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8 down: Caps very good with flowery decoration. (6)

I have PILEI which answers 'caps' but I don't see rest of the clue. Any thoughts??

Hi CannyAnnie,

"very good" = PI(ous) + LEI "flowery decoration" as in a wreath or garland of flowers.

A Lei is one of those flowery garlands, you see them in Hawaii for example.
Pi = Pious, very good, holy. It's in crosswords quite frequently.

Thank you both. I should have seen 'pi' at least!

I knew I could rely on all you good people out there.

Thanks Annie,

By weird coincidence I was doing a clue in this week's EV that required PI, just as you posted your query:-)

Pilei was just one of several obscurities that spoiled this for me, others being pyridine, cephalic, neodymium, ossicle and spiraea, all of which I could only get by using an online cheat site.

StrangelyBrown, maybe obscurity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder? I've seen most of those words before, I think 'neodymium' was the only new one for me.

I quite enjoy the occasional bit of obscurity (words that other people, including the setter, know and I don't) as it'd be a bit boring to have a puzzle filled with familiar words and phrases.

Hi Malone, for me the fun of a crossword is teasing out an answer from clever and witty wordplay, eg 24a Be relatively unobservant as a totally innocent person (8).
I don't mind how tricky a clue is, so long as it is leading to an answer that I've heard of. If too many answers are unknown to me, then a crossword descends into a tedious slog through Google or lots of unsolved clues.

Thanks, StrangelyBrown. I too like teasing out answers from clever and witty wordplay - but I don't mind if this sometimes leads to hitherto unknown words. I quite like thinking, 'what kind of word is that?', checking it in Chambers and finding it perfectly valid.

I haven’t seen the puzzle, but it seems like it may have had a scientific theme, in which case the answers are fair. On the other hand, “pi” as short for pious seems unfair to me. Is it common in the UK? In that case, I will retract my gripe. Still, I like the clue as “Detective has flowery decoration on caps” better. (I didn’t even have to resort to using mathematical constant for pi. 😁)