*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.

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I found this very difficult, solving time 46 mins. Thought this was maybe to accommodate a Nina, but so far , despite WAYNE being in the bottom row, all I can see is a pangram i.e. each letter of the alphabet used at least once in the grid. NW corner was particularly difficult.
* = anagram
ACROSS
7 G(r)AZE Was not aware of that meaning of ‘graze’ but dicts confirm.
8 MOLYBDENU M (One dumbly)*
10 WATERLO(o) G
11 AVENUE Very unusual – the letters are in ‘adventure’ and in order but not specified further by e.g. regularly if they were alternate letters which they’re not here of course.
12 SE(X)T ON I liked this. X = ten in Roman numerals
13 T (ROLL) OPE
15 S (TALKING) H ORSE (sore)*
18 IS A (BELL) A Automobile Assocation
20 DAR(l)ING Liked this, heart = middle letter, cryptically
22 (l)EF (FOR) T port = left
24 THOUSAND Clever, K or M can represent 1,000 66% was better than two-thirds which might have given too much away.
25 RADIAL TYRE (trial-ready)* The only across clue solved on first run through.
26 U(sin)G LIme

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Solving time: not applicable!

I’d started this puzzle and then left it for a bit with theme undiscovered, when another Inquisitor blogger forwarded me an e-mail about it. This gave away a good chunk of the theme, so this solution is rather assisted. The syndrome is what you probably know as Chinese Restaurant Syndrome – an excess of MSG = monosodium glutamate (the e-mail talked of the MSGs and I didn’t think they were messages for long). But don’t look for “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” in the grid – you need to find KWOK’S DISEASE (alternative name) in the NW-SE diagonal. The symptoms from first letters of extra words are ‘Chest pain, dizziness and flushing’. In the thematic answers, the first occurrence of a section of ‘MSG’ was replaced by MSG.

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I really enjoyed this one and learned a couple of new words, which is always good. Getting most of the long clues early on gave me a good start but there are one or two places where I need help, which I have no doubt will be forthcoming.

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To be honest, there was little in this puzzle to get my juices flowing. Too much a sense of simply “going through the motions” in this one.  Just hope everyone is well-versed on the neighbo(u)rhoods of prominent capital cities…

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We were told that 8 answers had been affected by a quotation in ODQ, and its author, which ran clockwise round the perimeter plus 3 squares in row 2 (see below). The quotation was “We haven’t got the money so we’ve got to think” and the author was ‘E Rutherford‘. Only the ‘lack of money’ part of the quotation applied to the thematic entries. The title of the puzzle had also been thematically affected and was originally ‘Propounds’.

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