Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Well, after a tricky week of Guardian cryptics (especially yeaterday’s) and a couple of more or less challenging Prize crosswords recently, this one came as a bit of a relief. Very well clued throughout, I’d say, with a nice variety of devices and range of difficulty within the gentle spectrum.
FOI the arguably too obvious 7. LOI 13, which I see had to look up having guessed the word (correctly) based on the parsing fodder.
COD? Difficult to choose, but I’m going with 11 for the saintly surface.
Many thanks to the Don for the entertainment.

(Superfluous ‘see’ in my OP - sorry)

A decent and entertatining workout, and probably the appropriate level of difficulty for the Prize puzzle that has so far contained Paul and Vlad. LOI and COD was 26a, it taking me an unfortunate amount of time to cotton on to Pasquale's clever parsing.

mogwai - I agree that 26 was very clever. Not sure I’ve seen anything comparable before. It wasn’t my LOI, purely because I got the solution from the crossers and then managed to work out the parsing before moving on.

Hi Rog,

Agree that this was much less demanding than some of those we've had of late, but great fun nonetheless.

I did wonder if the combination of 19a and 24a might signify something, but nothing springs to mind.

FOI was 9a followed by 10a, but I agree that 7d is a virtual gimme.

26a - I still haven't been able to fully parse this, although I am sure of my answer, so that will require some further thought.

Having got the last couple of crossers in 25a I almost fell into the elephant trap and so that held me up in the SE corner for a while but it was my mistake so no complaints.

COD - I did like your choice of 11a but I'm going for 15d.

Thanks to Pasquale for a very enjoyable start to the weekend.

Stay safe:-)

Ahhh! The posting genie has struck again and I now see 26a - very clever:-)

Thanks to the Don. Definitely on the gentle side - a number of clues were Quiptic-like - but some unfamiliar words and a few tricky parsings that provided a workout.
FOI 9. LOI the combination of 15 and 26, which together more than doubled solving time.
COD 15 over 24, 17, 16 and 1a.
25 admits a Pauline wordplay, but Pasquale chose an innocent (though clever enough) route. 😏

Hi Bren
I nearly put 15 as my COD - it’s certainly up there.
I’m now trying to work out what the elephant trap in 25a might be. I think I’m being dense.
Interesting point about 19a and 24a, but nothing springs to my (slightly dead) mind either.
As to 26a, I won’t give any hints as you clearly intend to persevere with the parsing. It’s far from obvious, but I think it works!
Very best wishes
Rog

I have two plausible synonyms for the definition in 2d depending on whether you use an English or Latin abbreviation. Is this an overlooked ambiguity or am I missing something?

Aah, Bren, you got there with 26 while I was composing!
Geeker - re 25, I’m glad I’m not the only one with a Pauline mind! 😏