Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Thanks schorley, all sorted now. I wasn’t thinking of real people. For the other one, quite a few exclamations in this puzzle. The limitations of 3-letter words, I suppose.

I finished yesterday morning but, due to my OCD, couldn't say I was done until I parsed every down clue (with some back engineering). A rare completion for me!
I presume there will be a little leeway given for the exact shape of the new 5th and 6th letters of 8d?
A fine puzzle by Ifor. (Is the shape of the grid no accident?!)

Williamseal - I think you’re on the right lines, I don’t think the end game quite works, unless I’m missing something. I think the end game is a 10 letter word in English, with the 5th and 6th symbols each representing 2 letters.

15a is clued as having the 2 letters, 14a isn’t. The 2 letter symbol at 14a looks like an E, so 14a works only if you read the symbol as English. 15a only works if you read the symbol the thematic way.

Would be very happy for someone to point out where I’ve gone wrong and that this does hang together, as I thought the puzzle overall was very clever and very well done.

If anybody is still out there could they help me with the parsing of 21 across? The Internet is offering good deals on flights to Medina but all I can find in terms of half-useful word possibilities is Hejira and variable spellings of the same. So not much help there. Otherwise I thought the clueing particularly fine. So what have I missed?

In a word ... LATIN ...

R for "recipe" = take
AH for "anno Hegirae"

:-)

Where are you putting RESEED Malone ?

Crosswhit, nowhere! It was just a random example as Williamseal seemed to be thinking the three-letter segments followed each other, whereas some were contained in others.