How might that be? Swathes of eminently-qualified detractors are slagging the old boy right off week in, week out (and not without good reason on occasion, I would begrudgingly concede), but still they (The Others Out There, or TOOT) come running, as sucklings to the teat.

Very strange. But true.

And as Duncan said, the “gee” thing is completely uncontroversial.

Infuriating, unfair and impossible to do without online reference and as such pointless in my book. If you don’t know even when you have got the right answer then there’s no lightbulb moment and where’s the fun!

Gee=G – I wondered about it and rejected it as ridiculous and just too inelegant even for this setter.

21A!!! So it’s ok that HARRAY doesn’t actually exist so long as it sounds almost like Hooray. Come off it!

I simply don’t trust this setter to ever give me a fair chance to solve his puzzles and I will not be duped into trying them again.

I actually came back to thank Beermagnet@21 for the illumination, and express my hope that they become known in Spain some time soon, as my audio reproduction is very deficient on this netbook.

Given the preamble, 21d’s AWARDS was easy enough, so 1-0 in the first seconds of the game.
Not even three minutes later I had a fantastic solo action scoring 2-0 out of nothing (ie ???????? ??? ?????) : SCOUTING FOR GIRLS (2d,18).
And the third goal wasn’t far away: PLAN B (24ac) – an easy header.
But …. we didn’t fully understand how I scored.
And my first movement was a litle bit clumsy (‘Back of’ as a reversal indicator – Sir Alex would have liked to see more elegance).

As the first half went on the game became somewhat slower.
Well, you can’t have everything, although we did: 15d …….
Just before half time I did a pointless attempt to score again, but ????? M?????? (10,22) didn’t lead to the great Laura Marling – alas.

Half time – tea! [unfortunately, the theme wasn't really my PinC's cup of]

Very quickly after the break, we scored again with a Messi/Silva-like combination: there he was: IVOR NOVELLO – what a beauty!
Goal of the Month! (Ah well, Best Goal of the Day …)

And our opponents?
They were a bit strange sometimes.
OKAVANGO (6d)? SLINGSBY (17d)? [I scored once with RAINOW (Cheshire village) - the crowd didn't like it at all)]
And you couldn’t be quite sure of them.
An at first incomprehensible action led to a fantastic goal: ALPHAMERIC (1d).

About GWENDOLEN (25ac) we weren’t sure.
Was it off-side or not?
As our commentator Wolfie (#24) said: it could have gone either way!

In the 57th minute our opponents made a splendid goal: DARK ENERGY (14d).

And? Did we win in the end?
I fear not.
We made a ridiculous mistake two minutes before time (9ac – I won’t tell how or why, it’s too unbelievable).
So, Araucaria FC won – credits to them!

No extra time needed.
And a very fair referee (Duncanshiell) who I would like to thank.

Btw, in the second half I spotted someone in the crowd with an incredible banner: Yes, Le Petomane (@30) – Fan of the Day!

BTW, there seems to have been some over-literal objection to “composer of today”: surely that is simply a reference to the fact that the Novello awards ceremony is today?