QC 3119 by Izetti

Strictly speaking, not all dogs are hounds, that term should be reserved for those that hunt game.

Sir Francis Drake, ruthless pirate, national hero

“Rooked” is pretty old fashioned these days, bur crops up a lot in these puzzles. I had both Clocked and Crocked as possibles before I remembered.

My first attempt of HITCH derailed my efforts in the SE, and yes I didn’t see that little “-ed” in the clue which makes it wrong.

“I may say that” is a way of making this a semi &Lit clue, in that a DENTIST may say “Cavity is source of trouble”. Very nice, and the clue defies easy classification, always a sign of a good one. It’s these types of clues that defeat crossword AIs, but give it one more year: I predict that this will be the last year humans win The Times championship.

Judge female donkey?(6)

My alternative clue.

I think this is teen slang? But “brill” is British, and “def” is primarily American

As in a flight of stairs. I was over-thinking this into a Double definition (as two word clues usually are). But I couldn’t make stairs=domestic. So this was my LOI. Stairs are found in lots of airports, offices, theatres etc, so not sure that “domestic” works well as a qualifier.

Struggled with this until checkers started to appear. Tried Geriatricians, Geront- and the like. Tricky one to spell, with the O E and A all unchecked.

The Northern city of Not-Newcastle. It’s not on the Tyne, and they are not Geordies (Wear and “Mackem”, respectively)

I tried FOUNDER, when a ship breaks up into pieces.

This is an odd one, but the sense is as in an “unqualified success”, meaning the success is not in doubt, it is Black and White.

I went with DELIVERED first, because LIVER is one of the words (like ROOK) that I know crossword setters use in odd ways.

“Past” is an example of a tense.

“upset” can also indicate an anagram, and with checkers of A and R, an anagram of (ATRICK) looked likely until I actually tried to slot the letters in.

I though 16d EDITED was usually written EDITTED, but the rule is you double the final consonant when adding -ed or -ing only if the stress falls on the final syllable. For example, “regret” becomes “regretted” but “edit” becomes “edited” (not “editted”) because the stress is on the first syllable (ED-it). The one major exception is the letter L, which British English always doubles regardless of stress position (like “travelled” and “cancelled”), whereas American English follows the stress rule for L as well, writing “traveled” and “canceled.”