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Brendan and geeker - think of ‘powerful’ as meaning ‘full of power’ and that should explain both the letter and its insertion in ‘bear with me’.

Surprisingly not any worse than a regular Paul for me, although I did get lucky with the Johnny clue, which leapt out at me not through any mental gymnastics, but solely because I have a friend whose nickname is Johnny 1ac.
Still trying to parse 12ac and 27ac.

... and of course have immediately parsed 27ac after posting

12 is self-referential, 1 inside 3.

Morning all. Curses! I was thrown for ages starting 8d with a t..

Good fun I thought. The long ones yielded fairly early on. Some tricky parsing.

I agree with Rog that it’s been a curious week in the world of Guardian cryptics. I’ve now watched all six episodes of Ludwig. And I wouldn’t have spotted yesterday’s Nina had I not gone back to the blog later in the day. Did any of you?

I thought this might mark another milestone but in fact not quite… Araucaria holds the record for setting the most Guardian prize crosswords with 317. Paul currently (including this one) is on 315. No one else is even close, the next highest is Picaroon on 65.

Hi jono
If it’s any comfort, I would not have got yesterday’s Nina in a million years without reference to 225. I’m hopeless at spotting Ninas (I always forget to look for them), but this one meant nothing to me in any event!

Full of smut and puerile toilet humour - I loved it!

Ianwill

Exactly. God, honest British vulgarity. Been around since the miller caught a buss (Thanks Enigmatist). Can't beat it.

Very enjoyable and Pauline.
Solutions flowing rather than 8d once I got 25/19/1a which clicked early on.
FOI 18a
LOI 3d which is also my CoD