Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31020
Hints and tips by Smylers
Hello and welcome to autumn — or spring, depending on your hemisphere. Thank you to Falcon for covering for me last week when we were on holiday. And Happy Labour Day today to Falcon and everybody else in Canada — or indeed Bonne Fête du Travail, depending on where in Canada. And the same but without the ‘u’ for those in America.
We had a lovely week in Wells-next-the-Sea, on the north Norfolk coast. It’s the 8th time we’ve stayed there in 11 years, always in the same home. The familiarity makes it easy, I naïvely commented to a colleague. That was before we discovered our favourite animal park at Norfolk Lavender has closed; that our hosts no longer have a beach hut (which we’d enjoyed using on previous visits); and that on a day we’d turned up at the beach, the sea was closed — that’ll teach us not to be complacent and to plan and research properly next time!
Anyway on to today’s crossword. Hints and explanations for each clue are below, and you can use a Congratulations! You are today’s lucky clicker! blob to reveal the answer. Comments are welcome, especially from anybody new — don’t make me misidentify an antelope every time just to provoke newcomers to leave a message! Do read Big Dave’s etiquette guide.