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Phew! Another very tricky crossword.

I think Paul used pretty much every device available to a setter to keep us all on our toes.

There are anagrams, both total and partial, homophones (these often cause much debate, and I don't think these will be any different) 'hidden' clues and, of course, charades - some of which are 'containment' type clues and are quite complicated!

There is a delightful reference to a Shakespeare play in one clue but I won't say which.

14a and 13d are very funny and have well disguised definitions.

I'm still not certain of the parsing for 20a and, as such, unsure which of 2 possible answers is the correct one.

9a also took quite a bit of working out, which is often the way with geographical clues - at least for me.

Thanks Paul for a difficult but well clued crossword.

@20a - Ah! Just figured it out - very devious and, as all good clues should, only leads to one possible answer:-)

Thanks, Paul. I enjoyed the puzzle, but solved it much more quickly than some of his recent efforts. Strange, for many years I felt on Paul's wavelength in some sense and had a lot of success with his compositions, but in recent months he's upped the level of difficulty and I no longer know what to expect. Still fun, though.

Very much agreed on Shakespeare (brilliant), 9a (which was LOI), and on general puzzle quality. Found 20a tough but clever, fairly confident on parsing. The intersecting 6d and 9a took a high percentage of solving time!

Hi Geeker,

The intersecting 9a and 6d were also my LOI's, and I went through quite a few option for 9a before I was confident I'd got it right.

Agree that once the parsing of 20a is sorted out, the answer becomes clear.

The Shakespeare clue is both clever and witty - always a good combination:-)

I didn’t have much trouble in parsing 20a, once you remove the letter u from the synonym for feeling down. But I still can’t parse 21d correctly. I assume the last letter in cook or k is to be removed somewhere for getting 21d?

A four letter word meaning 'staff' with the last letter removed + a four letter word meaning 'cook' with the last letter removed.

Thanks. I get it now. I have to remove f from cook.

Could I have some hints, please?

9a A capital in Africa, to the west (5)
A???A
I can think of an African capital, but can't see how it parses.

14a Those are for runners with good reasons to fail (4,4)
N?S?,??G?
Are the runners horses? I still don't see the parsing, though.

22a Free seat, I say, for adults )6)
S???M?
No idea!

6d Baked item sounding a pain in the backside? (6,4)
???t??,?a??

14a the runners are not horses but something more personal.