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I’ve managed to solve ~1/3 of the clues with a good few checks.

8d - That man’s entertained by sleeve on the blues records (4,9)

- what the heck is this all about?

9d - Caught Northern Spice Girl draped in curtain, making church music (6,7)

- what is going on here?

How do you approach these?

Hi druh,

Picaroon isn't the easiest of setters so, if you've already done 1/3, it shows you're getting better at them.

8d
A 3 letter word for "that man's"
"on the blues" - refers to a political party
"sleeve" - LPs used to be in sleeves; CDs tend to be in ......?
"entertained by" tells you how to assemble all the bits into an expression meaning "records".

9d
I struggled with this one myself. The two-word answer is a type of music you'd find in a church.
It's a cricket abbreviation for "caught", then a 7 letter word meaning a curtain, around ("draped in") an abbreviation for "northern" + a 4 letter name of a Spice Girl.

Hope that helps.

That man’s is more than likely going to indicate his, him, he’s or some variation thereof. With phrases such as “blues records” be alert to separating them into blues and records. Here the definition is only records…

Thank you both.

8d now appears straightforward, but I don’t think I’d ever have been able to solve 9d…even now it looks convoluted.

I’ve never heard of the answer.

Do you have to guess where N for northern fits into the clue or does the clue indicate exactly where it goes?

Yes, 9d is a little convoluted but, particularly with setters like Picaroon, you should never need to guess.... their clueing is usually meticulous. Breaking the clue down it's....

"Caught" = C
"northern Spice Girl" = N+GERI
"draped in curtain" so NGERI inside HANGING

So that tells you where the N goes. The answer is a form of bell-ringing I believe.

👍

Bad pastry dish draws Lurker out of the shadows. In 16d Spooner seems to have added a little too much filling. Or am I missing some alternative way to read the clue?

There does seem to be an L which gets lost in the mix, but then again Spoonerisms are spoken not written, so it sort of works for me.

And if you didn’t like this Spoonerism then I suspect you definitely won’t like 9a in today’s G cryptic…!