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I'm glad that you got all the help you needed without my input, roof!

I was trying to watch the rugby online, but it kept buffering, so I turned my computer off to ease the stress on the broadband. I don't know if there is any logic to this, but it seemed to work,

Although I've seen the film and enjoy the music there were several numbers I didn't know so I had to resort to Google.

When I first looked at the puzzle I thought the theme might be anaesthetics!

Hi Rossim,

I know what you mean, whenever I see 'singer', flower', number' etc in crosswords I'm always on my guard. I wasn't helped by solving 10a first, where the middle three letters are a "number" - literally!

For those who need a further challenge after this Prize...Nimrod (aka Enigmatist in the Guardian) has a (maybe even more than) typically impenetrable puzzle in the Indy today. I'm passing on that one. :)

It's the other way round in our house. I've always loved watching cricket and read a lot of cricket books as a child, despite the fact that girls had to play rounders at school. My husband has no interest in cricket at all so all cricketing references are my domain (the crossword is always a family activity on Saturday evenings.)

My pet peeve is words with a very precise scientific definition being used with a much more loose definition in crosswords.

That was in response to femmenoire btw.

Hi Longtimelurker,

I think you and fellow Forum member Chris (a scientist) are kindred spirits in relation to your peeves regarding the scientific clues 😉

Belated thanks for the hint to 9, chris. For some reason that word for born had completely slipped my mind.

I'm a bit in two minds about the cricket stuff - where I grew up cricket really wasn't a thing, so I've had to learn a lot of the abbreviations and conventions. But that's more or less the same as what I've had to do for all the sailing-related stuff, and some of the cockney rhyming slang.

And I know I have my peculiarities as well - I absolutely adore classical references in crosswords, even though they are, if anything, even more exclusionary than cricket.

Really enjoyed this, the theme made me happy.

Does the first word of 1,23,24 mean anything here? Something a little more going on?

Hi Mackania, I had the same thought, couldn’t spot one though, did you?