Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Thanks Malone but I fail to see how the letters are thematically
Placed as the J is not the middle letter of that word and neither are some others

Also from two names I fail to see how you can get the song and its lines without google ,if you are unfamiliar with these names

Not solvable without external help?

I cold solved almost all clues Then wasted hours fitting them in the grid starting with August which would not fit elsewhere

Thanks Malone but I was oblivious to the theme until fifteensquard on Wednesday

Ludo, the J was the middle letter of the clue - a bit of counting was required to get the 20 necessary letters. They were 'thematically placed' as they were stuck in the middle.

I don't particularly like puzzles like this, where solvers get so far and can go no further until they've got the theme. It's been referred to elsewhere as 'the chicken and the egg'.

I'd never heard of Joe Egan, but knew a few Gerry Rafferty songs, including the one here. I got the relevant phrase a lot quicker than I grasped some of the necessary stuff in other recent thematic crosswords. I've been expected to use quotations from various Shakespeare works - I feel no guilt when I look these up in my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or other reference books.

Thank you for the explanation Malone

I did finish without the theme as explained,and I have no problem with reference books as that's how it should be done
Imho

Its the having to Google to find this that an tother to complete a puzzle that bugs me and in this case the theme is irrelevant to finishing settersolver?

Thanks again for your help

Thanks for your comments, Ludo.
You mentioned that 'the theme is irrelevant to finishing settersolver', but I don't agree with that. The line 'here I am, stuck in the middle with you' is repeated six or seven times in the song - and it leads to solvers putting 'setter' ('I') and 'solver' ('you') in the middle column.

I used to agree with you about using only reference books to solve crosswords, but I think today's puzzles make that almost impossible. The ODQ and The Complete Works Of Shakespeare wouldn't help me track down Derby winners ridden by Lester Piggott, characters in 'Blake's 7' or the names of people claiming to have shot down the Red Baron. I'm sure some people know the answers to some subjects, other people know the answers to others, but we're not all expected to know everything.

When it comes to solving puzzles, whether thematic or not, it seems to me that the only intrinsic resource is the solver's brain, supported by such references (if any) as are explicitly recommended for that puzzle (whether in paper or electronic form), eg 'Chambers Dictionary (2016)'.

Beyond that, I cannot see that any material or medium has automatic precedence over another - the solver must decide what they think is most appropriate, whether that be thumbing through ODQ, typing a couple of words into a Google search, playing a CD, or, if the theme appears to relate to a board game, getting their Monopoly and Cluedo sets out of the loft. As far as I'm concerned, these methods all constitute 'external help' of one sort or another, whether the objective is to resolve a reference in a clue or to unravel the theme of a puzzle.