I started this on a Tuesday and finished it the same Friday but spent more time on it on some days than on others. My best guess is that it took a total of 6-8 hours, time thoroughly well spent.

Well, if the missing Y was a mistake, it was serendipity indeed! What a good job you didn’t scrap the whole thing!

I should have done as you did and made notes: it’s so hard to remember after a month, with so many puzzles intervening.

You’ve reminded me that I, too, went down the demitasse route for a while [which gave me two reasons to chuckle when I got 8ac!] and, as far as I remember, ‘mustard’ was my way in to the theme, too.

I got NELUMBO [only because it had been in a Bonxie puzzle a couple of weeks before] but couldn’t see the wordplay and PARCLOSE was a new word for me, too.

Admittedly, GRAND PAN is a tad esoteric. When I was writing the clue I was struggling to make anything I liked using the breakdown GRANDPA+NO. I then noticed GRANDPAN and recognised it as a pizza. After a bit of research on th’internet, I discerned (like Artie Fufkin @#5) that it was a speciality pizza introduced by Pizza Hut in 1998 and was formerly called Pan Pizza. I deliberated for ages over this but figured people would have heard of a Pan pizza and could probably guess Grand Pan from checking letters so decided to go with it – I’m still glad I did but it is perhaps a little unfair.

As for using M for McDonalds, it isn’t Ximenean but I think it’s a fun device that I’ve seen a few times in crosswords. You won’t find it in Chambers as an abbreviation but in my view I think it’s acceptable.

I find the use of compound anagrams in puzzles quite interesting. At work, most days, I help a group of colleagues do the Daily Mail (spits on floor) cryptic at break time. The puzzle is not of a particularly high standard, but, I’d say on average, a compound anagram appears in there every other day. If Daily Mail solvers are used to them, why do they seldom appear in broadsheet cryptics? I think compound anagrams are a great device but solvers aren’t used to them – I decided to use one here. Admittedly, the ‘s’ after Monet is a bit weak.

The ‘close’ in the clue for PARCLO(s)E is also weak. I hadn’t spotted this. I suppose I was too blinkered in writing a clue for PARCLOE that I forgot it was for PARCLOSE!

Eileen and Jan are right, I deliberately included PEACOCK, GREEN and DINING ROOM. Ideally, I wanted to get a Nina in there but my attempts proved futile. I suppose, technically, Cluedo isn’t a Nina as it’s mentioned in the preamble.

As Matthew says (@#1) the missing ‘Y’ relates to the motive remaining unsolved in Cluedo. I have to confess that this ‘feature’ was a mistake on my part. After spending hours filling the grid and writing some of the clues, I was aghast when I realised that my message was short of the final letter! I was about to delete the whole thing when I thought I could make use of the fact that it was a Y that was missing; a bit of serendipity coming to my rescue.

Thanks for the comments.

I made these notes on completion …

Wow! This was even better than Tramp’s February puzzle. What an amazing construction! We even had peacock, green and dining room in the solutions as well as Dr Black and Cluedo in the completed grid.

Using the omitted letters I noticed ‘mustard’ first and the rest began to fall into place.

NELUMBO and PARCLOSE are new to me and I had to visit Pizza Hut websites to confirm the phrase Grand Pan. I got quite hungry researching that one!

I was held up by 4d. I looked at ‘steamiest’ with a ‘d’ and had, _ _ _ T _ S _ E. Aha! I thought – demitasse – that could be used for a shot of coffee in the US. But could T = member rather than the M? Still I entered EMITASSE only to realise that nothing sensible would fit 8a. When I managed to solve 8a the penny dropped.

After writing ‘dining oom’, I couldn’t get Mr Tumnus and ‘spare oom’ out of my head.

All in all, a true tour de force. Thank you, Tramp, for several hours of puzzle joy.

Eileen, your research is more thorough than mine was, thanks for the link. And I’d missed DINING ROOM as a Cluedo reference.

As for Grand Pan, Pizza Hut relaunched their Pan Pizza as Grand Pan in 1998. I’ve eaten a few Grand Pans in my time but had to Google to find the date.

Well done Tramp!