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Well, I really enjoyed this week's offering. Not too hard, but not too easy either.

As like the Everymams of old, there was a good combination of some clever clues, difficult clues, and some quite witty ones as well.

3d for example, the first word was a write in but I spent 5 minutes looking for the definition of the second word.

24a is another excellent clue. The answer is fairly obvious but, again, trying to figure out the wordplay took ages.

20a is another one took me ages to figure out. The second word is the usual word crossword slang for "jazz fan", but then I fell into what I think was a deliberate trap and it took an age for the PDM - which made it all the more sweeter when it finally did drop.

My favourite part of the crossword, though is the framing. Clues 1a, 8d, 9d and 28a pretty much sum up how I felt when trying to work out those clues I've mentioned above.

Congratulations to the setter for what I thought was an excellent crossword.

As usual though, I'm always interested to hear what others think, so please, leave your comments.

Brendan, you probably know I'm not a regular solver, but your enthusiastic post made me have a look at this week's puzzle! The loose |(very loose, at times) definitions seem to have gone now and this was quite enjoyable. Some of the clues were fun, though there still seems to be a lot of anagramming going on.

Yes, great selection this week. I loved the double meaning of 27ac, and the common theme around the edges was really well done.

The most straightforward for ages but no bad thing for that.

I agree, Brendan, especially about 20a, only just twigged the parsing, after reading your comment.

Another enjoyable puzzle. Thank you observereveryman.
I think I must have fallen into the same trap as Brendan on 20a but when I corrected my error , it was 'purrfect ' :)

An excellent puzzle in my view. Thanks Everyman

Hi Brendan et al
A bit of help with the parsing of 3D would be much appreciated. I've been staring at the answer for half an hour now, and just can't see any reason for the second word, even though it's all that fits. Cheers, in advance.

'a' is a synonym for the second word if that helps

Thanks Cerasus. Just looked it up on Answerbank (because it was driving me crazy!) and they said the same thing, so I'm sure that's it. Guess I was looking for complications that weren't there (such as subtracting the number of the clue from the number of letters in the answer or looking for a synonym for 'work'!!!). Other than that, though, I agree with you -- excellent puzzle and up to the standard of the previous Everyman. Especially gratifying to see so much wit (2D, 8D, 21D, etc.).