Guardian Cryptic 29,286 by Paul

118 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,286 by Paul”

1. I nearly gave up after having only completed the NW corner and a couple of other scattered clues, but WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS (who I watched on TV last night) gave me a boost and I got on a roll. I loved the long clues especially NONSENSE VERSE and the super MIDLIFE CRISIS. Other favourites were OUTSTARED, HIT OR MISS, REINS IN, CABLE and ANNAPOLIS but there were others. I hope this goes some way towards your request for hard puzzles, Roz 🙂

   Ta Paul & manehi.

2. What a lovely Friday treat.

   Thanks Setter and Blogger.

   Amicable not amiable. I could not see where that C came from. Doh!

3. Looking forward to comments on the hilarious French homophone.

4. Ignore the Friday bit. I am off work today and getting very confused.

5. Matthew, lol – I thought you were being sarcastic, implying this was too tough for a Tuesday. And added thanks to manehi for parsing CAPRI.

6. 20ac – definitely not a bilingual homophone!

7. Having worked out it had to be WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS from the crossers and enough football knowledge to know that existed, I didn’t bother parsing it, but that was one of my last few in. Thanks for the parsing of CAPRI, it had to be that from the crossers, but I tried Roman numerals, looked at APRI and just shrugged. I also wondered about DESERVE – and having been given the parsing, I’ll chalk that one up to Paul being outrageous and quietly forget about it.

   Thanks to Paul and manehi.

8. As manehi said, some hard work parsing after getting or guessing the answer from the definition. The customary groan-worthy homophone from Paul of DESERVE. I think ‘discontentment in career’ is doing double duty for MIDLIFE CRISIS. I remember hearing Mongolian THROAT SINGING on the radio a few years ago, but apparently it’s common to several cultures. More GK absorbed, hopefully. Liked CAPRI when I worked out the parsing. Thanks to Paul, and to manehi for teasing out the parsing.

9. It started off well but the last lot descended into a lot of question marks and ended up being far too tricksy (not hard Alan C @1) for its own good.
   Yours sincerely,
   Disappointed of Sydney.

10. I think Paul’s really taking the p*** with some of this parsing. Finished more than 24/30s of it, but it’s not my idea of fun at all.

11. Some very twisty parsing here: some I enjoyed and some I didn’t. I did like CAPRI and CABLE, ANNAPOLIS and MIDLIFE CRISIS, OUTSTARED and STEN GUN.

    I got GARIBALDI immediately from the reference to squashed flies, but never did parse it apart from the ALDI supermarket. Things=clothes and clothes=garb, therefore things=garb? Paul says so, but I’m not sure I agree. And des oeufs wasn’t quite enough like DESERVE for me to “hear” it (I was trying DE=from in French, but couldn’t account for the waiter).

    Chapeaux to anyone who worked out NONSENSE VERSE or WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS from the parsing instead of after the event.

12. Really, really good. Was especially smug about getting CAPRI at the first pass, such a characteristically Paulian device. Having concluded that NONSENSE VERSE had to be correct it took me a long time to figure out where the zip was.
    Tomsdad@8. Not sure about double duty, exactly, but disappointment in career and “that it?” certainly combined to point me at the solution. One of my favourite clues here.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

13. AlanC@3, Everpuzzled@6, Shanne@7 and others, let’s leave off complaining about homophones: un oeuf is un oeuf, surely.

14. gladys, I had your DE and SERVEUR for French waiter but I couldn’t find a way of removing UR. MattS @13: referring to it as hilarious is hardly complaining! Tim C @9, I’m sure others would describe this is as hard but it’s all about one’s perception, I suppose. Satisfied of London.

15. I am quite a fan of Paul, but I tend to agree that a few here are too-clever-by-half rather than just clever. I have often argued that homophones work better the more outrageous they are, but DESERVE was pushing it even for me; “waiter” is padding, and there’s no homophone indicator that I can see.
    Chapeau to manehi for working out how CAPRI worked, but I suspect I won’t have been the only one who got the crossers and bunged in the answer, feeling that life was just too short.
    Particularly liked WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS and MIDLIFE CRISIS.
    Thanks, both.

16. I didn’t complete the puzzle, I only solved two clues and I gave up before even finishing to read all the down clues. I thought it would be better for my mnetal health if I just come here to read the blog 🙂

    Thanls, manehi!

17. This was a relatively quick solve – not a stroll by any means – but I’m glad of the parsing here, as much of it was beyond me. Gettable from crossers and definitions and a bit of guesswork, so not quite as chewy an experience as it might (or maybe should) have been.

    Parsing all of it for me today would have been a bit like wrestling with spaghetti.

18. Note to self – ODI is now becoming crossword language for “cricket match”. “Test” now consigned to the bin.

19. For some reason I thought des oeufs rather than deux, but whatev.

20. Thanks Paul and manehi!
    Liked THROAT S…, REINS IN, ML CRISIS, NONSENSE VERSE and GARIBALDI.
    DESERVE
    manehi could be right but just like many others here, I find the clue iffy. There is no homophone indicator. Right?
    Tried DE SERVEUR like AlanC@14…then DE+SERVER, then DES ERVE (checked out if ERVE meant something relevant
    to the context). In each case, the ‘couple of eggs’ bit was hanging loose. So I had to be wrong.
    things=GARB (no issues).
    ML CRISIS: The whole clue could even be considered as an extended def.

21. I thought this was a bit of an oeuf de curé, with some great clues and some a tad too tricksy. Thanks to manehi for the elucidation.

22. Well done, manehi, on parsing everything. Some very tricksy and typically outrageous Paulisms here – 24 days is diabolical. All great fun, though, and I agree with AlanC that the franglais is very amusing.

    Thanks, Paul!

23. Well, everything went in. Not all was parsed – even at 6 in the morning, I’m not sure I have the time or the energy to break down the Wolves clue. I was beaten by the French eggs. (ami)CABLE, GRACELESS and RADII were my favourites.

    I am probably being very dim but I am a tad confused by OUTSTARED which several have nominated as a favourite. It feels to me like an adjective or just a verbal form whereas ‘the first to look away’ would appear to be a noun. Isn’t that a bit like equating ‘locked up’ and ‘prisoner’: one can be both and one is implied by the other but they are not the same thing, surely?

    Thanks Paul and manehi

24. gladys @11 – you hear get your things when going somewhere, and that usually means clothes or garb (coat, gloves), so I didn’t have a problem with that. We asked the Rainbows to do it last night as they left.

    MattS @13 – if I was complaining rather than groaning at an awful homophone, you’d know. I wasn’t, but I could, if pushed.

25. MattS@13 – not really complaining. Just that my late French wife is turning …..

26. [Yep Shirl @18, test cricket is under threat. E.g., half the West Indies test team playing in Oz just now are debutantes … their seasoned players are elsewhere, earning $$s playing in ODIs and T20s]

27. DESERVE as an ‘aural wordplay’ clue doesn’t inherently bother me, but it’s unfortunate that Paul wasn’t aware of the quirk of spoken French than one doesn’t pronounce the ‘f’ in the plural…

28. This was tough but I got there in the end. Couldn’t parse either Capri or deserve and I suspect I could have taken the whole day and been none the wiser. Wolves went in early once I had the W at the start of Wanderers and I did work through the parsing just to check!
    Thanks Paul and manehi

29. OUTSTARED
    Postmark@23
    Correct me if I am wrong.
    Just like the defeated will be the losing person or the team,
    could OUTSTARED also not work as a noun in the sense of
    one who looked away first?

30. Re. 20 the rule is that “deux oeufs” is never enough ie the ending is not pronounced in the plural. But to Paul’s credit I think the answer alludes to “from the French waiter”, de serveur, still a bit dodgy though

31. Your parsing makes sense but I have to say this was all a bit obscure even by Paul’s standards. For me it was more guess a solution based on the probable definition, then mangle the wordplay to fit. VIRGO for example; I would never have thought of virus for a small destroyer.

32. John W@31. VIRGO also works, just about, if you remove A for American from VIRAGO, on the assumption that destructive females are likely to be smaller than their male equivalents. Virus is pretty clearly right, but it was virago that first came to my mind.

33. I actually finished this, though bunged the football team (life is too short for this kind of convoluted construction). Some clues I liked, such as CAPRI and REINS IN, but DESERVE is awful, and not in a good way, even setting aside the rhotic question.

34. as so I regularly find with Paul the answers often fly in ahead of full understanding of the clue, but still lots of pleasurable aha moments, for example STEN GUN, INDENTS and OLDIE. And REINS IN was a rare ‘work it out from the clue’ rather than the reverse (get the answer and then get the clue). Grateful to manehi for picking apart those I could not (or couldn’t be bothered with, e.g. WWFC). Thanks Paul for the fun.

35. Loved deux œufs – the best kind of aural wordplay. (Occasionally Paul will chuck in a SAW/SOAR homophone just to annoy us. Where’s the fun in that?)
    Here’s an earworm – No More Tears (Un œuf is un œuf) – 1979 – ‘the first duet by two women to top the Billboard Hot 100’
    MattS@13 – 😉

36. I enjoyed this, though quite a lot went in unparsed. WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS, NONSENSE VERSE and THROAT SINGING popped out from the enumeration and just a few crossers – I hadn’t the patience to spend more than a few moments trying to understand the constructions.

    Paul is famous for his outrageous ‘homophone’ clues, but DESERVE is a step too far for me. In French the final F is pronounced in the singular ‘oeuf’ but not in the plural: ‘oeufs’ is pronounced just ‘ö’.

    I did spot the parsing for CAPRI, which was my favourite clue, though I also liked HIT-OR-MISS and REINS IN.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi (bravo!)

37. For me, a really good cryptic crossword setting manages to strike a pleasing balance between the mental (and linguistic) strain required to construct the solution from the cryptic wordplay and the mental (and linguistic) strain required to see the solution in the definition. Paul’s settings — and today’s is a fine example — rarely balance those challenges.

38. Is 23ac also a reference to the Jim Carrey film character The Cable Guy? He also turned out to be less than friendly.
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115798/

39. https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/03/20/guardian-cryptic-29022-by-anto/ had the same wordplay for ALSO RAN
    “Capital ensemble established in island has not been successful (4,3)” – but people objected that Aran wasn’t an island but an archipelago.
    Someone else said ‘They constitute the historic barony of Aran in County Galway’ – hence “!rish barony”.
    Thanks P&m

40. KVa @ 29: I guess that works. Thanks. Though would it open the door to defining brushed as hair, polished as shoes etc?

41. Quite a few CQBA clues for me but that’s my bad not Paul’s

    CAPRI felt a bit Dusty Bin / 321

    Top ticks for WW, CABLE & HIT OR MISS for the reversible anagrind / definition

    Cheers P&M

42. I had to be very much on my toes here, and I suspect had I hit a wall it would have remained hit – momentum alone seemed to be carrying me through. As is often the case with Paul, a few I really liked (HIT-OR-MISS, NOT HALF, ALSO-RAN), and a few that are A Bit Much (CAPRI, DESERVES, OUTSTARED).

    Ultimately very satisfying though.

    Thanks Paul and manehi.

43. Fortunately I managed to see ‘W…HAM” in 8,13 and thus pull the answer out of my posterior, otherwise I’d probably have just given up on this one. I just bunged in several of my answers because I couldn’t parse them.

44. Thank you Paul and manehi.
    An enjoyable challenge, with my favourite being MIDLIFE CRISIS, but I failed to parse 9d and 22d.
    I liked the Italian corner ..NAPOLI., CAPRI & GARIBALDI (with the possible inclusion of WANDERERS as an Italian-American gang).

45. grantinfreo@19: I think deux oeufs works just as well as des… and the clue does say a couple. (And, I see, you can contrive a “hidden” too).

46. One thing about Paul is that, to my mind at least, his clues are nearly always far more amusing than the comments of his detractors. You might say that it’s not incumbent upon his critics to try to be funny, and that’s true of course, but then you could say the same about Paul – or any other member of the setting fraternity, come to that. I sometimes worry that some setters might throw in the towel altogether through lack of encouragement on our part.

47. This one just confirms to me why I dislike so many of Paul’s puzzles. Too many ‘guess the answer from the definition and crossers then work out the wordplay later’. Always tries to be too clever. Shame, I always had him as the natural successor to Araucaria but not any more.

48. gladys @45: See my comment @36. ‘Deux oeufs’ is pronounced ‘deuzeu’.

49. Tough slog to get to the end but a few gems on the way.

    A brave attempt to clue WW; it could have been an anagram eg ‘men have New World parrots’ etc. I thought CAPRI was c (about) APR 1st, thinking “this clue must have been written some time ago.” I preferred Frankie G @39’s ‘Un œuf is un œuf’ (shades of Peter Sellers).

    I liked the wordplays of CABLE and MIDLIFE CRISIS, the good anagram for HIT-OR-MISS, and the surface for SERVE WELL.

    Thanks Paul for the challenge and manehi for wrestling it into submission.

50. But why April?

51. I agree with Michelle@16. After putting in GARIBALDI (because of the squashed flies), HIT OR MISS and NUDGE I decided it was too convoluted so came here for the parsing and comments. Thanks Manehi and commentators.

52. Well I thought that by getting WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS straight away, having watched them yesterday evening on the box play out a no-score bore draw at Brighton I was well on my way here. But found this tricky, with some fiendish clueing for the likes of CAPRI and OUTDO, and finally with my last one in OLDIE. Though a favourite setter of mine, along with Philistine yesterday, Paul I find chameleon like, the appearance of his puzzles vary with his setting. Lots to like as ever, but did find this a struggle at times…

53. I generally enjoy Paul’s puzzles, but this one gave me more than the usual amount of trouble. I had to come here for quite a few parsings.

    I don’t mind a dodgy homophone, but I do think there needs to be a homophone indicator, so I still can’t understand 20ac. I also don’t really see how the definition in 10ac works: it clearly defines a noun, but the answer is an adjective (or a past-tense verb).

54. I seemed to be on Paul’s wavelength and thought this was much like his last puzzle – very entertaining and inventive but pretty straightforward.

    I had des oeufs rather than deux… and virago rather than virus, but virus is clearly right.

    Favourites were MIDLIFE CRISIS and CABLE

    thanks Paul and manehi

55. Ted @53 – many past participles are commonly used as nouns (usually preceded by the) – the departed, the damned etc. In Paul’s example, you’d use the gerund for the counterpart – the outstaring and the outstared.

56. In the staring match, Paul was OUTSTARED / the first to look away?

57. Happy to have finished it within 20 minutes. I didn’t bother with parsing several of them. Couldn’t

58. Thanks for your efforts manehi as I needed help with a lot more parsing than usual with Paul, and to Charles@32 for making me feel a bit better about my failure as I had the same idea for VIRGO.

    On the other hand I had no problem with 10Ac – eg in this clip, where Kampagnola is eventually outstared after a tense battle:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWgg20IqibM

    Thanks Paul though I am inclined to agree that you merit a pair of eggs served schoolboy-style!

59. Gazzh@58
    The last line: LOL!

60. Does “deserve” really sound like ‘deux oeufs’? Not remotely to my ear.

    Michelle@16: Count me among the minority who do not enjoy Paul’s convolutions, and find little satisfaction in trying to pick apart the parsing after the fact.

61. Postmark@40
    We have an open-door policy. If the setters get innovative we have more challenges and also more enjoyment.
    Of course, we will continue to register our constructive criticism of the likes of DEEZO (I mean DESERVE).

62. Well said, Gert@46.
    This took me a little longer than some, but finished eventually, all parsed – and I loved it. Thanks Paul.

63. I have to seriously mangle both my English and French pronunciation to make 20A a homophone. But that’s more than made up for by 23D and 17.

64. HIT-OR-MISS
    I took haphazard as the anagrind and random as the def.
    manehi has considered random as the anagrind and haphazard as the def.
    Just found that most dictionaries have under HIT-OR-MISS/hit-and-miss, random as well as haphazard.
    The clue works in two ways. I like it. Some may say it’s ambiguous.

65. Widdersbel @55 — Thanks! I agree that that makes sense. For some reason the gerund didn’t occur to me.

66. Well I finished this, in that I filled the grid in correctly, but I had long given up on trying to parse the clues. So I can’t say I had much fun doing it. My fault: I’ve enjoyed Paul’s puzzles before, so I’m probably suffering from brain fog.
    Thanks Paul and manehi

67. 10a doesn’t work as a homophone.
    OEUF OEUFS:
    Au pluriel, on ne prononce pas la consonne finale (F ). On dit plutôt, en fermant la voyelle, [beu] pour bœufs et [eu] pour œufs, les deux mots rimant alors avec feu.

68. Filled the grid, but was defeated by the wordplay in CAPRI (disappointed because I usually get mathematical shenanigans) and DESERVE (ditto for French).

    When I first contrived OUTSTARED, I thought no, whoever does that is the last to look away, but then I realized I had to treat it as a predicate.

    In all, a lot of fun, typical Paul, worth the effort.

69. I allowed some to pass quickly before commenting on the G page. But of course giulina @67 is right. It’s a shame. Sometimes Anglo-Saxons pronounce too many letters at the end, sometimes they over-compensate, as in en prise (chess) which I often hear on line as ‘en pri’ or le coup de grâce which is often said as though it were ‘the mouthful of fatty wine’. We’ll forgive you, John: there’s so much lovely stuff here.

70. No one seems to have commented on the splendid surface of 9d Ridiculous piece nurse cuts off having opened Uncle Sam’s zip? (especially when followed by SWELL in the next clue). I had just been listening to Ian Hislop’s Oldest Jokes on Radio 4, and thought this was a most appropriate example.

    Thanks Paul for the great entertainment and to manehi for unravelling more than a few.

71. Excellent, I finished this but thanks for explaining 18ac & 23dn

72. Thanks to Paul for the mental gymnastics. I couldn’t parse them all but enjoyed the ride. Thanks also to manehi for a super blog
    Favourites: SERVEWELL and PERCENTUM.

73. Like others, I finished this after quite some effort, with several left unparsed. Including, of course, DESERVE, which…well, it’s all already been said above, so I won’t throw more eggs at it.

    Surprised to see ANNAPOLIS. Yes, it’s the capital of Maryland and the home of the US Naval Academy, but it is not a very big place, so I would have assumed it was too obscure for a chiefly British audience. But no one’s complained so far, so I guess I assumed wrongly.

74. Thanks for the blog, VIRGO was pretty neat , I liked CABLE and NONSENSE VERSE .

    [AlanC@1 , if only. It is now 18 months and 1 day, not that I am counting. I expected you to construct a football theme, ]

75. Like others, I filled the grid but rather resent the time spent on it.

    I had the same issue as PostMark @23 with OUSTARED and first to look away. If these are acceptable as synonyms, things could become a jolly sight trickier in crosswordland.

    The unsatisfying surfaces in many of Paul’s clues make for an unhappy solve for me.

    Thanks for the clever parsing, manehi.

76. Well, that was a slog. It’s bad enough when I have to guess how some subset of Brits might pronounce a word in order to infer a homonym; it’s even worse when I have to guess how they might mispronounce French. I got there in the end, but oof. (Or is that oeuf?)

    Still not sure how DO = “cook”, unless you would also accept DO = “knit” or “set” or “paint” or “hoover” or any other verb that takes an indirect object.

    Similarly, RADII are indeed “straight lines” (or at least segments), but using that as the literal is rather like using “man” as the literal for HARRY KANE. It’s technically correct, but it’s too much of a leap from the general to the specific.

77. I think that’s 1 egg comments about DESERVE 🙂

78. Happened to be on Paul’s wavelength today such that a lot of answers and well-disguised definitions popped out without thought, so didn’t bother about several convoluted parsings (well done, and thanks manehi on our behalf).
    It felt like a (very) rare occasion of weak telepathy, owing probably to having become very used to Paul’s style and mood over decades. Thing is though, it’s not particularly satisfying.

    I can’t get exercised about mismatches of homophones; sometimes the point is that they don’t match well, but you can see that they might if …

79. ThemTates@76 should I DO mackerel tonight or leave it until tomorrow and DO stir fry instead ?
    I have just read that the storm is named after Jocelyn Bell so it does have one redeeming feature. It will not win the Nobel prize for storms , that will go to storm Antony despite zero contribution to storminess.

80. MattS@13 I would never complain about a homophones per se. I do have an issue when there is no indicator.

81. Why do I bother with Paul? You struggle through and finish with a bunch of unparsed answers and an uncomfortable feeling that the setter is taking the Michael.

82. There’s cryptic, and then there’s just obtuse.

83. I struggled with this and several solutions (Capri, Virgo, Also Ran, Cable, Deserve) went in unparsed. But I don’t mind that, if I could parse everything then I wouldn’t need to come here. I find Paul always offers entertainment in his surfaces and this was no exception. So thanks Paul for the challenge and manehi for untangling it all

84. I found this considerably harder than last week’s Paul offering. Chapeau to manehi for parsing all of it so promptly. I really don’t think DESERVE works, but on the other hand I had smiles for REINS IN, ANNAPOLIS and the excellent GARIBALDI.

85. Roz @79, yes I see that. But I can also ask my wife “Should I do the bedroom first, or the bathroom?”. That doesn’t mean (in my opinion) that “clean” and “hoover” and “dust” and “paint” and “decorate” and “fumigate” are all equally reasonable clues for DO in a charade.

86. ThemTates @85 — do = cook is sufficiently established as a synonym to merit an entry in the dictionary definition, the other examples not so 🙂

87. Manehi I am speechless with admiration at your having parsed all of these little beasts. Well done!!!
    This one beats all my previous records for unparsed & semi-parsed guesses. Had it been the first crossword I’d ever tackled, I doubt I’d come back for more

88. I managed to get about half the answers on my first pass. But then the fun started. Like others, I struggled with some of the remainder and bunged a few in without parsing (I could not be bothered trying to parse WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS, for example). Some great clues – I particularly liked OLDIE, ANNAPOLIS, GIRABALDI and DEMONIC. Paul summed it up nicely in the first two words of 9 down. What an adventure!

    Thanks to Paul for a difficult but enjoyable puzzle and thanks to manehi for a fabulous blog. I share the boundless admiration of your solving skills

89. Oh my. I got garibaldi from the surface plus the G and Aldi. Was pleased.
    Most of that was beyond me without the check button and guesses. Most just too obscure. Gave up to come here like Michelle to enjoy the parsing and the discussion!

    I wish the Guardian crossword editor would perhaps have a system to let people know if this is easy/hard/diabolical, especially for newbies like me. Been here long enough to know that some are v difficult but how is a person to know when they open the paper, unless they’ve been reading this long enough? But of course who decides, as some of you say most of the puzzles are “medium” – which is confusing for newbies!!

90. And so impressive Manehi to have parsed it all! Has anyone ever not been able to blog a whole crossword?

91. QuietEars @90
    It’s not unknown for a blogger to ask for help in parsing a clue or two.

    Martyn @88
    Ditto on WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS. It was obviously “wanderers” from the crossers, so I didn’t bother any further.

    Thanks manehi, and Paul, I suppose.

92. I thought this was great fun and at the easier end for Paul, with a couple of exceptions. I can’t see what all the fuss is about DESERVE as my French extends to three articles, three numbers and one name. I also had no show of parsing CAPRI (30 days = April is a bit much).
    Thanks manehi and Paul for reminding me what I like about British comedy.

93. Read deserve as “des oeufs” using “of” in French not couple.
    Just saying.

94. The homophone indicator in 20a ís from a french waiter .
    The WW I worked out as far as WOLVERHAM and then it was obvious .
    Thanks P&M.

95. QuietEars@90: I doubt your question relates to the inability to blog an entire crossword but such is the language that it’s a possibility and no to that. Otoh bloggers regularly encounter insurmountables and appeal to this forum for help (help which is inevitably (and probably annoyingly) immediate). On rare occasions a hiatus will occur until the matter is cleared up eventually – I will hazard that on these occasions the blog has been posted while most of the demographic is in the arms of Morpheus (every cliché deserves an occasional outing) but there are those hereabouts with sharp memories who will rebut or confirm.

96. Life is too short for Paul’ s crosswords.
    Thanks both.

97. On the crossword, I am inclined to the view that we are spoiled. This should have been a prize and had it been I would have chewed away at it happily for the week. That many (and me included) could not be bothered to solve (and by that I include parsing) WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS is indicative of malaise. For all its (purported) faults this was an amusing, dense, adroit and something else (insert appropriate epithet) puzzle that must have taken an amount of time to compile.

    I wasn’t much entertained myself but it certainly distracted from the trials of life for a period – what more could one ask for? And it has provoked an entertaining blog so thanks to you guys.

    ‘Go Paul!’. ‘Go manehi!’ And damned be he who first cries ‘Here’s your Easter gift from Dijon’.

98. Rob T @86, I’m not sure which dictionary you consider to be “the” dictionary, but do = cook is not one of the 22 senses of the verb that Chambers chose to mention. The OED lists it as I.16.c, after 40-odd other senses. I don’t dispute the usage; only the sufficiency of association. Especially given that people who say “I’m doing lamb chops tonight” are not using do = cook, they’re using the much more common do = make. Your mileage may vary.

99. @96. I have to beg to disagree. Life is too short to not do Paul’s crosswords. Perhaps too short for parsing every word you bunge in and yes I am looking at you CAPRI.

100. Can’t “waiter” be a verb? Then de = French “from the” (roughly) and serve = waiter.
     Chambers doesn’t give “waiter” as a verb, yet indicates “waitering” as what waiters do.

101. Is it just me or is Paul getting wilfully odder? To be honest, that bit I kind of get, and mostly adds to the fun, but:
     1 I’m with Themtates, I always forget cook = do and I don’t like it. Cooked = done works for me, but no one ever says ‘how do you do your eggs/steak?’ Only “how do you like your eggs/steak done?”. I’m with TT, if do = cook, it can mean any of hundreds of verbs.
     2 as a throwback to last week, I’m with Fed, is it really right we expect a 21st century solver to know Aran was an Irish barony, but whinge about a current snooker player?
     3 Whilst saying I’m ok with the oddness, it does tend to mean I am often unparsed. And the Capri clue is a madness too far for me personally

     Thanks Paul and especially manehi, for the parsing!

102. Alphalpha@97.
     I agree with much of what you say, though speaking personally I was vastly entertained. I can’t help feeling that much of the criticism of Paul’s puzzles stems from a sense of humour failure on the part of disgruntled non-finishers. The furore about DESERVE today is an excellent example. It isn’t a perfect homophone – not many are – but it is funny, and therefore satisfying when the penny drops, even if its descent is slowed by being slightly bent. Lighten up, people, Paul is an original and we are lucky to have him.

103. ThemTates @98 (and Stuart @101) – do=cook is definition number 15 as a transitive verb in my Chambers 🙂

104. Samosaman @100 – even if your parsing made sense, you have two eggs left over 🙂

105. Charles @102 – I generally agree, and I really like Paul as a setter, but the problem with DESERVE is nothing to do with it being accused of being a “dodgy homophone” (I’m very flexible where aural wordplay is concerned) but that, as I and other Francophones have pointed out, the F in the plural ‘oeufs’ is silent.

     It’d be like trying to make an English pun including the word ‘knit’ but pronouncing the ‘k’…

106. CAPRI beyond me!

107. Rob T @105… “Not able to crochet we hear (6)”

108. When do=cook was first(?) used two or three years ago, it provoked a lot of debate. I still don’t like it much (for the reasons given by ThemTates: it’s too vague and has too many possibilities) but it now seems to have become standard crosswordese and shows up regularly, so “cook” has to be considered as a possible meaning whenever “do” appears. Alas.

109. I had to force myself to finish this. Like others, I figured out WANDERERS from the crossers, and then went on Google in search of UK teams with that in their name. I didn’t even bother trying to parse it. Same went with CAPRI; it couldn;t be anything else, so move on.

     One of the least enjoyable Pauls I can remember. Vague, obscure parsing, an excess of UK GK (“squashed flies”?), and an almost complete lack of his usual wit, which is the saving grace of most of his puzles.

110. TT@98:You are making lamb chops? That’s very clever of you, genetically engineered?

111. This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.

112. Hmm. I thought ‘arms’ was short for ‘armaments’ so didn’t think ‘arm’ could represent a singular weapon.

     The definition for 2ac could be haphazard or random

113. Oxtoby @111 – will this crossword still be dangerous in 1000s of years?

114. Ex225 @112 — Chambers’ second section on ‘arm’, definition 1: “A weapon”

115. Paul at his most inscrutable, at least to me. Two clues remained unsolved, four required the check button, and four others remained unparsed. Whew!

     As others have pointed out, 20d DESERVE doesn’t work even as an outrageous pun or aural wordplay, unless the French waiter can’t speak his own language. I don’t think OLDIE (24a) means classic – a golden oldie is a classic, but an oldie is just old. 8,13, (the football team) doesn’t even have a surface, let alone a witty one. Re 9d, does anyone outside the UK know what a SEN is? It took me a long time to learn EN for enrolled nurse – are there other letters that can be added to that?

     I’m not complaining, however. Those who need a greater challenge deux oeufs their occasional fun at the expense of lesser solvers. Still, the comments were fun to read. Now on to Maskarade, for more of the same, I suspect.

116. cellomaniac @115, according to Chambers Crossword Dictionary, acronyms for nurse include EN, RN, CNN, RGN, SEN and SRN.

117. CAPRI is simply not convincing. Where does April come from? Perhaps if used on a different date!

     Some good clues, but it was hit and miss. 🙂

118. Well I mean to say! The outrageousness of Capri and Deserve were almost 1 oeuf to give me a midlife crisis! Thanks Paul and “chapeau!” to Manehi for some very enlightrening parsing!

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