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Thanks to Picaroon for a fun thematic Prize.
FOI 8, the second one (clue # omitted) in luckily (and instantly) revealed the theme.
On the easy side of recent Prizes IMO; a couple of clues (e.g. 1 and 6) were terms new to me but solvable from wordplay.
LOI 3.
COD 18, much of the NE quadrant was particularly clever as well.
Special thanks to Picaroon for including an elegant and infrequent (especially in Guardian Prize) crossword feature. 'Nuff said to avoid spoilers, perhaps that's already too much. 🤭

Hi Geeker,

Like you, I spotted the theme early on and, I'm guessing, from the same clue.

After solving the first handful of clues I started to think - "can that really just be coincidence"!? 😉😉

As you say, on the easy side but nonetheless, some tricky parsings and definitions.

If you do get stuck there are at least two long anagrams in the acrosses.

The only clue I can't fully parse is 27a - the answer is clear but, other than "tied", I can't see how the rest is derived from "players getting hands" - I wondered if it's related to bridge but I'm not sure?

COD - I'm going for 6d "Member of Parliament said why town law changes" (5,3) - although 5d is also worthy of a special mention.

Thanks to Picaroon for a thoroughly enjoyable Prize puzzle:-)

Yet again last week we had a new poster, "Qbee", join our friendly Prize blog and saw the return of an old regular, "Luko". It takes less than a minute to register and the benefits are numerous. My solving ability and understanding of parsing and clue construction increased massively once I was able to ask fellow solvers for advice. Remember, we were all beginners once so never be afraid to ask for help.

Stay safe:-)

Brendan, I parsed 27 as (4, 5). The 4 is "player" (card game, as you thought), the 5 "hands tied". Defn. is first part of clue (up to the comma). Perhaps "getting" indicates concatenation (I'm a former computer programmer)...

Thanks Geeker, my indecision comes from whether the 4 relates to "player getting hands" (indicating the type of player and game involved) or just "player" with, as you say, the 5 relating to "hands tied".

PS At least I managed to get a ✅ this week.

Thanks to Barny for letting us know why correct solutions didn't get one last week - it seems the answer to 12a SHEIKHS was incorrectly given as SHEIKS - even though that only has 6 letters and the enumeration shows 7!

Ditto your words in 2 Brendan. I rarely finished the prize on a Saturday years ago before I came here. Not just because of the useful hints but I learned so much about types of clues, techniques often used etc. I also learned how not to be a robot.

Very much a North South divide for me thus far. Can't get a foot in the North yet. I'm assuming 5d I'm going to have to resort to Google because I don't know much about that part of the world.

Thanks Rocky, likewise - I learnt all the different types of clues and made some good friends in the process:-)

5d - Don't be misled, the doctor is much more familiar answer than you might think 😉

Yes I got it soon after posting. Though I did have to Google the 'bread'.

Mostly NW left now. Never read about 16d. Desperately trying to remember all the places one of my all time favourite TV star and writer went to solve 4d.

Found that quite tricky but generally very good fun with some clever misdirection. The bottom half went in much easier than the top. In 27a I parsed “player getting hands” as the first four letters. I only know 19d from crosswords, it seems to crop up fairly regularly. 1d was LOI, got it from the wordplay but didn’t think it was a real word, but sure enough it’s in Chambers

Hi Jono,

Agree about the parsing of 27a. I had exactly the same thought regarding 1d - it sounded like it was right even if it didn't look it, but I had to double-check in Chambers:-)

Geeker - no one’s mentioned it, so looks like your reference was obscure enough to say without saying!