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A fun puzzle today... and Brendan can look out his pens, pencils, crayons...

Hi Malone, I needed a break from the Listener so started on this but am only about a fifth of the way through. I haven't figured out any of the thematic stuff yet but, as luck would have it, I got a lovely set of pens in a Pound shop in mid-week....


... let's hope I get that far:-)

Enjoyed that v much. The theme didn't reveal itself until almost everything was solved. Furrowed brow for quite a while as the various extra letters and words revealed themselves. 😄

I'm totally confused (there's a shock!) - I can get the pen name of an author of children's books but the 6/5 clue, assuming it's right, seems to be missing the first and third words of the title, and, having looked at her Wiki page I can't see any "friend" reference.

Am I at least on the right track?

Cancel that, the "just posted Genie" has struck again:-)

Hi Bren, most definitely, you're almost there.

Thanks Ginge,

It's amazing, I been struggling over this for the best part of the evening trying to make sense of the silvered letters (for obvious reasons) but was getting nowhere then, within a minute of posing my tale woes, Eureka!

Finished, hurrah 😛 A most enjoyable solve and I loved reading about 6/5 and what a great phrase that is that the first and last letters of extra words spell:-)

I'm not totally sure of the parsings of 27d and 30d but I've got the extra letter and word so I'll look at them again tomorrow.

Thanks to Hedge-Sparrow:-)

Sorry, brain fade ... I meant 27a and 30a.

I can't say that first and last letters phrase without affecting a Scottish burr 😃