27ac – In rugby the guy who kicks conversions and penalties is usually the same one all the time and he is often referred to as the team’s ‘kicker’. IMHO the clue is fair!

My thanks to Arachne, for a pleasant interlude over breakfast,and to Gaufrid for the review..

I enjoyed this, as usual with Arache – more fun than today’s (Tuesday) cryptic.

I didn’t remember ‘chopper’ for bikes, but Joanna vaguely rang a bell (or sounded a note )

I was familiar with ‘chopper’ as a type of bike, but hadn’t realised it was also a motorcycle.

Re. clue 6: ‘punish’ is in the Chambers Crossword Dictionary as an anagram indicator, so I guess it must be OK.

I thought this was OK for a Qiptic with a number of anagrams. I, too, was not particularly impressed with KICKERS for rugby players; didn’t know that KICKER is the German colloquial term for a soccer player

I have been doing most of the Quiptics since the blog started and commented several times that they were absurdly difficult for newcomers. But I found this to be a Goldilocks Quiptic – just about right. Nothing too obscure or convoluted, a nice range of clue types and some humour sprinkled through so that beginners can understand why we persevere.

Luckily for me, Cockney rhyming slang begat Australian rhyming slang. As a kid, our piano was “the goanna” so it wasn’t much of a stretch. A big ask otherwise I suppose.

I wondered about cycle = round, too, then thought of ‘the daily round’ – Chambers’ dictionary gives, for cycle, ‘a period of time in which events happen in a certain order’ and, for ’round’, ‘a cycle [!] or recurring series of events and doings’.

I don’t do the Quiptic every week but reckon to do Arachne’s, because I like her puzzles. I’d agree with K’s D’s assessment.

My favourites in this one were PIANO [Cockney rhyming slang, Wanderer] and EDUCATED GUESS.