I’m late as usual, having spent the past 3 weeks trying to get the last clue in Paul’s current Genius, which I still have not done.

I thought you would be interested in another faux pas that I made in answering a simple clue; a subject that I have written to you about before. For 26A I took Knock Out to be KO; turning to be OK. Crazy = KO+OK = KOOK. This is a common word in the USA and I seem to recall from Britain too. It didn’t throw me off for too long as I realised that ALCHEMIST had to be the answer. I have to say I like KOOK better than STUN though.

I have two other points:

I have to disagree with you and support PeterO and Van Winkle. I understand your explanation, but it does require a double leap from Old Flame to Past Love to Past O. I had thought that double leaps were not considered kosher for cryptic crosswords. Am I wrong?

Finally am I the only one who gets sick of people such as JIM #2 comment bragging about how quickly they can finish a puzzle. It seems to only ever be the men who brag about this. I wonder what their problem is. I have to say I would avoid people such as these at a party.

14d doesn’t work as it does not have continuity in its application of “love”. “Old flame = past love”, okay. But the love that is “inamorata” is not the love that is “zero”. So, “past love = past 0″, but there is no connection that makes “old flame = past 0″. Just putting a ? at the end of the clue is not sufficient to justify such a leap.

Would everyone be happy with a clue that used “seriousness?” to signify “g”. After all a synonym for seriousness is gravity, and another type of gravity can be abbreviated to g.

There are no &lits. An &lit requires all the clue to be both definition AND secondary indicator.

For example, ENDEMIC.
‘Harassed medic’ is DEMIC ; ‘needs space’ is EN. That’s the end of the sec-inds.
‘to cope with it’ adds nothing to the sec-ind. It merely extends the sense of the sec-ind to fill out a rather dubious definition.
Therefore, NOT &lit.

Same for COLD SNAP. ‘when this comes’ has no sec-ind value.
Same for OARSMAN. ‘one might be discovered’ has no sec-ind value.

In addition, the need to indicate indirectly might have been avoided since the elements at issue, IC, appear at the end of the word. That bit, obviously, could have been handled independently (no pun intended).

As to the criminality of calling IC ’99′, I can only applaud your remarks above (with the proviso that it was not necessarily the Romans themselves who imposed rules about all this).

I refer to the ‘IC’ in ACROSTIC and similar errors in the past. Gordius could of course have said ’101′ instead of ’99′, but the only point I wish to make is that I would appreciate a puzzle far more if it kept to the rules of the rest of the world (i.e. the world outside the crossword itself) when a clue is formed.

Saying that ‘IC’ is not a number in the Roman numeral system is not a purist’s opinion – it is a fact. (Or is this contestable?)

I still enjoyed this puzzle – it was not plain sailing – and ACROSTIC was among the first clues I solved.

To help explain the point, indulge me while I supply some &lits that have been engineered with precision to provide a proper pointer:

The jungly mass one cleaves (MACHETE)

Fantastic warblers do it – sew leaves! Here’s one among them (TAILOR BIRD)

By it ‘truth’ and ‘lie’ looked alternately interchangeable (DOUBLETHINK)

Wild love affair like this could give you coronary (CARRY-ON)

Mitredness is wrong? That’s what it says (DISSENTERISM)

This one may serve beers with apron on (BARPERSON)

I hope you enjoy these great clues, which came from Derek Harrison’s excellent site, even if you don’t agree with me!