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I was looking back at an old Listener crossword and saw this clue which I still can't totally work out the wordplay for....

Maybe propose for a prize minister before entering Number 10 shortly (8) NOMINATE

I did think 'Number 10 shortly' was NO TE(n) around MIN(ister), but that leaves an 'A' for 'before' - can anyone put me out of my misery:-)

Morning, Brendan. I've checked Chambers and 'a' can be 'before' - it's from 'ante' (italicised), Latin.

Hi Brendan, Chambers has 'a' for 'ante', before.

Thanks Malone, thanks Mattrom,

that was really bugging me. It was from the 'Hawking radiation' and 'Schwarzschild radius' puzzle.

Brendan, I originally thought this usage was new to me, but then realised I come across it every day - not always at 6 am, ante meridiem!

Glad we could help, Brendan.

That sounds a distinctly unappealing puzzle, too science-y for me!

Hi Malone,

I went back to the original thread to see if my query had already been answered (it hadn't) and noticed that you'd helped many solvers, including me, with this puzzle. Here's the link:-

https://www.crosswordsolver.org/forum/688982/offset/100

Thanks for that, Brendan. It was an interesting thread, though it didn't bring to mind the puzzle. Still, it was a long time ago - a very long time in solving terms, considering the number of thematic crosswords tackled since then!