i Cryptic Crossword 4147 by Phi
May 22, 2024
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳
A lovely little puzzle from Phi brings us to mid-week. I was held up for a short while at the close on the crossing 1d and 11ac, but elsewhere progress was pretty steady, with any unknowns revealing themselves as nicely as you would like thanks to the always lucid wordplay. If one of Phi’s themes is lurking then it wasn’t spotted on the other side, with no sign either of Phi popping by to give a hint to something that we would never have spotted anyway. 😉
CoD? I’ll go with 13d – “Fiery monster in sulphur alarmed an oddball (10)”.
All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from May 2020:
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/05/15/independent-10480-by-phi/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
Agree with above. Good to see Phi back at his best. Liked CRAPULENCE, ESCALATOR and COMMUNAL.
Yup, nothing to quibble about here; I marked it as maybe ⌛⌛½.
Very enjoyable, still easing my way back into the solving saddle so ⏳⏳⏳ here. Like Jon, 1d/11ac held me up a bit at the end.
A good solid Phi. 🙂
What Denzo & Saboteur said.
Most enjoyable. No theme or nina that I could see; it’s probably one of those puzzles where Phi just seeds the grid with a few words that he has some good clues for.