QC 1855 by Mara

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

A good variety of clues here including the use of quite a few anagrams although I think only one was an anagram pure and simple. All the others were elements of larger constructions. Many thanks to Mara for a witty and enjoyable start to the week.

FOI was 1A and LOI was I believe 12D. The answer did cross my mind earlier but I left it to make sure as I don’t think I have ever used a 12D in my life (never having seen that there was anything wrong with the written word for communication and having a vague feeling that having gone to all the trouble of evolving it from hieroglyphics it doesn’t make a lot of sense to reverse the process). Also they have really now been taken over by emojis haven’t they? (Or should the plural of that be emoji by comparison with fish or deer?) So the word already has a slightly retro feel to me even though it is only a few years old and I thought it best just to leave it to the end to give it my full attention. My COD was 3D. I suspect it’s a bit of a chestnut but I do like it.

Definitions are underlined as usual and everything else is explained just as I see it as simply as I can.

Across
1 Note repeated about a city in Florida (5)
MIAMI – MI MI (note repeated – as found in the Do Re Mi scale) ‘about’ A.
4 Two pieces for minor role (3,4)
BIT PART – BIT + PART (two pieces).
8 Trimmer vessel (7)
CLIPPER – double definition (hair trimmer and a three-masted ship built for speed).
9 Punch a fragile thing (5)
CHINA – CHIN (punch, as in “I’ll chin you!”) + A.
10 A large nut badly crushed, ultimately in little pieces (10)
GRANULATED – GRANULATE (anagram (‘badly’) of A LARGE NUT) + D (crusheD ‘ultimately’).
14 Clean, favourite child, endearingly (6)
MOPPET – MOP (clean) + PET (favourite).
15 As if failed, company in state of disorder (6)
FIASCO – anagram (‘failed’) of AS IF + CO (company).
17 Get down to business and discuss what to have for Christmas? (4,6)
TALK TURKEY – TALK (discuss) + TURKEY (what to have for Christmas). Alternatively you could look at it as a double definition with the second one being slightly cryptic as indicated by the ‘?’. So that is pretty clever to have two clues for the price of one but sadly in the end it does make the solution rather easier if you’re given two different ways to get there.
20 Cold, cold elevation (5)
CHILL – C (cold) + HILL (elevation).
22 Originally, eight tendons in sheep joint (7)
FETLOCK – ET (the first letters (‘originally’) of Eight Tendons) ‘in’ FLOCK (sheep).
23 Just coming up, link for woman’s garment (7)
NIGHTIE – NIGH (just coming up, as in ‘the end is nigh’) + TIE (link).
24 Ladder positioned vertically, build quickly (3,2)
RUN UP – RUN (ladder, as in a stocking or pair of tights) + UP (positioned vertically).
Down
1 Animals, many in central Europe, initially (4)
MICE – Many In Central Europe ‘initially’.
2 Keen to have opera star sent up (4)
AVID – DIVA (opera star) reversed. i.e. ‘sent up’ in this down clue.
3 Tense boast of bighead? (9)
IMPERFECT – a bighead might say “I’M PERFECT”.
4 Bear eating nothing bland (6)
BORING – BRING (bear, as in ‘we come bearing gifts’) ‘eating’ O (nothing).
5 Brief moment for twitch (3)
TIC – remove the last letter (i.e. make it ‘brief’) from TICk (moment).
6 Order dictates it’s a critical assessment (4,4)
ACID TEST – straight anagram (order) of DICTATES.
7 Sign of grief after race, let down (8)
TEARDROP – TEAR (race, as in ‘racing around’) + DROP (let down).
11 I select different queen, where Richard III lies (9)
LEICESTER – anagram of I SELECT (‘different’) + ER (Elizabeth Regina, queen) gives the resting place of the remains of Richard III. Of course, he was the last of the Yorkists but he was found in what is now a car park in Leicester where he was taken after being killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field (the last English monarch to die in battle. I think there is another quiz question as to who was the last English monarch to lead troops into battle (without actually dying in the process) and I think it was one of the Georges but I am notoriously bad on stuff like this so no doubt somebody will put me right). I believe there was a brief tussle between York and Leicester about where his remains (and therefore all the tourist revenue – the Richard III Experience is now the main tourist attraction in Leicester when tourists are allowed) should end up, but I guess possession is nine-tenths of the Law, so barring a daring midnight raid by a team of Yorkists à la Stone of Scone that’s where he’s probably going to stay.
12 Mysterious notice inscribed with second digital symbol (8)
EMOTICON – anagram (‘mysterious’) of NOTICE ‘inscribed’ with MO (second, as in ‘wait a mo(ment)’)
13 Letter-writing skill of witches and wizards? (8)
SPELLING – witches and wizards cast spells, which could cryptically be rendered as a verb ‘to spell’, of which the infinitive would be SPELLING.
16 Dessert: it’s insignificant (6)
TRIFLE – double definition. My Mum used to make lovely ones at Christmas with a sponge biscuit base soaked in rum or Madeira or something like that.
18 Thus working shortly (4)
SOON – SO (thus) + ON (working).
19 Avoid container filled with rubbish (4)
SKIP – double definition.
21 Fortune invested in clothing (3)
LOT – hidden word: ‘invested in’ cLOThing.

67 comments on “QC 1855 by Mara”

  1. Didn’t know they had parking lots back then. In any case, I knew he’d been dug up but didn’t know it was Leicester. Biffed FETLOCK, parsed after submission. 5:54.
  2. A fast one for me — so much so that I didn’t have time to notice what I hadn’t parsed: CHIN, EMOTICON, SKIP, and a few others perhaps. Thanks to astartedon for sorting it out for me! Misparsed the last letter of GRANULATED as ‘ultimate in little’ = E, which didn’t help matters, but I knew it probably wasn’t right and moved on.
  3. All green in 10 for a fast start to the week. Managed five on the first pass of acrosses with all of those in the top half. I’ve been getting FETLOCKs confused with my forelocks my whole life because I was surprised when it appeared and was so obviously right. Also help up by SKIP, NIGHTIE and CHINA where the ‘thing’ of ‘fragile thing’ together with dredging up ‘chin’ for punch (never seen outside “I’ll chin ‘im” and not in thirty years?) took a bit longer than perhaps it should have. Good puzzle and a great blog.

    Edited at 2021-04-19 05:46 am (UTC)

  4. I struggled to complete this within my 10-minute target and only just about made it. Actually I think I may have been over by about 15 seconds, but since I include parsing in my times which most quick solvers do not, I decided to allow myself a little leeway and count it as a ‘win’ anyway.
  5. Fairly gentle going but with a couple of brain freezes towards the end. At 14a I couldn’t get poppet out of my head, even though it clearly wasn’t right and it took a while until I spotted that LOI EMOTICON was an anagram. Finished in 9.20.
    Thanks to astartedon
  6. 17:11. Solid time, slowest in SW corner. LOI CHILL, FOI MIAMI.

    Biffed NEGLIGE which fitted the three checkers I had in at the time and “had to be”. This left an unpromising “I” for a three letter word for fortune or clothing. Eventually backtracked to finish.

    MOPPET was pencilled in then inked then pencilled again and until the blog I couldn’t see how it meant “endearingly”. Now I see that I had “child” attached to “favourite”. The old lift and separate needed again.

    COD 17a TALK TURKEY, although did not get it until late on.

  7. A good puzzle. Some gifts plus some clever clues to slow an otherwise rapid start for me. In the end, I exceeded my target by a minute (all parsed, apart from NIGHTIE). I agree with the suggested 12d and 22a as CsOD. I sympathise with setters but if I see AVID/DIVA again, I’ll scream. It is nearly as tedious as ETON. Like Don, I warmed to IMPERFECT and thought 19d was a clever little clue — I only moved from the obvious sidetracks when the crossers emerged. Thanks to Mara and Don. John M.
  8. … and all finished in 8 minutes. A nicely constructed puzzle which I enjoyed.

    16D Trifle is a favourite dessert in our family, except that we usually add more and more to it, so much so that one of our guests at a Sunday lunch once commented “That’s not a Trifle, it’s a Substantial”.

    Nice to see China clued as something other than Mate for a change. Sometimes I think that Crosswordland is the last refuge of Cockney Rhyming Slang — certainly one seldom hears it on the streets of East London these days.

    Many thanks to Don for the blog
    Cedric

    1. I largely agree about the rhyming slang but there was one time a couple of years ago when a blind guy cleared a flat for me (honestly — although he did have a bit of help from a couple of his CHINAS!). At the end of the job he asked (as such traders often do) if I could pay him in cash.

      Conversation went as follows:

      Me: OK that’s great, thank you. Will you send me an invoice?

      Him: I’d rather not. You couldn’t go over to Tesco’s and get me some Cadbury’s Smash could you?

      Having said that I guess he was really deliberately using that sort of language in the same way that people try to keep Welsh, Erse, Gaelic, Cornish etc alive. No disrespect to those people, I admire their spirit, but to me it looks as though they are on an inevitable slide down a slippery slope, if not to extinction then at least to museum curiositydom.

      I’m sitting back and waiting for the tide of indignation, no doubt written in those very languages which I will sadly be unable to understand, to prove me wrong!

      1. Thought of Cadbury’s Smash the other day when there was a clue about mashed potato. Don’t suppose its available these days.

  9. FOI: 4a
    LOI: 24a

    Time to Complete: 63 minutes

    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 25

    Clues Answered with Aids (3 lives): 18d.

    Clues Unanswered: Nil

    Wrong Answers: Nil

    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 26/26

    Aids Used: Chambers

    A nice start to the week with a completion. I did not know that Richard III lies in Leicester, but the anagram +ER lead me to that answer. I learned something new today.

    14a. MOPPET – I was not too sure on this one but felt it was the right answer. On completion I looked up the word MOPPET in the dictionary to find it is an archaic form of POPPET.

    17a. TALK TURKEY – I have never heard of this phrase before, but the letters present nudged me to entering it.

    18a. SOON – The only clue in which I used an aid. I initially had ERGO pencilled in, but as I came to complete clues that crossed that word, I knew I had it wrong. Chambers gave me SO for thus, and I immediately got it from seeing those two letters.

    Edited at 2021-04-19 08:10 am (UTC)

  10. Was going well for about half of it, but then slowed down. No really bad hold ups, but just enough chewiness in several clues to take me close to my target. Thankfully not over though as I finished in 28:29. For the second time in the last couple of weeks I put LIGHTER in and had to correct it to CLIPPER before too long. Never heard of the expression TALK TURKEY, but I like it. I wonder what its origins are: problems in the Middle East or the annual conference of poultry farmers? Anyway, FOI 1a, LOI IMPERFECT (not being a linguist and having grown up in the ’80s when the teaching of a lot of grammar was deemed unnecessary, that meaning of “tense” just didn’t occur to me until I saw what the answer was, and I have no idea what the imperfect tense is. When you chosen the wrong one perhaps?). COD 6d ACID TEST. Thanks Mara and Astartedon.
    1. That’s interesting to hear about not learning about tenses and so on. What a stupid attitude. The names of the tenses (and a lot of other grammatical terms) are simply straightforward descriptions that make a lot of sense. Taking the example that occurred today, the word PERFECT simply means something that is finished, or complete. Thus the PERFECT tense is a past tense that is used for actions that have definitely finished. Like you have definitely finished the crossword. IMPERFECT is a past tense that is used for things that might not have finished yet. So someone might say of you this morning “when I saw him he was doing the crossword”. The crossword now may or may not be finished — we cannot tell. And whereof we cannot speak thereof we must be silent, so the best we can do there is to use the IMPERFECT tense for an action that for all we know may not yet be finished. And so on and so on. I’m probably going off on one a bit but I am certainly eternally grateful for the time I spent being taught all that stuff. It is immensely useful without you actually realising it. I suspect that a lot of this sort of thing happens because the people who were useless at it at school and didn’t understand it have now grown up into positions of power where they can delete (or ‘cancel’ is probably the modern term) whole swathes of useful educational material from syllabuses just because they didn’t like doing them when they were at school.
      1. I’m sorry, but I don’t follow. Could you explain what is useful about knowing the meaning of ‘perfect’ when it applies to tenses? Crispb knows as well as you or I do what the difference is between, say, “He did the crossword” and “He was doing the crossword”. The tense, by the way, of “He was doing the crossword” is the past tense.
        1. From what I remember from school, albeit many moons ago, the past tense had two sub-groups: the perfect and the imperfect, collectively known as the past tense.

          In fact I seem to recall there being a pluperfect tense too, though I think that was part of a French lesson.

          Edited at 2021-04-19 01:14 pm (UTC)

          1. You are completely correct Poison! I was going to mention the pluperfect (a sort of ‘super perfect’) but thought the post was getting a bit long.
            1. Don’t forget the simple past — what we learnt as the preterite in Spanish ! And in there is an example 😊

    2. I too went to school in the 80s and only know tenses from doing Latin and modern languages. My children as the product of Gove’s reforms have done vastly more grammar than we ever did. I do feel it’s gone too far in the other direction though when they’re asking me about fronted adverbials age 7!

  11. Fast then dim in SE corner. Had a brain freeze and looked up dessert which gave me FETLOCK and SKIP. Biffed CHINA.
    Thanks all, esp Don.
  12. What a pleasure this puzzle was. Full of good surfaces and nice clues; some may see a few chestnuts but I enjoyed them. Thanks to Mara.
    My FOI was MIAMI; LOI SPELLING after a brief hold-ups for MOPPET and EMOTICON. Time: 08:40.
    COD to ACID TEST but lots of contenders.
    David
  13. Like others I started off very quickly and thought I was going to match my sub 6 minutes time on Friday. FOI MIAMI, biffed NIGHTIE and FETLOCK (parsed post solve), remembered EMOTICON from a previous QC, guessed at TALK TURKEY (NHO) and my LOI was CHINA in a pleasing 7:36. Thanks Mara and Don
  14. FETLOCK, CHINA and ACID TEST (even if no electric kool aid was involved)

    Felt like it was taking ages, so was pleasantly surprised to see the clock stopped at 5:39.

    RUN UP was LOI, took a few seconds to make sure of the parsing.

    1. In Statistics there is a test called the Least Square Deviation (LSD) test, which is called the “Acid Test”
  15. Just inside 13 minutes, so comfortably within target today. I’ve had a rest from crosswords over the weekend, spending my time re-reading the excellent Smiley’s People, so this turned out to be a fairly gentle reintroduction after a short break. The left went in much quicker than the right. Great to see my old home town in the grid, and in the FA Cup final. Happy days!
    1. What an enjoyable weekend you will have had. I too like to reread the Smiley books periodically and especially Smiley’s People. Although I watch very little television and very few films (I’m much more of a words man myself) I do also periodically rewatch the BBC television series of both Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People although I prefer the latter because of the air of melancholy that pervades it and the perfect performances of every single character (in TTSS I thought there were a couple of roles that weren’t quite right although still overall excellent. I don’t think I quite liked the Peter Guillam character as much in TTSS for instance (a different actor from SP although I don’t know their names). But Bernard Hepton as Toby, Beryl Reid as Connie, and the other actors who played Willem, Stella (Maureen Lipman in fact wasn’t it?), Vladimir and Otto and Oliver and Percy and everyone else — sheer certifiable brilliance. And of course the series were long enough to do full justice to the books and bring them faultlessly to life (not like that silly TTSS film version with Gary Oldman (I hate to say that because I think he is generally excellent (perhaps I am biased though as I did go to school with him for a number of years) although in fact there was nothing wrong with his performance — the problem was just trying to squeeze the intricacy of the book into a 2-hour film.).
      1. I agree with your comments, but whatever one says about casting, it remains true that TTSS and SP produced the two best examples of the art of casting in my lifetime – Connie Sachs played by Beryl Reid and Alec Guinness playing Smiley himself. Outstanding performances from both of them.
        1. Absolutely. I didn’t mention Alec Guinness as I sort of took him as read! There is no other Smiley.
  16. Had a bit of a blind spot in the NE, which held me up for a while, then was slow to sort the SW, where my LOI was SPELLING. I think it’s Monday morning brain fade! MIAMI was FOI, but I thought of TAMPA first. Just crept in under 10 minutes. 9:57. Thanks Mara and Don.
  17. A nice start to the week with a 20 mins finish for an enjoyable Mara puzzle. Would have been better but got hung up on 3dn (for some reason I couldn’t get “important” out of my head until I realised the spelling wouldn’t work)

    11dn “Leicester” was a write in whilst it took a little longer to get the right combo for “Talk Turkey” (I so wanted to put Cold Turkey, although it didn’t make sense)

    FOI — 1dn “Mice”
    LOI — 3dn “Imperfect”
    COD — 9ac “China”

    Thanks as usual!

  18. Struggled in the SW corner until I resorted to help for EMOTICON – not a word in my usual vocabulary. The rest then followed swiftly. Guessed FETLOCK – thanks for explanation.
  19. I must have spent nearly as long on my last three or four as the rest of the clues put together. Boring, China, and Emoticon were the main culprits — all looked plausible, but I found their parsings tricky. I kept on thinking ‘tic’ for second in 12d, and I’m still not totally convinced about punch/chin in 9ac (is this the only example where the target becomes the action?), but then I’ve had a peaceful life, by and large. Overall, a sluggish 25mins. Invariant
    1. Chinning was the unpleasant act, where said part of body was used to make hard contact was another person. More a weapon, than a target.
      2. As a former amateur boxer, I can assure you that no-one uses their chin as an offensive weapon! “I chinned him” means “I punched him flush on the chin”.
        1. Not in boxing, I grant you. I’m a former amateur boxer, too. But there are no rules between two drunks outside a pub. It was when reading a victim statement, that I learned that it sometimes means, ‘using the chin to inflict an injury on the other’s shoulder’. Ouch!
  20. Felt like it was taking ages. It was. 10K.
    When the mind is troubled the cogs turn slowly.
    Thanks Astartedon and Mara.
  21. I found this tough, as I often do with Mara puzzles. Just not on the same wavelength at all this morning. Had to dodge around the grid and also had to resort to aids to get EMOTICON. Biffed NIGHTIE – hadn’t a clue what was going on with the parsing. Took me 34 minutes in all to complete but nothing unfair or complex about the clueing, although I hesitated to equate chin with punch.

    FOI – 1ac MIAMI
    LOI – 12dn EMOTICON
    COD – 17ac TALK TURKEY

    Thanks to blogger and setter

  22. I guess I find it useful in several ways but doing crosswords is a minor case in point. And on the larger scale just knowing something about how the meanings of words relate to each other. But then again perhaps that isn’t useful and anyway nothing is useful as we’re all going to die soon and return to dust. Until that happens though we will all find different things useful in achieving our trivial daily ends. I suspect you and I will differ on the things we find useful and we probably just have to agree to do that.
  23. I’m with Rotter – good to see Leicester (in my adopted home county) making its occasional visit to crosswordland, and its even rarer visit to the FA cup final! You’re right Don that there was a tussle between York and Leicester over Richard III’s final resting place. The right place won – after all, it’s not as if York hasn’t got more than its fair share of lovely places to see. The RIII visitors centre is really interesting – it’s as much to do with the archaeology as the history. The tomb in Leicester cathedral is very moving as well – well worth a visit if any of you ever get to this quiet part of the world.
    On to the puzzle: an enjoyable start to the week which I finished, all parsed, in about 8 minutes. Nothing particularly stood out tbh and CHINA and TEARDROP slowed me down a bit. I did like SKIP, although I suspect that quite a lot of people DON’T avoid them! LEICESTER was a biff as soon as I spotted the king 😅
    FOI Miami
    LOI china
    COD Imperfect

    Thanks Mara and Don

    1. The legal challenge was actually brought not by the city of York but by the “Plantagenet Alliance”, a rather ragtag-and-bobtail assortment of Richard’s (very) distant relatives! They managed to get permission for a judicial review but then lost pretty comprehensively.

      Edited at 2021-04-19 01:53 pm (UTC)

      1. You are the man to know that! Thanks very much for those details.

        Edited at 2021-04-19 05:15 pm (UTC)

      2. I’d forgotten the details, but — as you can imagine — it was a hot topic round here for a while! Thanks for the reminder 😊
  24. … of 27 minutes, today. She has made two chocolate cakes this morning — one for her elderley parents and the other (a birthday cake) for her sister, all of whom we are seeing tomorrow (outdoors, of course) — so she has yet to take on today’ QC challenge. N.B. My contribution to the cake-making process was to lick the bowl — a very onerous and important task, in my opinion.

    For me, the top half of the grid went in unusually quickly and smoothly. The lower half posed a few more problems, but none I couldn’t overcome. I biffed COLD TURKEY and MUPPET at first, before correcting when trying to parse them fully. I was also nervous about CHINA, because CLIP seemed a better word for punch than CHIN.

    Many thanks to Mara and astartedon, as usual.

    1. Obviously you are lucky enough to live near family. We have two family birthdays next week and two last week but the only one I can make a cake for is my other half who shares his birthday with our Devon living son. The two granddaughters last week were up in Teesdale. Still no-one has had Covid and we hope to catch up with them all next month. Enjoy the garden birthdays — and the chocolate cake!
    2. In my opinion, you’re never too old to lick the residual cake mixture in a bowl.

      I would also add buttercream and icing to that onerous, but incredibly important, task.

    3. Just to report that Mrs Random has found the time to squeeze today’s QC into her tight schedule, and that (as ever) she timed her effort to perfection — 25 minutes, beatng me by two minutes. Her only real delay was caused by incorrectly biffing NEGLIGE, even though she knew it should have two Es and that it didn’t parse properly.

      Mrs R somehow always knows how I have done, even if I don’t tell her in advance of her attempt, and she is sufficiently adept at measuring her effort accordingly. Just another of her many competencies.

  25. A good puzzle to start the week – nice mix of clues some of which needed some thought. We finished in 18 minutes although it felt a lot longer.

    FOI: MIAMI
    LOI: EMOTICON
    COD: TALK TURKEY

    Thanks Mara and Astartedon.

  26. When I saw clipper, china and granulated, I wondered if we were going to have an afternoon tea related Nina.

    I found this an enjoyable outing with no need to resort to aids. LOI was emoticon which I biffed but couldn’t parse.

  27. Pretty much on my average time of exactly 20 minutes today so a decent challenge. I wasn’t sure talk turkey was an expression but seemed clear from the clue. I also didn’t see the anagram for acid test, so that slowed me down a bit. And got slightly stuck like others in the SW with fetlock and skip my LOIs.

  28. Held up by the South Westerlies, especially MOPPET and EMOTICON. A very neat puzzle with some excellent surfaces, much enjoyed.

    FOI MIAMI, LOI TEARDROP, COD FETLOCK (lovely clue), time 09:53 for 1.7K and a Good Day.

    Many thanks Don and Mara.

    Templar

    Edited at 2021-04-19 04:51 pm (UTC)

  29. Thought this was v good. Couldn’t quite work out how CUTTER didnt fit 8ac but that didn’t delay for too long

    Thanks Don and Mara

  30. We were doing quite well until we had the sw corner to do. We were baffled by 12d and 17a, so not a good day. Some clever clues, eg 13d and 9a. Hoping for a better day tomorrow.
    1. I found it hard too, and gave up after a bit.

      I did get CLIPPER, though.

      Thank you , Mara and Astarteden.

      Diana

  32. ….which briefly misdirected me on my COD, but was otherwise solved without much difficulty.

    FOI BIT PART
    LOI CHINA
    COD BORING
    TIME 3:35

  33. … at the end of this day, thank you all so much for all of your comments. I do love the way that just solving a crossword, commenting on it, having a little discussion and maybe even disagreement about certain things that are said, and then everybody else chipping in with their specialist bits of knowledge and opinions, is just such a civilised way of going about things. I love the accidental way in which you add to your general knowledge, where people come along and bare their souls about their favourite things e.g.: thank you therotter for your enthusiasm for Smiley which I share unfailingly, and thank you oldblighter for your enthusiasm for Rachmaniniov, which led to me finding an ideal piece of music for my mother’s funeral, and thank you templarredux for your legal slant on the final Yorkist Richard III tussle, to name just three. (Incidentally, I remember that the Smiley’s People theme was beautifully based on the Russian Kontakion (I bought the soundtrack on vinyl of course when it came out and still have it now reproduced in various formats) and I wonder, particularly with the prominence of the piece in the recent funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, whether anybody might have a suggestion of a favourite recording of that? Thank you poison_wyvern for your unfailing dedication to getting to the bottom of cryptic crosswords and your ‘three lives’ system for educational aids. Thank you deckhandiana for all your nautical terminology (I normally try to highlight words that might fall within your ken, although I forgot to mention CLIPPER today). Thank you louisajaney in absentia for your immense enthusiasm every time you comment and your particular knack for crossword neologisms such as ‘brain glue’ and ‘Monday morning brain cell allocation’, although sadly you seem to have been off the grid for a couple of weeks. And everybody else I haven’t mentioned. You make doing this fun.

    Edited at 2021-04-19 10:14 pm (UTC)

    1. Thank you astartedon, your comment was very appreciated, and encouraging for me. I have learnt a lot about cryptic crosswords from the members here, including your good self, therotter and merlin55. This site really is one of the best aids out there for learning about cryptic crosswords, especially with the explanations for the answers by the “duty blogger”. I too love how I can come here and discuss the answers or ask for further help with understanding the clues.

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