Strands #247 “More Than Just...
Quizzes & Puzzles12 mins ago
Good evening, in spite of the apparently daunting preamble, I’ve made some surprising head way with this one. Help with the following would be appreciated, thanks!
29a Resident in old people's home installed in vehicle (5) : ?N???
7d Source of spicy seeds no longer Colombia but Peru (9) : P??D??DE?
8d Send out atomic number retrospectively once (7, three words) :O??L??E
12d Show of affection from Auden promoting North in Russian commune, that is (10) : ?K?AU?E???
22d Sailor undergoes examination and leaves to stay away from college (6): A?S??? ( ADSORB )
PREAMBLE: Two down answers are thematic characters, big cheeses in their day, and are clued with wordplay only. Solvers must highlight these two characters and the first part of a (rather cheesy) cryptic representation of a thematically-linked saying that could also refer to them in a rather cheesy way (12 characters in a straight line, leaving symmetrical highlighting), and enter five further characters beneath the grid to complete it. Single extra letters generated by the wordplay in each across clue indicate a quotation that could be applied to them, from a UK perspective, and five other cheeses (but not a red herring) must be removed from across clues before solving. Five further characters of a different sort must also be removed from the down clues before solving; these complete a set. All entries, including this set of characters, are to be found in The Chambers Dictionary (2016), which is recommended.
No best answer has yet been selected by Matakari. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Many thanks, Roslyn and NACW, I would like to have some feedback on the following before I can contemplate cracking the the question of the big cheeses and the quotation.
23a Mother nevertheless returned instrument (4) ?UB? ( AUBE )
29a Resident in old people's home installed in vehicle (5) : ?N??? ( INCAR )
30a French moderate animosity about old milk in Paris (9) : ?O?ITI?RE
23d Litchi lone meal (hardly!) putting bishop in temper (5) :?BO?E ( ABODE)
NMA, no - it's a French word, meaning something like 'formal courtesy.' I no longer have my copy, with notes, but the A might have been the extra letter.
Matakari, I think you've been given almost all of these answers now.., so you should maybe have quite a few of the extra letters, enough to spot some emerging words maybe?