Times 24335

[captaincoma]

9a Town's university and two others combined to dismiss Head (8)
Oxbridge maybe? Can't see it. Thanks in advance.

[slaney]

U(o)xbridge

[mallam]

Hello Slaney. When I did this xwd it seemed plain sailing except for the workings of parsec: 5ac. Paces rapidly round stores a fair distance.(6) Can you throw light on that too?

[baitress]

paces rapidly - 1st 3 letters of rapidly and the last3 letters of pacesthen reverse them.

[mallam]

Thanx b. Glaringly obvious, isn't it? But not to a blind spot.

Interesting to observe what causes those. In this case I thought the answer was so obvious that I hallucinated the light in the wrong place, i.e. I thought it was an anagram of paces, and then couldnt account for the r!