Guardian Cryptic 29319 Paul

by

Thank you to Paul. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

9. Jab from Ali, one needing cut treated (9)

INOCULATE : Anagram of(… treated) [ALI, ONE plus(needing) CUT].

Defn: … with a needle/an injection of, say, a vaccine into the body.

10. Plain feature of personal life recollected (5)

LLANO : Hidden in(feature of) reversal of(… recollected) “personal life“.

11. Left hand in the end was tickly (7)

DITCHED : Last letter of(… in the end) “hand” ITCHED(was tickly/needed scratching).

Defn: …/abandoned.

12. Lock up repellent figure smuggling in brew (7)

ENCHAIN : Reversal of(repellent) NINE(a numerical figure) containing(smuggling in) CHA(or char, informal term for tea, a brew).

13. Last of five cracks finished off nut (4)

HEAD : Last letter of(Last of) “five” contained in(cracks) HAD(finished off, say, a meal).

Defn: For which, … is a slang term.

14. Literary prizegiver once impressed by denouement of weepie – should that be confined to the bin? (5,5)

WHITE BREAD : WHITBREAD(company which once sponsored the Whitbread Book Awards, which were then renamed the Costa Book Awards, then terminated in 20022) containing(impressed by) last letter of(denouement of) “weepie“.

Defn:  …, the bread bin, that is.

16. Loud female ultimately consumed by drink? (7)

LADETTE : Last letters, respectively, of(… ultimately) “Loud female” contained in(consumed by) LATTE(or caffelatte, a drink of coffee and milk).

Defn: A young female behaving in a laddish manner, ie. boisterously/loudly and drunkenly/consumed by alcohol.

17. Minister, rev with super-detailed forms (5,2)

SERVE UP : Anagram of(… forms) [REV plus(with) “super” minus its last letter(-detailed) ].

19. Girl, sweet love? (5,5)

FANNY ADAMS : SWEET FANNY ADAMS/Sweet FA
= Nothing/love in tennis scores.

22. Brief flash in battle (4)

SPAR : Last letter deleted from(Brief) “spark”(a small flash of light).

24. See 23 Down

25. Set of shelves that might get Scottish engineer in a tangle, did you say? (7)

WHATNOT : Homophone of(…, did you say) [ “Watt”(James, Scottish mechanical engineer) “knot”(a tangle/a confused mass)/what you might call a knot with that engineer in it) ]

26. Old athlete running backwards in US, New Orleans (5)

OWENS : Hidden in(running … in) reversal of(backwards) “US, New Orleans“.

Answer: Jesse, former American athlete.

27. Instruction from yoga master having addled the brain, pose finally grasped (7,2)

BREATHE IN : Anagram of(addled) THE BRAIN containing last letter of(… finally grasped) “pose“.

Down

1. Crank with daughter jailed, sick female and player in cooler? (4-5,6)

WIND-CHILL FACTOR : WINCH(crank/that part of a shaft or axle bent out at right angles) containing(with … jailed) D(abbrev. for “daughter”) + ILL(sick/unwell) + F(abbrev. for “female”) plus(and) ACTOR(player of a character in a stage play or film).

Defn: That which results in the air temperature being cooler because of wind.

2, 5. Setter contemplated resignation, discontented creative (8,6)

PORTLAND CEMENT : Anagram of(… creative) [CONTEMPLATED + “resignation” minus its inside letters(discontented) ].

Defn: An example of a liquid or semi-liquid that solidifies/sets after a time.

3. Forward up, backflipping on pitch (5)

PUSHY : Reversal of(…, backflipping) UP placed above(on, in a down clue) SHY(pitch/throw).

4. Something like a trainer also boarding ship on promontory (8)

SANDSHOE : AND(also/in addition) contained in(boarding) SS(abbrev. for “steamship”, in the names of such ships) placed above(on, in a down clue) HOE(a promontory/a headland).

Defn: …, ie. a type of footwear.

5. See 2

6. Melodious singer, beagle? (9)

BLACKBIRD : BLACK(whose abbrev. is “b“) BIRD(an example of which/? is the “eagle“).

7. Show is cancelled in wonderland (6)

PARADE : “is” deleted from(cancelled in) “paradise”(a wonderland/an ideal place).

… ushering in the Year of the Dragon:

8. Basic literary connection, one put in weird novel penned by American novelist (6-2,7)

JOINED-UP WRITING : Anagram of(… novel) [ I(Roman numeral for “one”) + PUT IN WEIRD ] contained in(penned by) JONG(Erica, American novelist, known for her “Fear of Flying”).

Defn: …, literally.

15. Minute: parts of it covering years and years (4-5)

ITSY-BITSY : { [ITS BITS](parts/bits of it, whatever “it” is) containing(covering) Y(abbrev. for “years”) } plus(and) Y(abbrev. for “years”).

17. Sooner or later one beastly female after another has enslaved me (8)

SOMEWHEN : [HEN(one beastly female, specifically, a female fowl) placed under(after, in a down clue) SOW(another beastly female, this time an adult female pig)] containing(has enslaved) ME.

Defn: An informal term for ….

18. Muscle builder, cuddly giant no more by the sound of it? (8)

EXPANDER : Homophone of(… by the sound of it) [ EX-(prefix signifying “no more”/formerly) “panda”(a cuddly giant of a bear-like animal) ].

20. Linear shot powered gun (6)

NAILER : Anagram of(… shot) LINEAR.

Defn: … for punching in nails.

21. Partners occupying different beds, pillocks (6)

DWEEBS : W,E(symbols for “West” and “East”, partners in the game of bridge) contained in(occupying) anagram of(different) BEDS.

Defn: …/stupid or inept persons.

23, 24. Escoffier’s porridge announced? (5,7)

HAUTE CUISINE : Homophone of(… announced) “oat cuisine”(how one might describe a dish of porridge, made from oats boiled in water or milk).

Defn: Cooking technique popularised by French chef, Auguste Escoffier, amongst others.

90 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29319 Paul”

  2. Wow! This was seriously hard. I struggled to get going, and struggled through the rest of it, and finally conceded the last two: BLACKBIRD and PARADE.

    Thanks PeterO for your help and to Paul for an enjoyable crossword despite all that

  3. Liked the sound of a whatnot, will look up later for a pic. Dnk hoe was a promontory. Liked its bits with their ys, but parsing the j-u writing was a cqba. All good fun tho, thx Paul and scchua.

  4. Toughest this week, but when I finished it all made sense (other than not unpacking JOINED-UP THINKING enough to see Jong, who I’ve read but forgotten about).

    Thank you for the amazing blog scchua, and Paul for the work out.

  6. Some very clever stuff here – I particularly liked HAUTE CUISINE and PORTLAND CEMENT.
    I can’t decide whether the wordplay for LADETTE is very clever, or slightly unfair, with the last letters of the definition forming part of the wordplay.
    All good tough fun, though. Thanks to Paul and scchua.

  8. I dismissed the solution SOMEWHEN initially, thinking it an unlikely word, but the crossers confirmed it. I’m sure HAUTE CUISINE has featured previously, though, of course, it’s exactly Paul’s style, as is EXPANDER. Of course, they are terrible homophones, but you have to enjoy Paul’s cheek in presenting them. Really struggled to get going this morning, but finally getting 1 and 8 gave me the way in. Thanks to Paul and to scchua for his usual detailed illustrated blog.

  10. Maybe I’m not at my best this morning, but Paul beat me with this one. The penny didn’t drop with LADETTE, which meant that I could have stared at 15dn until this evening without getting it. I completely missed B-eagle and couldn’t find an American novelist for the life of me, despite having enjoyed Fear of Flying when I was a student.

    An excellent puzzle, though, full of Paulianisms. Thanks to him and to scchua.

  11. 27ac, BREATHE IN seems to be a Paul continuation of instructions from yoga teachers, after that outrageous homophone of On A Mat Appear last week, was it…?

  13. Wow, that was a struggle today. I normally enjoy Paul’s puzzles, but I had difficulty even getting started. Some of the clues seemed very vague and, as is often the case, my pronunciation of the homophones doesn’t match the setters.

    Thanks for the excellent parsing scchua – in WIND-CHILL FACTOR, I had WIND for “crank” and then couldn’t figure out how CH was daughter! I did like FANNY ADAMS, WHATNOT and SOMEWHEN (a word I heard for the first time recently).

    Thanks Paul & scchua

  14. Loved EX PANDA and OAT CUISINE. I struggled with this. I had worked out HILL FACTOR, but for reasons I forget ,I was looking for 5-4;6 not 4-5,6. I didn’t parse the beagle and PARADE and thought LADETTE was a barely cryptic clue, so thanks for those and Paul for another brainteaser

  15. Probably the toughest, and slowest, solve of the week but then I often find Paul somewhat of a wrestle. There are some very nice clues in here, though, which were satisfying to crack: ENCHAIN, WHATNOT, PORTLAND CEMENT, BLACKBIRD, JOINED UP WRITING and HAUTE CUISINE were my favourites with the aforementioned LADETTE clue of the day (though whether that qualifies as another example of male-oriented setting, I do not know)

    Thanks Paul and scchua

  16. Very tricky but ultimately satisfying, although several answers incompletely parsed. I groaned at the puns, as the setter probably intended. Thanks, Paul and scchua.

  17. I like the unexpected meaning of setter in 2,5. I’m so used to it being I or me referring to the crossword setter. Or a dog.

  18. After serving up Jessie Owens and feeling like a dweeb, I gave up. Thanks for the entertaining blog scchua and kudos to everyone who could work it all out.

  19. I just loved this. NeilH@6 and nicbach@14: what you both say about LADETTE is of course true in a way. Another way of putting it is to say that it is that Holy Grail of cryptic setting, an & lit clue. OWENS would be another if J O had been active in New Orleans instead of Cleveland Ohio. LADETTE is my favourite along with JOINED-UP WRITING, whose definition is stunning. I have a mug with a picture of a horse and Oat Cuisine written on it – and I still didn’t parse the homophone until after I’d finished: knowing Mr Halpern, I was expecting something far worse!

  20. Lower half was easier for me. Tbh I don’t enjoy reading the surfaces of Paul’s clues – it makes me long for a puzzle by Arachne or the late Nutmeg.

    I could not parse 2/5d, 6d, 8d.

    Favourite: WHATNOT.

    New for me: SOMEWHEN, WIND-CHILL FACTOR.

    Although it has nothing to do with the answer to 19ac (fanny adams/FA = zero), I was horrified to read about the brutal 1867 murder and dismemberment of an 8 year old girl named Fanny Adams in Hampshire, England when I went looking for the etymology of sweet FA.

    Thanks, both.

  21. At first I thought I was going to make very little impression on this, with not a great deal of confidence behind my tentative insertion of SOMEWHEN and WHATNOT, but then it became quite an invigorating journey. But I do find with Paul’s puzzles that I can successfully tease away in small areas where I have a helpful crosser or two already in place. Though WIND CHILL FACTOR really opened things up for my initially slightly frozen thought processes. Last two in the clever PARADE and PUSHY. But in fact it was throughout yet another extremely clever offering this morning from my favourite setter, as I’ve often said…

  26. [pdm @25, yes I have heard one quite a few times last summer in the UK. Every day he’d come and sit in the top of a tree and sing away. Beautiful. Thanks for the vid as well. 🙂 ]

  27. If a Paul crossword were a walk, it would have a steep climb at the beginning, some great views along the way, take longer than planned, but be very satisfying to compete. Thanks for the great blog.

  28. Kicking myself for forgetting the Whitbread prize but I did manage the cement and several other tricky clues, even BLACKBIRD, not to mention SANDSHOE which I’ve nho. Got the long sides mainly on crossers as usual.

    Of the three ‘homophones’ only one (EXPANDER) was objectionable, surely a record for Paul.

  29. @petert And at one point of the walk you go off in completely the wrong direction for ten minutes.

    I was thinking it might be me (struggled with Phi in Indy too) so glad to see that almost everyone found this one tough. But most satisfying.

    And BTW what a superb picture of the amazing Jesse Owens

    Thanks Paul for a proper Friday workout and schuua for excellent blog

  31. My favourite Paul in ages. Loads of grins – EXPANDER, FANNY ADAMS, and SOMEWHEN in particular.

    I enjoyed WHITE BREAD, but would sympathise with anyone not familiar with a sponsor who stopped in 2005…!

    Thanks both.

  32. As usual, I regret starting on one of Paul’s. Managed 10 answers before giving up in despair. I feel cheated when my daily paper’s cryptic is so obscure.

  33. Thanks for the parsings.
    I don’t attempt Paul’s puzzles but enjoy the intricacies of the parsings, which in turn justify my reason for not attempting them.

  34. Tough but hugely satisfying to complete after a few sittings and a few coffees

    Top ticks for HAUTE CUISINE, PORTLAND CEMENT, and my LOI BLACKBIRD plus an honourable mention for my FOI WIND-CHILL FACTOR

    Cheers P&S

  35. As usual with Paul these days, it was fairly impossible for me but my computer and I eventually sorted it out, and I was able to parse everything to my satisfaction.

    I enjoyed the wordplays for ENCHAIN and ITSY-BITSY, the partial anagrams for JOINED-UP WRITING and PORTLAND CEMENT, the LADETTE CAD, sweet FA, and the pun-ny homophones for HAUTE CUISINE and EXPANDER.

    Thanks Paul for the challenge and scchua for a lovely pictorial blog.

  38. Thank you Paul for the gratifyingly tricky workout / sparring, and scchua for the beautifully illustrated blog.

    There’s so much invention that it is hard to single out a favourite clue, possibly 2d although I sincerely hope that ‘discontented creative’ does not apply to Paul, and I liked the succinct, Arcadian PARADE.

    I also liked that BLACK & WHITE were almost JOINED-UP, not to mention that Blackbird is from the White Album, and the whiff of a brewery in the across clues from 12-17.

  39. I always find Paul hard except when he does the Prize, where i assume the editor requires a level of difficulty that is not impossible without the check button! But I found this one particularly satisfying despite the way he manages to send me off on the wrong track. The setter was my LOI, and PARADE second to last, kicked myself with both, but very satisfying to finish. So thank you Paul and also thanks scchua for the terrific blog, loved the blackbird’s song in particular. Now for a week of cross country skiing with no Guardian (I won’t take my tablet and can’t see properly on my phone – old age can be annoying)

  40. Really struggled with this, but managed to complete it. Didn’t find anything very obscure, so that helped. Didn’t parse everything, but was glad to just finish…
    Thank you to Paul for the puzzle and Scchua for clearing the doubts I had in parsing.

  42. Anna@37: Yes, I agree, but don’t hold it against Paul, but he could have managed a better solution, but it was not a difficult anagram.

  43. Re: FANNY ADAMS (michelle@20) my earlier edition ofChambers’ defined “sweet FA” as “sweet F(euphemism) All”, implying that the unfortunate Miss A. was incuded later. Somehow, I don’t think that shouting “F(euphemism)!!” in moments of stress will ever catch on.

  44. I was defeated by PORTLAND CEMENT and PARADE, although in hindsight both are perfectly fair. I’m not sure I’d heard of the former, but I got CEMENT, after which PORTLAND should have tumbled out from the wordplay and crossers. I also didn’t know this meaning of HOE, but it had to be the answer.

    My favorites were the &lit LADETTE and, for the effrontery, HAUTE CUISINE.

  45. Discontented, Detailed, (b)eagle, and a couple of constructions eluded me. I tip my hat to those of you who can wrestle Paul’s clues to the ground, but many of them were a step too far for my aging brain.

  46. Meandme @43 – most accounts suggest that the sweet Fanny Adams is the original saying – when tinned meat rations were introduced in 1867 around the time of the murder, the anonymity of the meat meant it got renamed to sweet Fanny Adams, which then became sweet FA. We’ve forgotten the story of Fanny Adams, and now use swear word far more often, so assume FA means what you suggest.

  47. Definitely a struggle, and almost reached the “can I be bothered” point. Got there in the end, and just about worth the effort, ‘spose.

    Paul is one of those setters where I find I mostly have to work backwards… think of a possible answer, then try to parse it to fit the convoluted wordplay.

    Thanks for the very thorough blog, scchua.

  48. Maybe I’m the only one here, but I’ve always pronounced the ‘haute’ of HAUTE CUISINE not as ‘oat’ but as ‘ought’ – which I think is the correct French pronunciation. As a ‘sounds-like’ (we mustn’t use the H-word anymore must we!) it didn’t quite work for me – but I guessed it once I remembered who Escoffier was…

    Full marks for the long ones, WIND-CHILL FACTOR (lots of ingenious wordplay here, it was my LOI and for a long time I wondered if the first two words were ‘wild child’) – and JOINED-UP WRITING (though I hadn’t come across the name JONG). Also ticks for PARADE, LLANO (yes I did know the word), INOCULATE.

    I’m afraid I’d rather consign WHITE BREAD to the other sort of ‘bin’ – at any rate if it’s the Chorleywood species of so-called ‘bread’. But perhaps that’s just the foodie in me…

    It never occurred to me that there really was a ‘FANNY ADAMS’ – thanks to those who’ve filled us in. Nasty story! It wasn’t Sweeney Todd who did for her, by any chance?

    Thanks to Paul and scchua.

  49. Completely off his wavelength. Couldn’t get going. Solved 4 then quit. I no longer care for his puzzles

  50. I was beaten by some but revealed and plowed on to enjoy the entertainment. (I recommend this approach to those who find Paul inaccessible – there will always be another clue assisted by the reveal which will repay attention.) I was pleased to get three NHOs from the wordplay alone: WHATNOT, SOMEWHEN (I will introduce that into conversation, erm, at an indeterminate point in the future) and SANDSHOE.

    Thanks both and as usual an engaging pictorial blog from sschua. [And thanks to paddymelon@25 for that link – this is, I think, the best camera-work for Macca’s masterpiece that there is. And it shows that he uses Travis picking (sans thumbpick) – in this he seems to be alone (by which I mean everyone else gets it wrong).]

  51. Another brilliant puzzle from Paul. Tough but resolutely fair.

    LADETTE, PORTLAND CEMENT and HAUTE CUISINE were my favourites.

    Thanks Paul and scchua

  52. Pretty tough today, even by Paul’s standards. After a very sluggish start, I eventually struggled over the line but needed the check button to confirm BLACKBIRD (still not sure about that one) and chickened out of retrospective parsing of JOINED-UP WRITING and PORTLAND CEMENT. As ginf so succinctly put it, cqba. Nevertheless, thanks to Paul for the challenge and sschua for the explanations.

  54. Tricky but rewarding puzzle with a lot of characteristically complicated constructions, often at the expense of both concision and the surface, but we know what we’re getting with a Paul crossword.

    I enjoyed the two long entries, the clever clues for BLACKBIRD and PARADE and the non-PC &lit for LADETTE.

    The ‘oat cuisine’ pun is a bit of a chestnut (marron glacé?) – and ‘haute’ is pronounced much closer to ‘oat’ than to ‘ought’, Laccaria @48.

    Whatever the origin of the FANNY ADAMS expression, she has become a euphemism for a more robust reading of ‘sweet FA’.

    Thanks to S&B

  55. Completed three. THREE 🙁
    No complaints though, especially given that many of the others looked gettable (even sort of easy!). Thanks for a blog to explain them and for comments that don’t suggest it was an easy ride!

  57. This was one of those days when I decided that hitting the reveal button was a better use of my time than torturing out the clues for myself. Haven’t had one of those in a while. Good to see I wasn’t the only one.

  59. Not really adding to the FANNY ADAMS story, but I enjoy playing the dice game Farkle with the younger children. The only problem being not having a good answer to the question “but why is a zero score called a Farkle ?”

  60. Loved the blackbird video, scchua! Thanks for that.

    Never heard of a SANDSHOE, but have heard of (maybe sailed past) Plymouth Hoe.

    Needed help to get WHATNOT, and then realized I have one, a relic from my grandfather’s house.

    ginf@3 What’s a cqba?

    Wellcidered@57 Why IS a zero called a farkle?

    Somewhere, somehow and somewhat are all words, and so apparently is SOMEWHEN. So what about somewho ir somewhich? There must be an explanation somewhy.

    Thanks to Paul for the challenge, which I didn’t finish much of before hitting the check button, and to scchua for the blog, the pictures and especially the blackbird.

  61. Sympathy for those who confess a DNF here – I was almost one of them – and even some who BEGS’d*. I suppose BLACKBIRD was one of the toughest toughies – a lift-and-separate which I thought fiendish but nevertheless kosher by Grauniad standards – though not perhaps in other vehicles.

    I should have added that I thought the usual word for NAILER was NAILGUN – but I suppose NAILER is equally current. I’d just finished watching the movie The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (from Stieg Larsson’s book), in which (mild spoiler) a nailgun is put to rather nasty use – so the word was sticking in my mind anyway.

    *Barely Even Got Started.

  62. Thanks Andrew as I was a bit lazy and didn’t go back to parse some of the longer entries.
    I’m not really happy with 19A: FANNY ADAMS on its own does not mean zero (does it?), so love can’t be the definition, although it is doubtless a girl’s name. so I don’t think it quite works and I’ve tied myself in Watt knots trying to amend it to my satisfaction (Love is sweet with her?).
    Elsewhere I found this difficult but really enjoyable, with plenty of excellent tests, a couple of new words and all the wit I hoped to find, thanks Paul.

  63. I did this on a plane back from Geneva but hadn’t finished it by touchdown. It took me much longer to fill in the top half, but a very fair challenge. All of my favourites have been mentioned already but JOINED UP WRITING was tops. Didn’t know that meaning for HOE either. Another super blog scchua, although I don’t think many of us will see 20022, in your explanation for WHITE BREAD 🙂

    Ta Paul & scchua

  64. Valentine@60
    I probably should have checked before I posted. Checking now on Urban Dictionary, I see a multitude of possible origins, some innocent, some humorous, some less so.
    I have always understood it, however, to be a corruption of the current understanding of FANNY ADAMS.
    (Sorry.)
    The good news, though, is that I now have some child friendly answers to my question above.

  65. Gazzh @62 – in the UK sweet FA means nothing – it comes from f*ck all that sounds like Farkle, Valentine @60. If you read up there’s a back derivation from a pretty horrific murder story.

    Valentine @60 – SOMEWHEN is in my idiolect (as in I use it).

  66. I don’t know why there shouldn’t be a SOMEWHEN to go with somewhere, somewhat etc., but I’d always thought there wasn’t.

    Liked the WATT KNOT.

  67. Shanne@65 yes but my point is that while Love = Zero = Sweet Fanny Adams, the clue seems to want us to equate “Fanny Adams” alone with Love, unless I am completely misreading it (which is certainly not impossible).

  68. Valentine @60: Somewhy, somewhence and somewhither are dictionary listed (‘rare’!) as well as SOMEWHEN, but not, at least outside the crossword standard references, somewho or somewhich. OED anyone?

    My favourite of these archaic indefinites is ‘wherefore’, which has lost out to ‘why’. The standard Swedish word for ‘why’ is still the cognate ‘varför’. Many people now assume it just means ‘where’ and thereby misunderstand Juliet’s balcony speech.

  69. Took this long to finish – Paul’s hardest in a long time, I think. Needed some word searches, but no reveals, thankfully. I find the amusement factor of a lot of Paul’s clues makes them worth the struggle.

  70. Gervase@68. WS Gilbert seemed to think they had distinct meanings when he wrote ‘Never mind the why or wherefore’ in HMS Pinafore. My understanding is that why indicated the reason for something and wherefore how it came about, but I agree few would make the distinction today.
    Great fun from Paul today but one of the hardest that I recall. A lot of blank squares for a very long time but what satisfaction when they finally all filled up.

  71. MikeB @70: I rather think ‘whys and wherefores’ may just be an alliterative stock phrase like ‘bits and bobs’, and there isn’t any real distinction between the words. Certainly, dictionaries define ‘wherefore’ as ‘why’. Gilbert was adept at alliterative wording to fit the metre of Sullivan’s tunes.

  72. Thanks both,
    Lechien @13: I think your partial parsing is better. Crank (verb) =wind. Daughter = child = ch. Sick = ill etc. There is a question mark at the end of the clue to cover the DBE which would not otherwise be needed. I’m not keen on crank = winch even if one of the dictionaries gives it. A winch may or may not have a crank but is a more complicated machine. I suppose, in a sailing context, ‘winch in the sail’ and ‘crank in the sail’ might be the same, but it’s a bit of a stretch.

    Did anyone else try ‘Lafitte’ for 16a at first? It would work if the ‘i’ could be fitted in. Not the kind of drink ladettes usually consume.

    I still don’t see the parsing of 23d/24. Is ‘Escoffier’ supposed to be speaking Franglais? ‘Escoffier’ is not a word for a particular kind of cooking AFAIAA.

  73. Thanks for the blog, probably safe now to say that I found most of it a bit obvious but it is a rail strike day and I was hoping for more of a challenge for my journey home. I have seen the B EAGLE clue too many times to enjoy it. ITSY BITSY was neat for the parts of it.

  75. Tyngewick@72: For me it’s sufficient that Escoffier is synonymous with ‘haute cuisine’. So ‘oat cuisine’=porridge in conjunction with Escoffier leads readily imho to HAUTE CUISINE. Non?

    Escoffier’s seminal ‘cookbook’ – Le Guide Culinaire – was published at first without illustrations, which led to the expression ‘une omelette without the prints’.

  76. i’m with laccaria @48, being far more familiar with the French pronounciation of HAUTE.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pc0rPIEEaw
    also, i’d never heard of Escoffier, so while the answer was pretty obvious once i had the crossers, the clue was largely useless to me, personally.

    BLACKBIRD was clever and i wish i’d seen that. In the event, when i looked up “beagle”, Collins had:

    2. archaic
    a person who spies on others

    and the Blackbird is a very well known spy plane, so… there’s that.

    Ta scchu & paul

  77. scchua just realised I called you Andrew earlier despite your usual excellent illustrations (and sound effects too), very sorry!

  78. Mr and Mrs S feeling very proud of ourselves, having done all but Parade and putting in White board instead of White bread (we couldn’t parse it).
    The Guardian Cryptic has been part of our evenings for perhaps three years and we’re starting to learn the language. And we get different clues – we would never manage on our own.
    Now there’s a parable for life.

  79. Loved this and Paul is definitely my top setter again – he is so different, amusing, fresh, modern- this was really worth doing and especially fun for two people together.
    We are paper solvers and resent it when it appears crosswords have been designed to be done with the help of the check/reveal button – not so, this one. Thank you Paul and scchua.

  80. Thanks to Paul and scchua. There were some nice constructions in this puzzle, and on the whole it was very fairly clued, but I have a couple of quibbles. Firstly (23/24), the proper pronunciation of ‘haute’ is more like ‘ought’ than ‘oat’. I worked out ‘haute cuisine’, but could not see the porridge connection – it’s a bit of a stretch. Secondly (1), a winch is a drum, not a crank. A crank is the means by which a manual winch is operated. Again, I worked out the answer but felt a bit disgruntled. Maybe I was just in a grumpy mood?

  81. To Prospector@80 and other homophone-quibblers, we should perhaps recognise that “oat” is pronounced differently by different English speakers, and “haute” differently by different French speakers: a Maccam’s breakfast is pretty close to a Niçoises’s apex.

  82. …and in 1d, if you read ‘crank’ as a verb, is that not a close enough match to the verb ‘winch’ (“Crank it up”/ “winch it up”)?

  83. Meandme @43. I agree with Shanne’s comment@46. In my post @20, I probably worded it wrong – I was just pointing out what I discovered when I was researching the phrase ‘sweet fanny adams” and I pointed out that the murder had nothing to do with the answer to 19ac. Previously, I had never known about that 1867 murder.
    I think it is much more common these days to simply use the swear word F*** rather than a euphemism such as sweet fanny adams as it is shorter to say it quickly in a moment of stress or anger or whatever, or else FECK and FIG (as in ‘I don’t give a fig’) also get used.

    Gazzh@67, yes Fanny Adams = f*** all = zero/nil or love (in tennis).

    I also want to add that I had forgotten that we used to wear sandshoes for sports/PE classes at my school in Oz back in the 1970s but I haven’t called them (runners, trainers etc ) sandshoes for a long time now!

  84. Another thought on BLACKBIRD: the word ‘Beagle’ at first suggested two things to me: (1) Snoopy, and (2) Darwin’s world cruise. I was trying to see how either of those could be worked into a 9-letter light. Shows how easy it is to be led astray.

  86. Lots of really good clues but I just couldn’t seem to care today. Only managed to do six before I gave up!

  87. Yeah, no.

    Thank you for the explanations, which leave me thinking that my failure to get more than a dozen or so of these was not actually my fault. Well, except for INOCULATE, which I knew had to be an anagram of ALI ONE CUT and I still failed.

    FANNY ADAMS may be the new record holder for “least likely that ThemTates could ever get there”. That one (especially) and WHITE BREAD and JOINED-UP WRITING and maybe SANDSHOE pretty much needed me to have grown up a different person in a different place.

    (And while I’m picking nits, your definition of wind-chill factor is incorrect. The air temperature is not any cooler due to wind; it _feels_ cooler due to repeated loss of the warmed air that accumulates near a warm body in the absence of wind. Wind chill itself might conceivably be badly clued as “cooler,” but wind chill _factor_ — the measure in degrees of the effect — cannot. Wind chill factor doesn’t cool anything, and isn’t cooler than anything.)

  88. This was a really tough one – HAUTE CUISINE went in first and some of the rest gradually followed though I had to reveal BLACKBIRD (Beagle was way too obscure for me)
    @ThemTates (87) I loved WIND-CHILL FACTOR (when I had a few crossers in I managed to parse it from the clue) and I think the ‘?’ satisfactorily excuses the “it-feels-cooler”.
    I got JOINED UP WRITING after a few crossers went in (and a few checks!) but cba to parse it to the extent of getting Jong so thanks for the explanation scchua and thanks for the Escoffier chuckle Paul!

  89. [scchua – I completely stopped visiting 15² during the time of SARS-CoV-2 since the number of posts multiplied as their relevance decreased; I’ve been thinking the same way now because it invariably takes much longer to read them than to complete the puzzle. But I’m glad I did so in this case if only for the joy of your blackbird link. What an animal, what a voice and what a song! I don’t know you, scchua, but your continued generosity, and artistry, compels me to say that I think you are a wonderful person. Thank you]

    This is the chewiest Paul in some time (for me, at least) and only proves what I always say – how does he keep on doing it and staying fresh? We are truly blessed to be around when he is!

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!! Both….

  90. [Thank you very much for your kind words, William F P. I’m happy and I appreciate that you enjoy my labour of love, as I’d like to call it.]

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