Guardian 29,083 – Picaroon

107 comments on “Guardian 29,083 – Picaroon”

1. Loved this. Took me ages to even get my first solution but it gradually resolved with lots of tea tray moments. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

2. Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew!

   Liked CALVE, PRANG, G S T KING, ELAND, COFFEE POT and IN A GOOD LIGHT.

3. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
   A bit quicker than usual for Picaroon, but very enjoyable. POLITBURO is an example of my favourite type of clue – build up from the parts to get an unexpected answer.
   I’ve only ever come across “extractOR fans”.
   I took cross in football to give BALL too, but it’s a bit loose.
   I’m not happy with “potential explosive” for SALTPETRE. It’s a component of gunpowder, but as the oxidant for the carbon and sulphur combustion; it’s not explosive in itself.

4. Loved it. Some great definitions; politburo, well etc.

   Cheers P&A

5. Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew.

   Wonderful crossword. Came here to find out that I hadn’t parsed 4 or 5 correctly. That takes nothing away from the pleasure of finishing a Picaroon.

6. Muffin @3 – a long cross is the same as a long ball.

7. Btw Andrew it should be reversal of RUB in the explanation for POLITBURO

8. Crispy @5
   Well…no. A cross is from the wing, a long ball is from the backfield.

9. Such wonderful setting by Picaroon as always – I’m full of admiration for his surfaces and misdirection. Favourites were CHERRY BRANDY, CALVE, POLITBURO and CAMERA-SHY. Brilliant.

10. On 14d, I dont get why ‘PET’ is a “bad mood”- am I missing something obvious?

11. Excellent as per, though I agree, CROSS = BALL did not feel right.
    Thanks P and A.

12. Like JerryG and Bodycheetah, I loved it.

    My favourites were CALVE, NEWTON and CHERRY BRANDY and I particularly enjoyed deconstructing POLITBURO, LITIGIOUS, IN A GOOD LIGHT and ADULATING.

    Priscilla McHugh – re PET:
    Collins: ‘a fit of sulkiness, esp at what is felt to be a slight; pique’
    Chambers: ‘a slighted and offended feeling; a slight or childish fit of aggrieved or resentful sulkiness …’

    Thanks as ever to Picaroon for the fun and Andrew for the blog.

13. Good fun. Glad to see Picaroon earlier in the week.
    Not going to quibble about the GSTK song..
    TsILT were the openings in SVEN. I looked up Nimzo, found it was a chess opening, then thought I’d better check the others. Great clue. SLOTH made me laugh. Liked the curvy figure 8.

14. I rarely have any reservations about Picaroon’s puzzles, and I enjoyed this one as ever. My only quibbles were that, like others, I thought that ‘cross’ as a definition for ‘ball’ was a bit loose, and I have only come across ‘rat on’ rather than ‘rat out’ at 5d.

15. Re 21ac; after false starts and much mulling I finally got it – but remain unsure about definition. That’s because I googled spitball and saw it is an “unlawful pitch” made with a moistened (ugh) ball in baseball. Therefore, I thought, could “cross” be the definition? On the other hand, the ball could be thrown by any child, not just a naughty one…. Tend to agree with the theory that a ball is a synonym for a cross (or t’other way around). Great crossword and, as ever, lovely succinct blog, Andrew. Thanks very much.

16. George@14 – I think the “out” at 5d was misdirection to make you think sun was the definition and answer was star (snag of rat after start of spring)?

17. anagram …

18. Personally, I think CROSS for BALL is okay. Perhaps an indication of example would help – a cross is a ball, but a ball isn’t necessarily a cross.

    Paddymelon @13. TsILT?

19. TerriBislow
    I took a SPITBALL as the moistened little ball of paper, blown out of an emptied bic pen – an impromptu peashooter; hence blown rather than thrown!

20. …hence what a naughty child might do.

21. Thanks both. As it seems a day for minor quibbles, I am not a fan of kilo meaning weight – I think it’s a mass but. Pound would be better. Otherwise a fun workout today.

22. Crispy@18. Some here use TILT for a Thing I Learnt Today. I learned several things today, and TILTs would have been even more confusing.

23. George and Terri @ 14 and 16 – I came across ‘rat out’, in the first Batman film. Jack Nicholson as the Joker gets set up by Jack Pallance, his boss…”…looks like we’ve been ratted out, boys…”, in a way that only Jack Nicholson can say.

24. Not on setter’s wavelength, gave up on 4ac.

    Favourites: GOD SAVE THE KING, SLOTH.

    New for me: CHEYENNE = state capital of Wyoming; RIGADOON dance.

    11ac – I did not understand the reference to the two towns in the clue – why are are they considered new towns? Finally found the answer on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_in_the_United_Kingdom

    21ac – I did not understand why BALL = cross.

    Thanks, both.

25. Always pleased to see that Picaroon is the setter, and today met my expectations. Really good crossword, I thought. The top half went in so easily that I thought something must be wrong, but ground to a bit of a halt lower down. Elvis delayed me for longer than was reasonable, and I needed him to help me with SALTPETRE, in which I had fallen for the misdirection. Very much liked POLITBURO. Most enjoyable, thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

26. TerriBlislow@16. Put me down for a STAR instead of SHOP in the first instance.

27. SimpleS @21
    Pound is also, strictly, a measure of mass rather than weight.

28. Sticky moments: I couldn’t see the connection between ball/cross. Was unaware that a pet is a bad mood, although I’ve just looked it up and sure enough, it is. Book/caution is interesting. I thought that if a cop pulls you over for speeding he can either book you or caution you?

    A bit of British ken needed for NEWTON, but I soon found what I needed.

    Overall an enjoyable experience, as I’ve come to expect from this setter. Thanks Picaroon & Andrew.

29. Lots of moans in the Guardian thread about cross=ball in 21 across. I thought I’d sussed it but hesitated to write it in because my Chambers (13th revised) doesn’t seem to include SPITBALL. I agree with Crispy @18 that it’s OK but would have been better with something indicating a definition by example.

30. Wonderful, tricky and fun – what more could a solver want

    Thanks very much to Picaroon and Andrew

31. Also not a fan of SPITBALL. Couldn’t see it in Chambers, cross = BALL seems very weak, and I am struggling to find any reference to why a naughty child might throw one. But in the end I couldn’t think what else it could be.

    But the rest of the puzzle was so excellent I’m not going to complain.

32. Like JerryG @1, I started very slowly – only one across answer (the last) and three downs after the first run through. But it all came together most satisfactorily. Old habits die hard – I had typed in GOD SAVE THE QUEN [sic] even though I knew what Elvis was doing in the clue. The only New Town I know in England is Milton Keynes, and only because I drove there to see Bruce Springsteen once, so those two were a puzzle. CAMERA-SHY was my standout. I agree with muffin @19+20 on SPITBALL and @3 on SALTPETRE, which both took a long time – last two in. Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew.

33. Great fun, with some nicely cryptic definitions (redheads, bear a little lower, where to place volumes, having a fondness for suits), good constructions and surfaces.

    Although SVEN was ingeniously chess-related, it seemed a bit too obvious to me (an escape from an Everyman puzzle?). And, like muffin @3, I object to potassium nitrate being described as ‘potential explosive’, which it certainly isn’t on its own. But these didn’t spoil a most enjoyable experience.

    Thanks to S&B

34. GdU @28
    Book and caution mean the same for a football ref.

35. Took me while to get going on this and longer to finish. Needed help parsing a couple.

    My favourites included POLITBURO, COFFEE POT, CHEYENNE, SHOP

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

36. ASSAM
    Does ‘western’ indicate a reversal? Does ‘western’ mean ‘going towards West’ in a way?
    Or should we read ‘a western part’ as ‘a part lying towards West’?

37. Thank you, muffin @ 34.

38. Really enjoyed this Picaroon puzzle, though furrowed brows for a while as I teased out the last few – POLITBURO, SPITBALL and finally the tricky little SHOP. CHEYENNE suddenly came to me, with a flashback of having travelled through there coast to coast on a Greyhound bus in 1968. Long term memory fairly intact, even if the short term one is being seriously challenged at the moment. Thought IN A GOOD LIGHT particularly clever and challenging…

39. Kva@ 36, I took it as a reversal.
    I had never heard of a SPITBALL and when I got it ,I realised the child I was thnking of would be Too young,
    Thanks Both

40. What crypticsue said @30. Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew!

41. …and on the theme of long term memory, does anyone remember Prince Charles ordering a CHERRY BRANDY aged 14, while at Gordonstoun School at a Scottish pub nearby. And causing a bit of a scandal. GOD SAVE THE KING also triggered that remembrance for me too…

42. Thoroughly enjoyable crossword. But then it usually is worth The Pirate.

    muffin @3: thanks for the saltpetre explanation, great to have a pro in the ranks. I guess, to be charitable, adding potential to explosive gets the setter off the hook.

    Felt, like others, that for cross to be synonymous with ball, a ‘for example’ indicator is really called for.

    Only ever heard of EXTRACTor FANS myself, but the clue is perfectly valid.

    Many thanks, both.

43. A really good puzzle with some excellent misdirections and left-field definitions – e.g. REDHEADS.
    I also thought ‘ball’ equating to ‘cross’ was a stretch to far – even for Peter Crouch at his best.
    I suppose ubiquity of usage means ‘kilo’ as a specific metric rather than a generic prefix is ok, but I find it rather underweight.
    Many thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

44. Couldn’t parse ASSAM. I don’t agree that ‘western’ can mean the same as ‘westwards’ or ‘westerly’.

45. I agree with the general praise.

    There still seem to be those confused about spitballs, so it’s worth reiterating that it’s meant to be a moistened wad of paper used as a projectile by a naughty schoolboy. Spitballs in the illegally-doctored baseball sense are not what the setter has in mind, and I’m a bit surprised that those who looked it up found references only to the latter but not the former.

    [I once took a road trip to the west coast; I began the trip with the sensible idea of trying to pound out as many of the boring Great Plains miles as I could on day 1, but I idiotically overdid it. Tip: never arrive in CHEYENNE at 9 pm after a full day’s drive without a hotel reservation. Anyway, I’ve been there, and I’m willing to wager I’m the only one here who has.]

46. Muffin@27

    I don’t disagree technically. Pound-mass and pound-force are quite common words, with pound meaning either interchangeably, as is kilogram but kilopond is pretty obscure. Kilo is typically an abbreviation for kilogram, and I expect kilo can be an abbreviation for any word beginning with kilo, I think it is stretching it to use as one for kilopond.

    Upshot – I will continue to not be a fan!

47. “That’s a good looking ball”, as Scottish football commentator Archie Macpherson used to say.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

48. Thanks Picaroon for your ongoing excellence. I enjoyed solving this because I like misdirection and there seemed to be a fair share of it in this crossword. My top clues were POLITBORO, SHOP, ADULATING, and CHEYENNE. I couldn’t parse SPITBALL, GOD SAVE THE KING, and a few other bits so thanks Andrew for explaining.

49. Good crossword, though I share reservations about cross=ball, and, I suppose, about SALTPETRE as a potential explosive.
    But mass and weight are synonyms in common parlance, so no problem there. If my doctor asked me “what do you weigh?” I’d answer “70 kilos” not “700 newtons”.
    Thanks Andrew and Picaroon.

50. beaulieu @49 – someone tried to explain the difference between WEIGHT and MASS, but it was lost on me!

51. Thanks for the blog, I thought it was quite tricky when cold-solving but once I put the Downs in it was much easier , very friendly grid with a lot of first letters. I liked the precision of second wife for NEWTON and the use of DUG in ADULATING , POLITBURO was well constructed.
    KILO is fine, as Beaulieu@49 says , weight is used all the time to mean mass, if my students mix them up they get sent to Biosciences to do some colouring-in but this is just a crossword.

52. Another excellent crossword from Picaroon.

    I liked PRANG, CALVE, CAMERA-SHY and POLITBURO for the definitions, GOD SAVE THE KING for the misleading Elvis song, IN A GOOD LIGHT for the oil well, and BASS CLEF for the surface. I was another somewhat mystified by cross = BALL but given the examples above it seems OK to me.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

53. [HYD@50 a 10kg mass on the surface of the Earth has a weight of 98.1 Newtons, this is the force of gravity from the Earth acting on the mass. Take it to the moon and the mass is still 10kg but the weight is now 16.25 Newtons in the weaker gravitational field.
    Beware of football pitches, they have a very strong gravitational field that can pull young, fit men to the ground with ease. ]

54. I thought at first this was going to be easy: I got the first two acrosses right off the bat and so had 7 starting letters for the downs, but it turned out to just have “regular” difficulty, but a nice puzzle anyway. REDHEADS was my fave.

    I agree with muffin@3 re: SALTPETRE, and with several commentators that a cross is a kind of ball.

    Thanks P&A

55. I meant of course POLITBURO

56. Roz @53 – thanks, that actually made sense

57. Finished this after coming back from my exercise class, where I used hand-held kilo masses. I had COFFEE CUP for a while, which needed two lots of cocaine. I am not sure I have seen lift and separate used for the definition before as in red heads.

58. Hoofit @56 Another way to think about this is that mass never changes: it is an intrinsic property of matter. Weight represents the strength of the force of attraction between two masses, for example your body and the Earth or your body and the Moon. So your weight on the Moon is less, although your mass is the same.

59. Thanks to Picaroon for a hugely enjoyable puzzle, difficult in places and full of misdirection but always fun.
    Could not parse SALTPETRE, so thanks to Andrew for this and the rest of his blog.
    Lots of favourites including
    EXTRACTION FAN,
    CAMERA SHY,
    CHEYENNE,
    ASSAM,
    POLITBURO.

60. Completed this on an early morning flight to Catania this morning and probably the easiest Picaroon I’ve attempted, but only because the clues were constructed so perfectly. POLITBURO was the standout for me and I certainly didn’t have a problem with Cross/Ball although I agree with those who said perhaps a dbe would have been better. Beautiful puzzle.
    FYI Andrew, there is a slight typo in your parsing of Calve.
    [Roz @ 53: another pithy dig at footballers, very funny].

    Ta Picaroon & Andrew.

61. 9a I only caught on this morning that “endless” applied to “extra,” not to some word for “fighting” that I couldn’t think of.

    I’ve heard of New Towns, have no idea of what their names are, but give me some fodder and I’ll take a stab. BOOK for “caution” must have some sports connection.

    I associate PRANG with the RAF in the Battle of Britain, not with cars and drivers. Has it changed?

    ASSAM — nice to see a state in another country that has them, though “western” for “backwards” didn’t occur to me. Mexico, anybody? Australia?

    No clue about BALL for “cross.” Hopeless on sports again.

    Didn’t we have EIGHT for “curvy figure” recently

    TB@16 I had STAR at 5d for exactly the reason you gave, took a guess at 9a to set me right.

    Kilo began as a word for mass but quickly also expanded to being a word for weight, as anyone who has bought a kilo of onions can say. It now has both meanings in speech. SimpleS@46, I don’t think “kilo” can be used for “kilo-anything.” Have you ever heard “It’s six kilos from here”?

    mrpenney@45 No, I’ve been to Cheyenne too. I know I drove through it, and I remember having a Cheyenne postcard, so I must have stopped there.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

62. Valentine @61
    Increasingly one hears kilometre abbreviated to “k” – he lives 6k from the sea; he was doing 80k.

63. Thanks both,
    [I once tried to buy 100gm of saltpetre from the chemist’s to make some bacon, but he explained he couldn’t sell me that amount because it was classified as a potential ingredient of explosives. Strangely, he would have been allowed to sell me a kilo of the stuff.]

64. …or “klicks”…

65. Saltpetre (potassium nitrate) isn’t explosive by itself. Ammonium nitrate, often used as a fertiliser, is, though, and there have been a number of serious fertiliser explosions. It is also used in home-made bombs (perhaps I shouldn’t have said that!)

66. [The 2020 explosion in Beirut that devastated the port area was ammonium nitrate.]

67. Thanks both and it was all over too soon (I know! (I must be getting better!)). (But reference back to a recent request from (was it?) Kandy on how to improve solving speed – there’s a point where speed subtracts from the overall enjoyment.) Enjoyed teasing out SALTPETRE and POLITBURO.

    [Man in a vegetable shop asks for a stone of Golden Wonder potatoes. “It’s kilos these days sir..”

    “Oh.

    In that case I’ll just take a half stone…..”]

68. As (fellow chemist) muffin says, SALTPETRE is not even potentially explosive, unlike flour, for instance – dust explosions are a very real hazard in flour mills. But I’m sure there would have been more grumbles if ‘flour’ had been defined as ‘potential explosive’!

    [Re mass and weight, it strikes me that ‘weight’ is very much a geocentric practicality – in everyday activities we determine the relative masses of things by weighing them, ie by measuring the gravitational force that they experience on our home planet. I imagine that cooks on future lunar bases will use kitchen scales calibrated to account for the much lower gravitational force – to avoid massively over-catering 🙂 ]

69. [Gervase @68
    If they use balance scales rather than spring balances they should work just the same as on Earth!]

70. @36 I always taken ‘western’ in a clue to indicate that I am looking for either a reversal at the beginning of a word ie it is heading w or the first letter of a preceding word.

71. Delightful. One of my favourite setters. At 26A, eight as a curvy figure also featured in Friday’s Tramp puzzle. With thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

72. [muffin @69: True, though implausibly low tech! Interesting to speculate how lunar colonists would use the term ‘weight’ as a numerical quantity – with reference to Earth’s gravity or adjusted to local conditions?]

73. muffin @62 – I’m increasingly seeing kph as an abbreviation for kilometres per hour, which rankles somewhat – I would insist on kmph, obviously. At the same time, when talking about my cycling activities, I’ll happily refer to doing eg a 100k ride. Who needs consistency, eh?

74. [ AlanC@60 , a secret Special Branch mission no doubt, infiltrate the Cosa Nostra while pretending to play golf. Be very careful , do not go in any pubs called The Nag’s Head .
    My football pitch theory is an attempt to explain why the players spend most of their time lying on the floor. ]

75. Valentine @61. A PRANG in UK English nowadays would translate roughly into US English as a ‘fender-bender’. Despite once, in my early teens, having been an aficionado of gung-ho tales of WW2 Lancaster bombing raids, I confess I had entirely forgotten that use of the word.

76. gervase@72. They’re maybe lo-tech but balance scales can be very attractive antiques. I’m proud that mine has a complete set of weights, ranging from 1 gram up to 1 kilo… So 26 across didn’t bother me at all. (Well, apart from the earworm.

77. I enjoyed this. Didn’t know SPITBALL was a thing. But why is Broadway in clue? Brigadoon is a “musical”. Is “Cats” a West End musical?
    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

78. blaise @76
    That’s a bit modern – ours are in ounces (and fractions of).

79. ttt @ 77 from wikipedia

    “The original production opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway in 1947 and ran for 581 performances”

    So it seems reasonable to call it a Broadway musical.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

80. [I first saw Brigadoon when it was the school musical (Krishnan Gurumurthy was one of the leads), then the much inferior Gene Kelly film. Simon Callow refers to Brigadoon just before he dies in Four Weddings and a Funeral (spoiler). I didn’t realise it had been on Broadway!]

81. Gonna give my weight in Newtons from now on. 228lbs. Loved those comments?

    What do I weigh????

82. I make that 1014newtons. Roz may correct me, though.

83. Late to this after a hectic day, but just wanted to acknowledge the brilliant POLITBURO.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

84. I may have missed it, but why has no one demurred at “calve” having the definition “bear a little lower”; to calve is the process of giving birth to a calf, not the pregnancy itself.

    [Tyngewick@63 a strange anomaly, indeed. In about 1977, I was in a pub in Lancaster a few minutes before the official opening time, and they wouldn’t sell me a shandy, but cider was apparently ok. I have never fathomed that one]

85. Dave @84
    It’s a verb meaning “give birth to a calf”, i.e. a “little lower”. I don’t see the problem.

86. Widdersbel @ 73, we use km/h.

87. On this side of the pond SPITBALL and RAT OUT are common terms. On the other hand, PRANG and SHOP (for rat out) were unfamiliar to me. Unfortunately, we are also all too familiar with LITIGIOUS.

88. muffin@78. Not so modern if you live in France. And a gram’s so small that you don’t need fractions.

89. Dave Ellison@84 to moo is to low. So a little lower is a calf.

90. 1a – is a baby bear a “calf”?

    8a – where does EXTRA come from?

    12a – does “initially “ not mean the clue should be made up of starting letters?

    15a – where does “r” come from?

    18a – where does RUN come from?

    21a – how do you know TIPS needs to be reversed?

    4d – where does TT fit in?

    I’m too tired to ask the many other questions that I have.

91. Muffin@85 and ttt@89 Thanks, but those are not my queries – it is the “bear” part as in “bearing a child”; or should bear not be part of the definition?

92. Thanks P & A. My last one in was SHOP, because I had to look up the expression RAT OUT, which was new to me. An enjoyable solve, however.

93. Steffen @90:

    1a – is a baby bear a “calf”? – the definition is “bear a little lower”. Bear = give birth to, lower = cow (one who lows or moos)

    8a – where does EXTRA come from? further = extra (and then you take the ‘a’ off, because it is endless).

    12a – does “initially “ not mean the clue should be made up of starting letters? It can do, but it can also mean ‘put first’ as it does here – put book = caution before the cases = luggage.

    15a – where does “r” come from? Right = r (and ‘without means pan = criticise goes outside it)

    18a – where does RUN come from? It is RUB = massage, backwards (not RUN)

    21a – how do you know TIPS needs to be reversed? ‘about’ tells you to reverse TIPS = hints

    4d – where does TT fit in? times = TT goes inside (entertained by) BOOMS = prosperous periods, where it makes best sense (giving BOTTOMS).

    Remember that words like ‘about’, ‘entertains’, ‘back’ etc can be instructions as I have explained above, but they need not be – they may be playing some other role. It is sifting through the possibilities for the roles of words in clues that make cryptics both challenging and fun. Sometimes, you just can’t see the role until you guess the answer, or even until you see the parsing on this blog.

94. Muffin@62 Come to think of it, it’s used for money too — kilo dollars, euros, pounds etc. “The house sold for 300K.”

    Steffen@90 and Dave Ellison@91 A baby bear is a cub, but here “bear” = “give birth to.” With a “little lower” being a small animal that moos, or a calf, the answer = “bear a calf,” or CALVE.
    8a EXTRA = “further.”
    “initially” here means “put it first,” so caution/BOOK precedes luggage/CASES, even though it comes second in the clue.
    15a Criticise (-pan) goes without(=outside) right (R), then G for golf (NATO alphabet)
    18a There is no RUN. It’s RUB, massage, spelt backwards, following IT= sex, all contained in POLO, a sweet.
    21a “hints about” means turn TIPS about, reverse it.
    4d TT = times, two of them.

95. TT beat me to it. I should have refreshed before I posted TT’s post was both faster and better.

    Steffen, TT can also mean “teetotaller,” hence, “dry” or “sober,” and some kind of auto racing I never can quite remember. Those are useful to keep in your back pocket.

96. GDU @86 – always used to be km/h over here but kph seems to be increasingly popular, much to my utter disgust!

97. Dave Ellison @91 – bear can mean to carry in the womb or it can mean to give birth to, so the clue is fine.

98. Thanks Widdersbel. I thought it meant carry and give birth. I couldn’t find a definition which was just give birth.

99. If yoiu use the past tensr, eg She lore a child , then the assumption is that she gave birth to it too.

100. Muffin@82 I made it 1015N but it depends on rounding , only for the Earth’s surface of course.

     Valentine @94 k=kilo=1000 is a standard SI prefix and can be used with any units to mean multiply by 1000 , and by extension money.
     The big anomaly in SI is the kilogram, it is the base unit of mass but has the k built in . Far more consistent to have the mass unit defined as “something” and then the prefixes could be used for mass as well.

101. Thank you

102. [Dave E et al – when a child (or calf) is born, we’re using a special form of the past participle of ‘to bear’. In other contexts it’s usually ‘borne’, as in airborne and water-borne. It’s also ‘borne’ when bear = ‘give birth to’, but in the active, not passive, voice, eg ‘a woman who had borne three children’. Merriam-Webster has a useful summary here.]

103. Steffen@101. Funny coincidence the 101, but we’ve all been there. Thanks to Tassie Tim who’s probably snowed under right now.

104. Picaroon & Tramp both like “curvy figure” to clue EIGHT. Tramp used it 4 days ago. Both used it in 2021.
     I said this yesterday, but my comment disappeared into spam. Let’s try again…

105. eb@102. These matters are beyond the bourne of our understanding. 🙂

106. …I also remarked that the consecutive clues 17 & 18
     ASSAM & POLITBURO “Back massage” brought back bad memories of Paul’s “eg Assam” BACK RUB clue…

107. I can’t understand the blogger’s refusal to correct the parsing given for POLITBURO, which should contain a reversal of “rub” rather than “run” – though it was pointed out

     This would have spared Steffen unnecessary confusion, and the need for other commenters to explain the typo. Surely the purpose of 15²?

     Still a great, efficient blog (though refusal to edit gives an impression – wrongly, I’m sure – of haughtiness) and another entertaining puzzle from Picaroon

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