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A boy and his father are involved in a car accident. The father is killed. The boy is taken to hospital. In the operating theatre, the surgeon says I cannot operate on this boy: he is my son.
This was once a conundrum ...

I will keep doing this until I get no comments on having done so for an entire year :-)

When I saw that this month's puzzle was a Soup, I thought "Whoopee!" My heart then sank on seeing the preamble. Prospero's post put me on the right track to an engrossing many hours.
A good mixture of clues from the easy to the exasperating. I'm not sure that the frog is fair, but he is famous :) Thanks, Hamish.

The first ciphered entry I cracked was 15D, then 30D, so i thought there might be a hint to the ciphered answers in the clues. 12A as well, but are there any others?

Help please with 21a Hawk in small hole (4) (one of the 16)

and 18a Old man's aides (4) (also 1 of the 16)

xwordfan - the hawk is an alternative meaning from the bird - wordplay: normal letter for small + synonym for (large) hole. 10 is a classic word for father which involves two assistants.
app - I think 13 is intentional but don't believe any of the others are ... Hamish will doubtless put me right in due course.

thanks prospero ...never heard of spit to mean hawk though ?

As You Like It: V iii 10

Thank you!

Am very much enjoying this puzzle, but still have a couple of struggles, namely 20d and 28a - even though there have been hints!

Is the latter a Dickens thang, and to be enciphered, it seems so? I have the central letter F.

Was unawares of the sapphires location - having only been there during the civil war and mostly on the east coast, post tsunami, so rather focused on other things.