I started last night, but due to double vision, only caught a couple of clues.

16 busted the theme for me, but I was delighted to see the theme used so many ways. Very ingenious.

I never twigged FLOWER, kicking myself for that since I am reasonably familiar with irises being called “flags”.

Not thrilled with “prevaricator” = “staller”, but I did ink it in. Thanks for the explanations regarding “character’s upright” everyone.

A perfect Wednesday puzzle, thank you Brummie/Cyclops. And thanks for the blog Uncle Yap and everyone else.

The article also has this :
Not Quite Peglegs in Fiction

* Long John Silver in the book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, was missing a leg, but did not have a pegleg. He used a crutch.

I think the notion of LJS moving around with a pegleg was created by illustrator like N.C. Wyeth (1882–1945) and that notion has stuck, judging by the number of hits when you google Long John Silver Prosthesis

It took me ages to get into this puzzle and really enjoyed it eventually. Looked at it for about an hour yesterday afternoon and only got SPECIAL and JOVIAL; broke the back of it in the evening; and finally finished it this morning. I found it quite difficult but all the clues were fair. I particularly liked PROSTHESIS, PAVING STONE, STARS AND STRIPES and DISPENSARY. Thanks Brummie and I did like this crossword a lot more than some of the commenters here. I was also able to understand the wordplay completely which is rare.

I’m [already!] breaking my resolution – but it’s getting late.

Smith’s is my usual resource – since it’s downstairs! – and today I found L and S had nothing to add.

I could never afford Lewis and Short as a student but acquired it,’for free’, as they say nowadays, when my place of employment went comprehensive and Latin dropped out of the syllabus, so it would otherwise have been binned! [O tempora ... ]

Thanks. I don’t have a Lewis and Short but have to rely on a large old Dr Smith’s which is pretty good.

I kept hoping Cornelius would have another famous Roman cognomen Cerealis but no such luck.

Still here but with Other Things to do today – including, like tupu, defrosting the freezer!

I did this puzzle early on and was slightly disappointed with it, for a Brummie. I looked at the first couple of comments and rather agreed with Coffee’s ‘tad dull’ assessment.

By the time I got round to it again, Robi and tupu had both answered their own points – yes, ‘flaccus’, according to my Lewis and Short, occurs only twice in literature [but one of those times is in Cicero] and ‘flaccere’ is, indeed, a verb, which Lewis and Short translate as ‘to flag, droop’.

As for your own point, re Indo-European origins, I’ve nothing to add, except, of course, to agree. I did only a little philology as part of my degree – I wish I’d done more.

[I was quite taken with mhl's comment on his blog last week, to the effect that he tries not to reply unless he has something new to add. I thought that was quite salutary for me, so I made a mini-resolution! ]

Having said that:

Hi tupu

I loved your Cornelius Flaccus. My first thought was that he must have had an extra cognomen, Spurius, but, after research, I find that he was one of Julius Caesar’s deputies. I somehow managed, throughout my career, to avoid having to read Caesar’s Gallic Wars in toto, whereas, unfortunately, for so many students, it seems to have been their only experience of Latin literature.