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 .