Difficulty (or ease) is very very hard to determine, I think. I suspect Hugh assumes Araucaria belong on Thu, Fri, or Prize. And when one just scans the clues and sees all the other clue numbers in them, one might assume it will be hard. I know I do!

But difficulty is so hard to ascertain. Is there a theme which one Wikipedia article will give all the answers to? Or that someone simply well-versed in the topic can fill in 8 answers based on word lengths?

I liked this, it was fun. Porgy and Bess came to me early and I had a great chuckle. That gave me Gershwin, and a gentle struggle through the rest. I think I missed one, and had to use research to “prove” or find two. Oh, yes, Hunslet and Doodlebug. The former I would not have worked out in a thousand years, the latter I might have got in a few days.

Thanks for the late summertime teaser, Araucaria, and the excellent blog, Andrew and everyone else!

Don’t know whether I found this as easy as some – having not being familiar with the opera – interested to read up on it though. Last two in were VOID, 1d and NITRIDE (which I had to change from NITRITE too). GOUACHE, DOODLEBUG and HUNSLET were new.

The interesting clueing made it fun – thought 3,12 was COD.

Agree with Brendan@26 where there are ‘odd’ placements of crosswords – with very easy ones popping up in Prize and late in the week slots and more difficult ones on an ‘easy’ day.

Like others I had nitrite at first, which made me smile. 21d made me smile, too – love my Shakespeare.

Giovanna x

Even so this was surely not Friday fodder.

I know I’ll get slated for this but, considering the incidents of the past few weeks, does anybody else get the feeling that our esteemed “Crossword Editor” is only giving the submitted puzzles the most casual glance before passing them for publication? (I’m putting on the tin helmet as I sign off!!!! )

Thanks to A for blog and A for puzzle.

Cheers…