When Eimi indicated on this Board that Virgilius, whose themed puzzles appear on Tuesdays, was moving to Wednesday this week, I was pretty sure we would get a themed puzzle for the day.     I even thought it was odds-on ROMEO and JULIET would appear and they did in the very first answer.    It was a marvellous puzzle with so much thematic material packed into the grid and the clues reflecting it as well.   Great fun to solve.   The single focus on the theme made it a very quick solve for me.

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Solving time: 35’

A feeling of deja-vu crept over as I solved yet again a long anagram for AT THE DROP OF A HAT (in yesterday’s Times as well). I found the across clues rather hard but the downs were more tractable: long anagrams related to clothing. I kept expecting a St. Valentine day theme to crop up or something to do with 24,000.

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