Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Does anyone understand the preamble today? Pomfret Cake has given me too much to chew on so far. The only clue I’m really happy with is 12a. So far. I’ll persevere.

This was tough. Misprints were relatively straightforward; unpacking the "meddled-with" clues took a while. I can see where the final highlighting might cause some consternation, Well worth persevering, I think.

VERY sneaky. I’m reminded of the notorious hare in a Listener several years ago.

Have persevered! Now stuck with one or two clues if anyone is out there willing to help. 44a: after Osaka’s second ace, practice with ball coming in low on racket (7, 2 words) I have ??S???N

Jogamel, that clue has been meddled with by the prankster who is alliterative. The entry is a familiar word. The clue answer gives another 7-letter word preceding it.

The first 5 words of the clue yield one word, the last 6 the other one.

I don’t understand the preamble when it refers to unclued entries. I can only see 2 unclued entries, the shaded parts, and they only have 5 unchecked letters. Where have I gone wrong?

The letters in capitals are subtracted from the following phrase to leave five for the unchecked cells.

Thanks ozzy. Oh that is fiendish.But still stuck on so much. May have to admit defeat.

Oof! Toughest one in quite a while. Partly due to the somewhat unfriendly grid, with several under-checked lights. I confess that partway through I was finding this to be a bit of a slog... between twigging the theme and filling the grid there was a lot of head-scratching and back-parsing. However, the way the final names were hidden put a big grin on my face, so all's well that ends well.

I actually came on here to check one outstanding parse, but as is often the case, the penny dropped while I was working out how to phrase the question! But I've typed all this out now, so you're getting it anyway... :-)