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And as so often happens, 22/6 and 21 immediately came to me once I’d posted

I really enjoyed this - my fastest ever completion of a Paul, albeit some parsings came after the fact. Whilst I adore the taste of wine, I notice that abstinence definitely increases my mental acuity.

For 16a I parsed the overall answer as a synonym for the first word only. The first part of the word I thought a synonym for the second word in the clue as in “I’ll be heading off then” and then finish with the study group… if all of that makes sense without being too spoilerific at this hour.

Thanks Richard, that's how I'd originally parsed it but then, for some reason, I convinced myself there was more to it.

Hi Jono,

Glad to hear you're starting to do the Genius puzzles, the current one is a belter:-)

Easy enough to fill in, with my favourites being 21a and 4d. However I haven't a clue on the parsing of 1a or 2d. Any hints, please?

Hi Chris,

1a - 3 letter "father" (think 'heavenly' around a 5 letter "pet" as in a 'sulk' - definition is "slug, say"

2d - 4 letter "guarantee" around/'saving' a 3 letter "time" (as an abbreviation) - definition is "important".

Apologies Chris, that should be 'A + 5 letter "sulk' inside "father".

Thanks brendan. 1a came to me as I was cooking - not the usual synonyms for father or pet - but I still wouldn't have seen 2d!

Thanks Chris,

I know what you mean, there were quite a lot of unusual synonyms used by Paul in the wordplay.

Although 2 was practically a write-in after solving Guardian 28,647 (Vlad, #16) from 2 days ago, it still took a while to parse.