Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Real struggle this week.

24d Maybe stout resistance met by each trio omitting Les? (4,3)
??a? a?e
I assume this is real ale: r = resistance, each = ea, but how is lale reached from 'trio omitting Les'?

French "articles" la, le & les; the ? at the end indicating the need for lateral thinking.

Hmm, thanks Ginge but there’s nothing to indicate using French, and ‘Les’ has a capital.

In all the years I've been attempting this weekly offering, I've never come across one so hard.

I thought I'd solved 4D but the first word doesn't fit!!!

I doubt I'll be troubling anyone much on this.

Agreed, Bear of lb.

By the end of my second pint I would usually have solved around half the clues. This week I'd solved precisely six. Given up.

I reached the same conclusion as ginge with REAL ALE. I guess that the capitalisation of Les was to obfuscate further!

My query concerns:

Large English egg chopped up hardly appetising fare (5) G*U*L

GRUEL fits the definition but buggered if I can parse it.

I agree that there were some difficult clues, but it was generally pretty fair.

L E URG(e) … egg being urge, chopped, then reversed

Maybe... L large
E - English
Urge, egg, encourage - chopped, reduce it to Urg and then go Up for
Gru el.

Thanks both👍