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The bad weather in North Lincolnshire has led to panic buying at the newsagents with the result that I have been unable to get a copy of today's EV. If a Forum member has a copy in a form that could be emailed I would be very grateful. (fleetj@btinternet.com)

Sent.

Be warned, there's an error, 11A is two words.

11a is a double definition and it's two words for stage and a hyphenated one for hoax. Chambers does not have the latter, as such, but Collins does.

My Chambers 2016 clearly gives the answer with a hyphen as a noun meaning hoax. No error here.

mapledurrell

I agree. The only error I can see is in the pre-amble.

"Wordplay in all but the final down clue......." means that all clues (across and down) have an extra letter. In fact none of the across ones do.

Better wording would have been... " Wordplay in all down clues but the last....." or similar.

Pity - this complier is normally extremely accurate in pre-amble and clues.

Err...Mapledurwell, then it should say 'hyphenated'.

= a mistake your way too.

I take the question-mark after hoax to indicate questionability of the 'hoax' definition, inferring that the opening definition is the correct solution.

I may be wrong.

But either way the indication of the solution as being simply '5 letters' is mistaken.

QED

But the preamble clearly states that apart from 13 and 21 all across clues are normal - so therefore would not have the extra letter device in the wordplay.
I have not seen an indication of a hyphenated answer before in EVs.

Jigjag, I didn't look for any extra letters in the Across clues as the preamble had already stated ' All other across clues are normal...' I didn't find it ambiguous - let alone see it as an 'error'. The part about 'Wordplay in all but the final down clue....' comes AFTER we've been told the Across clues are normal.

It i is never stated when a word is hyphenated. If the answer is hyphenated then the number in brackets ignores the hyphenated. So (5) rather than (3-2).