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Brendan,
Often I parse clues by removing or inserting punctuation.
Here I'd insert: "Not very; quiet" and read that as the substitution indicator.

And it's a letter replacement within "birdhouse".

Thanks for the help everyone! Got their in the end. Didn't know the programmer, the Shakepeare character or the paper word!

I presume 4 and 11 are the rhyming pair, though the extra -s is a little inelegant.

Thanks again.

I've got the answer (I have the green tick) and I know I'm being pedantic but where is the instruction to replace one letter with another? After the "not very" it just says "quiet" - if it said "not very but quiet" then it could inferred that 'quiet' replaces 'very', but, of course, it wouldn't make any grammatical sense. As it stands, it's sort of in a no-man's land - it makes sense grammatically but you're left to your own devices as to what you do with "quiet".

I think we're just reading it differently Geeker, but that's part of the beauty of cryptics 😀

Agreed, Brendan, that's part of the beauty. 👍
I find the removing/inserting punctuation heuristic helpful, probably because my late father mentioned it to me when I was starting out with cryptics. But it's surely not universal.
I don't think 24's "implied substitution" (so to speak) is so unusual, it seems (IMO) to pop up from time to time.

I'm sure you're right Geeker and, looking at it again, I can see that a "quiet birdhouse" is a birdhouse with 'quiet' within it.

On a totally unrelated note, have you been following the Morphy v Anderssen saga with Agadmator? Very entertaining:-)

Hi Brendan & geeker,
I suspect 24a is one of these looser clues we have come to expect from Everyman. You can get to the answer but you need a fair bit of interpretation.

Brendan,
No, sorry, I haven't been following agadmator. He's good, but for some reason not one of the sites I most often visit (chess24, chess.com, chessbase, chessgames.com). I watch some of his videos, but mostly when they arise in the course of other investigations. I'll check out the story.

Hi Mystogre,

I thought I had never heard of 24a before but then I remembered she is referenced in "Upstart Crow" and, like in this instance, she remains unseen - very clever by Everyman:-)

I actually have 24 as my COD. I read it instantly the way the setter intended. Oh well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? However, I am stuck. I can’t make anything work for 13. I’m also missing something for 19. I believe I have the answer - I’ve even been to Victoria 19, but I don’t get the Dave. Help, please?