     I really like AGO – fiendishly clever. And FIRST PERSON – so well hidden a definition. And a plus for TOUGH TITTY – very well hidden. I remember that phrase from Monty Python. And of course there are the twins GOBLET and GOBLIN – though I’m not sure if a goblin is quite the same as a troll – certainly not in either Tolkien’s or Pratchett’s universe. No matter.

     Much more to like here. I’ll forgive Paul his risqué NUDIST – perhaps it ought to be ‘family jewels’ rather than ‘crown’ but – again – no matter.

     Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

107. I should have added that to me., BUNTHORNE (Bob Smithies) was merely one of the most eminent setters of a bygone age. But this lack of GK as to where his sobriquet came from is simply down to my PIG-IGNORANCE. I’m afraid G&S operas are not high on my radar.

108. I guessed at SOCCER as the sport in 9a; I googled it, and thought that was hair-raising, even for Paul. Fortunately the crossers ruled it out.

     I needed help here to parse PIG-IGNORANT, so thanks for that. Don’t know if it was just me, but I thought that this required more than the usual level of GK to solve.

109. I agree with Muffin@16 although in my case I had to reveal the answers and even then found it hard to parse some of them. Never heard of tonsil hockey or Bunthorne but I did get tough titty and several of the other cheeky clues. Again I think hanging around with rugby players helped.

110. ragged @42:

     Thank you! I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one worried about goblins and trolls not being the same thing. I recommend the sixth episode of the first series of The Office, for a comedic manifestation of this worry.

111. Bit tough for me, couldn’t parse a few after revealing answers

     Struggled with how ‘banks’ indicates a hidden word as I was thinking along the lines of banks referring to outer letters. Nice red herring I suppose

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