Guardian Cryptic 29,415 by Fed

87 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,415 by Fed”

1. SWEEPSTAKE
   I don’t know much about the sport of rowing. It seems there is a type of rowing known as SWEEP rowing.
   9 potentially is STEAK -called-STAKE

2. Chambers gives SWEEP as a verb meaning
   ‘to row with sweeps’.
   And as a noun meaning ‘a long oar’.

3. Sweep rowing is the normal sort of team rowing with one oar per person, as opposed to sculling with a pair of oars.

4. EASY MONEY (my take)
   Def 1 (cryptic): A walk in the park means (income)
   Def 2: A healthy RETURN without much exertion.

   Thanks Fed and PeterO!

5. Finished this, but couldn’t parse quite a few..
   Missed “Mother = Bear” and “Ten = Attractive” in 10a
   Was unaware what Tedding was…
   “Noisily” and “Cleanse” were absolute mysteries to me, would never have been able to parse them.
   Couldn’t parse 13d, (Thank you to KVa)
   Used to 2 P’s for “Peperoni”
   Didn’t know a ship’s doctor was called a Surgeon specifically…
   This was one of those times, I finish a puzzle successfully but still feel I really didn’t finish it at all…
   Thank you to Fed and PeterO

6. Sorry, forgot, thank you to Fed and PeterO

7. Ditto TPS @5 re noisily and cleanse, just bunged ’em in. If I’d bothered, No 1 si[l]ly would’ve clicked, Le [M]ans inside [ra]ce probably not (into cricket, bored by brrm brrms]. Knew about sweep ss the oar, but not that it defined that type of rowing, thanks Flavia @3. And thanks Fed & Peter.

8. The multitude of long clues (3 or more lines when rendered on my tablet) are kind of like Paul’s multiple cross-references: you sigh when you first encounter them since you know they are best solved with crossers in place – and you hope the remaining clues are fertile enough for that to happen. But as with yesterday, it did happen.

   Talking of yesterday, that was when DISOWN was drop; today it is deny.

   I solved NOISILY, not understanding why to drop the L. Even with the blog, I still don’t – why is the middle letter the focus? Seems to be a bit of a mixed metaphor.

   Another one favouring a third P in the topping.

   Thanks

9. … did wonder about mother = bear. Bear a child, then mother it …?

10. I also took EASY MONEY as a double definition and parsed SWEEPSTAKE as per KvA @1,2
    Favourite for me was the nicely disguised substitution in IMPRESSIVE, which it was.

11. 15d EASY MONEY: “A walk in the park” = EASY; means = MONEY; “a healthy 1d RETURN without much exertion” is the definition.

12. Thanks Fed. This was gentler than I usually find Fed/Bluth but I felt it was every bit as good as the more challenging fare. My top picks were RADICAL, SERF, CLEANSE, DROOPY, PATHETIC, PEPERONI, DISOWN (nice misdirection), and WI-FI. I couldn’t parse 14/18, (a write-in from the definition) and NOISILY. Thanks PeterO for the blog.

13. I imagine14, 18 was Fed’s first entry in the compilation, so I would have expected a better clue than this. As it was, I got it from the enumeration after checking MAKE was the first word, and I had no idea about the parsing. Several others I couldn’t fathom, either (MOTH-EATEN, ALOFT, NOISILY, CLEANSE, SWEEPSTAKE).

    I did like DISOWN for its misdirection.

    I think there was some discussion about MOTHER not too long ago.

    Thanks PeterO and Fed

    And so back to bed.

14. oed.com ‘SWEEP, n. V.28. 1801– A long oar used to propel a ship, barge, etc. when becalmed, or to assist the work of steering.’ and ‘SWEEP, v.. I.12. 1799– intransitive and transitive. [< sweep n. V.28] To row, or to propel (a vessel), with sweeps or large oars. Also intransitive of the vessel. ? Obsolete.
    PEPPERONI borrowed from Italian and misspelt with 2 Ps

15. Madness’s It Must Be Love (1981 – can’t believe it’s 43 years ago)

16. Labi Siffre’s It Must Be Love (1971 – can’t believe it’s 53 years ago)

17. ‘awaiting moderation’ @14 – “…PEPPERONI was borrowed from Italian and misspelt with 3 Ps.”

18. Re PEPERONI, I found a site https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipe/snacks-sides/peperoni-10569/ that said it is the Italian for a preserved red capsicum (“not to be confused with pepperoni”). The only one I couldn’t parse properly was the long one – I could see parts of it but couldn’t be bothered teasing out the rest – and that meaning of “ted” would have escaped me. Nice anagram for WATER TAXI. Thanks, Fed and PeterO.

19. Strewth – nho ‘tedding’ which sounds as if it should be an innocent word with a dark meaning: I’m afraid I rarely attempt to parse and construct that sort of long clue. Like some others here, I await crossers and then it tends to go in from those, enumeration and the def. Then I can back parse. But not today.

    It wasn’t Fed at his most tricky which suits me fine. Everything fell into place bar PEPERONI which is new to me and, yes, I fell into the trap of thinking it to be the spicy meat pizza topping. WHOPPER, ALOFT, NOISILY, CLEANSE, DROOPY, CHELSEA BUN and the nicely spotted SETTEE are my ticks. Once again, Fed brings in some nice popular cultural references; I do wonder if he has spent days going through lists of artists and entertainers, together with their works, testing them for anagrams, acrostics, reversals etc … If so, time well spent!

    Thanks Fed and PeterO

20. There were some good clues but too many that I got through crossers and found painful to parse in retrospect. I ended up revealing a couple because I wasn’t enjoying it overall and not a good use of my time. Sometimes I like Fed, sometimes I don’t. To my shame, as an ex rower, I had never heard of sweep rowing, we differentiated by using sculling where the oars(wo)man has two oars and just plain rowing where they have one. Conversely, ted is a term I am familiar with as I am surrounded by farms that do it. Like others, I couldn’t be bothered parsing the whole thing. I had a few crossers, put it in and thought it must be right because of the words ted and sun.

21. Got all the words in correctly, didn’t parse everything and several I should have – I do know tedding hay having made hay by hand, and I’ve dusted a Le Mans trophy enough times to know about that one – my father raced the 24 hours back in the day (it was when Brands Hatch was still raced, because I’ve been told I’ve been taken on the victory lap there and Silverstone, very, very small).

    Postmark@18, I suspect Fed gets to hang around sets and back stage and plays with words as they occur to him.

    Thank you to Fed and PeterO

22. PostMark @18, apparently that meaning of Ted according to Chambers comes from the OE (Old English) tedden, related to the Icelandic ‘tethja’ (to manure). I only dredged it from the depths of my subconscious where it had been lodged by battling through Azed every week for the last few years. 🙂 I thought it was a neat clue to fit in “Ted Talks”.

23. Doing old American crosswords should have tipped me to TED (a staple of grid-packers much like ALEE, RET, and ANOA.) Although I solved it mostly OK, some parsings were missed and seemed inelegant when explained, and a red flag on PEPERONI which as a vegetable is surely a much rarer pizza topping than the sausage! The long one didn’t impress me but REEF did.

24. Thank you TassieTim @17, NHO of that kind of peperoni (neither has my spellchecker, as it just tried to double the second ‘p’). With that meaning, it is a less obvious pizza topping.
    Thank you Fed and PeterO.

25. Many thanks to Fed and PeterO. I am another who has NHO tedding, so only half parsed that. Also struggled with Noisily. I parsed EASY MONEY the same way as FrankieG @11. It was one of my favourites. Others were IMPRESSIVE and CLEANSE. Many thanks to FG for two lovely earworms of the same song – it must be the weekend, and the sun is shining, so off to make hay ☀️…

26. I didn’t get on very well with this: far too many where it looked as if it must be xxxxx but took forever to work out why (though I was wrong about EASY PEASY).
    Didn’t get A TEN=attractive and gave up on PEPERONI – obviously I don’t spend enough time eating pizza or rating my fellow humans for their hotness or otherwise. I thought it had a double P: didn’t realise the one-p version was a different meaning, not just an alternative spelling (did Fed?)

    I’m with PostMark and Dr WhatsOn on the long laborious clues: I can usually get them from def/crossers/enumeration and the rest is too much like hard work.

    Nice anagrams for WATER TAXI and CHELSEA BUN, and I liked SETTEE and PA-THE-TIC, and the cross reference that wasn’t for DISOWN.

27. Thanks Fed and PeterO
    Easier to fill in the answers than parse them – several remained unparsed. I didn’t even attempt to parse the long one, as the definition and enumeration were sufficient to give the answer.
    Why is “signal” MOTION?
    I knew that a SURGEON was a ship’s doctor, but lots of surgeons aren’t, so why was “ship’s” needed?
    Favourite DISOWN for me too.

28. muffin: from the first verbal def of motion in Chambers, To direct or indicate by a gesture?

29. Thanks PostMark

30. muffin – the example I had in mind when solving might be slightly dated usage but one might signal/motion a waiter across to one’s table?

31. Not as intimidating as Fed usually is, but still a worthy challenge. Thanks to setter and blogger.

32. I biffed in MAKE HAY … and promised myself I’d come back and parse it later. I lied 🙂

    Top ticks for DISOWN, NOISILY, and IMPRESSIVE which was, er, impressive

    Did wonder if there might be an SNP theme with (Nicola) STURGEON, WHOPPER, EASY MONEY, MAKE HAY etc.

    Cheers P&F

33. Thanks to Fed and PeterO. I had a good time with this one. My favourites have been well-canvassed already. I agree that 19d’s use of “1 down’s” as an anagram was a clever trick. Like some other contributors, I didn’t actually get the parse for MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES at 14 and 18 across (lazy solver here), but I still appreciated it despite being somewhat distracted by the thought of taking a bull by the horns. However the enumeration just didn’t work!! I did need the blog to see the SALON fodder for 26a ALOFT, as well as a few other wordplays.

34. Thanks PeterO, for your blog, and well done for parsing MHWTSS. I don’t think anyone else so far persevered with it, as I didn’t. Others have clarified some of my remaining queries, or confirmed my guesses, which was nice.

    My picks are CLEANSE, WI-FI, and DISOWN.

35. Many of the clues had clever misdirections, lovely wordplay and wit. Unfortunately, before one started breaking down the clue, the solution would pop up; as the words were easy to guess. This sadly took away the shine from the hard, clever work of the setter in constructing the clues. Thanks Fed and PeterO

36. Having read the G comments this morning first, I thought this was going to be a tough challenge, but it all fell in surprisingly quickly. I parsed EASY MONEY as FrankieG. WATER TAXI and SETTEE were great spots as others have noted. Thanks for explaining SWEEPSTAKE and tedding. Two great versions of the same song and what great memories you must have Shanne @21. Enjoy your tedding Pauline in Brum 🌞

    Ta Fed & PeterO.

37. …and I can’t resist this earworm for the lovely clue REEF

    https://youtu.be/bihoNRc8GDQ?si=Im7vSpyPhrZuID-f

38. IMPRESSIVE, ALOFT, NOISILY all needed Peter O’s explanations once I had solved what was for me a fairly straightforward Fed in the early hours today. Oh, and last one in, PEPERONI, too. The only pizza topping that fitted with all four crossers snugly in place. Actually, come to think of it, MOTH-EATEN was
    another parsing that had me scratching my head…

39. Thanks Fed and PeterO, especially for MAKE HAY which like others I failed to parse.
    I parsed EASY MONEY like FrankieG@11
    I thought of PEPERONI as an alternative spelling.
    ‘No.1 silly point’ losing focus gave me noisilly!
    And the Madness clue was delightfully bonkers!

40. Thanks PeterO. Thanks all.

    FrankieG @11 has my intended parsing for 15d.
    EASY (a walk in the park) + MONEY (means) = a healthy return without much exertion

    grantinfreo @9: I’m not pretending I’ve ever used the word in this way, but FWIW, Chambers has
    Mother: 1: to give birth to

    Regarding PEP[p]ERONI – Chambers offers both spellings – and in my experience Pizza menus are split on which is favourite also.

    muffin @27 – the original clue did just say ‘doctor’ rather than ‘ship’s doctor’ but I was advised that it would yield complaints as people habitually complain if ‘doctor’ is used for ‘surgeon’. I think it’s a bit of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t situation, but in the end I decided that adding ‘ship’s’ was fairest as it is unequivocal.

    The ‘surgeons aren’t doctors, actually’ people might raise a point of debate… but a ship’s doctor is fairly and squarely a surgeon.

    Cheers.

41. Much to dislike here I’m afraid. MOTHE[r}=’bear’ I can’t understand. Is there a sentence where one could directly substitute for the other? I’ve become inured to the frequent cricket references in crosswords, but having to guess the name of a position as being close to the batsman is too GK for me. PEPERONI, which I am familiar with) is not a pizza topping, as has been pointed out. The long linked entries are too tortured to be parsed before seeing the answer from crossers, and after seeing it I’m not sure who can be bothered aside from our luckless blogger.

42. Thanks Fed for explaining STURGEON. Funnily enough I just googled ‘are surgeons doctors’? And it seems clear that surgeons have to qualify as doctors first before specialising, and then being referred to as Mr.

43. Thanks for dropping by, Fed, and for the clarifications.

    A lot of entertainment here, although finding the solutions was often much easier than parsing them – I failed totally on MAKE HAY… which went in from the enumeration and just two crossers (good to see a long phrasal solution on two adjacent lights – Paul, please note 🙂 ).

    I’ll second gladys’s choices @26. I did consult Chambers to confirm that PEPERONI was an alternative spelling for the spicy sausage. Thankfully the ‘topping’ wasn’t pineapple…. TassieTim @18: ‘peperoni’ (the word is plural, of course) is the standard Italian for sweet (bell) peppers, whether raw or prepared. The smaller hot chilis are known as ‘peperoncini’ (etymologically ‘little big peppers’, the contradictory opposite of ‘panettone’ – ‘big little bread’).

    Thanks to Fed and PeterO

44. A few too many went in from the definition and enumeration, but there was still plenty of fun to be had with the parsing afterwards (and to check the guess was right). Nothing wrong with solving that way, but it just seemed I was on the right wavelength for once. I recall struggling with early Feds and really not getting his style, but now I find we have probably met somewhere in the middle and I am very happy to see his name at the top of the page.

    Peperoni may be unfamiliar but another option (which may help recall the spelling) is peperoncini, which are chilli peppers. This is found both on pizzas and the simple but delicious pasta aglio, olio e peperoncini (pasta with garlic, olive oil and chilli). Pepperoni appears to be a 20th century American invention (by Italian immigrants) as it is not one of the traditional Italian sausages. [Apologies – overlapped with the much more Italian-informed Gervase]

    I liked “Chelsea Bun” for the clever use of “looks sweet” which fits the surface so nicely and the bun itself is heavily sugar glazed, so does not just taste sweet but really looks the part.

    Anyway, I really enjoyed this – fun wordplay and definitions. Thank you Fed and PeterO.

45. Thanks for clarifying “surgeon”, Fed.

46. poc @41: just a thought, if a man can father children, it does seem logical that a woman might mother them. Not a construction I would ever use – though the first is commonplace, the second feels very odd. But it would make some sense and, yes, it has dictionary support.

47. Oh and on doctor vs surgeon – it reminded me of the fact that what we call “the surgeon fish”, the Germans call “der Doktorfisch” rather than “der Chirurgfisch”. In English it is named for a scalpel-like spine at the rear so definitely more surgeon than doctor.

48. AlanC @36 – I don’t remember the victory laps, just seen photos, far too young. Earliest memory of Silverstone was silence for possibly John Taylor after he was killed at Nuremberg, but we stopped going around then, were far more involved in sailing.

49. I was not really on the setter’s wavelength today. I solved but did not parse 1ac or 14/18 – solved it via the letter count and the crossers I had. Never heard of make hay = ted. Also did not parse 26ac, 13d. It was easy enough to guess the answers but I couldn’t see how to parse them.

    New for me: goalkeeper is usually assigned the number 1 shirt (for 27ac) – obviously I know nothing about soccer!

    I also parsed EASY MONEY as a dd.

    Thanks, both.

50. I had “retort” for 1d which seems to work equally as well as “return”. Lovely crossword as was Paul’s yesterday.

51. poc @41 For sentences using mother in this sense, I can offer you “They likely each mothered a litter of pups every year of their young lives.”, “She also mothered a litter of puppies, who now work for the sheriff’s office” or, my favourite, “Lord Emsworth’s favourite female not only mothered a litter of outlandish plots but has recently lent her imperial title to a Hampshire pub.”

52. I really enjoyed this one. Thanks Fed. And thanks PeterO for the blogpost because I needed you for a couple of the parsings – including 13d though like others didn’t worry about parsing 14/18.

    With Fed more than others I seem to get words from the definition and one or two crossers and then backfill parsing, which means I get the pleasure of the initial “aha” and the satisfaction of resolving the parsing. Maybe I’m on Fed’s frequency for the definitional misdirection.

    How do human brains get to set the Madness clue? Very tickling. Also liked DISOWN.

53. I appreciate the explanations for all those words or parts of words I couldn’t parse, MHWTSS, NOISILY, ALOFT, MOTH EATEN. They make sense now, of course.
    I did get the Le Mans connection and knew about sweep from my surf-boat rowing brother. I took Peperoni to be just an alternative spelling.
    I liked WHOPPER, IMPRESSIVE, REEF, PEPERONI, DISOWN, CLEANSE.
    Thanks to Fed and PeterO – and thanks for dropping in Fed.

54. Slow start on this but struggled through to the end with several unparsed. Bunged in HAY and now glad I didn’t spend too long trying to parse it. Ted FFS?
    Just glad to have finished after not bothering with Paul yesterday.

55. TrickTrev @50 — I had retort for as well, but wondered about the parsing and the connection to EASY MONEY. Eventually landed on RETURN as my last one in.

56. I thought the MOTHER bear was the middle one of three (but, if so, there should have been a question mark.)
    If a toy bear is stuffed with straw, is it TEDDED ?

57. Generally followed others by BIFD (bunged in from definition) and later parsed – not SWEEPSTAKE or MHWTSS though, where I DNK the clever Ted which was positioned nicely next to Talk.

    I liked the CHELSEA BUN anagram and wordplays for RADICAL, IMPRESSIVE, NOISILY and DISOWN.

    Thanks Fed (not Ted) and PeterO.

58. That started slowly, then finished all at once. Like several others I left the long one unparsed. Sometimes the game is not worth the candle.

    Favorites were 19D for the misdirection, and 20D for the very clever surface.

59. Very enjoyable. Favourites were 22ac and 27ac and 28ac. NHO of ted in reference to making hay. Still none the wiser re 13 down. Thanks very much to Fed for puzzle and clarifications and to PeterO. Glorious day here on the IOW and the festival has started so I’m sure they will all have a baking day while the sun shines.

60. Clunky. I’m impressed by those who bothered to do more than chuck in a plausible answer and move on. Backsolving is an activity for which I have little time, especially when the result is “Oh. OK.”

61. Took me longer than usual although I enjoyed it. LOI PEPERONI!

62. The Guardian Crossword is bang up to the minute. Looking out of the window as we finished, we saw the farmer drive his tractor into the field below us pulling the raised ‘tedders’. These were then lowered and pulled across the field to tedder up the grass that was cut a couple of days ago into single piles ready for the baler tomorrow and the sun is shining too.

63. TheGreatArturo @60 – If I solve a queue from the definition in the early stages (i.e. no or hardly any crossers), I always make the effort to work out the wordplay, because it is usually difficult to be certain there aren’t other answers. Sometimes I am satisfied if I can see at least one part of the wordplay. Later on, I generally trust the crossers to be enough to confirm the answer and only do more if I have time to spare.
    I know that some solvers feel that if you haven’t fully parsed every clue you haven’t properly finished the crossword.

64. EASY MONEY
    (me@4, Tim C@10 and michelle@49. There may be others who thought like we did.)
    The setter has spoken. So the intended parsing is quite clear. I wanted
    to share what I thought:
    ‘A walk in the park’ is a nounal phrase and ‘EASY’ is an adjective. If we take the ‘A walk
    in the park means’ as one unit/block that could lead to EASY MONEY in a cryptic way.
    I want to be educated if this is proper English (what I have assumed). Like…can you say,
    “It was a walk in the park game.” to mean that it was an easy game?

65. I vaguely knew that “silly” was cricket for something, but no idea what. How do you lose the A from “impassive” to make IMPRESSIVE? No idea that a ship’s doctor was a SURGEON. all I knew was that Gulliver was one.

    Thanks, Fed and PeterO.

66. Loved this crossword. I initially thought 22a was miscrypted(?!) but then realised it was an excellent clue. Loved the misdirection in 19 and 20 was wonderful.
    Thanks Fed for a brilliant bit of fun!

67. IMPRESSIVE
    (Attn Valentine@65)
    PeterO has explained it in the blog. Repeating it in a way:
    ‘made A case for resistance’=Made ‘A’ RE=Converted A into RE (replaced A with RE).

68. KVa @64: interesting question. You would say ‘The game was easy/a walk in the park’, I think, but not the way that you have posed it in your query.

69. KVa @64 you wouldn’t say “it was a walk in the park game”, no. But you might say, “that game was a walk in the park” to mean “that game was easy”.

70. EASY MONEY
    Thanks Fed@64 (PostMark@68) for your response.

71. muffin@27

    Fed 240 explained

    British surgeons do not call themselves doctor. They are always Mr. name FRCS.

    The reasons are buried in history, but I think go back to barber-surgeons who did not have a degree.

72. Thanks PeterO for the parsing of ALOFT; I spent too long trying to think of a discovered newspaper. Thanks Fed for a quick workout.

73. Just one gripe. No. 1 for probably keeper. Maybe in my old Charles Buchan Football Monthly magazines. More like possibly keeper in the modern game and hardly ever for the keeper in cricket. Guess I’m not in the best of moods after watching England’s current no. 1 trying to be a footballer rather than just a goalie.
    Thanks Fed and PeterO.

74. Houstontony @71
    One cannot become a surgeon without qualifying as a doctor first, so all surgeons (nowadays) are doctors.
    In Cambridge, all the doctors – GPs, etc. – were called “Mister” unless they actually had a PhD.

75. Enjoyed this, I normally find Fed very tricky but not so today – though there were three or four I couldn’t parse. There are some really lovely spots by Fed in here, in particular the artist plus single word endings in SETTEE and the satisfying anagram for CHELSEA BUN.

76. Thanks for the blog, I really enjoyed this after a very long day, up before sunrise.
    MOTH-EATEN very neat and Frankie has ample justification. IMPRESSIVE a clever substitution, very nice double EP for PEPERONI , many more…..
    I would have left out pursued for RAN AFTER .
    I have used a hand tedder , like a rake with wooden teeth set quite far apart.

77. I thought 19 DISOWN was delightfully deceptive. Unless I deny it was contrived, can it still be my favourite clue? (Yes.)

    Thanks Fed for the felicitous Friday fun, and PeterO for the predictably precise and (im)pressive parsing.

78. I’m impressed by the number of commenters who found this “less tricky” than usual from Fed, while also admitting to not being able to parse a handful. That makes it pretty darn tricky in my book.

    I managed to parse all except the long one (I’d heard of Tedder as a name – a WWII airforce commander who had a street named after him in Hemel Hempstead where I lived as a boy) but had forgotten its agricultural meaning) and MOTHEATEN. Using ‘bear’ to clue MOTHER and then knock the R off is a real stretch as far as I’m concerned. (I got A TEN though I have only ever seen it in books, never spoken or heard it.)

    I also struggled with REEF, though I’ve no complaints. I was distracted by watching the football, and if you told me that REF blew the whistle 20 times before the penny dropped I wouldn’t be surprised.

    Thanks Fed and PeterO.

79. SH @78
    I think “ten” refers to the Dudley Moore/Bo Derek film

80. Really enjoyable, but needed a little help on a couple of parsings.

    KVa @ 64 re: “Easy Money” and “A walk in the park”. I’d call them synonymous as standalone phrases. Imagine a Hollywood movie – two villains walk away from the smoking ruins of a bank carrying bags stuffed with cash, cop cars on fire all around, bodies strewn across the street. They both want to make it sound like it was a doddle. One says “Easy Money” the other says “A walk in the park”.

    After reading the comments I recall I’ve encountered “tedding” maybe a couple of times before but only in crossword-land. But that’s fine – there are plenty of other words I know that I’ve never seen elsewhere.

81. Interesting that doctors and surgeons in the UK are all called “Mister.” Are you folks planning to admit women to the profession any time soon?

82. Valentine@81 Doctors call themselves Doctor regardless of gender. Surgeons may call themselves Mr, Miss, Mrs, Ms etc.

83. a “walk in the park” just means EASY. No mention of MONEY. The MONEY is supplied by the “means” in the clue.

84. Very enjoyable and just the right level of difficulty for me. Several unparsed, thanks PeterO for the blog. And thanks Fed for the crossword and for popping by to give us your two penn’orth.

85. muffin@74 and 79
    A biochemist friend whose DPhil was in the Faculty of Medicine used to say that those who were most commonly referred to as “Doctors” were actually Bachelors of Medicine.
    I think “a ten” refers to the top mark in a scale of ten, especially in Strictly Come Dancing.

86. For 10A MOTH-EATEN we need the film 10 (1979), in which Dudley Moore has a midlife crisis over Bo Derek, who scores A TEN on a scale of attractiveness.
    And the clue number is TEN A – Coincidence? – I don’t think so. (…OK, maybe it is.)
    A 10 in Strictly Comes purely from Dancing skill. It has nothing (…OK, maybe something) to do with how “attractive” the dancers are.
    Ann Widdecombe (2010) was never going to win on either metric. [“Sir, why did you write ‘LO/LO’ on my homework?” — “It’s 10 out of 10, you nit! — (circa 1967)].

87. I was confused about how to make SIGNAL = MOTION, so thanks to PostMark @28, 30 for clearing that up. I was also baffled by the parsing of 14ac (MAKE HAY …), because, ironically, I didn’t know the word TED.

    Google’s NGram viewer indicates that PEPPERONI is far more common in English than PEPERONI. I didn’t know that the two words meant different things, and, I suspect, neither did most of the people who used the latter in the English-language corpus used by Google: I bet if one looked at the instances of the latter in English, most are misspellings of the former.

    CHELSEA BUN is a particularly nice anagram. It seems likely that others have discovered it before, but to the best of my recollection it’s new to me. And I particularly enjoyed the misdirection in 19dn (DISOWN), which took me ages to figure out.

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