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@WilliamSeal - Yes I have tickets for myself and Mrs kt17 - M

Williamseal @10 I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to attend. I should be in the middle of an 8 week course of radiotherapy on the revised date. (That is, assuming that the appointments go ahead given current uncertainties!)

Just got round to this and couldn't help sniggering at some of the resulting made-up words: Laurgler sounds like a Scottish burglar to me! Reminded me of The Meaning of Liff, although those were all real words of course.

Great fun, as ever. Really enjoy Azed when there are special instructions. My only confusion here is the significance of the sentence re the two-letter pairs, which is written in bold, no less, as if it’s important. I don’t see why he needed to bother. Plus, as far as I can tell, two entries end in ‘-ng’ and two others end in ‘-ga’. Then there’s the two that begin with ‘ra-‘ and another two that begin with ‘re-‘. So there are a few that share letter pairs (and there could be more). What am I missing?

Actually, I make it three that begin with ‘ra-‘. Have I gone horribly wrong?

Yes, I've got RA at 3D, 17A and 29D. Is this incorrect?

The note is correct as far as it goes - there are two letter-pairs (NG and GA) which are shared by the second halves of two entries - but I agree with your observation regarding its usefulness. I think Azed's view (expressed in the preamble) was that each of the 36 solutions 'belongs' where its first half is, so it is only the second halves which are mobile, but this isn't really true - you could equally well view it the other way round. Likewise, the recommended method refers only to finding a definition of the word which contributes the second half of the entry; finding the other definition of the word which contributes the first half of the entry is equally valid. Once you've solved, say, 18ac you've got links to both 6dn and 27ac.

@Jack Aubrey, I hope your course goes very successfully - M

You’re right, Spoffy. I’d misread it as one pair of letter pairs, as it were, for two solutions, rather than two different pairs of letter pairs for four. But, yes, there’s still the shared first-half pairs. I suppose it’s the different perspectives of starting with solutions then working backwards, as a setter might, and starting with the clues then working forwards, as a solver. He must have seen the second-half letter-pairs as more of an issue than we do (my head’s hurting now...)

I think the instruction in bold refers to the two pairs of second halves that you have mentioned - GA and NG - in line with the instructions talking about it being an exercise to match second halves with first halves. The fact that two first halves also appear twice is incidental. I think!

I was chuffed to finish the puzzle, but 34a is a real brute to write a clue for - in particular, how to smoothly include two definitions.