Sunday Toughie No 115
by proXimal
Hints and Tips by Sloop John Bee
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I tried to do this last night on the “new” site but it failed to update for ages, I had to carry on on the old site and had a full grid before the new site moved to Sunday. They must change that before killing off the old site as I can’t wait until 01:15 to start solving. I will also miss the old site’s facility of allowing you to check if you are correct a few times and the bonus 5 letters have also been useful in the past, but I guess I will have to forgo the “lagnappe” that Robert and I used. I think this will probably reduce the number of correct submissions and therefore Stephen C is more likely to secure that mythical pen! I am sure you will bear with me and correct any mis-parsings that I make in future. That is something else we will miss from the old site – the lists of Toughie setters and Sunday Toughie setters. I hope that something similar appears on the new site soon.
We have many of the proXimal signature clues, A Spoonerism to start and extractions aplenty but the X’less or 4X features of proXimal’s puzzles seem to be reserved for elsewhere.
Today we have evenly balanced 14a and 14d clues and I have hinted half. I hope you find the checkers to finish but remain available for an extra nudge if there are any tricky clues left on the cutting room floor
Here we go, Folks…