Fed is today's inquisitor.
I found this quite difficult to complete, but got there in the end with TEE SHIRT my LOI. Some of the clues were very straightforward, which thankfully gave me the crossers I needed for some of the meatier clues. I don't agree with the enumeration for PDQ as it's not a 3 letter word, but an abbreviation of 3 words, and some of the surfaces were quite tortuous, although all fo them were fair, but on the whole, I enjoyed the challenge and it was a satisfying solve.
Thanks, Fed.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ICEBERG |
Diver caught by current around hazardous sea feature? (7)
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<=(GREBE ("diver") + C (caught) by I (symbol for electrical "current" in physics), around) |
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| 5 | ART DECO |
Architectural style of a road round middle of Acton Green (3,4)
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A + Rd. (road) round [middle of] (ac)T(on) + ECO ("green") |
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| 10 | DEFORM |
Oddly looking in reflection of mirror, Freud reveals damage (6)
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[oddly, lookiing in reflection of] <=(M(i)R(r)O(r) F(r)E(u)D) |
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| 11 | CRIMINAL |
Somehow I’m in car pound to complete fence? (8)
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*(im in car) [anag:somehow}] + L (pound, as in L/s/d) |
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| 12 | PDQ |
Palladium line-up announced without delay (3)
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Pd (chemical symbol for "palladium") + homophone [announced] of QUEUE ("line-up") PDQ stands for "pretty damn quick", so enumeration should have been (1,1,1) instead of (3). |
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| 13 | ENZYME |
State of excitement after father leaves me stain remover? (6)
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(fr)ENZY ("state of excitement" after Fr. (father) leaves) + ME |
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| 14 | UNDULATE |
Ripple of muscle with inappropriate squeezing (8)
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LAT ("musce") squeezed by UNDUE ("inappropriate") |
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| 15 | BEARD |
Show with lead for Dick Van Dyke, say (5)
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BEAR ("show" as in display, e.g. a cost of arms on a shield) with [lead for] D(ick) |
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| 16 | GREEN BELT |
It’s hard to build on this level of martial arts proficiency (5,4)
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Double definition |
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| 19 | HITPARADE |
Camouflage-wearing soldier on first of these charts (3,6)
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HIDE ("camouflage") worn by PARA ("soldier") on [first of] T(hese) |
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| 21 | PASSE |
Dad and sister occasionally dated (5)
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PA ("dad") + S(i)S(t)E(r) [occasionally] |
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| 24 | TASMANIA |
Last of flight crew joining when international airport’s opening in part of Australia (8)
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[last of] (fligh)T + MAN ("crew") joining AS ("when") + I (international) + A(irport) ['s opening] |
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| 26 | OLD-HAT |
Former bowler, possibly 21 (3-3)
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OLD ("former") + HAT ("bowler, possibly") The 21 in the clue refers to thesolution to 21ac. |
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| 27 | SHY |
Throw pipe down next to yard (3)
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SH ("pipe down" as in "be quiet") next to Y (yard) |
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| 28 | TEE-SHIRT |
Top 30 without The White Stripes ultimately taking year out (3-5)
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THIRT(y) taking Y (year) out without (th)E (whit)E (stripe)S [ultimately] |
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| 29 | ADAGIO |
See you in Ibiza, when snorting a gram, son must go slowly (6)
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ADIO ("see you" in Spanish, so "in Ibiza") when snorting A + G (gram) |
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| 30 | BY A NOSE |
Just soybean spread (2,1,4)
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*(soybean) [anag:spread] |
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| 31 | BEDEVIL |
Torment two bases (7)
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BED ("base") + EVIL ("base") |
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| DOWN | ||
| 2 | CLEANSE |
Sanitise scalpel – as NHS vet regularly (7)
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(s)C(a)L(p)E(l) A(s) N(h)S (v)E(t) [regularly] |
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| 3 | BOOBY TRAP |
Practical joke – bash knocker – run the other way (5,4)
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<=(PARTY ("bash") + BOOB ("knocker", as in breast), run the other way (i.e. backwards)) |
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| 4 | ROMPED |
Miles Pedro cycled went quickly, easily (6)
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M (miles) + PEDRO cycled becomes RO-M-PED |
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| 6 | REINDEER |
Dancer maybe needing control – Fred Astaire chose her conclusively (8)
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REIN ("control") + (fre)D (astair)E (chos)E (he)R [conclusively] |
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| 7 | DRILL |
Bad doctor starts practice (5)
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Dr. (doctor) starts with ILL ('bad") |
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| 8 | CHATTEL |
Property Lawrence left following gossip (7)
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TE (Lawrence (of Arabia)) + L (left) following CHAT ("gossip") |
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| 9 | ACQUIRED TASTE |
Bought smack – it’s not for everyone (8,5)
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ACQUIRED ("bought") + SMACK ("taste") |
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| 17 | BOARD GAME |
Risk for one willing to go after directors (5,4)
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GAME ("willing") to go after BOARD ("sirectors") |
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| 18 | BRANDIES |
These used to be wine and cheese consuming soirees originally (8)
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BRIE ("cheese") consuming AND + S(oirees) [originally] |
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| 20 | IMAGERY |
Mental pictures conjured up by this writer’s mature line (7)
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I'M ("this writer's") + AGE ("mature") + Ry (railway "line") |
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| 22 | SWAHILI |
Language in exchange with Larkin – the poet – after losing pages (7)
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SWA(p) ("exchange") with (p)HILI(p) (Larkin, the poet) after losing the Ps (pages) |
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| 23 | VOYAGE |
Lady Gaga finally appearing in fashion mag – not everyone can see this passage (6)
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(lad)Y (gag)A [finally] appearing in VOG(u)E ("fashion magazine", not U (film classificaton (universal (ie for anyone to see)) |
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| 25 | MASON |
A male issue undermining biggest character of Matthew Perry on TV? (5)
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A + SON ("male issue") undermining [biggest character of] M(atthew) Perry Mason is a criminal defence lawyer created by Erle Stanle Gardner, appearing in over 80 books and in a 1950s/60s TV series where he was played by Raymond Burr. |
I normally avoid Fed’s, as they have been known to end in tears, but I took the plunge today and surprised myself by coming within a whisker of finishing.
A few unknowns, including Philip Larkin and PDQ, which I thought should have been clued as (1,1,1).
ADAGIO (a minor omission)
A G in ADIOs less s(son).
I see we agree on PDQ, Loonapick.
KVa, you’re correct, as ever.
Beaten by TEE-SHIRT in the end: so many moving parts and a failure to spot the def. That apart, everything was reasonably smooth. I’d agree with the enumeration observation and also with KVA’s observation re ADAGIO. BEDEVIL, BOARD GAME and REINDEER my podium today.
Thanks both
Found this difficult as I’m not yet attuned to Fed’s style, but chipped away at it. Was relieved to get PDQ on my initial pass, so didn’t question the enumeration, but I think loonapick and GDU are correct. Perry MASON took me back to TV in the sixties when I had nothing better to do.. Liked ENZYME, HIT PARADE and BRANDIES. Thanks to Fed and to loonapick.
Thanks, KVa @ 2 – don’t know what happened there; will edit later when next on my laptop.
Slight typo in your spelling of muscle in UNDULATE.
Agree with PDQ and that some of the clues were a bit torturous. I always enjoy Fed’s cultural references, whether past or present and he didn’t disappoint with Matthew Perry Mason, White Stripes, and Lady Gaga for example. I also liked the link between HIT PARADE and the Top 30 in the clever TEE SHIRT. Very enjoyable excursion.
Ta Fed & loonapick.
…and typo in BOARD GAME as well fyi.
Yes, a few clues were tortuous, but the overall fun and cleverness won the day. Happened to particularly like PASSE (not suggesting approval!)
I failed to solve 15ac – never heard of the Van Dyke beard style but I do know of the painter van Dyck after whom it is named 😉
I couldn’t parse the SWA bit of 22d; and also 3d (was thinking that TRAP was a reverse of PART=run/go) – and do people still refer to breasts as knockers? Wow, that is very 21ac!
New for me: PDQ and PD = palladium; ENZYME = stain remover; 18d BRANDIES I did not know brandy is distilled from wine but I know of the Brandywine River from Tolkien 🙂
We have had the enumeration discussion before, maybe with RSVP. The Guardian style is that if it’s written without the full stops, it’s 3 or 4 rather than 1,1,1 or 1,1,1,1. Another great puzzle from Fed.
The OED (not, I think, O.E.D.) goes with PDQ, with P.D.Q. as a variant.
I’m giving up on this one. I usually persevere these days and often finish cryptics or at worst end up revealing a few answers but I didn’t find this intriguing or entertaining enough to make the effort. Too many clunky and tortuous clues.
Always enjoy a Fed puzzle. Not too difficult but BEDEVIL took up a good proportion of the total time. Got a bit focussed on it ending -sin.
Glad I got TEE SHIRT fairly quickly seeing the other posts and pleased I managed to assemble an unheard of musical term.
Favourite today BOARD GAME
Thanks Fed and Loonapick
I sometimes find Fed’s puzzles difficult, but I was on Fed’s wavelength today and made steady progress through this one which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed. Plenty of clues that I thought were excellent with some of my favorites being VOYAGE, TEE-SHIRT, BRANDIES and BEDEVIL (appropriately my last fill). Big thanks to Fed and to loonapick for a great blog.
I always wonder about the demographic here. Anyone who remembers Perry Mason has to be positively neolithic (like me!). Thanks to Fed and to loonapic.
JeremyKahn@17: yes, indeed! So when I see “Lady Gaga” in the clue I know that she will be there simply to provide the final letters Y + A, and when I see “Matthew Perry” I know immediately that the name should probably be split and that “Perry” alone will refer to the 1960s TV show Perry Mason. Ha ha ha.
“Could In have a packet of Enzyme o get this stain out of my tee shirt!”
My scence training may be a bit dated but….
Fed quickly went from perfectly OK to one of my favourites. I loved some of today’s surfaces.
I was well impressed with these clues. The surfaces were really well crafted, I thought. The “wine and cheese” phrase in the BRANDIES clue was subtly done as a distractor while the definition “These used to be wine” was nicely cryptic. Another example: in the DEFORM clue, the “looking in reflection of mirror Freud” combines the fodder for the alternate letters string with the smooth semantics in the surface. There was a lot of this type of cleverness in this puzzle, which I very much enjoyed.
Perry Mason actually had a more recent outing in an Amazon series, where he was played by the excellent Matthew Rhys. It was much more hard-boiled than the old version but unfortunately didn’t get enough views and was cancelled after two seasons.
Sorry if I’m labouring the issue, but Chambers has pdq – lower case, no full stops, “informal”. Yes, I was a bit surprised too.
@copster #19 Try searching for ‘enzyme cleaner’
I found this hard to complete with too many unparsed. Finishing the crossword is an addiction – sometimes you struggle through even if you’re not enjoying it.
I agree with loonapick about the tortuous parsing, and sometimes life’s just too short to parse a Fed: I came here for my last few in, HIT PARADE, BEDEVIL, DEFORM and BRANDIES though I should have seen all of them. Fed is very good at the misleading multi-word term: look at Matthew Perry (Perry MASON is a long time ago!), Acton Green and Dick Van Dyke. SWAHILI was very clever, but my favourites were Dancer the REINDEER and GREEN BELT.
Nice to see T E making an appearance – but not so nice to meet not one but two crude terms for breasts in BOOBY TRAP.
PDQ is annoying but Guardian standard style, I think.
Very entertaining. I agree with gladys that Fed is the master of misleading use of names for the wordplay — Acton Green, Dick Van Dyke, Matthew Perry, Lady Gaga….
Initialisms like PDQ are never enumerated as 1,1,1. As Petert says @12, it’s just the Guardian style and you have to get used to it!
Many thanks Fed and loonapick.
Well, I’m feeling quite pleased with myself for once. Usually I’m one of the strugglers here, especially with a Friday Fed, but after a slow start with the Across clues, it went in steadily in a couple more passes.
I also enjoyed the clever constructions, once I got on Fed’s wavelength, and liked most of the surfaces.
I guess it’s Opposite Day where I am.
Excellent in every respect, great surfaces and misdirection, without a single dud. TTS&B!
What a fun puzzle! “Throw pipe down” a misdirect for the books, and BOOBY TRAP is simply perfect.
Struggled with the left hand side too (glad I’m not the only one) but in hindsight all completely fair. Thank you Fed & loonapick!
I find amusing that I initially parsed
“A male issue undermining biggest character of Matthew Perry on TV?” as A + M + BO under M, giving MAMBO. Coincidentally the singer that popularized “Papa Loves Mambo” was one Perry Como. It nearly works!
Jeremy Kahn @ 17 I remembered Perry Mason from the 80/90s TV films that my grandmother watched, I was in my teens then.
BEDEVIL was my LOI and I should have got it earlier as I had ‘devil’ as an early thought for DRILL.
Paste was my first synonym choice for ‘smack’, rightly it was going through various dubious condiments that the penny dropped.
I probably shouldn’t get so irritated when people quibble about the enumeration of acronyms/abbreviations. You don’t even need the justification of “Guardian house style” to justify it. An easy yardstick: is the “word” normally written/typed/printed/texted with spaces between the letters?
Very enjoyable, parsing everything except Chattel. Thought Lawrence left was simply supplying the L, so couldn’t work out where TE came from. Doh! Iceberg was LOI after spending ages trying to construct something around Scuba, Scuber, etc
Many thanks to Fed and Loonapick
Thanks for the blog , found the clues very clever without being contrived , six are circled , rare for me and could have been more .
ENZYME was very neat for difficult letters , TEE-SHIRT well-disguised and BOARD GAME hid the capital for Risk very cleverly at the front , my favourite game as well .
ART DECO had a sort of centenary last year , started before 1925 but really took off after the Paris Exhibition that year .
[ Has anyone seen Cellomaniac in the blogs ? Since my return from exile I have not seen his name , we are different time-zones so I may have just missed it . ]
Phew… Made it in the end, having been sat here in the Chateau LeMouton kitchen through lunch and beyond, staring down the last half dozen or so. Satisfying, in the “now I’ve been to the gym I can wind down” kind of way.
LOI was TEE-SHIRT: parsing obvious only after the event. ICEBERG, as for others, caused a bit of trouble… being an occasional sailor, I’d got a bit fixated on reefs (we don’t have many icebergs in the Solent), and every sort of water fowl but the right one.
Towards the end I was looking for a pangram, but it was not to be.
Good chewy stuff overall. I especially liked BY A NOSE for its compact clueing, BOARD GAME for its neat misdirection, and BRANDIES despite its rather weird construction.
Thanks to Fed for a good work-out and Loonapick for the blog.
Fed is my favourite. Partly because I know who he is and can empathise with his sense of delight, partly because I’ve tuned in. Some I build from the parsing, but often that’s a long shot, in which case, I enjoy jumping to the answer and working it all out. If this is my route to conquering “tortuous parsing”, then so much the better.
I have no issue with the enumeration thing. It would be a waste of a decent clue to make it 1,1,1 and unnecessary by any rationale as it transpires. I share the surprise that it’s listed in the dictionary in lowercase. A glance at my hard copy Chambers confirms it was already like that over 30 years ago.
LOI for me was BRANDIES. New to me was a Van Dyke BEARD.
Thanks all.
Great puzzle and just the right difficulty to finish quickly, for those of us who have to stroll out and buy a newspaper. Had to check a couple of parsings in the blog but the answers were clear. Don’t know about the clueing but there aren’t many three letter words ending in Q
I got CHATTEL when initially thinking of a particular work by a different Lawrence. Several of the clues have this kind of double resonance.
Thanks Fed & loonapick.
Had to reveal SHY and three entries in NW – mostly, vocabulary issues, although I could have gotten BEARD if I tried a bit harder. I liked quite a lot of the entries incl. ROMPED, ENZYME, HIT PARADE, TEE-SHIRT, SWAHILI, BOARD GAME. Thanks Fed and loonapick!
[Roz @34: Cellomaniac was the last to post on the blog yesterday so still around]
Thanks Loonapick and Fed! I was more on Fed’s wavelength than usual, although there were a good number of answers where I had to arduously reverse engineer the parsing after entering. BEDEVIL, appropriately, was LOI for me.
Can anyone enlighten me on why Lawrence = TE? (Possibly an American problem…?)
Loren ipsum @41
T. E. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia, as portrayed by Peter O’Toole in the David Lean film.
I enjoy Fed’s puzzles although I often have to look up the parsing. It would have taken me forever to work why booby trap was right. Perry Mason turned into A Man Called Ironside after he was shot.
PDQ or pdq seems to be the favoured spelling in most dictionaries with p.d.q. in the ODE. Anyway, we’ve had this discussion many times with the consensus being that the Guardian Style Guide usually goes for ‘words’ without full stops. Another fun one from Fed. I liked Freud’s odd mirror and the NHS (3) vet for CLEANSE. These ‘regular’ clues are not always the easiest to discover. I also liked the ripple of muscle for UNDULATE and Fred Astaire’s DANCER. As others above have pointed out: In 2020, Matthew Rhys starred in the lead role on the HBO period series Perry Mason, so fairly current.
Thanks Fed and loonapick.
[ayeaye @41
You have reminded me of a favourite “overhearing” (a friend’s, not mine).
Middle-aged lady and elderly lady in a department store:
Elderly lady “Look, there’s Lawrence!”
Middle-aged lady: “No mother, that’s not Lawrence, it’s Keith”
“Well I knew it was something of Arabia”]
[ Thank you MrPostMark @40 , glad he still comments and will track him down at some stage . ]
I think it has only been recently that the American(?) expression in horse racing for the shortest winning distance “BY A NOSE” has often replaced the British version of “by a short head”. Sometimes it’s only by an agonising flared nostril if you’ve backed the second horse.
Beaten by several lengths by Fed today, but enjoyed the gallop. Christmas not too distant a memory yet, so got REINDEER straight away. Liked ENZYME and (Perry) MASON, which TV programme I used to avidly watch as a teenager…
Great puzzle with many fun parsings. Agree that BOOBY TRAP is not very PC but it has an excellent surface image.
I originally thought the ‘show’ part of 15a should be Bare, but the example by loonapick nicely explains why Bear works.
Faves: ICEBERG, REINDEER, BRANDIES and MASON.
Good fun. Thanks, Fed and loonapick
We liked this a lot – very enjoyable. Favourites are BOARD GAME, SWAHILI and the excellent TEE SHIRT. Failed to completely parse IMAGERY (didn’t think of railway line) but was obvious from the clueing. Thanks to Fed and Loonapick.
Missed on 28, where I had RED-SHIRT. This is the practice, in US collegiate sports, of a freshman absenting himself from competition, so that he can develop his skills and enjoy 4 years of eligibility starting in his sophomore year. I believe the term “redshirting” applies more widely to parents’ holding a child back a year before starting first grade. Anyway, this would exactly fit the definition “taking year out”, and would parse if “top” were taken to mean “cut the end off”.
Thanks both. I enjoyed ICEBERG because yesterday I was pleased to enjoy the sight of a pair of grebes swanning around a local lake. The latest in a continuing series of cross-references to life popping up in daily puzzles. Amazing how often it occurs.
I’m with gladys@25: BOOBY-TRAP was in poor taste.
Gotta love a Dave Gorman puzzle & this one didn’t disappoint. Great fun & with ticks aplenty – ENZYME, TEE SHIRT, ADAGIO, REINDEER, ACQUIRED TASTE & SWAHILI particular likes.
Thanks Fed & to Loonapick
ronald@47 I think a nose has always been around and is closer than a short head. I grew up by Epsom racecourse and the phrase was around in the late 1950s.
Martin@40 – I just figured out who Fed is. I saw him many times on the Manchester stand-up scene in the nineties. Very clever and funny and always seemed to be thoroughly decent. Always thought it nice he did so well (along with many others from that time).
I enjoyed that, good puzzle but it had me beat in three or four places.
A neat clue said former bowler. Played for England was Chris Old. That’s the way I read it . Found the crossword quite difficult.
Thanks loonapick, thanks all.
I was as surprised as anyone when I discovered that P.D.Q. was in the dictionary as pdq. But it is. And so (3) it is.
If I’d enumerated it as (1,1,1) there would have been complaints about that also from people pointing out the dictionary listing. They’d be right.
Cheers!
Am I the only one thinking that booby trap (3d) usually refers to something much deadlier than a practical joke?
A lot to enjoy, but eclipsed for me by ‘knockers’, just distasteful.
I like Fed’s puzzles and was happy with this one…but…couldn’t crack the NW corner, so dnf. Flummoxed by “Dick Van Dyke” in 15a — I knew something was going on, but didn’t know it was a BEARD. Other really good misdirections in 6d REINDEER (“Dancer”, combined with “Fred Astaire”), 17d BOARD GAME (“Risk”), 23d VOYAGE (“not everyone can see this”), 25d MASON (“Matthew Perry”)
Clever: 28a TEE-SHIRT took a while to parse, 22d SWAHILI (“losing pages”), 31a BEDEVIL (“two bases”).
9d ACQUIRED TASTE I thought was going to involve Marmite! 🙂
I got there in the end, but as always had to come here for several parsings. Like others I enjoyed the cryptic BRANDIES. I can’t remember when I first found out how brandy was made – one picks up lots of things along the way having spent so many years on the planet, enough to remember Raymond Burr as both Perry Mason and then Ironside.
Bayleaf 57,
No, you’re not alone, though I think that the term gets used metaphorically to mean a practical joke.
I thought that this was a well-constructed, steady challenge, with TEE SHIRT holding out the longest. I agree with the comments about Perry Mason.
Thanks all.
Bayleaf @57 re Booby Trap.
Chambers has 2 definitions:
1: a harmless-looking object which on being touched sets off an explosion
2: a form of practical joke, by which something is made to fall upon someone entering a door, or the like
Some thoughts in defence of ‘knocker’.
I’m genuinely surprised to see people finding the term knocker distasteful. Chambers notes some slang words as crude or offensive and this isn’t one of them. It can be used in a lascivious way, of course, but it is also used in an “I-want-to-sound-informal-but-don’t-want-to-sound-crass-while-mentioning-them” sort of way.
For example, here’s Emily Atack talking about doing nude scenes in Rivals, choosing the word – I think – precisely because it’s an inoffensive term, no?
There’s a wonderful group who knit prosthetic breasts for people who’ve had to undergo mastectomies called https://www.knittedknockers.org/
I don’t find the word offensive in either of these contexts and I’d be surprised if others do.
If the word isn’t in and of itself offensive then I think it comes down to the context in which it’s used and in neither the surface reading – or the cryptic reading – of the clue does it invite any salacious thought. I would have thought it obvious that it was chosen precisely because it summoned up an image of a knock-and-run practical joke which made for an apt surface, no more, no less.
Which brings me to a broader point – when setters use euphemisms for body parts or bodily functions it’s not uncommon for solvers to assume that the setter is somehow snickering up their sleeve like a toddler finding wee and poo funny. And I think it’s sometimes this false assumption of intent that makes some recoil.
I think it’s simpler than that. People’s desire to not mention those subjects in polite society is the reason polite society has created so many euphemistic words and phrases for such things. And euphemisms – innocent words with more than one meaning – are especially helpful in constructing cryptic clues which are essentially innocent sentences with more than one meaning.
For me it’s as simple as that. I don’t think of setting clues as creating things so much as discovering things. It’s like cracking open a rock and finding a fossil. It was always there waiting to be found.
That a fair definition of BOOBY TRAP is PRACTICAL JOKE and that synonyms for PARTY and BOOB can be wrangled into a story describing a well known form of practical joke – which is only the case in both instances with the help of the phrase ‘run the other way’ seems to me to be magical. I enjoyed discovering it and sharing it. At no point did I think, “boob, fnarr, fnarr” and nor did I expect anyone else to.
Of course, you’re entitled to take offence wherever you find it – but I hope those who do might at least accept that it isn’t used blithely with that intention.
Fair enough Fed@62, the story line works very well and your arguments persuade me somewhat. It’s just that ‘knocker’ and ‘boob’ can be seen as irretrievably misogynistic terms carrying negative connotations that can’t be ducked. And this is coming from one who argued strongly against the perceived offence offered by the inclusion of the word ‘faggot’ in a puzzle some time ago – but on that occasion there was no tinge of the offensive interpretation contained in the clue. Fwiw (not a lot) I would offer that your ‘euphemism’ argument just about wins the day.
Alphalpha @63 – well, I clearly disagree that the terms are irretrievably misogynistic. I think they can be used misogynistically but can also be used innocently, as with the examples offered.
It’s conventional that abbreviations not be listed as e.g. (1, 1, 1) to avoid giving it away.
Pleased to find the GK within our scope. Charmed by the clever soybean spread. Also the apt surface linking Fred Astaire and Dancer.
Made it to Friday (we have been skipping weekend puzzles). Very much enjoyed this. As a feminist I was not personally offended by BOOBY TRAP, possibly because I liked the clue too much. Baz got the REINDEER straight away. Left side much harder for us than the right—we went clockwise—though BEDEVIL took a while. BEARD was LOI and got almost accidentally, from crossers; I agree that it derives from Van Dyck portraits (not Van Dyke) but I think the anglicised beard spelling is quite common, and it worked beautifully with lead for Dick. Loved BOOBY TRAP, BOARD GAME, ICEBERG—and groaned when I finally got TEE SHIRT, an excellent clue. Thanks loonapick for explaining the disappearing U in VOYAGE—the answer was obvious but we don’t use U in film classification down under—and to Fed for a very satisfying puzzle.