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Thanks to Prize regular and fan favo(u)rite Picaroon for another entertaining weekend challenge. Apologies to Brendan, starting the thread early so I can shut down the computer for a while.

FOI 17. Started out looking difficult with little in the way of low-hanging fruit, but then sped up, solving time significantly shorter than usual. Very gentle by Picaroonian standards. :-)

LOI 1a which took a while to parse due to unfamiliar usage.

Too lazy to pick a single COD. Clues 9 (familiar from a recent Paul weekday puzzle and iirc either a WSJ or Harpers), 5a, 5d, 4, 3 and 22 all top-shelf, so call it a 6-way tie. Another half-dozen good ones IMO.

Hi Geeker,

Similar experience to yours in that I went looking for low hanging fruit but found hardly any!

FOI was 25a which I recommend as a good starting point if you're having trouble getting going.

If you do get stuck there is at least one hidden and at least one long anagram, both in the downs.

A few clues had some unfamiliar usage of common words with threw me at first but which I began to appreciate more and more as the pennies began to fall:-)

I did also think that one answer contained a 'ghost anagram' which I understood to be verboten in cryptic crosswords but, after re-reading the clue, I see the mistake was mine.

COD - I did have a list of three or four contenders but eventually decided on 4d to the exclusion of all others 😀

Thanks to Picaroon for another high quality Prize puzzle.

Let us know in comments how you got on.

Stay safe:-)

very rapid solve. 1d favourite.
i can't see where the outside 4 letters of 1a come from, or all the parsing of 8d.

Hi Chris,

1a - "still" as you might take with a camera

8d - 2 letter "soldiers" inside anagram/high of "heat" the 2 letter "also" striped of outside letters.

thanks brendan

Pretty quick solve for me too, but plenty to like. Learned a few word (24) and usage (2). Hard to pick a COD, but I’ll go with 27.

Incidentally, I’d forgotten what a ghost anagram is, so I searched online. That took me back here to a thread started by chrise in 2012. That thread contained a link to a previous thread from 2010 which had a lively discussion of a clue whose solution was bubalis. Great read!

All the best everyone!

I can't get my head round 14 across: the bits are (sort of) all there, but I can't get them in the right order.

14a Unseen Observer article with lines knowing about everything (3,2,3,4) = 3 letter article, 1 letter with, “lines”=goes in the middle of, 3 letter knowing, 2 letter about, 3 letter all. Phew!

Sorry, should end with 3 letter everything

I'm having trouble parsing 18a.