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7a reminds me of that old joke .What is orange and sounds like a parrot .

Classic 😂 Nice one Chrisxxxx

Agree with others who said this didn’t feel like a Paul in parts. 6d is straight out of the Everyman playbook! Did my usual thing of working through all the clues in order before referring to the grid. I find it interesting to see what proportion of clues can be ‘cold solved’ without crossers and today was a higher proportion than usual for a Saturday. Thought I saw a Nina emerging in row 3 but 5d spoilt it (see what I mean?). 16d my COD also liked 25a, I should have eaten before attempting this! Good fun, cheers all.

I thought that there were a lot of similar clues - reverse hiddens, first letters, last letters; with that and all those fruit, I found it a bit boring (though Paul is a compiler I don't generally enjoy anyway).

Two problems - I can't see that adding O to the other 3 letters in 3d gives a fruit, and I've no idea how 4d parses.

Hi Chris,

Yep, it was all a bit "vanilla", but there you go - I suppose they can't all be classics:-)

3d - If you add the O back in to the outside three letters you get a variety of blackthorn.

4d - The first letter and last 4 letters are the "endless fruit" around a 4 letter "good deal" minus its first letter/"no starter"

Thanks Brendan
I was putting the O in the wrong place!
Not surprised I didn't see 4d...

chrisxxx @21
Try this (the entire book is hilarious!)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33346/33346-h/33346-h.htm#h2H_4_0010

As others have said there were some easy clues for Paul, so I almost finished this with no external help - which is rare for me with a Paul crossword.

My lack of classical knowledge stumped me for 14d / 17a. For 14d, I spotted the device, but didn't realise it gave me a valid answer. And the only 4 letter composer that I knew starting with the correct letter was wrong :-(

For 4d I think I've got the answer but can't parse it. I can get an "endless fruit" for the 1st 2 letters, but stumped by the rest (unless its a 5-letter curry followed by the starting letter of another word in the clue.

minty

It didn't link directly to the picture I wanted. It's 8 in the list of links in the contents.

minty
See brendan @25 for 4d