As for deifying RCW, it was bound to happen!!

I realise that many solvers will disagree, but I cannot else than give an opinion within the limits of my view on crosswords.
Indeed, at times (not always though) I can be annoyed or excited by individual clues which may affect my overall appreciation of a crossword, either positive or negative.
Others, like you or RCW, see a crossword as a whole and just want to have fun or a challenge. I have nothing against that, but my approach is slightly different as I am also interested in the technical aspects of clueing.

My post @17 was not meant to be a castigation of the setter Philistine, even if it may seem so.
As I said above, I admired many of his previous crosswords.
But sometimes puzzles just don’t work for me, and this was one of these.
Can happen.

BTW, RCW is now promoted to RDW? D of Divine?

I qualified the much discussed 17d as ‘unfair’. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have gone that far, but it will certainly not be my Clue of the Month [though, I guess, many others will go for it].
I have no problem with splitting up words in a clue. As a daily Guardian solver I got used to it. But what I do not like is that the definition is part of that split too. I believe Philistine did a similar before, which I then called ‘novel’, but I do not like it. Unlike Gervase – sorry mate – I would not want to write a clue like this. It is crossing borders that I do not want to cross. Others might find this ‘device’ adventurous, I do not.

I also would rather prefer a setter not to write clues like 13ac (TEEM). Nobody so far has objected (which I find odd given discussions on this topic in the past), but it is once more one of these ambiguous clues that should be avoided. “Suitable for returning swarm” can just as easily lead to MEET as to the actual solution.

20ac: “Transport system, the first to go chaotic”.
Two possible anagram indicators (transport, chaotic), that’s OK – makes one think a bit more. But “system, the first to go” leads for me to “ystem”. Apparently, Philistine belongs to the group of setters who find “the first” for T acceptable. As I said before, I hate it and I can easily name setters who would never use it. But it is all the more annoying because the clue actually tells me to delete the first letter of ‘system’.

Last week there was a puzzle by a new setter in the FT, Wanderer. I praised him for a clue that used “essentially” to indicate precisely the central letters of a combination of words. In Philistine’s puzzle we had [wallp]APERCUS[tomers] – not exactly in the middle. He could have said ‘… to a wallpaper customer’.
Probably, to most of the solvers and/or the readers of this blog it is not of any interest, but for me it is something that I care about when I (occasionally) write clues.

For me personally it is more important to be precise, unambiguous and what I think is fair, than to come up with fancy things like 17d. Creating a great surface is more my kind of bonus to a crossword clue. Exactly the reason why I like Tramp’s crosswords and the ones by Donk and Rorschach, the rising stars in Crosswordland – unfortunately only in the Independent so far.
Let’s face it, “By cupboard love” (24ac): what does it mean?

So, sorry, Philistine, I admired many of your previous puzzles but this one couldn’t please me ultimately.