Guardian 24091/Paul – one’s or your?

Solving time: 35’

Lots of wondrous wordplay to admire here – and some to wonder about. Sometimes numbers in clues really are numbers – and not other clues. The editing isn’t The Guardian’s best to say the least. I won’t bother pointing out the mistakes.

Across

5	BUS STOP – rev(pots=pockets, sub=reserve). “Pockets” as in snooker and a cryptic def for where one finds lots of “waiters”.
9	TIMES – rev(Semit[e]). See also 19A.
11	N,EARTH,IN,G – it was a NEAR THING but I managed to restrain myself from looking up the capital of Greenland.
15	A,FORE,SAID – it’s how you pronounce the number 4! So wordplay in the answer. Like some of you I’m sure, I spent a bit of time wondering how to involve 4D (KNOW-IT-ALL).
18	MAN,DRILLS – just so we don’t forget who we’re descended from.
19	TORAH – rev(har[l]ot). A touch of indirection: “Student dismissed” indicates “L removal”.
21	ULTRA –alternate letters of “oUtLeT gReAt”.
25	HANDLE=”Handel”,BAR –great wordplay (with a somewhat forced surface). “Some music”=BAR and ref. Eddy (or his son Axel) Merckx, the Belgian Tour de France cyclist (I used to ride a lot so I know a lot more cycling trivia than cricket).
26	GHANA – hidden in “thouGH A NAvy”. Another clever clue: it’s a “land” and it’s “locked” inside the fodder. Unfortunately GHANA isn’t itself landlocked which would have been nice.
27	SPA(N[o]NE)R – Brit wrench.

Down

1	PUT ONE’S MONEY WHERE ONE’S MOUTH IS – I got this quite quickly once I had M?N?? for the 3rd word. Double/cryptic def (ref. bread as slang for MONEY). The perennial issue I have with these is whether it’s YOUR or ONE’S – typically we use YOUR in everyday speech but my non-scientific conclusion is that in crypticland ONE’S is more common: probably since it has more useful letters.
3	ON,SET – ref. ON and off sides in cricket. I think that “all padded up” for SET is just a way to make the surface more consistent.
4	KNO(WIT,A)LL – I’m pretty sure that “Having not much of an inclination” is a cryptic def for KNOLL.
6	STORMIEST – (sort items)* — “foul” as in weather.
7	TUR(I)N – I actually got this from 14D referring to “7 shroud”. And “break wind” isn’t what you think.
8	PI(E-EYE)D – clued quite differently in a recent Times: it’s Eey[or]e=donkey in rev(DIP), where “or not” indicates removal.
14	TA[u]R(PAUL)IN – “Shroud” is used to indicate containment of PAUL, our saint – and the 2nd letter of Turin (7D) needs to change – doesn’t say to what but…
16	OBSTETRIC – (r, I bet cost)*. def is “of delivery”.
17	A,[b]I(R-INTA)KE – some more complex wordplay: being train* in [b]IKE (“another vehicle losing its first”)
20	HUSBAND – genius double def clue: “Save Man United!”: where “Man United” is a great way to cryptically define a HUSBAND and ref. sale of Manchester United to, gasp, Americans.
23	WEBER[n] – Not sure about this but seems there are composers WEBER and WEBERN so…
24	EGG,ON – enumerated as (5) but really should be (3,2). Ref. it takes 3 minutes to make a soft-boiled egg (and, according to legend, solve The Times cryptic!).

7 comments on “Guardian 24091/Paul – one’s or your?”

Blimey. You did so much better than me on this one.
Thanks for several which I did not get (e.g. 15A “a 4 said” and 17D) and others where I could not see the wordplay (e.g. “pie-eyed”), but I find myself stuck on 22D:
“A six-footer standing in skimpy attire” (5)
I slapped in Tanga (rev. a gnat) confident that when I got back from the pub I’d look it up and find it is a thong-like thing, but it isn’t. Anyone?

You’re right re.Tanga. It’s in Chambers as ‘a brief string-like bikini’.

Thanks Kevin. I must get a decent dictionary here at work. The one I looked at had tanga as a former coin of Portuguese India, equal to the 10th part of a rupee – that would make very skimpy attire.