QC 2927 by Dangle, welcome to our newest setter

Egg on = Urge on.

Very nice clue, which beat me all ends up until I was able to biff from checkers.

It’s a variable resistor just like the ones in a traditional dimmer switch.

One of the very first jokes I remember telling was “When is a door not a door? When it is ajar.” I didn’t learn the meaning of “ajar” until many years later, and so developed a whole line in what I thought were similar jokes such as “When is a dog not a dog? When it is a cat.” Parents dutifully laughed. Then, “When is a fish not a fish?”  etc.

I thin CAN is very much American English, like DOVE or GI, but LAV is very much British English.

RANGE=series is not the first use of Range that comes to mind (but to be fair, it is first in the OED). One example is “a whole range of emotions”

“Give EAR and come to me” – Isaiah 55:3

I’m Not sure what the surface refers to. With the capital L maybe it refers to the demonic Listener puzzle generally regarded as the most difficult cryptic crossword to appear in a national weekly. It survived the closure of The Listener and now appears in The Times on a Saturday.

You can tell this is a tough parse as it needs all my different types of brackets to explain. I had LASS with the L missing for a long time.

The surface is somewhat ungrammatical for what is a very good anagram.

One of the few examples of new strong verbs that have appeared in the last 50 years. Generally strong verbs (which indicate past tense by a change of vowel) get replaced by their weaker forms. eg Chid/Chided, Strove/Strived, Spake/Speak.

Snuck (for sneaked) is another new strong verb, and Drug (for dragged) is starting to make an appearance.

The OED has this meaning from 1972. It can now be confusingly used with foods such as “Do you want a flavouring in your coffee”, “No just Vanilla”, and “Yes, Vanilla” produce very different results.

WHELP is a very Old English word :it’s in a very early translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels (Matt. xv. 27)  But is rarely heard this days, where “pup” seems to cover it, except perhaps in dog-breeding circles.

The OED explains LATTER this way: mentioned second of two, last of a group of more than two, or at the end of a preceding clause or sentence.

The OED recognises Magpie=collector from 1900. The earliest known reference to magpies as hoarders or collectors comes from ancient Roman times. Pliny the Elder mentioned this behavior in Naturalis Historia, (77-79 AD). In Book 10, which covers birds, Pliny describes magpies as having a tendency to steal and hide shiny objects.

But modern research shows that magpies are actually quite cautious about shiny objects.

GENT for gentleman is a bit weak. Maybe “chap” or “fellow” would have been better.

Nice one! Rafa Nadal, the famous tennis player.