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Hi jigjag
I was going to post the first verse of Gray's Elegy to illustrate "wends", but when I Googled it, I found that he has "winds"!

....wind, not winds

Jigjag, Chris,

Yes, I initially thought 'wind' meant the same as 'wend', so Grunger's win, three points thing made sense. I did a quick check but couldn't find anything to confirm that. I can see the river winding, that sounds as if it's curving, bending etc, and you possibly do the same on your way to (or maybe from?) the pub!

Jono, I need a letter or two in place to have a chance with your G-Gag clue!

Hi Malone,
It’s something of an infamous clue often cited as crossing the line into unfair. If you have a piano to hand it might help.
Crossers might be ?a?p? ??r???a?
Definitely not fair imho!

jigjag

wend/wind

Although both mean proceeding in an indirect line, I think 'wind' implies the movement of something lengthy such as a river or a herd of cattle strung out (as in Gray's elegy).

However, the clincher in the clue is that E is a compass point and I is not. I don't think 'win' is a close enough definition of three points.

The issue of a random selection of letters occurring twice in the same crossword may well be controversial. I know the Times would not have more than one 'hidden word' clue, for example.

Wend seems to be the best answer - I think the setter was clever in knowing that, to sporting people, a `win` in footyball is a `three pointer` - I smell a red herring!

Happy birthday fits and GGAG are the first few notes, though that would be in rather a high key. CCDC would have done just as well.

But why the hyphen between the two Gs? And there are very many tunes that begin with those notes. Sorry, but I'm not impressed.

Jono, I solved the clue last night, but only through using a wordwizard thing. I have to say I was completely underwhelmed. Sorry!

It’s been suggested that the hyphen is indicative of the dotted quaver - semi-quaver notation which is often how the first two notes are expressed.
I‘m not defending it by any means!