K’sD@7 et al I have just completed this in Adelaide on 26 August (we get the Indy crossword daily but three weeks behind its UK publication) and 5D was indeed enumerated as 5,3 in our local paper, The Advertiser.

I realised my ‘explanation’ was ambiguous when I wrote it: it’s the convention to write omitted letters in lower case – and, unfortunately, lower case L looks rather like upper case I. Thanks, NMS – that’s what I meant!

To my way of thinking, a ‘pangrammatic lipopgram’ is a contradiction in terms: crosswording pangrams have all the letters of the alphabet, while crosswording lipograms omit a letter (or group of letters) cos that’s what the ‘lip’ bit (stem of Greek leipein, to omit) means. Away from Gridland, several books have been written lipogrammatically. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote something called Gadsby, which has 50,000 words in it … none among them contains the letter E.

Let’s wind him up: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! There.

I bet that Lewis Carroll had a clever way of saying this (and maybe an appropriate quote from Alice will occur to me in the early hours tomorrow) but having just got my head around the idea that I should be searching for Ninas and other, less sophisticated, themes in addition to the apparent job in hand – solving cryptic clues – it seems that I ought to be looking not just for “pangrams” (agreed, Ali, the U, V, X, Y and Z seemed to indicate this) but also ” lipograms” and even “pangrammatic lipograms or lipogrammatic pangrams” as Wikipedia suggests?

For my part, I was thrilled to be introduced to the “inner circle” of Ninas etc. on discovering 15/2, these do after all add such a further dimension to the puzzles and in consequence to one’s enjoyment of them. But “pangrammatic lipograms or lipogrammatic pangrams” – did Phi intend such an exercise today (or, try as he might, did the letter “Q” simply prove to be ultimately elusive)? Perhaps these devices are all to be considered as just another weapon in the setters’ armoury and something which we should always be considering when engaged upon a “solve”? I’d be grateful if Phi (or any other of our setters) would care to comment.