themadwomanintheattic, I quite agree about deletions. I find them to be inane and irritating. Looking at this crossword, there are 54 clues, and 27 of them are based around anagrams or deletions.
So it’s think of a word, chop some letters from the front, back or middle, add some random letters from the NATO alphabet or take a letter from some arcane acronym and promote it to an acknowledged abbreviation, then shuffle the letters around to create a solution.
It just revolves around playing Scrabble with the letters. Wit, humour, puns and clever wordplay seem mostly to have been abandoned since Lucian Poll ceased to produce his online critique of the crossword at the end of last year. I used to enjoy his comments and analysis more than the actual crossword. Did anyone else here follow Lucian’s Web Ramblings?