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Thank you Stick Insect. What an amazing puzzle! Some tricky clues but how those thematic clues were constructed is truly astounding. Well done indeed.

Thanks as usual, malone, for setting up this thread. I did, however, prefer the less ambiguous wording of last week's thread title: "...hints PLUS gentle nudges on the theme" — perhaps adding 'belt and braces' parentheses around "plus...theme" to further avoid any misunderstanding.

From the punning title to the glorious construction of the themed clues via another variation on how to derive redundant clue letters, this was a wonderful puzzle. Hats off to you, Stick Insect!

22d - Worked topless around sudaria having shade (8)

I have the extra letter and answer but just can't see the wordplay.

Brendan, I initially had a wrong answer for that. The definition is at the end, the jumbled word/extra letter was clever.

Aaahhh brilliant! - I had assumed the definition was at the start and so couldn't account for the "single" R 😲

Many thanks Malone:-)

.... so, just to clarify - I originally had the wrong answer - hence it was unparsable (is that a word?)

Thanks to Stick Insect for a fantastic puzzle and a great piece of construction:-)

Thank you Specsaver (and JG) - great to know we can still download on Fridays - but I too hope Tatters is OK - it would be nice to get back access to the archive of these threads for each puzzle which was stored on the Dropbox address - but not essential.

What a great puzzle (once the PDM comes!). I am 99% confident of my answers, but to satisfy my lingering OCD, I now need to make sure that the thematics align with the clues - but I'll do that later. Please let Tatters be OK.

I did the same Gitto, under the heading of 'dotting the i's etc'.

I did find a slight error in one of the down thematics but that could easily my mistake.