Thanks Paul – this was an enjoyable struggle, with some tricky parsing to work through afterwards. My favourites were 15ac, 3/24, and 5dn.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | FLATTENED |
Coffee back in canteen, provided cups laid out (9)
|
| for definition e.g. in a fight, to lay someone out / to knock someone unconscious / to flatten someone
LATTE=type of “Coffee”, plus the end/”back” of [cantee]-N; with FED=”provided” as a container (it “cups” the other letters”) |
||
| 6 | TWINKLETOES |
See 20 Down
|
| 8 | PIE CRUST |
One’s filled with various pictures (3,5)
|
| anagram/”various” of (pictures)* | ||
| 9 | TRIVIA |
Rat, I suspect, has gobbled six trifles (6)
|
| anagram/(“suspect” as an adjective) of (Rat I)*; around/gobbling VI=”six” in Roman numerals | ||
| 10 | SLOUGH |
Shed in Berkshire town (6)
|
| double definition: for first definition, slough as a verb, to shed a skin or an outer layer | ||
| 11, 22 | BENJAMIN SPOCK |
US author referencing issue with mountain, page covered by explanation for sticky foot? (8,5)
|
| definition: Benjamin Spock is a US writer on the topic of children i.e. “issue”
BEN=”mountain” (e.g. Ben Nevis, etc); plus P (page) inside/”covered by” JAM IN SOCK=”explanation for sticky foot?” |
||
| 12 | STATIC |
Rubbish charges thus frozen (6)
|
| TAT=”Rubbish”, inside/(to charge = to fill): SIC=”thus” in Latin | ||
| 15 | TUTORIAL |
Class nuisance, out unfortunately for detention (8)
|
| TRIAL=difficult experience=”nuisance”; around/detaining anagram/”unfortunately” of (out)* | ||
| 16 | UNIRONED |
Red upset with union awaiting the press? (8)
|
| definition: something unironed has not yet been pressed
anagram/”upset” of (Red union)* |
||
| 19 | DITHER |
Twitter feed, it heralding gulps? (6)
|
| definition: dither = to be agitated, to act in an agitated manner = twitter
hidden inside (gulped within): [fee]-D IT HER-[alding] |
||
| 21, 2 | OFFSHORE ACCOUNT |
A less taxing sailors’ yarn? (8,7)
|
| definition: something that might lead to lower tax liabilities
OFFSHORE ACCOUNT could also be read as ‘a story/account of what happened away from land’ i.e. “sailor’s yarn” |
||
| 22 | SHIRTY |
Ticked off – as top? (6)
|
| definition: SHIRTY can mean angry or “Ticked off”
SHIRT-Y could also mean ‘like a shirt’=”as top” |
||
| 24 | TRUTH SOCIAL |
See 3 Down
|
| 25 | SHOCKING |
Odious pipe, with joint to inhale (8)
|
| “pipe” can mean to SING [in a high voice]; around/inhaling HOCK=”joint” of meat | ||
| 26 | APSE |
Recess, politicians on vacation in Adelaide spewing guts (4)
|
| definition: a recessed area in a church
P-[olitician]-S vacated of inner letters; in A-[delaid]-E losing its inner letters or “guts” |
||
| 27 | SPARKIEST |
Short continental break where plonk guzzled – and most bubbly? (9)
|
| SIEST-[a]=”continental break” cut “Short”; with PARK=to set down, to put into a place=”plonk” guzzled inside | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | FRILL |
Flounce and kick down Whitechapel Road? (5)
|
| sounds like (with a Cockney or “Whitechapel Road” accent): ‘thrill’ = “kick” | ||
| 2 | OFFSHORE ACCOUNT |
See 21 Across
|
| 3, 24 | TRUTH SOCIAL |
Leader on laptop behind it, our chats fallacious? (5,6)
|
| definition: Donald Trump’s social media platform
anagram/”fallacious” of (it our chats)*; with leading letter of L-[aptop] going behind |
||
| 4 | NOT A BIT |
Hardly what conductor may seemingly have done with it (3,1,3)
|
| not sure exactly how to read this:
something like ‘raising a BATON’ could be “what conductor may seemingly have done”, indicating NOT AB as a reversal upwards (raising) …then, add IT from the surface |
||
| 5 | DETONATED |
Triggered by old boarding school? On the contrary (9)
|
| “On the contrary” of “old boarding school”, so instead ‘school boarding old’
so, ETON=”school”, boarding into DATED=”old” |
||
| 6 | THIN AIR |
Upbringing happy, good day to hide – nowhere to disappear? (4,3)
|
| definition as in e.g. ‘to disappear into thin air’
RIANT=mirthful=”happy”, reversed upwards (“Upbringing”); with HI=greetings=”good day” hiding inside |
||
| 7 | ELIMINATE |
Clear I am at home when opening lift (9)
|
| definition: to clear = to remove or eliminate
I’M IN=”I am at home”; “opening” inside ELATE=”lift” |
||
| 13 | TIN OF SOUP |
Subject of pop artist put on, if so surrealistic? (3,2,4)
|
| reference to Andy Warhol and the Campbell’s Soup Cans [wiki]
anagram/”surrealistic” of (put on if so)* |
||
| 14 | CANOODLES |
Vessel requiring a load gets it on (9)
|
| CAN=”Vessel” plus OODLES=a large quantity=”a load” | ||
| 17 | RESPITE |
Breather touching on venom (7)
|
| RE=concerning, on the topic of=”touching on” + SPITE=”venom” | ||
| 18 | DEEP-SEA |
A shipmate’s last race having capsized on the ocean (4-3)
|
| A (from surface) + last of [shipmat]-E + SPEED=”race”; all reversed upwards/”having capsized” | ||
| 20, 6 | TWINKLETOES |
Skeleton with less foot to shake about, scintillating dancer? (11)
|
| anagram/”to shake about” of (Skeleton wit), where wit is “with” minus its last letter or “foot” | ||
| 22 | BENJAMIN SPOCK |
See 11 Across
|
| 23 | TENET |
Principle, if flipping the same? (5)
|
| “if flipping the same” indicates that TENET is a palindrome |
I thought this was friendlier than usual from Paul with the main hold up being that I bunged in CAN OF BEANS without properly checking the anagram which held me up on STATIC (despite being the majority of my username).
Not heard of BENJAMIN SPOCK but once I made an educated guess at BENJAMIN the rest of the parse gave me a chuckle. My favourite today.
Thanks Paul and manehi
Another fun puzzle from Paul, and much better IMHO than his last offering. Favourites were BENJAMIN SPOCK and TRUTH SOCIAL.
Thanks Paul and manehi
BENJAMIN SPOCK is much better known as “Dr. Spock”.
Lots of fun in this one, especially the outrageous BENJAMIN SPOCK. I also enjoyed PIE CRUST, TUTORIAL, SHIRTY, OFFSHORE ACCOUNT, TRUTH SOCIAL and TWINKLTOES.
Ta Paul & manehi.
I think that “what conductor may seemingly have done” is “raised BATON”.
JAM IN SOCK was very good.
Thanks Paul and manehi.
DNK Riant for happy but I guessed THIN AIR from the crossers and definition)
Couldn’t parse the US author either – JAM IN SOCK certainly requires some lateral thinking!
LOI FRILL – didn’t spot the cockney hint, and hadn’t figured out FLATTENED parsing yet to be sure enough
All else classic Paul, fair, and enjoyable,
I made a bit of a dog’s dinner of this one, but enjoyed it anyway despite bits of solutions being dotted around all over the place. (I’m a Paul fan, but that’s not my favourite trait of his.)
I thought NOT A BIT and DETONATE were both very clever, that PIE CRUST was brilliantly misleading (I wanted it to somehow be bar chART for a while), and that the &lit TRUTH SOCIAL was very well-executed. FRILL was a bung-and-hope though.
My problems came more on the RHS, especially in the SE. It all started going wrong when I decided that the nho (and somewhat generational?) author must be a BEN-EDICT: issue with mountain. So confident was I, in fact, that I lazily revealed it instead of typing it in – only for the marmelade to turn up. Still, that made it possible for me to tease out the SPOCK once I’d got a checker or two.
But DITHER, SHIRTY and sPARKiest took me an age – so much so that I’d run out of patience by the time I got to TWINKLETOES and SHOCKING. I still couldn’t untangle the (straightforward-when-you-see-it) parsing of the former even after revealing!
So Paul got the better of me today. Till next time, Gadget. Tx both
P.S. Technically (from the cryptic grammar) the def for OFFSHORE ACCOUNT must be sailor’s yarn, despite the phrase only really being meaningful as the fiscal tool. This means it’s a flawed clue in some sense. Only technically speaking, mind; personally I thought it was great!
I reckon TRUTH SOCIAL qualifies as an &litt
Great puzzle but, unlike Staticman@1, I found this one of Paul’s tougher creations
Many thanks for the blog, manehi; the parsing of THIN AIR had escaped me
This was proper Thursday fare (in my opinion, of course!)
Great fun as ever. Loved the jam in sock, the capsized shipmate and Eton (which is suitably close to SLOUGH).
Thanks Paul and manehi (especially for explaining THIN AIR)
I found this tough. Even after guessing some solutions, I still needed manehi to explain the parsing. I saw the jam in sock in 11/22, but did not understand what the “referencing issue” was about. I missed the hidden word in in 9A.
Do we know if Paul had a foot injury recently? If so, maybe there’s an intentional Nina on the top row?! Ouch
Made my way through this eventually. I think I’m getting the hang of Paul. Not sure that Odious = SHOCKING in 25A, but it was the only answer once Dr. Spock appeared. “It” appears in a lot of the clues/answers — wondering if ”it’s” a mini-theme? 🙂 Thanks Manehi and Paul.
Paul on good form with a few chewy, unparsed ones. I liked FLATTENED with its cups, the surface in TUTORIAL, the surrealistic TIN OF SOUP, the skeleton dancer TWINKLE TOES, and Trump’s fallacious TRUTH SOCIAL.
Thanks Paul and manehi.
Got there in the end but needed manehi’s excellent blog to parse 6D THIN AIR and I missed the Cockney connection for 1D FRILL. Also thought that TRUTH SOCIAL was an &litt given the amount of **** he puts out on it.
As usual for this setter it took some time for me to get more than a few clues in, but the rest followed at a steady if not great pace. Like many I totally failed to parse 6d. Thanks Paul and manehi.
Good fun but unlike Andy in Durham@2 I preferred Paul’s last one even though I found it a lot tougher.
I couldn’t parse FLATTENED, THIN AIR, BENJAMIN SPOCK, FRILL (!), NOT A BIT and SPARKIEST. Thanks to manehi for the explanations.
Favourite TRUTH SOCIAL.
Thanks also to Paul for his usual excellence.
Paul is my favourite setter and I loved this jolly one today. BENJAMIN SPOCK and SPARKIEST both made me laugh, and there were plenty of other smiles along the way.
In parsing DETONATED I understood that DATED was boarding, in the sense of “providing accommodation for”, ETON, so I found “On the contrary” confusing. Did anyone else think this?
Thanks for the blog Andrew, and for parsing THIN AIR for me.
AP@8
O ACCOUNT
Agree with you in a way. I thought the whole was just a cryptic def as “a less taxing’ doesn’t seem
to match the part of speech of the solution. The full real def is not given, but only a part of it and
a whimsical def. I have seen such clues before. Not sure it’s technically sound.
TUTORIAL
“for detension” reads a bit odd.
RESPITE
I read it as
“touching” =RE
RE on SPITE
My faves: FLATTENED, B SPOCK, T SOCIAL, NOT A BIT (agree with Lord Jim@5),
THIN AIR, TIN OF SOUP and TWINKLETOES.
Thanks Paul and manehi.
Nho riant but THIN AIR seemed the only solution. Even now, can’t understand why it’s ‘nowhere to disappear’. Surely it’s ‘where to disappear ‘?
This seemed a bit clunky for a Paul puzzle, though still a good challenge. Well done Manehi for parsing, and thanks both.
Enjoyable, but tough on the new app which doesn’t cope well with split-entry solutions.
I agree (with KVa) that 21/2 is best read as a whole cryptic definition.
Thanks to Paul and manehi
I hate to think how long this took overall. I’m with those who didn’t consider this to be at the easier end of Paul’s range. I am genuinely interested to know how quickly the best solvers can get through something like this unaided. I realise it’s a faux pas for them to tell us. For me, there was definitely some thesaurus action today. My search for US authors ending in K was rather skewed to fiction, but my suspicion that the mountain may be Ben got me there in the end. I had heard of Dr Spock so it arrived fully parsed.
Thanks Paul and manehi for polishing my roughly correct parsing. Thanks also to the I’ve given up on Paul guys for not reminding us today.
PS. And repeated kudos to Dutch Girl @11, it’s extraordinary to be doing this in a second language.
Thanks both,
I much enjoyed this despite needing a few checks. I’m not sure I’d equate ‘bubbly ‘ and ‘sparky ‘. The first essentially means ‘lively but vacuous ‘ whereas the second is ‘lively but astute ‘ All IMHO, of course.
Thanks to Paul. Sometimes you just have to stand back and give thanks for manehi. Very difficult, but very enjoyable, for me. NHO riant. Whatever category OFFSHORE ACCOUNT is, I think it is brilliant. SHIRTY is really good too.
Shame SPOCK wasn’t a Vulcan clue 🙂
I’m a big Paul fan but this fell a bit flat. Not sure why.
Ticks for SHIRTY, DETONATED & CANOODLES
Cheers P&M
Paul at his best here. It didn’t take me as long as it sometimes does but I felt like I had to be firing on all cylinders to be getting through it. Exactly what you want out of a cryptic – I was punching the air in triumph towards the end. Thank you Paul (and manehi of course).
Very nice, as usual! Liked many, marvelled at TRUTH SOCIAL and the way the clue was satire on the solution’s claim.
Thanks much
Truth Social has to be the clue of the year. Bravo maestro!
Twice now I’ve virtually completed but not fully parsed a Paul… I am taking it as progress!
I figured Benjamin from mountain and sticky jam but had to Google the surname that fitted.
Similarly offshore for tax but account took a while to drop out and then convinced me of pie chart. Similarly “sparkling” sat too long untill I twigged the dancer but couldn’t work out why.
Thanks Paul and manehi
Thanks for the hints, no idea about the crossword though.
I thoroughly enjoyed this — many thanks Paul and manehi! My only quibble is with 13, where Andy would have said can, not tin: “… a fun scoop seen in the Guardian”.
[Two elite NFL teams — LA Rams and SF 49ers — going at it in Melbourne, Friday @1:35 am UK time. Well worth a watch if you’ve got Netflix.]
Thanks for the blog , my mother a big fan of Spock’s baby book and she passed it on to me when I was first up the duff . I am told he was a very famous child-rearing guru at one time .
Martin@22 , if you really want to know it must have been 19 minutes , finished just as my train was getting home .
I’ve not seen that meaning of ticked off before. Online dictionaries all have it as informal US. How long has it been common over here?
Chapeau Roz@32. My solving time this morning was at least double yours.
Simon@34 I have been doing crosswords a very long time , I have probably done every single Paul crossword , I remember the first , so I am wise to all the tricks .
Thought this was superb. ‘Jam in sock’ so ridiculous. Plus yes massive thumbs up to TRUTH SOCIAL. Paul still top of my list for sheer entertainment. Many tx to Manehi though for filling in several parsing gaps including NOT A BIT.
Thanks Roz. Wow, no wonder you want more of a challenge from time to time.
Pretty tough this, I thought, but very ingenious in places. NOT A BIT, TRUTH SOCIAL, & OFFSHORE ACCOUNT particularly good. Definitely took me longer than 19 minutes.
I believe my mother also read Dr Spock, but that was before I was born. I had better not say what I first thought of for 27a when I had all the crossers. RIANT is a word I have come across before, but I could not bring it to mind when trying to parse THIN AIR.
Did better than usual for a Paul, but that means I only had to reveal about half. Quite a few where the parsing was utterly beyond me too. SPARKIEST for example I’d never have worked out, couldn’t understand FRILL despite realising there was some sort of cockney connection. And nho RIANT (and it still doesn’t look like a real word), so parsing was impossible. Heard of Dr SPOCK, but never knew his name was BENJAMIN,
TRUTH SOCIAL and OFFSHORE ACCOUNT raised a smile.
Yet another fine puzzle comes from Paul.
FRILL was just sweet.
I didn’t time my solve, I like to break off and daydream, and why hurry through an enjoyable puzzle anyway?
Thanks one and all.
Hector@39, I’m genuinely curious. Spankfest?
Perhaps Paul read my comment? A much better puzzle and perhaps a personal reference in 9ac?!
AP@39: OK then – SWANKIEST. Couldn’t quite make it fit the clue, but then got the right answer without having to search for it.
Very enjoyable and quite slow, as usual with Paul.
Nho riant, but convinced myself it meant happy because of La Vache qui Rit.
Thanks P & m
Hector@44 that’s pretty good, made me chuckle! I ran with the rather plainer SPORTIEST for quite a while.
Spike@45, barking up the right tree, I’m sure. Also Spanish reír / riendo
As is often my experience with Paul, this one revealed itself slowly and steadily through the day. No big breakthroughs, just one solution at a time. Patience and persistence paid off for me. And perfectly timed, I see, for Roz’s train trip @32. If only it had taken longer she might have snagged her beloved 42
My top favourite was 8a PIE CRUST, a terrific anagram — surprised not to see more praise for it here. Others, 11/22 BENJAMIN SPOCK (“sticky foot”, funny), 16a UNIRONED (“awaiting the press”), 19a DITHER (well hidden)
Couldn’t parse 4d NOT A BIT — thank you manehi
Hector@44 That was my first thought, too. Who knew if “plonk” was some kind of British slang?
I don’t get it. Am I the only one who still doesn’t understand what “Skeleton” is doing? The clue parses fine without it?
Dave@48: for TWINKLETOES, I don’t see an alternative to manehi’s parse: (SKELETON WIT[h])*. Can you share yours?
AP@46, Mig@47: a distant memory sent me searching for, and finding, Azed’s clue (in no. 1797, Nov 2006) for WATER-DRINKER: Teetotaller worried re ‘dirt’ imbibed by worthless fellow. Perhaps I was unnecessarily coy at #39.
Hector@50, sparky!
Mig@47 , plonk is slang for cheap wine but plonker is a stupid person or male anatomy so getting close . I was too tired to come back and claim 42 , Thursday a long day for me .
Hector@ 50 I remember that clue , I suppose Azed can say it is in Chambers .
Paul once had a crossword containing Scunthorpe , Arsenal , Wast Water , Widow Twanky etc , all innocently clued .
Roz@52: yes, I remember that one too.
I least I get 54 which is 42 in base 10 .