I think -meister as a suffix is in reasonably common parlance in English these days, used meaning someone skilled at, or in charge of, something.

I thought that the KERATIN clue was great with its beautifully misleading definition and the wonderfully inspired “thou art” wordplay. I think thou for K is great and I’m surprised it’s not used more. I can imagine it being used in something like “I just bought a new motor from this geezer for two thou cos it was past its prime”.

I also don’t see what the problem is with using names whether they be people (dead or alive) or companies. It seems to be a pretty aritrary convention. So long as Tees isn’t getting free double glazing or a lifetime’s supply of Big Macs then I’m happy about it.

Ah, Hihoba! Are you George, Jo or Barnie today? Thanks for your opinions, but I’m afraid that’s all they are: unfortunately I can’t see that they impinge on the point I made above. That these indicators are within the available palette is indisputable, and any compiler is entitled to use them – you now attack thou(sand) for K, which is absolutely robust. That you don’t like something is fine, but it makes no difference. There cannot be any disqualification on the grounds of sentiment.

Equally, where does it say that Everest (clued as a mountain, depending on how, for the purposes of making a point, one chooses to interpret it) may not be clued (or, as here, alluded to, depending on how, for the purposes of making a point, one chooses to interpret it) as a company? Again, I don’t mind at all that you dislike the gambit, but there’s no substance other than that to what you say.

As for McDonald, well he’s the famous founder of a chain of restaurants, rather than the restaurant (fyi called McDonald’s) itself and so again, I can’t undertand why you have a problem. And your pooh-pooh for BURGERMEISTER sums up fairly well for me how much fun people here seemed to be prepared to have with yesterday’s puzzle.

On other matters Collins defines ‘race’ as ‘a line of containers’ (NZ), so given that Collins is a standard reference tome, I could claim it on that alone. However, a line is ‘an ancestral series of people’ which – you may surmise – is not all that different from ‘a group of people of common ancestry’. But drive the wedge of negativity into that by all means.

I’ll agree with you on DARTRE, and look forward to your next crit of a Gordius puzzle.

Can bloggers (and preferably commenters) possibly use their own names…?

When Paul B. refers to Wil Ransome as the blogger (who gives his name as John), it just seems to me rather confusing…

But I think in all fairness I could actually say that so long as an indicator is backed by a recognised work of reference (say Chambers), the fact that I like it and somebody else doesn’t is completely irrelevant. In other blogs we’ve seen a variety of weird and wonderful shorthand discussed, and the general practice has been to look it up in a dictionary and declare its provenance one way or the other. Seems a more logical way to go about things than simply to opine!

…without and before any compiler prescribing it.