Paul is in fine form on rather a tough solve, I thought.
I hope that I have managed to explain everything adequately.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PREDAWN |
Early man planting tomato, cherry or chestnut (7)
|
| RED (tomato, cherry or chestnut) inside (planting) PAWN (man) | ||
| 5 | GORILLA |
Pass small runner, a thug (7)
|
| GO (pass) + RILL (small runner) + A | ||
| 10 | TUTU |
Old archbishop in tie, reportedly? (4)
|
| Homophone of (reportedly) TWO-TWO (tie, as a score), referring to Desmond Tutu | ||
| 11 | GOODFELLOW |
Puck, wicked soul (10)
|
| GOOD (wicked) + FELLOW (soul) | ||
| 12 |
See 29
|
|
| 13 | HEREUPON |
Hydrogen pure, one gathered, as of now (8)
|
| H (hydrogen) + anagram of (gathered) {PURE ONE} | ||
| 14 | TEA FOR TWO |
Wrote to couple in cafe needing a brew – their request? (3,3,3)
|
| Anagram of (needing a brew) {WROTE TO + interior pair of letters of (couple in) [C]AF[E]}, “their” referring to the aforementioned couple | ||
| 16 | JOLLY |
Really cheerful (5)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 17 | SPACE |
Void, step beyond limit of consciousness (5)
|
| Last letter of (limit of) [CONSCIOUSNES]S + PACE (step), with “beyond” indicating the order of the wordplay | ||
| 19 | SOUR CREAM |
Guardian readers’ piercing cry, food dropped on jacket? (4,5)
|
| OUR (Guardian readers’) inside (piercing) SCREAM (cry), referring to a topping for a jacket potato | ||
| 23 | PINOCHLE |
Help! Coin lost in card game (8)
|
| Anagram of (lost) HELP COIN | ||
| 24 | LARDER |
Cool place for a cocktail if after 23, reportedly? (6)
|
| If we place this solution after the solution to 23[A], we have “PINOCHLE LARDER,” which is a homophone of (reportedly) PINA COLADA (cocktail) | ||
| 26 | STRIKE ZONE |
Area for swingers in action, number observed after opening of zip (6,4)
|
| STRIKE ([e.g., industrial] action) + first letter of (opening of) Z[IP] + ONE (number), with “observed after” indicating the order of the wordplay, referring to batters in baseball | ||
| 27 | GRIT |
Steel crushed stones (4)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 28 | FREEZER |
Cool place for a song if before 16 11, reportedly? (7)
|
| If we place this solution before the solutions to 16[A] and 11[A], we have “FREEZER JOLLY GOODFELLOW,” which is a homophone of (reportedly) FOR HE’S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW (a song) | ||
| 29, 12 | LET THAT SINK IN |
Really think on it, and open the door to a new basin? (3,4,4,2)
|
| Double/cryptic definition, the latter being a command that a plumber might utter during a home renovation, for example | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | ROUTINE |
Boring, boring affair out in Europe (7)
|
| Hidden in (boring) [AFFAI]R OUT IN E[UROPE] | ||
| 3 | DRUNK |
Lush dip crossing river (5)
|
| DUNK (dip) around (crossing) R (river) | ||
| 4 | WAGONER |
Romantic broken by love for driver (7)
|
| [Richard] WAGNER (Romantic) around (broken by) O (love) | ||
| 6 | OXFORD |
Eight, third of those with two crosses? (6)
|
| Third [letter] of [TH]O[SE] + {X + FORD} (two crosses), referring I assume to one of the university rowing teams | ||
| 7 | ILL-HUMOUR |
Bile in funny jokes? (3-6)
|
| ILL (funny) + HUMOUR (jokes) | ||
| 8 | LOO ROLL |
Jumper turned up in lounge, sheets in lavatory (3,4)
|
| ROO (jumper) inverted (turned up) inside (in) LOLL (lounge) | ||
| 9 | GO THE WHOLE HOG |
Fully commit, having found form before opening corner (2,3,5,3)
|
| GOT (found) + HEW (form) + HOLE (opening) + HOG (corner, as in “corner the market”) | ||
| 15 | FACTORISE |
Upset I forecast, list those contributing to result (9)
|
| Anagram of (upset) I FORECAST, referring presumably to arithmetic, the factors of a number being a list of all the numbers which divide into the original number without a remainder | ||
| 18 | PAINTER |
Bacon, say, a plant-based protein, initially (7)
|
| First letter of (initially) P[ROTEIN] + A + INTER (plant, i.e., bury), referring to Francis Bacon, with “based” indicating the order of the wordplay, i.e., “provided the base for” | ||
| 20 | RELIEVE |
Cover for ever, unfortunately having buried high priest (7)
|
| Anagram of (unfortunately) EVER around (having buried) ELI (high priest, in the First Book of Samuel) | ||
| 21 | AMERICA |
Setter in a state over ‘mouth’ in Cockney, a North and South, perhaps? (7)
|
| I think this parses as: ME (setter) inside (in) {A + RI (state, i.e., Rhode Island)} + first letter of (“mouth” in) C[OCKNEY] + A, referring to the continents | ||
| 22 | WHEEZE |
Clever scheme taking more than one minute, we hear? (6)
|
| If WEE is minute (stress on the second syllable, meaning “small”), then a homophone of (reportedly) this solution is WEES (more than one minute, i.e., plural) | ||
| 25 | RIGHT |
Blue in the pink (5)
|
| Double definition, the first referring to the Conservative Party |
This was Paul at his very best with tricky, funny and ingenious clues showing a wonderfully wide and inventive vocabulary with GOODFELLOW, GRIT, JOLLY, RIGHT, DRUNK and GO THE WHOLE HOG.
Our foi was HEREUPON, but we had to return to parse five clues including the tortuous
construction of our loi AMERICA and hope that we have correctly explained 29/12 and 19! However are favourites have to be the triplet of homophones PINA COLADA, WHEEZE and FREEZER.
Hats off to P and thanks to C for confirmation
PAINTER and the SE corner defeated me. Got nowhere near solving “Blue in the pink”. Kept trying at bedtime. I enjoyed many of those I solved: not least OXFORD and TUTU.
The minute in clueing WHEEZE is pronounced “my-newt”. Ah. Cineraria has covered that.
Many thanks, Paul and Cineraria
Typically I’m not a big fan of Paul’s homophones, but Freezer Jolly Goodfellow did make me chuckle. Not so sure about Wheeze. Felt a bit meh.
Took me until yesterday morning to finish this. It was a cracker. Thanks Paul.
And Cineraria for the blog.
This took a number of sessions, but the humour overcame the trickiness (imo). I particularly liked FREEZER, which I’m guessing is the marmitiest of clues today, along with WHEEZE and LARDER.
Anyone notice the short staircase of Z’s at the bottom?
Jolly good fun all round.
I got GO THE WHOLE HOG from the enumeration and immediately mentally tokenized it as GOT HEW HOLE HOG as was clearly going to be required, feeling quite pleased with myself. And yet I still couldn’t immediately parse it, and so it and I remained engaged in a frowning standoff until some checkers arrived and forced me to do the thinking. That set the scene for the puzzle as a whole, with lots of enjoyable unexpected meanings to work through and great humour to boot.
Getting GOODFELLOW via FREEZER made me lol, but not as much as did – by then in on the joke – the groanworthy PINOCHLE LARDER.
Cleverest was probably AMERICA (north and south being rhyming slang for mouth of course), most typically Pauline were LET THAT SINK IN, SOUR CREAM and STRIKE ZONE, and loi was PREDAWN which in fact was a technical dnf as I assumed it was ED in PRAWN! Well they’re sort of red. Or brown. Oh well.
Tx to Paul for the laughs and to Cineraria for the detailed blog.
Thanks Cineraria. Back to the mind bending stuff after last week’s more gentle offering. Never did quite come to terms with PAINTER or AMERICA so thanks for the explanations. I wondered about the inclusion of ‘new’ in 29/12, it didn’t seem to be necessary but did successfully sidetrack me into looking for anagrams.
Dr. WhatsOn@5, I didn’t. But I did notice it was a pangram. Right up until there was no remaining space for a QU. Or as it turned out, a B.
My picks: TUTU, TEA FOR TWO, The PINA COLADA clues, FREEZER, LET THAT SINK IN,
GO THE WHOLE HOG, PAINTER and AMERICA.
Thanks Paul and Cineraria.
TEA FOR TWO was first in. I had COMBAT ZONE pencilled in for a while having dropped thoughts of golf – action for [war] combat and swingers as in punchers. (I think) WAGONERS and OXFORD were my last ones in. I didn’t realise WAGNER was romantic. In retrospect I should have been much quicker, but I finished in the early afternoon.
FREEZER JOLLY GOOD FELLOW and PINOCHLE LARDER are priceless if you have a sense if humour (and no that’s not how anyone says them, derp!). Plenty of other likes including the longer phrases.
Thanks Paul and Cineraria.
A tough one that I had to keep coming back to over the week. My last one in was LARDER, which I finally wrote in unparsed but sure it had to be right, then I sat back and thought about it and let out a huge appreciative groan. It didn’t help that I’d been trying to make the clue something to do with ‘pinnacle’. It also hadn’t helped that I’d managed to imagine some minor boat race theme, with OXFORD, PAINTER, SINKIN’ . PREDAWN (practice?) and so had thought the ‘blue’ in 25d was ‘light’ and had that tentatively pencilled in almost to the end. Great fun, though, mainly from the excruciating ‘dad’ jokes in FREEZER, TUTU and of course PINOCHLE-LARDER (although I didn’t really see how WHEEZE worked). And some clever non-homophone clues too, so thanks to Paul and to Cineraria.
Being a Paul crossword, I went down the route of thinking WHEEZE as a homophone for urination and went down a rabbit hole of searching for idioms such as spending a penny which may have something to do with time – back in a mo? I’ll be a minute? But to no avail. Thanks Cineraria and Choldunk for clearing it up!
Two-thirds complete, and then it was unyielding. A surprising number of errors didn’t help. Tough puzzle. Tough week
Loved 29/12 — “Open the door, and LET THAT SINK IN!”
Thanks Cineraria for untangling some tricky parsing
Yep, pinochle larder is one of Paul’s best ever groaners, thx to him and Cinners.
Thanks for the blog , GO THE WHOLE HOG was neat with unusual but valid synonyms , good use of inter for PAINTER .
PINOCHLE an unusual game with double reduced decks . Turns up in The Godfather film , Clemenza has his men let a rival hood win to keep him happy .
FREEZER JOLLY GOOD FELLOW has been done before , 16/11/2011 , it was a Wednesday . A while ago but not something you forget .
A hard one, took me half the week, and I am impressed to find I had it all right. Could not parse RIGHT, WHEEZE, or GO THE WHOLE HOG, though the last was clearly right, so thanks, Cineraria, for your blog.
DrW@5 and AP@8, I did notice the ZZZ, and expected a pangram, so wasted some effort looking for a B and Q. Is Paul making a comment about the B&Q chain of stores?
24 and particularly 28 were amusing, so my thanks to Paul. But I am doubtful about ‘eight’ as a definition for OXFORD – I agree it must refer to rowing.
I took 21d to be ME in AR(kansas) I(n) C(ockney) A, with ‘ mouth’ referring to two words, but the RI parsing looks better.
Tx for the parsing of WHEEZE. I had convinced myself it was meant to sound like ‘weeks’ but of course that’s wrong.
Loved the two cool places, which together with SINK can follow ‘kitchen’ (a mini theme?).
Thanks to Paul and Cineraria.
Took me the whole week nearly but I got there, though couldn’t parse a few including America and had to look up Pinochle. A good battle, which is what you want from a Saturday prize. Thanks Paul and Cineraria.
Really tough but fun. Having lots of time I persevered and completed it, and then parsed it all as well (as confirmed by the blog).
I never knew goodfellow and puck are similar in meaning but nothing else would fit. Thought 25d a bit weak, and couldn’t quite make WHEEZE work (still don’t like the clue).
Loi FREEZER. I finally twigged what the pinochle larder was and that gave me freezer jolly goodfellow. Both brilliant clues and my stand-out favourites.
Thanks Paul and Cineraria
Thanks Paul and Cineraria
I enjoyed this more than usual, with Paul, even the groans!
PhilB @20
Puck in mythology and Midsummers Night’s Dream is actually called Robin Goodfellow.
Muffin@21. Thanks. My lack of Shakespeare and general knowledge exposed.
Jolly good fun.
I haven’t got round to doing the crossword for weeks but picked this up yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it, with a bit of help from my son who supplied the Archbishop that was holding me up.
Paul in top form again, and a sheer joy from start to finish. Barely a dud clue in there, but particular mentions for the groanworthy puns, the precise parsing of GO THE WHOLE HOG, the tricky AMERICA (with ‘north and south’ of course being cockney rhyming slang for mouth) and the cunning misdirection of the two very different meanings of ‘minute’ in WHEEZE.
Just rather surprised that the homophone police haven’t yet been on to complain about it!
A puzzle that shows the value of perseverance. I was on the point of giving up a few times, but then I would have missed the jokes. Great stuff.
I would like to give praise to ROUTINE as one of the most subtle and well hidden clues I’ve come across.
Very hard but enjoyable. I completely screwed up the top left corner by solving 10ac as MORE – homophone of Moor as in tie up. Then decided 2dn was ANODINE alternative spelling of anodyne which sort of works if you accept a nod as a boring affair. Then 1ac as BARROWS – early mans earthworks which of course makes 3 dn unsolvable. First time I can remember getting 3 plausible but wrong answers and all fitting together.
Dr. WhatsOn@5 I also noticed the ZZZ. Sometimes used to indicate sleep or imminent sleep due to boredom. Was this a wry comment on those who find his “loo” “humour” (nearly aligned) a bit tedious?
Thanks to S&B.
Speakers of Spanish would of course know that the cocktail should be pronounced pinya colada (piña colada – ‘strained pineapple’) which does spoil the homophone slightly.
Strange that references to cricket, part of our national life for centuries, can attract such opprobrium, while jargon associated with the American version of rounders passes without comment. 🙂
I struggled with this one but all fair in retrospect except, for me, pinochle larder. I’m usually broad minded on homophones, including the others here, but there’s no way can I make that sound like pina colada.
A Prize that was a sheer joy, containing all of the ingredients that make Paul one of my favourite setters. Loved all of the puns, and the ingenuity and humour of the clues for AMERICA, TEA FOR TWO., STRIKE ZONE and many others. A special tick for SOUR CREAM. I couldn’t get the image of food on a jacket being about anything other than my own typical carelessness with book covers. Missed out on GORILLA, OXFORD,, GRIT and RIGHT, as well as too many parsings, for which thanks to Cineria, and, as ever, to Paul.
Pina Colada
The C Major and The C Minor both give ˈpiːnə kəˈlɑːdə as an alternative pronunciation.
Cool enough for our purposes, I feel.
I enjoyed this but struggled to put the final two in. I didn’t see ‘plant’=INTER in 18d, though the answer was clear enough from definition and crossers. But I was totally misled by 22d having the correct crossers for CHEESE, with that word being a near anagram of ‘scheme’! Obviously I couldn’t get it to work, but I also couldn’t get it out of my mind. In my defence, the suggestion of plural minutes when ‘minute’=WEE is intended is one of the most deceptive things I’ve ever seen in a crossword. I also have a bit of a blind spot for W when it comes to combining letters with a following H – I get stuck on S, T, C and P and don’t look any further. (Need to do something about that.)
Hugely enjoyed the lengthy puns, with PINOCHLE LARDER being an absolute gem. I bet Paul is having a chuckle at every comment on here saying it doesn’t sound like pina colada.
Thanks to Paul for the fun and to Cineraria for the excellent blog.
Worth the entrance fee just for PINOCHLE LARDER and FREEZER JOLLY GOOD FELLOW.
(Both being a defiant Up-Yours to those who go on and on about wordplay and puns not sounding “correct” to them…)
Honourable Mentions to WHEEZE and RIGHT – with ROUTINE winning the Best Camouflage prize.
(At university, we used to say “getting a Desmond” for those with a 2.2 degree. I suppose that one’s dying out now, if it hasn’t already done so.…)
Thanks to Paul and to Cineraria
I can forgive the FREEZER… ‘homophone’, but PINOCHLE LARDER for “piña colada” is too much for me, even by Paul’s standards. In my ear they sound substantially different. I did enjoy the rest of it though.
For some reason Mrs P. and I got completely stuck on 19A which was our last one in.
In utter frustration I decided to pitch Gemini against ChatGPT to see if either could do any better than us.
Gemini won. Although its first attempt was LENTIL SOUP which doesn’t even fit the letter split. ChatGPT offered up BLUE PLATE which apart from the right split is totally nonsensical; it added some hogwash about how Guardian readers drop food on blue plates.
But when I posted in the crossers, Gemini got the right (and suddenly obvious to us) answer – and correctly explained how it worked. ChatGPT declined to venture a solution, basically said it couldn’t find anything suitable that matched.
Anyway, it was an interesting (to me) experiment.
This one took us every lunchtime until yesterday as our two brains steadily ground through. Suggesting possible answers to one another until, in retrospect the ghastly puns and obscure definitions (Oxford=eight? In the pink = right?) let us put things in with a shrug. Didn’t bung it in, but we both occupied too much time trying to make Fridge be the other cool place for 24.
Thanks Paul – a pleasure to finish, amusing in retrospect but a real challenge. Thank you Cineraria.
Zoot#30
Yes and we’re expected to know the 50 abbreviations for the individual USA @ 21d. Couldn’t parse that one though only briefly distracted by “North and South” being Cockney rhyming slang for “mouth”. Not too keen on “eight” as a definition for OXFORD or “blue” and “in the pink” for RIGHT.
That said, lots to enjoy as usual with Paul. Thanks to him and Cineraria.
Wellbeck @35: funnily enough I mentioned a Desmond to my wife yesterday, when we received a magazine from QUB (where we met) for worldwide graduates. I also enjoyed your Up-Yours comment with regards to the preposterous homophones and noticing the 💤 as Dr. WhatsOn @5, I thought that this would be the sort of thing Paul would reply with to the usual critics.
This took me all week as well but worth the perseverance for the wonderful sense of humour on display. AMERICA and ROUTINE were particularly clever.
Ta Paul & Cineria.
Further to Wellbeck’s “defiant Up-Yours” comment @35 and Alan’s remark about the ZZZ’s, perhaps those who refuse to enjoy the joke would like to join in a rousing chorus of this song :
“Yes, I like PINOCHLE LARDER
And gettin’ caught in the rain…”
KVa @33
Paul in sparkling form. It took me a revisit to the crossword before coming here, and all the crossers, to get 24A LARDER (and a few other holdouts).
[I love the “C Major and C Minor”; of course, we all know which is which, even if we disagree.
Apropos of nothing but 28A FREEZER and 22D WHEEZE, I am reminded that the small Scottish Christian denominations are known collectively as the “wee frees”.]
Peter@42. “Wee Frees”. Wow! That’s definitely not what Paul had in mind.
Or was it?
Thanks Paul and Cineraria. A slow start but eventually a quick finish, and a jorum for 23a. Loved the outrageous, excruciating puns.
A very witty and enjoyable crossword. You can’t beat a bad pun, and I particularly enjoyed pinochle larder and freezer jolly good fellow. Managed to complete it on the day, which is unusual for me.
I really enjoyed the two outrageous punning long homophones, wonderful cluing. Sour cream was my LOI, I just couldn’t think of any parsing to get a solution until a good night’s sleep had me waking up refreshed and finding the tea tray crashing down.
Thanks both,
I came here just to see the reactions to the cocktail. I chuckled for a minute or so. Possibly the funniest clue ever?
Enjoyed getting most of Paul’s big clues, but couldn’t finish the top L and bottom R corners. Gave up this morning. I had alternative solutions to 3d (DENSE, thinking of magnetic NS dip) and 25d (RUDDY, curse and pink). That scuppered my chances for 29a/12a. Spent too much time thinking about SET YOUR ?I?E ?N. Shame because I rather liked the answer when I finally let cineraria reveal it to me., and SINK is such an obvious word for basin. Good puzzle overall, just two over convoluted clues, PAINTER and AMERICA. Oh well. On to Kite next.
And one. might very well pronounce it “pinochle larder” after a few of those “cocktails”!