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RE: '12A - Oz's shooter for such wild cats - i know the correct letter, but not where it goes, or how shooter fits in.'

DD - four words [well five if the apostrophe is removed], and two words. Misprint in shooter [fourth letter].

All done and on its way to St. Green's, without recourse to this forum for the first time in quite a while, in spite of ssome trickssy clueses...thank you, Craft.

But still baffled by the parsing of 10d - it can only be one word, which in extended form fits with the first three words of the clue perfectly; but the next bit of the wordplay seems perversely wrong, and the definition of the entry eludes me. Any explanatory hints without giving too much away? - and apologies if someone else has addressed this earlier

Brendon mentioned it a few posts back, but 'first to top' is literally what it means to generate a one-word letter, which is removed from a DBE.

It would have been different if it had been The Rolling Stones - very different indeed if Earth, Wind and Fire.

... and definition is the last word, a sporting term.

Hw7 - thanks- I had got the meaning of the entry but somehow managed not to make the connection with the last word of the clue.

I'm still foxed by the "first to top" instruction - the entry still has the unusual initial (not unusual for me, of course...) of the extended fsix-letter word suggested by the first three words of the clue (definitely not the LSO, agreed), so nothing has been moved to the top of that - or 'topped' from it;
the letter that has been 'topped' to make the entry doesn't appear to me to be the first of anything... I'm evidently being very stupid.
Where does the DBE come in? Judi Dench?? "...are we a pair?"

Try "Not first OF top"

Ahh!!

Thanks, Jordan.

The entry couldn't have been anything else, but it was niggling me.

Timely.

DBE - definition by example. So the definition is not necessarily a synonym of the answer, but an example, or sub-type.

A few classics - setter for DOG, bowler for HAT - and a lot of overlap.

So Mercury = element or god or planet; Galaxy = plane or bar; Vulcan = plane or god; Mars = bar or planet. Or god, as it happens, obv.

Ximenean rules are that the definition must be qualified with a 'say'; or 'for example' or 'perhaps'; requirement starting to slip.

Cheers -

HW7

Thanks to everyone for your explanations:

While i would never have worked out the "mixing word order up", i am always amazed by the brains ability to have such glaring blind spots/brain fades:

- i couldnt see that shooter could be adjusted (although i assume that was only included to allow for a correction ; it would make quite an elegant 3 word normal clue (or even 2 word clue)
- I could only see the "fractional" extension to the Beatles one - makes it a whole lot more straightforward if you use the correct one!