My apologies for being late.  I am standing in for Bert and Joyce who are on holiday this week and I have accidentally managed to get two blogs for the same morning, neither of which turned out to be very easy.

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A tough puzzle from Monk as always, but everything is there waiting to be found once one figures out where to look.   Very enjoyable, thank you Monk.

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A pleasing crossword; I had to hunt about for an entry point (or, rather, entry points; I solved three or four clues before getting any that intersected), but it all came out in the end, after several “How did I not see that in the first pass?”es.

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Preamble: Several clues contain words to be extracted before solving. These surplus words fall into 6 consecutive blocks of 4, each block providing material to define two further words: one of each pair is an otherwise unclued grid entry, the other a word that differs from that entry in a consistent way. Filling in the central square, solvers must highlight two names – the pseudonym of one, in conjunction with other features of the puzzle, will reveal the setter of this puzzle to be entered over the grid, while the equivalent remnants of the pseudonym of the other must be highlighted in an unclued entry.
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