Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

The preamble does not make clear, at least to me, whether the entries for the 13 clues should be the defined answers or the rearranged answers.

Many thanks RHSL, I have now completed everything. It may of helped if I had looked in the right direction. I know one thing for certain and that is that I will never attempt to read that book

Ozzy, I read "the wordplay leads to the answer similarly rearranged" as meaning the entry is normal, but the wordplay isn't.

Ok, thanks Gitto.

Thanks to rhsl, I stuck with this off and on between gardening etc. Once I realised how to enter the thirteen 'rearranged' clues, it fell into place relatively easily. Good puzzle. Researching the book leaves me with absolutely no desire to read it though, that definitely get filed in 'Life's too Short'!

Carte Blanche, no symmetry, blank cells! I initially assumed it would be a beast. I made life even harder by confidently pencilling in “sists” for 1a. (I know it’s Scottish but it seemed to work).
Then spotted how a thematic clue worked, guessed the title half way through making the other thematics easy to identify and it turned out to be a little more accessible than I had anticipated.
Perfect for a sunny Sunday morning.

Agree this was hard going at first but then fell fairly steadily once you got into it. I also struggled with NW corner, but found the quotation from the bottom half so that filled in a good chunk of it for me.

Smithsax, 1a is what held me up for hours as I had done exactly the same. Personally, I think answers should be unambiguous, as ambiguity in the entry shouldn't undermine the cluing.

1acr seems fine to me. A clue for SISTS would have some indication that it was Scottish and SISS would have an indication that it was N American. The absence of those things should have at least made you doubtful.

On the other hand, the last down clue is definitely ambiguous (it could be def followed by wordplay, or vice versa!)