Guardian 29,743 / Matilda

95 comments on “Guardian 29,743 / Matilda”

1. An elegant puzzle with some really standout clues. Big ticks for CAMBRIDGE BLUE, FOOTBALL GROUND and SACROSANCT. I also liked PULL IT OFF, TRIPOLI, AUTOPILOT, STRING PULLING and RIOT ACT. I couldn’t find a weak clue anywhere and enjoyed it immensely.

   Ta Matilda & Eileen.

2. AlanC @1 – you’re right of course re 21,22. I did have that originally! I will amend now.

3. Thanks Matilda and Eileen
   STRING PULLING was the only realistic possibility that fitted, but I had no idea about either definition – the painting technique was interesting (thanks Eileen), but what is the connection with fraud?
   Apart from that, very good. Favourite BASSET.

4. I think TRIPOLI is intended as an &lit, rather than for Port to be the definition?

5. SCOURGE is just CO, Eileen? I removed my comment about SPORTING GROUND as I thought I’d got it wrong again, but thanks for the validation. Never too confident amongst the experts on here.

6. I also didn’t see either definition for STRING PULLING… why fraud?
   TRIPOLI I saw as &Lit given that Port is part of the wordplay.

   Very nice, thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

7. I think 8d is RING PULL (can feature) in STING (fraud)

8. Muffin@3 ring pull “can feature” in sting “fraud”

9. Quite right, PM and Jay – even better than I thought!

10. I couldn’t parse 8d – I never heard of this paint technique, and I don’t understand the fraud connection either.

    Oh I see now: string-puliing in Collins is ‘the use of one’s influence with other people to get things done, often unfairly’.

11. Please excuse my ignorance (I’m Australian) but how does ‘George’ = AUTOPILOT? (6 Down)

    Thanks Eileen and Matilda: lots of fun today!

12. Knew I was going to cross!

13. Crossed with criceto!

    Also found in my research that a lot of pilots name their autopilots “George”, hence the definition at 6d

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

14. Knowing the autopilot is George is one of the many things from Airplane!! I’ll never forget. Surely not! Yes, and don’t call me Shirley!

15. Thanks Alex and criceto. That makes it a very good clue!

16. “Can feature” RING PULL in “fraud” STING… ah, that’s excellent!

17. Ring-pull inside sting …
    Far too slow 🙂

18. Thanks Alex@13.
    That one flew by me, but must’ve been a write-in for all those pilots out there.

19. Apparently there is a scam in touristy Paris, where the participants tie string/wool around the fingers of unsuspecting victims and then intimidate them into buying balls of string/wool.

20. Alex @7 and Criceto @8
    Oh dear – I think I should go back to bed (or rewrite the blog)! Too many of the clues are (even) better than I thought. (It’s taking a while to log in to make amendments, too.)

21. I agree that this is a first rate puzzle. I particularly enjoyed a number of clues which gave an “a-ha!” moment as, having guessed the answer from the crossers, I saw how the clue worked. Examples FOOTBALL GROUND as you realise that football is an anagram of Ballot of, and that Ground is an anagram indicator (and a straightforward one by Grauniad standards); NONET as you contemplate something that might actually offer blessed relief from what the cartoonist Giles once summed up as “two weeks of bonk-bonk-thirteigh-forteigh“; OFTEN as it dawns on you that that’s exactly what decimal means.
    Thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

22. Eileen, I’m still unsure about FOOTBALL GROUND. If you ground BALLOT OF, then sporting is not necessary as an anagrind and then becomes part of the solution.
    Ah I see NeilH @21 has had the same thought.

23. AlanC @22 – I’m having second (or perhaps first!) thoughts, too – I panicked when I saw your comment. That was not what I had originally. I shall restore my original parsing – as yours, paddymelon, thank you. I usually say that ‘ground is one of my favourite indicators.
    My apologies to everyone for the confusion.

24. Eileen@23. I just withdrew my comment. I’ll restore it.

    Isn’t FOOTBALL GROUND a clue as definition, as a reverse clue? Don’t think I’ve seen one like that before.

25. Liked many.
    Top faves were: MINUTE STEAKS, FOOTBALL GROUND, TRIPOLI and STRING PULLING (failed to parse it. Thanks Alex and Criceto).

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

26. But I think that ”sporting” is the anagrind.

27. Eileen @23: either way actually works, which makes the clue even better. Sorry for the befuddling.

28. paddymelon@26 and AlanC @27- my last word: I’m sticking by my original thought, as NeilH has it @21. I’ve amended the blog.

29. Eileen @28: 😉

30. I also put in the answer STRING PULLING without thinking about the possibility of the ‘can feature’ parsing. INEXPERT took a while as I failed for a long time to see that ‘each afterwards held’ could be read both as per in next and as next in per. Lovely puzzle from Matilda and the usual elegant parsing from Eileen. Many thanks both.

31. I’m getting the impression – certainly this week – that the setters have been a bit kinder to we solvers recently. Not to take away anything from the ingenuity employed, particularly today by Matilda. I imagine a Paul Cryptic might come along tomorrow and change that trend.
    Anyway, CAMBRIDGE BLUE has a very distinct green tinge to it – all kinds of weird and wonderful theories about how that came about. The pub nearby us with that very name has faithfully painted its exterior in that precise shade.
    I really liked SACROSANCT amongst several other excellent clues today…

32. Great stuff from Matilda. Not sure if they were being kind today or I am getting better but they are usually a setter I struggle with.

    Agree no bad clues in there. Hadn’t heard of STRING PULLING but had to be.

    Liked the &lit for TRIPOLI. I also had a laugh remembering the AUTOPILOT scene in Airplane.

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen

33. Some good puzzles this week. This was my quickest for a while and it was all so satisfying.

    Trams were going backwards in the Quick Cryptic this weekend (I was training my 10-year-old) and today there’s one coming back the other way.

    I liked SACROSANCT and MINUTE STEAKS, but really, it was all very good. I was with Michelle @10 on the STRING PULLING, and that works fine, but the hidden ring pull is a beautiful thing.

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

34. Classy crossword, Matilda’s phrasing as smooth and witty as Louis Spohr…

35. Good fun; plenty of smiles. CAMBRIDGE BLUE held me up a bit, as I’d never heard of it.

36. A puzzle of slow bit by bit realisations. I pencilled in STING on the outside, guessed it might then be PULLING and had the final aha moment when I saw the RINGPULL. FOOTBALL GROUND also took an age to dawn on me. Lovely puzzle.

37. Another nonplussed about the nho STRING PULLING, though it had to be that. Otherwise very smooth and enjoyable.

38. …as a little boy in the very early 1950’s I can remember getting on a TRAM in Birmingham (Warwickshire, not Alabama I hasten to add, though I don’t think the TRAM travelled very fast).

39. Very pleased to see Matilda this morning – I always like her setting, and particularly loved her Quiptics.

    I’ve run a STRING PULLING activity with kids – I suspect in a summer holiday camp we ran in farming country, because the children of farm workers weren’t going to go on holiday, and this gave them something to write about when they had to write the inevitable “What I did in my school holidays” essay. I don’t think I was stupid enough to do it in Pre-School provision. (This is said by the person who had an hour’s clearing up after Monday’s Rainbow session because I’d set up a very messy craft activity, the night we had parents in to see the girls awarded with their badges.)

    One boat I’ve been on featured an AUTOPILOT called George; he wasn’t that helpful, because he was attracted to large lumps of metal, like big ships or marker buoys, so he couldn’t be left unsupervised, ever.

    Thank you to Matilda and Eileen.

40. Another person who a) had never heard of string pulling and now really wants to try it after searching for the term, and b) had the, somewhat tenuous, idea of string pulling as an aid to fraud and missed the “ring pull” in string, what a beautiful clue!

    And I’m glad I’m not the only person who knew George from Airplane, looks like I picked the wrong week to give up amphetamines.

41. @40 Eoink 😆

42. As a relatively new solver I feel like I’ve had a great week. Perhaps the setters have been kind, perhaps I’m getting better, but that’s 4 from 4 this week with no reveals and only a few unparsed (before a visit here, of course). I’m always heartened when the 15^2 community say it was a lovely puzzle (rather than “more of a quiptic, this one”), so on today and yesterday’s reviews I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it’s me getting better….

43. Sorry to disappoint all the posters above, but although George is a moniker applied to autopilots, the name of the autopilot in the film “Airplane” was Otto.

44. I parsed STRING PULLING correctly, having no idea what it meant. Wonderful to be able to get RING PULL into wordplay. Great example of the setter’s craft.
    Lovely puzzle, all parsed including the reverse anagram (if that’s what it’s called).
    Thanks Eileen for the usual excellent blog, and Matilda for the puzzle.

45. Entertaining solve with some smooth clues. I particularly liked FOOTBALL GROUND, NO NET, and the &lit TRIPOLI. I couldn’t parse STRING PULLING, although I noticed the ‘can feature’. That’s another really good clue.

    Thanks Matilda and Eileen.

46. Ampersand@42 As another relatively new solver, I’ve had the same thoughts about this week’s cryptics – very cheering after last week when I struggled most days. Let’s tell ourselves we’re improving.

    I thought this a very impressive crossword. I parsed most and those I didn’t figure out make perfect sense now I’ve read Eileen’s excellent blog and the discussion which was interesting and focussed today. More Matildas, please!

47. Lovely puzzle. AUTOPILOT = George is one of those things I learned solely from crosswords. Favourite today was SACROSANCT.

48. Echoing others, enjoyable solve, beautifully constructed clues, very informative blog and discussion.
    TILT – The AUTOPILOT is often called George by pilot, STRING PULLING is an art technique, and the device used in TRIPOLI is called an &lit.
    Favourites – SACROSANCT (very elegant), CAMBRIDGE BLUE (LOI), STRING PULLING (second last in, solved from wordplay, ring pull inside sting) and reverse anagram FOOTBALL GROUND.
    Thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

49. Seeing as it’s yonks since I last chomped my way through any kind of steak (I’m not the only one here!) perhaps someone can fill me in on whether a MINUTE STEAK is a slice of some bovine animal, grilled for just 1/60th of an hour on each face – or is it a slice cut from an Etruscan Shrew (poor mite!) that you can hardly see on the plate?! Judging by what some ‘fine dining’ restos tend to serve up these days, I’m inclined to guess the latter…

    I didn’t know GEORGE as a nickname for AUTOPILOT, though it was plausible enough. Brings back memories of the first-ever computer operating system I had to wrestle with, a monster called GEORGE which ran on ICL1900 series mainframes. Oh the fun I used to have with it! (on one occasion I locked up the entire University system for several hours because I’d simply set it the task of solving 100 simultaneous linear equations – something neither the 1900 nor GEORGE could handle!)

    Enough of reminiscing. I found this quite a gentle stretch after several toughies we’ve had over the past few days. But fun nonetheless. Have to give a big tick for FOOTBALL GROUND – always fun to spot these reverse wordplays. And SACROSANCT – even if the surface is a bit iffy. Oh, and ‘likes’ for MINUTE STEAK (yes, even from me!), INEXPERT, RIOT ACT, FUNFAIR, CAMBRIDGE BLUE, SCOURGE. And lots more.

    Thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

50. Very nice puzzle, faves SACROSANCT and FOOTBALL GROUND.

    It’s probably just me, but I don’t equate INEXPERT with unskilled, since the level of moderately skilled seems to be covered by the former but not the latter. Nobody else has mentioned it so either I’m wrong or nobody wants to break the spell since it’s “close enough”.

51. I agree this was a lovely puzzle. I didn’t really understand STRING PULLING so thanks for the explanations.

    My favourite was FOOTBALL GROUND which I thought was brilliant. Those suggesting “sporting” is the anagram indicator: I originally thought that, but I don’t think the clue would work that way. An anagram (“sporting”) of “ballot of” would just give you FOOTBALL, not FOOTBALL GROUND; and also that would just leave “venue” as the definition which is not as good as “sporting venue”. As Eileen says in the blog, the wordplay is just “Ballot of”, which is the word “football”, ground!

    Many thanks Matilda and Eileen.

52. Came here for the parse of STRING PULLING and said “Good heavens” aloud when I read it–I didn’t even think to look and see RING PULL in there. So many clever clues in this one! Thanks Matilda and Eileen!

53. Apart from not being familiar with the art technique of STRING PULLING, and not being sure how either that or TRIPOLI parsed, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Favourites SACROSANCT, BISTRO for a neat surface, FOOTBALL GROUND, CAMBRIDGE BLUE, NONET and AUTOPILOT. I’ve seen F-UNFAIR and RIO TACT before, but that’s more than made up for by the rest!

54. As kids we did string pulling with ink. And that with a permanent royal blue!

    Lovely puzzle

    Thanks both

55. Dr. Whatson@50 “He was an inexpert lover” would be an example. Or “Eden’s inexpert handling of the crisis brought about his downfall”.

56. I didn’t know the painting technique, and I didn’t get the wordplay, which makes it surprising that I figured out 8dn (STRING PULLING). I thought that the secondary indication was just a reference to “pulling strings” as a way of getting an unfair advantage, and I thought it was a little weak, but I was 100% wrong — it’s a great clue.

    I agree with the consensus that there’s not a weak clue in this batch. What a satisfying puzzle.

57. Fantastic stuff, loved every minute of it! Lots of variety and very smooth indeed, leading to far too many faves to list -though I did blink at the surface for SACROSANCT and get held up conjuring INEXPERT as a synonym, as per Laccaria@49 and Dr. WhatsOn@50

    Just as Amma@46 and Ampersand@42, I feel pretty chuffed today for having rattler through this, solving and fully parsing the lot. My LOIs were BLISTERED (alas there’s no little-known carbonization technique called Britney-ing), FOOTBALL GROUND (so the “of” wasn’t just a link work – but I was on to you from the start after seeing GROUND 😉) and STRING PULLING (so the second work also ends in ING; I couldn’t see what could come next after my sting ended too early!).

    I don’t really believe in “being on the wavelength” in broad brush terms, but I do find I get on well with setters such as this one (Arachne’s another whose puzzles I relish). I somehow find it quicker with them to get the aha-I-know-what-you’re-up-to feeling.

    NHOs were CAMBRIDGE BLUE, George the autopilot and the arty STRING PULLING fun, but all had to be from the parsing. One of the lovely things about cryptics.

    I think TRIPOLI is even better than the even better that it’s already been judged to be: not only an &lit but I suspect the “is” is the plural of “i” 😉

    Great fun, thanks both!

58. Excuse all the typos etc… I’m on my phone and 4 mins edit time instead of 5 pains me greatly 🙈

59. Thanks Matilda, I second the praise Eileen showered in the intro but I’ll add my favourites — FOOTBALL GROUND, LEANER, RIOT ACT, LEGATEE, FUNFAIR, and BASSET. I didn’t know George as an AUTOPILOT & I spent too much time thinking of Orwellian things before I solved the clue. In BLISTERED I was sure the celebrity would be an A-lister but that made no sense; somehow a B-lister sounds more like a has-been celebrity. In any event this was a most satisfying crossword. BTW, we did ‘string art’ in elementary school & it was great fun that every child could enjoy. Thanks Eileen for a wonderful blog.

60. After ticking the first four clues I decided instead to put an X beside each mediocre clue. There weren’t any. Matilda’s puzzles come close to perfection in their wit and cleverness.

    Thanks M & E for the merriment and elucidation.

61. Delightful puzzle, super blog and fine comments. I especially enjoyed the tale of George the wayward boat autopilot.

    I’ve never heard of ring pulls — in the US I think we call them pull tabs. Now that I’ve seen it, I think ring pull is better — it’s more descriptive.

    I liked the pretty string paintings, but couldn’t find anything in the article that said how to do them.

    Thanks to Matilda and Eileen.

62. Actually, the classic ring pull on cans in the UK was phased out years ago, because of the litter problem. They have been replaced by a pull tab that is retained on the can, rather than separated from it.

63. Re 6 Down. Utopia has nothing to do with George Orwell. It was written by Thomas More in the 16th Century.

64. Doug, I think Eileen’s well aware of that, as she has often referred to that classic crossword chestnut “More work” for Utopia! I think what she was getting at was that “George’s dysfunctional utopia” could be taken as a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four.

65. Doug Edwards @63

    I do know that – it was the ‘dysfunctional’ that led me to think of ‘dystopian’ – the word usually used to describe ‘1984’ – just word association. Sorry for any confusion. 😉

66. Lots of fun! RING PULL is a thing of beauty once revealed! Very satisfying to see Matilda’s ingenuity at work and thanks Eileen!

67. Mandarin@55 yeah, I hear you, but to me that is an example of delicacy rather than accuracy.

68. [Lord Jim @64. Just to say that it is pleasing to see the title of Orwell’s novel written out in full rather than reduced to its numerical equivalent, which always irritates the bejeezus out of me.]

69. [Doug@63 and others: of course Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a “utopia”! Well – sort of. Big Brother is always saying it is, after all, and Big Brother is always right, innit? And the continually broadcast message on the telescreen is “our new happy life”. What’s more (just think!) the powers-that-be have actually increased the chocolate ration, by a whopping -10 grams, from 30 grams to 20 grams. Can’t say fairer than that … !

    Errrmm… 🙂 ]

70. muffin @ 62 You still pull on a ring to open the can. QED

71. Simon @70
    Yes, but it isn’t actually a ring; at least not a circular one, as the old ones were.

72. Tim C@43, so it was. I seem to have Mandela Effected myself.

73. Ampersand@42 and Amma@46, I’m another solver who’s felt pretty chuffed with being able to solve everything so far this week. Either we’re all getting good simultaneously, or the setters actually have been going easy on us.

74. Thanks Matilda & Eileen. I get a special kick out of solving “reverse” clues, like the anagram variety at 21/22, or the container variety like this from Anax in Sunday Times 4476: “As deputy, resign? (6,2,7)”. I’m wondering if any other clue type comes in a “reverse” flavour.

75. Thank you for the blog.

    I have read and re-read all the comments and I just cannot understand where GROUND comes from in the clue 21,22.

    I see where FOOTBALL comes from, but I am lost otherwise. Completely lost.

76. Steffan @75: it’s a kind of backwards wordplay – “football ground” as a clue would indicate an anagram of FOOTBALL, giving “ballot of”, and then “sporting venue” is the definition. I often see this kind of backwards logic indicated by “cryptic[ally]”, but apparently not always.

    Lots of lovely clues today and nothing I couldn’t work out one way or the other, even if it did take me all day. I blame the heat, personally.

77. Coloradan@74. Another that comes to mind is the reverse reversal like Philistine’s:
    LAID UP Face being sick in bed? (4,2) in a down clue.

78. Steffen@75: ‘Ballot of’ is ‘football’ ground (ie the letters of football are ground up and rearranged). For a while I had it wrong and thought that the definition was just ‘venue’, but now I think Eileen has it right.

    Strange coincidence: EDEN featured in The Times today; ‘Prime minister of northern country forgetting first two points’: Sweden minus S and W, which in my opinion is a better clue.

79. Thanks for that paddymelon@77. I see that it got numerous ticks in Andrew’s blog.

80. Coloradan@74: interesting question. Further to paddymelon@77, I guess any cryptic device ordinarily indicated by surface words could be used in a “reverse” clue if a meaningful word or phrase containing it can be dreamed up as a solution.

    So, a solution containing the string “UP”, “BACK”, “GROUND”, “STARTS”/”ENDS”, “SECONDS”, “ODDLY”, and so on. I would think that such a clue would have to be simple, consisting of just the definition and the result of the operation indicated by the solution. In the solution, the suggested strings wouldn’t technically need to be separate words; were there to exist a word containing the substring “ODDLY” then that would work thanks to the Guardian-esque fusion technique. But therein lies the rub: it’s hard to find many words or phrases which involve “ODDLY” or “SECONDS” for example, let alone ones which give something meaningful when you apply the “odd/second letters only” operation on the remaining part of the solution. And even if one could be found, it’s probably the only one for that operation. “BACK” and “UP” certainly offer more options and hence potential for surprise, but of course anagrinds give by far the richest pickings.

    Here’s an example I’ve come up with for another operation I mentioned:

    Irregular bursts of activity amounting to nothing? (4, 3, 6)

    But again there are unlikely to be many other solutions involving that particular operator.

81. Oh and Steffen@75, I know others have already pitched in, but just to be absolutely clear: FOOTBALL GROUND is the solution to the definition “sporting venue”. The rest of the surface is wordplay resulting from what the phrase “football ground” leads you to when you interpret it as if it were itself a cryptic clue.

82. Eileen, I retract my ill-thought out postscript at 26. Brain only half-engaged.

    Steffen@75. ( Further to posts in the meantime while I’ve been putting my response together. Apologies for any overlaps or repetitions.)

    From https://www.puzzazz.com/how-to/cryptic-crosswords

    Reverse Definitions: In a reverse definition clue, the clue is actually an answer clued by an entry in the grid. Perhaps the most famous reverse clue is Gegs (9,4) for SCRAMBLED EGGS, a reverse anagram clue by British setter Araucaria.

    And from https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/06/reverse-anagrams.html

    Reverse anagram:
    Guardian 24798 (Rufus): Make wealth the wrong way? (5,3,3) BREAK THE LAW
    If you “break” THE LAW, you might make WEALTH. The whole clue is the definition, &lit style.

    Both of these sites give lots of examples of clue types and how to recognise them. They helped me a lot when I was starting out.

    (Beware of the potential confusion, as ”reverse” can also refer to a ”backwards” clue where the letters are reversed from right to left, in an across clue, or from bottom to top in a down clue. This meaning of reverse clue is where the solver has to find the missing instruction to come up with the answer.)

    The example here is the most common form of a reverse clue, ie anagram. You have the definition but you have to work out what the instruction/anagram indicator would be that would fit the definition/answer.

    As our blogger Eileen gives, and Bevan@76 says, “ballot of” is an anagram of football. So we have to think of a word that would fit the definition ”sporting venue”. We have football from the anagram. We know there are two words in the answer, 8 letters (football) and 6 letters. So we have to think of a word with 6 letters that would go with football and the two words together would mean a ”sporting venue”. A common anagram indicator is ”ground”, as in the past tense of grind, to mash something up, in the surface reading. It’s the missing anagram indicator here, but it means a sporting venue in the answer.

    Hope this helps. I looked for it in Alan Connor’s blog in the Guardian, How to solve cryptic crosswords, the ultimate beginner’s guide, (another great resource) but didn’t find it there. It comes with experience. As you can see here, a few of us, including me, had incorrect first attempts at this clue.

83. Thanks AP@80. It took me a while to crack that one (still getting used to UK slang). The considerations you set out got the wheels turning, as it were: A certain magnum opus brings a smile? (4, 5)

84. George is a name given to the autopilot: see Wikipedia

85. Seymour@84. I know it’s a long way back but that link was given @13.

86. Many thanks

87. Coloradan@83 I have to admit defeat on that one! I’m going along the lines of some major work that’s passed me by called SPIN MILES, though I’m not sure where the ‘A certain’ comes in! It’s pretty hard to cold-solve this kind of clue of course, even with the advance warning that its a reversal clue (perhaps inversion clue would be a better term).

    Certainly, for FOOTBALL GROUND, I happened to have the three checkers for GROUND, allowing me to spot that word first, triggering the gotcha! moment. I think one typically needs a few checkers to come up with a solution to the def and then figure out how on earth it parses.

    For the benefit of other readers (few and far between by now, I should think) the solution to my one is FITS AND STARTS. [I didn’t consider the Britishness of FA there, sorry!]

    Seeing the examples cited by paddymelon@82, I guess a couple of other comments can be made: this type of clue would seem to lend itself quite well to semi-&littishness (that Rufus one is excellent); and it was probably Araucaria who invented these things, which wouldn’t surprise anyone. His clue is a bit simplistic perhaps but it was probably an early example of the genre. Right up to date, there was an example by Everyman a few months ago in which the minimalistic clue To? (4, 3) gave MANX CAT (via tailless tom of course), which caused some consternation and indeed I wasn’t a fan… it’s taking the indirectness a bit far, IMO, though other setters’ earlier efforts at that, using slightly clearer surfaces, worked better I think.

    Also, I didn’t address, in my previous comment, the lovely example you gave in @74. I think “IN” for containment has a fair bit of scope, though it’s pretty hard to invent a clue using that as the only starting point. For example SON-IN-LAW needing a clue that contains a synonym for relative (for the def) and a synonym for law which, when an ‘s’ is inserted, gives another word that can be added to the clue as the inverted wordplay. Can’t think of anything! I guess setters do it the other way around, starting with the inverted wordplay word such as “resign”, leading them to ponder the ‘s in reign’ and then enjoy their own kind of penny-drop moment.

    Anyway that’s quite enough from me. Thanks for the thought-provoking diversion! On to today’s Pasquale which I’m finding heaver going already…

88. A day late but this is just to let the setter and blogger know of my appreciation for this puzzle and blog. I felt very much in the hands of a skilful setter who just wanted me to solve and enjoy her work, so thank you to Matilda. Eileen did the puzzle proud in her blog, which elicited a wonderful thread of interesting posts, comments, details and side detours. Sending appreciative feedback to Eileen.
    Like Eileen, I was reminded of Nutmeg’s setting – elegant, economical and enjoyable! She remains much missed.

89. AP@87: In hindsight I was probably unfairly obscure. Maybe I should have used something like “Bayreuth spectacle” rather than “A certain magnum opus”. “Ring Cycle” is what I had in mind. Many thanks for your very enlightening treatment of my original query!

90. Ah nice one Coloradan! I did briefly try to think of one for the CYCLE operator but got locked on to CYCLE PATH and couldn’t escape it 🙈

91. Lots of great clues but I really can’t see how “takes order” can fairly lead to [S]TEAKS in 4. It doesn’t make grammatical sense to me.

92. Michael R @91: order is a classic anagram indicator because you are “ordering” the letters. The S belongs to MINUTES in this case.

93. ^ Thank you, but I understand that. I probably should have been more explicit. ‘Order’ is a transitive verb being used in the wrong place as an imperative; grammatically it should be in front of the anagram fodder. ‘Ordered’ would be fine, but obviously the surface wouldn’t make sense. The Guardian does often allow this kind of looseness, and most people don’t seem to be bothered by it, but you can bet Bradman wouldn’t do it!

94. What a great puzzle.
    Many thanks!

95. Agree that this was a lovely puzzle. It also gave me my fifth completion in a row, I think a record for me!

    Favourite? Perhaps 19a FUNFAIR for the brilliant, meaningful surface

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