sun times 4356

[kalahari12]

19 dn: A driver of seventeen?(6) ???I?E ( the answer to 17 in the puzzle is AIRLINES)

[janzman]

novice

[kalahari12]

thanks Janzman. I am therefore stuck on 23 across!!

[degiorgio22]

What letters do you have for 23A?

[kalahari12]

Marxist accepts useless product (5) m?o?o (the middle "o" is from NOVICE

[frameshift]

If 19d is NOVICE, then 23a is M - O - O. Marxist accepts useless product (5) I can't find anything on any of the word searching sites for this.

[kalahari12]

I was thinking MA ng O with 19dn being something like entice or engine but I can not justify the answers against the clue.

[degiorgio22]

MAO with NG is probably right.
ENGINE is what drives the airlines maybe.

[kalahari12]

Digeorgio 22 I suspect you are correct and they have provided a couple of pretty duff clues.

[degiorgio22]

Yes. Clues on this particular puzzle are weak, to say the least.
LEAF GOLD !!?

[frameshift]

Totally agree Marahari12, this crossword had a lot of duff clues, so many infact that it wasn't a pleasure to do, as is usually the case. 5a seemed to need a space between church and man to work properly and I was anything but staisfied with AIRLINES for 17d. 8d should have been GOL LEAF, not the other way around, oh well.

[kalahari12]

Yeah I noticed that leaf gold thing and had to google it in the end. I wasted a fair bit of time and eraser trying to get the other answers to fit gold leaf! It is used but I would not have written it in with any confidence if all the other answers around it did not fit.
I started doing these crosswords in the mid 80s and rarely ran into a dodgy clue but now it seems de riguer! Actually back then many of the clues were actuallt classics!