Thanks to Guy for a very enjoyable challenge.
Not too easy and not too hard. Some witty tricks and and turns to keep things interesting.
CHA[p]S (men) swapping P[edal]O (sides in)
Take CHAPS (men) and swap P (one side of Pedalo) for O (the other side of pedalO)
(WEE (tiny) + PH (pub, public house)) hidden by SAND (dune)
(OWES ME A)* (*crook)
CONS (criminals) to admit FE[e]S (charges, saving one E (energy))
Cryptic definition
‘Convenience’ is used to mean WC
“HEEL” (part of shoe, “as you’re told”)
(AG (silver) tipped SPAR (pole)) in AUS (Australia)
RIP LEADER (rent guide) from Spooner
Double definition
(TO ENGLANDER [mot]OR[ing] (in the centre))* (*troubling)
[realisin]G Nostra[damus]< (some, <taken aback)
‘Lied’ in the German sense
ROOM< (space, <to reverse) and AGE (time)
ERATO (muse) on NUM (mining group, National Union of Mines) + directo[R] (last)
TEND (mind) about R (Republican figure)
COL (pass) round A
(IN CAMERA I.E. (that is))* (*tangled); opened by P (pressure)
(MOO (low) + CH (church)) beneath S[teeple] (top of)
R (run) through STERN (serious) + WAD (pile of cash)
[h]E[r] M[a]C[k]E[r]E[l] (leaving odd bits of)
PUN (joke) + I + TRY (crack) about D (Germany)
[p]ACE[s] (steps, out of bounds)
(SINS PRAYED)* (*after reviewing)
“KNIGHTING GAEL” (dubbing Celt, “on the radio”)
WHO (person that) + RAIN (showers) after LEG (section of journey)
REP< (theatre, <turned up) + FORMER (late)
Rep (repertory theatre) involves an acting group performing a range of plays on different nights of the week
(ROOD (cross) + TEN bridges X (by))< (<heading north)
AD (notice) + ROT (cobblers) keeping [stud]I[o] (second last in)
[c]R[ossword] [y]O[u] (taking seconds for) + GET (understand)
HE (male) + RD (way to drive, road)
TU (you, in France) found on M (motorway)
Nice challenge from Guy! I made it through relatively quickly for me, but it wasn’t because there were a lot of gimmes. Thanks Guy and thank you to Oriel for a great blog.
A gentler offering than I’m used to from Guy but no less enjoyable for that – still, I needed the blog to parse CHAOS and ROGET (clever) satisfactorily.
My top pick was AWESOME for its ‘grand’ yet pithy surface.
AMERICAN PIE, PUNDITRY and PERFORMER also had neat surfaces while I liked TREND for its current definition and TUM for its whimsical one.
Thanks Guy and Oriel for a great blog.
Thanks for the blog , very good set of clues , clever wordplay , CHAOS is very neat but many more . Friendly grid , lots of first letters .
I had INCONVENIENCE as a straight definition – trouble – plus wordplay .
Oriel, for 28a, I think the definition (rather than the wordplay) includes ‘figure’. If something figures large on social media, it is ‘trending or ‘on trend’.
Liked CHAOS, LIP-READER, NIGHTINGALE and ROGET.
Thanks Guy and Oriel
INCONVENIENCE
(I saw it as def+WP)
Def: Trouble
WP: using WC=IN CONVENIENCE
(Roz has said that already)
Diane@4
TREND
Agree with you
Agree re 28, Diane @4. Fun puzzle, not without a bit of curl — had to mentalpha to get the w for sternward, and switch from verb to collective noun to get rain for wholegrain. Took s minute to click lied (even tho the ginf seniors were liede fans), and to remember that dividend/divisor = numerator/denominator.. Enjoyable, thanks Guy and Oriel.
Everything fell into place neatly – as one would expect with this setter – and I was delighted when LOI, HERD, prompted the satisfying ‘puzzle completed’ message. A couple needed piecing together bit by bit – at one point I was staring at WHO LEG RAIN and thinking ‘it does sound a bit like ‘hooligan’ but how can that be unrefined!!!! [Funny how the eyes and mind can sometimes play that trick: at one point our local dustcarts carried a warning about putting broken glass etc into bins with the logo split across two panels on the side of the vehicles – DUST BIN DAN GERS – and I found myself reading the second word as rhyming with ‘bangers’, thinking ‘what on earth are dustbin dangers?’]
Faves inc AWESOME, ART SONG, NUMERATOR, NIGHTINGALE and the aforementioned WHOLEGRAIN.
Thanks Guy and Oriel
Had a couple of different parses. For 2d, (IN AMERICA)* + I.E. opened by P. For HERD, I had the definition as a verb ‘to drive in a group’, with HE (male) + RD (way).
I really liked this. I had the same experience as PostMark with WHOLEGRAIN. The cobblers second last was very neat. Did CHAOS. make others remember the Freddie Flintoff incident?
[PM @8, one of the Psychs where mrs ginf practiced had a cartoon on their door of a signwriter putting the finishing touches to Psycho The Rapist]
I solved 24 ac easily enough, but felt that “lied” in the surface should have been capped.
Thanks Guy and Oriel
24ac lied is given in the sense required for the definition without a capital and as a naturalised English word in Collins 2023 p 1133, Chambers 2016 p 883, ODE 2010 p 1020, SOED 2007 p 1594, and even in the Pocket Oxford 2013 p 526. It does not need a capital for the definition, and certainly not for the surface.
Thanks Guy. This went down quite nicely with my favourites being ART-SONG, STERNWARD (very accurate surface), ACE, DISPENSARY, HERD, and TUM. I failed to parse CHAOS. Thanks Oriel for the blog.
GIF@11, last century when I worked as a braillist for RNIB, we had a journal for physiotherapists. There is a word sign for THE, and also contractions for TH and ER (and ST).
The correct way to represent it is “physio[TH][ER]api[ST]”, but it was too tempting to write “physio[THE]rapi[ST]”.
The proofreaders usually spotted it, and it was an easy correction to make as the four letters took up two cells either way.
Sorry for late comment but i found this puzzle very difficult compared to usual FT which i can usually solve. After 2 weeks of leaving and returning got everything except 3D even though had 3 out of 6 letters! Admittedly I missed low=moo but not sure FT should bother with US teenage slang. Otherwise v witty and enjoyable when you get there!