Times Crossword 25,726 – tutti-frutti?

Solving Time: 26 minutes.. so a bit harder than average but not unduly so. As we saw yesterday it can be hard to judge a crossword mid-blog, as it were.. but I thought this a decent effort, let down by a rather uneven set of clues, but redeemed by its inclusion of St Eric Morecambe..

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”

ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Across

1 Proserpine – R(uns) in problem = POSER + PINE. Proserpina was the Roman equivalent of Persephone, mistress of the underworld. The entire Roman religion would have fallen seriously foul of the copyright laws, had the Greeks ever wished to press the matter
6 curb – CUR + B(ark)
9 cowling – COW + LING (heather)
10 medulla – soME DULL Academic. A part of the brainstem attached to the spinal cord and controlling autonomic activities like breathing, thankfully..
12 prima donna – proper = PRIM + ADO + N(u)N + A. Odd, how many derogatory words there are to describe women who behave as men commonly do
13 aid – (m)AID
15 resort – men = OR (yawn) in REST.
16 strophes – STROP + HE’S. There is a whole vocabulary of poetic metre, such as strophes, iambs, feet etc etc, met (by me) only in crosswords
18 hard core – dd
20 tissue – as in a tissue of lies, I suppose. I see what the setter is getting at but to me it seems a bit lightweight as clues go
23 ism – IS(LA)M. Ism is a difficult word to spot, at least the first time
24 Manchester – MAN + ST in CHEER
26 holiest – story = LIE (as in tissue) in HOST
27 stature – STATU(R)E
28 pads – soft = P + notice = AD + S(on)
29 regenerate – R(oyal) E(ngineers) + *(TEENAGER)

Down

1 puck – dd. Well, once I had 1ac, it had to be puck or peri, and it turns out that a puck is, according to ODO: “An input device resembling a mouse, dragged across a mat which senses its position to move the cursor on the screen.” That was news to me, I confess
2 onwards – cd. Where nurses are, geddit?
3 Eric Morecambe – *(RARE COMIC ME) + live = BE. Cue a link to youtube, I think my favourite quip is this one
4 pagoda – A + DO (= cook) + GAP (= opening), all rev. Only properly parsed this clue now..
5 nominate – home = IN, in mother= MA, in NOTE
7 unleash – *(HOUSEPLANT), having removed the letters POT. So really *(HUSELAN)
8 blandished – BLAND + I + SHED. For some reason blandishments seem much more common than actual blandishing
11 diatonic scale – *(NICE CODA TAILS). This crossword did stretch one’s anagrammatic skills rather. I looked at the Wikipedia entry for diatonic scale, but understood not a word I’m afraid
14 archbishop – *(BOORISH CHAP), having removed an O
17 brunette – career = RUN in BETTE(r). Blondes being what is supposedly preferred, though my own view is more along the lines of “beggars can’t be choosers.”
19 rambled – walk = AMBLE in RD. Amble and ramble being uncomfortably similar in meaning, undermines the clue a tad
21 specula – *(CAPSULE). Not an instrument I’ve ever seen in use, I’m pleased to say
22 chaste – C + HASTE
25 mede – ED in ME. The reference is to Daniel, Ch6v15, where King Darius the Great is forced by his own laws, “The laws of the Medes and the Persians,” to toss Daniel into the lion’s den. The rest is history. Or myth.

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

97 comments on “Times Crossword 25,726 – tutti-frutti?”

  1. 23 minutes, with the last five on 20, 21 and the 1s, finishing with a bit of a guess at PUCK, assuming, perhaps rightly – I don’t know – that a mouse-like gadget could be conceived of as something that glides over the ice. Held up in this quadrant by having ‘inwards’ at 2d for a while.

    Quite a lot from the literals or enumeration today, including Eric M. Had to attend carefully to the anagrist at 11d, though, as I was thinking of a first word ending ‘-tic’ by analogy with ‘chromatic’. A bit of a throw-back puzzle that will suit those brought up on the Classics and the Bible.

  2. 13:45 .. submitted with fingers crossed because:
    – I didn’t know what a MEDE was
    – didn’t know this meaning of PUCK
    – knew I misspelt ERIC MORECAMBE last time he came up
    – wasn’t sure if ‘strophis’ was a possibility and the wordplay works either way (I think).

    I did like 17d, even though it’s clearly brunettist. I may have to file suit for psychological trauma.

    1. Your comment reminds me of Gore Vidal, who failed like a modern-day Cnut in his attempts over several decades to persuade people that ‘homosexualist’ was the correct styling for the person, ‘homosexual’ being a mere adjective.
      1. The one person I can think of who uses the former is Jeremy Clarkson. Peas in a pod, those two.
  3. After yesterday and last Friday it was quite a relief to complete this one within 30 minutes – only just, though fully parsed. I didn’t know PROSPERPINE, SPECULA, PUCK or MEDE and nearly went for STROPHIS at 16ac.
  4. I didn’t know Eric M, (thank you for the link), and had forgotten Prosperine. I’m reading Fagle’s Iliad, so I have most of the pantheon right at the front of my mind, but she doesn’t appear.
    I had triple definition HARD ROCK – which comes pretty close to working (kind of group, not giving way, and foundation)- for a while
    1. Persephone (‘Proserpine’ in some translations – Samuel Butler’s for one) pops up in Book ix, l.457.

      Edited at 2014-03-05 09:20 am (UTC)

  5. Close to an hour. But one wrong. I went for STROPHIS never having heard of it (and I never considered the alternative STROPHES which I’d never heard of either).
  6. I first put in STROPHIS but fotunately revised it on reflection to the more probable STROPHES.

    “The Medes and the Persians” are familiar but I had no idea of the source or the connection with laws. I suspect I’m not Robinson Crusoe in that.

    I had never heard of a PUCK as a mouse – this Apple mouse (I had one once) from about 15 years ago is the right shape though.

    1. I still use one of those with my original iMac. (OS9 is useful sometimes.) Among Mac devotees, it was always called “the hockey puck”. Most users junked it and replaced it with a regular shaped number. I liked it!
  7. … not at home. But under the 30m. I’d assumed the def at 1ac was at the other end and was looking for a type of pine wood.

    MEDE had to be the answer (though I pondered BEDE as the law-giver). But the Medes and Persians thing went straight through to the keeper.

    If I’d been blogging, I’d still be scratching the noggin over ISM.

    Afterthought: maybe 20ac is a subtle reference to the Yorkshire Post?

    Edited at 2014-03-05 07:32 am (UTC)

  8. 16m. A vanilla puzzle except for a few nuggets of obscurity: PUCK, MEDE, STROPHES, DIATONIC SCALE, SPECULA. It’s one way to make a puzzle a bit more challenging I suppose.
    Like sotira I misspelled Eric last time he appeared. I remembered this fact, but not how I’d done it, so I had to take care with the anagram.
    I listened to some Finzi yesterday evening. I won’t be rushing to repeat the experience I’m afraid. Perhaps I’ll try some Searle this evening. He shares a first name with my youngest which disposes me positively towards him.
  9. Given the obscurity of the computer meaning of 1d, I thought it was a bit hard on anyone who happened to know what a PACA was (an animal in the guinea-pig genus), but happily I decided that a setter who knew all about the immutable laws of the Medes and Persians would be mentioning the AMND Puck for sure – and so it proved.
    1. But pacas are not in the same genus or family as guinea pigs, I think their nearest point of contact is being fellow members of the order rodentia. Since according to Wiki they grow up to 30″ long and 14Kg, they are not all that fairylike or mouselike either! More like one of my very favourite animals, the noble capybara..
      1. Fair enough, Gerry, I was just going off Chambers saying pacas are cavies, which are members of the guinea-pig genus (Cavia). And my wife freaks out if she sees a capybara, which she describes as a ‘mutant mouse’.

        Edited at 2014-03-05 08:59 am (UTC)

      2. At last … something to be agreed upon by your good self (JW), Ulaca (his userpic) and moi! In various papers, I’ve always used the capybara as my philosophical animal of choice for non-human sentient living entities.

        BTW nice to see Magoo back in the land of the living too!

        Edited at 2014-03-05 08:41 am (UTC)

        1. Well the three of you have that much in common with my kids. They love capybaras for some reason.
          I’m always a bit freaked out by them. Somehow between sightings (usually at a zoo near my parents’ house) I always manage to forget how weirdly big they are.
            1. Don’t worry, they’re friendly creatures. I know this from watching The Octonauts and the Amazon Adventure.
    2. What is really interesting here is the choice of PUCK by reason of the type of setter. I too had never heard of the IT mouse but also decided that this setter was highly likely to go for Waggledagger over PACA. The sort of judgement that only comes from a lot of experience that should prove to newish solvers that this is a game at which skills develop over time.
  10. 25 minutes and a similar experience to others. Didn’t know PROSPERPINE, SPECULA, PUCK, MEDE or DIATONIC SCALE (though I think I’ve heard of a pentatonic one).

    Also torn between STROPHIS and STROPHES but fortunately plumped for the latter on the basis it sounded like a plural whereas the former sounded more singular.


  11. About 45 mins. Smiled when I read Sotira’s first post above, thinking ‘yes, me too…’ until I got to the bit about Eric M, when I checked my spelling. Ooops! I got it right last time, and didn’t think too much about it…
    1. Sorry, Janie! Sometimes it’s better not to know, if you ask me.

      My problem with Eric M was that I knew I misspelt it last time but I couldn’t remember how. Thankfully, all the letters were there in the clue ….. just not necessarily in the right order.

      1. The power of crosswords. I have to confess I hadn’t thought about the spelling and had always wrongly assumed the second O – but I battled with the anagram and it just had to be an A.
  12. 18 minutes, so easier for me than yesterday’s. I confess to actually using “the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed” when appropriate, so 25 was easy. I have never used a Mac, so 1d was not – it was just a guess. I have sung pieces based on the Diatonic Scale, though I’m not sure I could tell you what it is.
    Is it churlish (or just foolhardy – I’m bound to have committed a similar solecism) to point out that, aside from Jerry in his excellent introduction, we have been spelling PROSERPINE wrong throughout?
    BRUNETTE my last in – that devious definition and a hazard at SPINSTER causing a last minute frantic check on checkers. The rest solved today from NE and clockwise.

    Edited at 2014-03-05 09:07 am (UTC)

    1. The easy bit today: it’s the white notes on the piano, or any transposition thereof. If you’ve sung “a scale” it’s most likely this one.
  13. I found this easy today – 15 minutes – and was relieved to find the same was true of others after yesterday’a aberration.

    As mentioned above I didn’t know PUCK but took an educated guess. The Goddess and the poetry stuff both turn up from time to time. I thought TISSUE very weak. All in all a rather dated feel to this one.

    1. Just the sort of puzzle that I like – I think my age may have something to do with this! – today not pb but happy to be around your time.
  14. Not much to get excited about today. Proserpina and Proserpine appear to be interchangeable and my schoolboy greek led me to STROPHES (also the basis of catastrophes and apostrophes). PUCK ws a pure guess.
    1. Bigtone,

      Greetings from Nairobi. Re your question of yesterday, all the Indians I know pronounce it raiyeetha, i.e. a sort of elongated e in the middle. The t following is softish and not hard. Hope this helps.

      A German friend visiting Mumbai a few years ago went to Jalali’s which in those days was THE place for authentic Indian cooking (sadly no longer there) and ordered their hottest curry not realising a hot curry at Jalali’s really is hot. After the first mouthful he took a dollop of raitha in the hope of cooling things down, not realising that genuine Indian raitha has fresh chopped chillies in it!!! Using petrol to put out a fire was the phrase that came to mind when I heard the story. When he recovered and asked Jalali how people put out a gastronomic fire, Jalali simply said, “Genuine Indians don’t need to put out gastronomic fires!!”

      Nairobi Wallah

      1. Thanks Nairobi Wallah,

        All the more reason to be sparing in the use of homophones for foreign words when clueing.

  15. 15 mins. I thought the ERIC MORECAMBE clue was top notch. I finished up in the NW and was helped a lot by having just finished a novel in which one of the lead characters told another that PROSERPINE is another name for Persephone. PUCK was my LOI, and you can count me as another who didn’t know the IT part of the DD but it seemed the most likely answer. Fortunately I had never heard of a “paca” either so I wasn’t tempted to go that way.
  16. recollection of a Roman goddess proserpinA to do with fertility and the such like, but had never heard of her ending with an E, so fell foul of assuming pina was a species of (pine?) tree.
  17. 21min : 1ac LOI because I’d put ONWARDS at 2dn. PUCK seemed likely, though I don’t have the relevant Mac experience.

    Edited at 2014-03-05 10:28 am (UTC)

  18. Just under 10 minutes; nice puzzle, or perhaps I just felt happy that whatever my wavelength is, this was on it. PUCK went in on faith, from the fairy definition and the fact that my mouse looks sufficiently like a puck to be conceivable, while PAGODA was unparsed before coming here but couldn’t be anything else. AS Jim says, if you do a lot of puzzles, you eventually get a decent feel for which unknown unknowns just feel right.
  19. About 25 minutes, so feeling quite relieved after yesterday’s puzzle convinced me that senility was finally taking its course.

    My knowledge of the Medes comes solely from a poem that an inspirational headmaster used to read to us in junior school; it began “Darius the Mede was a king and a wonder….” The children loved it, but anything by Vachel Lindsay is likely to provoke much clucking and tut-tutting by educationalists these days.

    In one of those curious crossword coincidences, this week’s LoveFilm DVD has just come through the letter box: “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”.

        1. I’d always taken it to mean Ordinary Regiment like OS is Ordinary Seaman. Glad to be corrected.
  20. Smugly done in 20 minutes, guessing STROPHIS as it seemed likely that HIS was a better genitive than HE’S. But I was wrong. Otherwise a finer medium density puzzle.
  21. Surely ‘homosexual’ suggests that you ARE something, whilst ‘homosexualist’ suggests that you DO something? Gore Vidal was good anyway. Especially in Bladerunner.

    27 minutes and about a pint of coffee, CoD 25D which is impenetrable.

  22. 11:10 – I agree with Tim and Jim, one where it helped if you have done lots (and lots) of cryptic crosswords, plus the joy of Eric Morecambe too!
  23. 17:22 but rather too much wnt in with very little confidence. I think most of the areas of doubt have been covered above but I was unsure about haunt = resort as well.

    Thanks for explaining 23. I thought the US city had been chopped off the front so I was left wondering if there’s a US city I’ve never heard of like Juda, Sikh or Shinto. Maybe the Shinto Pucks play the Juda Capybaras at ice hockey.

    At 26 I’m still unsure as to whether holiest = most scared element or host = element of mass. Anyone?

    COD to the non-blonde.

    1. The latter (though sacred not scared!), as the Host is the consecrated bread at Communion/Eucharist…Mass.

      Edited at 2014-03-05 01:40 pm (UTC)

    2. I thought: Most sacred (holiest) / element of Mass = HOST) around LIE

      p_in_l

      1. Thanks both, I guess I got confused as host and mass can both mean a lot of summat.

        {Captain Mainwaring} Well done Ulaca, I was wondering who’d be the first to spot that {/Captain Mainwaring}

        1. Yeah – and the mis-direction of H = Helium = Element is also in the mix
          p_in_l
              1. My mistake. H = Hydrogen. Explosively more interesting for P61’s aereo vehicle.
  24. a lot of gk in this one, seems like quite a few people had gaps in their knowledge so at least it was somewhat democratic. my unknowns were cowling, diatonic scale, strophes and mede. Strophes could easily have been strophis, but other than that all fairly guessable I suppose.
  25. For the record, the puck in 1D is presumably not the old Mac round mouse (which after all, *is* a mouse, not “like a mouse”, but a device used in conjunction with a graphics tablet for computer-aided design applications for which a mouse isn’t sufficiently precise. To quote Wikipedia’s article on graphic tablets, “A puck is a mouse-like device that can detect its absolute position and rotation. This is opposed to mice, which can only sense their relative velocity on a surface (most tablet drivers are capable of allowing a puck to emulate a mouse in operation, and many pucks are marketed as “mice”.) Pucks range in size and shape, some are externally indistinguishable from a mouse, while others are fairly large devices with dozens of buttons and controls. Professional pucks often have a reticle or loupe which allows the user to see the exact point on the tablet’s surface targeted by the puck, for detailed tracing and computer aided design (CAD) work.”

    deke

    1. Curiously (for the Times) the definition is not found in any of the usual sources, though I acknowledge the wiki quote looks relatively authoritative. Dictionary.com does have, under puck: “British Computers. mouse” (sic). Looks like the sort of thing Jimbo might know about. Jimbo?
      1. Sorry z8 not my field of expertise – from deke comment above sounds like a specialist engineering tool so we need a CAD/CAM expert
        1. Yes, my apologies Jim, I did notice after posting that you had entirely disavowed knowledge.
        1. Indeed you did (blush). I couldn’t find it when I looked it up – presumably you have better access?
    2. And furthermore… Reading up on the Apple “hockey puck” reveals divergent opinions, from “widely considered one of Apple’s worst mistakes” to “I liked it!” Mctext, vs. Arguably it’s the computer equivalent of the Douglas Adams Heart of Gold drinks machine, which always delivered a substance that was “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea”.
      I got it from the Shakespeare reference and guessed the rest.

      Edited at 2014-03-05 03:35 pm (UTC)

  26. Bouncing around London so have no idea of a time but probably about the hour mark. I convinced myself that Laism was a religion so got the right answer for the wrong reason. Plumped for the correct Strophes simply as it felt better and put in Mede on a wing and a prayer. A real struggle with the anagram at 11dn which was LOI. Seemed chewy but satisfying – so, after vanilla, chewy toffee and tutti frutti, maybe a nougat?
  27. Ok, brand new to all this, so using the blog for parsing the ones I miss

    It drew a yawn from the blogger but why is “men” = or?

    1. Hi Anon,

      This has been answered higher up the chain today but the reference is to Other Ranks (ie non-officers). To quote z8

      “Yes, exactly, Other Ranks. Turns up quite a lot, hence Jerry’s yawn.”

    2. Welcome. The same question was asked by ianb21 at 12:12. It’s never a bad idea to read other comments before posting one. Admittedly, today’s comment thread is a bit meandering, but still.
    3. Your question has been answered but I apologise for the yawn. It is just that it has cropped up many times over the past few months. a bit cliched..
  28. One missing today (Brunette). Should have got it.
    Proserpine and Strophes both unknown but gettable from wordplay.
    Made a meal of the NW corner with initial wrong guesses of Inwards for Onwards and Cowslip then Cowhide for Cowling.
    Rather embarrassed to say I justified Puck by thinking an ice hockey puck resembled a computer mouse!
    1. “The hockey puck looks like a computer mouse” was exactly my line of thinking – except that I’m not embarrassed in the slightest!
  29. Fairly straightforward solve today, all the “old fashioned” GK well within reach, other than my LOI, PUCK, which I’d never ever come across before despite a career spent on the fringes of IT. RHS went in within 10 minutes, LHS took longer, not helped by the bucketing of the bus between Clapham Junction and Putney.

    No stand-out clues today, too many write-ins, too many obvious anagrams, and at least one dud – TISSUE – but ERIC MORECAMBE made me smile, so all is forgiven.

  30. About 30 minutes for a ‘back to normal’ puzzle, although my list of unknowns matches everyone else’s. COD to BRUNETTE, indeed. You folks in the UK might consider making me an honorary citizen as I got ERIC MORECAMBE on the first read, with only the ‘I’ checking letter (from COWLING), thus surprising myself. I only know his name via these puzzles, or this blog, and I did not recognize him on the thoughtfully posted you tube link. Anyway, regards to all.
    1. Kevin,

      Your honorary citizenship is hereby granted. However to complete the process, you must watch this link. Although sometimes Morecambe & Wise humour can be a bit uneven, this sketch with Andre Previn really is about as funny as it gets. Observe the way the orchestra itself is in stitches for much of the sketch

      Edited at 2014-03-05 06:20 pm (UTC)

      1. Right now I’m getting some kind of youtube error message Jerry, but I will make a point of playing the video. Citizenship has its obligations, after all.
  31. Oh, by the way, I agree that TISSUE wasn’t very good, but I have a greater quibble with my LOI, which was RESORT. I don’t find ‘resort’=’haunt’ to be very persuasive. But thanks to the setter regardless for the unpreferred female.
  32. Phew. After my DNF of yesterday, I was glad when this one turned out to be more tractable.

    Speaking of capybara (how did they crop up?), I’ve eaten one – or at least a part of one. Not bad. Now every time I eat chicken I can say “tastes a bit like capybara”.

    Nice to see ERIC MORECAMBE turning up, and a nice clue too, as was ARCHBISHOP. I failed to parse PAGODA and ISM, though the answers were inevitable.

    PROSERPINE was one of those names in the back of my memory – could have been a godette or a Shakespearian character for all I knew. Had never encountered STROPHES before, and took a guess that this wasn’t STROPHIS. I presume a strophe is what someone writes after the apostrophe and before the catastrophe.

    As for 21d, all I can advise is that if your gynaecologist isn’t sure what’s wrong with you, don’t ask him to speculate.

    Edited at 2014-03-05 06:46 pm (UTC)

    1. I was in the wrong area with speculum, although with hindsight, I recall this as with many things my late father carried around in his gynaecological bag that I was told in my youth not to discuss with my mother. The ‘mirror’ aspect made me think of the concave mirrors with a hole in which every TV physician in the 50s wore on his/her head as well as a stethoscope around the neck. Apparently the ENT mob (otolaryngologists these days apparently) still use them. Any comment Dr Thud?

      Edited at 2014-03-05 08:41 pm (UTC)

      1. Those ENTs will do almost anything to try and look more like real doctors.

        The mirrors themselves are concave, which means that if you examine a patient in sufficiently strong sunlight you should be able to melt the wax right out of their ears.

  33. A steady 42m here with no real problems beyond decoding the clues even with the unknowns. So pleasant to have only 3 question marks to wonder about! Thanks for the blog.
  34. If you know Keats, you will recognise Proserpine from the opening of Ode on Melancholy:
    No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
    Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
    Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
    By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine
    1. I’ve always felt a bit uneasy about Keats’s rhyming “Proserpine” with “wine”!
        1. I suspect Tony might mean it should rhyme with seen or mean.. a more “correct” spelling is Proserpina, and anyway it is all Greek derivative stuff.
          The pronunciation of Latin in England has changed radically over my lifetime and for both the old and the new one can find fat red-faced Latin teachers who insist they know exactly what is right when in fact they haven’t – we haven’t – a solitary clue
          1. If I wanted to pronounce the last four letters as a single syllable, then I’d probably rhyme them with “wine” rather than “wean” (I much prefer an Argentine tango to an Argenteen tango). However, the conventional pronunciation (for all but Keats and Swinburne) was and is prəˈsəːpɪni.
            1. Something similar has happened for similar reasons with the expression ‘in fine’, which shares with the goddess the properties of being Latin and literary, and therefore rarely heard. Different dictionaries give different pronunciations, with OED – perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, given the fine tradition of English anti-intellectualism – giving the Anglicised one-syllable rhyme with ‘wine’.
        2. I blame Keats (that old Cockney!) for leading Swinburne astray. The problem for poets is that if you pronounce Proserpine in the conventional way, it’s really difficult to rhyme, except in a Tom Lehrerish sort of way: with “Dick Turpin-y”, say (as in “simile” rhymed with “Rudolph Friml-y”).
  35. Frustrated, and over the hour mark, by NW quarter. Like you I’ve never heard of a puck in computing, so my last in (or rather, my missus’ last in!)
    1. I guessed “puck” was a technical term in some sort of mechanical device – weaving or such. Computing never occured.
  36. I am eagerly awaiting the TnB report of the first poor soul in A&E with a doctor-induced melted ear.
    1. Fortunately, we’re in East Anglia. This means that the doctor can just watch out for light coming out of the opposite ear.
  37. Much the same experience as everyone else. Didn’t know the computer meaning of ‘puck’, so just relied on Shakespeare, and didn’t parse ‘ism’ in my haste to complete. Also like some others, 17d was my favourite clue, though being married to a beautiful brunette (now with engaging silver highlights), I have to contest the basic assertion of the clue, saved only by the question mark.
  38. Oh phooey! Much the same as yesterday, this time with PUCK costing me another 5+ minutes at the end for a miserable 15:50.

    Could the answer be PUCA, perhaps a variant spelling of POOKA (??) which could, at a pinch, be classified as a fairy? Was there another 3-letter farm animal ending in W apart from COW that would give a likely answer to 9ac? (Surely SOWLING wouldn’t do?) Could I get an X in as first letter to allow PIXY for 1dn? And if so, how would the mouse fit in with that? And so on … (Deep sigh!)

    And I’d forgotten all about the blessed PACA!!!

    1. I know you have seen the crossword club thread dealing with Mark G, which expresses the view that the major difference between him and us is his ability to spot incorrect thinking, and change it or move on very quickly… I’m still thinking about that 🙂
      1. Yes, I did read that, Jerry. I feel I’d like a little more explanation as to how exactly he does it (and whether there’s any hope that the rest of us might manage to do the same).
  39. Thanks for the explanation I got “mede” but it was a bit of a guess and I couldn’t figure out why.

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