Happy Thursday all. Did all of this one pretty swiftly, apart from ‘agaric’, which we looked up in Bradford’s when we got home. In retrospect, ‘smelly plant’ = ‘garlic’ should have been pretty obvious, but it didn’t occur at the time. Nothing exceptional here, but plenty of accurate and enjoyable clues regardless.
ACROSS
5. ST A.I. NED<
7. R(I G.I.)D
9. HASSLE ‘he’ containing ‘lass’, but with the first letter moved to the end
10. CATARACT dd.
11. ALTO CLEF ‘a cello’ anagramised with ‘t’ inside, then ‘f’
12. REC OIL
13. CON SIDE RATION
16. PROF. IT
18. NEED LING We don’t know why ‘Heather’ is ‘Ling’ – any answers?
21. MARGARET ‘tram’ reversed outside ‘gare’ (French for station; ‘Gare du Nord’ etc.)
22. CAN(IN)E
23. HORSE sounds like ‘hoarse’
24. D IS SENT
DOWN
1. RAMS HORN cd ‘ram’ as ‘butter’; something which butts
2. UN WELL
3. PRETORIA (I report)* a
4. A GAR(l)IC
5. S(N)AIL
6. DECAFFEINATED (affected Diane)*
8. (ad)DICTION
13. CAR WASH cryptic definition that we felt wasn’t as strong as it could have been
14. INTERN E.T.
15. I SLANDER
17. FI(GUts)RE
19. EX C.U. SE<
20. N(ONE)T
LING = heather is a crossword staple from way, way back – can’t say I’ve ever heard it in real life but dicts confirm it.
Enjoyable and finished it in half an hour.Great for me!