Guardian Cryptic 28,029 by Tramp

68 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,029 by Tramp”

1. I found this easier to solve than to parse. New for me was johnny = condom. I failed to fully parse PLEAT, HOOVERING, GREAT HORNED OWL, SALAD (9d).

   Thanks manehi and Tramp.

2. I always expect Tramp to come up with a few obscure definitions, justified by being in some dictionary somewhere, but these were mostly straightforward, with just two exceptions. Like Michelle, I didn’t know ‘johnny,’ and slater = one criticising was also unfamiliar to me. Parsing was much harder, and I had to come here for several explanations, so thanks to manehi for the helpful blog, and thanks to Tramp for a good workout.

3. Derek Trotter wears a sheepskin coat. Thank you Manehi; I would have been at it till Christmas before I associated Bo D with 10. Well done Tramp; you shut me out for twenty minutes but, when I got going, I found this a good challenge.

   Julie, I’ve left you a message on yesterdays blog which I hope will raise a smile. Good night all.

4. I found the three SELF-HARM, GREAT HORNED OWL and WALDORF SALAD almost brilliant, but in each case the definition did not quite work for me – hence/despite the question-marks.

   I understand, and like, the use of stretch synonyms and unexpected constructions to add some difficulty, but not when the clue verges into incorrectness. Amongst some really clever stuff in this puzzle were some problems, imo. Hatching (13d) is when the creature breaks out of the egg, which happens after the sitting-on, so is not the same thing. Pat Cash (1d) is still a tennis player, as far as I know – in 2013 he won the Wimbledon over-45 doubles. “tennis champion once” would have worked better.

5. Anyone remember Dr. Seuss’s Horton the elephant hatches the egg? As kids we often hatched our bantam eggs on the aga. I think this use is permissible.

6. Wonderful puzzle with too many great clues to mention.  But sentimental favorites which came easily were WALDORF SALAD (favorite Fawlty episode) and GREAT HORNED OWL (we have a pair who often visit our roof, and wake us up with their eerie calls to each other  .. such fascinating creatures).

7. Thanks for the early blog, manehi. Like others before me, I needed help with understanding several of my solutions.

   Perhaps we have led sheltered lives, michelle@1 and DaveinCarolina@2, as I had not heard the slang “Johnny” for a condom either so I didn’t understand 7d RONDO. 18a SLAUGHTER was a guess from the crossers – and I am still not convinced that it’s a good synonym for “Clobber”, even though yes it is listed as a colloquialism in my online Chambers. I didn’t know the “SKY” part of SKYWARDS at 21a, and am embarrassed to say that even after being caught before on “POD” for “school”, I still missed the parse for 26a POSED.

   I liked all the favourites mentioned in the preamble, and laughed out loud at 8a SLEEPING AROUND. I also liked 25a BRAKE PAD. But my sentimental favourite was the GREAT HORNED OWL at 24a. Loved hearing about your visitors, rodshaw@6, and I have to say that the memory of the WALDORF SALAD (9d) episode is one of many great memories of “FLOWERY TWATS” that can still make me smile.

   I did have a question mark on “to sit on” for “HATCH” in HATCHBACK at 13d, Dr. WhatsOn@4, but didn’t share your other thoughts on the other clues mentioned.

   It only remains for me to express my thanks for the enjoyment to Tramp.

    

8. [Thanks for yesterday’s comment @39, il principe – loved what you posted! I have got over my fear and loathing of the poet in question, and in latter years was able to impress groups of students by quoting from memory quite long bits of his works, so something clearly stuck.)

9. As with several others (so nice to know one is not alone) somev not completely solved, unfamiliar slang contributing to this, so thanks for the helpful blog. Lots to like , fav was SELF-HARM but as with JinA, SLEEPING AROUND got a chuckle.
   Thanks to Tramp for the fun and Andrew for the blog

10. A lot of genius on show here, especially the long anagrams, but I also have a few nits to pick. I’m surprised no-one has mentioned the indirect anagram in “sealskin” which held me up for ages (you have to substitute “ie” for “that is” before making an anagram), and I don’t see a good indicator in “pleat” that “t” replaces the end of “leaf” only that it goes on the end. I also could not parse “knackered” or “hoovered” so thank you Manehi for saving me a lot of head-scratching.

    “Waldorf Salad” was nearly brilliant – I’m deducting half a point for the fact that the salad is named for the hotel so it’s all a bit circular, but the Warty Towels reference made it worth it.

11. Oops, I meant of course thanks to Manehi for the blog- and lovely to have it early in the antipodean evening

12. Tremendous puzzle even by Tramp’s standards.Thanks for parsing of RONDO

13. Thanks for a great blog, manehi. Once again, I share your favourites – with the addition of several more! And thanks for pointing out the FT link in the super 9dn – reminding me of Tramp’s first cryptic puzzle [which I was lucky enough to blog here ] which included the titles of all twelve episodes of the show. I remember thinking then, ‘This lad should go far’. 😉 [See copmus @12.]

    Huge Thanks, Tramp – I loved it!

     

14. @DrWhatson
    I’m sure if Pat Cash is still playing the occasional rally with his great grandchildren in 40 years he could technically be described as a tennis player. As it is, we know exactly what the wordplay denotes and I can’t escape the feeling that you’re nitpicking for the sake of it. This was a quite superb crossword.

15. @drwatson Chambers has several meanings for ONCE including “at any time”. Tramp pushing the envelope for hiding anagram fodder today but isn’t that all part of the fun?

16. Well, there were some clues I thought rather good — but many I really disliked, I’m sorry to say. To me, the “fill in the missing word” device (no definition) in 6d is so clunky: like the crosswords in Amateur Beekeeping magazine. KNACKERED was clued the wrong way round: nobody would actually use the wordplay to arrive at the solution because it is so obscure and random — instead, the setter assumes that we biff the answer and then parse it post-solve. That is poor clueing, I think. The HATCH=’sit on’ in 13d is another painfully overstretched synonym towards a solution that is an obvious write-in. The Fawlty Towers allusion in 9d delighted everybody, but ‘old TV show half-heartedly served up’ is so completely random as a way of constructing SALAD that it cannot surely be solvable. This kind of wordplay is not obscure or abstruse in the sense that few people will have the required general knowledge to access the key word (like my ignorance of the golf driver Ernie Els); it is obscure in the sense that the connection between the wordplay and the solution is so vague or random that it cannot reasonably be deduced. And the abbreviations? K=Laotian ‘kip’? R=’recipe’? Oh, come on! Can any noun be reduced to its initial letter as a valid device in cryptic clues?

    Thanks for the fine explanations, manehi.

17. Looking over comments above, I see that many allude to the characteristic difficulty in parsing after the solution was guessed: michelle @1, DaveinNCarolina @2, il principe @3, Dr WhatsOn @4, Julie @7, ngaio @9, TheZed @10, Bodycheetah @15.

     

18. Thanks manehi for the blog and thanks to others for their kind comments.

19. Thanks Tramp and manehi

    As one who is all in favour of setting boundaries being pushed I thought this was a tremendous puzzle. And it’s fair to say that ‘THAT IS’ > IE and R = RECIPE occur so regularly I’m amazed that they still attract comment.

20. Just couldn’t parse KNACKERED, though saw the film yonks ago. Loi was SELF HARM, though wrestled for some time with SKYWARDS. But a fair and rewarding challenge throughout.

21. serve_p2 @ 16 You’re probably 500 years too late to argue about R being an acceptable abbreviation for recipe and (whilst you could possibly argue against K for ‘Laotian Kip’) the use of initials for abbreviating currencies is standard (USD, GBP, D, FF….). Hatch for incubate is another long established and straightforward synonym.

    Challenging but enjoyable for me, rod for gun was new and I was curious as to why Tramp went with ‘Golf driver’ when golfer would have served just as well (nothing wrong with the clue as written but coupled with tennis player ‘once’, ‘old’ TV show, etc I wondered if it was a conscious decision to assist the solver).

    Thanks to Tramp and manehi.

22. Simon @19 – if you read my comment I was not struggling to equate “that is” with “ie” – my comment was specifically that it was an indirect anagram, ie “i” and “e” had to be mixed in to the fodder. There are numerous techniques people have used to avoid indirect anagrams (like “rarer” in this puzzle in which the synonym is reversed rather than scrambled) or where a single letter is “promoted” or shifted (as was used yesterday). In the past any sort of indirect anagram has been considered off-limits and would be commented on so I was surprised this had not been. If we say it is OK because “ie” and “that is” are more closely synonymous than, say “red” and “carmine” or “woman” and “una”, then that suggests a line needs to be drawn somewhere other than where it currently sits. I’d say that was worthy of comment.

    I agree re “R=recipe” as being standard fare, though I learned it from fifteensquared about a year ago so had been happily solving puzzles without that little bit of knowledge somehow.

23. Mostly a great puzzle, but a couple of quibbles. $A, 8, 10 and 6D were favourites.

    Couldn’t see a definition in 19 – took “blue planet” to be Earth, and not convinced by the blog’s blue = earthy. One of my earliest entries was DOLTS at 3, as LT (lawn tennis) is a sport, but PE is not, at least in my book. This held me up in the anagram at 8.

    Don’t know much about the film 10, so that had to be checked post-entry (nothing wrong with that). Never had a television, so rarely saw anything pre-iPlayer, including Fawlty Towers, and missed that reference. It didn’t matter as even I know that Dallas is probably the most famous American drama series of all time, and anyone with the slightest interest in food knows the salad was named after the hotel where it was invented. Far from being unsolvable,  the clue was a write-in, even though I thought a bit inelegant (using the hotel name in the same sense twice).

    Recipe = R is absolutely standard cryptic crossword fare, to the extent that the word very rarely has any other use in a clue. It was used for hundreds of years in medical prescriptions, among other places.

    Specialist publications, and Specials (Listener, Azed, Inquisitor, Mephisto) can be expected to use specialist vocabulary, but if a solver lacks the GK to deal with puzzles in standard daily papers and can’t be bothered to check standard lists of abbreviations the lack is in the solver not the setter (that includes me).

     

24. 4A

25. I just realise I had not parsed KNACKERED. Never would have gotten that one, even though I have heard of Bo Derek and the movie ’10’.

26. …and I rather like the way Tramp often comes on here afterwards to accept the plaudits – and occasionally the brickbats – with equanimity. Though of course there are considerably more of the former than the latter…

27. Goujeers @23 et al.: Yes, yes, you’re entirely right. I am rather fuddy-duddy and idiosyncratic about my taste in crosswords and, as we all know, there’s no accounting for taste! Some of the arcane Crosswordland conventions (L=pound, D=pence, IT=SA=sex appeal) I blithely approve, but Tramp uses some others that I don’t.

28. Maybe JOHNNY is old-fashioned. We certainly used it at school in the 1960s. “Could you pass the rubber, Johnny” said loudly in class being a frequent wind-up of our teachers. Mind you, that was on Merseyside. Despite having seen the film 10, I failed to see the relevance of DEREK but realised it had to be there. I really enjoyed that solve, with all its sex and promiscuity.

29. Oof, I found 4A in extremely bad taste (admittedly a clever clue, but the thing about being clever is you can find another way.) Enjoyed it apart from that, although I had to resort to strategic use of the “Check This” button for the last few.

30. Blimey, there’s no pleasing some people.

     

    FWIW Johnny was a very commonly-used word for condom where I grew up. I couldn’t say if it’s now out of use as that would involve me having a rather awkward conversation with my teenage son…

31. I don’t often comment on Guardian puzzles here, but I must say I am flabbergasted by all the moans and groans here today.

32. TheZed: I don’t believe that clue is an indirect anagram. A clue involving an indirect anagram is like this one:

    Small pebbles possibly coming from the country (7)

    SHINGLE being an anagram of ENGLISH. This is an indirect anagram and a totally unfair (and rubbish) clue. Now, I would argue that my clue for SEALSKIN is not like this. Admittedly, it isn’t a pure anagram and, to solve, you have to know that IE is “that is”, but, I don’t think that’s too unfair. Picaroon is a setter I look up to: in his Guardian 27,395 puzzle of Jan 2nd 2018 he had this clue for ACROSS-THE-BOARD:

    Comprehensive school had Serbo-Croat Society (6-3-5)

    To solve the clue required an anagram of HADSERBOCROAT+S (for Society). Picaroon (rightly, in my opinion) justified this single-letter abbreviation in the anagram fodder with the comment:

    “…I agree that needing to make a standard single-letter abbreviation before anagramming isn’t as neat as a pure anagram, but it’s been widely used for as long as I’ve been solving crosswords, and I prefer it to “X initially”, or “Y finally”, say, to derive the last letter, once again purely for reasons of neatness.”

    I would use a similar argument for my clue although that uses a double-letter abbreviation in the anagram fodder.

    I did write this puzzle a long time ago and I remember agonising whether the use of “hotel” in the clue for WALDORF SALAD was weak: I decided it wasn’t too bad because the “hotel” in the surface reading is Fawlty Towers not the Waldorf. It’s not a perfect clue but it’s decent.

    As for GK in crosswords, I refer interested readers to this article by the brilliant Alberich/Klingsor:

    http://www.alberichcrosswords.com/pages/gkquizzes.html

    Neil

33. TheZed @ 22 and Tramp @ 32

    I too wondered about the “indirect anagram” question.

    I take Tramp’s point that we are dealing with an abbreviation here (that is = IE) rather than a synonym (small pebbles = SHINGLE).

    But then the “thin end of the wedge” argument comes into play.  Could “say” in a clue mean that we have to introduce EG into the anagram fodder? Or ‘namely” or “which is” = VIZ?  Could we then take it a stage further, with hesitation = UM or ER, all right/fine/agreed = OK, or even ancient city = UR?

    Notwithstanding all that, thanks to Tramp for the brilliance, and to manehi (I would never have parsed KNACKERED without you!)

34. Very nice puzzle, which was hard to break into.  I particularly liked the &lits/extended definitions in SELF-HARM and GREAT HORNED OWL, the latter taking a surprisingly long time to see.  For some reason, I missed the anagram in SLEEPING AROUND after become fixated on the idea that “about” clued the AROUND piece.  I thought WALDORF SALAD was fine.

    I don’t mind clues that require answer guessing and back-parsing.  At least half of my solves are like that 😮 ) and I invariably enjoy the PDMs.

    Thanks, Tramp and manehi.

35. First of all thanks to Tramp for engaging with the point I made – so often comments on here are ignored, possibly because the setters and/or editor don’t read them, possibly because they know there really is very little to be gained from arguing with some bloke on the internet! I would say Essexboy @33 has expanded on my point exactly as I would. A single letter abbreviation is, hopefully, unambiguous – though “s” can be “son”, “society”, “shilling” and a million other things, “society” in the context can only be “s”, partly because we know indirect anagrams are forbidden. So “school” could only send us down the route of “s” in an anagram, and not “Eton” for example, though it could in a charade.

    It just seemed to me that this clue did something I had not seen before – it introduced a two letter abbreviation into an anagram rather than a single letter, and I thought that worth commenting on. Was it totally unambiguous? Possibly – though I, for a long time, had “ie” at the end rather than as part of the fodder and was wondering how the heck Haile Selassie could be the answer 🙂

    It boils down to whether “that is” is an absolute match for “ie” alone. Would “Man that is least courageous (8)” (Tim + id est) be a fair clue? If so, does it matter that “that is” can be both “ie” and “id est” if in the context of the clue only one can work? Or should context not matter?

    I think here it was a stretch of the usual anagram rules (and I think Tramp knows that), but there are no prescriptive rules. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts too though.

36. TheZed @35, I always appreciate your posts and thought that this one is worth commenting on. I read the article referenced by Tramp @32, where the author notes his dislike of comments along the lines of “too much GK required” or “those words are not synonymous.” In most cases the setter can justify the clue as fair by arguing that the GK in question is really not obscure, or by falling back on the authority of a dictionary. However, it occurs to me that in both cases the real objection is that the setter is requiring the solver to make too much of a mental leap to connect clue and answer, and that could be the start of a conversation worth having. In this particular case I did notice that the anagram at least bordered on being indirect, but I didn’t regard the guessing of the pre-mix substitution as a large leap. Of course the length of a leap is in the eye of the leaper, but I imagine that most setters try to look at their clues through a solver’s eyes, and I trust them not to abuse the “thin end of the wedge.”

37. If general knowledge meant universal knowledge, there would be little point in general knowledge quizzes. Just relieved (and extremely surprised) that I was able to complete this – though one answer I could get only from the crossers, since the great horned owl has never before contributed to my meagre share of universal knowledge.

38. Great puzzle from Tramp as always. For those who hadn’t come across Johnny for condom before, may I amuse you with one of the greatest clues of all time IMHO, again by the master Tramp: Bribe Johnny Cash (10,5).

    Thanks all

39. Some superb clues here. GREAT HORNED OWL, SELF-HARM, HOOVERING and KNACKERED were particularly brilliant.

    First-class all round.

     

40. gsolphotog @38 – thanks for the memory! ‘This lad’ is good, isn’t he?

41. 15a my favourite as I love smut. What is the answer gsolphotog?

42. All in all this was enjoyable but I found many of the clues needlessly convoluted. I must agree with pserve_p2 about “biffing the answer then parsing post-solve.” I did find 11a and 4d esp. satisfying. Thanks Manehi for clearing things up and to Tramp for the crossword.

43. I thought this was a superb puzzle made even better by Tramp’s engagement with the blog comments – thanks to TheZed for provoking the conversation. There were several I didn’t parse, including KNACKERED as I hadn’t come across K for the Laotian kip and had forgotten about Bo D in 10 – how could I! I love it when I can’t parse a clue and come here to find it explained and there is new learning to be had.
    I also admire Tramp’s ability to construct concise clues with smooth surfaces that are really tough – in sharp contrast with last Saturday’s prize which has really tough clues that don’t read well and are long.
    Thanks again to Tramp (and other contributors) and to manehi for a blog equal to the puzzle.

44. Ong’ara in Kenya, I ll wait a little longer in case others are still working on it and if nobody else reveals the answer, I will 😀

45. Well, the lad may be good but he’s usually too tricky for me. I completed this after a fashion but there were a great many parsed after the event,some partially parsed and others not really parsed at all- SLAUGHTER and HOOVERING spring to mind. I did like FEDORA and SENTINELS but I’m still not a fan.
    Thanks Tramp.

46. I sussed the Derek bit of knackered fairly quickly, but it wrecked my further progress. For example  “It wasn’t Derek Cameron, was it, who lived at No. 10?” “Could the answer to Clue 10 possibliy be Dominoes?” So thanks, Manehi, for clearing that up. (The only Bo that I remembered was Bo Diddly!)

47. PROTECTION MONEY, gsolphotog?

48. I don’t understand the objection to “solve first, parse later”. A serious number of my solves function that way: especially with crossers, you see the part solution, a word that fits springs to mind, and you see if it works. What’s wrong with that?

49. Very good crossword (again).
    Quite a few easy ones to get you going (1ac, 12ac, 26ac, 20d, 22d – to name a handful).
    While SEALSKIN (10ac) was not my favourite (I found it a bit too contrived), I nominated the wonderful SELF-HARM (4ac), the equally brilliant SLEEPING AROUND (8ac), HOOVERING (6d) and 9d’s WALDORF SALAD with a totally apt surface for Clue of the Day. Can’t decide which one should take the palm.

    Although I got KNACKERED (14d) without much problem, I was foxed by the ‘Derek’ part.
    I actually did see that movie on the big screen in the late seventies but Bo didn’t spring to mind.
    Never heard anything from her after that but I hope she’s happy.

    Just one final question: what happened to Tramp as a writer of themed crosswords?
    Many thanks to manehi for the blog & Tramp for the Quality (with a capital Q).

     

50. Simon S @48: nothing.

    (totally agree with what you said)

51. I parsed 14d as “contained in DEREKCANKIP backwards”. No need for obscure currency.

52. Re indirect anagrams, the argument I’ve sometimes seen is that they’re ok as long as there is only one possible abbreviation. Though ‘that is’ is usually ie, I’ve seen sc(ilicet) used as well. I got 10a, but I didn’t like it much.

    This was in an Inquisitor a while back: The Spanish popes destroyed nations (7)

    I queried it with a few other solvers and was told it was fine because The Spanish is only ever EL. Since then I’ve seen The Spanish = LA in The Times.

     

53. Sil @50 – me too. I’ve never understood that ‘objection’ – for me it adds to the enjoyment. Thanks, Simon S.

    Ong’ara in Kenya @41 and 7 – and anyone else who may be wondering …

    You only need to enter the clue / answer into Site Search [ under Calendar] on this page and you should get there.

54. As a reasonably inexperienced crossword enthusiast I don’t see how I’m supposed to know 4a is ‘self’ harm, where in the clue indicates that? I’m not sure how I get that without the S and the L crossers even though i has figured ‘harm’. I’d appreciate advice.

    Similarly I had figured 24a hooter was the Definition so it was an owl but I really didn’t get the structure of the clue. When I’ve seen ‘And lits’ before it’s usually a catchphrase or famous thing, rather than one of hundreds of a type of bird?

    As an aside, I’m a big golf fan, Els isn’t known (particularly) as being an exceptional driver. But the clue kinda works I guess.

55. I have a few queries about this crossword but first one…which bit of 4a indicates ‘self’? I don’t get it?

    I also didn’t like 24a but I guess I’m used to ‘and lots’ where the answer is more unique than one of hundreds of a type of bird?

56. Thanks Eileen and yes Ong’ara, correct!

57. Stuart @54 and 55

    4a had me foxed for a while too.

    It’s actually a really clever clue: an anagram (“damaged”) of FLESH, plus ARM (in the sense of weapon). “Knife” is a kind of weapon, so the second part of the wordplay is actually a definition by example.  The setter knows that this is a bit tricksy, so he lets you know he’s playing mind games with you by adding a question mark.

    And then the whole of the clue is an &lit definition: to damage flesh with a knife is (usually) to self-harm – though again you could say it’s definition by example (which, again, is covered by the question mark).

    manehi explains the clue, but perhaps you might not have realised that (xyz)* is shorthand for an anagram of XYZ.

58. Thanks for replying essexboy. Maybe I’m annoyed because I had thought of self harm but couldnt make the whole thing all work as I couldn’t see anywhere in the clue that implied self. Therefore I’m Not sure I like the ? doing double duty? Are we saying it is indicating ‘by example’ twice (both for arm and for the whole ‘and lit’ definition) ? Hmmmm

59. (I’m sure this is all about me and how I look at clues as much as anything else!)

60. Stuart, you’re welcome.

    Yes, that’s my take on it. In a sense, with an &lit, the whole clue does double duty, so I guess it’s not too much of a stretch to make the question mark work twice as hard as well!

61. Thanks to Tramp for the superb puzzle and to manehi for the blog – I was wondering who Derek was (was ‘I am the one in 10’ performed by Derek and the Dominoes? No.)

62. Thanks to Tramp and manehi.

    Agree with an awful lot of the foregoing, and left with a feeling of nearly very good – WALDORF SALAD, HOOVERING – and nearly very bad – SEALSKIN, GREAT HORNED OWL – but overall a satisfactory flounce around the outer limits of planet X-word.  Favourite was BATHROOMS.

    Gonzo@61: Not sure if you’re still wondering, but Bo Derek was the proposedly irresistible eponym of the movie “10”. It was a successful vehicle for the late lamented Dudley Moore, most of whose output I enjoyed, some of it thoroughly.

63. A lot of words used above to argue the irresovable. There is nothing “wrong” with “solve now, parse later”, as many solvers have declared their satisfaction with this approach.  But many of us don’t appreciate it when the main challenge of a clue is to identify the cryptic content so that it can be ignored and solved on the basis of the definition and crossers. 14d is the excellent example.  I personally find it odd that a setter should be patted on the back the greater the proportion of the clue content is redundant in actually filling the grid. For me, Tramp is a brilliant wordplayer but an average crossword setter.  Other people have a contrary view, but both are to do with personal preference rather than the inherent goodness or badness of a crossword.

    4a is another good illustration. Some seeing it as fantastic, but me agreeing with Stuart that its double duty use of the question mark makes it “clever”. And one of the uses of the question mark is dubious in itself in giving enough to get the SELF bit.  Would “kill someone?” give “commit suicide”.

    Two tribes – one that prefers to benefit from the full richness of the clues in filling the grid, and the other that gets pleasure from appreciating the cluing after the fact.

64. Well I’m in the camp that thought this was excellent. Great variety of clues and a lot of big smiles. WALDORF SALAD was superb imo – very creative and amusing at the same time.

    Appreciated Tramp’s elucidation on the anagram and on reflection I agree with the Picaroon quote – in particular the point that it allows for more possibilities with the surfaces as opposed to things like “X initially”, or “Y finally”

    On guess then parse clues – for me the key is variety. A puzzle full of this type of clue would certainly be very unsatisfactory, but while my favourite clues are those you can build up from wordplay I also wouldn’t want a whole grid of those. Some clues you can write-in combined with some where you need crossers adds to the fun and the challenge I think and produces more of those priceless penny dropping moments

65. Lots of fun. Particularly 9D where my immediate thought for 7,6 was Flowery Twats – kind of relieved that wasn’t right!
    Thanks Tramp, and Manehi for parsing 14D for me.

66. (7,5) obviously. Oops.

67. Btw I was also desperately trying to figure out how to reconcile DEREK Trotter ‘in’ his famous sheepskin with the sealskin at 10ac!

68. Loved this. One of the moments that has stuck with me on my journey through solving cryptics was the moment I got my first “solve first, parse later” clue, and I remember enjoying it immensely. It was like a turning of the tables – I felt I’d made progress. The clue had given me just enough to work with, there was a cheeky cryptic definition, and the enumeration gave me a little to work with. When I managed to parse it afterwards it was at least as good as if I’d done it the right way around, possibly better. I still get the same feeling now if I get it first, with a well constructed clue. I agree with others that you don’t want too many in a puzzle, but a few moments where you do is part of the joy of crosswords for me.

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