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Catkin - 26d and 31a share a common four letter word - not two letters as you suggest.

26d is an icy area (think of what the perma-frost area with dwarf vegetation is called) surrounded by a two letter word demanding peace (and quiet) - all going west (reversed). This will give you your tough men!

31a starts with a longer word which has a short-form of A, followed by a fish (think of a fast swimming ocean fish) and a short-form for caught both reversed (on the rise). That will give you something chewed in S Asia.

Parsing 20d had me puzzled for a while - but it's very clever! Think of the collective noun for crows and preposterous has "reversed" as one of its meanings.

Hope this all helps!

Hi catkin,

I don't have the puzzle in front of me so might misremember the exact wording of clues, but from memory:

- 26d, common fish and abbreviation for 'caught' written upwards after a 3-letter alternative for 'A'

- 31a, word for a cold, barren landscape written inside an abbreviation for 'quiet', all written backwards

The shared thematic word is 3 letters.

Sorry - Heisenburg is correct - it's a three letter word!

Thanks smartie, you're a quicker typist than me!

I thought this puzzle was excellent.

Oops - I also got the clue numbers reversed :-P

Thank you Heisenburg and Smartie. My mistake was that I omitted a bar from 31a so I thought I was looking for 7 letters ending "Y" and a themed 2-letter word. Obvious now and I should have spotted that 26d was 8 letters and not 7. I really like the "crows" clue now that I see it. I just kept thinking that the rum came from preposterous and couldn't break out of that loop.
All done and very enjoyable.

I meant 6 letters of course! Having trouble with my arithmatic.