Without Delay

[dickythecook]

1d. Without delay (15)
Please help. None of my letters seem to make any sense.
?t?h?d?o???a?a?
TIA

[dannyk13]

At the drop of a hat

[JJ109]

At the drop of a hat

[Mamyalynne]

Little wonder you struggled if it is clued as one word.

[dannyk13]

The Mail on line version has a nasty habit of not dividing the number of words in a clue.

[Mamyalynne]

That's poor

[dickythecook]

Cheers Danny. I remember when they used to give the clue as 2,3,4,2,1,3.

[dannyk13]

Agreed Lynne and I have mentioned it to them ,but to no avail.

[goodgoalie]

In my experience, American crosswords don't give you the divisions, so 10 spaces could be a 10-letter word or (3, 7) (5, 5) (2, 8) etc etc. I once spent a week trying to finish the New York Times crossword :)

[albaqwerty]

at the risk of asking off topic, why don't the setters give the break of letters required - surely it would put off some puzzlers, especially 'newbies'?

[Mamyalynne]

As Danny says he and no doubt others have asked just that.

They do it in the print version.

[dannyk13]

Just contacted the Mail again and pointed this out to them, They have promised to look into it.

[dickythecook]

Thank you all.
dtc