Very much on the easy side, I thought. Good puzzle from Phi as ever. Solving time, 13 mins.

<  = reversed * = anagram

ACROSS

5 BESIDE ONESELF Double definition, the second slightly cryptic, hence the “?”

8 ARCHIMEDES This refers, I think, to the story that he raced through the streets naked, saying “Eureka”, I’ve found it - the scientific principle named after him. An ancient Greek.

9 OGRE Hidden <

10 BO(H)R(e)

11 NONPAREILS (person in al)*

12 ROLL-ON ROLL-OFF This helped to make this an easy puzzle for me - answer jumped out from definition and enumeration.

15 TANN (HAUS) ER Opera by Wagner. Tanner = an old sixpenny bit (pre-1971)

17 GI T(h)E

18 S (K) IM Sim = computer game using simulation

18 TRAVELOGUE U (capital of Uruguay) in (great love)* & lit.

20 TH(R)E S (HER S) HARK

DOWN

1 E (SCH) ER

2 I (DO MEN) E O By Mozart. Heard of it, but not familiar with it - the surface reading may well relate to the plot.

3 RED SEA(t)

4 ZERO-ZERO   When visibility is so poor that a pilot can see nothing.

6 ORDINARY’S HARES    Charge = ordinary (cannot not quite see this, looked in Collins, which is all I have to hand just now)

7 FORK-LIFT TRUCK     The cryptic part is, I think, describing how such a truck works, rather than wordplay.

13 LAND MARK   Old currency as German marks now replaced by euro.

14 L (ARGent) ESSE(n)

16 A U (’TIS) M

17 G (LOB) AL

Tough-in-places but enjoyable-all-over puzzle from Nestor. Still not sure about 19a and 4d though.

Paul’s salute to the ever-inventive British train companies and their feeble excuses for shoddy service.

Not as difficult as some Paul crosswords can be, especially once you’ve cracked the theme, but very satisfying.

ACROSS

8 LO-NICER-A = had to look it up, I only know plants if they are in road names or recipes. This is the technical term for the Honeysuckle.

11 VOL-UP-TUO-US : “UP” meaning “on drugs” is a bit of a stretch. Could you really be said to be “up” on “downers” ?

12 (ALI G)NS - Respek ! Paul keeping it real and being down with da kids. The reference to the game of Bridge (partners = NS) loses some street credibility though.

14 Omitted on purpose

15 ADDRESS

17 ARTICLE - trad. clue similar to “for example, the sure thing = DEFINITE ARTICLE”

20 L-ONES-O-ME

22 SIGNAL FAILURE - reverse cryptic, referring to the fact that SIGNAL is an anagran of ALIGNS

23 PSY-C-HOL(OG)Y - a compound solution more usually seen in Araucaria.

26 THE WRONG KIND OF SNOW - (WIND KNOWN FOG OTHERS)* - superb !

DOWN

1 SOC(I)AL-LED

3 LEAVES ON THE LINE

5 S-TIPPLER

6 GA(LUMP-HI)NG - awesome word which I will over-use today.

7 ANNUAL - I don’t understand this one

13 GARDEN CITY - (CREATING D(erb)Y)* e.g Welwyn Garden City

16 STOP-OVER - a chinaman is a cricket term for a tricky spin ball, and six of these make an over. First you have POTS in reverse

18 L-EARNING

19 RETORTS - a type of stand used in chemistry (I think)

22 ST-YLER - to “rely” on something is to bank on it

24 KIR-K

Following on from the non-appearance of a post on an Araucaria puzzle this week, we’re going to start using placeholders. This is how it will work:

• Either a full post or a placeholder will appear  by 3.30pm. That’s your cue to start commenting. If a comment is made on another post asking after the whereabouts of either the post or the placeholder it will be deleted.  The same goes for questions/comments about clues for other puzzles.
• If a full post has not appeared by around 7pm-ish, it will be considered fair game for anyone to post a blog of their own - I will edit the placeholder at the time to confirm this. If you’re not on the blogging team then your blog will have to appear as a comment but this has happened a couple of times in the past and it seemed to work ok. All I ask is that if you plan to write something of your own, you let everyone else know in a comment so that we don’t have more than one person writing about the same puzzle.
• This will apply to all puzzles, not just the Guardian.
• That’s it.

We’ll see how it goes and have a rethink if it doesn’t work. I’ll turn this post into a permanent page (like the Bloggers, Setters and FAQ pages) so that it’s always available for people to read.

Can I also just say thanks to muck and Beermagnet for providing a blog to the Araucaria puzzle yesterday.

Neil

What an excellent puzzle, almost ruined by poor proof reading!  Editor please note!!

First the moans: Wrong word length for 1A - to be consistent with the other clues with unchecked blanks it should have seven letters. Wrong clue numbers for 18A (printed 17A), 20A (printed 19A), 19D (printed 18D) and 17D (printed 20D). Finally missing bars in two places: first below the 17 square and, symmetrically, above the square above the 32 square.

All positives from there on! Great stuff from PHI, who figured in several guises in his own puzzle.

The missing letters were quite tricky - but all scrupulously fair - and it was quite easy to spot “What is the ….. ghost”, but I floundered a bit after that due to a number of misconceptions. First that the “central group” in 8D was CREW and it turned out to be CORE, second that the word IF was one of the words in the question and the I turned out to be the last letter of THAI. The wordplay for 1D remained a mystery until I cottoned on to the fact that we were looking at “WHAT IS THE THAI FOR GHOST”, which suddenly made the BANGKOK reference in the title make some sense, and sent me on a search for an extra H in 1D’s wordplay. A google search revealed a Thai festival called “PHI TAM KHON” which was clearly ghost-related, and so the Thai for ghost was PHI, which had appeared earlier in the “unchecked blank squares” (one of which was nearly obscured by the missing bars mentioned above) mentioned in the rubric. The three words revealed using the extra letters were SPECTRE, PHANTOM and SPIRIT, alternative names for ghostly Phi. 

Solving time : Three or four hours on and off!

Below, the blue letters are superfluous and removed from the wordplay. The red indications are the modified rows.