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Hi Ethereal,

I think it's just that the synonym for "maintained" houses/contains the abbr. for "male".

Interesting to read your thoughts on the puzzle - I'm curious to see what others will think of it.....

Agree with Brendan on 16.

Hi Ethereal

Maintained means it is the past tense and houses is telling you that past tense holds the male.

Here it is again my favourite grid, last seen just two Saturdays ago. I’m always drawn to 19a for some reason and got that straight off the bat before I realising it was going to be a theme and after that I went through all the themed answers first. Some of the cryptic definitions aren’t really enough to get these from wordplay alone if you don’t know them which is a little disappointing. I’ll be impressed if anyone could without resorting to google.
Paul hinted a couple of days ago something about a palindrome, I’ve just realised what this meant!

Morning all!
I loooooove this theme, wondering if I'll be able to get them all without google?! Started fairly quickly with 6d leading to 10a and cracking the theme.
Time to make more coffee though to tackle the rest.

This was fantastic! My better half, who I usually bore to death of a morning when I point out clever clues to her, is something of an expert on the theme(!). I spotted the theme by way of 22d then she completely unlocked the puzzle with 1d.

The non-themed clues were also pretty straightforward for a Paul, only new word for me was 14ac which was gettable from the crossers and the wordplay, a quick detour to chambers to check.

The most fun I’ve had with a crossword in a long time.

i'm about 1/4 done, and having got the theme from googling 10, i'm not going to bother doing any more. in contrast to many, paul is just about my least favourite compiler.

All done now, prefer a prize to last longer. As much I enjoyed the theme, I think because I know it so well I could get the answers without much thought and agree some of the wordplay is overly convoluted. There are a few I can't be bothered to figure out. Also had to check 14a as not familiar with that term.
LOI was 2d. COD maybe 18d for its simplicity, and of the themed ones - 5d.
Luckily I'm off to the zoo so shan't be too bored for having finished already.

Like chrise, I'm not usuallay a fan of Paul's but I quite liked this (possibly due to the theme). My route into the theme was 22/20.

I didn't know of couple of the themed answers but managed to guess most of 1/23/24a from the crossers and guessed the right number of muses (they come up so often in crosswords that I should know that!).

A couple of the parsings elude me. No idea on 19d, and 28/4 where I can only get it to work if 'pulled back' s doing double duty.

Mike

In defence of Paul I *did* manage to complete it without resorting to Google, despite not knowing 13 and 17 down and two of the longer answers. Oh, I'd better check I got them right .... yes! 22,20 COD. Many thanks to Paul.