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Ha! Thanks for the thought Grunger, sneaked through in third place. I recall one of the critics’s described that desert as ‘half exquisite pudding, half practical joke’! I like the sound of it though

jono

I think the humour of the dish led Grunger to assume it was you. As for the critic who hated it, because of the dripping running down her neck, well, some of us were brought up on bread and dripping.

The critic who hated Jono's dish turned up last night on BBC4 presenting a programme about dancers from the last 50 years. She clearly knows as little about dancing as food, as she did not rate Pan's People, who as everyone knows, were the best dancers ever.

Although I liked the clue, I thought 14A in the Times today was wrong.

"....brief fancy panties" should be ".... fancy brief panties" as "panties" is chopped then anagrammed.

It would also read better as the garment is "brief panties" (briefs) which can be preceded by an adjective, fancy, lacy, black etc.

Just been incensed by the last question in tonight's University Challenge:
"How many atoms are there in a molecule of sodium bicarbonate?"

a) it's ionic, so doesn't contain molecules
b) its correct name has been sodium hydrogencarbonate for about 60 years

As you say ChrisE
Na+ HCO3-

I started off, after reading your post, thinking about whether ethene and polyethene etc. had yet penetrated the chemical industry. From that my mind moved on to another topic namely how to pronounce methyl and similar chemical words. At university in Scotland, methyl was pronounced like the name of a town in Fife (Methil) and ethyl a bit like a girl's name and it was not until I moved south of the border that I came across "meethile" and "eethile". After 50 odd years, it still jars when I hear it.

Interesting, parellogram. In fact, I've always pronounced them "ethil" and "methil", but I might be wrong!

Just keeping Malone up to date and on the boil with this week's Times homophones.
In 27836 we had
Bashful girl, they say, this Indian (8)
My pronunciation stands corrected here because CHEYENNE for me would be 'shay en' but it must be 'shy ann'.

Then, the day before, the solution KHARTOUM was expected to represent 'car tomb'. Not sure about that in some regions.

Adding to my @2049 and remembering Malone's dislike of outdated expressions such as 'daily' for a cleaner, the Times yesterday had

Poor female host Helen, lonely and unloved (2, 3, 5)

I haven't heard ON THE SHELF for years. Probably a sackable offence for using it in broadcast media.