Guardian Cryptic 29,318 by Boatman “Just desserts”

115 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,318 by Boatman “Just desserts””

1. I stared at the NW quarter for a while without any lighbulb moments, so thought I’d try a different approach. The SE fell into place very quickly. “Ah, cakes, eh? I’ll bet there’ll be one or two doozies.” And there were. CHURRO was unfamiliar, and TUILE wasn’t even in Wikipedia’s rather extensive list of cakes, although I pretty much got it from the wordplay. I’ll overlook the fact that I don’t regard a crepe as a cake; it’s near enough.

   I spent ten minutes looking through Wikipedia’s list of London hospitals (there are a lot, aren’t there?), then decided I wasn’t enjoying it, so gave up solving 3d. Never heard of STRABO either. Far/very much and event/consequence I thought were a bit loose, but no doubt they’re in the revered Chambers. And my knowledge of judo was not sufficient to have heard of DAN.

   Overall very enjoyable, and a mouthwatering theme, thanks Boatman & PeterO.

2. GeoffDownUnder @1
   In reference to 24A CREPE, like you, my first reaction was that it was not a cake – but it is a pancake.

3. I don’t regard pancakes as cakes either, PeterO! Apparently one can make a crêpe cake by stacking crêpes with gooey things between them.

   I realise I’m splitting hairs. 🙂

4. 😀
   Enjoyed both of your posts GDU

5. Thanks Boatman for the delicious puzzle! Thanks PeterO for the yummy blog!
   Loved CAKE STAND (a neat homophone unlikely to be contested, I think), CHURRO, EMAILS (an extended def, I feel. The ? prompts me to say, “No, Huge leap forward!”) and GASTRIC (for the shortcrust).

6. Found this quite hard: STRABO was one of the first in, ironically.

   Still struggling with consequence=event; the example in the blog doesn’t quite do it for me.

   Another one not sure a CREPE is a cake, but the two different uses of shortcrust compensated.

   Thanks

7. A puzzle full of tasty delights! I enjoyed sampling 10a TUILE, 12a CHURRO, 1d DANISH, 5d DONUTS and 22d ECLAIR very much! Fortunately I wasn’t 17a SEASICK nor did I develop 19d GASTRIC symptoms. I also ticked 3d STRABO, 18d STARTING and 23d LOCUST! So much to like here! Many thanks to Boatman for a lot of fun and to PeterO for the blog.

8. Dr. Whatson@6
   In the event (without ‘of’) in the sense of ‘in consequence/as a consequence’ works?
   Still ‘the’ problem persists?
   Agree with you about the ‘shortcrust’. Very nice.

9. I’m a bit unhappy with 10. Tuile and guile don’t rhyme. ‘Tweel’ is roughly how the pastry is pronounced en bon français.
   I wrote in yurla. Yes, it’s a pastry too, Wikipedia says.

10. But YesMe, 10a doesn’t claim to be a rhyme, does it? The “you say” refers to the T.

11. Anyone else write in SCONE for 8 across and think you’ve nailed it?

12. Yes my first one in was SCONE. Not really a cake? Having once worked as a pastrychef I got all the cakes but I needed the blog to explain a couple of parsings. I have never thought of an eclair as a cake but it pops up in crosswords frequently. It’s a pastry made with chou pastry. A St Honore is a cake made with chou. So, yeah I don’t think a crepe is a cake and neither is tuile (biscuit) but I’m not argumentative at all. It’s crosswordland. I was actually disappointed not to see any eccles. Thanks to the Boatman for the fun ride.

13. I’m with GDU. I don’t regard CREPE, DONUTS, CHURRO, or BAKLAVA as cakes either, at least not in terms of usage here in Oz. I did feel that the theme was stretched to the limit in this puzzle.

    And yes Peter @11, I also went for SCONE.

14. This took a while and 3 revisits. I had Cake Stall for a while, even though it doesn’t work and I was thinking canned, a bit slow today. I was wondering about a geographer called O’Strab, but luckily I have heard of STRABO somewhere. It had to be (E)VENT, but I could not justify it. Thanks PeterO for that and the rest of the blog and Boatman for keeping me stumped for ages.

15. @11,12 and13: How does SCONE correlate to hit, it might be the result of a hit, but would really be stretching it surely?

16. He sconed me. Maybe not in the UK but it’s bound to be in Chambers as to strike or flatten.

17. I enjoyed this, realised very quickly it had a theme of cakes or baked goods variously, and was thinking of recipes made in the Great British Bake Off as I went through. I’m not sure they’ve ever made POUND cake, but all the rest have featured at least once. CHURROs, my FOI, were one of the technical challenges, and I’ve seen them on sale in the UK in supermarkets; cold and flabby they don’t appeal.

    I solved bottom up, with the top taking longer, but all done and dusted. I worked through London hospitals in my head to get STRABO.

    Thank you to Boatman and PeterO.

18. I also struggled with event = consequence. It’s not listed as a direct synonym in C, but consequence is listed as a synonym for event in CCD, but not vice-versa. Nicely done puzzle, although I’m waiting for the howls of outrage from the ‘homophone” police. 🙂

19. Dnk the Greek mapper but guessed him via knowing St Bart’s [Uncle Harry did his G&O there]. And nho tuile, needed help, so a dnf. Otherwise quite fun, ta both.

20. The INTENSE ‘in tents’ homophone is worse than most of Paul’s, so I’m also surprised about the lack of complaints TimC@18. My experience seems similar to PeterO’s, with just a couple of the across clues starting with DISPLAYED on the first pass, and then a slow fill from there on in. I blanched a bit at the theme, not being in my sweet (sic) spot. But worked out CHURROS from the wordplay and TUILE was one of my last entries, though DONUTs was the final one in. STRABO brought a smile and was one of my first in. Thanks to Boatman and PeterO.

21. Those Aussies who’ve never heard of tuiles (I’m looking at you gdu @1 and ginf @19 🙂 ) must never have watched any episodes of Masterchef Straya.

    Shanne @17, I’m not sure what UK supermarkets are serving up these days, but churros are deep fried and crisp, not flabby. Eat them hot out of a deep fryer. Here’s an Aussie cook’s recipe.

22. I’m another for whom the nho STRABO was FOI, giving me a much needed foothold. Very much a puzzle of four quarters – the grid is unfriendly with all those underchecked words and just the two lights connecting both top/bottom and left/right. Which eventually left me with stubbornly difficult hangers-on in DONUTS, POUND, ABNORMAL and CREPE. Pound cake is another nho.

    CAKE STAND, SPARSITY, DANISH, IMPURE and LOCUST were my favourites today.

    Thanks Boatman and PeterO

23. You’re right Tim C; cooking shows not my thing, and competitive eliminations even less so.

24. Thank you PeterO for the blog and especially for parsing ABNORMAL… Thanks to Boatman for the puzzle.
    I just wanted to ask shouldn’t 17a, as clued, be “Seasickness”?
    Also, “Produce” seems unnecessary, unless the answer is referring to “vomit” and not “liable to produce vomit”
    After mal, sick and vomit, I feel slightly ill myself now ..

25. Thanks Boatman and PeterO
    I don’t enjoy this sort of puzzle, but I managed to finish without too much difficulty. I didn’t see the NIA part of 20a, and don’t like it much.
    I’ll accept the “homophone” for INTENSE, but why is it “saturated”?
    GASTRIC was a great clue.

26. Having solved only a couple of across clues on first pass, then a few downs, the crossers gave me enough to go back and finish with few pauses and little idea of why I’d found the clues so puzzling at first. To me that’s the sign of a well-written crossword. Look, think, get confused, move on. Come back with a little more help and see exactly what is happening. An exciting score draw between setter and solver.

    OK they are not all cakes and pastry. But then a pastry chef is responsible for a lot more than pastry so I am willing to let the definition slide especially as it reminded me of the only joke I know of in my ancient copy of Chambers:

    “Eclair: a cake, long in shape, but short in duration…”

    GDU@1: “It is a far, far better thing I do now” for “A very much better thing”?

    Bon appetit Boatman and PeterO

27. I’m hungry now. thanks Boatman! I thought that was pretty much a perfect themed crossword. The limit of what is or isn’t a cake/pastry was stretched but it was always going to be. PeterO’s blog was excellent but not needed today as I was aligned to Boatman’s way of thinking.

    Thanks Bmn and PO

28. LOI 10a, I couldn’t get past thinking SLY and GUILE eluded me

29. Tim C @21, I’m another Aussie who is innocent of ever watching a cooking competition show. Or pretty much any other “reality TV” show. The sole exception would be the Japanese version of Iron Chef, which I regard as comedy.

30. Jack@26 that Chambers entry for ECLAIR is still there in the current version and in the app. Most amusing.

    Also…
    panˈcake noun
    A thin flat round cake of eggs, flour, sugar, and milk, fried in a pan
    crêpe noun
    a thin pancake

    QED, a crêpe is a cake.

31. Phew. Pervasive theme and unfriendly grid made this a bit of a struggle, but satisfying to finish.

    Shouldn’t there be some sort of homophones indication in DANISH? Perhaps someone will correct me, but I thought the judo achievement was pronounced dann not dane.

    Many thanks, both.

32. William, methinks you’re looking for homophones where none exists nor was intended.

33. Some forty years ago I had a conversation with the Guardian compiler Custos (Alec Robins) who was complaining about the poor standard of a lot of the Guardian grids. Nothing has changed in that time!

34. Sorry, this wasn’t really to my taste this morning, and had a similar experience to GDU@1 with the NW corner initially. Too many iffy components in that corner. With both STRABO and CHURRO a nho, and a very dodgy homophone in INTENSE, and a Spoonerism involving something I’ve not come across in a tin yet. Haven’t harrumphed in a while, but I did today with a DNF. Though I did think the off topic ATHLETICS an excellent clue. Think I’ll find myself a coffee and croissant now, mildly surprised that this pastry didn’t appear somewhere in the grid.

35. Boatman deserves brownie points for a well-executed theme. Yes some of the clues were choux-ins but overall it hit the sweet spot. That’s enough waffle from me. Top ticks for SEASICK, GASTRIC & INTENSE

    Cheers B&P

36. Now that is what I call a crossword. Not sure I’ve seen a Boatman for a while, but it’s fine to take your time if the outcome is a puzzle with this degree of invention.

    Not desperately difficult, but desperately clever. I did linger long over TUILE, having fixated on beheading sly to produce something ending in -ly, but the rest was fairly steady. Lots of terrific clues. ABNORMAL, CHURRO, VIVIDNESS, all delightful.

    muffin@25: in photography, colour saturation equates to intensity.

    Thanks to Boatman for a delicious breakfast, and to PeterO for the blog.

37. For muffin @25, my take was that intense and saturated can be (near?) synonyms when referring to colour.

38. Well I loved this, my first ever crossword to finish in under an hour. VIVIDNESS, very nice. CHURRO was neat, and DANISH was cute too. Well themed, an Amuse-Bouche. Flour, water, butter, sugar, cakes, pastries, who’s counting. Thanks Boatman, and Peter O

39. Tough and enjoyable, slightly helped by the theme.

    New for me: STRABO, TUILE.

    15d I could only parse A to B = ends of a journey but did not parse the NORMAL bit correctly.

    I agree with Geoff@1 and others re 24ac – for me, a crêpe is not a cake, it’s a thin pancake but I did find this explanation online:
    Pancakes are considered cakes by some people because they contain similar ingredients to cakes and have a leavening agent. At the same time, some people refuse to believe that pancakes are close to cakes because cakes are baked, usually contain vanilla or some flavoring, and are more fluffy. 
    https://getmorsel.com/are-pancakes-considered-cake/

    That said, classic French crêpes do not use a leavening agent (yeast, baking powder, or baking soda).

    Thanks, both.

40. Aren’t pancakes cakes made in a pan? Maybe I’m missing something

41. With regard to the crêpe = cake controversy, if the great Jaffa Cake debate is anything to go by it may be something that is worth litigating, and would certainly exercise the philosophers…

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38985820

42. Like GDU@1 I started in the southeast quarter, though the four-corners grid meant that even completing all of it didn’t help much with the rest. Just about remembered POUND cake and TUILE, and same quibble about EVENT as others.

43. Michelle @39 a Genoise sponge cake doesn’t use a leavening agent either and is definitely a cake!

    I found this my quickest end of week solve for a while, for some reason I had TUILE in mind but wanted to use SLY which held up the NE corner. STRABO was a guess but FOI.

44. [TimC @21 plastic box of CHURROs and smaller container of chocolate dip in the fridge = cold and flabby. Street market food, straight out of the fryer = crisp and warm.]

    POUND cake is pound cake because the original recipes called for a pound of each of the ingredients without raising agents.

45. GDU @32: Not really. I just think that somewhat like a judo master is DANNISH rather than DANISH. No?

46. I really enjoyed this puzzle. For once I was on the setter’s wavelength. Been reading the blogs and comments for ages but have never been brave enough to comment. I would like to know if anyone else parsed 10a as T U (tea you, say) then ILE (wile without the first letter)? Thanks Boatman and Peter.

47. William @31 I think we could look at DANISH as more of a homograph than a homophone. It’s just a bit of fun

48. Consequence or outcome is the original meaning of ‘EVENT’, deriving from the Latin ‘ex’ and ‘venit’ – i.e. to come out of, for example, a previous action. Therefore, when Hamlet in Act IV scene 4 upbraids himself for ‘thinking too precisely on the event’, this links back to his ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy where he argues that the unsearchable consequences of any action lead to inertia or ‘cowardice’.

49. Entertainingly hyperglycaemic puzzle from the sailor boy. When is a cake not a cake was an obvious question in places, but in a restaurant kitchen the dessert department is called the pastry section even if it produces no baked goods. Dough!

    STRABO was first in for me and TUILE the last. INTENSE may be a bit naughty, but it’s a pun that I have heard used often outside Cruciverbia.

    CHURRO, VIVIDNESS, DANISH, ABNORMAL and GASTRIC were my choices from the CAKE STAND.

    Thanks to Boatman and PeterO

50. I am surprised that there are complaints about cakes. They may not be technically all be cakes but, you wouldn’t say “No”, would you?
    This was a very fun challenge. And way hard.

    Felt smug about getting ‘Tuile’ (which I’d never heard of) from the clueing:
    Realising that “Tea” = T and
    “You” = U with a headless “Wile” on the end.
    But not I see I got the “You” wrong. Am lacking in guile.

51. The raising agent in Genoese would be the egg whites which are separated from yolks and whisked to provide aeration and bulk.

52. Definitely not a piece of cake, but rich and yum. Thanks Boatman & PeterO

53. bodycheetah @47: Yes, agreed. It was a teeny quibblet. In no way spoilt the puzzle.

54. I also like that 14 & 17 are linked by ‘rock’ and ‘second rock’

55. Rich @43 and others – in my post @39 I was responding to the quote. I am not of the opinon that a cake must have a leavening agent. Ditto pancakes although some types of pancakes do use a leavening agent. Crêpe is translated to pancake in English but there are certain differences in the ingredients used in pancakes, pikelets, drop scones, crêpes.

    Personally I don’t think of pancakes as cakes but of course they are desserts or sweets and I think that Boatman simply wanted to push his theme of CAKES to the limit. He could just as easily have written the clue as ‘Steal quietly forward to get dessert (5)’.

56. Thanks, PeterO and all – I’m glad to see that the spirit of friendly debate is alive and ready to tackle the weighty issues of the day! I had to think carefully about whether some of the solutions were cakes or pastries, in particular the category-defying crepe, for which Chambers has crepe = “a thin pancake” = “a thin flat round cake … fried in a pan” – definitely a type of cake, in other words. On the other hand, Chambers also has tuile = “a very thin, crisp biscuit …” and goes on to define biscuit = “a small, thin, crisp cake …”. Anyone familiar with the legal battle over the status of Jaffa cakes will know how inflammatory it is to conflate biscuits and cakes, and I couldn’t bring myself to define a tuile as a cake, so it had to be (in the general sense) a pastry.

57. Got there in the end, although I missed the DONUTS. I just gave myself a pat on tne back for remembering the Boatman = I and = AB device for once.
    Thank you both.

58. STRABO was my first in although I didn’t know him
    But did anyone also confidently write PINCH for 24
    Took a while to see the problem as it is THAT close to parsing
    Grid didnt help
    But thanks Boatie and Marie Antoinette

59. I found this fairly straightforward for a Boatman. Very enjoyable. For me it was a much easier solve than yesterday’s Harpo. The only problem is that I’m trying to lose weight and now all I can think of are pastries and cakes (!) With thanks to Boatman and PeterO.

60. Thankyou Boatman and as my children would say FFS what are you all complaining about?

61. Full agree with everything said by Charles@36.

    I also solved TUILE as per Saz@46, before realising what was intended.

    INTENSE is clued here as per the classic dad joke “Did you hear about the fire at the campsite/circus? It was in tents.”

    Anyway, many thanks to Boatman for a terrific puzzle: not intimidatingly difficult but a very well deployed theme with some nice misdirections. Favourites were CHURRO, GASTRIC and VIVIDNESS for the sheer neatness of their construction.

62. Good fun solve with interesting comments about pastries and cakes.

    I liked the canned steak, the surfaces for BAKLAVA and STARTING, the TEMPORAL wordplay, the rock cake making you sick, the good anagram for ATHLETICS, and the pun-ny DANISH.

    Thanks Boatman and PeterO.

63. I enjoyed that immensely – even if it did leave me hungry for cake. Favourites were GASTRIC – I loved the “shortcrust pastry” device, CREPE and the surfaces for ECLAIR and TEMPORAL.

    Sofamore@16 – I couldn’t find “scone” meaning “to hit” in the free online Chambers, but it’s there in the OED as Australian and New Zealand slang. I too had put SCONE in at first. POUND does make much more sense, though.

    Thanks Boatman for a delicious puzzle, and PeterO for the blog

64. Saz@46 (welcome aboard) and McCourtney@60: whatever Boatman originally had in mind, your parsing works as well as the other one, so why not?

65. Thanks to Boatman for the puzzle, and to PeterO for the very helpful blog – I needed you for the NE corner.
    But, Saz@46, I thought your alternative parsing for TUILE was fine too.
    I note from Wiki that Strabo died in 24 AD. Nice that Boatman has marked the anniversary, even though Strabo’s amusingly triangular map of Britain could have done with a couple more sails round the coast.

66. I’m with Charles @36 and nuntius @59, surprisingly approachable puzzle.

    I thought GASTRIC was a great clue.

    Thanks Boatman and PeterO

67. Fun but failed to complete NE. Always frustrating when your last two blanks intersect. Ho hum, never mind.

68. To digress somewhat from the comestibles, yellowcake is the concentrated mixture of uranium oxides resulting from the processing of uranium ores. Definitely contains no raising agents and not advisable to be taken internally 🙂

69. Thanks both,
    I enjoyed this, despite Thursday being a low calorie day.

    Did anyone else put in ‘bake stone’ for 1ac (spoonerised to steak bone)? What kind of a person puts pastries on a cake stand? Very naff.

70. Despite an unfriendly grid, lots of clues to enjoy, with TEMPORAL, ANALYTIC (as mirror images of technique), DONUTS and GASTRIC my favourites. And also ABNORMAL now that I have seen the proper parsing from PeterO; I had mistakenly thought it was a rather loose ‘normal’ for lack of sickness. Thanks Boatman and PeterO

71. Preferred the clues that weren’t force-feeding me sugary pastries: INSIGNIA, EMAILS, ATHLETICS, VIVIDNESS, TEMPORAL, ANALYTIC, ABNORMAL.
    Here‘s one of STRABO’s maps. He does a pretty good Italia and Græcia, but that blob beyond Brettania is supposed to be Ireland. He called it Ierne. It’s
    apparently cold, inhabited by cannibals, has luxuriant herbage, no snakes, and is 500 stadia/stadions from Celtica (Gallia) – so, as Father Ted would say, “far away”.
    [ “Tota Gallia divisa est in tres partes – Wigan, Hunslett, and Hull Kingston Rovers.”]
    Thanks B&PO

72. Didn’t enjoy this. Not everybody is obsessed with cakes and pastries. I’m certainly not. What’s a tuile? What’s a churro?

    And leading off with one of those wretched spoonerisms, the feeblest type of clue.

    Not, to put it politely, for me.

73. Thanks Boatman and PeterO.

    On a personal note, STRABO was my FOI as my wife trained there, and both my children were born there. Next was CHURRO, as we lived in California for 30 years, and they were a delicious sticky comestible.

74. Tyngewick @69: Tell that to the tea rooms at the Savoy and the Ritz, where CAKE STANDs are much in evidence!

75. I thought that The Great British Bake-Off was going to help me with this more than it did, as it turns out I’d heard of all the desserts anyway. Living here in the US, I think of CHURROs as Mexican, though of course they are indeed of Spanish origin. There are vendors that sell churros out of carts in the summertime here, and I used to always make a stop at the churro stand at White Sox games, before cardiovascular problems forced me to ration my fried-food intake. I also stopped going to games as much, so I can’t claim it’s just that. (They also have an elote stand at the ballpark that I sorely miss patronizing, if you prefer your Mexican street food savory rather than sweet.)

    I thought of BUNDT for POUND, but then the hit is spelled “bunt”, so we’d have needed a homophone indicator. But speaking of homophones, the one that WAS here reminded me of this terrible joke someone saddled me with a while ago: “You don’t run through a campground. You ran, because it’s past tents.”

76. Thanks Boatman for an inventive crossword. It wasn’t quite a cakewalk for me but I got there eventually except for TUILE. My top picks were CHURRO, INTENSE, GASTRIC, LOCUST, TEMPORAL, and ANALYTIC, the latter two for the letter selection devices in the wordplay. Thanks PeterO for the blog.

77. Clyde @65 – That’s a fine biographical coincidence about the year of Strabo’s death, which I’d missed. I’m more used to people dying after I mention them in a clue rather than 2,000 before.

78. [mrpenny @75: INTENSE brought to mind this terrible joke: A patient tells his psychiatrist that he repeatedly dreams about a tepee and a yurt. His psychiatrist says to him, ‘you’re too tense’.]

79. Very tasty once I`d given up looking for leaping things.
    Naughty but nice.
    Thanks B@P

80. Great to see a Boatman today, it seems to have been a while. I found this difficult to get started but was rewarded with patience and several returns to the grid. DNF thanks to donuts and tuile but accept that both fall into a wider def of cakes. Overall, very enjoyable. Thanks B and PeterO.

81. SAZ – yes I reached the answer TUILE the same way. Tea you say. Becomes T and U. Cunning is WILE minus the W.

82. Saz @46 & Jan @81 – That seems to be an equally good way to get to the solution and arguably makes even more efficient use of the words in the clue, though it’s the parsing that PeterO deduced that I had in mind. I don’t know enough about old French and old English to be certain, but it looks as though “guile” and “wile” have a common root in old German, so it’s not entirely coincidental that they both work, though it’s a surprise to me that I wrote a clue that so perfectly compensated for the different letters!

    Mandarin @61 & Tony S @78 – There are even worse (and very rude) jokes on the same theme. I felt comfortable using the terrible not-really-a-homophone largely because we’ve all heard one variant or another.

83. I don’t usually enjoy Boatman’s puzzles, and this was no exception. Never heard of ‘tuile’ in this context, or ‘churro’. I guessed the latter correctly, but not the former, where I opted for ‘tuily’. Much too much looseness in the definitions for my taste but, as always, I am happy for those who enjoyed the puzzle.

84. I really enjoyed this – even though I had 6 left unsolved (yeah, STRABO was one of those). It was just light hearted fun.

    I’m not normally one to complain about homophones and it’s scary to do so here – but really??!! Nia/near and intense/in tents? Dire! But it’s crossword land, and so I don’t care.

    Pancake-cakes shook me for a moment … then I also thought pancakes are clearly cakes made in a pan, given the word 🙂 (bodycheetah @40)

85. On the one hand I found this a most enjoyable puzzle. On the overhand given that I’m currently in a hospital bed nil by mouth it was most painful.

86. I noticed the heading Just Desserts. Peter O did you make this addition because it doesn’t appear in the printed Grauniad? As usual from Mr K some excellent cluing.

87. Gervase @74. You rather make my point. I knew it would tease someone. How do you do?

88. Cedric @86 – The Graun doesn’t give titles to its puzzles, so the heading here is the invention of PeterO. I do have working titles for my puzzles (this one is listed in my notes rather prosaically as “Pastries”) which may or may not become their final title when they’re republished in book form. There’s a puzzle in my first book and available online here that I called simply “Puddings”, but which would have been a better fit for the Just Desserts title.

89. Picking up Boatman’s comment about guile and wile, it is generally the case that the ‘W…’ variant of these words came into the language from Norman French post-1066 while the ‘Gu…” variants were borrowed from central French at a later date. By the late 14thC these two variants of French provide Chaucer with his remark about the Prioress that “Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, / After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, / For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe.’

    Other w/g variants in English, besides ‘guile’ and ‘wile’, are ‘warranty’ and ‘guarantee’ and ‘warden’ and ‘guardian’.

90. Thanks for the blog, I do not like the sticklebrick grids and this had many odd numbered entries but maybe it was needed for all the theme words. I hope Noel Edmonds hasn’t seen it .
    Good set of clues and the classic double Boatman, fortunately BARTS is the first London hospital I think of.
    I had TUILE the same as Saz @46 , in fact it helped me with the U and I would say that “you” is not needed in the clue otherwise.

91. Tony @78: 🙂

    Re me @75: is bunting (or some equivalent) a thing in cricket? In baseball, a bunt is where the batter deliberately hits a very short ball when a deep hit is expected (by grabbing the barrel of the bat with his off hand and just barely doinking the ball), and then scampers to first base while the fielders try to adjust. Based on what I’ve seen of the game, I can imagine an analogous tactic in cricket, though not an analogous technique.

92. I love it when solvers make their own assumptions about a puzzle (theme or device) and then complain when the solution doesn’t conform to their assumptions. Two examples today:

    1. People assume that the theme is cakes (not cakes & pastries, or desserts, or sweet things) and then complain that an eclair isn’t a cake.

    2. People assume that a clue is a homophone instead of a pun or other aural wordplay, and then complain that ‘intense’ doesn’t sound exactly the same as ‘in tents’.

    I find Spoonerisms to be often the most difficult type of clue, but they almost always generate a laugh when I either get them or see the solution in the blog, so I cannot complain about them. This one made the puzzle a DNF for me, but I liked it anyway.

    Thanks, Boatman for the Steinbeck moment (Sweet Thursday) and PeterO for the excellent blog.

93. Thanks PeterO, and Saz@40 I started off with TU… but couldn’t think of a suitable 4 letter word ending ILE so gave up on that when gUILE popped into my head, I like your version more, somehow. For my part, ended up googling TABUUS to see if it was an obscure transatlantic concoction for 5D, and when the light bulb pinged there I had to google NOONE cakes for 8A before finally getting there. AidaN@85 my sympathy and hope you are soon able to again enjoy the various treats shown here. Spooner@85 thank you for your educational notes. Boatman thanks for a lot of fun, memories of cake (mr penney i will see your White Sox churro and raise you various delights from the Ladies Pavilion at New Road) and some top clues.

94. cellomaniac@92: hear, hear. The cakes were probably stale, anyway…

95. Roz@90, interested to know more of “sticklebrick” and “Noel Edmonds”.
    I did note that this grid has four 5 letter solutions each with only two crossing lights; four 7 letter solutions each with only three crossers; and four 9 letter solutions with only four crossers. Is this the “sticklebrick” reference?

96. [S’s c@89: True enough about the origin of these w/gu doublets, but the words are originally Germanic, coming into French dialects through Frankish, so the w forms are closer to the original.

    Is that so about the Prioress’s ‘Stratford atte Bowe’ language? I have always thought it Chaucer’s gibe at her pretentious bad French]

97. Charles @36 & cellomaniac @92 nail it for me. Themes are tight or loose, who cares. Slight typo in your parsing of GASTRIC, PeterO, if I may. You have ‘crusi’ which had me confused for a wee while.

    Ta both.

98. Don’t eat cakes, so a bit at sea with this.
    Thanks both

99. Try wordhippo for synonyms – life changing.

100. Failed to get DONUTS and POUND. Shame on me for the former, but the latter was caused by the extraneous “a” in the clue. POUND =/= “a hit”. Managed to suss out the rest, despite the very different patisserie terminology across the pond.

     I had KANISH (alternate spelling of “knish”) for 1 down — KAN means “school” and not really “master”, but then “dan” means “level”, not “master”.

101. Saz @46, I also parsed TUILE as T + U + [w]ILE, having started by thinking that “cunning, missing topping” might be [w]ILY.

102. It was fun even though I failed to answer five clues. I thought the theme was pastries, not cakes, so Tuile was the only one of those that eluded me. Thanks for the parsings Peter O, and Boatman, in future I’ll remember that you’re an Able Seaman.

103. Great fun as always from Boatman and also thanks to PeterO for the blog.

     A propos CAKE STAND Boatman almost invariably includes a spoonerism in his offerings. It’s nearly as characteristic as his self-references. To those who decry them I would say try and think of one; Boatman concocts dozens and dozens. And, for me, the more tortuous the more fun.

104. I worked hard on this in the morning, leaving three. Then a nice colonoscopy in the afternoon, a little nap, and those three just jumped out at me (7A, 3D, 4D), and am now going to bed happy. Never checked or looked anything up. I feel somehow cleansed. It seems I have arrived.

105. big@104, that was a rather drastic measure to take just to solve those last three clues. I’m glad it all came out in the end for you. Happy dreams.

106. big above:
     I`m sure your colonoscopist was glad too. ;0)
     (Had too many to keep count, so feel qualified to comment. All OK now. Hope the same for you.)

107. Took me ages to finish. Is there a recommended amount of time?

108. Bart’s is the only London hospital I can name. It’s where Holmes met Watson, and also where my Dad did some work a long time ago. But I didn’t remember Strabo (although no doubt I’ve heard of him at some point), so it took ages to get this one.

     I found this a very difficult puzzle, with a few definitions and constructions that struck me as loose, but enjoyable nonetheless.

109. The overall theme was sufficiently broadly patiesserie-oriented (much use of ‘pastry’ in the cluing) that I was happy with the slightly stretchy definitions.

     I’m with you Copster, I hypothesised PINCH from the wordplay and felt quite chuffed when I found it existed.

     I knew CAKE STAND had to be the answer to the Spooner, but the construct seems a bit out of sync – ‘steak canned’ feels the wrong way round for ‘tinned meat’.

     Boatman’s puzzles may be at the tricky end of the Guardian spectrum but they are always worth the wait.

110. mrpenney @91 in cricket, if there are no fielders particularly near the stumps, it’s perfectly possible for the batsman to gently block the ball so that it drops at his feet, and take a run. It’s not referred to as a bunt, however.

111. First puzzle I’ve completed for weeks so I’d put this at the easy end of the scale. Always like boatman’s puzzles.

112. Tyngewick @ 69. Yes, I fear so! 5D and 10A beyond me as well.

113. Very late, forgot to post this. Somebody may read it.

     I’ve always thought of CHURROs as Mexican, but they may well have come from Spain.

     Well, now I know what fairy cakes are. I knew they were something that English people eat, which was enough to fill in the answer. This morning several googles told me several things, and apparently they’re sort of cupcakes only different. Okay.

     I’m sure mrpenney will join me in saying that’s not how WE spell “doughnuts.”

     Never thought of “from A to B.” Is “mal” a word in English? should have been some sort of indicator.

     TimC@21 This American has not only heard of tuiles but made them, though I call them cookies rather than biscuit. (US term dating, like many words of Dutch origin, from when New York was a Dutch colony called Nieuw Amsterdam.)

     Thanks, Boatman and PeterO.

114. Interesting – about the wile/guile comparison arising from alternate parsing (from saz et al), which I appreciate, though I went with Boatman’s attention

     Very enjoyable – and more accessible than some of Boatman’s earlier compilations. I saved this as I’d thought it might be a longer solve ….

115. A bit late to the party on this, I know. But perhaps Jack of All Trades (26 above) should look up mullet in his ancient copy of Chambers.

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