Crossword roundup: more geometry and politics than football Icosahedron Meaning

Dodecahedron - ICOSAHEDRON - The death of your body

Crossword roundup: more geometry and politics than football Icosahedron Meaning

A search for soccer in our pick of the best of the broadsheets’ cryptic clues

A truncated icosahedron.Photograph: Peter Cade/Getty

Reader, have I missed some great World Cup-themed puzzles?

... but off the pitch: Vladimir PUTIN, using a different sport to boot.

[ synonym for ‘even’ + nickname of US dept of defense ]

... but, with the answer REGULAR PENTAGON, is interested only in some of the segments of the truncated icosahedron that makes up the key bit of kit. If you share Maize’s passion for geometry, there’s plenty more in

Perhaps there are some World Cup themes in the weekend prize challenges, or perhaps setters are holding on for the Round of 16. If you’ve seen others, let’s highlight them in the comments below.

it now. As Paul’s exclamatory tweet suggests, he has certainly mastered the American art.

I usually savour the discovery of a new-to-me word from a puzzle, Icosahedron Meaning

Margin containing recipe associated with English root vegetable (7)

... of SKIRRET was too poignant for me to enjoy the experience for long. Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary:

, a species of water parsnip, formerly much cultivated in Europe for its esculent tubers; the root of this plant.

‘Formerly much cultivated’? The poor skirret. How can this happen to a perennial? It sounds great. Here’s The London Art of Cookery, 1800:

Yum. The poor old skirret. Let’s bring back other Tudor vegetables. Parched black badger peas on Bonfire Night. And black Spanish radish with mustard ... whenever black Spanish radish is in season. A vegetable which was once apparently neglected but happily en vogue is the subject of our next challenge. It’s the esculent root also known as purple goat’s-beard: reader, how would you clue SALSIFY? Icosahedron Meaning

wasn’t popular; of the automotive ones, I especially enjoyed GappyTooth’s “Take back German car that breaks down a lot”, Chrisbeee’s “Old jeep maybe seen on M*A*S*H” and Chippanali’s sly “Dead cert loses a grand, put another grand on non-runner?”. And the unappetising surface of Dunnart’s “Impregnable casing around sausage” misdirects from a lovely

One runner-up is Patjberry47’s “Sausage, or a little beef stew”; the other, which also takes the audacity award, though for a different reason to usual, is Catarella’s “What only Prince Philip might do to pork sausage?”; the winner is Steveran’s elegant “Crate of bananas began ripening in the van”.

Kludos to Steveran; please leave any entries for this week’s competition and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.

... in making the solver think of bean-counters en route to the answer: BALANCE SHEET. Ker-ching.