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I couldn't agree more with the comments regarding the excellence of this EV puzzle and the poor standing, in comparison with it, of this week's Listener.

I do have one query, however, as I'm unsure of my own reasoning on one facet of the endgame. I've assumed that the 9 letter "definition" given by the central cells in the NE quadrant is making a reference to a significant female protagonist's membership of a social grouping recognisable for its nomadic lifestyle. It just seems a bit tenuous. Do fellow solvers concur?

in response to the query about 13. I had it as a type (iii) clue where the superfluous wordplay letter is A from car A t. So C + 5 letter valuable property + outer letters of ThE.

Hi Turast, I had it as a type of, where a letter needs to be added too a word in the clue.

I had typed "type ii", but the predictive text kindly changed it to the wrong entry for me - great!

thanks brendan - should have checked there werent multiple abbreviations for cart...

Oops, sorry Brendan, typo! I meant type 2 (ii). Just wanted to make sure the central cell letter was clear.

Any thoughts on my query about NW quadrant?

Hi Turast, do you mean NE? If so, I think it was fine. The original definition of the 9 letter word is "wanderer" so, from there, it's just a short hop to 'traveller' then .......

turast - yes i didnt bat an eyelid at the NE quadrant - and given the characters in the novel it is unambiguous - although there is an alternative 9 letter alternative more closely associated with the group (starting with T) that i guess could have been used.

TBH the SW quadrant was the cheeky one if anything - although it did make me smile when i got it.

I agree this is a humdinger. I have the three characters (and I think SW is fine Andy: arguably the central character given the original title). But I’m struggling with the synonym. I suspect I may have some of the central letters wrong. What I have is YDY,OWA,OLN. Corrections welcomed!

Jack Aubrey
The first Y and the second O are incorrect