Apologies for the late blog – I volunteered to step in when it became apparent that the blog had not yet appeared today.
Ah, Paul – a setter who polarises opinions with his multiple word answers spread across the grid. Personally, i like that as solving one clue often opens up the grid, and that was the case today with LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY. Having found that wonderful anagram, I was able to get crossers for some of the more difficult clues. I don’t recall seeinf the word PARADOR before, but it was well clued.
Thanks, Paul.
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | KILOTON |
With nothing to hide, how Scotsman may appear an explosive force? (7)
|
| KILT ON (“how Scotsman may appear”) with O hidden [to hide] | ||
| 8 | PARADOR |
Road winding past average Spanish hotel (7)
|
| *(road) [anag:winding] past PAR (“average”)
A parador is normally a historical building that has been converted into tourist lodgings. |
||
| 9, 14 | BETE NOIRE |
Curse when e-number found in French drink (4,5)
|
| E-TEN (e-number) found in BOIRE (“French” for “drink”) | ||
| 10 | AS IT COMES |
Friends, say, in water doing the backstroke – neat! (2,2,5)
|
| SITCOM (“Friends, say”) in <=SEA (“water”, doing the backstoke, i.e. going backwards) | ||
| 12 | CRAIC |
Fun solve, reportedly? (5)
|
| Hophone/pun/aural wordplay [reportedly] of CRACK (“solve”) | ||
| 13, 6 | SPINNING TOPS |
Opts for toys? (8,4)
|
| If you spin the letters of TOPS, you get OPTS | ||
| 15, 24 | GIRO D’ITALIA |
I stick it in melon for European event (4,7)
|
| I + ROD (“stick”) + IT in GALIA (a small “melon”)
The Giro d’Italia is the Italian equivalent of The Tour de France. |
||
| 16 | BOING |
Quagmire’s fenced off in spring (5)
|
| BOG (“qaugmire”) [‘s fenced off] IN | ||
| 17 | PLIE |
Ballet move worked at when back gone (4)
|
| PLIE(d) (“worked at”, when back (i.e. last letter) gone) | ||
| 18 | TORTILLA |
Much appreciated boxes or drawer for dish (8)
|
| TA (“much appreciated”) boxes OR + TILL (“drawer”) | ||
| 20, 5 | WHITE VAN MAN |
Welshman in poet, boor on the way? (5,3,3)
|
| EVAN (“Welshman”) in (Walt) WHITMAN (“poet”)
Drivers of unliveried white vans, especially Ford Transits, have a reputation for being aggressive or inconsiderate while on the road, normally because they are busy or under some time constraint. |
||
| 21 | STAGE LEFT |
Male with fleet at sea – how might one exit? (5,4)
|
| STAG (“male”) with *(fleet) [anag:at sea] | ||
| 22, 21 | TAILSPIN |
Pointed fastener on evening dress in sharp spiral (8)
|
| PIN (“pointed fastener”) on TAILS (“evening dress”) | ||
| 24 |
See 15
|
|
| 25 | NEGRONI |
Cocktail: one with gin stirred up about right (7)
|
| *(one gin) [anag:stirred up] about R (right) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1, 4, 17 | LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY |
Wearisome trash talk with pained crying (4,8,5,3)
|
| *(talk with pained crying) [anag:trash] | ||
| 2 | MODERATO |
Musical expression in Muse who owned a Lambretta? (8)
|
| MOD (60s youth “who” would typically have “owned a Lambretta”) + ERATO (“Muse” of lyric love poetry) | ||
| 3 | MOSAIC |
Design of a prophet? (6)
|
| Double definition, the second relating to Moses. | ||
| 4 |
See 1
|
|
| 5 |
See 20 Across
|
|
| 6 |
See 13 Across
|
|
| 11 | INSTIGATE |
One isn’t lost, door found (9)
|
| I + *(isnt) [anag:lost] + GATE (“door”) | ||
| 12 | CHINO |
Such in our trousers? (5)
|
| Hidden in [trousers] “suCH IN Our” and &lit. | ||
| 14 |
See 9 Across
|
|
| 16 | BULLET IN |
Newscast shot? (8)
|
| If you’ve been “shot”, you have a BULLET IN | ||
| 17 |
See 1
|
|
| 19 | TRAJAN |
Emperor, king in empty town (6)
|
| RAJA (Indian “king”) in [empty] T(ow)N | ||
| 20 | WITHER |
Flag featuring late monarch (6)
|
| WITH (“featuring”) + ER (Elizabeth Regina, the “late monarch”) | ||
| 21 |
See 22 Across
|
|
| 23 | IONA |
Isle where an attention seeker turned up (4)
|
| <=AN OI (a noise made to draw attention, so “an attention seeker”, turned up) |
Many thanks, loonapick
As a Never-Pauler, I’m happy to say that I enjoyed this one, which seemed to me to exhibit all of Paul’s virtues with none of his flaws. Some very deft stuff here, esp SPINNING TOPS and the excellent CHINO. Thanks Paul, and especially to loonapick for diving into the void.
This very much a Tale Of Two Sittings. Couldn’t settle to sleep in the wee small hours, so sat up and managed to fill half the grid, then ground to a hall. But then in the clear light of morning I straight away spotted LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY and WHITE VAN MAN. Which greatly helped with the other clues tumbling into place. GIRO DITALIO the last in after a considerable pause. As that first line of my misquoted book title maybe suggests, a Paulian cryptic tussle can sometimes feel like the best of times, the worst of times. But I/Some Of Us keep coming back for more…
I loved this too. PARADOR was a jorum and that anagram for LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY was brilliant.
Thank you to loonapick and Paul.
This was good. The missing apostrophe slowed me down a bit at the end. Having said that, looking up a list of melon types would have solved that issue much earlier.
I didn’t spot the drying paint from enumeration and or lateral thinking like I normally would, but actually enjoyed solving the splendid anagram by old school methods. The GK was all within reach, although I did also consult a list of emperors for speed.
I liked lots of clues, but I’ll single out BOING for the concision.
Thanks Paul and thanks loonapick for jumping in.
Thank you so muck loonapick, very much appreciated. As with many of his crosswords, it looked impenetrable and my only answer on first reading was the only word I didn’t know, PARADOR, aided by the internet. On retrospect I had managed to figure everything out even if many took a few wild guesses before yielding. The Paint anagram eluded me for too long so missed out on a lot of help there. Lots of ticks and a few head scratches but overall a clever end enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Paul.
For IONA I pictured A No 1 as the egotist. Moot.
Many thanks to Paul for the fun, and to loonapick for stepping into the breach with the blog. [If you get the chance to stay in a parador in Spain, leap at it – they’re usually beautiful and palatial, and seriously affordable.] A DNF for me, I failed on 20, 5 because I didn’t think MAN could appear in both clue and solution.
Took me a few minutes to parse BETE NOIRE, as I took e-number to be E-NO and wondered if Betire was a variety of pastis…All good fun, though!
I found this scintillating and would heartily commend it to anyone still under the misapprehension that Paul is not worth bothering with, or is unreasonably hard.
I took e-number to be E-NO too. Nho galia melons. Parsing BETE NOIRE and IONA was beyond me, though I did bung them in. PARADOR looked sort of familiar, it fit with my meager knowledge of Spanish.
This was very hard, and I often had to use the check button to try out letters until one of them passed. So I didn’t do much of this in bed last night. Paul seems to be much harder than he useter.
The bizarre 3-digit numbering system has mercifully disappeared, and now it’s challenging to read the admin blog on that change, where comments like “I agree with #357” are now untraceable. Have we introduced “This comment was deleted” to preserve numerical order? That would be helpful.
Thanks to Paul and especially to loonapick for leaping in.
Not sure if Paul was alluding to the Arabic proverb about melons and boys but I wouldn’t put it past him 🙂 GIRO D’ITALIA my favourite of many fine clues today
Great too see Britain’s favourite cocktail the NEGRONI again
And heartfelt sympathy for anyone solving online – the xrefs fried my brain even with the paper version
Cheers L&P
Usually I find Paul’s puzzles to be (fun but) challenging. I generally need to get a decent foothold, and then things come together. Today, I got a few right off the bat, but then was stuck. I decided to investigate.
Several years ago, I developed an entropy-based method of evaluating a finished grid’s overall “helpfulness”, in terms of what letters occupied the crossing points. So, crossers such as q, j, x – helpful; e, t, a – not so much. I did an analysis of maybe a year’s worth of puzzles and found that (the sadly late) Chifonie’s crossers were the least helpful, Brummie’s the most, with Paul (then) nearly as helpful as Brummie. I did report that here, back then.
I compared this puzzle with that collection and found it to be even less helpful than the least helpful from back then, i.e. lots of common letters in the crossers. Now, it was 6 or 7 years ago that I gathered the data, and there may have been small drifts in answer vocabulary distribution, but I don’t think that can explain what we see here today. I’m not saying it’s deliberate, but I can say that I felt the effect.
I got about two-thirds of this one before hitting a brick wall (as so often with Paul), but, having come here, I can’t really see what it was that stopped me so conclusively. Except for the GIRO D’ITALIA, which I’ve never heard of, I should have managed the lot, I think. So thanks to Paul and our blogger for the entertainment.
Many thanks to loonapick for coming to the rescue.
For me it isn’t the cross-references as such that are annoying, but the Guardian software’s absolute refusal to treat two or more sections as a single unit when checking, deleting, revealing or even when entering letters. Oh well.
Lots of languages today: French, Spanish, Italian and Irish (which I got wrong, entering CRACK instead of the proper Irish spelling). I didn’t recognise OI as the attention-seeker, and not sure exactly how BOING=spring: it’s certainly the noise a spring makes – is it also a verb?
Anyway, a lot of fun today and much more accessible than some recent ones. I did enjoy the mod Muse on her scooter, and the WHITE VAN MAN
Well, I did solve one before I got completely stuck 😢.
I can see from the blog it was a good crossword for those more skilled than myself, so no complaints … but I resorted to codeword instead!
A joy to solve. Thanks to Paul and loonapick.
Bodycheetah@11 – I use the app on my phone – the multi-part solutions are highlighted as single entries – it’s actually a lot easier than using the paper version.
I could not see the parsing of MOSAIC at all, but everything else was very nice.
Great fun, with some slow but satisfying solves. I laughed at KILOTON when the penny finally dropped! I have one minor quibble – I think GIRO D’ITALIA should have been enumerated as (4, 1, 6) rather than (4,7).
Thanks Paul and loonapick
This would be a good puzzle for solvers who normally fear to attempt a Paul. My only raised eyebrow was BETE NOIRE given that “boire” is the infinitive form so always translates as “to drink” rather than “drink”, surely? I still enjoyed the clue, and all the others. Favourites were BULLETIN, BOING and TRAJAN for the crisp surfaces, and MODERATO which made me laugh.
I was apprehensive about attempting this after the last Paul I tried but was pleasantly surprised. Defeated by a couple which I revealed but there were many funny/ clever clues. I liked WHITE VAN MAN and KILOTON though I’ve never heard of the latter. GIRO D’ITALIA went in easily because I know a bit about cycle racing.