QC 2591 by Mara

I’m not thrilled about MAT=felt, I thought about PICADOR which I had to discard, but I guess MAT as in matted. Felt is a cloth made of matted fibres of wool, or fur.

Doesn’t get much easier than this.

I’d not heard of this, but with helpful enumeration, the ANT jumped out leaving what had to be WHITE.

“Termite” is a back-formation from termit-es, a Latin plural word. It displaced the older English WHITE ANT (or wood ant) in the 1700s.

Apparently Aussie Slang has “He has White Ants upstairs” meaning someone’s brain is addled.

A visual puzzle like the”sounds like” clues in crosswords, but with pictures. For example, The arms of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (aka the Queen Mother) feature bows and lions. Geddit?

The boardgame Dingbats uses Rebus puzzles.

The word REBUS comes from being non verbis sed rebus ‘not by words but by things’

Not such a common Greek letter, ϵ Used in Calculus to denote an infinitesimally small quantity.  Also the fifth brightest star in a constellation: the Belt Buckle of Orion is Orion-epsilon.

Tiziano Vecelli (1488- 1576) known in English as Titian. Think big busty, naked goddesses with flowing wispy gowns. And Mary.

“Make a Scene” is the phrase that is needed here.

I thought this would be our Number One girl, DI. So went through words like  disabled, diseased, disposed, disputed.

PENT isn’t such a common word without being part of “pent up”, but it is just the past form (like bend/bent) of the now-rare pend, meaning shut in.

Soaking or steeping something in a liquid  in order to soften it. Often done with soft fruits like strawberries or peaches. I saw a recipe that put macerated fruit into a STRUDEL.

I thought MACERATION was chewing, but that is MASTICATION. I was confused by the machine in a toilet to chop up the solids, which is a MACERATOR.

Upstage has the metaphorical usage of outshine a person. I propose a new usage of DOWNSTAGE which is when you put someone else in the spotlight rather than yourself.

Draw as in a match where the scores are level. A tie.

“Forms” is a bit of an odd anagram indicator, but the word “penalty” can form the word “aplenty”.

An easy solve but a tough parse. “Heart in” meaning “middle letter of”, and “after” not being a positional indicator, but part of the anagram.

I had to use some aids on this one, thanks Ross at Crossword Genius.

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. — Karen Blixen

Recess is the term used for the breaks in the parliamentary calendar. They are on recess for about half the calendar year. Nice work if you can get it.

To amend something is to try to make it better by changing the way it currently is. To emend something is to fix an error. Subtly different. An Editor might well do both.