i App Cryptic Crossword S0129 by Phi
May 26, 2024
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳
Phi today, with an offering that was perhaps a little trickier than par for him? I think so. The Scottish references may have alerted some, but not most I suspect, to a theme regarding one Alasdair Gray that remains a mystery to me, but perhaps not to you. An interesting and lively puzzle.
CoD? I’ll go with 13ac – “Title for man giving nowt ultimately away? (5)”.
All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from May 2020:
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/05/29/independent-10492-phi/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
Quite enjoyed this, and would have finished in ⏳⏳½ time but for my last two (12a/7d) which pushed it towards ⏳⏳⏳⏳. With 12ac I was puzzled by ‘work on paper’ (‘work with paper’ would make more sense to me) and I ended up using a wordlist for 7d as the answer seemed an UNLIKELY synonym for ridiculous 😉. Elsewhere I wondered about ‘F’ for ‘fighter plane’.
No real standout clues for me, but I enjoyed the long anagram at 16a.
Mostly enjoyed Nd completed in about two ehgg timers. Most of the puzzle was excellent, like the CoD.
Four or five clues took longer than the rest of the puzzle, and it looked as though Phi decided it was too easy and so introduced some challenges, some of which were rather clumsy. The clue for GRIMM, for example was superb, but I had to guess that he was also a linguist, although, according to 225, Phi himself concedes he is known better as a collector of fairy tales.
I was not convinced that Appalachian was better than Scottish, German or Australian to describe a CAMPGROUND. And whilst F bring indicated by Fighter plane is OK, there might well have been a neater surface and less clunky wordplay if he had stuck to Female or Following.
But, rant over, more to like than dislike in the puzzle.
….F BEING indicated….
Nice one. Slow to gain much traction at first, but that was probably the excesses of last night still wearing off. Then a steady, moderately chewy solve finishing with CAMPGROUND. Felt like a 3 for difficulty but took longer, if that makes sense. Favourite was SPOONBILL.
I found this to be typically Phi, so nicely enjoyable, finishing in a high ⏳⏳ or low ⏳⏳⏳.
Wasn’t entirely convince by the definition for BOXY , but it couldn’t really be anything else.
I gave the possibility of a theme my carefully rationed nanosecond of consideration. Glad I didn’t give any more…