Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Working backwards, PIRATE as the answer works - as an anagram of RAT PIE.

Interesting idea. But rather than as an anagram, wouldn’t it work better as an insert, ie RAT in PIE? I think Pie containing Rat is plausibly repulsive

Agreed!

And now the Times from back in 1973;
No warm handshake from her at last (4)
-I-I and I'm not really veering towards anything

It looks like a reference to the tragic Mimi in La Boheme. When Rodolfo meets her he says “Che gélida manna”, what a cold little hand, and she is finally given a muff, but dies.

Manina, not manna*

Wow. I wouldn't have picked up that reference in a proverbial month of Sundays! Although I have heard of "your tiny hand is frozen".

Exactly that, a more common translation of the aria. I’m not dogmatic, and always happy to see a better idea if anyone has one. Hard to see any wordplay in the clue, and nothing to suggest Kiki, Fifi, Gigi, or anything else to me. I started doing the Times crossword in the 70s, and there were still a few clues like that.

Continuing the 1970s Times cryptics.
Wherein Tom in capital form appears to make a witticism (7,5)
LOOKING GLASS
We suspect another literary allusion, but all I have is Alice (no help there) or cats looking at kings.

If Tom looked in the answer, he'd see Mot, a witticism?