The official bored-at-work cryptic crossword pass it on thread.

you're on fire! took me ages of pondering to get that...

once you twigged the anagram it wasn't too bad. the hardest clues are the ones where you can't work out yr line of attack i think

Good use of cricketing terminology!

That's where the c comes from?! I've been learning via puzzles in The Nation, and Frank Lewis being American I haven't run into cricket abbrevs.

c = caught, that is.

Yeah, "c" for caught is an abbreviation used on cricket scoreboards, so it's widely used and accepted in UK crosswords

further sources of confusion: Bowled = b; run out = ro; stumped = st

not out = no

don't think you'd have much use for lbw

Joint, English, strangely out leg before wicket? (5)

lol ok

Guarantee Jimmy will take a meditative chant (7)

promise

aye

was racking my brains as to why Jimmy = prise, then it struck me...

Eccentric Scotsman puts his finished documents here, by the sound of it (5)

Seriously annoyed with this clue from Paul in the guardian prize btw:

Into smacking, if I then propose shaking, the results should confirm it (3,5,2,2,3,7)

ans: The proof is in the pudding.

THE PROOF IS NOT IN THE FUCKING PUDDING

lol outré.

lol

That is nice. I usually am terrified of clues with scots things in them ('Hamish's cradle', 'Classy In Inverness' etc etc). There's one most weeks in Azed & it just means a bloody war of attrition and then dictionary mining to find a dialect word or strange spelling I'll immediately forget.

just had a look at that prize & god paul can be irritating.

In North America, island, island, island, island capital (7)

Fun, but next to no surface sense.

can't see the problem with that pudding clue. or the answer.

(it's the kind of clue i get by the word sizes rather than the anagram though)

there's no such phrase as "the proof is in the pudding".

"the proof of the pudding is in the eating" wouldn't fit across a standard sized crossword i guess.

have you tried googling recently?

was always 'proof is in the pudding' at ours - the ingredients are all well and good but the proof is in the finished result.

1st google result

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proof-of-the-pudding.html

"That longer version makes sense at least, whereas the shortened version really doesn't mean anything"

only seems to work with a truncated phrase but...

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=proof%20is%20in%20the%20pudding%2Cpudding%20is%20in%20the%20eating&corpus=0&smoothing=1&year_start=1800&year_end=2008

i look at that graph and i see a massive decline for the one, the other going from strength to strength. it's just a matter of time... 8)

"proof" doesn't mean "evidence" in this sense either, but "test", i.e. "the test of whether the pudding is any good is in its taste and not other considerations"

would be ok with this if Paul had set a themed enraging/divisive-phrases crossword - 'proof is in the pudding', 'another think coming', 'literally a viking' etc etc

we should do one.

*cough* "another think coming" is uncontroversial and correct

You know where to take it.

what a fantastic thread.

i am sleep-deprived and can't do any of today's guardian, sigh.

proof is in the another vikink coming

i'm doing better than usual at today's guardian

Blend or brew or fictional small family member? (8)

Borrower :)

v good

(wasn't mine. is Brummie from today's guardian)

need 2 from today's guardian:

12A Powdered bottom (6) _ R _ U _ _

3D One unknown to get into firm danger (6) _ A _ A _ _

(the last letters are the same, the rest are unches)

ground

hazard?

ah, with a-z to do with unknown somehow?

that's what I was thinking. it's how I get most clues tbh, vague hand-waving.

yes and yes, thanks (and so obvious when you know)

i suck at dual definition clues.

z often used in algebra to denote an unknown variable. (or x or y)

on a very bad day i resort to vague handwriting, just so onlookers think i've solved it

One = A (ie singular)

x would have been the obvious algebra substitution but ok

you're so one-dimensional 8)

on a very bad day i resort to vague handwriting, just so onlookers think i've solved it

a little flourish before and after I find helps with that.

mr beanism

Puzzle by Pasquale/Quixote/Don Manley in the New York Times this weekend.

Just did it. It was enjoyable, pretty easy.

Finally did puzzle that won The Nation contest. Very nice. Those guys edited a book of insanely hard variety cryptics, National Puzzler's League Cryptic Crosswords, which is now out of print, but can be found on the web for free.