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Welcome to our new compilers Madrigal. Any guesses how they chose their nom de crossword?
Fairly gentle and the quote dropped out easily enough, but I do feel that 12 unclued lights out of 48 total is a rather high proportion.

Am I alone in finding the numbers in the pdf grid so small as to be barely legible?

There doesnt appear to be a grid for this crossword.

Yes, quite a challenge without a visible grid.

When, years ago, I had a chat with Doc he said that the Speccy had a small selection of grids which were used. If so, things have changed - I've never seen a Speccy with double unches before.

I have found that if you open the page in "Reading Mode", the link to the pdf including the grid becomes visible.

Here it is:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/crossword-01032025.pdf

Re: Cockie at pt. 5.

I believe there are something like 30-odd 'standard' grids available to Spectator compilers.

Without wishing to sound too 'nerdy' - the one that our new compiler Madrigal has used this week has not been seen for quite some while. I can however find it in Crossword 2591 (Get Over It by Fieldfare) for 11 February 2023. So just over a couple of years ago now.

It's certainly not one of the more attractive grids, but double unches have definitely occurred in this series and this suggests that this grid is indeed one of the 'standards', albeit an infrequently used one (probably for obvious reasons).

Nope! I struggled, even with my reading glasses! (I eventually found the puzzle not too challenging after correcting a silly error at 10a where I first though 'Learn' to be the definition).

Is anyone else having problems emailing this week's puzzle? Mine keeps bouncing back
from Postmaster as Undeliverable. I'm using exactly the same address as I do every week (automatically, from my address book). Even deleting that and typing the address "longhand" results in the same non-delivery. All suggestions welcome!