The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29923.
As always, a pleasure to solve from Paul – witty, inventive, quirky and mischievous.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | HOWS THAT |
Bowler, say, after wicket in present appeal (4,4)
|
| A charade of HOWST, an envelope (‘in’) of W (‘wicket’, cricket records) in HOST (‘present’, verb); plus HAT (‘bowler, say’). The clue has an extended definition, again with a cricket reference, although it is more often rendered as something like owzat. | ||
| 6 | ENGAGE |
Time has passed say detaining new recruit (6)
|
| A charade of ENG, an envelope (‘detaining’) of N (‘new’) in E.G. (‘say’); plus AGE (‘time’), with ‘has passed’ suggesting the order of the particles. | ||
| 9 | SCHOOL |
Train left, second half of train first (6)
|
| A charade of S (‘second’) plus ‘half of’ CHOO[-choo] (‘train’) plus L (‘left’). | ||
| 10 |
See 22
|
|
| 11 | HOLD WATER |
Wash, as will washing machine, for example (4,5)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 13 |
See 18
|
|
| 15 | TATTOO |
Exaggerated echoing in flow of universe – superficial design (6)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of TTO, a reversal (‘echoing’) of OTT (over the top, ‘exaggerated’) in TAO (‘flow of universe’). | ||
| 17 | COLONY |
Settlement describing two dots? (6)
|
| A whimsical formation COLON-Y, with : as the ‘two dots’. | ||
| 18, 13 | TOILET BRUSH |
Bowl cleaner line into Brit and he’s out after a review (6,5)
|
| An envelope (‘into’) of L (‘line’) in TOIETBRUSH, an anagram (‘after a review’) of ‘Brit’ plus ‘hes out’. | ||
| 19 | LETS GO |
Extremes of thoughtlessness in builder? Come on! (4,2)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of TS (‘extremes of ThoughtlessnesS‘) in LEGO (‘builder’). | ||
| 21 | UNITE |
Ally with entourage stripped back (5)
|
| [r]ETINU[e] (‘entourage’) minus its outer letters (‘stripped’) and reversed (‘back’). | ||
| 22, 10 | GRUMBLING APPENDIX |
Internal problem – reference having that complaint? (9,8)
|
| Definition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 25 | LITTORAL |
Tortilla cooked beside the water (8)
|
| An anagram (‘cooked’) of ‘tortilla’. | ||
| 26, 29 | WIND-UP MERCHANT |
Infuriating type, retailer of clockwork mechanisms? (4-2,8)
|
| Definition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 28 | IGNORE |
Blank page released from grip, one that’s tight (6)
|
| An anagram (‘that’s tight’) of ‘gri[p] one’ minus the P (‘page released’). | ||
| 29 |
See 26
|
|
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | ORC |
Light-skinned monster (3)
|
| A subtraction: [t]ORC[h] (‘light’-) minus its outer letters (-‘skinned’). | ||
| 3 | SWORD |
Steel, silver, silicon or scandium, say? (5)
|
| S-WORD (Silver, Silicon or Scandium, say’). | ||
| 4 | HALF A DOZEN |
Six eggs I eye, loosely speaking, would be twice that? (4,1,5)
|
| ‘Eggs I eye’ sounds somewhat like (‘loosely speaking’) XII (Roman numeral, 12). | ||
| 5 | THAMES |
Trains including first from Hillingdon that runs through London (6)
|
| An envelope (‘including’) of H (‘first from Hillingdon’) in TAMES (‘trains’). | ||
| 6 | EXPO |
Fair seductress disrobed (4)
|
| A subtraction: [s]EXPO[t] (‘seductress’) minus the outer letters |
||
| 7 | GINORMOUS |
Huge trapper or trappee detailed? (9)
|
| A charade of GIN (‘trapper’ – trap) plus ‘or’ plus MOUS[e] (‘trappee’) minus its last letter (‘detailed’). | ||
| 8 | GRIMSBY TOWN |
Gloomy street crossing near particular football club (7,4)
|
| A charade of GRIM (‘gloomy’); plus SBYT, an envelope (‘crossing’) of BY (‘near’) in ST (‘street’); plus OWN (‘particular’). GRIMSBY TOWN FC is not exactly Premier League; its major success seems to have been to reach the FA Cup semifinals twice (in the 1930s; actually, they have had more recent achievements) | ||
| 12 | OUTSTANDING |
Sovereign to be paid (11)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 14 | HOVER MOWER |
Five torpedoes where room built for blade-on-blade machine (5,5)
|
| An envelope (‘torpedoes’) of V (Roman numeral, ‘five’) in HOERMOWER, an anagram (‘built’) of ‘where room’, with a cryptic definition in which the first ‘blade’ is a cutter, and the second, grass. | ||
| 16 | THIRTY-TWO |
Every man on board has to try with all at sea (6-3)
|
| An anagram (‘all at sea’) of ‘to try with’; the ‘board’ in the definition being a chess board. | ||
| 20 | PRELIM |
Trial where runner climbs towards peak in Peru (6)
|
| A charade of P (‘peak n Peru’) plus RELIM, a reversal (‘climbs’ in a down light) of MILER (‘runner’), with ‘towards’ suggesting the order of the particles. | ||
| 23 |
See 24
|
|
| 24, 23 | FREE LUNCH |
Article in Spanish university in another language that supposedly doesn’t exist! (4,5)
|
| An envelope (‘in’ – the second one) of EL (‘article in Spanish’) plus U (‘university’) in FRENCH (‘another language’). | ||
| 27 | URN |
In audition, make pot (3)
|
| Sounds like (‘in audition’) EARN (‘make’). |
Liked the cryptic defs. Liked HALF A DOZEN even more.
Thanks Paul and PeterO.
We did not think we had any hope of getting this out. One of the hardest we have done. We didn’t get “eggs I eye” so couldn’t parse 4d, but otherwise managed to work everything out after insane intuitive leaps and eye-rolling from Baz. Liked COLONY (and HALF A DOZEN once explained!), HOLD WATER, GRIMSBY TOWN, WIND-UP MERCHANT. Thanks (I think) to Paul for a strenuous Friday evening workout, and to PeterO.
Lurked here for fifteen years. So, it must be time to post a comment.
We found this very gentle for a Paul. Favourites were 26/29a and 22/10a. It took far too long for the penny to drop for 6d.
Thanks to Paul and for PeterO.
An excellent puzzle, requiring some lateral thinking (especially for COLONY and HALF A DOZEN). Paul consistently sets puzzles which bring a smile (or at least a wry grin) to my face.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
HALF A DOZEN was my first one in but with no clue as to the parsing, until I arrived here. Likewise GINORMOUS which I filled in soon after – I really don’t know the references (including ‘detailed’).
As for the rest, this was one of those Paul puzzles that come along from time to time, that I could just about deal with. One reveal short of finishing, and a bit of help from Word Wizard for a handful along the way, but navigable and not without enjoyment.
Good fun. Love Paul, he’s a real 26/29.
Thanks both.
I thought this was challenging but not as dastardly as Paul can be. Not heard the phrase GRUMBLING APPENDIX and an incorrect EVEN for EXPO was blocking the correct answer. Once the P was in though it just had to be.
Enjoyed THIRTY-TWO and SCHOOL
As the blogger says I have never seen HOWS THAT spelt as perhaps the dictionary intended.
A Paul loosely speaking clue is also quite the scare. I never did parse it.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
This was such a treat from start to finish, sparkling with witty clues and clever devices. So many likes but I thought HALF A DOZEN was brilliant. At first, I was trying to make ‘I eye’ equal HALF A DOZE, as in half asleep, but it didn’t really make sense. GRUMBLING APPENDIX, COLONY, PRELIM and TOILET BRUSH were excellent also. GRIMSBY TOWN might be a bit obscure for solvers across the seas, but the wordplay was fair.
Ta Paul & PeterO.
I must confess I’ve never heard it called a grumbling appendix before; learning is good.
I do not like howzat spelt hows that.
Brilliant puzzle by Paul, but indifferent solving by me. As a Manchester United supporter, I have been trying to erase Grimsby Town from my memory, apparently with som success.
Bm@9 I’m inclined to agree about howzat but it does provide this classic ear worm from Sherbet – possibly the best cricket-themed song of all time
Got off to a flyer with this but soon crash landed. Top ticks for COLONY, 32 and HOLD WATER
Cheers P&P
I have a hard time with “sovereign” as a definition for “outstanding”; they hardly overlap in my opinion. But I solved it anyway.
Struggled with the S-word for a long time, but didn’t utter the F-word.
YM@12 I wondered about sovereign too but Chambers has: adj. “Supreme, Excelling all others” which seems close enough?
Another Man U supporter who could have done without reminding … but congratulations PeterO – not sure I would have been able to parse a good half of these!
I guess I must have missed the message, but I have just discovered that on my laptop I can tab backwards and forwards through the clues like we used to be able to do by using the square brackets “[” and “]”!! What a relief, for me anyway.
A relatively gentle Paul I thought, but as ever great fun to come here for PeterO’s blog and the comments. Thanks to both P and P.
@PeterO: In your explanation of 6d ‘seductress’ is misspelled, and you should have ‘disrobed’ rather than ‘stripped’.
Another gem from Paul
By chance I’m currently writing a history of Grimsby Town in the period they reached those semi finals. I’ll send a copy to the United fan when its done. Thought of Town the moment I saw the clue with letters but only looked at it seriously when I had two crossers
Great crossword from Paul with some witty clues, and more anagrams than usual for him. Thanks to PeterO for the blog as I had a couple, like 20d, that I couldn’t parse.
More approachable than some of Paul’s output and enjoyable. I liked the cricket stories for HOWS THAT (it’s in Chambers, the ODE and Collins) and TOILET BRUSH, the WIND-UP MERCHANT with clocks, HALF A DOZEN (although I didn’t see the pun for 12), THIRTY-TWO men on board, and ‘there’s no such thing as a FREE LUNCH.’
Thanks Paul and PeterO.
Thanks Paul, as always, for a Friday-friendly puzzle and Peter O for my usual missed parses – SWORD (groan) and HALF A DOZEN – too Paul for me!
Thanks again for this blog – such a joy when I found it and was able to resolve the frustration of my frequent missed parses!!
You have to be slightly drunk to believe eggs sounds like ex
That was great fun. A surprising lack of scatology for Paul, but some of his trademark lateral wit, I really enjoyed eggs I eye and colony, but the whole thing was great fun.
Bodycheetah@11, can I offer this as my favourite cricket themed song? https://youtu.be/vy-WU7RPxEw?si=RbXBjGkg7TlQhJyN
I smiled at XII and COLONY. And I filled the grid, which is not something I always achieve with Paul.
However, as always with Paul, I remain baffled by several even with the help of PeterO’s blog. NHO gin for trap, so that was a fill-and-shrug. I still don’t see how OUTSTANDING means sovereign, although I’m sure it’s in Chambers (which, as I have said before, I consider a necessary but not sufficient condition).
I am unfamiliar with ‘that’s tight’ as an anagram indicator. Perhaps one of our more experienced solvers can enlighten me?
Agree with YesMe2@12 that I wouldn’t really consider sovereign and outstanding to be synonyms. Also, maybe it’s just that I’m unfamiliar with the usage, but is ‘echoing’ usually understood as a reversal indicator? Doesn’t seem very intuitive to me, echoes are normally repetitions of things that are said, not reversals.
Otherwise, agree with others above that this was a relatively approachable (and therefore more enjoyable, for me) Paul grid. Lots of great (and groanworthy) clues here, even though I had to reveal a few, and I was able to parse most of them before coming here.
Finished it! A rare Paul solve.
Several eye brow raises along the way – I agree with Ed@22, for example, and tight as an anagram indicator. But also many a smile – COLONY, WIND-UP MERCHANT, and more.
Ingenious, and nowhere near as tough as Paul can be, thank goodness – I enjoyed the choo-choo train, the COLON-Y settlement, the S-word and the WIND UP MERCHANT, the trapper and the trappee and the THIRTY TWO men on the board. But there were too many where the answer was fairly obvious to me but the parsing wasn’t: HOVER MOWER, TOILET BRUSH and HALF A DOZEN – and of course GRIMSBY TOWN: not the first town club to come to mind…
But not a joyless slog, so thanks, Paul, and PeterO for sorting out the tangles.
Sen@25, yes echos bounce back to you…. They also repeat. This is one of the many aspects of cryptic crosswords that I love: you have to keep hold of all possible interpretations all of the time.
A very slow start for us, but gradually picked up speed. Enjoyed the detailed trappee in Ginormous and wish I’d spotted the eggcellent wordplay in Half a Dozen
Thank you Paul and PeterO
Ace@24, tight in this context is slightly dated slang for drunk.
Thanks GT@28, that explains it – hadn’t thought about it in that way!
Miles above my level, though I did get 4d, which I would not have parsed in a million years.
Thanks both.
Somewhere in my deepest memory is an alphabet that begins A for ‘Orses and ends X for Breakfast, Y for God’s sake and Z for Elli. I’ll get my coat.
Thanks PeterO. Bit of a different take on 22/10: GRUMBLING (internal problem, as in workplace discontent) + APPENDIX (reference, e.g. at the end of a book); “having that” (with that in place) we arrive at the definition: “complaint”. Kudos to Paul, my favorite setter.
Phew! Made it! I started on this last night, but got no more than scant half-dozen in before grinding to a halt. More in tune this morning and got most of the rest over breakfast, and finished it after a (Grand)dad’s taxi run up to Birmingham & back (trains out of Oxford being, how can I put it politely, F—ed).
Despite, or maybe because of, the length of solving, I found it very rewarding, with external recourse only to the back cover of Private Eye for working out some of the anagrams.
As I’m a materials scientist, the clue for 3D threw a lot of dust in my eyes, and so SWORD was nearly my LOI, the final penny-drop aided by all the crossers.
I especially liked the (self-referential?) WIND-UP MERCHANT, the charade that made up GRIMSBY TOWN (not being in any way a football follower, whether Grimsby had a team or not, or what if so if was called, was unknown to me) , and THIRTY-TWO (I guessed early on it must be something to do with chess, but still took some puzzling out). Ticks also for LETS GO, COLONY, HALF DOZEN and GINORMOUS.
Good stuff, Paul – thank you! – and also PeterO for the excellent blog.
Coloradan@33: that was also my take on GRUMBLING APPENDIX.
XII reminded me of the Two Ronnies sketch where Barker asks “FUNEX?” Great puzzle. Thanks to Paul and PeterO
A sovereign puzzle! So much fun and invention.
DNF, sadly, as I failed to see the HOLD that went with WATER. I knew it couldn’t be POND
EmPee@32: P for penny, I seem to remember. Those were the days.
With appendix, colon(y), wind (-up), toilet and possibly water, is there a digestive tract theme here?
Thanks Peter and Paul.
EmPee@32/DP@37 A for orses B for mutton C for yourself ….. P for comfort Q for a pee/a pint…..
Was pleasantly surprised to walk through this in under an hour.
First word of 14 held me up before crossers because a Hover mower does not cut the grass with a blade on a blade. A rotary mower does.
Mind you I now realise it wasn’t the mechanism Paul was alluding to, but the machine and a blade of grass.
Stupid old me.
Very enjoyable grid. Ty Paul.
Great fun from our favourite setter and we found this a bit easier than usual. Favourites SCHOOL, WIND-UP MERCHANT, FREE LUNCH, SWORD and our COTD is COLONY.
17A definitely UED-worthy. Maybe that would be a good theme for a setter. Forget Chambers or Collins, base the whole puzzle on Uxbridge.
TANSTAAFL stands for “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” apparently a commonplace in the 20’s to say that apparently free things have a hidden cost — it was common for speakeasies to offer very salty free food, which would make patrons thirstier. I met the acronym in Robert Heinlein’s novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. (I had to google the acronym to be reminded where I’d read it.)
Never heard of a hover mower.
Blank = ignore?
Grimsby Town is a familiar phrase to me for reasons having nothing to do with sports. The fishing town of Grimsby. as well as others along the same coast. lost many men and many boats in the terrible storm of February 1889. A local fisherman wrote the broadside ballad “Threescore and Ten” to commemorate them, and sold copies to raise money for the fishermen’s families. The chorus goes’
Threescore and ten boys and men were lost from Grimsby town
From Yarmouth down to Scarborough many hundreds more were drowned.
Our herring craft, our trawlers, our fishing smacks as well
They long did fight that bitter night their battle with the swell.
Do google the song, it’s a good ‘un.
I thought at first that the football club would be “something City,” since that’s what I’ve encountered up to now.
I’m familiar with FUNEX/ When I saw X on a friend’s grocery list I knew just what it was and have used it ever since.
Thanks to Paul and PeterO.
Lightly beaten up over dinner – very enjoyable. Chapeau to PeterO for various parsings. I will not be applying for the blogging job.
I really enjoyed working out GRIMSBY TOWN. Has Paul a connection therewith – seems a strange one to conjure from mid-air?
HOW’S THAT reminded me of the old joke about a chap presenting to the doctor with a cricket ball lodged in his fundament. The doctor didn”t understand what he was saying. “How’s that?” said she. “Don’t you start…”
Odd isn’t it? Most of you found this easier or on the gentler end of the spectrum for a Paul, while I gave up with eggs I eye clues unsolved. (But I did get that one.)
Nevertheless I enjoyed the attempt, and especially enjoyed the witty wordplay throughout, after PeterO deftly explained the ones I couldn’t see.
Favourites were the aforementioned 4d HALF A DOZEN and 24/23 FREE LUNCH.
Thanks P&P for the pleasing puzzle and blog.
scraggs@5, your puzzlement over use of the word ‘detailed’ is understandable. So here’s an explanation. Read ‘detailed’ as de tailed, meaning tail (last) letter removed. Hence tail letter of mouse ‘e’ is removed to give mous. Hope that helps.
Istan@46 It does – many thanks. It can be frustrating when the actual parsing leaves you no wiser.
A relative newcomer to cryptics, having toyed with them over many years, but now a regular on the Guardian as a daily challenge. I love the wordplay, wit, unravelling, and that great feeling when I feel I’m “in the groove” or “on the same page” as the setter. 225 is a great resource to unravel when I’ve got the answer right, but not fully grasped the parsing.
However, after a challenging Paul today that had me resorting to more checks and reveals than I would like, I found PeterO’s parsing a bit sparse. But perhaps I need to learn the parsing conventions geared to more experienced solvers!
Nonetheless, I persevere in enjoyment.