Guardian Cryptic 29,038 by Paul

112 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,038 by Paul”

1. Thanks, Paul for the lovely challenging puzzle.
   Thanks, manehi. The blog must not have been easy to put together. Very neatly done.

   SHAMELESS
   Can ex-Wimbledon somehow mean “other than Wimbledon” (like ex dividend etc.,)?
   Of course, I see the hyphen in the clue and the absence of it in my example. Difficult
   to imagine that Paul chose the only grand slam Seles did not win.

2. I can’t believe I got all the songs without realising NOONE was = number 1
   And all Beatles which wasn’t mentioned was it?
   Great puzzle Paul and thanks to blogger

3. …kept thinking “these aren’t Herman’s Hermits”
   ..and thanks Manehi….I was rushing for my own NO ONE!

4. (This isn’t all about me but)….. before seeing theme I got I FEEL FILE which I guessed from one crosser and the IF leading to HELLO GOODBYE then CIAO after that.
   Ok I’ll shut up now. Sorry

5. While I like Paul in general,

6. … sorry premature post … I do find his themes often labored. I got the meaning of Number One early on, but could not see any reason to attach it to the Beatles (after I got I Fell Fine I just said to myself that I hope it does …).

7. Seemed impenetrable, until a suspected NO ONE was deciphered by WHELP, then off to the races. Another one puzzled by the “ex” in 14a.

   I think mentioning the Beatles would have made it too easy.

   Thanks P&M

8. I agree with others that 24a was too vague to serve as the link for the themed words. There is nothing to indicate that the number 1s are all by the Beatles. “Noone”, as somebody else said, suggested Herman’s Hermits, if one was inclined to think in that direction.

   I though this was an exceedingly weak and frustrating puzzle, not worth the effort required to finish it.

9. Lets not forget that “For no-one” although not a single is a great Paul(Macca) song from arguably their finest album “Revolver”-giving a link to the other
   themed clues
   Worse than the error ln the Seles clue is the fact that the stabber received a suspended sentence
   Great puzzle.

10. I thought that MEGAFLOP was a nice ironic counter to NO ONE.
    Favourite was ROOT BEER.

11. am another one who failed to parse NO ONE, or should it be No ONE and was thinking of Peter Noone, but to the best of my knowledge, he did not cover PAPERBACK WRITER, which was the first of the themed clues I got and WHELP confirmed it was the Beatles and not Macca.
    Ifound this realy difficult, It has taken me 2 1/2 hrs, but I don’t agree with GFO@8. I found satisfaction in eventually finishing.
    Thanks manehi for the blog, I needed help in parsing a couple,, especially 24a, which was the key clue.

12. Never heard of a MEGAFLOP, but nicely pointed out Tim C @10 that it’s the converse of 24A.
    I love ROOT BEER. Favourite soft drink from my childhood in Queensland, Oz, not far away from Bundaberg, home of ginger beer, along with sarsaparilla, or sars, as we called it.

13. I liked the wordplay for WET BLANKET, but the def was too obvious, which rather spoiled it a bit.

14. If I were to be picky, I don’t like the nonsense word ”garpen”. We’ve had a few lately from Paul. Some don’t mind, some do. And I felt that TEG (”get” back) in CORTEGE was a bit of overuse of the device also in “gar(paper back)pen” PAPERBACK WRITER.
    SWIMWEAR was a goodie’. I thought budgie smugglers was an Ozism.

15. This was hard and like others I got the songs before understanding the theme. I thought maw in 21 across meant throat, mouth or gullet rather than stomach? Impressive puzzle though. Thanks Paul and thanks for the early blog Manehi.

16. Lovely! What a nice hidden answer in 3d. Thanks both.

17. If I search for “ex” the first definition I get is “not including/without” which makes 14ac work.

18. I think I FEEL FINE was the fab four’s first number one so quite cute for it to be the first theme too. I enjoyed this as you never know with Paul whether he’s going to make the theme consistent throughout or riff on different meanings of NO ONE

    Top marks to KVA @1 for the ingenious defence of ex

    Cheers P&M

19. I think it would have been neat to have had one light for which 24a actually was Peter NOONE, but that’s cavilling a bit.
    I found this extremely hard going to start with, but once I got into it I thought it was good fun and quite ingenious. The only one which I thought was going too far was CORTEGE, but I guess if I was comfortable with the whimsical ‘Garpen’ in 16a, I should not have minded TEG = Get Back.
    Whatever you may say about this puzzle, and I appreciate Paul is a bit of a Marmite setter at times, I really don’t think it can be described as a weak puzzle.
    Thanks to Paul for an invigorating start to the day and to manehi for the customarily perceptive blog.

20. Really liked this.

    I was relieved that the NO ONEs were Beatles songs, rather than hits from any time after about 1980, which I wouldn’t have had a chance with. “Cavalier” as an anagrind is just about OK. Seles I knew as a tennis player, but had forgotten she didn’t win Wimbledon – my suspicion is Paul had forgotten this too, rather than “ex” being a clever allusion to this, but I may be being unfair to him. Needed to come here to parse CORTEGE.

    Favourites including NO ONE, RING-SHAPED, SWIMWEAR.

    paddymelon@14, I think you’re right on the origin of “budgie-smugglers”, but it’s one of these wonderfully apt Oz expressions that’s become well-known in the UK.

21. Great fun. Easier to solve than to parse, so thanks to manehi for that.

22. That was chewy, and tough to get a foothold, but when I started solving it gradually came together, a combination of building clues up and seeing a solutionand parsing it. Bits not parsed, like the teg in CORTEGE which I solved early and forgot to go back and work out why.

    Thank you to Paul and manehi.

23. That Paul, eh?
    I thought this was pretty brutal. Didn’t help that it took me a long time to figure out the keystone clue. Eventually CIAO led me to HELLO GOODBYE and the Beatles, after which TICKET TO RIDE and PAPERBACK WRITER became accessible.
    Not sure about “Garpen” in the latter. The fact that it was a made-up word actually made the clue easier, because it obviously had to be deconstructed, but to say it rendered the surface inelegantly rough is a bit of an understatement.

24. Classic Paul, I thought. Really tough to get into but once the theme revealed itself I was off. I got 10ac before realising the alternative meaning of 24 ac so thought Whelp might be an orphan dog! (I know nothing about dogs!)
    Thanks Paul and manehi.

25. As Charles@23 says, pretty brutal – but satisfying to finish. And like Shanne@22, I didn’t get ‘teg’, but now see it! Many thanks to Paul for the fun, and to manehi.

26. I’m sure I’ll get corrected, but the phrase budgie smugglers is fairly recent. The sadly missed John Clarke is generally admitted to having originated it in 1998.
    Not sure if it’s worse or better than a ferret down your trousers.

27. Like many recent Paul puzzles this seemed impenetrable at first glance, but it fell out surprisingly smoothly for me. I had a few solutions dotted about the grid until I spotted CIAO, which gave HELLO GOODBYE and I had unlocked the key. Thence I got PAPERBACK WRITER from the crossers – I don’t like these Dingbat clues at all.

    The Seles clue is a nice construction, pity about the howler. Why not just ‘ex-tennis champion’?

    Favourites were EL NINO, WET BLANKET, SWIMWEAR.

    STRAWBERRY Fields Forever/Penny Lane, possibly the Fab Four’s best ever single, was kept off NO ONE by the cover version of Please Release Me by Englebert Humperdinck. One despairs…

    SueB @15: ‘Maw’ = stomach is the original meaning (cf German Magen, Swedish mage) but this is now archaic and it now usually indicates mouth or gullet, as you say.

    Thanks to S&B

28. I spent a bit too long trying to make a case for 16 across being Octopuses Garden until the penny dropped. Is “maw” the stomach? I thought it meant mouth/gullet.

29. Thanks Paul and manehi
    Easy theme for me – same I FEEL FINE route in as some others.
    paddymelon – I’m surprised by your objection to “garpen”; you at least should have recognised the famous Australian high pressure hose manufacturer! (actually I agree with you).
    Lots of lakes to choose from in 25.

30. I forgot to say that SELES turned up in another puzzle very recently, and I thought it was a bit obscure then.

    GARPEN!

31. I often approach Paul’s linked puzzles with an initial “Harrumph”, but end up enjoying them. As has been said, I was half-expecting alternative No 1s, a me or KVa or AlanC

32. What joy that our swimwear slang is making a contribution to Anglosphere erudition! I thought the same as SueB @15 re maw, as in colourful phrases like “The great beast’s ravening maw”. A fun Beatles puzzle, thank Paul and manehi.

33. … thanks ..

34. There’s a MACA- in MACAW and a RING- in RING-SHAPED. EL NINO has almost the right letters for LENNON, but I can’t find George Harrison anywhere. Am I reading too much into this?

35. Thanks to Paul for an enjoyable puzzle and manehi for a great blog.

    grantinfreo @32 – you might enjoy reading this
    https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/jan/07/happy-to-let-it-hang-out-budgie-smugglers-are-back-on-australian-beaches

36. Thanks manehi as I wondered if I had missed something in 1d. I also wondered if the “perhaps” in22d would have been more appropriate attached to the mog in 7d, but these are petty quibbles indeed in the context of such a brilliant set of clues, thanks Paul, if anyone attends his online chat can they pls report back on the Seles matter as I like KVa’s take on it?

37. Sorry Andy@28 but the octopus was singular anyway!

38. Barry R@34…cortege is almost as close to George as El Niño is to Lennon, but in answer to your question – Yes!

39. Knew 9a had to be I FEEL something, but what? Wrong enumeration for Carole King and Chaka Khan. Not enough letters for Maria. Ah, Cream of course! No, James Brown! No – Donna Summer!!

    Good spot Barry @34. As for George – While my guitar gently WHELPS?

    Lots of fun, ta P & m.

40. I sometimes complain about Paul and his linked clues, but this one was right up my street and even the homophone was unobjectionable. Got it all in under half an hour (or perhaps I just had a good night’s sleep).

41. Great fun. Saw the No. 1 thing quite early but then bunged in an unparsed I FEEL LOVE at 1ac, which held me up for ages. It did in the end seem odd to have all Beatles plus one Donna Summer!

42. For No One is a great song but not a single let alone a number one. It was not a “hit”. If you’re going to delve into the most famous pop catalogue for your theme get it right Paul.

43. What does (always) mean in 15d?

    I managed a grand total of ZERO solutions today.

44. Steffen @43
    It’s a bit sneaky. It gives the “forever” for the song title.

45. Harry Stevens @42

    Nowhere does Paul suggest it is!

46. Harry @42
    I don’t think the clues directly refer to the song “For No One” and hence don’t suggest that it was a number one. Same with the reference to “Strawberry Fields Forever” that manehi noted.
    That said, it did make me think of “For No One” (great song, indeed) and for a moment that threw me slightly off what the theme could be.

47. Thanks for the blog, a theme to honour AlanC at last.
    Garpen was clever, a Playtex plus a reverse synonym. CORTEGE also devious. RING-SHAPED a very neat clue and TICKET TO RIDE flowed very nicely.

48. Held up for a while by bunging in tata ([steak] tatare) for 23d. OK, I know it’s only a homophone for a tiny minority, but much latitude seems to be allowed round here in such cases – indeed the one in 15d would have them scratching their heads in the town of the same name.

49. Too hard for me! I gave up on 19ac, 25ac, 7d, 14d, 20d.

    The song titles were easier for me. Liked PAPERBACK WRITER, TICKET TO RIDE

    New: song I FEEL FINE but I probably heard it many years ago; MEGAFLOP.

    I did not parse 23ac.

    Thanks, both.

50. Just finished whilst enjoying the sunshine. Typical Paul fare I.e some very clever cluing IMO 24a was extremely good in sending one of in many directions. Presumably it’ll be Maskerade tomorrow. Ta for the blog too

51. Harry Stevens @42

    But nowhere does Paul suggest it is!

52. Like others, the penny dropped at 10D, and then it was pretty straightforward. (Unlike yesterday’s, which still has me hornswaggled.)
    @Roz – what’s a Playtex? I searched but couldn’t get beyond ladies’ underwear.
    Thanks all.

53. Mimi @52
    It refers to a “lift and separate” clue, often where a word needs to be split into two words, in this case GAR (rag backwards) and PEN. “Lift and separate” used to be a Playtex advertising slogan (don’t know if it still is!)

54. Slow and steady progress. Was I the only one held up by putting LUMPIER in 12ac?

55. Thanks Muffin@53! I do (vaguely) remember Lift and Separate but Cross Your Heart was all that came to mind. Love a new factoid.

56. Despite solving 24A and a couple of the non-theme clues, I got nowhere with this and left frustrated and dissatisfied.

    Perhaps I’m being old and cranky but I dislike it when success with the puzzle hinges entirely on decoding an unobvious theme (rather than the theme being a nice bonus that one might not even notice until reading the blog).

57. I enjoyed that, though it was a bit of a themo collapso once I realised what the NO ONES were (STRAWBERRY was the hint that suggested the theme). The middle TEG of CORTEGE is a long stretch and I failed to see why it was that, likewise the ACE in SIAMESE CAT, but that was me being dense, not any fault of Paul’s. I don’t think I’d ever have worked out GARPEN if I hadn’t known by then that I was looking for Beatles songs.

    Liked SWIMWEAR, WHELP, EL NINO and the clever link from CIAO to HELLO GOODBYE.

58. I’d say including ‘Beatles’ in the theme would be redundant. All the 24’s are Number Ones. Their Beatleyness isn’t needed to solve. Efficient clueing with no chaff.

59. What great fun I found this on a sunny Good Friday. Although bizarrely enough it wasn’t the Fab Four’s number one hits that held me up the longest. Had just sent an email to across the street neighbours who were off for an Easter weekend at the Suffolk coast. Entitled Feeding the Feline, confirming that I would make sure their cat (not a Siamese one, though) wouldn’t starve. In then went the last two, FELINE and SIAMESE CAT. Many thanks Paul and Manehi, with lots of Miaows and Ciaos…

60. ‘Lift and separate’ clues have been discussed here a number of times. The expression was coined by Times Crossword Championship winner Mark Goodliffe in 2007 and has changed its meaning over the years – see here for its original meaning: https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/12/lift-and-separate.html – to quote from this article: ‘Not all clues let us detect their structure so readily. Some create a joint so compelling between definition and wordplay, it takes an act of supreme will for the solver to pry them apart. This is popularly called “lift and separate”.’.

    Two examples from last week’s Picaroon puzzle:
    Pay graduate £50, getting light fixture (8,5)
    Synthetic material, red like fancy fur coats (9)

    ‘Garpen’ is not one of those – more like a Dingbat, as Gervase said @27.

61. Mimi @52 Playtex is when you have a single word and split it into two before solving, Gossard is two words pushed together before solving , both are examples of cleavage.
    Lift and separate is two words already seperate so I do not see the point , if I am going to be fooled by that I may as well pack in and do the Wordsearch.

62. I had a hard time with this, got only 8 last night and two more this morning before I had to hit the check button.

    Never thought of “NO ONE” as “number one,” so was completely baffled by all the 24’s in the clues.

    Never heard of Lake Bala, though there’s a town in Pennsylvania called Bala Cynwyd, so that would make Bala Welsh. (In Pennsylvania it’s pronounced “Bala Kinwood.”)

    On the other hand, this is the very first time I’ve remembered without prompting (except for the clue itself) that “on” = “leg” in 20d SPOT ON.

    Roz, I think the idea for the two-word playtex is that two words that form a single concept, like “light fixture,” are separated, so that “light” (part of the wordplay) in the clue = “match”, and “fixture” = the whole answer, in this case FOOTBALL MATCH.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi for the puzzle and blog, and to Eileen for the budgie.

63. Like Tim the toffee @2,and some others, I solved it without realising NO ONE meant Number One, and also wondering where aka Herman fitted in. A good work-out, though.
    (btw Bodycheetah @18, there were several Beatles’ chart-toppers before I.F.F.). 🙂

    thanks to Paul and Manehi

64. For those of us in Birmingham, a different route to 25ac ALABASTER may be possible. In addition to all those canals, we have the mighty River Rea, so if we can use ST for stone and allow both lake and river to flow backwards…
    No? Oh well, thanks to Paul for a chewy puzzle and Manehi for a thorough and informative blog.

65. I’m in the anti-garpen camp, as I do generally prefer wordplay that involves actual words, and clues that at least seem to mean something on the surface. Otherwise, this was all good fun.

    There are only a handful of other musicians you could get away with doing this with. Elvis, for sure. Madonna, fair game (she was topping the charts for over two decades, ending nearly two decades ago). There are some people since then with a slew of hits, but the intersection between cryptic solvers and, say, Rihanna fans is pretty close to nil. Still, one day we’ll have to join the 21st century, reluctantly and with great protestations. Gentle reminder that the last Beatles release was before my birth, and I’m middle-aged.

66. I imagine the theme was especially easy for someone with your name, Michelle @49

67. Great puzzle, thanks, Paul. Had me grinning from beginning to end. I seem to be in a minority who really clicked with this one. Which is funny because it’s usually the reverse for me with Paul. Working through the clues in order, I FEEL FINE and PAPERBACK WRITER were gettable before I’d even read the clue for 24a – 16a is such a trademark Paulism that it wasn’t hard to see what was going on. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I loved it.

    Thanks for the blog, manehi.

68. I generally dislike puzzles in which large numbers of clues are linked. Linking two or three is fair game; more than that and, unless I spot the key in about 10 seconds, I lose interest. Today, NO ONE was all it could be, but I missed the No 1 interpretation. And, never having had much interest in pop music and knowing far fewer Beatles songs than most of my friends and contemporaries, it made not a jot of difference. As so often with Paul’s offerings, I’m afraid my reaction is ‘Yes, yes, very clever’ and off to cut the toenails or something equally interesting. Basically beaten by one clue, hence virtually nothing entered in the grid.

69. Jacob @56 – I agree completely.

70. Brilliant!!

71. As a resident of the said borough I can echo DavidT’s comment @48. The natives pronounce Bury to rhyme with hurry 🙂

72. [BTW I loathe ROOT BEER. That powerful flavour of salicylate esters – I feel I should be rubbing it on a sprain rather than taking it internally]

73. Gervase @72 – Ha! I’ve always called root beer “fizzy Germolene”. Delicious!

74. Great bit of fashion history, Eileen @35. Regards, ginf.

75. … esp Steve B’s depiction of our erstwhile PM …

76. Fab fun! Thanks Paul, for making this Friday good!

77. Oh dear! I didn’t get very far with this one. I got NO ONE and PAPERBACK WRITER, and one other themed answer, but I didn’t realise they would all be Beatles numbers, and I don’t remember many of them anyway. I’ve enjoyed Paul’s weekend puzzles this year, but this one didn’t appeal to me.

78. Our fastest ever Friday solve. Loved it. Loved CORTEGE, ROOT BEER and STRAWBERRY. Great fun. Thanks Paul, and Manehi for the blog.

79. Assumed the soul in no one clue was a reference to rubber soul.

80. I thought that, for 21, it was MA-CA-W, eith circa for “a ton”.

81. I got almost nowhere with this after wasting many minutes on the Herman interpretation of NOONE and missing No. 1 completely. I even noticed Help but missed the connection.

82. I see I wasn’t alone in not getting that NO ONE could be read as No. 1, that explains a lot! I realised the Beatles connection almost straight away, getting HELLO GOODBYE, despite not getting CIAO until much later, and had thought until coming here that NO ONE had to be some sort of reference to one of my favourite Beatles songs, “For No One”. Anyway, it all went in very quickly, despite the confusion, and a big thanks to Manehi for explaining the parsing of NO ONE, PAPERBACK WRITER, WHELP, MACAW and finally, CORTEGE.

83. A brilliant puzzle! A tour de force. I can’t praise it enough.

    CORTÈGE was my last one when the penny (lane) dropped.

    Thanks Paul and manehi

84. A tussle but enjoyed in a gruesome way. Thanks to Paul & manehi.
    Am I the only one for whom the Beatles are “those young chaps”. Even Sinatra is after my time! Nonetheless I was aware, as a teacher of the Beatles generation in Merseyside, of most of their works. Didn’t spot GET-back in CORTEGE.
    At a party in 1963 I expressed enjoyment at a record and asked what it was. I still recall the scorn of “It’s the Beatles Sir”.

85. Easiest Friday in ages for me. Theme was right up my alley. More like this please!

86. Rather late in the day because I’ve only just given up having failed to spot “number one”, but I don’t think anyone else has pointed out that megaflop is not a measure of computer speed because it needs an s on the end – flops=Floating Point Operations Per Second

87. 86 comments in and no one complained about El Niño yet. IMO it’s a weather system not a current and exchanging an Ñ for an N in wordplay is verboten. Grouchy that I didn’t see it in the clue (so no real doubt), but considered and rejected for those reasons.

88. What would you call more than one flops then Ravenrider @86?

89. Lovely crossword Paul even though I needed to reveal a few clues in order to finish it. At least I could mostly parse them afterwards! I don’t understand how so many people missed the No. One part of No one. Wasn’t that why it said hit?

90. Brian @87: I came here to do the same. El Niño is one phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – a sort of sloshing of heat from one side of the Pacific to the other – and most certainly is *not* an ocean current.

    Otherwise loved the whole thing…

91. Brian @87 I had similar thoughts but Chambers gives it as a warm water current in the Pacific. I think people now aware of it because of the large influence on the weather . I did actually learn something, it is known as the “Christ child” because the current usually appears around Christmas in Peru.

92. Then, Roz @91, Chambers is wrong!

93. I did ask a climate expert as well, it is an ocean current bringing warm water up to the surface of the Pacific.

94. Roz: nope. Your climate “expert” isn’t.

    Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño–Southern_Oscillation

    (PS: I wrote a book about climate and warming, back when there was still time to do something about it.)

95. I would prefer a professor of Climatology to clicking on links. If my students quote wikipedia at me I send them to biosciences to do some colouring-in. I will say no more on the subject.

96. Wikipedia’s climate pages are very good, maintained by an informal group of working climate scientists.

    Chambers is still wrong.

97. Chambers is descriptive and not prescriptive. If words start to be used erroneously they get listed as such in the dictionary. I presume this is the explanation for the ‘wrong’ definition of EL NIÑO. ‘Epicentre’ is another good example which always gets some of us hot u der the collar.

98. My Internet research suggests that the climate phenomenon is named after the current rather than the reverse.

99. I’m travelling so am in catch-up mode, only getting to this today (puff, puff).
    Echo all the praise with some sympathy for the gripes (and v grateful to manehi for an amount of parsing). The one pebble in the shoe is that I could have sworn that Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields was a no1 – don’t I recall a lengthy sequence of appearances on TOTP? Perhaps Gerry Dorsey stopped the lads going straight in at no1, which was their norm? But I am removed from my reference material (travelling you see) so cannot offer anything better than a lazy ‘surely that can’t be right’.

100. Loved it. Hard (it was a bank holiday after all) but achievable, and like others my way in was a tentative NOONE then WHELP gave me the clue I needed. I’m OK with garpen and the like, as it’s pretty obvious what is going on, if not how initially. I thought NOONE was a good clue and a good ref to one of Macca’s finest — if this had been 4d it would have read 4 NOONE, even better.

101. Strawberry Fields / Penny Lane famously didn’t get to no. 1 and the story is that George Martin thought it was the worst decision he made to insist it be released as a single, as in those days it meant it couldn’t go on the album.

102. Just got around to this. Very glad Paul limited himself to Beatles. Cortège was a late penny drop moment. I really struggle with made up words. Requires no skill. Not sure other editors would accept. Also surface readings like 13/22 don’t rock my boat. But it was fun putting in all the Beatles no one hits, whelp was the clue that suggested that. Got into a bit of a mess trying to use tata (tartare) for 23d, more a sauce than food. Thanks Paul and manehi

103. Needed a few ‘checks’ for this one. Is it perhaps a bit GK-heavy, I’m thinking? Even if, of the entire “pop” genre of which I’m so ignorant, the Beatles numbers are the ones I’m most likely to guess, I never spotted the Beatles connection. Once I’d sussed 24a’s double meaning, I simply assumed that these were chart-toppers by various artistes – most of whom I would never have heard of.

     I did know of the Beatles’ Help!, at least. But that didn’t Help! me…

     I liked the mini-theme linking 7d and 14d, at any rate. Couldn’t help thinking of the (now very politically incorrect) song in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.

     Thanks Paul notwithstanding a real struggle. And manehi for working it all out…

104. It is for this reason I don’t enjoy Paul or Vlad. I don’t mind a challenging crossword but it needs to be fair. The references here were too obscure

105. Rats@104 – I suppose each of us has their own idea of what’s ‘fair’ and what’s ‘unfair’ in a crossword.

     Some solvers loathe ‘lift-and-separate’ clues, as has been mentioned above, and hence some editors won’t allow them. I particularly recall the late and sadly-missed Alberich telling me that he was very reluctant to accept such wordplay from me, and only because I agreed to hyphenate it.

     So what about ‘garpen’? I’m pretty certain there’s no such word: Chambers denies all knowledge and so does Google. I don’t think it makes the clue unfair – just that it makes any surface the clue might have non-existent. To me that matters a lot. “Gar-pen” might be better. Is the Gar a fish that can be farmed, so might be kept in a Pen? Is it even edible? Someone may know!

106. Brian@87 – I wondered about the N/Ñ in EL NIÑO too. Ahem – in one of mine there’s an E/É conflict, but I think that’s excusable, since (in French at any rate) accents on UPPER CASE letters are optional.

     I remember seeing a very clever use of Ü in a crosser, where both the across and down words required the umlaut. But I can’t recall whether both clues were likewise ‘umlaut’ed. It would have been brilliant if they were!

107. I was also thrown by MAW as stomach but a bit of searching in Chambers suggests that it covers throat, gullet or stomach. I also found a reference to the Abomasum, or maw, the fourth and final rennet-secreting stomach of a ruminant.
     I too did not like the use of ‘Garpen’.
     It’s reassuring that I’m not the only one to have missed the #1 meaning of 23a despite spotting the Beatles song titles theme after solving Ciao and then Hello Goodbye.

108. Quite flattered to come across this spoonerism again (independent 10595)

109. Late to the party here, and as I haven’t read every post above, I apologise if anyone else has beaten me to the punch, but a track on Revolver has the title of ‘For No One’ which obviously wasn’t a no.1 though.

110. Thanks BlueManc@109. Unlike you, I have read all 109 comments and can tell you that For No One has been mentioned approximately 17 times. Almost as often as Herman’s Hermits.

     I led myself astray with an unparsable DISTORTED at 19a – used plenty of Tippex when I realised my mistake, but never did get the right answer.

     Never heard of MEGAFLOP(S) and thought SLIP would do for a ‘failure’ – “*many a slip twixt cup and lip*” sounds like a series of drinking failures to me – though I must admit the grid entry looks more like an avalanche than something from IT. I’ve got as much chance of knowing that one as Keith @84 had of recognising the Beatles when he heard one of their records at a party 60 years ago!

     Thanks to Paul (it’s a good thing he never reads the comments on here, so he doesn’t know how unappreciated and feeble his efforts were) and manehi (whose efforts are always appreciated).

111. Just finished this. I prefer having a few puzzles on the go and love the way answers appear when one returns after a break and see the clues in a different way e.g. the “get” in cortege.
     I find some of the moaning and boasting on this website disappointing; thankfully, there are enough appreciative correspondents to make a visit worthwhile.
     Thank you to the blogger, the Guardian for making this excellent puzzle free to access and, of course, the setter too.

112. I had 23d as TATA as in potato

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