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Glad to help, nelson

Thanks muraria - got it! I'd thought along those lines but didn't pursue it as I had a couple of wring extra words (eg "sort" in 5d) - d'oh! All very nice, thanks to Serpent.

Hi cb,
Yes, I had 'sort' too to start with for 5d and was wondering for a while whether to take more than one letter per extra word. Writing down and staring at the first four extra words in clue order gave it away for me.

Bit slow today - only just realised the "self-referential" bit of the hint, very clever!

Can I get a parse for ...

21a - Unchristian cannibals say disembowelled macaque had upset scientists (10)

I have "unchristian" as the extra word and am assuming the first 2 letters come from "macaque disembowelled" and the next 3 (and 3 after that but "upset" isn't plural so I doubt it) could come from "upset" but can't get the rest from "scientists"?

The last two letters are the scientists, confirmed in Chambers. I'm not sure about the centre of the word.

Sorry, Brendan, that last post was very rushed! I thought, think, I am missing something with the 'upset' part. I can see two times 'had' in the answer, but don't see how the clue gives that. It's just as well that I don't bother too much with parsing!

I see what you mean - "had" as in I had such and such for dinner". Chambers gives one meaning of "eat" as 'upset' and as it say "had upset" as in past tense I, incorrectly, thought it was "ate" (which appears twice).

Many thanks Malone:-)

I think you’ve both cracked it. Had gives the first “ate”, and upset gives the second “ate”. It’s certainly unusual to see a word appearing twice in the same answer clued differently both times, rather than “twice”

That's excellent, many thanks Quisling:-)

PS My pens are a bit low on ink so I've decided to replace them so I can really do this endgame justice 😀